Nowhere is this clearer than on Devil’s Rain, an EP out with Fear of Missing Out Records this coming February. Recorded during the locked-down spring, the project came alive with what they describe as “extraordinary urgency,” becoming an obsessive work that could not be explained by the surfaces of pandemic-induced anxiety or boredom. Forced to sing quietly so as not to disturb the neighbours, there’s a hushed atmosphere to the songs, but this does not represent a retreat away from the outer world. “Nothing about it is comforting,” Maria BC says. “Music just seems necessary for whatever reason.”

If the process was intensely personal, then the songs themselves follow suit. Devil’s Rain is an EP of intimacy and earnestness, the songs woven with a gentle patience that evokes a candid atmosphere. Music that is introspective yet unguarded, probing into themes as weighty as memory and religion with intuition and care. Maria BC challenged themselves in order to focus on this style, the enforced quietness becoming something actively pursued. “Normally I belt when I sing,” they say. “It constrained the melodies I could write, knowing I would need to be singing quietly, and it meant I couldn’t rely on certain old tricks to craft an arc.”

Today we’re delighted to share the release’s first single, ‘Adelaide’. Confronting introspection head on, the song is inspired by a friend’s experimentation with memory palaces, a novel method of enhancing information recall. As Maria BC explains: “A friend of mine used to work as a museum guard. Guests would almost never ask her questions, so she had a lot of downtime.” The friend would spend hours each shift constructing these palaces, aiming for total autobiographical memory. But on hearing of this, another friend raised an interesting question. Is it possible to put too much effort into recalling the details of your life? Can a person become lost in their own interiority? “I thought, damn, that’s so true,” Maria BC continues. “I’ve seen that happen to so many people. It’s happened to me many times—this feeling that I’m stuck in the architecture of my own ego.”

‘Adelaide’ is therefore not about the museum guard, rather the questions that arose from their ideas. “It’s a song addressed to a depressed version of myself,” Maria BC says, “or someone who needs a hand to pull them back into the social world.” The muted softness of the sound belies the urgency at its heart, not to mention the thorned truths it chooses to grasp, but for all of the conflicting emotion of the track, the enduring impression is that of compassion. And seeing as there can be no compassion without others, the song reveals the intentions behind Maria BC’s introspection. Not some retreat into a personal interior, but an attempted communication from that space in an attempt to reconnect beyond its lonely borders.

Photo by Sergio Gutierrez

The post Maria BC – Adelaide appeared first on Various Small Flames.

January sees the release of a brand new Alex Chilltown record on Fear of Missing Out Records. Eulogies represents what we described in a preview as “a blend of dream pop and art rock for the hyperreal present,” drawing on personal experiences, the local environment and research in cultural studies to explore “a place of concrete and tarmac and a constant bustle toward a future that no-one can quite imagine, so is instead painted as another cycle of the past.”

This image is an important one, Croydon painted not as some flat stereotype or total hellscape but rather an ambiguous place. The suburban record is so often one of escape, boredom and alienation driving the artist away, as though a life on the fringes is a life suspended, waiting for the energy of the city to shake it free. Esaw takes a different tack, embracing the contradictions of a brutalist, grey home in which dreams never come true but never quite fade away either, proving that a life on the edges is a life all the same.

Today we’re delighted to share the latest single, ‘Carry On’, a single fully engaged with such concerns, complete with a video by Jamie Drew. “Working with Jamie was a real pleasure,” Esaw explains. “He really embraced our chaotic creative approach and we thrashed out a very simple and effective idea that shows off the song but also I think really highlights what a great film maker he is.”

Eulogies is out via Fear of Missing Out Records on the 24th January and you can pre-order it now from the Alex Chilltown Bandcamp page.

Photo by Jamie Drew

The post Alex Chilltown – Carry On appeared first on Various Small Flames.

Rat Tally – Feel Something

The recording project of LA’s Addy Harris, Rat Tally makes an emo-inflected brand of indie rock, exploring tortured emotion and mental health struggles in a manner at once wistful and fierce.  New single ‘Feel Something’ is a perfect example. A song about depression and self-sabotage, Harris delves into the competing horrors of feeling bad and feeling nothing at all. “When you feel depressed and numb, and you’ll stop at nothing to feel anything at all,” she explains, “even if it means emotionally hurting yourself and sometimes the people around you.” Gathering momentum as it progresses, the track becomes both an expression of regret and something of an explanation, and thus a drive to continue forwards nonetheless.

But I just want to feel something
Even if I end up spitting out blood
I told you you’d get used to it
I think I always knew you never would
But I just want to feel something
Even if you end up spitting out blood
When you’re finally done with it
I’ll tell you I always knew one day you’d run

EL LAGO – Pyramid

Existing at the intersection of shoegaze, dream pop and post-punk, EL LAGO’s Pyramid is a nocturnal record, ominous and dark and shot through with shimmering points of light. Released last month on Wallflower Records, the EP packs a genuine sense of variety, from the brusque, Patio-esque detachment of ‘Moths’ to the breathless, soaring shoegaze of the title track. However, each track is linked by a common spirit, all existing in a mysterious twilit space where threat and wonder stand side by side.

Lead single ‘Citadel’ is as good an introduction as any. Kicking into dinghy rhythm, the song holds a promise at its heart, though whether this is a promise of awe or violence is left unsaid. As such, there’s an unhinged intensity to the sound, like Bambara’s crazed preacher vibe, or something that might roll through the Roadhouse in Twin Peaks.

Pyramid is out now on Wallflower Records and you can grab it from the EL LAGO Bandcamp page.

Will Orchard – Turning Back Again

Working under the moniker LittleBoyBigHeadOnBike, Will Orchard wrote and released hundreds of songs a year, his Bandcamp featuring a vast array of experimental and colourful albums that stitched a giant patchwork of his creative influences. After much touring, Orchard decided to reinvent his practice, focusing on less tracks for a longer period of time and putting them out under his own name.

The result is Old Friends on the Mountain, an album made with engineer Jeff Prystowsky (The Low Anthem) that is concerned with loss and longing ” for lost imagination, friends long gone, and memories slipping away.” Ahead of its release next January, Orchard has unveiled the lead single, ‘Turning Back Again’, showing off his more cohesive, Americana-inspired sound. The tone is certainly nostalgic, and therefore focused on things now lost, though cast in a fond light—committed to bringing to life those moments, however mundane or ordinary, that help us become ourselves.

Katie Kuffel – Jelly Donut

Back in October of last year, we had the honour of sharing Take It Up, the debut album from Seattle-based songwriter Katie Kuffel. The record was one “of complete authenticity,” we wrote. “All pretences have been dropped, all half-truths abandoned, every wrinkle of self-doubt examined and ironed out.” In cherry picking the best bits from blues, jazz, folk and pop, Kuffel’s piano-led sound is capable of being fun as well as emotionally deep, tied together by a sense of live energy that her soulful vocal style only grows.

Kuffel is back with a brand new single, ‘Jelly Donut’, a track which develops on the sound of the record. Revolving around ideas of recovery and healing in the face of trauma, there is once again a serious weight at the core, though that is only half of the story. Replete with an energetic groove and smoky charisma, a fluid confidence permeates the sound, producing an affirming mood that’s as enlivening as it is infectious. Check out the video from Amphora Media below:

Alex Chilltown – Drown

Alex Chilltown is the recording project of Croydon’s Josh Esaw, and their debut record Eulogies is very much a product of that south London milieu—a blend of dream pop and art rock for the hyperreal present, a place of concrete and tarmac and a constant bustle toward a future that no-one can quite imagine, so is instead painted as another cycle of the past.

Lead single ‘Drown’ gives a taste as to what to expect. Threaded by a taut energy and a richly intricate sound, the song has pressing tone, unfurling in a relentless flow. “I wanted to write something that felt urgent,” Esaw explains. “It represents a lot of anxieties I was having about myself and that’s why it has that kind of tightness to it like when your brain is stuck in an anxious thought pattern and you’re crippled with indecision but also can’t stop ruminating on that.”

Eulogies will be released on the 24th January via Fear of Missing Out Records and you can pre-order it from the Alex Chilltown Bandcamp page.

French for Rabbits – Highest Hill

Led by Brooke Singer, New Zealand dream pop band French For Rabbits make an ethereal, layered brand of music. Their previous record, The Weight of Melted Snow, released on Home Alone Music and Muscle Beach Records, was translucent and melancholic and alive, the songs the musical equivalent of a sea mist that drifts in with a beguiling hush and settles upon your skin.

‘Highest Hill’, sees French for Rabbits perfect the style, the muted atmosphere showing that emotional resonance need not resort to bombast or melodrama. Working with Misma Andrews, the band set out to record a video with Lucifer the cat and dogs Pepa and Jolene, though with too much footage and/or a reluctance to cut, they ended up crafting two films for the same track—the cat version and the dog version. You can see the one for the far superior animal below:

You can find French for Rabbits on Bandcamp, and find out about the upcoming tour dates on their website.

Lazy Legs – Silkworm

We’ve written about Portland, OR’s Lazy Legs a few times in the past, from their self-titled debut in 2016 to last year’s single, ‘Nosebleed‘. The latter was taken from a new record, Moth Mother, and we’re finally getting close to release, with the album out on the 15th November.

In the preview, we suggested that the new record would see Lazy Legs “orbiting closer to their grunge and slowcore influences,” and latest single ‘Silkworm’ continues the trend. Finding a shuffling rhythm from the tape hiss intro, Laura Wagner’s vocals shimmer across the track before an almighty crunch of sound, drums and guitar and bass clattering into a reverb-drenched crescendo. From here the track ebbs and flows, settling into brief moments of peace before diving headlong into the noise once more.

The Big Easy – Nothing Comes for Free

The recording project of Stephen Berthomieux and friends, The Big Easy makes a distinctive blend of bedroom pop and garage rock that leans into the lo-fi aesthetic as a route toward authenticity. From now until February, The Big Easy will release a brand new single on the first Friday of every month, and ‘Nothing Comes for Free’ is the first entry in the series.

With fuzzed out guitar and a drum machine whirring behind, Berthomieux puts his vocals through a guitar amp to give them a distorted edge too, his voice almost becoming another instrument in weaving the rich texture of the sound. Thematically, the title does the talking, exploring ideas of uncertainty in the face of our costly society.

Two packs a day is more than just a goal of mine
cause then they find my ashes they’re be nothing left that’s mine
and every fucking time that i find i spend the night
life’s like every episode of twilight zone
something must be wrong
i never trust myself

People Person – Bound

Coming from the abrasive world of post-metal and hardcore, People Person is a project that aims to take aggression and ferocity and channel them into a more thoughtful, considered sound. The result, album Look Outside, Watch Closely, is somewhere between post-rock, bedroom pop and ambient, the sound rising from confessional whispers to something intense and soaring. If heaviness comes in a variety of forms, People Person are keyed into the nuances.

Lead single ‘Bound’ is a case in point. Opening with a despondent pop-rock style in the vein of Daughter of Julien Baker, the song intensifies gradually, the band displaying a real expertise in the balance between build and payoff. The result is something more intricate that the one-speed rush of hardcore while avoiding the self-indulgence of post-rock, creating a sound at once vast and immediate.

Alexander Biggs – Madeleine

Australian songwriter Alexander Biggs makes music haunted by a sense of loneliness and loss, as though something important has gone missing from our times. Through poignant arrangements and evocative folk melodies, Biggs brings such emotions to life, binding it all together with his earnest vocal style somewhere between Conor Oberst and Phoebe Bridgers.

Brand new single ‘Madaleine’ is described as an “observational piece,” collating several toxic relationships to paint something of a caricature—a person violent and volatile and suffering, lashing out as though to share some of the pain they are subjected to. Loaded with starkly beautiful lyrics and possessing a tenderness despite the bitter tone, the track is caught between two poles: the immediacy of hurt not lessened but matched by the slow sadness of understanding.

That’s all for Vol. 30 of Bright Sparks folks, but be sure to stick around the Reviews and Previews sections for more in-depth writing.

The post Bright Sparks: Vol. 30 appeared first on Various Small Flames.

Thanks for being with us.

Advance Base – Animal Companionship

Run For Cover Records

““The songs are intended to be a comfort for folks going through their own tough times,” Ashworth explained in an essay for Talkhouse. “Commiseration has always been a guiding principle of my songwriting.” Love need not be hugs and hearts and kisses, and loyalty does not necessarily mean hanging in a relationship beyond all reason. But love is loyalty, and Owen Ashworth has been, and seemingly always will be, loyal to those who need it most.”

REVIEW / BUY

Basement Revolver – Heavy Eyes

Sonic Unyon / Fear of Missing Out Records

“An expansive and spacious sound that’s lit up with a slow-burning emotional resonance, centring around Hurn’s impassioned vocal delivery. Their music combines the magnitude and granular glitter of shoegaze, the personal songwriting of bedroom pop and the cathartic noise of 90s indie rock. [Basement Revolver] play a double game of big and small, switching from quiet personal sentiment to big bombastic broadcast, often within the same song.”

REVIEW / BUY

Benjamin Shaw – Megadead

Audio Antihero

“For all the frustration and (self-)loathing in show, there’s also something else. Perhaps the defining characteristics of Shaw’s music is its ability to transcend its own themes. He may be singing about hating his job, about going nowhere fast, but in doing so colours these things with meaning. To create art is to communicate, and as such the songs represent the antithesis to their own concerns, the simulated happiness and artificial connection punctured through their ironic presence.”

REVIEW / BUY

Campdogzz – In Rounds

15 Passenger

“[Closer ‘Sorceress’] at first might seem a slightly strange segue for a final track soon straightens out into an intuitive sense of logic and belonging, as though the album-long teeter on the edge of some epiphanic transformation has finally fallen headlong at the last moment.”

REVIEW / BUY

Damien Jurado – The Horizon Just Laughed

Secretly Canadian

“While it might be tempting to view [Jurado’s] songwriting career as a fruitless quest for his true identity, perhaps the complete opposite is true. His career is his identity, splinters of truth arriving through dreams or divined from another realm entirely, fractals that can be arranged into a whole that far surpasses the meaning of any one component. A manifesto of sorts, one full of prophecy and history, though rather than country-western stars of [Joseph Billie] Gwin’s vision, the Ten Prophets of Damien Jurado are merely alternate versions of himself—past, present, future, dream—each record its own style or consciousness, born of him, yes, but equal to him too.”

REVIEW / BUY

Dear Nora – Skulls Example

Orindal Records

“You can be anyone, we are told, do anything, though only superficially, a multitude of simulations all working toward to same goal, the means to the end of shifting units and making money. Dear Nora’s music attempts to undermine this by playing the same game, crafting an unreal reality of their own to overlay the other. And, by neutering the money-making end, they in effect invert capitalism’s technique, reestablishing the means (ie. living) as the purpose. Yes, Skulls Example might be a simulation, but it is one of the most meaningful and rewarding you could hope to find.”

REVIEW / BUY

Field Report – Summertime Songs

Verve Forecast

“The summertime theme might conjure ideas of cloudless, uptempo good times, but to limit Field Report’s use of the season to a more poppy sound is to miss the deeper point […] We cannot rely on grand promises or paradigm shifts. Rather, we must commit to the slow, considered process of letting go and working through, of deciding who we were and who we want to be. In these times, we’d be foolish to trust that will be enough, but belief in small moments of agency and human connection is more productive than misplaced prayers for epiphany.”

REVIEW / BUY

Free Cake For Every Creature – The Bluest Star

Double Double Whammy

“free cake for every creature don’t make sad songs exactly, usually tending toward a kind and hopeful feel. Yet there is something intangible about them, a strange sensation that weaves its way into quiet moments, like a kind of everyday poetry or nostalgia that we all recognise but don’t have a name for. The case in point is the penultimate song, ‘be home soon’, which somehow portrays a subway ride home as something beautiful and magical.”

REVIEW / BUY

Frog – Whatever We Probably Already Had It

Audio Antihero

“Contains lines of total sincerity that feel disarming in the face of what has come before, as though the truth of things slips out in quiet whispers to oneself, the party over and room emptied out. The truth being the soul-shearing reality of the American Dream, the tragicomedy of understanding your dreams and desires to be complete fictions while leaning on them with all of your weight.”

REVIEW / BUY

Gia Margaret – There’s Always Glimmer

Orindal Records

“The palette of Gia Margaret is built from shades of sadness—loss, regret, wistful longing, the arresting trap of nostalgia and plain old hurt—though again and again Margaret provides a counter-shade, as though the darkness’ true purpose is merely to highlight the warm, weak glow within. Because, while people up and leave, and time is certainly no kinder, Gia Margaret is here to prove that value is inherent in life itself, meaning and fulfilment not in spite of troubles, but within them. No matter how dark, there is always glimmer.”

REVIEW / BUY

Haley Heynderickx – I Need to Start a Garden

Mama Bird Recording Co.

“I Need To Start a Garden is the perfect album for the onset of spring. It’s all about growth and the hope of new beginnings, but also doesn’t shy away from the necessary hard work that makes such growth possible. It’s a reminder that plants are not the only things that need to be tended and cared for, but also that they’re not the only things that can flourish and bloom either.”

REVIEW / BUY

Lisa/Liza – Momentary Glance

Orindal Records

“The context [of bereavement] is important not because we wish to suggest some ‘romantic’ mythology behind the record (indeed, the songs were written before the tragedy occurred), or that there is magical healing power in the making/consumption of art. Rather, Momentary Glance is a symbol of the power of community, generosity in the face of grief, and the album’s use of placidity over bombastic melodrama is indicative of such an authentic spirit.”

REVIEW / BUY

Long Neck – Will This Do?

Tiny Engines

“Despite the difficult circumstances, there is also a sense that things will be okay, that our narrator has gained the sense of strength and self-reliance necessary to move on. Or rather, is working toward being strong enough and self-reliant enough, with this album being the furthest possible reach forward toward that place. Of course, it’s likely full strength and self-reliance will never be achieved, but it’s the strive toward those ideas that is the most important. Of course this will do.”

REVIEW / BUY

Lung Cycles – S/T

Lily Tapes & Discs

“The placid natural flow continues whether we voice our concerns or not, and nothing in this external sphere is working to exacerbate our feelings. In this way, Lung Cycles reveals anxiety and melancholy to be no more than parasites of the human psyche, forces all too willing to consume us should we centre our existence within our own heads, but soon found dead in the vacuum of natural quiet.”

REVIEW / BUY

Monarch Mtn – days of sleepwater

Self-released

“Darkness breeds darkness, and allowed to fester can become a self-perpetuating thing that metastazises unto ubiquity. Here, Monarch Mtn do not pretend that suffering is abating, or can be dispelled by a mere shift in perspective, but rather choose to fight the phenomenon. days of sleepwater exists to fight the creeping dark, and not embrace it.”

REVIEW / BUY

Naps Eyes – I’m Bad Now

Paradise of Bachelors

“Behind the heavy-lidded blasé exterior lies a rich and tangled inner life, an invitation to fall into the folds of Chapman’s brain and watch his thoughts pass by […] Those with enough curiosity or desire can try to arrange the Nap Eyes lines into a magical formation, wrestling with the existential questions in the hope that they will be the first to figure it all out. The rest can take a back seat and let the Big Stuff drift around them, finding comfort in the fact that there are things bigger than us, and beauty in the understanding that they are beyond our grasp.”

REVIEW / BUY

Remember Sports – Slow Buzz

Father/Daughter Records

“Sincerity could be said to represent Slow Buzz as a whole, though sincerity not as some sentimental force rather a commitment to what feels true, no matter how messy and conflicting. There’s something in the Remember Sports story at the heart of this earnestness, the possibility of progressing without sacrificing an entire ideal, of reincarnation where one returns not as some different creature entirely, but a new version of oneself. A truer version, at least for now.”

REVIEW / BUY

Sun June – Years

Keeled Scales

“Years is a record shaped and propelled by the gentle forces of the world, currents in the substrates of the earth and life itself, invisible yet profound, capable of changes both minor and major […] a number of the tracks returning to a repeated phrase, cyclical patterns that rise in intensity like incantations, or else echo out into the fabric of the sound.”

REVIEW / BUY

Swearin’ – Fall Into the Sun

Merge Records

“We live in a time obsessed with the past. Our dreams now look backwards instead of forward, our deepest wish not for some utopian future but rather a return to an unreal past, one sanded of all trials and troubles by nostalgia and the constant passing of time. With Fall Into the Sun, Swearin’ rebel against such a mindset, redirecting our hopes toward the future once more, and compelling us to pay attention to the present while we still can.”

BUY

Talons’ – After Talons

Self-released

“Talons’ capture the futility and hopelessness of a content life in a creaking hyper-capitalist society, an existence often devoid of meaning and full of shame at the hypocrisy in caring about the world but doing little to change it. But it’s also kind-hearted too, its glowing core of humanity somehow comforting despite the heavy subject matter. In other words, there’s no optimism here, but there is hope.”

REVIEW / BUY

Valley Maker – Rhododendron

Frenchkiss Records

“Built upon a thematic bedrock of faith and religion, but anyone who baulks at the R-word need not worry, [Valley Maker] is uninterested in creeds and doctrine, instead exploring metaphysical mysteries that we can all wonder about […] Crane is not foolish enough to offer answers, though his words and voice work as a reassuring balm, even while acknowledging the ambiguity and turmoil that surely awaits. ”

REVIEW / BUY

The Washboard Abs – Lowlight Visions

Antiquated Future

“Clarke Sondermann’s music has always been intimate, but this album treads deeper into this ideal than any of his previous work. In the circumstances, it would be relatively easy to make an album of sad songs, but it’s a brave artist who takes the very personal worry and suffering and uses it to build something that’s this complex and multifaceted, vulnerable but not hopeless, forgoing nihilistic dejection in favour of a strange kind of love, an appreciation of what stands to be lost.”

REVIEW / BUY

The World Without Parking Lots – Seventh Song Counts the Engines

Self-released

“Seemingly simple but rendered dense and cryptic with the addition of Parcell’s poetry […] Seventh Song Counts the Engines is a beautiful collection of songs, one which somehow makes a bold statement in a circuitous whisper, deceptively complex instrumentation and ambiguous lyrics capturing decidedly unambiguous emotion.”

REVIEW / BUY

Young Jesus – The Whole Thing is Just There

Saddle Creek

“How do you adopt a more sincere, hopeful position without becoming a flat Sincere, Hopeful Person, and everything that image entails? Young Jesus have put their hope in a spontaneous, endlessly recursive form of questioning, where every hard fought answer only exists to be questioned further. The endeavour might well take a life time, but the prospect of circling closer to the truth is something of a solution in its own right. So, while it’s tempting to think that the true message or meaning of the songs on The Whole Thing Is Just There is always just out of frame, the reality is in fact the other way around. The message of the songs is that meaning is always just out of frame, and that there is no more valuable an enterprise than the constant search outside and beyond.”

REVIEW / BUY

Yowler – Black Dog in My Path

Double Double Whammy

“The writing is vague and affecting, words imbued with an esoteric power that fuses intimate internal thoughts from the corporeal world with something altogether more supernatural. “I bear the mark, I am sigil,” Jones sings, “to the spirits and the sprites, but I promised not to listen and stay in my life.” The natural and supernatural converge on Black Dog In My Path, and Jones has re-purposed Yowler as the conduit between these two dimensions.”

REVIEW / BUY

We’re be sharing our favourite songs, books and Bandcamp name-your-price releases in good time, so keep an eye on the ‘Lists‘ category for those.

The post Favourite Albums of 2018 appeared first on Various Small Flames.

This summer the band released their debut full-length album, Heavy Eyes, which brings together some of the material from their previous shorter releases and adds some great new songs too. Opener ‘Baby’ is one of these new ones, an expansive and emotive indie rocker, all echoing vocals and clattering drums. Hurn also gets to let her vocals soar, as the track descends (or maybe that should be ascends?) into pure purging sound. Not that the song’s themes are necessarily as grandiose as that sounds. “Baby is about feeling sad and down even though you are generally happy about everything and everyone in your life,” Hurn explains. “It is about crying a lot and my tendency to retreat when things get too overwhelming, to spend all day and night in bed and watching Netflix and eating Doritos.”

And this gets to the heart of something wonderful about Basement Revolver. They play a double game of big and small, switching from quiet personal sentiment to big bombastic broadcast, often within the same song.

One of our favourites from the last few years, follow-up ‘Johnny’ was the track that proved the breakout hit for Basement Revolver. We described the track previously as “a rather desperate plea for another to stay away from the titular character, a person who seems to have broken the heart of our narrator.” Again it displays all of Basement Revolver’s qualities, and comes complete with a catchy chorus too. ‘Dancing’ on the other hand feels direct and driven, a song about overcoming 21st century malaise by doing something fun or adventurous. “Break out of your shell,” Hurn urges, “and dance, or get some fresh air,” as drums slap and guitars gallop.

‘Knocking’ is perhaps the most poignant track on Heavy Eyes, one which sees Hurn ball up all of her hurts and worries and set them alight with a beam of bright white openness. Inspired by a letter she wrote to her family, the song confronts past mistakes with a sense of both vulnerability and determination, and becomes something restorative in the process. “I basically kept telling myself that I was garbage, broken, unlovable,” Hurn explains. “I think that ‘Knocking’ was my way out of that dark place.”

‘Johnny Pt. 2’ is the sequel to the earlier song, the drums this time a little more insistent, the choruses wider and brighter. The narrative switches from the previous desperation to a melancholic acceptance, a display of love despite everything, and the offer of a second chance should the possibility ever emerge. Next up, ‘Words’ opens with melodramatic guitar and cymbal crashes, Hurn’s vocals levitating above like oil on water. The song faces the existential dilemma of communication, how “words are just words are words are words,” lacking any tangible meaning unless backed up with something more real.

“Really starting to feel like I need someone to talk to,” Hurn sings at the start of ‘Tree Trunks’, a song that is rich with a sense of weariness and yearning. Deep percussion rolls around as blasts of guitar ring out like thunder on distant hills, the atmosphere accentuating Hurn’s message rather than smothering it. This transitions into the more upbeat ‘You’re Okay’ (“I have friends who say they love me, Hurn sings, “remind me daily they’re thinking of me”), and the relentlessly heavy title track, which sounds like a long-lost 90s underground hit.

The album closes with ‘Diamonds’, perhaps its slowest and most reflective moment. The song unfurls from a stripped back ballad, sinuous atmospherics shifting behind Hurn’s vocals, to a final wall of sound crescendo, the perfect final reminder that Basement Revolver can do both the micro and the macro at once.

Heavy Eyes is out now on Sonic Unyon and Fear of Missing Out Records.

The post Basement Revolver – Heavy Eyes appeared first on Various Small Flames.

The EP opens with ‘Tree Trunks’, a smouldering cross between indie rock and shoegaze that shows off the distinctive Basement Revolver lyrical style, blending personal, intimate confession with strange abstractions. “Climb into my lungs,” Hurn implores. “There you’ll find smoke rings like tree trunks.” This is followed by ‘Johnny Pt. 2’, sequel to a song on the self-titled album that we described as “a rather desperate plea”, the drums a little more insistent, the choruses wider and brighter. The narrative has switched from the previous desperation to a melancholic acceptance, a display of love despite everything, and the offer of a second chance should the possibility ever emerge.

“You say you still love me
but you can’t do this no more
You say you still love me
but you can’t do this anymore

My door will always be open to you”

‘Mountains’ is darker and brooding yet full of steely grit, swelling guitars rising around the constant thump of drums, Hurn’s vocals swirling above it all in a tone somewhere between promise and threat. ‘Bread and Wine’ changes things up again, opening softer and more content, despite the biblical imagery. The chorus arrives in one great affirming crash, the racing drums and the wall-of-noise guitars positioned just behind Hurn’s voice so as not to overpower it. The result is a triumphant surge, a wave upon which Hurn is buoyed and lifted, and, as a consequence, you will be too.

Agatha is out now via Yellow K and Fear of Missing Out Records, and you can get it from the Basement Revolver Bandcamp page.

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