‘Been a Long Year’, the lead single from Alex Nicol’s forthcoming EP Been a Long Year Vol. 1, offers a picture of grief as a kind of matryoshka doll. Where a wider context of loss and decay couches the personal, and sadness moves ever-inward with increasing weight. The track’s landscape is a town decimated by both the pandemic and chronic neglect (“And all the shops are empty,” as Nicol sings, “and the diners too / The miller, baker, and seamstress / Gotta find something new to do), within which personal tragedies including the loss of a job and the death of friends and family unfold. But with a compassionate, airy tone and guest vocals from Angel Deradoorian, ‘Been a Long Year’ doesn’t try to make sense of such experiences so much as admit the full implication of their difficulty. “I wanted to express my frustration at running from my feelings for so long,” Nicol explains. “It felt like the world was crumbling at the same time as I was pretending everything was fine, but I really wasn’t, and I finally expressed it. It feels like one long exhale for me.”

Been a Long Year Vol. 1 is out on the 30th June and you can pre-save it now.

Alex Gardner – Upside Down Crown

Inspired by everything from the Anthology of American folk music, rockabilly and bluegrass to fairy tales and experimental poetry, LA‘s Alex Gardner combines classic and contemporary styles in his distinctive music. A kind of outsider folk for the twenty-first century, where Gardner teases out the through line from acts like Michael Hurley to the modern indie style. With album Highly Attainable Dreams coming later this week, single ‘Upside Down Crown’ gives an example of what to expect. A tender folk number propelled by a nineties-style indie rock energy, coupled with a suitably nostalgic video by Lauren Slusser:

Highly Attainable Dreams is out on the 12th May and you can find Alex Gardner on Bandcamp.

Brittany Ann Tranbaugh – Pennsylvania

As much a snapshot of a damaged country as it is a personal narrative, Brittany Ann Tranbaugh’s latest single follows a queer couple as they move from a liberal urban setting to their home in rural Pennsylvania. “It was wonderful to live out west,” go the opening lines, “fun to kid ourselves I guess,” the drive punctuated by second thoughts, uneasy vibes and a “radio blaring about divided times,” but also an undeniable fondness for the familiar landscape too. Tranbaugh’s country style captures this mood in all of its nuance, where fear, fury and bone-weary disappointment coalesce into one dense weight, and wry humour is perhaps the only way to lighten the load.

Pennsylvania, it was never easy to explain ya
Sometimes home’s not just an easy chair
Lately home feels like a cross to bear

Greta Ruth – Holy Omen

Writing of her debut album The Fawn back in 2021, we described the music of Minneapolis artist Greta Ruth as “hum[ming] with a quiet dream-like energy,” where “each track is a composition of poetry and tone which slowly unfurls to reveal layers of depth and meaning.” Last week, Ruth released a brand new single ‘Holy Omen’ which again follows this style. Built on gentle vocals, fingerpicked guitar and Zach Waldon’s subtle piano, it’s a song about the awe and calm that comes with real love, “a love that,” as Ruth puts it, “sweetens and strengthens you while the chaos, mystery, and dissonance of life rage on.” Stark and soft and dream-like, it’s a more than worthy addition to the Greta Ruth oeuvre.

headboy – Reservoir

Next month, London post-punk trio headboy will release their debut EP, Was It What You Thought. Comprising of Mars West (guitar, bass, vocals), Jess Collins (guitar, bass, vocals) and Oli Birbeck (drums), the band make a distinctive blend of raucous punk and lo-fi indie pop which tackles themes both personal and political. “We pretty much condensed every emotion we’ve felt in the past two years into fourteen minutes,” Collins describes. “There are moments of anger, fear, and sadness, but also moments of joy, or acceptance, at least.” Latest single ‘Reservoir’ has all the sweaty, smoky allure of a late-night dive bar dancefloor, a shadowy post-punk exploration of “infatuation and unaddressed sexual tension.” Watch the video, directed by West themselves below:

Was It What You Thought will be released on 9^th June via Blitzcat Records. Order it via the headboy Bandcamp page.

Julez and the Rollerz – Wildest Fantasy

Having originated as a solo project, Julez and the Rollerz really came to life when Jules Batterman moved to LA in 2020 and the Rollerz were enlisted. Soon Rachel David (bass/vocals), Shea Carothers (synth/vocals), Hannah Hughes (guitar/vocals) and Emi Borja (drums) were as important a part of the band as any, and the quintet began honing their psych-inflected punk rock sound. With EP Is This Where The Party Is? coming later this month, the outfit have unveiled latest single ‘Wildest Fantasy’ to rope listeners in. A track which confronts the honest difficulties of negotiating the music industry, fighting to maintain enthusiasm in a space so often appearing to drain dreams from artists. But armed with equal parts playful mischief and heart-on-sleeve passion, Julez and the Rollerz power on through regardless.

Nora Kelly Band – Lay Down Girl

Having made a name as part of grunge outfit DISHPIT, Montreal‘s Nora Kelly has until know been known for her unapologetic attitude and energy. And though a pandemic-induced rebirth pushed new project Nora Kelly Band in an alt-country direction, this defiant tone remains. Album Rodeo Clown is out this summer Mint Records, and lead single ‘Lay Down Girl’ goes some way to explaining the LP’s titular image. A figure made to smile no matter the mood. “The lyrics to this song were direct advice that I was giving to myself,” Kelly explains. “To stop staying put, acting sweet and putting everyone else first. Other people’s approval had been my priority for so long that overtime my connection to what I liked and what I wanted had become weak.” Watch the video directed by Gabie Che below:

Rodeo Clown is out on the 25th August via Mint Records. Find Nora Kelly Band on Bandcamp.

The Phone Booth – Wasted

‘Happier at Home’, the previous single from Santa Barbara outfit The Phone Booth, was a slow-burning ode to living against expectations, moving through a sludgy haze of boredom and anxiety. Something of the track must have served its therapeutic purpose, because new single ‘Wasted’ is altogether more upbeat, blending sunny indie rock with slacker sensibilities to signal something of a return to past album Roman, albeit with a new sheen of polish. The song is the lead single from a forthcoming self-titled album, and gives the impression that The Phone Booth are ready to reintroduce themselves in their most confident form yet.

Sarah Coolidge – Ice Pack

Following several singles and EPs over the last few years, Bay Area musician Sarah Coolidge is set to release her debut album, Call Me When You Get There, a collection of ten songs recorded in John Vanderslice’s Tiny Telephone Studios in Oakland. Coolidge has a knack for writing deceptively simple songs that are effortlessly catchy and full of tongue-in-cheek humour, and lead single ‘Ice Pack’ is the perfect introduction. Upbeat indie pop soaked in shoegaze shimmer, it’s a song about a litany of eye injuries suffered from 3^rd grade to present, from burnt eyebrows to invasive pepper flakes. Tennessee Mowrey joins on bass and Chris Olson on drums, and together the trio make something genuinely infectious, certainly the most buoyant examination of bodily harm you’ve heard this year.

Virgin of the Birds – Moon Chariot

Following a series of EPs, Seattle‘s Virgin of the Birds caught the attention of Edinburgh label Song, By Toad, with albums Winter Seeds and Secret Kids seeing them join a roster including the likes of Meursault and Adam Stafford. The company felt fitting for a project straddling lo-fi folk and left-field art rock, where literate lyrics are met with experimental sounds, and inventiveness need not come at the expensive of emotion. The Scottish link continues with new EP Viper Summer, with members of Edinburgh folk outfit Storm the Palace joining to add a new dimension to the project, as captured by lead single ‘Moon Chariot’. A track bursting with bright energy and mythical strangeness, where any sense of opacity from the latter is rendered redundant by the conviction of the former. A song of serpents and winged horses in which you can only totally believe.

I rejoiced at seeing the giantess
And the world and its cruelties
And the serpent that sings:
“Now, for the moon, Noreen!”
“Now, for the moon, Noreen!”

The post Weekly Listening: May 2023 #2 appeared first on Various Small Flames.

It should come as no surprise then that Greta Ruth’s latest offering strays more towards the strange. A double single titled Milk Tooth/Hull, it comprises of two songs that began life as potential vocal interludes for more conventional songs, before taking on a life and distinctive flavour of their own. Both are constructed entirely of layered vocals, many of which were improvised during recording. “Following cycles of breath, layers of voices work through stagnant, wavering, or melodic patterns,” Ruth describes, “while others feature simple, direct lyrical imagery of pain, loss, and letting go.”

Both tracks are mixed and mastered versions of what were initially intended to be demos, a decision made to preserve the spontaneity and strangely significant imperfections of the original recordings. On ‘Milk Tooth’, the background vocals take on a tonal quality that rings like a bell, while the lead delivers wavering repeated lines that explore how even life’s most consequential events are one day consigned to memory.

It’s just a memory now
I can take it in my hands
and turn it round

‘Hull’ has similar thematic depth despite its sparse lyrical content, aching with an injured sense of catharsis. It’s a song in which violence is implicit, existing in the tender aftermath of some terrible occurrence. “I’m coming home with the same body on my bones,” Ruth sings, “bruised from things I can’t recall / you’d think I would have known what hurt me so but I am all alone here.”

Milk Tooth/Hull is out now and available from the Greta Ruth Bandcamp page.

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After a series of singles, Greta Ruth has just released her debut full-length album, The Fawn, on Minneapolis label Corrector Records. It’s an album that demonstrates her sensibilities perfectly. A patient and richly textured collection of songs that hum with a quiet dream-like energy, where each track is a composition of poetry and tone which slowly unfurls to reveal layers of depth and meaning. Often concise and fleeting, Ruth’s writing combines personal thoughts with opaque images to allude to a certain mysteriousness. As she sings on ‘At the Place’, “I’m sure of little in the dull light.”

There’s something mournful and morbid about many of the images Ruth paints, a funereal elegance that ties together death and life and love like a ribbon. From the stones and bones on ‘Oslo’, the wrapped legs on ‘In a White Gown’, or the torn silk on ‘Taut’, Greta Ruth finds beauty in dissonance. But perhaps the best example is ‘The Waves’. “My love I need a small death,” she sings, “face me sure and sweet / waves will come and change us, claim all our breath.”

Ruth says she wrote these songs as a means to “reflect on the idea that our greatest virtues can also be our greatest vices,” and this meditative atmosphere is perhaps the album’ key feature. There is a tranquillity woven throughout, the sense that each song is suspended in negative space, the dusky silence of an empty room or the inward caverns of the self. Ruth traverses these expanses with a kind of steadfast graciousness, unhurriedly disentangling the snaggle of knots that can trouble and complicate a life. “Through internal and spiritual work,” she says, “we have the opportunity to grow toward a place where we are no longer at war with ourselves.”

This combination of rumination and spiritualism is sometimes addressed directly, such as on the softly turbulent title track which feels thick with things left unsaid. “I go for walks to talk to God,” Ruth sings, before surrendering to her anxieties “worry, sick with worry / I can’t be worried anymore.” But the songs are not always disturbed by this unease. Hope flickers too, not unlike the glimmer of gold on the album’s artwork. Take ‘Full Hue’, which opens with the stark acknowledgment “happier, I want to be happier,” before using lunar metaphors to convey the wax and wane of selves and relationships. But what could end as a sad song shows a flicker of strength too, the realization that, perhaps, better things are possible (“if I was brighter, if I was kinder, if I was braver, maybe”). The sensation is most apparent on ‘Like You’, an otherwise austere folk song where hope reveals itself most fully, sparkling gently with a soft and quivering radiance.

I thought the dark would
hurry my heart
to an early grave
when the light came
what sweet wonder
that whole unbroken day

The Fawn is out now on Corrector Records and you can get it from the Greta Ruth Bandcamp page. You can also choose from a variety of cool merch, including t-shirts, hand-made jewellery and a print of the image from the album cover.

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