“The song is constructed from a multitude of small details, dreams and snapshots and sensations which knit together into a kind of abstract storyboard for good times. Or a vivid representation of life’s sunny side. A shiny plum indeed.”

Ben was kind enough to answer a few of our questions, so have a read below as we discuss imaginary audiences, sincerity in music and the poetry of Eileen Myles.

Hi Ben, thanks for speaking with us! How is life now that Bowl of Plums is out in the world?

I honestly feel wonderful! The release show last week was really, really nice and putting this record out has been a really opportune moment to reconnect with people + talk to some new folks. I’m a little bit relieved, also – happy to finally cross the finish line. I’ve been walking around beaming!

The writing/recording process sounded like an interesting one, with a collection of very different songs coming into being pretty much right across America (from Alaska and California to Brooklyn and Queens), so much so that you’ve describe the album as a “greatest hits album”. Was this your intention from the beginning?

I never intended to write the album that way. After a few years of bopping around, through touring and visiting my family out west and doing some different artist residencies, I had a pretty big grab bag of different songs that weren’t necessarily part of one larger body of work. Thinking of the “greatest hits” helped me conceptualise everything, and helped me find the thread of humanity that was common to all these tracks.

I also liked how it’s a little tongue-in-cheek – greatest hits albums are for people like Tom Petty and the Eagles, goliath recording artists whose songs top the charts. Calling my tiny little campfire of an album anything grandiose is an almost-funny joke.

Also – “Yellow Roses,” an album-length song/jam I put out on tape in 2015 was partly about really embracing a classic rock vibe, just laying super hard into dominant chords and multiple guitars. We kept thinking of the tape design as something you’d pick up in the discount music bin of a car wash, a 50 cent tape of a band from the late 70s that nobody had ever heard of. I think maybe the “greatest hits” idea started creeping in there a little bit.

Do you think you’d like to go back to any of the tracks and write a more cohesive album around it? I mean, will we see any of the trees from which the plums fell?

It’s possible! But I don’t have any specific plans right now. The thing I’m working on now is based on my teenage years in California when I was just starting to outgrow religion – I’ve been listening to Everclear a lot for inspiration, haha, so who knows.

The thing that strikes me most about Bowl of Plums is how you manage to capture those transient moments of wonder and joy. Do the songs arrive in your brain like that, in little golden instances? Or do you work hard to conjure that feeling through trial and error?

I actually find that the harder I work on something – especially its words – the less resonance it has. The title track, for instance, went through a number of lyrical changes over the course of a few months that I was never happy with – I ended up using the very first draft of lyrics, the words I scrawled down in a beat-up notebook while I was hunched over a table still awkwardly wearing my guitar. Something like first thought, best thought. Revision and fine-tuning is something that I admire in a lot of other singers and writers but for me it just seems to dull my instincts and pull me out of the soft, human dreams I’m trying to live in with these songs.

The other thing that strikes me, as was the case with your self-titled album, is the sincerity of your writing. There are a million and one things I could ask about this but one thing I do wonder is how much of this is a concerted effort on your part? Does sincerity flow? Is it your default setting? Or does it require practice and patience and hard work?

I think the sincerity flows, dude! And I think it flows in most people, too, but for various reasons we learn over and over again to be cool, a little distant, intellectual, whatever. Maybe it takes hard work to overcome those impulses.

Without sounding like too much of a stoner – – you can’t aim for sincerity, I don’t think. You can’t say, “I would like this thing to be sincere.” With that thought, you have automatically disqualified the sentiment from ultimate sincereness…you know? You say something, make something, and if it’s an honest exploration of a compelling subject, done with tenderness and maybe, like, a lack of guile, then it might be resonant and might appear pure-of-heart. But you can’t aim to make something sincere.

Would you say you experience increased anxiety when sharing songs so vibrant and personal? Like, all artists suffer the will-people-like-it? thing but it must be more difficult when you put so much of yourself and your experiences down so clearly (as opposed to, say, masking it with irony or diluting it with fictitious characters and events)?

I have certainly been scared of people not liking what I make in the past, but I think I’ve outgrown that fear – – I’m pretty confident in what I do and, more importantly, I know that it’s for sure not everyone’s cup of tea. I’d hate to disappoint my regular listeners with a turd of an album, but I would also never put something out that I wasn’t stoked about and proud of personally. So, no!

The thing that I’m REALLY anxious about is the album and the songs just not making much of an impact, just kind of vanishing into the ever-growing content void. I recently called Bowl of Plums a paper sailboat, carrying my heart, set out to drift on the ocean. It’s also something like setting off a cherry bomb in a metal trash can – I’ve lit the fuse and I’m just hoping that the explosion is physical and loud and satisfying instead of anti-climactic – – mm, yes, haha. That is the thing that worries me right now.

Fortunately this interview will help!

You shared an Eileen Myles poem with the release. Did you have the poem in mind when forming the album, or did you discover it later and think it relevant? Does poetry and literature in general play a role in your creative process?

I was reading Eileen Myles’ semi-autobiographical poetic memoir kinda book Inferno (a poet’s novel) the summer I wrote a lot of this material. Such a great book, really hypnotic and steamy and smelly – – very accurately captures something about New York City, I think. And it’s just so direct and fearless – proud, too. I think her writing and her poems just made me want to sing about things that weren’t easy, to push through.

Later on, after I had been recording for a while, I came across the quote I ended up using as the epigraph – having written numerous songs name-checking flowers and, in one verse, just naming a few, it was too perfect – it concisely summed up the sheepish and outlandish presentation of a bouquet of flowers that I believe this album to be.

I love books, love getting lost in them, and find that the best ones allow you a totally reckless intimacy that’s extremely special and rare. I always think about that idea that Whitman had where, while you read Leaves of Grass and hold his work in your hands, you actually holding him himself. My big project in making music is finding, celebrating, and creating intimacy and tenderness and my notions of what that all means definitely comes from books. And I hope there’s something like that for people who hear my songs.

You’re releasing an EU version of the record through Italian label Love Boat Records (which is a great idea, speaking as a fan of North American music stuck the wrong side of the Atlantic), and plan to tour there this summer. Why Italy in particular?

It’s honestly “just one of those things” – I’ve happened to build an audience in Italy specifically, thanks mostly to the tireless efforts of Andrea Pomini, a musician and music critic who downloaded my last album illegally when it came out in 2014 and ended up championing it as a good, if totally under-heard, record. Once he wrote about the self-titled album in a magazine called Rumore, I suddenly had a sizeable audience in a country I had never been to. Since then, I’ve just taken every opportunity possible to go there and play and do more.

Someone smarter than me might be able to figure out more specifically why my music is resonant there – I’m just happy that it happened.

Essentially, one person happened to hear my music there and believed in me.

If anyone in other countries would like to do the same, I am open to the idea! Would love to be able to tour Japan regularly, for instance.

On a semi-related note, do you ever think about your target audience when writing and recording? Like, aside from family/friends/enemies, do you have a hypothetical listener in mind? What do they look like?

There isn’t a specific person, I don’t think. At least not right now – there have been targeted individuals in the past. I might describe the audience I think of like this – – a crowded room, maybe 20% people I know and 80% strangers, as if I’m opening for someone (actually, I think I’m imagining the time I opened for Evan Dando). And I think about how to win them over, do something approaching beautiful, and ultimately be, um, of some help, I guess is how to say it. How to do right by a tiny sliver of humanity.

I do not currently imagine my many enemies but I think I would like to start doing that!!

Finally, could you suggest 4-5 bands you think we should be listening to? Feel free to name old classics or new buzz bands, whatever you find yourself returning to.

-I’m really into Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith right now and, by extension, really feeling modular synth videos on YouTube.
-I just watched two Bill Callahan sets two nights in a row and I’m completely obsessed, once again, with “A River Ain’t Too Much to Love” and his cover of Kath Bloom’s “The Breeze.”
-I’m really into Abdullah Ibrahim / Dollar Brand, specifically a track called “African Marketplace” that rules.
-The new Karl Blau country album wow, yes yes
-Looking forward to the Uni Ika Ai album coming out in the fall – this track is very good
-And like, just in case – if anyone hasn’t heard “New Day Rising” by Hüsker Dü it is pretty much the best song of all time

Bowl of Plums is out now and you can buy it from the Ben Seretan Bandcamp page, or on cassette from Hope For The Tape Deck. For those of you in Europe (and that includes us in the UK, at least for now), Italian label Love Boat is putting out vinyl and CD editions on the 8th July.

Cover photo by Dan Sullivan, main body photos by Sean Pierce

The post Interview: Ben Seretan appeared first on Various Small Flames.

Bowl of Plums, his latest album set for release this Friday (24th June), was written and recorded across the breadth of America, from an Alaskan island and Californian condo to a greeting card factory in Queens and a pharmaceutical factory in Brooklyn. The geographic variation translates into the music, the songs feeling like a collection of singles rather than a cohesive album, a kind of greatest hits compilation which draws from every sound, sight and second from Seretan’s recent life. As he explains in the press release: “Each track seems to me to hint at a nonexistent record that might have been made in the last two years. These are the best of them, the shiniest plums. The greatest moments.”

We’re delighted to share the title track ahead of Friday’s release, a song Seretan describes as the “guiding light for the whole album”.  And it’s not difficult to understand why. The song is constructed from a multitude of small details, dreams and snapshots and sensations, which knit together into a kind of abstract storyboard for good times. Or a vivid representation of life’s sunny side. A shiny plum indeed.

“My friends call me when they’re feeling low
We talk quietly for hours and walk the room
Flowers growing in a coffee can
Our lives are wonderful and sad sometimes

I’m so happy I could cry
A bowl of plums on the table”

The post Song Premiere: Ben Seretan – Bowl of Plums appeared first on Various Small Flames.

We’re huge fans of Joshua Britton’s Psalmships output (I Sleep Alone was one of my favourite albums of last year) and therefore very excited to hear that he has recently put together Old Waves Pt. 2. An assortment of B-sides, demos, out-of-print songs and live recordings, this is a collection of so-called oddities and rarities which most artists would be proud to put out as a full release. Indeed, the nature of the release actually works in it’s favour: Psalmships’s music is always honest and intense, so slightly rough recordings and live performances just makes things seem even more stark and sincere.

If you’re not familiar with past Psalmships releases, you probably want some kind of idea of what sort of music we’re talking about. Well, in my review of I Sleep Alone I wrote this (and stand by it):

[The album is] beautifully human, sounding simultaneously hushed and impassioned, delicate and raw. The negative space that intersperses each guitar note has an emotional heft, an almost tangible substance that snakes around like fog. The lyrics are superb, and the whole thing has a depth that requires repeated listens to even begin to appreciate. It’s a bona fide “slowcoustic” album, with parallels to all of the modern greats (Molina, Tillman, Jurado et al.).

That should give you some idea of the tone of the music, certainly on the gloomier side of the spectrum – but all the best songs are sad songs right? And I can’t think of many contemporary songwriters who do sad as well as Britton. ‘Demise’ takes this to its limits, with lyrics such as, “I’ve been dead since you have left, but it’s not the beautiful death, where you run out of breath and slip beneath the grass. It’s the worst kind of demise and it’s left me paralysed, though i tried i tried, to wait for it to pass”. However, hushed sadness is not Psalmship’s sole strength. His music also displays a sense of self confidence, not in an arrogant sense but a simple defiance against the things that have hurt him. See for example his repetition on ‘Apocryphal Babe’ of the line, “Who cares if I can’t get over all the things that have fucked me up?”

The release also contains several instrumental interludes, such as ‘Western Mountains’ (which is as poppy a track I’ve ever heard from the band) and ‘Ocean Floor’ which sounds like giant soft-bodied sea creatures pulsing through the murk, or the crushing water pressure thumping blood through your ears like syrup.

This is not music to get a party started (although maybe I’d go to more parties if it was), but it is the genuine artistic expression of one man (with help from lots of talented friends), an exploration of loneliness and personal anxiety which speaks to the listener in a very important way. It seems somewhat paradoxical that an album which deals heavily with sadness and loneliness can actually have the opposite effect on the listener, doing something only really good art (of any kind) can. It shows that even if you do feel sad and lonely then you’re not the only person feeling that way, beaming an all important message which says “YOU ARE NOT ALONE”.

You can buy Old Waves Pt. 2 on cassette via Hope For The Tape Deck, or as a digital download from the Psalmships or Hope For The Tape Deck Bandcamp pages.

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The album opens with the sprawling ‘Ticonderoga’, which sounds like the lovechild of Fang Island and Parts & Labor. Clocking in at just under eight minutes, the track is a suitable flag-bearer for the rest of the album. The only lyric present is the song’s title, a name he repeats over and over with mounting feeling as the guitar and percussion become increasingly agitated. This is followed by ‘Light Leaks’, another seven minute epic that mixes the finger-picked complexity of traditional folk music with a mathy electronic sound. Here we get the first real glimpse at the truth at the heart of the record, a naked sincerity which forgoes being hip or clever or cool in an attempt to communicate openly and truthfully and connect with the listener. The song holds an improbable weight, opening with two simple verses and the refrain of “Hey, it’s all right. Light leaks from under the door”, it seems like the sonic version of the sort of simple but impossibly meaningful gesture from someone which begins to pull you from your darkest hour. Next Seretan delves into repetition once again, and the clear cycle of uncomplicated words means that by the halfway mark the listener is singing along, each phrase swelling in size and feeling, filling that soul-shaped part inside your ribcage that isn’t taken by your heart or your lungs, becoming a chant, a hymn.

“You will be stronger tomorrow
You will be wiser tonight
You will find new love without warning
You will find new joy with every breath”

If ‘Light Leaks’ is the epiphany then ‘Meadowlark’ is the sustained attempt at being well, a slow-burning new dawn that demands with a country rock swagger, “Put your might in something good. Sing out with the Meadowlark”. Lyrically, ‘Blues for Ian M. Colletti’ follows a similarly encouraging theme (“You are a blessing on the world”), but the sound is far more restrained and ethereal, the late night heart-to-heart to ‘Meadowlark’s morning optimism. ‘The Confused Sound…’ and ‘Two Black Wings’ are nostalgic/oneiric returns to ramshackle rock, again using swirling repetition to build atmosphere and emotion, before the final two tracks close off the album with a clear return to the hope and joy that runs through the record. ‘My Lucky Stars’ is short and stripped back, based around the lines “I’m in love with you, I thank my lucky stars for you” and the album ends with ‘Swing Low’, a seven-minute loop of the joyful “swing low, sweet chariot. Coming for to carry me home”.

There are clearly Bad Things which inspired the record too, but these are not the focus. Rather, these Things bring into relief everything we stand to lose, everything worth fighting for, the good and the bright and the beautiful. This is an album that tries to remind us why Bad Things are bad in the first place by holding aloft what is good. Seretan has ECSTATIC JOY tattooed on his chest for goodness sake! To quote him again:

There are lots of [Bad] Things for everyone. You might be going through a Thing right now. I am, for sure. But making music isn’t about those things, exactly. Not for me, at least. It’s about me and my loved ones planting a flag – brilliant, billowing, as wide as a city block and covered in pink and yellow sequins – and letting it unfurl on the stone face of the outcrop.

This is why Ben Seretan is such an admirable record. To write sincerely involves opening up, which is not only icky and messy and embarrassing but also leaves you open to ridicule, the dreaded patronising smirk. Yet the only way to enable real connection is to stand out in the open, trusting that those you meet feel the same way. The only way is not to hide. And let it be known: there is nowhere to hide on the stone face of an outcrop, especially when you are holding aloft a gigantic flag full of sequins.

You can buy Ben Seretan on CD and vinyl via Bandcamp, or grab a cassette from Hope For The Tape Deck. If you want to read more about what the album means then head on over to Seretan’s Tumblr for some rather lovely writing.

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