A single as part of Art Is Hard‘s Pin Pal Club followed, and then finally 2018 EP smol, a release that found nostalgia charged with a keener sense of loss that captured the key components of the Exam Season style—the playful reminiscing hiding a deeper look back into the past, the ache of knowing that the best things go away with time, and so often cannot return.

There’s been a period of silence in the interim, but now Exam Season are back with a brand new single, ‘Your Car’. The melancholic ache of previous releases is still present, but the track deviates from previous releases in its overt confrontation of grief. For death is placed at the forefront of the track, faced head on with a disarming simplicity. “God damn I wish I knew you mum / This is kinda your song,” Watson sings. “You explained to me what cancer was in a Peugeot 106 / I don’t remember much else from age ten but that detail fucking sticks.”

The track could be taken as central to the Exam Season oeuvre. The key that explains the rest of the songs, the prototype from which everything else branches out. An important moment in the band’s life, a benchmark from which to build and hone their style—blending earnest emotion, nostalgic visions and an eye for humour in even the most difficult of places.

I loved our trips to Fleet Service Station,
I’m only half joking when I say it was our favourite holiday destination,
I saw a t-shirt there today that had “legalise dreams” written on the front,
At first I laughed out loud, then thought that’s relatable as fuck.

‘cause,
Every night you turn up in my dreams,
But next morning I forget everything,
I just wish I didn’t have to create,
My picture of you with someone else’s paint.

The post Exam Season – Your Car appeared first on Various Small Flames.

Tracklisting:

Mike Pace and the Child Actors – Everyone Out of the Car
Miranda Winters – The Futuristic District
Exam Season – Strawberry Milk
Saccharine – Pumpkin Guts
Tuvaband – Wolfpack
Devon Welsh – Dreams Have Pushed You Around
Mending – Alan after the Fire
Reddening West – Even If
Valley Maker – Light on the Ground
The Washboard Abs – Return to You
Manatree – Brushfire
Miserable Chillers – Horse Opera
Saint Charles – She Don’t Wanna Know
new casino – going for a walk*
Frankie Valet – Why Blue
Goodbye Max – Old Photos
Adeline Hotel – Habits
Joe Kaplow – I Said I Was Going and I Went
Pecas – Tuesdays
Sun Kin – Neglect
Baby Cages – flowers
Crooked Spine – Skinned Knees
Lauren O’Connell – Out of Focus
Mount Goldie – Summer
Harvey Trisdale – Baby
american poetry club – the sum of your parts
Babehoven – Out of the Country
Adam Arcuragi – Low Parade Rain
Jason Bemis Lawrence – Southern Midwest
Campdogzz – Sorceress
Barfoot – A Thin Place Between Worlds

* not on Playmoss

The post August 2018 Roundup appeared first on Various Small Flames.

The good news is that Exam Season are back with a new EP, smol, a release they say is about “the anxiety that comes with feeling your youth slipping away… fueled by Paul McCartney interviews, emo memes and strawberry milk.” But Exam Season aren’t interested in capturing these anxieties with mumbly mope-core. Instead, they throw their gazes back to the sparkly jewel of childhood, creating pop songs with influences ranging from Modern Baseball and Snail Mail to 5SOS and Charli XCX.

Lead single ‘strawberry milk’ is a song about once finding solace in music and Yazoo, and how even that simple pleasure has been taken from us by traffic light nutritional information and the twenty-first century persecution of sugar. Of course, the song is about more than just milkshake, its comforting sickly embrace standing in for any number of former pleasures that have been snatched away. It’s more about pining for things in the past, when the answers to your problems were as simple as, you guessed it, strawberry milk.

“Life hasn’t been fine,
Since it was okay,
To drink Strawberry Milk,
Everyday”

And this is the overarching theme of the record, gazing back at simpler times with a wistful sigh as a kind of escapism from our modern woes. As Watson describes:

“It’s all about growing up, but specifically it’s about missing childhood—not adolescence and the hormonal shift period, but what came before. I miss ringing home phones and awkwardly asking friends if they want to come play. I miss cookies for breakfast. I miss 5ive. Ultimately, the EP is naively childlike in a time where everything sucks, or at least is perceived to. Really, I just want to be as smol as a puppy again, I think we all do.”

As if to prove this point, ‘Cool Beans’ is an emotive indie rock song about getting older but never quite growing up. “You personify our cuddly toys, the food on our plates, the dust on the floor,” Watson sings, “At first I couldn’t see, but now you make me weep at the sight of a lonely pea.” Closing track ‘Black Candle Flame’ is probably the EP’s most reserved moment, Watson’s modulated vocals soft and sincere over minimal percussion and quiet guitar. It’s a song that compares past fears (horror movies and Hocus Pocus) to current ones, namely that ever-present shadow of mortality.

“I fear cancer, tinnitus and dust.
And I’m told that WebMD,
Can’t cure me, immediately.
I am scared,
I’ll always be scared”

You can get smol now on LP or download from the Exam Season Bandcamp page.

The post Exam Season – smol appeared first on Various Small Flames.

The track is called ‘Everything is Salted Caramel’, a song which sees Exam Season take the juxtaposition of the en vogue sweet treat and apply it to relationships. The message seems to be that it’s okay to take the rough with the smooth and that a dash of proverbially salty feelings is not just normal, but can make the sweet ones taste that much better.

“Everything has to be
sweet and salty”

If you’re unfamiliar with the Pin Pal Club, it’s a subscription service that sends not only a new and exclusive single each month, but also a specially designed enamel pin badge. It was planned to be a thing that ran through 2016, but if you order the year subscription now you get all the previous pins in one package, which might be more or less exciting, depending on your character. Also, the pins and corresponding singles are available for purchase individually via the Art is Hard online store.

The post Exam Season release new single, Everything is Salted Caramel appeared first on Various Small Flames.

And, of course, being comprehensive is impossible these days, so let us know if we missed your favourite and maybe we’ll add it to the collection.

Emily Yacina – Nice Try
(RIYL: bedroom pop)

Evening River Band – EP5
(RIYL: country, folk, psych rock)

Ever – But I Am
(RIYL: bedroom pop, dark rooms)

Exam Season – Mostly Homely
(RIYL: indie rock, emo, Trust Fund)

Family Video – Places To Sleep
(RIYL: indie rock, lo-fi, longing)

Field Medic – that beer called becks reminds me of a haiku i wrote
(RIYL: lo-fi, indie pop, modern folk)

Fish Food – For Shadow Hurts
(RIYL: indie pop, lo-fi, weird lyrics)

Folktale Records – Folktale Sampler (COMPILATION)
(RIYL: experimental, folk, indie pop)

Fossil Jane – will you?/you will.
(RIYL: bedroom pop, singer songwriter, )

Free Space – Ahead of Myself
(RIYL: bedroom pop, lo-fi, Trace Mountains)

Generifus – Peace Sign Rising
(RIYL: indie pop, indie rock)

Georgia Maq – Brain Studio Session
(RIYL: acoustic, bedroom pop, Camp Cope)

Ghost Camp – Great Lakes
(RIYL: indie rock, psych pop)

Glider – Demos
(RIYL: lo-fi, psych pop)

GoldFlakePaint – Too Far From Town To Learn
(RIYL: indie pop, lo-fi, Gold Flake Paint)

Good Good Blood – O Belong / Motion Sickness
(RIYL: ambient, dream pop, folk)

Gorgeous Bully – Better Demons
(RIYL: lo-fi, indie rock, fuzz)

Govier – Predator
(RIYL: indie rock, lo-fi, “alien folk”)

High Sunn – i will never learn
(RIYL: chillwave, lo-fi, dream pop)

The post Favourite Free Music of 2016: E – H appeared first on Various Small Flames.

Remember, we’re on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and Tumblr, so don’t hesitate to get in touch and let you know your favourite tracks from June. Or July. Or whenever.

Tracklisting:

1) Gofer – Yucky Duster
2) The End Parts One and Two – Paper Bee
3) Pas De Deux – Brenda’s Friend
4) Mostly Homely – Exam Season
5) rosy – Long Neck
6) Cool It! – Terry vs. Tori
7) best thought – Honeyuck
8) buttery sprouts – Trace Mountains
9) Green Ennui – Flying Circles
10) Memento Mori – Jake Bellissimo
11) Same Light – Tim Lannen
12) Golden Car – Tincho
13) Can’t Take My Mind – Skyjelly
14) E.V.I.L – Medicine Boy
15) Bike Thief – Frederick Squire
16) Oh Well – Adeline Hotel
17) Offering – Loone
18) Something Profound & Meaningful – See You At Home
19) Bowl of Plums – Ben Seretan
20) Muted Colours – Chain Wallet
21) Little One – Aaron Holm
22) Fear O’ the Light – Katie Dey
23) Protracted – William Ryan Fritch
24) Dizzy – Danielle Fricke
25) Uncanny – Sister Grotto
26) Hands in Our Names – Karima Walker

The post June 2016 Roundup: A Mixtape appeared first on Various Small Flames.

‘A Petty Song’ charges headlong at the strangeness of life in the 21st century, sitting on a knife edge of viewpoints. Is the world slowly sinking into a landfill of meaningless nonsense? Is the entire population becoming what the song describes as “a generation of culturally inferior types”? Or is that just a defence mechanism? Snobbery we coat our lives in to try to feel somehow better than everyone else? Whatever the answer, the track has some pretty cool verses, almost reminiscent of Alexandra Kleeman’s You Too Can Have a Body Like Mine. Take, for example, the opening verse:

“We roam around department stores
Searching for things we can’t afford.
Getting lost in a world of cultural beigeness
And other futile things like avocado holders”

‘TV Routines’ and ‘Megabus’ are ironic and funny but bathed in a persistent melancholy that the smirks can’t quite shake. “My best friend is called Megabus,” Watson sings on the latter with disarming sincerity, “He texts me all the time / Even though they’re always just a bunch of digits and letters / intertwined.” Following jabs at the rival coach service competitors (“Fuck you National Express / For your unequivocally, awful service”) the song falls into a a sadder place, the vocals pleading for reprieve from a fast-approaching future.

‘Constantly Ignored’, which opens with a quote from Portlandia to sum up the Exam Season vibe, sounds like the lonely echoes of a disillusioned cynic, his thoughts rattling around inside the blank vacuum which belies the superficial skin of mass media. The title track closes things with more nostalgia and sadness, the only two emotions left standing as the technology-induced razing continues unabated:

“We’re swiftly approaching a great sense of numbness everyday,
Colour has leaked from the walls to reveal a desolate grey.
I cling onto hope that something at the shady bower might change,
Still I’ve got no desire to leave, and no desire to stay.

I call it home.
It’s all I’ve ever known”

With its references to Eggheads and Flog It! and headers & volleys, Mostly Homely is a delightfully British record addressing an unquestionably global malaise. It’s music for those of us who spent our youth swapping Merlin stickers and naively thinking life could only get better and more meaningful, only to find ourselves over-educated and unemployed and wondering if this is really all there is. You can buy it now from the Exam Season Bandcamp page.

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