Back in February we described how the music of self-described “depression pop band” bathtub cig lives up to the image of their name. “A project which looks to evoke those private moments of contemplation and small comforts,” as we put it, “be they born of wallowing or self-care.” With EP Good Mourning, I love you out now, bathtub cig are back with new single ‘Marry Me’, a perfect example of an album about loving in a time of loss. “Meet me at your mom’s, boyfriend’s old farm house,” as the song opens. “I’ll be in the field with crickets singing and the frogs.” And it is a testament to the writing that the song fits a number of relationships, doubling as both an ode to platonic friendship or bi love.

Caroline Strickland – Loving You Right

Writing last year, we described how the work of  New York-based songwriter Caroline Strickland combined abrasive energy and intimate tenderness to explore a gamut of conflicting emotions, and her latest single ‘Loving You Right’ builds upon the style expertly. The first taste of EP Martha’s Calling, which is forthcoming on Good Eye Records, the song looks to work through a period of uncertainty and distance through sheer momentum. “The thesis of the song is this,” as Strickland explains. “Mannequin Void. I felt like a hollow, plastic body, a frame, a pencil sketch. I said, ‘I wonder if someday I should take the time to break the MANNEQUIN VOID and give it one last try. Have I been loving you right?'” The mission to break this feeling is applied almost literally, the song gathering a head of steam as though Strickland plans to thrust herself into something hard at high speed in the hope of shattering that which imprisons her.

Martha’s Calling is coming soon via Good Eye Records.

Circus Trees – Trap Door

“Circus Trees makes music that doesn’t fit with their age, their gender, their living conditions;” explains the bio of the Marlborough, Massachusetts band. “They are young, they are sisters, they spend their lives in the wastelands of suburbia.” The sibling trio make a raucous, evocative brand of indie rock capable of evoking the sadness and frustration of suburban living. Coming later this month via Five By Two Records, new full-length This makes me sad, and I miss you shows how cathartic this style can be. Offering a hefty, emotionally charged sound, Circus Trees mine their own personal struggles for the universal experiences of pain, and in doing so invite the listener to burn off their own difficulties through the power of energy and sound.

This makes me sad, and I miss you is out on the 20th September via Five By Two Records and you can pre-order it now.

Dummy – Blue Dada

Last week saw the release of Free Energy, the new album from LA’s Dummy, on Trouble in Mind. The record is a wildly ambitious one, even for a band who have made a name for their creative spirit and left-field choices, taking the basic formula of 2021’s Mandatory Enjoyment and making everything bigger, better, weirder. Think shapeshifting psychedelia, insistent motorik rhythms, jangly guitar rock experimentation and looped vocals and catchy choruses straight out of smash hit electro pop. It’s an album impossible to capture in one song, but perhaps the best introduction is final single ‘Blue Dada’, which takes all of the above and wraps them in a coat of 90s throwback atmospherics. “This was one of the first songs that really came together for Free Energy,” Dummy describe, “with the idea of cross-wiring genres, between ambient dance music, á la Seefeel, and revved-up drone-pop, á la Dunedin sound. ”

Field Report – Trust In Movements Made

Back in 2023, LOTUS Legal Clinic—an organisation in Milwaukee which helps survivors of human trafficking and sexual violence by blending comprehensive civil legal services, victims’ rights representation and therapeutic arts programming—reached out to Field Report‘s Christopher Porterfield about being an artist-in-residence. The following period saw Porterfield work with five writers to create original music inspired by poetry they had written during the program’s creative writing workshops. The resulting five songs are being released as Trust In Movements Made, an EP released under the Field Report name but truly collaborative in practice. “I consider myself co-writer of these songs, along with the original authors,” as Porterfield explains. All proceeds from the release will be donated back to ensure LOTUS can continue their vital work.

Kid Tigrrr – Therapy

Singer-songwriter and visual artist Jenna Fournier made her name as the lead of Cleveland shoegaze outfit Niights, though after a couple of studio recorded albums and international tours, found herself wanting to explore a different kind of music, both in terms of process and style. Hence Fournier split from her record label and started out solo under the moniker Kid Tigrrr. She turned to home recording and production as an antidote to her previous studio experience, and uses the project as a vehicle to explore intensely personal themes and challenge stigmas around mental health, addiction and abuse. Debut album Stoned + Animald therefore represents a fresh start for an artist pining to work with a new level of intimacy, and latest single and album opener ‘Therapy’ is the ideal introduction.

Leif Vollebekk – Peace of Mind (Evening)

“As confident as it is poignant, furthering Vollebekk’s investigations into the deepest of themes. [Namely] the phenomenon of love as it stretches over time. Longing as some echo through the years.” That’s how we described ‘Southern Star’, the recent single from Leif Vollebekk‘s upcoming LP Revelation on Secret City Records. With the release fast approaching, Vollebekk is now back with new track, ‘Peace of Mind (Evening)’, an alternate version of a song on the record which lives up to its title with its golden crepuscular shine. ““This is the evening version of ‘Peace of Mind’,” Vollebekk explains. “This version isn’t even on the record. It just wanted to be its own thing…The melody came along fully formed right after I’d spent a few weeks’ vacation with my family. I rediscovered my solitude for the first time in a while. And, in the stillness, I sang about them. I dreamt a child placed a dandelion on my grave. For some reason, I awoke incredibly peaceful. What does that mean?”

Revelation is out on the 27th September via Secret City Records.

Leila Dandan – my room’s a mess

Hailing from Huntington Beach, California and currently based in Dallas, Texas, Leila Dandan is a songwriter who takes various vulnerabilities and stitches them into a blanket—something capable of offering comfort and protection if you are brave enough to wear it proudly. New single ‘my room’s a mess’ typifies the kind of song Dandan has made their own, embracing their own insecurities in an effort to overcome them. “I wrote this song amid a panic attack,” Dandan explains. “I was at a point where I felt like I couldn’t really tell anyone because I was afraid of being so vulnerable. I didn’t want people to see the mess because it felt embarrassing, but in reality, things wouldn’t have been so messy if I had let myself rely on others for a little help.”

‘my room’s a mess’ is out now and available from the usual places.

Meagre Martin – Never Thought

With Gut Punch, released last year via  Mansions and Millions, Berlin’s Meagre Martin showed off their evocative, politically aware style, from existential ‘The Big Death‘ to the nostalgic ‘Malcolm‘. With a string of appearances at the Reeperbahn Festival, Pop Montreal and Pitchfork London approaching in recent weeks, the band have put out a brand new single, ‘Never Thought’. An example of Meagre Martin’s more relaxed side, the song draws on elements of folk and blues to inform its languid indie rock style, though its seemingly easy-going vibe belies the doubt and desperation running through the lyrics. “‘Never Thought’ questions how well we know the people in our lives, and how our security in them can still be shaken even after years of knowing them,” the band explain. “The chords and melodies encircle and repeat, much like the rumination of thoughts in our heads.”

Moira Smiley x tUnE-yArDs – Go Dig My Grave

Though made popular as the lead single and opener of Lankum‘s most recent album, the song ‘Go Dig My Grave’ has a far longer history, with versions (often titled ‘The Butcher Boy’) stretching back to the 1920s and verses being taken from songs older still. Part of new album The Rhizome Project, Moira Smiley’s take on the track traces its roots back to the haunting Appalachian spirit of Jean Ritchie. Merrill Garbus (AKA tUnE-yArDs) helps craft the stark arrangement, where ominous strings simmer behind the vocals, charging the delivery with the desperation and fury of the song’s forsaken lead, what Smiley describes as “this beautiful, dissonant cry against a loss of bodily autonomy in 2022.”

The Rhizome Project is out now and available from the usual places.

Video Age – Record Shop

Last month we wrote about the release of a new version of Video Age‘s single ‘Out In The Country’ featuring Esther Rose, a reworking of a track which first appeared on the 2023 LP Away From the Castle. Now the New Orleans duo are back with ‘Record Shop’, the A-side of a 7″ single featuring ‘Out In The Country’ released as part of an expanded edition of Away From The Castle on Winspear. Described as “a theme song for record shop employees,” the track charts the days of a humble store clerk with all the lonely nobility of a modern cowboy. “I got my job at the record shop, I play the songs that I like a lot,” as the chorus goes, “My two girlfriends are a broom and mop / And they dance with me when the needle drops.”

The post Weekly Listening: September 2024 #2 appeared first on Various Small Flames.

Here is a list of songs from 2020 that we liked but didn’t get around to writing about.

If you find something you like, follow the link in the embed to support the artists and labels on Bandcamp. And of course, there is a whole year’s worth of pieces on releases we did manage to write about, so have an explore through our reviews, previews and interviews from 2020.

The post Music We Missed in 2020 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.

Various Swell Sounds is a new collaborative playlist series from Shana Hartzel of Swell Tone, Jon Chin of Cereal and Sounds, and myself. Instead of constantly exchanging tracks amongst each other, we have decided to work together to bring them to more ears. Every month, we will match a selection of our old and brand new favourites to a specific theme, as decided on a revolving basis month by month.

After the brutal summer, the leaves are finally turning, which can only mean one thing. Yep, it’s the time of year to slip on pavements, make tired jokes about pumpkin spice coffee and hide behind closed curtains to ignore the calls for candy from ghouling children. We’ve made a playlist of songs to see you through the cool and crispy season.

There’s a Playmoss and Spotify version below, so choose what suits you best, though due to incomplete catalogues the are slight discrepancies between the two.

Check out our other Various Swell Sounds entries here and here, and head over to Swell Tone and Cereal + Sounds for the edition over there.

The post Various Swell Sounds #9: Cool & Crispy appeared first on Various Small Flames.

Featuring:

Petal – I’m Sorry
Wild Pink – The Seance On St. Augustine St
Big Thing – Spin
Bombshell Nightlight – Death Day
Mount Goldie – Summer
Elsa Lester – Pretty Bad, Man
Why Bonnie – Gold Rush
Devon Welsh – Vampires
Max García Conover – Another Travelling Man
Floating Room – Dog
Izaak Opatz – Bathing in the Ganges
Free Cake For Every Creature – Around You
Indigo De Souza – Home Team
Museum Food Court – bad song
Crisco Dreams – I Like Your Bed
You’re Sister – I Think About You
Russel the Leaf – Let ‘Em Run
Fresh – Daytime
Stevhen Peters – Phone Talk
Tender Age – Don’t Mind
Lord Youth – Do You Have Anything To Add?
Quiet Hollers – Addicted
Blue J – Hard to Know
Post Moves – The Arc of Life
Angus & Julia Stone – Nothing Else
Gia Margaret – Birthday
Sun June – Discotheque
Campdogzz – Souvenir
Field Report – Every Time

*(Due to various issues of availability and licensing, neither playlist has the complete quota of acts, but welcome to the modern age).

You can find all of the previous instalments of Bright Sparks here, and be sure to check back in a few weeks to see what makes the next edition.

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

The first two Field Report records might have explored a range of moods, but they certainly veered toward the colder seasons. Such categorisation is reductive, but their self-titled debut could be said to be the winter album, and follow-up Marigolden an autumnal offering. As the title suggests however, the new record has different intentions. It’s fuller, more polished, intentionally bright and uplifting with relatively simple singalong choruses. A pop album, in short. This change in direction is clear from the beginning, opener ‘Blind Spot’ coming complete with a slick chorus that seems designed to stick in heads. It’s initially a startling departure from the often chorusless verbose poetics of previous albums, but longtime Field Report fans need not worry, the band haven’t sacrificed much in terms of writing or feeling. Porterfield is still the master storyteller, able to convey so much in simple descriptive sentences. And there’s something strangely reassuring about realising that this is still the band we loved, that you don’t need to peel back many layers of shiny production to find their beating heart.

Things might be sunnier, but Porterfield explores familiar material, the only thing that’s changed his vantage point, now looking back at the tough times, and embroiled in new ones. As we explored in our review, Marigolden was a record about an attempt to break a cycle of addiction and dissatisfaction, to straighten a circular path into a direct line home. How successful the quest was open to interpretation, and the superstitious hope of closing track ‘Enchantment’ suggested that the whole thing might be more a matter of belief in any case. We drew on the writing of Denis Johnson to elucidate how the belief is change was key to the whole enterprise, its presence or absence the difference being floating and sinking.

[Like Marigolden], Angels and Jesus’ Son are populated with sad men trying to find something like this Home, then refusing to believe it or else not liking what they see when they get there. Instead they return to the old bars and the new women and the extraordinary promise of an endless search. Whether Porterfield’s character is doomed on these lines is not clear, but if he is then he hasn’t yet grown cynical with it. The closing lines are infused with belief, the marigolden hope that is woven through album.

With the narrator waking face down in the air bag of a wrecked car, some reviews have cited ‘Blind Spot’ as an immediate relapse from the promise of Marigolden, though it would be fairer to call it a continuation of the themes rather than the narrative. The present-tense promises of change still remain, though Porterfield is positioned ahead of the event, looking back rather than living through, possessing not only the same will to be well but a newfound appreciation of the difficulties of such a state.

‘If I Knew’ makes this clear, not least in the chorus of “If I knew what I know / So far yet to go.” The track does contain relapses, the starting of drinking and stopping of meds, though exactly where and when is not clear, the chronology perhaps not as simple as the order of records. Again we find Porterfield ahead of the crisis, looking back from perhaps not comfort but at least something like critical distance, though this does not influence the immediacy and vividness of his writing:

“And then a car crashed through the wall,
and there you were, in the room,
and the blood red blood bled your outline and it coloured you in.

You were close enough to cough on
and your breath smelled like creme de menthe,
headstones, dialtones,
you said ‘hey fucker, where you been?’”

Indeed, to view these songs as a singular continuation of the Marigolden narrative is to perhaps miss the point. Summertime Songs was made during the 2016 US election cycle, a period when Porterfield and his wife were also expecting their first child. There was also a lot of emotional turmoil around when the songs were conceived. “There were a lot of people in my life whose relationships were coming to an end,” Porterfield told Artist Waves, “there was a lot of mourning, reflection and hurt in the air as these songs were coming.”

One interpretation of the record is one of multiplicities, a collection of narrators linked thematically but not personally, a collective struggle against common demons stalking an entire nation. Worry and doubt are the prevailing emotions of the album, the characters that populate the songs going through all manner of difficulties which speak to the listener both on their own terms and against the country’s tumultuous political backdrop. So rather than cast a Trumpian bogeyman, Field Report explore demons older and more insidious and more personal too, conditions woven into the Western experience of which any contemporary figures are merely manifestations, like distorted reflections projected large and loud to highlight our own failings.

For example, ‘Never Look Back’ could be taken as a break-up song or a make-up song, but beyond the personal lie lines ominously pertinent to the present in light of an imperial past. “Turn the telescope back around,” Porterfield sings, “With these troubles out of view / Forgiveness does not excuse, it’s to prevent everybody from destroying you.” This is followed by ’60 Second Distance Run’, a song of searching questions in view of an approaching reckoning, while the spacious ‘Every Time’ provides the most impassioned and insistent moment on the record. If the past here haunts the narrator, then it is a spirit of poltergeistic nature, something capable of seizing and moving and throwing its weight.

“Last night I had a dream there was tartar on your teeth
And you had me gently, with a knife, loosening it free
And then spread it all around like sunscreen at the beach
And we were laying there for hours, your head resting on my knee
While the late season ice was sneering from the shade
I’m gonna keep you under glass and keep trapped in amber memory
The secret anniversary of a first date”

‘Healing Machine’ is something of a waking dream, an insomniac’s hope of redemption, while the thematic centrepiece and spiritual title track, ‘Summertime’, opens in an almost jarring manner, the vocals not quite clicking into the rhythm of the instrumentation. However, soon the floor drops away and suddenly it’s all swaying hips and swooning hearts, a smash hit Springsteen-style jam. This energy belies the anxious lyrics, the delicate existence of sobriety and parenthood colliding with a tumultuous cultural moment to produce a kind of paralysis that the music fights to escape.

And escape seems to be achieved, because ‘Tightrope’ plays as something of a continuation, as though ‘Summertime’ was the getaway car and this the heady freedom thereafter, a manic disregard of danger in the hysterical relief of a wider reprieve. ‘Occupied Mind’ sees the tempo slow, a tale of finding solace within others, while closer ‘Everything I Need’ is slower still, an emotive piano ballad, Porterfield’s vocals aching with a sense of warm and uncertain contentment and the hope of personal connection. “I don’t trust this moment,” he sings, speaking of everything outside, “but I want to believe.”

This the crux of the record. 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. Although more morose, Marigolden‘s autumnal setting set up an album-wide metaphor of change, the very environment shifting in colour and shape as its inhabitants fled toward warm burrows. Summer might be stereotypically viewed as a more positive time, by Porterfield uses it as a long, well-lit stretch of looking forward and back, relatively changeless in comparison with what has been and what will come. This extends to the position of the narrators too. Vast change belongs to spring and autumn, flurries of growing and dying capable of wiping the slate clean. Summer offers no such reprieve. 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.

Summertime Songs is out now on Verve Forecast and you can get it from the Field Report website.

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Umhoefer’s latest release, Two Torches, at a Place Where Three Roads Meet, finds all the building blocks of the Old Earth sound present once again. Guitars are looped and interwoven, the lyrics opaque but pregnant with meaning, the overall atmosphere one of a strange dream or ritual. The three tracks began as “stragglers” from last year’s Six Around One, and are at once concise and wildly ambitious, with a thematic reach far beyond that of most music. Umhoefer wrote a Facebook post that introduces some of these themes, which revolve primarily around neopagan spiritualism. “Old Earth has always been a projection of matriarchal values,” Umhoefer explains. “These pieces speak to the manifestation of wisdom through the model of the Triple Goddess (Maiden, Mother and Crone).” So expect esoteric explorations rich with symbolism, from the aforementioned lyrics to the moon on the cover art, but free from any sense of performance or appropriation, the imagery not aesthetic but instinctive.

As if to prove this point, ‘Pit Dynamics’ is lean and powerful, Umhoefer’s vocals like some focused mantra as he delivers lines like “Hugging the ceiling something like a ghost / Humming around in waves.” Notions of the religious often bring to mind ideas of great complication, vast narratives fashioned into endless mazes of allegory and metaphor. For all of the references to various belief systems, Old Earth strips religion to its essence, a fundamental mystery hardwired into our souls or strands of DNA, but also much bigger, passing all around us. With this in mind, the opening lines begin to read like Umhoefer’s artistic modus operandi. “I get a feeling something like a call,” he sings. “Open the door and wait.”

Following on, ‘Quiet Your Arms’ begins with tense and reserved guitar, the vocals ringing at the centre of things, radiating outwards like rings on a disturbed pond. Again, Umhoefer’s words have a natural cadence, an almost breath-like rise and fall that conjures the same paradoxical sense of intimacy and awe—a representation of some power, great and peaceful.

“It’s the only thing we build that doesn’t break
It’s the only kind of love that doesn’t fade”

Indeed, such a force plays into a key thematic element of the collection: the ancient Egyptian concept of balance, order and justice. This is personified as a goddess who regulates not just the movement of heavenly bodies but also the early ones of us mortals too. “I’m also pointing towards Maat”, says Umhoefer, “calling for judgement above and beyond self-righteousness—instead one of righteous discernment”.

Perhaps this explains the serenity at the centre of the songs, present again on ‘Park Witch’. Layered guitars orbit careful and considered vocals repeating the same handful of words, Field Report’s Christopher Porterfield adding an atmospheric and wordless croon. So often, peace is framed as an escape, but this is peace as a confrontation—be it psychological, cosmological, theological—facing up to something incredible as a way of dismantling your trivial self.

“What cold came over us?
What depth?
What distance?
What height before we called it enough?”

The three songs are as singular as anything Old Earth has released to date, and are so thematically rich as to transcend mere indie rock. You don’t need to be fluent in the principals of ancient Egypt or neopaganism to appreciate the record, with the need for harmony and truth among chaos and disorder as prevalent now as any ancient time. It’s unlikely that Maat is going to descend from the sky and restore order, but we can all play a part, however small, to make a difference. As Umhoefer puts it in his introduction of the release:

“In order to destroy hate and inequity, we have to find peace within ourselves”.

You can get Two Torches, at a Place Where Three Roads Meet now from the Old Earth Bandcamp page.

If you’re new to Old Earth then explore the tag, and consider reading the interviews we’ve done with Todd in the past.

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Jeremy was kind enough to answer some questions about the new record, and offers some great insights into the motivations, inspirations and ambitions behind his music.

Hi Jeremy, good to speak to you again. How is life now that your latest album, Collapse, has been out in the world for a few months?

Hey, good to speak to you too! Things have been going pretty great. I got married about two weeks before the album came out and life has been beautiful. I’ve been spending time this Summer with my new wife and my kids, playing a few one off shows and I have been writing a new album.

The album is obviously deeply personal, with lots of it’s themes rooted in your own experiences. Is it a cathartic experience writing these songs? And how does it feel baring all of these real emotions to the world in your art?

Yes, it is very therapeutic at times (while writing them). However, once I’m completely finished with the songs often times they take on a new meaning and it is a relief to be done with it. Even though my songs are written from my personal experiences I write in a way that the listener can paint their own picture of what the songs are about and relate to it either directly or to what they portray in their mind that relates to their own experiences.

Kind of linked to the previous question – do you ever stop and consider the impact the songs will have on the listeners? Do you ever stop and consider the dual healing effects of art, how the sharing of your own struggle and pain might help ease that of others?

Yes, I definitely do. Although, when I’m writing the songs I’m really just in a certain state of mind at that particular moment. I am just feeling it out and telling a story. I like to be brutally honest but draw a narrative that sounds good. That being said with art in general everybody sees, hears and feels something different. I hope that by sharing my personal experiences and by attempting to make something beautiful out of it that people can find peace in their own struggles.

On a (final) related note, much of the album deals with troubles arising from addiction. Would you feel comfortable in offering any words of advice or consolation to anyone who might be going through (or watching a loved one go through) similar issues?

From my own personal experience. I would say you have to help yourself. Don’t enable the person who is an addict. They have two choices: To seek help or let the addiction win. You are not responsible or at fault for the choices that they make. I say this with the deepest compassion and respect.

While perhaps not one of the primary themes, religion is a thread that runs through the album, especially on tracks such as ‘Remnants’. I guess this isn’t an easy question to answer, but what’s your relationship to all that stuff, and how does it impact upon your music?

This is a great question. I very often use religious undertones and metaphor throughout all of my albums. I was raised by my Grandmother who is a devout Christian. (Crosses on the walls, religious artwork, etc… I try to paint a vivid picture of where I was raised and the home where she still lives in some of my songs) She is one of the strongest, most hard working and kindhearted people that I’ve ever known. I have gone back and forth throughout my life with what I believe to be true. However, I am a very spiritual person and even though I don’t follow the tradition and beliefs of Christianity I find the stories and iconography very interesting and compelling. It plays a huge role in my music and writing because it is one of the important things that inspire me.

There are several great guest musicians on the album, such as Heather McEntire of Mount Moriah and Shane Leonard of Field Report / Kalispell, How have you made this network of collaborators, and what effect do they have on your creative process?

I am a huge fan of Mount Moriah, Field Report and Kalispell. Mount Moriah live here in North Carolina as well. I’ve been a fan of Heather’s work for years. I reached out to Heather because I thought she would add something special/different to the songs. I was so happy that she sang on this album. I’ve known Shane Leonard for a while and he has worked with me before on the album When Will You Go… (2013) I asked him to play on a few songs on Collapse and I was very pleased. I also asked my friend Sean Husick to play drums and bass on the first track titled ’58’. I meticulously choose who I want to be a part of my records. Heather, Shane and Sean each brought something unique to the songs and it helped to shape them into something special . A perfect example is how Shane played on the songs ‘Fall on Me’ and on ‘Gemini’ it helped to make the album sound more sparsely layered, atmospheric and come together as a whole.

What are your plans now that Collapse has been out in the world for a while? Are you writing (or at least thinking about) new music? Does it take a while to get over creating something like this?

I am currently planning a southeast tour this Fall. I have been working on a new album and writing new songs. I am always writing in some way and I always have a song or idea in my head.

And finally, our usual closing question. Could you name a few bands/artists you’ve been listening to lately?

Lately I’ve been listening to Angel Olsen, Heather Woods Broderick, Beach Slang, William Tyler, Eric Bachmann, Phil Cook and Kurt Vile to name a few.

Be sure to read our full review of Collapse, and check out the Jeremy Squires tag for reviews of previous releases and an older interview. And of course, head to the Jeremy Squires Bandcamp page to buy all his music.

The post Interview: Jeremy Squires, Part II appeared first on Various Small Flames.

The album opens with ‘58’, a slight departure from Squires’s previous work in as much as it’s more of a full band effort, drums and bass adding depth to his usual lonely acoustic sound. A touching reference to his late mother, the track takes an interesting post-Christian approach to death, the words addressing the lost loved one directly, while also admitting, “I know you cannot hear me now / when you are is far away at the speed of sound / and I’m always reminded that everything is on its way to another place”. The song explores that middle ground between no longer believing our forefathers’ versions of faith and spirituality, and not being quite ready to give up on a world beyond our own.

More akin to the songs on Shadows, ‘Water Signs’ is a heartfelt slo-mo country track that introduces another of the album’s main themes―an ill-fated and mutually destructive relationship governed by struggles with addiction. If ‘Water Signs’ is all desperate declarations of love and final curtain calls, ‘Fall On Me’ exists in a hushed and anxious aftermath, Squires joined by Field Report’s Shane Leonard on drums, bass and synth.

“There’s an eerie glow
when the TV casts a light through the haunted house
When I lie awake at night and I think about too many things
I wish I could call you when my mind is stirring”

Many of these songs are at least partially autobiographical, and this authenticity is the standout quality of Squires’s songwriting, every line able to ring true with a kind of resigned and wistful acceptance. It’s the sound of a man who has lived through a lot, and who may still not have all the answers but is at least getting better at anticipating the questions.

‘Night Cars’ is a standout track, a beautifully ruminative folk song where the guitar gathering in intensity as Heather McEntire (of Mount Moriah) joins vocal duties. The track deals with what Squires describes as the “trial and tribulation in this worn-out heart,” a frustrated weariness in watching a loved one succumb again and again. ‘Remnants’ is enclosed with claustrophobic religious imagery (“Children play where you lay / near a permanent stain / on the wall hangs a cross / that don’t keep all your demons away”), while ‘Where the Devil Sings’ is sour with poison, a madness-induced by living with addiction and trying to support its victim. ‘Leave-Taking’ sees the relationship finally end (“Well I knew you’d leave right from the start / but when it comes around it still breaks your heart”), before the closing track, ‘Secrets I Can Keep’, sees out the record. The song is infused with a wistful sense of acceptance, built entirely from gentle guitar, slowly winding pedal steel and Squires’s vocals.

“I don’t wanna let you go
and i don’t wanna watch you stumble
I don’t wanna talk about it anymore
all their wasted time
waiting for tomorrow”

Collapse is perhaps most remarkable for its final message. It’s one thing to make an album suffused with genuine emotion, tales of heartbreak and suffering, but another thing entirely to see it through to the light at the end of the tunnel, the idea that things can and will get better if you can hold tight and keep on going. So while, as the first song hints, contemporary country/folk songs might not be as sold on the idea of God as those of the past, Collapse is Jeremy Squires showing us there are religious experiences to be found everywhere. Be this through God or not, in times of struggle or in quiet, everyday, small-town existence. Society may be changing but ideas of love, forgiveness, and ultimately redemption are not unobtainable. As Squires wrote in an email about the album, “This album is about overcoming in general, coping with loss, persevering and becoming whole again.” It’s this sense of hope that sets him apart from many of his peers. It’s (relatively) easy to write sad songs for listeners to wallow in, but in offering the possibility of change and recovery, Collapse feels not just unusual but important.

You can order it now on CD and digital download from the Jeremy Squires Bandcamp page.

The post Jeremy Squires – Collapse appeared first on Various Small Flames.

Opener ‘Foothills’ sets the tone, an emotive and contemplative alt-folk song that sounds like a chill in the air, like the smell of wood smoke on the wind. At its heart it’s a love song, although delivered not from the blushing early stages like many romantic songs, but rather much later.

“I’ve never been a faithful man
I’ve always been too proud to pray
But won’t you come out to the foothills
And hold me together for one more day”

‘Disappearing Act’ is a well-written tale of the aforementioned love and loss, of turning to drink and wandering to overcome thoughts of someone who has “been coming back in focus lately / resurrecting bones from graveyard ash”. Whether that line is literal or metaphorical seems besides the point, the depth of feeling is considerable regardless. ‘Revelation Road’ is the perfect track for the oncoming autumn, as Balto sings “Thunder clouds are rolling through the heavens over Revelation Road / pirouette the leaves from off the branches cascading rust and gold”.

‘Midwest Elegy’ is just that, an ode to a region hung out to dry, a grandfather whose farm was run out of business by the big guys, a father made strong from 25 years on the engine block line at General Motors only to find himself out of work after the recession. It’s just one example of that confronts a major theme in Simon Balto’s music – a sense of loss, be it in terms of livelihoods or actual lives.

You may have also noticed that Simon Balto is the kind of songwriter whose lyrics you want to quote. Like on ‘True North’, a love song rich with natural imagery, where he sings “Amongst cicadas and the whispering pines / you tangled your bony fingers up in mine”, or on the sorrowful ‘Dark Burns’, where, backed with woozy harmonica he sings, “If the dark burns like cigarettes on the body / goddamn, I’m sorry for the things I couldn’t do / with every heathen’s breath buried here in my chest / I will pray my best for you to get good again”.

The title track closes the album, a song that sounds like it’s beamed from a classic folk record of a bye-gone age. The image of a great twisting cloud of starlings sits at the forefront of a track that’s suffused with a real sense of melancholy but also hope, the narrator praying that the birds guide a passing loved one to their next destination.

“And on the bright day when it comes your time to go
I hope your heart breaks into starlings that’ll carry you home
And murmur you on out to where the north wind softly blows
I hope your heart breaks into starlings when it’s time for you to go”

Even if you’re not from the Midwest, or even from the USA, it’s likely you will relate to some of the issues that Simon Balto confronts on Murmurations. The struggle to get by in small towns in an age where power and wealth is increasingly confined to big cities, where traditional, community-supporting businesses are collapsing as the world gets better connected and the banks gamble away our money. But the album doesn’t come off sounding like a protest. Balto still sees enough beauty in the everyday, in the changing of the seasons and the faces of loved ones, to deal with these struggles with stoicism and hope. The thoughts and ruminations here are rooted in the personal, in all the wishes and fears that make us uniquely human.

You can get Murmurations now from the Simon Balto Bandcamp page.

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