Daytime TV – S/T (REVIEW)
(RIYL: indie rock, lo-fi, 80N7)

Debaser – MOOD RING
(RIYL: mixtapes, lo-fi, weird)

Derek – Rookie of the Year
(RIYL: indie rock, lo-fi)

Devon Mello – Constance All Grown Up (REVIEW)
(RIYL: indie pop, lo-fi, bedroom pop)

Dicktations – Words Don’t Love You (REVIEW)
(RIYL: garage rock, Weezer, Black Lips)

Diners – It’s All True
(RIYL: indie pop, Telekinesis)

Diocese – S/T 
(RIYL: garage rock, Krill)

Eerie Summer – The Way I Don’t Understand Anything Anymore (REVIEW)
(RIYL: indie pop, shoegaze, jangle, The Pains of Being Pure at Heart)

EP – Ashland (REVIEW)
(RIYL: indie rock, lo-fi)

Fairweather Currents – Things Get Better (REVIEW)
(RIYL: bedroom pop, folk, acoustic Nana Grizol)

Fanpage – L Y A (REVIEW)
(RIYL: noise pop, shoegaze, Jenny Hval)

Faux Discx – Where We Were (COMPILATION)
(RIYL: indie rock, post-punk, shoegaze)

Fazed on a Pony – Hunch
(RIYL: lo-fi, indie rock)

Field Medic – Light is Gone (REVIEW)
(RIYL: bedroom pop, folk, lo-fi, J. Tillman)

Fog Lake – Victoria Park (REVIEW)
(RIYL: experimental, atmospheric pop, solitude)

Fox Academy – Elsie (REVIEW)
(RIYL: indie pop, summer nostalgia, golden oldies)

Fraternal Twin – s m a l l  w i n d  p o w e r (REVIEW)
(RIYL: gentle acoustics, natural glitches, intimate songwriting)

Free Cake For Every Creature – Moving Songs (REVIEW)
(RIYL: bedroom pop, folk, post-collegiate blues [or, overcoming them])

Furnsss – New Moves (REVIEW)
(RIYL: indie rock, deadbeat disinterest, Abe Vigoda, Hallelujah The Hills)

Gay Angel – Floral (REVIEW)
(RIYL: indie pop, weird, early CFTPA)

Gleemer – No Goobyes (REVIEW) / Moving Away (REVIEW)
(RIYL: pop punk, grunge, Pains of Being Pure at Heart)

GoldFlakePaint – The Human Noise We Sat There Making https://goldflakepaint.bandcamp.com/album/the-human-noise-we-sat-there-making
(RIYL: indie pop, lo-fi, compilations, all the cool stuff GFP write about)

Good, Good Blood – S/T (REVIEW)
(RIYL: indie pop, lo-fi, atmospheric folk)

The Grey Estates Vs Gold Flake Paint – The Pale Light Between (REVIEW)
(RIYL: indie pop, lo-fi, compilations, Gold Flake Paint, The Grey Estates)

Griffin Washburn – S/T
(RIYL: chill indie pop, psych, The Lagoonas)

GRNDMS – Capitol Mill (REVIEW)
(RIYL: bedroom pop, folk, Frankie Cosmos)

We’ll be sharing a new section of the list every day this week, so be sure to check back for the complete collection. If you find something you like, or think we missed something life-changing, then why not let us know on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Tumblr or good old email.

The post Favourite Free Music of 2015: D-G appeared first on Various Small Flames.

Evening Hymns – Quiet Energies
(REVIEW | INTERVIEW)

“The album takes the suffocating, nebulous shadow of grieving and distils it into something small and hard and strangely tactile, a mysterious object that will always be there in your pocket, radiating its secret and peculiar brand of comfort. This isn’t about forgetting death, or even really ‘moving on’, instead its about coming to a deeper understanding of one’s life, about how a person can be so shaped by another, and how such an impact can and should be a source of immense pride and joy, no matter how hard some days can be. In other words, Quiet Energies is about understanding how it is in fact life, not death, which shapes us and our view of the world.”

Kathryn Joseph – Bones You Have Thrown Me and Blood I’ve Spilled
(REVIEW)

“This is a simple album about things so complicated that it’s almost impossible to put them into words. It’s about those thoughts and feelings that we all experience but never admit, the things that we, be it through etiquette and embarrassment and fear, dare not confess to others or even ourselves. Bones You Have Thrown Me and Blood I’ve Spilled is an album about people: lonely and loved, corporeal and divine, mortal and terrified yet enduring with a resilient hope that never quite goes out.”

Young Jesus – Grow / Decompose
(REVIEW | INTERVIEW)

“As the title describes so neatly, Grow / Decompose speaks of the familiar paths that human lives follow. Despite all the strangeness, the characters here are going through the age-old problems – depression, anxiety, identity crises, existential terror – the problems of being You and You alone, Molina’s “curse of a human’s life”. For all of the complexity of our existence, we are still locked in the atavistic pattern of life and death, everyone more or less condemned to the same mistakes and fears and joys that we as human beings have been experiencing for generations.”

Danielle Fricke – Moon
(REVIEW)

“Moon is a lesson in stillness, a moment stretched out, questions asked but not answered, a monologue that might never leave the room. The wonder of the album is that the human emotions of love and longing never evaporate, continuing to push through the frost where they are warmed by earthshine, opening up the possibility that the very feelings which caused the pain could be the things which end it. So while the narrator is trapped, they never submit to the vacuous silence of space. Hopes are still hoped and dreams are still dreamed and wishes are cast from cold, cupped hands, skywards.”

Yowler – The Offer
(REVIEW)

“Burns with quiet intensity, its strange lyrics feeling oddly personal, giving the album the intimacy of hearing about someone else’s dreams. Guitars sidle and prowl like shadows and the whole thing seems on the verge of something vaguely dangerous. All eight tracks are a study in the art of minimalism, of the exchange between poetry and negative space. It’s certainly a lot more than just quiet and pretty folk music”

Advance Base – Nephew in the Wild
(REVIEW)

“I don’t know Owen Ashworth, and maybe I’m completely wrong, but he seems like a kind and empathetic generally nice human being, in the same way the best writers seem like people you could be friends with. Even if none of that is true, I guess it doesn’t matter – what is indisputable is the fact that he’s a damn good writer who tells stories that speak to and help us all. While it’s easy to cast him as the lonely boy in front of a keyboard, the truth, at least in my eyes, is that he’s often hardly there at all, a transparent gateway into the lives of people you’ve never met, feeling things you thought you had to suffer through alone.”

Siskiyou – Nervous
(REVIEW)

“Nervous is an album of dizzying scope and ambition, quite literally the tumult of sound and emotion inside one man’s head. It is by turns dark and creepy, shimmering and vibrant. Siskiyou have never sounded so eerie, so threatening, or so expansive. And I have to admit, I don’t think they have ever sounded so good.”

Samantha Crain – Under Branch & Thorn & Tree
(REVIEW | INTERVIEW)

“These are songs played like inner thoughts or secret diary entries of persons not usually able to or justified in expressing their true sentiments, people who are not as tough as they let on, but tougher than they think in the middle of the night. A selection of underdogs living the lives they have been given, not pining for more or complaining at a cosmic injustice. Quiet, noble people in the trenches of everyday life, those with the broadest shoulders and smallest voices and a hard, buried sense of pride who treat hardship like a member of the family.”

Lejsovka & Freund – Fatal Strategies
(REVIEW)

“Fatal Strategies inspires a multitude of strange, lateral thoughts – a soundtrack that doesn’t need a film. The musical translation of the postmodern ruminations of an over-active, twenty-first century brain. Music unearthed by a post-society people, who’ll turn it up loud and sit in their ruined cities, reclaimed by branches and vines, and wonder and wonder about us.”

Frog – Kind of Blah
(REVIEW | INTERVIEW)

“Kind of Blah is a product of this place, an album imbued with the spirits of a sparkling past… Judy Garland is America. Lusty teenagers are America. Jesus Christ is America. So is Dr Pibb and dusty valleys and shut-down bowling alleys and all the communal memories shared by millions just like you. Kind of Blah is America, the U S of A in eleven songs – quirky, joyous, breathless, exhausting, addictive, heartbreaking and downright weird, accelerating towards a distant horizon while keeping its eyes firmly on a halcyon past that sure seems like it should have been more fun.”

Oh, Rose – SEVEN
(REVIEW | REVIEW OF ‘SEVEN’, THE VIDEO)

“Olivia Rose’s voice carries the tracks beyond the genre norms into peculiar territories. Raw and versatile, her vocals range from whelps and wails to quiet, haunted whispers. On their début full length SEVEN, a record on which, if anything, Rose pushes things even further. Lean and wiry guitars lead proceedings while a lo-fi buzz envelopes everything, Rose’s words cutting through like shards of glass. The vocals have the quality of an exorcism, like the unnatural utterings of a twelve year old as some jaded man of faith flicks holy water at her forehead.”

Valley Maker – When I Was a Child
(REVIEW | INTERVIEW)

“When I Was a Child is an album about belief and love in a variety of guises, about the big and unknowable questions, from love and growth and family to God and everlasting life. It’s an album about all of us, basically.”

Eskimeaux – O.K.
(REVIEW)

“O.K. is about reality, the moment we live in and the people we share it with. It’s about the things we want and the things we wish for and the things we can’t control. It’s about doing the best you can and hoping it’s enough, about accepting and learning and growing so that whatever hand you’re dealt, you carve out some semblance of meaning and happiness to make everything worthwhile”

Aero Flynn – S/T
(REVIEW)

“This is not an album in which the emotional arc is self-contained and easily mappable… The redemption is the very fact that Scott is creating words and sounds, that he is letting others know where he is and how he is and why he is. The album is the flare of hope hanging in the night sky, burning bright and incandescent.”

Hip Hatchet – Hold You Like a Harness
(REVIEW)

“[Speaks] of that vulnerable core at the heart of every man, and the desperate, ridiculous attempts to suffocate it with cigarette smoke or drown it in whiskey or cover it over with scars. Hold You Like a Harness is an album about tough guys who know deep down that they aren’t so tough. Yeah they fight and drink and make merry, but they’re also sentimental and lovesick and terrified of everything.”

Mike Pace & the Child Actors – Best Boy
(REVIEW)

“Best Boy is for the children of the 80s and 90s, reminiscing about the age where entertainment exploded, where VHS tapes and cable TV transformed us into constant consumers. Of course, as consumers we were sold promises, told we merely needed x, y and z to be happy and successful and pretty and popular. It’s kind of ironic that a time built on visions of the future is now seen as a utopia locked in the past. Pace gets at this feeling by writing feel-good songs tinged with longing, nothing too sad or serious, nor a Father John Misty-style ironic assault. Instead, Best Boy is a wistful celebration of what we had and presents some convincing reasons for why we feel the way we do.”

Fanpage – LYA
(REVIEW)

“Fanpage’s music occupies a space between life and imitation, too mechanical to be described as organic yet too intuitive and mysterious for machines. It wanders a strange distance ahead of the human race, amongst a chaos born of our need for order. Love and delirium and bright white fear roil beneath the feedback, humanity kicking and twisting within a noise filled with myth and magic and dread. Terrifying and beautiful and glorious, LYA is an album for the information age, where data has exploded to incomprehensible volumes and become its own wilderness.”

Titus Andronicus – The Most Lamentable Tragedy
(REVIEW)

“Life (and especially mental illness) isn’t a neat Freytagian pyramid, so why should a representation of it conform to expectations? […] You are left with the impression that the band have said “fuck it, we’re doing it our way”, rejecting a clear genre in favour of whatever felt right at any given time. This kind of zealous self-belief in their own work is interesting, as it’s at odds with Our Hero’s struggles to accept himself as Himself, and sees Titus Andronicus cutting swathes through the field of wannabes, imposters and pretenders and stepping up to the plate as the twenty-first century’s bona fide punk rock band.”

Elvis Depressedly – New Alhambra
(REVIEW)

“This is not a born-again Love-The-World-Because-Life-Is-Great sort of album. Elvis Depressedly will not mend broken bones or cast out demons or have you walking across hot coals. Instead they say that afflictions are not all there is, that you are not defined solely by your circumstances. They say that peace and hope are never out of reach and offer an achievable version of optimism, one which does not require manic enthusiasm or God-like goodwill but instead a pinch of determination and a firm belief in love.”

Nathaniel Rateliff & The Night Sweats – S/T
(REVIEW)

“Nathaniel Rateliff & The Night Sweats could be your favourite anti-heroes of the sixties, the forgotten friend of Otis Redding and Sam & Dave, or maybe from even further back, a band of villains rolling into nameless pre-war towns to cause shitstorms in cowboy brawl-bars and put smiles faces for one night only. That there is a serious side is less a surprise than a foregone conclusion, because no man has conjured this kind of bone-level fervour out of a pleasant existence. No, here are people staring down the barrel, people stranded in a sea of beer, locked inside some breakneck motion in which a grin and a grimace are practically indistinguishable. Whether this is a defiant two fingers or last hurrah seems unclear even to Rateliff, himself too caught up in a compulsion to dance and scream and shout. Whatever you take from this record, one thing is clear: They can’t put you in the ground if you’re still moving.”

What were your favourite albums of the year? Let us know through one of the usual channels – we’re on Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr and Instagram.

The post Wake The Deaf’s Favourite Albums of 2015 appeared first on Various Small Flames.

On a related note, things are gradually getting busier for us in other areas – Liam works full-time and I’ve gone back to school – so the old two posts a day routine might not be maintained too often any more. That said, in an effort to keep things ticking over, we’re going to introduce a new ‘Flash Review’ feature where we cover albums in less words than we would otherwise use. It’s not ideal but a short piece is better than no piece. There’ll still be a good smattering of the usual style too.

Tracklisting:

1. Birthstone (Reprise) – Pet Cemetery
   2. Vice – Roundheels
   3. Forever – Boosegumps
   4. So Long – Heavy Boots
   5. Long Walk To All Sorts of Place – Fanpage
   6. Feathers & Leaves – Ocean Floor
   7. Down Predator Souvenirs – Lejsovka & Freund
   8. Vacation – Florist
   9. 2. – Old Earth
   10. Never Good Enough – Eerie Summer
   11. EZ River – Wilder Maker
   12. Thumbs – Claire Cottrill
   13. If I Were A Portal – Evening Hymns
   14. Jenny Come Home – Andy Shauf
   15. Only Friend – Valley Maker
   16. The Flood – Mike Pace & the Child Actors
   17. Close Call (Adderall Anxiety) – Shaky Shrines
   18. Nancy Kerrigan – Frog
   19. Kaleidoscope – Arbes
   20. The Book of Love – ARMS

The post October Roundup – A Mixtape appeared first on Various Small Flames.

The album kicks off with lead single, ‘Rain Days For Bad Songs’, a strong start which acts as the perfect introduction of the beautiful weird to come. In our preview we described the track (rather accurately) as “an off-kilter electro-pop song just managing to keep it’s head above a swirling noise, like a radio hit from your favourite recurring dream.”

‘Long Walk to all Sort of Places’ starts all slinky, with whispery “sshhh”s and noodly little synths that worm in from the ominous noir that surrounds the song. The whole thing sounds slightly unhinged, with an odd, unearthly atmosphere that quickly establishes itself as the signature of LYA. ‘Y U’ takes things even darker and weirder, with a steady, slow thump of percussion and background “vocals” which sound for all the world like feedback-riddled moans and screams. Even the lulls in the maelstrom have a rumbling sense of mechanical foreboding, and the lyrics are just as black: “I got those witches at my side / some things crawling as I turn on the light.” It’s genuinely unsettling, bringing to mind some of the tracks on Oh Rose’s recent SEVEN in its almost horror-level intensity (if not quite in throat-shredding yells). ‘Murder’ cools the mood with the air of woozy hallucination, the pretty dream-pop vocals delivering not-so-pretty lines. “We know you are gonna get another fire hun”, she sings. “Setting flames to light another guilty pleasure in the setting sun”. However beneath the composed vocals swirl strange cries, a thousand flavours of hysteria as heard from behind locked doors and thick walls.

From here, things don’t quieten down. ‘Helena’ has unusual effects on the vocals that transform them into the high pitched whine of a buzz saw, and ‘Reply Please’ is all disturbed paranoia, with drum machine beats that sound like the agitated pulses of a delirious body, everything somehow bleached hot-red like a wobbled vision from within the throes of a fever. ‘I Got My Piano at Six’ is a haunted instrumental, all devious feedback and heavy oppressive atmosphere with weird piano that seems to ripple and quiver into the distance, while ‘Cry Me a River’ comes across oddly understated with a spare drum beat and shoegazey post-rock atmospherics, the lyrics painting a picture gaunt and crumbling, vague poetry of negative urges and self destruction. Follow-up ‘Within You’ is a schizophrenic pop track with lyrics delivered in almost robotic monotone, noise spooking the edges like a static fog, while ‘Check My Heart’ advances in a shadowy slow glide, like a flashy car coasting neon-glared midnight streets in some 80s thriller, before descending into bursts of high-pitched derangement, rain-slicked hairpin bends and cackles rising from seedy back alleys. ‘Boys’ plays like a bizarro r&b track, clanking along with a hundred textures of noise, the creepily sensual pop music that all the post-human android bars will be playing in 2116, again with lyrics that defy initial definition:

“Got me, got two tickets out, got me, got a witch inside
got a tendency to lour, got a friend I gotta hold on
hey girl – watch me

Got me, got to figure it out, Got me, got someone possessing me
got a cold heart I borrow , got an angel inside a bottle”

The album finishes with ‘Poser’, its humid breathy ambience and slow precision building and building, passing from a sense of clarity into something else entirely, something massive, too large to see or describe. The song is imbued with a sense of clear-minded determination, as if operating to a logic clear to the narrator, if not to us.

“I keep on hiding in my den as summers passing and winters sometimes
I watch my spelling how I write, if I dress in colours my heart turns beige

I got some secrets in my bag, some words might slip but not this one, not this one
Somebody said I tried, I tried, somebody said I loved I died
oh, I got it. I think I got it to late this time”

Fanpage’s music occupies a space between life and imitation, too mechanical to be described as organic yet too intuitive and mysterious for machines. It wanders a strange distance ahead of the human race, amongst a chaos born of our need for order. Love and delirium and bright white fear roil beneath the feedback, humanity kicking and twisting within a noise filled with myth and magic and dread. Terrifying and beautiful and glorious, LYA is an album for the information age, where data has exploded to incomprehensible volumes and become its own wilderness.

You can buy LYA right now via the ever-wonderful Fox Food Records, either as a digital download or on a lovely limited-edition cassette, designed by Alexander Wireen.

The post Fanpage – LYA appeared first on Various Small Flames.

Tracklisting:

1. By My Side – Valley Maker
   2. Shadow Play – Tierpark
   3. West Texas – PWR BTTM
   4. Console – Joplin Rice
   5. Lightning Dream Shuffle – Will Stratton (for Genius Loci)
   6. Dazed By You – PINS
   7. Y U – Fanpage
   8. The Rest – Alex Bleeker and the Freaks
   9. I’m Not – Hoshifo
   10. Nothing, Just Looking at the Moment – Lejsovka & Freund
   11. Stole Ur Bike – Boosegumps
   12. Our Headache Years – Nudes
   13. Worry, Glory – The Silence Set
   14. Sand – Frankie Cosmos
   15. xplodineyez – Field Medic
   16. Walking The Line – Sam Moss
   17. Bedroom – Alanna McArdle
   18. Tired – Captain Samurai
   19. Birds – M Caridi & The Glow
   20. Gardensong – Funeral Advantage
   21. Snow Bird – Ama Moii
   22. So Long, Suzie (The Damage is Done) – Morning River Band
   23. Cracks in the Sidewalk – Naomi Pop
   24. Burn This – Mauno
   25. What Coast – Grubs
   26. Pulled Over – Generifus
   27. EZ River – Wilder Maker

The post September Roundup – A Mixtape appeared first on Various Small Flames.

Okay, here’s a second chance. Fox Food Records is preparing to release the début album from Sweden’s Fanpage (the solo project of Elsa Kristina Sundin), whose first EP Trip was very much up our alley. In fact we described it as:

[A combination of] DIY bedroom poppers’ lyrical style with a punky delivery and shoegazy soundscapes… the whole thing a few clicks too slow… an atmospheric release that is at once both sad and slightly creepy, with the angsty croon and eerie languidity of the Julee Cruise stuff on Twin Peaks

LYA consists of twelve songs which the press releases describes as “small pieces of life, floating in a river. Absorbing mud, iron, colour” which are “finally pulled together, processed and formed into being”. So far only two of these songs are available, but this coalescence is abundantly clear. First up is ‘Rain Days For Bad Songs’, an off-kilter electro pop song just managing to keep it’s head above a swirling noise, like a radio hit from your favourite recurring dream.

“Oh I got a splinter in my heart
I’ve got something to keep me occupied”

The second track, ‘Y U’, is similar in its combination of pop and noise but ups the ante in terms of weirdness, with some unnerving backing vocals/moans which play like the shrieks of an wounded demon or troubled mind. The result is something both unpleasant and alluring, like a dark secret you know you should avoid but can’t help but seek. Think the strangest parts of the new Oh, Rose record if the garage rock was switched out for atmospheric dream pop.

If that isn’t quite exciting enough, the album will be released on some rather special tapes. As the cryptic description reads:

Designed and created by Swedish artist Alexander Wirren the tapes and the accompanying artwork will be processed by nature, each one with it’s own form and tale of life to tell.

It looks like Fox Food Records are taking the tape game up a notch. Pre-order one now via Bandcamp ahead of release on the 1st October.

The post Fanpage announce début album appeared first on Various Small Flames.

Opener ‘Border Line’ begins with percussion like clattering metal and the little pop of fireworks, with the whole thing draped in a dreamy gauze of piano and lo-fi faraway vocals. The result sounds something like Meursault meets Youth Lagoon’s debut album. ‘Good Shepherd’ has an Eastern mystic vibe and reminds me a little of Chad VanGaalen, while the acoustic guitar on ‘Eserkiel’ makes for an assured and comforting dream pop track. The final song, ‘Dear Friends’ is my current favourite. As the title suggests, it is about the importance of loved ones. “I could never make it on my own,” he sings.

The whole thing feels like a not-unpleasant dream, not the twisting dark corners of a nightmare but a reassuringly familiar (if somewhat incoherent/illogical) set of memories, all spliced together in sepia tone. The sort of dream you are disappointed to wake up from and try to chase back through the layers of consciousness to no avail.

You can get Good News Is Too True via the Fox Food Records Bandcamp page, either on limited edition cassette (for a measly £3!) or on a pay-what-you-want download.

The post Newfoundland – Good News Is Too True appeared first on Various Small Flames.

Tracklist:

1. She Reminds Me – Family Video
2. Jean Skirt Mystique – Naps
3. Sail – Swim Lessons
4. Mirror Threat – Waiters
5. Tibetan Clouds – Chips Calipso
6. Smokesquare – Fanpage
7. This City Will Eat Itself – Blush Response
8. Undone – Phoria
9. Lungs – Pixel Fix
10. Ancient Ways – Interpol
11. Have You Seen My Son – Benjamin Booker
12. Ballad of Big Nothing (Elliott Smith cover) – Arms
13. Stupid Boy – Owl John
14. Memento Mori – Hollow Wood
15. It’s the End of the World As We Know It (R.E.M. cover) – Free Cake For Every Creature
16. Youth – Thad Kopec
17. You Belong – Lucas O’Connell
18. Knives – The Meanest Creature Ever Known
19. Accept That the Mark Will Outlast You – Old Earth
20. If I’m – Sea Oleena
21. Joni – Old Amica
22. Autumn in the New Canaan – Lejsovka & Freund

August Mix from Wake The Deaf on 8tracks Radio.

The post August 2014 Roundup – A Mixtape appeared first on Various Small Flames.

Fanpage is difficult to pin down in a distinct genre. Imagine combining the DIY bedroom poppers’ lyrical style with a punky delivery and shoegazy soundscapes, and then playing the whole thing a few clicks too slow, and you will be getting somewhere near what Trip sounds like. The result is an atmospheric release that is at once both sad and slightly creepy, with the angsty croon and eerie languidity of the Julee Cruise stuff on Twin Peaks.

You can grab the release on cassette or digitally over at Fox Food Records. While you are there, have a browse of their other releases, including some good stuff from NEWFOUNDLAND and Oh, Rose.

The post Fanpage – Trip appeared first on Various Small Flames.