With album Mirror, Reflect coming in May via Winspear, Amy O has shared single ‘Dribble Dribble’ by way of introduction. The record charts the experience of new motherhood during the pandemic, where twin forces of uncertainty and isolation ran a deep seam of precariousness through everything. But as ‘Dribble Dribble’ shows, Amy O documents this time with compassion and playful curiosity, the lo-fi pop sound lifting rhyming schemes from the books she read to her daughter to offer a mood at once fun and incisive, and Glenn Myers’s backing vocals further the conversational closeness.

Please don’t let the tide rush in
Held unburdened by the wind
A roomful of familiar
No catastrophes within

Bloomsday – Dollar Slice

The recording project of Brooklyn’s Iris James Garrison, Bloomsday introduced itself back in 2020 with debut Place to Land, an album which charted the fear, loss and joyous freedom inherent within the quest to find one’s true identity. But despite the personal subject matter, collaboration has always been an inherent part of the Bloomsday DNA, and new album Heart of the Artichoke is certainly no exception. Coming this summer on Bayonet Records, the release see Iris joined by Andrew Stevens (Lomelda, Hovvdy), Alex Harwood, Richard Orofino, Maya Bon (Babehoven), Hannah Pruzinsky (h.pruz, Sister.) and Chris Daley, and proves to be not only a celebration of togetherness and community but a testament to the enduring presence of friendship itself. Lead single ‘Dollar Slice’ is a great place to jump in, the cornerstone of the album which hints at the sound’s devotional quality. “I’m not religious,” Garrison says, “But I am into the idea of mystical, higher power—whatever that means – and that power seeing me, and my bullshit, and calling it out. That’s kind of godly to me.”

Cereus Bright – Boys

We introduced Boys, the new EP from Knoxville‘s Cereus Bright, back in February with single ‘Drifting’. “An ode to every tired soul and person without direction,” as we put it, “which offers comfort not through the promise of agency but rather the unforeseen benefits of letting oneself relax into the drift.” With the EP now out via Nettwerk, Cereus Bright has released the opener and title track as a final single. Inspired by stories of a “hard, complicated figure” of a grandfather, the song delves into the tangled world of cause and effect not so much in search of an answer but to instead reveal the layers of complexity which define any given person. As the artist explains: “It’s essential to reckon with the people or institutions that have affected us or hurt us, but some times truly understanding is impossible.” The song comes complete with a video filmed by Follow The Leader which you can watch below:

Boys is out now via Nettwerk and available from Bandcamp.

Fresh – Merch Girl

London punks Fresh have made a name with a heart-on-the-sleeve brand of rock, with tracks like ‘Babyface‘ and ‘Morgan & Joanne‘ typifying the bittersweet celebration of the queer experience offered by LP Raise Hell. Ahead of tours with Teenage Halloween and Los Campesinos!, Fresh are releasing a brand new EP Merch Girl on Specialist Subject Records next month, and have unveiled the title track for an early taste. It’s a song “about living in that space between wanting something and achieving something” as lead Kathryn Woods explains, centring on the titular character as they yearn to break free from the sidelines and make art of their own. “Standing at the back of the room / Wishing I could do what they do,” as Woods sings, “After all, I could play that guitar part better / I could hit those drums much harder / I could sing that song far louder // But I’m just a merch girl.”

I’m tired of living like this
Letting people talk over me for years and years and year and years
Gonna start doing things my way
Gonna write a song with a voice so strong it knocks you sideways

I’m not just a merch girl

Hour – Ease the Work

Though named after an image from a tragic Greek myth, Hour‘s 2018 album Anemone Red had more quotidian concerns. “Hour present the same heartbreak and longing as it occurs today,” we wrote in our review, “repressed and layered behind our day-to-day responsibilities, manifest not in blood-dripped flowers but the slow, sad progression of the world around us.” The project, led by Michael Cormier-O’Leary, returns this spring to build upon this foundation with Ease the Work, a brand new release on Dear Life Records. Challenging any clear distinction between composition and improvisation, the album performs the same small miracle of the previous records, presenting the everyday in all its joy and melancholy, comfort and strangeness. Listen to the title track now:

Jack Name – Cherie’s Eyes

Described as a “homage to the IRL world and its twisted and varied romance with the worlds of our minds,” Fabulous Soundtracks is the fourth album from Los Angeles-based musician Jack Name, out this May on Maple Death Records. Each song on the record is intended as a mini-soundtrack to a specific scene, and Jack Name runs the gamut of genres and stylistic influences in order to create cinematic soundscapes able to elevate these moments into their full surreal potential. Single ‘Cherie’s Eyes’ is the first example of this singular effort, presenting a sound at once odd and strangely intuitive, as though Fabulous Soundtracks functions within the logic and physics of dreams, where everything is off-kilter yet charged with meaning.

 Logan Lynn – To Be Of Use (Smog Cover)

Songwriter, producer, filmmaker, television personality and activist Logan Lynn is releasing new LP SOFTCORE this June on Kill Rock Stars. The album, written in the aftermath of a break-up, serves as a vehicle of rebirth. “A record of my coming alive again, and coming back to myself in the face of pretty extreme betrayal,” as Lynn puts it. “It’s a party album in a way—loud, wild, unhinged and abrasive at times—but it’s also a collection of tender songs about longing and togetherness.” A cover of Smog’s ‘To Be Of Use’ opens the album, a plaintive track which slowly gathers momentum, as though Lynn uses Bill Callahan as a way to shake off the shrouding gloom and turn a new page.

Magana – To My Love

Last month we introduced Magana‘s new album TEETH on Audio Antihero with the single ‘Paul’. “A song where grief is transcribed almost verbatim,” as we put it, “and tenderness, strangeness and plain disbelief can exist simultaneously.” With the album out today to coincide with the Worm Moon’s peak illumination, Magana has released final single ‘To My Love’ to further introduce the witchy rock atmosphere. A strange sound for a strange world, made by an artist determined to use every style available to best communicate their own experience of trying to exist within it.

Pina Palau – We’ve Got No Time At All

“The birds outside my window, they are singing as if the world was still the same.” So opens ‘We’ve Got No Time At All’, the centre point of Get a Dog, the sophomore album by Pina Palau. It’s a song that very directly captures the despair felt by young people across the globe, describing a world of war and mass shootings, heatwaves that “no AC can get us out of.” The Swiss artist put a career in medicine on hold to pursue her musical career, and her creative work is driven by the same fascinations that led her to the path to becoming a psychologist—what label Mouthwatering Records describe as “a desire to understand unvarnished humanity—the motivations, emotions and stories that shape our lives.” Which is why ‘We’ve Got No Time At All’ stands out on an album full of varied emotions. A rare track that stares down a generation’s biggest concerns head-on, blowing out into furious noise in its cathartic climax.

We’re still young they say we have time
But the truth is: we’ve got no time at all

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Back in February, we wrote about Dana Gavanski‘s forthcoming album When It Comes on Full Time Hobby, describing the record as “more unguarded and ambitious than its predecessors.” With its delicately eerie tones, latest single ‘I Kiss The Night’ is another example of Gavanski’s commitment to sitting with vulnerability on the new record, practising an instinctive and honest examination which roots itself in the voice. It possesses a sense of hushed, late-night seclusion, that unique lonely feeling experienced only when it feels like the rest of the world has gone to bed. But far from an ominous experience, the song is “an ode to the night,” as Gavanski explains, “learning to lean into its magic, and the magic and spookiness of solitude in a winter storm.”

Fresh – Babyface

Writing of the single ‘Morgan & Joanne‘ back in December, we described a new positive side to London punx Fresh. The track, which displayed a willingness to subvert “traditional narratives to develop a truer picture of the queer experience,” held a distinctively upbeat, celebratory tone. The vibe might not always be so sunny and playful on new record Raise Hell, to be released this summer on Specialist Subject Records, but something of the brightness is retained on latest single ‘Babyface’. A song described by lead Kathryn Woods as “a cry for help masquerading as a pop song.”

FonFon Ru – Fatty Tissue Thorn

Ahead of their fourth record Collapse Of The Silver Bridge, out next week on Repeating Cloud, Maine trio FonFon Ru have shared latest single, ‘Fatty Tissue Thorn’. Barrelling headlong into the spiralling chaos of a hypochondriac mind, the track spikes its indie rock energy with an anxious post-punk needle, the building momentum falling somewhere between catharsis and catastrophe as it gathers its volatile motion. Check out the video directed by drummer Wes Sterrs below:

Collapse Of The Silver Bridge is out on the 15th April via Repeating Cloud and you can pre-order it now from the FonFon Ru Bandcamp page.

JoJo Worthington – The Divide

Based in Montreal, songwriter, composer and producer JoJo Worthington works at the intersection of pop, folk and ambient styles. Utilising an array of technological techniques to conjure songs both mysterious and intimate. Soundscapes as a kind of emotional geography. Latest single ‘The Divide’ turns its attention to the partisan nature of contemporary society, and how between the fervour and bombast of its extremes stretches a deep and lonely canyon. “You know in movies when there’s an earthquake and the earth splits open and it separates the protagonist and the love interest and then sometimes you see people fall in the gap?” Worthington asks. “[The song is] kinda about the people in the gap and trying to find a home there.”

When there’s so many delusions
When there are so many truths
Maybe I’m confused
Sometimes I don’t know what to think or do

Nancy Mounir – Khafif Khafif

Described as “a remarkable communion with ghosts,” the debut record of Egyptian composer Nancy Mounir juxtaposes its microtonal and non-metered arrangements with recordings of artists from back in history. Titled Nozhet El Nofous (‘Promenade of the Souls’), the release is in dialogue with a different era of Arabic music, one before the dominant maqam (modal systems) were established and creativity reigned. First single ‘Khafif Khafif’ highlights the blend of haunting emotion and steely defiance which underpins Mounir’s work.

Nozhet El Nofous is out on the 3rd June via Simsara Records and you can order it now from the Nancy Mounir Bandcamp page.

Panda Riot – E.S.P.

This summer sees the return of Chicago‘s Panda Riot with a brand new album, Extra Cosmic, and lead single ‘E.S.P.’ throws listeners head first into their detailed yet immediate sound. After a period of experimenting with increasingly complex guitar pedal work, the song finds the band at their most intricate, but everything is tied together by an intuitive forward motion, a sense of release which lines up with the cathartic epiphany of the themes. “‘E.S.P.’ is a song about trying to connect with someone and never quite getting there,” the band explain. “Every time you think you’ve got it, you realize you’re still passing one another by and not quite syncing up.”

Extra Cosmic is out on the 10th June and you can pre-order it from the Panda Riot Bandcamp page.

Party of the Sun – Hymns Forgot

Despite having released new EP Capsule I barely a month ago, New Hampshire‘s psychedelic folk outfit Party of the Sun are not ones to rest on their laurels. Out via Trailing Twelve Records, latest single ‘Hymns Forgot’ is the most recent in a series of monthly releases, a self-described ‘nylon boogie’ which stitches together layers of bright guitars, shuffling percussion and lush harmonies to evoke an easy springtime warmth. Lyrically, the track explores an urban life removed from the peace of the natural world, and charts this disconnect through historic cultural violence. “Was it mine to take or yours to find?” they ask, “Maybe the one who chose to give it.”

Sailing down
Never would I have come
To the land devotion lost
Giving power to a sun

‘Hymns Forgot’ is out now via Trailing Twelve and available via streaming services.

Pet Deaths – swingtime

Following their acclaimed 2019 album to the top of the hill and roll…, London duo Pet Deaths return this spring with a brand new record, unhappy ending. The release takes inspiration from the likes of Alice Coltrane and Miles Davis to conjure an exploratory and colourful sound, a kind of spiritual freedom which carries the highly personal lyricism of lead Liam Karima beyond its immediate resonance. The result, as single ‘swingtime’ shows, is often intimate and surreal, something captured in the video by photographer Kulbir Thandi and Karima himself.

unhappy ending is out on the 27th May and available to per-order from the Pet Deaths Bandcamp page.

Rose Brokenshire – Better Now

Splitting the year into summers as a firefighter and winters making music, BC‘s Rose Brokenshire has learned to embrace larger rhythms within her work. The path has seen her develop her folk style into a more ambient-based sound, something patient and compassionate gained only through experience. Looking to accept the past in all its nuanced truth, latest single ‘Better Now’ utilises this wisdom to offer a salve against suffering. As though embracing the emotional volatility of life can provide its own balm. “I wanted to make something that honoured the journey of growth,” Brokenshire explains. “Something that expressed love for both the ups and downs, the light days and dark days, and the tools I found most healing during a more desolate chapter of my life.”

‘Better Now’ is available from the Rose Brokenshire Bandcamp page.

WILDES – Woman In Love

The first new release since 2020 EP Let You Go, London-based singer-songwriter WILDES has returned with single, ‘Woman in Love’. Taking inspiration from the defiant work of artists like PJ Harvey and Patti Smith, the track confronts suppressed emotions with an unerring eye. The vocals emerge through smoky layers of the sound with a searing honesty, what begins stripped-back and taut eventually blossoming into something lush and soulful. “‘Woman In Love’ is a song of anger,” she explains. “It’s all about the façade presented by someone who isn’t all that happy, and the rage that lies under the glassy exterior.” WILDES is here to crack the glass, to feel the empowerment of release.

Bitter memories, digging up the treasure I sunk
Love your enemy, maybe you can keep them infront
How would you know what I’ve seen, what I’ve done?
How would you know I’m a woman in love?

‘Woman in Love’ is out now and available on streaming services.

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Fresh are back with brand new single on Specialist Subject, though this time the inspiration comes from a far more contemporary source. Because ‘Morgan & Joanne’ is based on a viral story of a blind date gone right. “I wrote ‘Morgan & Joanne’ because I was so struck by the charm of Morgan and Joanne and how they turned what had the potential to be a really typical first date into an adventure,” explains lead Kathryn Woods. “The song is about the magic of meeting someone who you really fancy for the first time and kind of escaping into a different realm with them.”

With a rattling rhythm and Woods’s impassioned delivery, the song’s intensity is very much familiar, though the tone and subject matter shows a different side to Fresh. One concentrated more fully on the positive side of things. But this sense of fun carries its own weight too, subverting traditional narratives to develop a truer picture of the queer experience. “I think popular media and historical narratives tend to make queer relationships tragic instead of focusing on all the joy and possibilities that they hold,” Woods continues, “so I wanted to put a song out there that’s sweet and funny and empowering to counter that a little bit.”

Things didn’t go quite as planned
Morgan & Joanne
If I believed that love existed
I think I’d see it in your faces

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Swim Camp – Pretty Bird
Black Belt Eagle Scout – Indian Never Die
Pedro The Lion – Quietest Friend
Cat Clyde – Anymore
She Keeps Bees – Coyote
Cartwheel – Nothing
Tempertwig – Comfort Blanket
Downhaul – Wires / Enough
Witching Waves – Eye 2 Eye
LISA – Primitive Us
Yamachan – Rose Gold Blue
Spelling Reform – The Second Coming
Faith & Majesty – Summer Fling
Caroline Lazar – Georgia
Jeffrey Silverstein – Easy Rider
Ronnie Rogers – Leaning On
Nanami Ozone – Alone Too
Fresh – Willa
Perfume V – Perfume Homes Movies
Hand Habits – Can’t Calm Down
MUNYA – Benjamin
LUNCH – Forget Everything
Control Top – Chain Reaction
Prudence – Euphoria
Cult Film – Bored to Death
Walking Bicycles – Fat Cat
Lost Dog – DFT
Sharkmuffin – Serpentina
Bandy – Trying to Reach You
Gold Connections – Like a Shadow
AllegrA – Spoon or Fork
Parkway & Columbia – Wondering and Wandering
la loye – to live underwater
Kitchen – Claws
Spectator – Waves
Sailor Boyfriend – The Battle of Sugarhill
Ladada – My Van
The Exbats – 2027
Adir L.C. – Reacting
minihorse – Drink You Dry
Trevor Stott – Halfway in the Night
Tyler Burkhart – Waiting For You
Or Sobre Blau – Mártires

Like what you hear? Catch up with the rest of our Monthly Mixes!

The post March 2019 Roundup Mix appeared first on Various Small Flames.

Lead single ‘Willa’ suggests that the the band have honed their style even further, the carefree rhythm of the instrumentation belying the emotional vulnerability of the lyrics. “I wanted Willa, as a loud song with fuzzy riffs, to capture that kind of ecstatic, post-show high feeling you get when you’ve truly had a good time performing, when you feel really invincible,” explains vocalist and guitarist Kathryn Woods. “It’s also got a lot of frustration in the lyrics because I can’t change how the rest of the world sees me as a woman and I often feel like women can’t make the art they want to make without it being fetishised or tokenised. I want to be acknowledged as a musician and that’s it!”

The title is a nod to US author Willa Cather, whose works such as My Antonia explored both the beauty and horror of the working class existence in the American West. Such an embrace of the good and the bad of life is intrinsic to Fresh’s sound, as is the feminist underpinning of such a position. “[Cather’s] got quite a fatalistic style,” Woods continues, “and I wanted that ‘whatever happens, happens’ vibe to go into the song.” Fresh aren’t here to tell you that everything will be okay, but they are willing to walk through it with you, fighting for every inch.

Withdraw will be released on the 7th June via Specialist Subject Records and you can pre-order it now.

Photo by Francesca Tirpark

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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.

Mount Goldie – Summer

There’s very little information available about Mount Goldie, other than they are a duo based in Portland, Oregon and have a new album, All My Friends Are Mothers coming out this August. In a world of gimmicks and EPKs, there’s something refreshing about letting the music do the talking, which is exactly what Mount Goldie do with ‘Summer’. Building slowly with a sense of weight, the track has sense of stifling summer stillness, a lack of movement that becomes oppressive, as though rising toward some sudden break, though never quite coming to anything. Clint Snow’s vocals rise through this heavy air, conjuring the likes of Dusted in his ability to draw emotion from straight delivery.

All My Friends Are Mothers is set for release on the 3rd August and you can pre-order in now from Bandcamp.

Devon Welsh – Vampires

Best known as the frontman of electronic duo Majical Cloudz, Montreal’s Devon Welsh began pursuing a solo career after the natural end of the band in 2016. Following a collection of older songs titled Down the Mountain, Welsh has been unveiling new material in the last few months. After the meditative ‘I’ll Be Your Ladder’, which came out this spring, Welsh has unveiled a brand new single, ‘Vampires’, complete with a video directed by Christopher Honeywell.

The track is stripped back to a lonely minimum, a kind of late-night absence across which Welsh’s distinctive vocals can move, the introduction of small notes acting like sparks and streetlamps in the gloom, building slowly into an incandescent glow as Welsh rises from from baritone into near devotional warmth.

“What are we doing here hanging on a dark night?
What are we doing here this town’s a vampire
Ducking our silhouettes waiting for the cop’s light
This town’s gonna eat us alive

So we’re moving on”

You can find all of Devon Welsh’s music on his Bandcamp page.

Floating Room – Dog

Led by Maya Stoner and Kyle Bates, Floating Room are a Portland band who last month put out a new release, False Baptism, via Good Cheer Records. The record is something of a follow-up to 2016’s Sunless, which explored the consequences of an emotional relationship. The new album is still centred on this subject, though there is a greater degree of clarity here, as though pulling away from the scene to better take in its dimensions.

Lead single ‘Dog’ serves as a great example, using the metaphor of pet and owner to explore emotional reliance and obligation. The canine wants to escape the relationship (““I don’t like how weak I am when I’m with you”), and the master is terrified of losing their control, and while both declare their love for the other, the true focus of this love is perhaps not healthy or fair. The result is a situation governed by fear, motivated not by true connection but the dread of being alone.

False Baptism is out now via Good Cheers Records and you can get it from Bandcamp.

Angus & Julia Stone – Nothing Else

Australian brother and sister duo Angus & Julia Stone have been releasing their atmospheric brand of folk music for over a decade now, culminating in 2017 album Snow. With a video directed by Jessie Hill, they have recently released ‘Nothing Else’ as a single. Charting the lonely spaces between connection and empathy, the song probes the repercussions of relationship and their influence on identity, playing as something of a reassurance (or attempt thereof) after some unsaid disturbance. Featuring Julia playing two roles, the video speaks to this too, as though, regardless of outside judgement, we can return to ourselves in confidence.

Snow is out now and you can get it from the Angus & Julia Stone website.

Izaak Opatz – Bathing in the Ganges

LA-based Montana native Izaak Opatz has teamed up with the good people at Mama Bird Recording Co. to re-release his album Mariachi Static. The record is the perfect balance of playful and emotional, classic country heartbreak portrayed through loose-limbed confidence, all the trials of life doing little to extinguish his sense of humour. Complimenting this is Opatz’s knack for writing vivid scenes, evocative slices of life woven from small details, making for an emotive and endearing atmosphere that prevents the ironic elements from undercutting the meaning of each track.

The reissue also sees the addition of three new songs, a cover of ‘Carmelita’ alongside two new originals. One such tune, ‘Bathing in the Ganges’ serves as a neat introduction to Opatz’s sound, emerging with a slow and dusty inevitability, kicking into something of a rhythm across its length, though never quite shaking the languid stretch.

Mariachi Static is being released by Mama Bird Recording Co. on the 20th July and you you can pre-order it through Bandcamp.

Free Cake For Every Creature – Around You / In Your Car

Good news! Free Cake for Every Creature, the project lead by Philadelphia’s Katie Bennett, are back with a new album. Titled The Bluest Star, Bennett has again enlisted the help of Francis Lyons and Heeyoon Won (of Boosegumps) to record the record, which is set for release in August on Double Double Whammy.

The band have released two singles thus far, which seem to confirm that Free Cake aim to continue their signature gentle indie pop. ‘around you’ is sweet and understated nostalgi-pop, Bennett’s lyrics focusing on those simple joyful moments of making a new friend, while ‘in your car’ features Felix Walworth on banjo and Meghan Center with additional vocals, a song about whiling away long summer evenings in a parked car with Pavement on the radio. Again it displays what Bennett does so well, focusing on small details to infer larger feelings, all wrapped up in a transportive atmosphere.

“Windows down in your stopped car
Radio picking up the distant city’s station
You pass me the glass, your lipstick in the rim
“Summer babe” narration, waiting waiting”

The Bluest Star is out on Double Double Whammy on the 3rd of August. Pre-order it now.

Campdogzz – Souvenir

Campdogzz are a five-piece based out of Chicago who, led by the distinctive vocals of Jess Price, create a brooding indie rock that their bio describes as being “dialled into the bleak, spirited heart of the industrial Midwest.” Following 2016 album Riders in the Hills of Dying Heaven, the band have signed to Cursive’s 15 Passenger Records for a brand new record, In Rounds. The release took shape when Price and guitarist Mike Russell travelled around southern deserts in a school bus, and it is promised that the harsh beauty and wide open spaces of the landscape shape the sound. Lead single ‘Souvenir’ is all we have to go on so far, though it promises a sense of danger and rawness that more than lives up to expectations.

In Rounds is set for release on the 3rd August via 15 Passenger Records and you can pre-order it from Bandcamp.

Indigo De Souza – Home Team

Taken from I Love My Mom, their debut album released last month on Sub-Fi Records, Indigo De Souza’s ‘Home Team’ shows off the North Carolinian songwriter’s wry yet impassioned voice. Simultaneously bitingly honest and guarded, the song toes the line between cutting and pleading, as though seeking to clear up ambiguity in others while stewing in a confusion of its own, a need for reassurance that peaks from behind the bleachers despite the confident front. The result is fiery and at-times genuinely funny, the scope in tone matched by De Souza’s vocal range, as confident in conversational intimacy as big, broadcasted refrains.

“Don’t you blame me
if I don’t answer my phone.
I don’t like fucking boys who need to know
what to do when there’s no-one else home.

We’re all pining for that modern day girl
she’s really a star
got the crowd just jumping for joy
on a Saturday night at the home field.”

I Love My Mom is out now via Sub-Fi Records and you can get it from Bandcamp.

You’re Sister – I Think About You

The recording project of New York’s Megan Braaten, You’re Sister put out a new full-length, Keepsake, this past May. Drawing spirit from its title, the album is a comforting brand of bedroom pop that’s shot through with a sense of distant regret, as though there is something inherently sad within the things we treasure most. Single ‘I Think About You’ serves as the perfect example of this, the warm atmosphere nurturing a keen melancholia, an immersive emotion that’s something to do with memories, something to do with the passing of time.

You can get Keepsake now from the You’re Sister Bandcamp page.

Fresh – Daytime

Fresh are a pop-punk four-piece from London who last year put out a self-titled album with Specialist Subject Records. Channelling the likes of Camp Cope, the record is fine balance between thoughtful, personal lyrics and a sense of carefree abandon, painting a picture of the volatile rollercoaster ride that is life as a young person in contemporary society.

A year later, the band are back with a brand new 7″, Daytime/Nightime, and have unveiled a video for lead track ‘Daytime’. Again, the track’s infectious sense of energy buoys what is an impassioned and empathetic lyrical side, Fresh railing against the debilitating search for perfection. As lead Kathryn Woods explains, “[‘Daytime’ is] about how in our culture there’s this myth of constant happiness or the idea that you always have to be thriving and successful, when actually, a lot of the time, you just have to get through whatever’s going on.”

Daytime/Nightime will be released on the 31st August via Specialist Subject Records (UK) and Discos Finu (Spain).

Tender Age – Don’t Mind

Portland punk outfit Tender Age are putting out a new album, Becoming Real Forever, on the 9th of July, and have unveiled a video for the lead single ‘Don’t Mind’ to set the tone. The press release describes the band’s sound as like “being pulled into an automatic car wash,” and while the experience is not nearly as painful as that sounds, the image does capture the whirlwind of activity, a series of disparate elements pulling together toward a cohesive whole. Add in a the retro-tinged vocals that bring to mind Sonic Youth or The Breeders, and you have a confident, moody track unafraid of exploring light and dark within the same space.

Becoming Real Forever is set for release on the 9th July via SINIS Recordings and you can pre-order it now from Bandcamp.

Blue J – Hard to Know

Vancouver’s Blue J have a big summer ahead, with their debut EP coming out in August and a tour with SALES and Dave Monks (from Tokyo Police Club). So far, the quartet have released a number of singles, and the latest ‘Hard To Know’ demonstrates their ability to weave nuanced lyrics into affecting music. Indeed, the blend of motion and emotion in the instrumentation brings to mind Big Thief‘s Capacity, as the lyrics deal with loss and grief from the perspective of someone outside of the immediate situation, trying to comfort the mourning.

“The way that you looked on that day
I knew that I could not relate
to the shock that showed up on your face
the look of loss you wore with grace
staring at cracks on the ground
your call ended without a sound
no ‘goodbye or see you later’
your breath was getting deeper”

You can get ‘Hard to Know’ and the previous singles from the Blue J Bandcamp page, and be sure to keep an eye out for more news on the EP.

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 Bright Sparks: Vol. 14 appeared first on Various Small Flames.