Tracklisting:

1) Evening Loving – Jenny Gillespie
2) Luxury – Patio
3) Low – Yours Are The Only Ears
4) Either Way – Sorority Noise
5) Home at Last – The Sports
6) Braver – Sally Fowler
7) Chow Chow – FAYE
8) Meant – Spartan Jet-Plex
9) Stained Glass Eye – The Dead Tongues
10) October – These Bashful Claws
11) Bad Vibrations – Naps
12) Baked Goods – Young Jesus
13) Heroine – BB Cream
14) Winona Death Ryder – Boy Problems (No Dice Tapes comp)
15) The Only Other Girl From Back Home – Advance Base
16) When it Feels – Soft Spell (STAY RAD SAV comp)
17) The Unnatural – Claire Cronin
18) Same Old Ocean – Crabapple
19) Diet Coke – Lake Michigan
20) Ferris Beuller – Flatsound
21) See Good – Jobless
22) Anything but Yourself – Tom Greenwood
23) Under the Mountain II – Mermaidens
24) Liars – Gregory Alan Isakov
25) Warning Sign – Mikko Joensuu
26) Candy – Fish Food
27) White Gold – Good Good Blood
28) We Bury Our Dead Alive – Coping Skills
29) Joke/Rope – Haybaby
30) Slacker – Will B & the Teen Creeps
31) Double Bacon Cheeseburger – Yikes
32) All I Have – Derek Ted
33) Try Hard – Hovvdy
34) Dark & Gloomy – Horse Teeth
35) Migratory Birds – Western Skies Motel
36) Endless Wave – Hanging Valleys

The post May 2016 Roundup – A Mixtape appeared first on Various Small Flames.

After the short instrumental opener of ‘5/13’, ‘ferris bueller’ emerges sad and intimate, somehow managing to sound at once desolate and warm, like a hug in the middle of a desert. The track gets to the heart of did everything feel…’s themes, the crushing bind of panic disorders and agoraphobia and the struggle to exist as a vivid, 3D person when saddled with such labels. Here we find the narrator wanting to be free but eaten alive by anxiety, pleading for mercy, wanting to retreat into a safe world of entertainment.

“it never felt this hard to be inside of your car
i want to go out far, to anywhere you want.
but, is ferris bueller on?
because i could really use some distraction from everything”

‘you were a home that i wanted to grow up in’ sounds like late night thoughts externalised, imagined conversations where worries about pride do not exist and every word is the right one, and ‘you had a panic attack in my bathroom’ is slower and minimal, opening across its length into something hesitantly hopeful, finding solidarity in other people. “you can’t believe it’s true,” he sings, “there are people like you – with the same hearts, and the same marks on our bodies.” ‘nothing good comes from being gone’ is hushed to the point of whispers, sounding akin to Keaton Henson’s introverted folk, but surprisingly fierce in terms of lyrics. Here, the narrator faces up to his mental health issues with a steely determination, a willingness to fight.

“because nothing good comes from being gone.
i’m willing to admit it’s all my fault.
i will trade all of my pride for what i’ve lost.
i don’t want to lose this battle with my thoughts.
nothing good comes from being gone”

The album is great, and proves rewarding on several levels. Musically it holds up without any of the inspiration or back story, but its real strength lies in the good it could do for people struggling with similar issues. Welling has done something both brave and kind in releasing music based solely upon a theme so personal and difficult to communicate. And we should all be glad he did.

You can buy did everything feel beautiful when you let go of the idea of being anything at all now from the Flatsound Bandcamp page.

The post Flatsound – did everything feel beautiful when you let go of the idea of being anything at all appeared first on Various Small Flames.