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

Emily Yacina – Nice Try
(RIYL: bedroom pop)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

If any of the above points make you feel a little down, here’s a playlist of every band we featured during September to cheer you up. As always, click the artist name in the tracklisting to be whisked away to the specific post.

Tracklisting:

1. Hidden Driver – LVL UP
2. Death – CHUCK
3. Seskinore – Hiva Oa
4. Shut Out the Light – Tiny Dinosaurs
5. Foothills – Simon Balto
6. Lie 2 Me – Shana Falana
7. annie – moving in
8. A Lonely Road – Jordan O’Jordan
9. Augustine – The Chairman Dances
10. Golden – Mt. Wolf (feat. St. South)
11. I – Slenko & McKeys
12. zszs – rgz
13. Meditations – Tall Ships
14. Tossing & Turning – Saint Clementine
15. Century Woods – Lisa/Liza
16. Clear Section – Spartan Jet-Plex
17. Trancendless Summer – Peter Silberman
18. Where We Began – Tilman Robinson
19. will you?/you will – Fossil Jane
20. Ya w/Me? – Lomelda (from Swell Tone’s Summer of Sad)
21. Soon Soon – Praything
22. Drive – Mere Women
23. See Through – Suzy Callahan
24. Untitled (Slow) – Jana Irmert
25. Beyond the Stars – The Edge Of The Light
26. Northern Arm – Evening Hymns
27. It’s Not Real – Hazel English

You can check out the previous monthly roundups here, and our various other playlists and mixtapes here.

The post September 2016 Roundup appeared first on Various Small Flames.

Opening track ‘Regimen’ sounds like it’s echoing from a dark and empty room, eventually whipping up into a waltzing pop song. “What’s the point of holding on forever”, Price sings, “of breaking whatever chain or regimen to claim?” ‘Time’ is more sedate, drifting along in a dreamy haze, Price’s vocals occasionally rising in peaks. The title track bubbles over crystalline atmospherics, like a more lo-fi take on Beach House’s swirling sound, eventually opening out into cymbal-heavy dream pop.

“will i live above
what you dream of?
i try to be her, but i’m not”

If you download the EP then you’ll also get a bonus self-titled track, an emotive acoustic song that signs off on a decidedly reflective note. Grab will you?/you will on a name-your-price basis from the Fossil Jane Bandcamp page.

The post Fossil Jane – will you?/you will appeared first on Various Small Flames.

Solace is an album about pain and love, tackling the issues of mental health and racism through an emo-influenced brand of alternative folk. Some of the tracks, such as opener ‘Joseph’, play like frenetic rock songs, while others, like ‘Capacity’, are slow and dark and brooding. Walker’s lyrics are often simple and melodramatic, written without poetic flourish, like blunt and truthful diary entries.

The title track plays like laid back folk with both emo and country tinges, the vocals plain and confessional throughout the verses though building into cathartic choruses ruled by alienation, isolation and melancholy.

“Could you feel
in your empathy?
Look at their pain
and find beauty.
I can’t live like
like you want to.
I can’t live like
you want me to”

‘Heart’ emerges warmer and more hopeful, the proverbial new dawn, while ‘Cruel’ morphs across it’s length into an alt-rock anthem. Other notable songs include ‘I Hope It Ends One Day’, a powerful meditation on racism where Walker’s subtle guitar plays behind a spoken word sample from his grandmother, and the striped back ‘They Don’t Want us to Live’ with only acoustic guitar, piano and backing vocals from Olivia Price of Fossil Jane.

Single ‘It Hurts’ represents Walker at what could perhaps be his best, fierce folk which rises into rock by the very momentum of his words.

“We are the slaves of a desperate past
It’s memories like this that we’ll always look past
It’s the scars that touch our bones
That will always hit home
It’s the memories within
That’ll leave our skin

It hurts
To know the truth”

This is music from someone sick and tired, someone beat-down and furious with the things they see and experience every day, a person making a decision as to what to accept and what to fight in the ultimate hope that things can change. And forget genre, or sound, or influences, forget whether you’d prefer your songwriting less forceful and melodramatic, because this is the sort art the world needs. The sort of artist.

There’s plenty to get down about, plenty to hate or fear or ignore, and the solution isn’t going to be found in hashtags or think-pieces. The answer, I think, lies in human connection, in empathy. In realising that despite it all, there are people out there feeling the exact same way, or else worse in ways you can’t begin to image. For all of its doubt and anger, and whether he is aware of it or not, A Day Without Love is some sort of attempt at this, a kind of starting point. Taking a quote from the beginning of ‘Too Fast’ as his mission statement:

“You’re still not alone in the world. You just have to believe there’s a power greater than yourself.”

Solace is out now and you can buy it on CD from Sounds and Tones Records and digitally from the A Day Without Love Bandcamp page.

The post A Day Without Love – Solace appeared first on Various Small Flames.