Lily of the Valley, the timely new album from 22° Halo, might centre on something intensely personal and difficult, but it’s more widely relevant too as it actively works to fight off despair and let light in on an otherwise dark time. As we described when writing of previous single ‘Virtual You’, the sound is “wistful, yes, and not immune from a certain sense of longing, but always with an overarching gratitude that such times happened at all.” With the album now out via Tiny Library Records, Will Kennedy has unveiled final single, ‘Cobwebs’. A fittingly introspective track which tracks the early days of the diagnosis which sits at the heart of the album, looking to preserve ordinary life while wrestling with an all-encompassing uncertainty.

I’m trying to believe that you’re good
I’m trying to believe that I’m good
I’m trying to believe that we’re good
I’m trying to believe

Clara Mann – Stadiums

UK singer-songwriter Clara Mann has announced her debut album, Rift, the follow up to 2021 EP Consolations (Sad Club Records). A culmination of her young career so far, label The state51 Conspiracy call the record “a tangible expression of Clara’s entire world—a snow globe raised in her palms for the world to see, in all its layers and complexities, containing all her love, relationships, memories, and experiences.” Mann describes her music as “almost-folk”, and the album’s two lead singles introduce this perfectly. Finely wrought and patient, minimal percussion lapping at the edges of the impressive vocals. ‘Stadiums’ is perhaps the standout, precise and emotive in equal measure, swaying around a still and poised centre.

Decant – Rest

Bay Area trio Decant are this month releasing two singles, both in preview of an upcoming EP set for release early next year and to celebrate the fact the tracks appear in the film credits for the movie Rust. The first single ‘Rest’ introduces the band’s evocative style, something folky that splits the difference between shadow and warmth. The result is at once poignant and moody, aching with a nocturnal longing yet holding on to a sense of light.

German Error Message – Lilt

Two decades since the project’s conception, the latest release from Paul Kintzing’s German Error Message is a self-titled collection of songs written and recorded since 2020. First released digitally earlier this year, the album is now getting a cassette release from Lily Tapes & Discs as part of their Fall ’24 batch. It’s both reassuringly familiar and somehow fresh, the warm and hushed lo-fi songs reaching out toward a newfound sense of brightness. As Lily Tapes put it: “Where previous albums may have built insular and hermetic worlds with their hushed delivery, German Error Message sprawls outwards, unfolding as a series of nested home-recording experiments disguised as folk songs.” Check out ‘Lilt’ as a taster.

Hamburger – Frankenstein

Bristol six-piece Hamburger are gearing up for the release of their new EP Beat Back the Ghouls via Specialist Subject Records later this month, and latest single ‘Frankenstein’ shows how the collection both builds upon their previous work and pushes the sound in new directions. Where debut EP Teenage Terrified offered equal parts rawness and invention, Hamburger use the new release to show off a more sophisticated, layered sound without sacrificing any of the personality that fans have come to love. ‘Frankenstein’ is the ideal introduction. A richly wistful track which pines for summers past with equal parts soaring energy and enveloping fuzz.

Lone Striker – Dunno

You might know Tom Brown as part of bands like Rural France and Teenage Tom Petties, but new project Lone Striker moves away from the fuzzy jangle of those projects towards something more akin to Americana, albeit one with an off-kilter wobble. With a self-titled album coming next year Repeating Cloud, Safe Suburban Home and Hidden Bay Records, Brown has shared the title track to introduce the project. Something of a theme song for Lone Striker which doubles as an ode to those old school number nines.

Mumble Tide – The Rails

Consisting of singer Gina Leonard and composer Ryan Rogers, Mumble Tide is a Bristol-based project which has made a name with a maximalist amalgamation of synth pop and country. But new single ‘The Rails’, out now on Breakfast Records, sees the outfit pivot towards a different direction. With help from producer Stew Jackson (Massive Attack), Mumble Tide worked with newfound patience, crafting a slow and careful arrangement in which Leonard’s vocals can be heard in all their nuance and depth. The result draws heavily on sixties folk but elevates such sensibilities with an almost cinematic sheen, and the emotive, assured mood which results is central to the track’s themes. “’The Rails’ is like an angry kiss, or throwing stones at a mirror,” Leonard explains. “It’s about leaning into all the things that hold me back and in the process realising that they’re not as solid as they seem.”

Otala – Patchwork

With a sound that combines jazz, math and post-rock with ambient and spoken word, Nottingham’s Otala are not ones to be held to genre conventions. Having recently signed to London’s Lil Chop Record Shop, the band are preparing to release new EP Fire! To The River next February, and single ‘Patchwork’ gives listeners a chance to immerse themselves within the evocative and inventive Otala sound. A song that has been part of the outfit’s repertoire for a long while now reimagined as something fitting their current level. “’Patchwork’ is a song we have been performing since we began playing as Otala, but one that we’d originally planned to let fade into our history,” the band explain. “After seeing a live video from an old set we decided to put the time in to adapt and reanimate it into something we’re proud to release.”

Watch the video by Rory Allen below:

‘Patchwork’ is out now via Lil Chop Record Shop and available from Bandcamp. Fire! To The River will be released in February.

Ruby Gill – Some Kind Of Control

We’ve previously described the work of  South Africa-born, Melbourne/Naarm-based pianist, guitarist and singer-songwriter Ruby Gill as “setting its sights on the overbearing, patronising force of male entitlement,” and “aris[ing] from a very personal situation but end[ing] up speaking to a far wider experience.” New single ‘Some Kind of Control’ follows in the same vein to explore the strange blend of agency and restriction experienced during the lockdown period of the pandemic. “I had been grappling with what it meant to have all and no control over my time and body—all at once,” Gill explains:

In a big way, the world was in charge, but also in a day-to-day way, I had all the power: I could move freely through my kitchen and clothes and kindness however I wished—it was a new experience for me after feeling quite trapped in some difficult spaces and systems for a long time—“always babysitting other people’s arguments instead of my own” as the lyrics say. I feel like this song encompasses so much of what I’ve learnt and reclaimed in the past few years, and feels very reflective musically of my true, silly, powerful self and community.

Watch the video filmed, directed and edited by Bridgette Winten, with shoot and lighting assistance by Sophie Christopher below:

‘Some Kind of Control’ is out now and available from the usual places.

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

Working between soul, jazz and R&B, Portland, ME-based artist Angelikah Fahray is a rising star of the New England scene, winning attention with a sound willing to embrace both haunting and sensual styles. Latest single ‘In My Coffin’ is the perfect introduction for those unfamiliar. A slow, sultry croon which envelopes the audience, the song occupies an ambiguous tone which never quite shows its hand. Is it romantic, bitter, melancholic? Or perhaps all three spun into an enthralling web?

‘In My Coffin’ is out now and available from the usual places.

Casual Technicians – On A Trip To Nowhere

Though now separated by geography, all three members of Casual Technicians have a long history with the music scene in Portland, Oregon. Tyler Keene and Nathan Baumgartner were founding members of And And And while Boone Howard fronted The We Shared Milk and the Boone Howard band. This experience shined through on Four Corners EP, the latest release from Repeating Cloud, where the band offer a confident and playful sound that’s not only willing to experiment between genres but to meld them together seamlessly. Opener and single ‘On a Trip to Nowhere’ plays something like the bummed-out dispatch from contemporary existence a la talons’ as processed through a laidback Steely Dan warmth.

there’s so many times that I’m tired and I’m in the basement
working on stuff and I take a nap
and I go out in the backyard and cut the grass
and shave it down as close as my old head

I feel beefed up but burnt down
burping up bubbles from a weird old beer
that looks like its been open for a half of a year
imagine that

makes me wish it was later in the day

French For Rabbits – Leech

Towards the end of next month, Aotearoa dream pop band French For Rabbits return with a brand new EP In the End I Won’t Be Coming Home. The follow-up to 2021 LP The Overflow, the four song release was recorded this past summer with strings from Auckland’s The Black Quartet and sees an evolution of the French For Rabbits style that we’ve previous described as “translucent and melancholic and alive.” Latest single ‘Leech’ is the perfect introduction, an exploration of “the push and pull of love” suffused with ethereal harmonies and a soaring atmosphere, at once epic and fragile, the lingering melancholy burning away to reveal the rousing chorus.

Cause your love is my only comfort
And your love is my only reward
But if my heart is a leech and you’re still out of reach
All I’m left with is all of my thoughts.

German Error Message & Noah Kittinger – It’s night and you’re alone

The latest release in Furious Hooves‘ Furhoof Halloween Split Series, It’s night and you’re alone offers two ambient instrumental tracks—one by German Error Message and one by Noah Kittinger (of Bedroom)—which live up to the release’s title and offer the ideal Halloween soundtrack for those looking beyond the cliched and the camp. The songs were written six years, eleven months and one day apart from one another, though despite the gap somehow seem to be in conversation. Paul Kintzing’s ‘10.30.16’ plays as a walk down a lonely forest path as night descends, its slowly gathering momentum mimicking the kind of latent dread which comes down with the dark, while Kittinger’s ‘10.1.23’ offers a different sort of night-time passage. A lonely journey through a darkening countryside as viewed from the window of a train, and furthermore one complicated by the liminal strangeness of such an experience. Time both upended and hauntologically conspicuous, your own reflection mirrored back to you in the glass, both part of the view and not.

It’s night and you’re alone is out now via Furious Hooves. Get it via Bandcamp.

Library Card – Cognitive Dissonance

Drawing inspiration from acts like Protomartyr and Life Without Buildings as well as poets such as Anne Clark, Rotterdam’s Library Card are a band of contradictions. Dissonant yet melodious, rambunctious yet taut, volatile yet cool. Lead by Lot van Teylingen and featuring Emre Karayalçin, Kat Kalkman and Mitchell Quitz, the outfit are now preparing to release their new EP Nothing Interesting, and single ‘Cognitive Dissonance’ serves as a encapsulation of this incongruous sound. An examination of the competing forces which coexist within us, an internal struggle between the desire to be selfish and altruistic.

Unspeakable
Unthinkable
Do we simply stare at what’s horrible and forgive it?
Do we simply notice but not see at all?
Truth is a beautiful illusion
Where is your truth now

‘Cognitive Dissonance’ is out now via AT EASE. Get it from the Library Card Bandcamp page.

MVSO – Hold Clear

A collaboration between songwriter/vocalist duo Mat Vairo and Saumon Oboudiyat, MVSO originated as little more than a space for the pair to experiment with music, though soon developed into something more considered and official. The result is Proprioception, an EP pencilled for release in spring 2024 which sees the artists explore universal themes of life, death and the passing of time through a decidedly personal lens. This allows them to take on the biggest ideas while also recording a specific moment in their lives and the position of their friendship within it. Single ‘Hold Clear’ hints at the evocative, simmering style this takes, where the intimacy of the personal opens out into something cryptic and deep.

MX LONELY – Rest In Salt

With their new EP SPIT coming on Candlepin Records early in 2024, Brooklyn‘s MX LONELY have unveiled single ‘Rest In Salt’ to signal their pivot towards a heavier alt rock/shoegaze aesthetic. With Rae Hass taking over lead vocal duties, the song pitches the listener into a shadowy, foreboding world full of needling intensity and crushing weight, the vocals emerging from within this tumult like the helpless cries of the damned. “’Rest In Salt’ is about being trapped in purgatory, pure and simple,” as Hass explains, “about being ridden with anxiety and stuck to the couch. It’s that feeling of jealousy for the dead and the tinge of guilt that follows. When you lie so still you think you can almost remember the freedom of being nothing at all.”

SPIT is out on the 6th February via Candlepin Records and you can pre-order it now.

See Jazz – 1982

Described as a band for “uncool people everywhere scattered to the edges of contemporary anywheres,” See Jazz might be the solo vehicle of Aaron Pfannebecker, though the endeavor is far from a one-person project. Forthcoming album Is This Anything?, out next month via Flower Sounds, sees the likes of Adam Langellotti (Kurt Vile and the Violators), Jed Smith (My Teenage Stride and Jeanines) and Zara Bode (Sweetback Sisters) lend their talents to bring to life a sound at once ethereal and danceable. Take single ‘1982’, so airy if feels on the verge of drifting upwards and away, though all the while anchored by Pfannebecker’s vocals and their exploration of the stubborn nature of human perspective.

Is This Anything? is out on the 10th November via Flower Sounds and you can pre-order it now.

Wet Fruit – Dandelions at the Gate

Hailing from Portland, OR, Wet Fruit take inspiration from a grab bag of genres to create their own singular sound. New album Dandelions at the Gate, out now via Half Shell Records, has indie rock, punk, psych and experimental DNA. But far from an unwieldy mutant, the result is something honed and cohesive. Take opener and title track, its dreamy textures and harmonies cut through with a propulsive energy, giving the sense of escalating towards some moment of chaos or clarity. But as songs like ‘St. Charles’ show, the band are about more than hectic rhythms, stripping away the frenetic elements in favour of something more drifting. Like a late-night drive, sealed into your own little world and estranged from passing cars, left instead to consider the finer textures of solitude.

Dandelions at the Gate is out now via Half Shell Records.

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This style can be traced back through the German Error Message catalogue. A clear through-line exists between Mend and the anxious longing for epiphany on ‘2017’, one rooted in the developments first seen on 2014 album, Haunts. The latter, released on Furious Hooves, itself rose from the cold and melancholic After the Warmth, as though the seasons were reversed and winter broke to a golden autumn. This progression is telling, for it fits within the overarching thematic concerns of Kintzing’s work. Epiphany and transcendence are not as forthcoming as one would wish, and when change does arrive, it is not guaranteed to last. A winter curtailed by a new autumn is a tenuous relief. A season glorious perhaps, but fading all the same.

Though preceded by a number of releases, After the Warmth therefore represents something of an origin point for German Error Message. A record rooted in the isolation of iced windows and early dark created by an artist realising their direction. “I had moved to a new city for school the year before and didn’t know many people and all of my free time outside of school was spent working on it,” Kintzing explains. “My friends would sing with me and add parts when we were home for holidays. The songs came out quickly, many close to fully formed, and I’d rush to get them recorded while they were still fresh. I was still figuring out how to record, and these songs bounced around between an early digital multitrack, a four track cassette recorder, an ancient PC, and finally a Macbook.”

The album never got an official physical release, but in recognition of its eleventh anniversary, Furious Hooves have stepped in to put this right. On February 15th, exactly eleven years to the day since the original release, a cassette edition of After the Warmth will be available. It’s an exciting announcement, not only because it celebrates an incredible record, but because cassette feels like its perfect medium, the enveloping ambience and murmured volume accentuated by the warm organic hiss of a tape deck.

Today we’re delighted to share a video for single ‘Discontent’ to celebrate the announcement. Filmed by Furious Hooves’ Ryan McCardle, the video is the perfect encapsulation of After the Warmth. The sensation of being cut off in a world slowed down by the cold, the only company the small lights peeking through closed blinds across the way. Kintzing’s words are candid in the manner one can be in an empty room. Promises or threats offered to the quiet stillness like prayers. But no matter how sorrowful things sound, there’s something almost magical in the sharing, and the very fact that you’re there to hear it begins to feel miraculous. A reminder of the lights beyond the immediate present, and of the importance of lighting your own lamp too.

After the Warmth is out via Furious Hooves on the 15th February and you can pre-order it now from Bandcamp.

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Not one to rest on his laurels, Keyes immediately set to work on new music, finding a newfound willingness to push the boundaries of his style. “I found myself feeling more open to being vulnerable and experimenting both sonically and lyrically,” Keyes says. “It feels freeing to present something authentic because I know the album represents who I am at this point in time.”

A new album, Dissolving in Dusk, rose from the period, and today we’re delighted to share the lead single, ‘Nowhere’. Recorded with Paul Kintzing (of German Error Message) in Nashville, the track is the perfect introduction to Keyes’s blend of intimate and newly experimental styles. Coaxed into life with finger-picked guitar and gentle percussive beat, the sound starts out soft and pensive, wrapped in an easy-going sincerity that holds both melancholy and fondness. But as it develops, other elements emerge, the vocals lifted upon layers of organ as the drums kick into higher rhythm, growing in conviction to match the rising mood in a manner that feels instinctive and free-flowing.

This sense of intuitive rhythm is baked into the song, extending right back to its creation. “I wrote the lyrics to ‘Nowhere’ while going on an evening walk by myself at Shelby Park in Nashville,” Keyes says. “When I came into the studio the next day, the percussion and melody flowed super organically, and we finished the song over the course of the afternoon.” For those familiar with his work, Kintzing’s influence is apparent, the way the parts of the track coalesce, the slow-dawning tenderness.

The post Jack Keyes – Nowhere appeared first on Various Small Flames.

Now the project is back with a new double single, two suitably autumnal tracks to hold on to during the approach of the cold. Kintzing wrote and recorded these songs in the fall of 2016, and they’re finally getting released three years later. “These songs were my first attempt at writing again after not making music for several years,” he explains, describing how a desk job left him feeling burnt-out and disconnected. These songs proved an important step in his attempts to re-organise his life around music, and although it must have worked (just see the German Error Message releases from the last few years), Kintzing struggled to finish them off. That is until recently, when he returned to the songs with “fresh ears and openness,” and completed them for release last month.

With its “weird-pop hooks and reversed guitar solos,” ‘What Welcoming’ is the more lush and rounded of the two tracks, steady percussion and layered guitars. In comparison, ‘Hand Comes Down’ is a powder-soft take on folk classic folk arrangements, built on a warm and bubbling bed of background ambience. It’s more akin to classic German Error Message, with the chill and internal warmth of a walk through a crisp late autumn night.

Despite the stylistic differences, both songs meditate on a common theme, what Kintzing describes as “reckoning with self-destruction, moments of clarity, and making constant, conscious choices to be present in one’s own life.” “What welcoming was in me then? What calming wind?” Kintzing asks on ‘What Welcoming’, presumably during one of those moments of clarity. “When my heart had opened up, accepting some wisdom.” It’s just one example of a blossoming hope at the heart of these two songs, a landmark moment which saw Kintzing reach a dawning realisation and get his life back closer to where he envisaged it. Nowhere is this clearer than a repeated line at the end of ‘Hand Comes Down’, seven words which encapsulate he complexity of feeling that is captured in these two sort songs.

“Forgot how it felt to be good”

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We first covered the act back in 2014, a split with Lung Cycles via Lily Tapes & Discs, followed by the fourth full-length album, Haunts, on Furious Hooves later that year. The releases highlighted both the diversity of the German Error Message sound and the intrinsic spirit that bound this together—the stripped back simplicity of ‘Everything is Scary’ and the hypnotic, densely layered ‘Slow Thickening’ united by Kintzing’s uncanny ability to breathe human authenticity into everything he does, not matter how modest, weird or abstract.

After a hiatus with only the hauntingly relevant single ‘2017’, German Error Message returned earlier this year with a brand new album, Mend. Building upon the stylistic evolution suggested by ‘2017’, the record drew from increasingly ambient and experiment influences and found Kintzing developing as a songwriter, crafting songs from the unease of our times and framing them in an empathetic manner. “[The album] exists within a state of tension,” we wrote, “delivered from a deceptive calm, the eye of a personal storm, acting as a soothing balm for our own worries and woes.” There is no comfort in the low-level dread of these days, but togetherness, some common humanity, can be found within its ubiquitous grip.

With the quiet period very much over, Kintzing has been busy since Mend. Earlier this summer he released Not Songs under the name Other Nothing, a collection of instrumental fragments stemming from a period of compulsive recording in 2017-18 as he worked on new sound processes, and there has also been a collaboration with the fellow Nashville-based artist Bedroom, such as the single, ‘Count to Five‘.

And that’s not all. Today, we’re delighted to unveil a brand new standalone German Error Message single, ‘Fine’. With recording by George Pauley and featuring vocals from Noah Kittinger (of Bedroom) and drums by Matthew Sigur, the song is a newly collaborative endeavour that highlights a brighter side to the German Error Message sound. With an optimistic piano line and warm strings, the track is something of a wider palette to previous releases, possessing a colourfulness that verges on joy.

Kintzing’s lyrics are not exactly a counterpoint to this new positivity, but they are not fully on board either. Rather, he seems to be asking permission to release himself into the sensation, or wishing it were true. “Does it feel right?” he asks, “Can I be filled with light too?”

The post German Error Message – Fine appeared first on Various Small Flames.

Adrianne Lenker – cradle
German Error Message – Hopelessness
Jo Schornikow – Incomplete
Grizzly Coast – Half-Light Boy
Taylor Hamilton – Might Say
Porridge Radio – Give / Take
Patio – Scum
Ruthie – Spirit Now Moves
Esther Rose – Don’t Blame It On the Moon
Blood Cultures – Flowers For All Occasions
Puddle-Cuddle – Compost
Mess – Dead Space
Cry Babe – Soft Honk
The Painters – Pieces of Life
Two Meters – Ground
Erin Durant – Take a Load Off
Michelle Blades – Ring
Eric & Magill – Thanks to Sciences
Foundlings – Caught Up on You
Craig Finn – Something To Hope For
JW Ridley – Homesick (Out The Blue)
Pieket – Eternal Recurrence
The Curfews – Rose
Emily Fairlight – Body Below
Raggedy – Brainwash
Barrie – Saturated
Blush – Forever Is a Long Time
Shane Leonard – Empire Builder
Con Davison – Sofa Bed
Gold Light + Snakemusk – The Heart Is A Lonely Hunter
The Chats – Pub Feed
Shutups – Yellowjacket
Izzy Heltai – Stuck In Stone
Adam Ostrar – Take It Back
The Death Of Pop – Last
Toledo – Some Samurai
Yot Club – Japan
Evan Thomas Way & The Phasers – Long Distance
K. Campbell – Heads Up
The Duke of Norfolk – As the Heralds Revere You
Leaky Engine-John Birch Society Blues
naps – treading
Vieo Abiungo – What the Rain Restores
Old Earth – The Friends ∴ The Gods
Good Good Blood & Astral Social Club – Heathen Astronaut

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

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

“Hopelessness pacing the room,” Kintzing goes on to sing, as if eager to confront these demons immediately, “will worry forever destroy me?” The track’s anxious themes are offset by mellow strummed guitar and muted, breathy vocals, coming to feel like a moment’s quiet clarity amidst a barrage of mind-racing worries. Such a sensation extends across Mend, earnest messages delivered from a deceptive calm, the eye of a personal storm, acting as a soothing balm for our own worries and woes.

This sense of contrast is also present in the album’s very texture, the grain of its beams and the dust that settles in its corners. Kintzing evokes the seclusion and stillness of an empty house, intertwined feelings of isolation and tranquillity snaking around each song. Opener ‘Murmuring’ is the immediate example, a song that describes both frantic feelings and the comforting image of “the yard’s gentle murmuring,” what we described in a preview as “joy and dread creeping side by side, twin forces of transcendence that promise to lift us from the contemporary loneliness.”

If you’re familiar with previous German Error Message releases then you will immediately feel at home. Kintzing has always had a knack for combining folk and ambient and bedroom pop and slowcore, melting them down into restrained but emotionally poignant music prone to spikes of desperation. The sound is close to being perfected on Mend, loaded with foreboding and humane warmth despite the relatively short run-time, the longest track clocking in at under three and a half minutes in a genre prone to meandering.

‘Red Kitchen’ is a musical representation of the fluttery, hyper-sentimental feeling that comes with exhaustion. “All things will be held warmly,” Kintzing sings, “and recognised in a red kitchen, all lit up with everyone that I’ve ever loved.” ‘Protection I’ brings to mind Aaron Gerber and Sarah Winchester’s A Weather project with its steady percussion and sense of rich melancholy, while the song’s follow-up has perhaps the closest thing to a chorus on Mend, as Kintzing asks “How will I protect myself?”

The relatively upbeat drums and George Pauley’s piano make ‘Saltless’ the nearest Mend comes to a lo-fi pop song, although Kintzing’s vocals never quite puncture their downbeat tone, and the sense of isolation is still overwhelming. “I have trouble being in myself,” he sings, pulling against the rising cadence of the drums. “Every creak and groan / that echoes through the house / internalised / it’s saltless and puzzling.”

Closer ‘Carefully’ steeps itself in the album’s defining spectral loneliness, trying to find peace or solidity in the impermanence of doubt. As such, the song feels like a self-confrontation, a late night mirror gaze in the unflinching light of a halogen lamp. What is found there might not be ideal, or comfortable, or comparable to what we are told to expect and aim for. It might not even be an answer of any kind. But it is our reflection nonetheless. It is us.

Unceasing
“I’ll be fine”
with whatever happens

Got closed off, frightened
No mystery left to find
In the flat glare of blue light
Reflected in my eyes

Will my body live in tension

Will I carry doubt through my life

I’ll treat it carefully

Mend is out now and you can get it from the German Error Message Bandcamp page.

The post German Error Message – Mend appeared first on Various Small Flames.

Tracklist:

Act Of – I am Fungus
Static Animal – See You Around
Skirts – Brite Boy (Alex G cover)
Space Mountain – Cloud
Alexander – Going To Sleep
German Error Message – Murmuring
Thelma – Take Me To Orlando
Jeffrey Silverstein – Make Yr Peace (And Have It Too)
camp counselor – museum of broken relationships
Spartan Jet-Plex – Stop
Lala Lala & Why? – Siren 042
Shrimpwitch – Leerers
Sir Babygirl – Flirting With Her
Spielbergs – Five On It
Stella Donnelly – Lunch
Mentalease – Avert a Gaze
Priests – The Seduction of Kansas
Mike Pace and The Child Actors – Hazy, Hot & Humid
Swim Camp – Circle K
BURLY – Kent Lame
Miserable chillers – Cider Palace
Imp of Perverse – Tripping Thru a Hallway On Fire
Go Fever – Olivia
Polyan – Dan Song
Morning River Band – Bury Me
Nigel Wright – Overcast
Denmark – I Know
Sister Wanzala – I Went Whaling in My Gap Year
Body Meat – Nairobi Flex
Derek Piotr – Repeating Bloom (Simon Whetham Remix)
Michael Chinworth – Good As It Gets
Mesa Luna – Dispel
yot club – jaded

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

Stella Donnelly – Boys Will Be Boys

After the success of debut EP Thrush Metal, Australian songwriter Stella Donnelly is preparing to release her debut full-length album, Beware of the Dog, this spring on Secretly Canadian. The record looks set to continue the defiant tone that made her previous release so striking, confronting personal and social issues by looking them right in the eye, and refusing to move until they flinch.

That this is achieved through delicate folk rock is a testament to Donnelly’s writing abilities, and single ‘Boys Will Be Boys’ is a case in point. The track laps in gentle rhythm no matter how dark and violent the lyrics, Donnelly’s tone somewhere between earnest, wistful and searingly sardonic. A nightmare in lullaby clothing, that just so happens to be waking reality.

Go Fever – Olivia

The recording project of Australia born, Texas-based songwriter Acey Monaro, Go Fever look to explore themes such as love, sex, outsiderness and mental health through a feminist lens, using a New Wave-inflected indie rock as the vehicle. Following up 2017’s self-titled album, Go Fever are back this winter with a brand new EP, Daydream Hawker, and single ‘Olivia’ gives a hint as to what we should expect from the album.

Part dreamy, part surfy, and with more than a hint of 70s sensibility, the track is a vivid take on a friendship turned sour. “You don’t have to pretend anymore,” Monaro sings, hinting at the anger stitched into the warm textures of the song. “I’m tired of the sight of you.” Understandably, the song is far from a happy one, though the buoyant sound of the instrumentation lifts the tone from self-pity into grim celebration.

Nigel Wright – Overcast

Raised in Georgia but now working out of Bandon, Oregon, Nigel Wright is a songwriter, composer, artist and former carpenter’s assistant who put out his first record in 2010. After the experience of a European tour, Wright worked on his second album in 2014, and has since been storing up his songs for a new full-length, Kyht, that will see the light of day at the end of February.

‘Overcast’ serves as a strong introduction to the record, the instrumentation imbued with a sense of lightness and motion, Wright’s distinctive vocals like weather-worn rocks within the flow. Thematically, the track is clearly that of an artist, the push and pull of obsession and obscurity, where a keen vision burns brightly, but always just out of frame. Wright’s role it seems, is to get as close to that clarity as possible, and hope that it brings focus for others too.

“You said so long to my meaning
back to as you were
no it aint your assignment to measure your worth
you just gotta do the work”

Priests – The Seduction of Kansas

When Washington D.C.’s Priests put out Nothing Feels Natural back in 2017, the band cemented their position as one of the most interesting bands around, their fierce, freewheeling sound pitched somewhere between furious and funny. The band are back with a brand new record, The Seduction of Kansas, and the title track suggests a slightly different direction for Priests, swapping out the raw punk sound in favour of sinuous art rock. Still, the writing and delivery is as cutting and arresting as ever, the band taking on ideas of national identity and Americanness with acerbic wryness, referencing everything from the Koch Brothers to Castle Pizza.

The track comes complete with a video by singer Katie Alice Greer, and the film belongs to the valuable bracket of music videos that actually seem to add to the meaning and impact of the song. Check it out below:

The Seduction of Kansas will be released on the 5th April via Sister Polygon Records and you can pre-order it from the Priests Bandcamp page.

Polyan – Dan Song

Polyan are a psych-folk band for the post 9/11 age, their old timey twang having one foot in dusty campfire tunes and another in the twenty-first century. ‘Dan Song’ shows this off, the hypnotic flow of the instrumentation and the lazy slur of the vocals lendimg a dangerous, temperamental dimension, threatening to spill over into something altogether more unhinged. Eventually, the song follows through on this dark promise, the vocals rising into a deafening screech that blows through the mics and stings your soul.

Sir Babygirl – Flirting With Her

Sir Babygirl was born when new Hampshire’s Kelsie Hogue had an Ebeneezer Scrooge-style experience, the ghosts of pop past and present (the holy trinity of Britney Spears, Christina Aguilera, Whitney Houston) visiting her in a dream and convincing her that there is no higher form of art or self-expression. The epiphany saw ambitions in Chiacago’s DIY and comedy scenes dropped, Hogue now devoted to creating a pop persona worthy of her heroes.

Taken from debut album Crush On Me, single ‘Flirting With Her’ provides a tour through the gaudy pop world that has been crafted in response, the flashy plastic decorations and glitterball diva energy making what the press release calls “unabashedly bubblegum, unashamedly queer pop for a future free of genre boundary and the gender binary.”

Mesa Luna – Dispel

The recording project of Vancouver multi-instrumentalist Justice McLellan, Mesa Luna melds dream pop and shoegaze to form shimmering soundscapes, the rich textures tied together by resolute rhythms that pull you through the spacey haze. Taken from the debut Mesa Luna album that’s due out early this spring, ‘Dispel’ shows off McLellan’s balance between energy and space, where the fuzzy tones are guided by a lucid conviction, leading to a sound translucent yet crystalline.

Body Meat – Nairobi Flex

Philadelphia’s Body Meat is primarily a duo of Chris Taylor and Matthew Anderegg (of Mothers and Infinity Dance Complex). They create contemporary pop/R&B that’s made weird by skewed time signatures and superimposed polyrhythms. There newest song, ‘Nairobi Flex’, is a great example. At once jittery and smooth, the song combines collaged staccato samples and smooth pop vibes, creating something that’s as infectious as it is adventurous.

The song comes complete with a video by Daniel Patrick Brennan, which you can check out below:

Head to the Body Meat Bandcamp page for previous releases.

yot club – jaded

Not much information exists about yot club, the recording project of someone named Ryan that pitches a glimmering blend of dream pop and chillwave. This month saw the release of aquarium, the debut yot club release, a deliciously lo-fi synth pop album that combines sadness and bounce to create its infectious sounds. Bringing to mind the likes of Pizzagirl, lead single ‘jaded’ puts bummed out disaffection next to tropical pop, like watching a day end from the bottom of a chlorinated pool.

Lala Lala & Why? – Siren 042

Yoni Wolf and Lillie West of Chicago’s Lala Lala have known each other since the “golden, olden days when Lillie used to sneak backstage at Why? shows,” and have now come together to make a collaborative single. ‘Siren 042’ sees West take the lead, infusing the track with a sense of melancholic self-confrontation, while Wolf and some beautifully dreamy guitar brighten the palette. The accompanying video, directed by Scott Fredette, sees the pair running through a variety of landscapes, constant backward glances suggesting they’re desperate to flee rather than get somewhere new.

“and i’m sorry i was evil
i don’t do that anymore
i just copy other people
try to forget what was before”

Imp of Perverse – Tripping Thru a Hallway On Fire

In addition to drumming for Austin band Sherry, and his membership of now-defunct favourites π and The Halfways, Sean Lochridge also records solo as Imp of Perverse, where he gets to show off his skills as a multi-instrumentalist. As the title might suggest, new album Imp In Reverse collects four of Lochridge’s previous releases and presents them in reverse chronological order, creating what the label describes as “one gigantic, shifting, psychedelic auditory flashback totaling in 22 songs and nearly an hour and a half in runtime.”

Such a project might sound impenetrable, so why not cut your teeth on opening (and potentially most accessible) track ‘Tripping Thru a Hallway On Fire’? In opposition to the titular immediacy, the song is a detached dream-float prone to eddies and swirls in its tempo. For their part, Lochridge’s vocals remain even and barely audible. It’s is something of a trap door through which you fall into the truly weird recesses of the album, though it is certainly worth trusting Imp of Perverse to be as delightfully odd as possible.

Swim Camp – Circle K

Swim Camp is the bedroom pop project of Philadelphia’s Tom Morris. His latest single ‘Circle K’ is a soft and mumbled song that combines the intimacy of a home-recording with a touch of lush studio production. Guitar sits at the forefront, slowly unfurling as percussion ambles along in the background, creating something akin to slo-mo indie rock. Morris’s vocals only adds to the atmosphere, sounding weary and sober as he delivers minimal lines that nevertheless have distinct emotional resonance.

“to tell the truth
i forget what i want
so ill keep on asking
and praying to god”

Thelma – Take Me To Orlando

Natasha Jean Jacobs established herself as Thelma with a self-titled record back in 2017, exploring the pure/impure dichotomy with a tone at once delicate and caustic, proving a valuable meditation of self-worth. Much has transpired in the meantime, but this February sees Jacobs back with a brand new Thelma record, The Only Thing.

Lead single ‘Take Me To Orlando’ employs a similar ambiguity, drawing on the nirvana of simulacra that is Disney World to dig into ideas of performance, fantasy and longing. “I love how you play with illusion,” she sings to someone/thing she’d decided to call Orlando, “cause you know how badly we need them / to live our silly lives.” Check out the video directed by Stephanie Gould below:

The Only Thing is out on the 22nd February and you can pre-order it now.

German Error Message – Murmuring

We’ve covered German Error Message numerous times in the past, from the beautiful album Haunts and a spilt with Lung Cycles to standalone single ‘2017‘, the latter of which we describes as “quietly devastating […] late-night solitude made strange by stark, staccato forces emerging from the sky or within the skull.”

The good news is that German Error message is putting out a brand new record, Mend, in 2019, and we’ve been given ‘Murmuring’ to set the scene. As ever, the song is one of great atmosphere and feeling—joy and dread creeping side by side, twin forces of transcendence that promise to lift us from the contemporary loneliness.

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