“A small piece of the colossal, communal whole demanded of us. The imperative to celebrate life and warn of its fragility. To remind everyone of just what we stand to lose should the malevolent forces of this world be allowed to grow.” That’s how we described Anna Tivel‘s new album Animal Poem last month when writing about the lead single and title track. A grand statement perhaps, but anyone familiar with the folk songs penned by Tivel will know she always aims high. With the album forthcoming via Fluff & Gravy Records, latest single ‘White Goose’ is a track described by the artist as ‘a song about the way the natural world shapes our understanding—of life, death, truth and meaning.” The song embodies the spirit of the collection. An attempt to reach beyond the surface of the moment, be it made of petty grievance, mortal dread or chronic suffering, in order to connect to something deeper, richer and more fulfilling.

Watch the accompanying short film, directed Ryland Bouchard and starring Anastasiia Duvallié, below:

Animal Poem will be released on the 29th August via Fluff and Gravy Records and you can pre-order it now from the Anna Tivel Bandcamp page.

Caged Animals – Alligator

“Think JJ Cale scoring a Flannery O’Connor reading,” is how the press release describes ‘Alligator’, the latest single from Vin Cacchione’s Caged Animals. There’s a strong Canadian influence to the release—recorded with Jon Mckie in the Canadian Maritimes with Steven Lambke as a guest and released with You’ve Changed Records—but the song’s Southern Gothic vibe is decidedly American in flavour. A surreal tale of an encounter between two, contrasting Americas that only reinforces disconnection between them, delivered with Cacchione’s playful tones. “Well he was parked there to watch Daytona melt /  He had a pistol hanging off his derriére weighing down The Bible Belt,” as one verse goes. “I told him, ‘love dear is a superpower’ / And he just said, ‘love here gets hungry every hour’.”

The Cindys – Eternal Pharmacy

After a number of years recording complicated, challenging music under the moniker Birth Fury, Bristol’s Jack Ogborne yearned to return to something simpler and more immediate. Enter The Cindys, a brand new band led by Ogborne featuring Naima Bock, Finlay Burrows and members of Belishas which helps scratch this itch, owing more to the retro indie sensibilities of C86 and Flying Nun. With a self-titled mini album coming later in the year via Breakfast Records (UK) and Ruination Record Co. (US), The Cindys have shared debut single ‘Eternal Pharmacy’, a song inspired by Ogborne’s experiences as a touring sound engineer. “‘Eternal Pharmacy was written about the first proper European tour I went on,” he explains. “Seeing places I never would have been able to see otherwise, being spoiled by promoters with 3 course meals and unlimited drink, seemingly living a life of excess while simultaneously being totally broke. The song was an attempt to get a firm grip on the rapid change happening around me.”

Watch the video by Ogborne and Burrows below:

‘Eternal Pharmacy’ is out now, and the debut album from The Cindys will be released later in the year via Breakfast Records (UK) and Ruination Record Co. (US).

Drench Fries – Camera

“The solo project of Brooklyn-based songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Levi Nattrass, Drench Fries has carved out a niche within a country-inflected indie pop,” we wrote back in 2024, his work “offering equal doses classic western longing and a more coastal sense of brightness and pep.” Now Drench Fries are back and sounding better than ever with ‘Camera’, a song written back in 2019 but not quite coming to life until a full band got their hands on it. Enter Jason Altshuer (pedal steel), Evan House (drums), Alex Heubel (synthesizer), Stephen Vincent Ibanez Jr. (guitar, bass) and Sam Peterson (guitar), all getting behind Nattrass to bring to life the most rock-oriented Drench Fries track to date.

Eydís Evensen – Dimmuborgir

Living up to its title is the mission of Oceanic Mirror, the third full-length from Icelandic pianist and post-classical composer Eydís Evensen, forthcoming this autumn on XXIM Records. An album which looks to reflect the true power of the sea—its power, its depth, its constant movement and mystery—in order to push past the trivialities of contemporary existence and reconnect with the sublime of the natural world. Featuring renowned fellow Icelander Ásgeir singing one of Evensen’s poems, latest single ‘Dimmuborgir’ hints at the scale and beauty of the record, evoking not just the epic expanse of the ocean but also the themes of mortality and renewal it represents. Watch the suitably evocative video filmed by Einar Egils below:

Oceanic Mirror is out on the 10th October via XXIM Records.

FONTINE – Good Buddy

Winnipeg-based songwriter FONTINE is preparing to release new full-length Good Buddy this autumn via Birthday Cake Records and has released the title track as an introduction. Titled after CB radio slang for ‘gay’, the album plays like a series of dispatches from the road, be it touring her own project or as a collaborator with artists Boy Golden, Kris Ulrich, Begonia and Georgie Harmer, and plays with the stereotypes of such imagery. It sits at the intersection of big rig bravado and unashamed sentimentality, using a blend of good time rock and bedroom pop sensibilities to explore ideas of love, friendship and self-actualisation. The title track embodies the style perfectly, and hints at the record’s cathartic promise

In The Pines – Flyin’ Nowhere

Cincinnati psych outfit In The Pines have a slightly different origin story to most bands. The group run the boutique vintage pro audio repair shop Foleytronics, one of the few places in the world able to restore vintage digital effects, tape machines and synthesizers. As you might imagine, such a job accumulates a plethora of musical equipment. In The Pines’ forthcoming album Sunbeam Dream was recorded entirely with such hardware, the instruments and devices once destined for landfill salvaged, lovingly restored, then put back to use. The result is DIY in the purest sense, the band literally building their own sound in real time and working around (or, more aptly, embracing) the inherent limitations. The result bears the fruit of such a degree of control, as typified by lead single ‘Flyin’ Nowhere’ and its heady combination of energy, texture and detail.

Watch the video directed and edited by Adriana Noritz and Michael Shular below:

Sunbeam Dream will be released on the 12th September and you can pre-order it now.

John Calvin Abney – Last Chance

In September, Oklahoma‘s John Calvin Abney will release new record Transparent Towns on his own Tin Canyon Records label, via Well Kept Secret / Secretly Distribution. The folk artist’s seventh studio album, it was conceived during what he calls “a period of introspection and convalescence,” after undergoing vocal cord surgery. Forced to exist in near total silence, Abney used the quiet to delve back into his past, dwelling on the accumulation of small moments of both growth and loss that mark the passage of time. Lead single ‘Last Chance’ illustrates this perfectly, looking back at Abney’s Oklahoma youth and the then-unknown moment when beloved things slipped away. “When you come back to a love, a land, friends, family, or even a bar or a cafe that you spent a brief passage in, you’re never quite sure of the exact moment that marks the end of your chapter there,” he explains. “I try not to be these days, but sometimes I am caught dwelling in the space between now and then, thinking about where I stand today and those final seconds before everything became different.”

LUCKY – Falling Through

“A song full of backward looking despite its forward motion, resulting in a mood at once wistful and affirming.” That’s how we described ‘Traveler‘, the debut single from Bay Area supergroup LUCKY back in April. Consisting of Half Stack‘s Peter Kegler, Andrew St James and Zach Elsasser (Affectionately), the project utilises the experience and ideas of its cohort to bring its folk rock sound to life. Again released by Royal Oakie Records, latest single ‘Falling Through’ builds upon the style, a lesson in the value of intra-band chemistry which imbues its country rock sound with equal parts laidback swagger and earnest emotion. A track earthy and immediate but not without a certain wry self-awareness, especially in the near-spoken sections of the verses.

Lutalo – Cracked Lip

“Described as a time capsule of lessons learnt in their first chapter of life, the album sees the Vermont-based singer-songwriter delve into their past and invite the audience along for the ride.” So we wrote of Lutalo’s full-length album The Academy back in 2024, songs like ‘The Bed‘ and ‘Broken Twin’ highlighting the variation across the release. But the album only scratched the surface of what Lutalo has to say, something indicated by the new deluxe edition of the record which comes complete with four brand new tracks. With the release coming soon via Winspear, Lutalo has unveiled new track ‘Cracked Lip’. A song warm in tone but ambiguous in meaning, highlighting the project’s ability to combine abstract poetry with emotional immediacy. “The walls surround me / I’d like to think that I’m different from you,” as one typically cryptic verse goes. “Oh now you found me / I like to slip that salt in my shoes / And just move.” Watch the video by Noah Lenker below:

The Academy is out on the 19th September via Winspear and you can pre-order it now from the Lutalo Bandcamp page.

Snake Lips – Happy II

In recent weeks we’ve shared a couple of singles from Cat Beach, the new album from Portland, Maine outfit Snake Lips on Repeating Cloud. Both the hectic garage rock number ‘Thumbs Up’ and surf inflected ‘East Coast’ presented a band at the height of their powers, Cody Mitchell and co. burning through a myriad of hang ups and frustrations with good old fashioned rock energy (“There might be no means of fixing this predicament, but the song can remedy one part of it,” as we wrote of ‘East Coast’). With the record now out, Snake Lips have shared the album’s closing track ‘Happy II’ as a new single, and it seems wrestling demons via unapologetically raw indie rock might have therapeutic value after all. Because while the verses are essentially a list of regrets and apologies, the song turns into an expression of gratitude for the small (often four-legged) consolations that help us learn to accept ourselves.

But I’m happy where I’m at
I got the sunset and the dog in the yard
And my two best friends my cats
And I’m finally cool with me
I got the one I love, the dog in the yard
And my friends are hanging out
On cat beach

The post Weekly Listening: July 2025 #5 appeared first on Various Small Flames.

There is a repeated line, a single word refrain, in ‘The Glow’, the new song from Aïda Mekonnen Caby, which you may have some trouble comprehending. Fjaðrárgljúfur is the name of a canyon in south east Iceland which Caby and her partner visited in the early days of their relationship, and the landmark’s cinematic majesty leaks into the song’s very DNA, transforming a gentle indie folk song into something rich with widescreen emotion. It also represents something of a new dawn. For one, it is the opening track of the debut Aïda Mekonnen Caby album, Mais Uma, which comes out at the end of August via Mtn Laurel Recording Co. But also because the trip that inspired it and the feelings it evokes marked a turning point in Caby’s life too, one which saw her move first to Portugal and then to France. Mais Uma promises to explore this period of personal change and all its associated heart swells and aches, illuminated throughout with that sense of wonder at newfound love.

Dead Tooth – Song of the Weak

Led by New York-based songwriter Zach Ellis, self-described ‘rodeo-core’ outfit Dead Tooth have made a name crafting an atmospheric and often slightly chaotic brand of post-punk, combining the brooding shadow of the genre with raw energy. With their self-titled debut out now via Trash Casual, Dead Tooth have shared single and opener ‘Song of the Weak’ to introduce their work to the uninitiated. A song full of volatility and bite, Ellis’s vocals spiking with frustration as though driven half-crazed by the constant motion beneath him, or else how it never seems to lead to anywhere new. “In so many words [the song is] about struggling with cyclical destructive decision making,” Ellis explains. “Choosing hedonism over looking in the mirror. I’ve spent many years in NY on what feels like a hamster wheel of trying to fill a void or chase some kind of unattainable self/other. A song written for the darker times that in retrospect I feel have eaten too many years of my life.”

Dead Tooth is out now via Trash Casual and available from Bandcamp.

Living Hour – Wheel

Winnipeg’s Living Hour have announced Internal Drone Infinity, their fourth record, which will release later this year. What the band themselves have coined “yearn-core”, their style combines slowcore, indie rock and dream pop into something shaded by the gauzy texture of memory. The record was in part inspired by lead Sam Sarty’s time as a cinema projectionist, and it exists in a similarly otherworldly setting, its dark backdrop illuminated by a wistful glow as the band express what they call “the quiet magic hidden in everyday life.” To celebrate the announcement, Living Hour have unveiled lead single ‘Wheel’, which shows off both the dreamy yearn and crunchy rock sides of their sound very nicely.

The track comes complete with a video by Leigh Lugosi and Brett Ticzon, which you can see below:

Internal Drone Infinity will be released on 17^th October via Keeled Scales, Paper Bag Records (Canada) and Beloved Records (Australia). Pre-order a copy now from the Living Hour Bandcamp page.

Malena Zavala – MELT

Born in Argentina and now living between London and Mexico City, Malena Zavala is a self-taught musician and producer who first caught attention with her 2018 debut, Aliso. Drawing inspiration from both Latin American music and the likes of Devendra Banhart, Beach House and Feist, Zavala’s music layers poetic lyrics over hypnotic and haunting instrumentation. Latest single ‘MELT’, the first single from an EP of the same name that comes out later this year on Zavala’s own new label Paraná Records, is a good example. A soft and cosy love song that Zavala says tries “to express the feeling of being wrapped up in bed,” it’s built on gentle acoustic guitar and her hushed and intimate vocals and accentuated by ethereal harmonies and subtle synths.

‘MELT’ is out now via streaming services

Oh, Rose – For Art

Almost a year on from their last full-length Dorothy, Olympia/Portland mainstays Oh, Rose return in September with For Art, a brand new EP released via the good folks as Antiquated Future Records. The EP finds the band’s members in the midst of some big personal events, like getting married and starting families, and perhaps understandably this has them ruminating on family and relationships. As the label put it, the EP focuses on “themes of long-term commitment and partnership—both in romantic and platonic relationships, as well as to artistic practice itself.” Oh, Rose have released the title track by way of introduction, an unhurried and heartfelt song that captures these themes perfectly. “At first I feel so nervous to be this vulnerable,” Rose sings with courageous clarity, “it’s true that I was thinking about you.”

Routine Caffeine – Green Glass

“A track which marries a taut central rhythm with a dreamy haze, and hints at a sharp bite too, all highlighting just how much control Katie O’Brien Kelley (vocals, guitar), Madison Elizabeth Case (bass, synth, background vocals) and Emma Treganowan (drums) have over the mood of their work.” So we wrote of Routine Caffeine‘s ‘Philodendron‘ back in 2024, a track taken from the Louisville-based trio’s Weeds Under Concrete Stones. Their first release since that EP, new single ‘Green Glass’ is no less evocative, again crafting an immersive atmosphere to explore themes of nostalgia, belonging and the passing of time. “This song has served as a way for me to reflect on my family’s old farm in Michigan, one of my most treasured places,” they explain. But more than a lesson in simple longing for home, the track also charts the changes to the beloved place which accumulate with every return, adding an extra layer melancholy as the familiar slowly shifts into something different, and the past only grows further away.

runo plum – Lemon Garland

Minnesota singer-songwriter runo plum has slowly amassed a following over recent years, her detailed, wistful style of bedroom folk winning plenty of attention online. Having now signed with the ever-impressive Winspear, plum has released new single ‘Lemon Garland’ to celebrate. The first taste of forthcoming debut album patching, the song embodies the fondness and compassion of the runo plum style, as well as the longing for connection which underpins it. “Give me company / barefoot and muddy,” as she sings, “give me pointing / at the birds we’ve never seen before / we’ll stop to pick some veggies / for the big feast at our friendly table.” The result is inherently bittersweet, a hopeful vision of the future shadowed by the suggestion such community remains just a dream, though the lasting feeling is one of affection. As though it wishing for something so simple and fulfilling, runo plum shows our desires need not be so far away.

Watch the video directed by Karlee Boon below:

patching will be released soon via Winspear.

Scree – TV Sometimes

Brooklyn experimental maestros Scree return next month with August, a brand new full-length on Ruination Record Co. The band—that’s primary trio guitarist/composer Ryan El-Solh, bassist Carmen Quill and drummer Jason Burger, plus lots of guests—are hard to pin down, smashing together everything from Romantic classical music, dusty lonesome Americana, improvisational jazz and weighty indie rock to create some of the most interesting and deep instrumental music around. Scree released the title track as the lead single a few weeks back, and have now returned with a second cut, the enigmatically titled ‘TV Sometimes’. The song has been part of the band’s live repertoire for years, and here it gets a richer arrangement with contributions from the cast of collaborators. “It’s something like a love song,” El-Solh describes. “I probably should’ve chosen a more generally intelligible title, but at the time there was really only one person I was trying to reach with this bit of code and she got the message so the title stuck.”

The post Weekly Listening: July 2025 #4 appeared first on Various Small Flames.

After lead single ‘Mild at Heart’, a song which “shifts and drifts across its length,” as we put it, “a controlled, ever-curious track that shows the power of understatement while also reaching towards new ground,” múm are back with brand new track ‘Only Songbirds Have a Sweet Tooth’. The song “is something that sounds like you would think it would” the press release describes, embodying the colour and playfulness of the record as a whole. All manner of glitches and pops play across the background melody, offering a bittersweet tone which the dual vocals only further in their searching, reflecting style.

History of Silence will be released via Morr Music on 15th September. Pre-order it now from the múm Bandcamp page.

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Back in May we introduced Part Of The Problem, Baby, the new full-length from Fortitude Valley coming this August on Specialist Subject Records, with single ‘Sunshine State‘. “A track which finds [lead Laura] Kovac addressing her younger self,” we described, “delving into the person she was before and during her move from Brisbane to the UK, and how the competing desires for home and escape never really go away.” With the album’s release edging closer, Fortitude Valley are back with new track ‘Video (Right There With You)’. “The song is about trying to get inside the head of someone you love, and how hard it can be surviving together in what feels like an increasingly hostile and scary world,” Kovic explains. “It also plays into the central theme of the album, which is about feeling distant from people you care about, both literally and figuratively.”

Watch the video directed by Stuart Laws below, shot as the band performed at the Machynlleth Comedy Fest and starring comedian Celya AB.

Part Of The Problem, Baby is out 1st August on Specialist Subject Records and you can pre-order it now from the Fortitude Valley Bandcamp page.

 French for Rabbits – Gold and Blue

Ahead of the Matariki holiday and an upcoming winter tour around Aotearoa, Te Whanganui-a-Tara/Wellington-based outfit French for Rabbits have returned with brand new standalone single, ‘Gold and Blue’. Written by lead Brooke Singer in a prolific period before the birth of her son, the track meditates on the future and the mysterious ways in which it realises itself, be it through chance, fate or an intuitive reaching forward. The song comes complete with a video by director Martin Sagadin and cinematographer Bill Bycroft. “For the video, we wanted to throw the listener through time and space,” Singer explains, “feel a gasp for breath as they tumble them through the present and past to moments of change, connection, and fluctuation.”

‘Gold and Blue’ is out now and available from the usual places.

Glenn Echo – Give + Take

The project of Brooklyn multi-instrumentalist Matt Gaydar, Glenn Echo is an outlet for patient and introspective folk music. Gaydar has just released a new Glenn Echo EP, No Believer, a collection of five songs recorded with help from Will Stratton that showcase this style perfectly. Second track ‘Give + Take is perhaps the standout, opening with the warm country croon of guitar before settling into a slow, contemplative momentum. “Been driving away, over the county line,” Gaydar sings in the opening line which immediately captures the song’s sense of night-time hush, “past the firehouse, all through the night, blind driving, silent.”

Jess Kerber – Tropical Storm

We’ve written about a number of singles from Jess Kerber‘s debut album From Way Down Here in recent months, describing how the Nashville-based songwriter melds traditional folk and contemporary electronic sensibilities to bring her emotive style to life. ‘Next to You’ rose from a dreamy haze to clarity, while ‘Never Again’ introduced the themes of loss and belonging so central to the record. With the album now out via Felte Records, Kerber has released latest single ‘Tropical Storm’. Another poignant, wistful slice of nostalgic longing, rooted in the specific imagery of memories as imprinted on the young mind. Watch the video edited by Kerber herself below:

From Way Down Here is out now via Felte Records and available from the Jess Kerber Bandcamp page.

Jeffrey Martin – Edge of Lost

With albums like One Go Around and Thank God We Left The Garden, Portland, Oregon songwriter Jeffrey Martin has developed an evocative brand of folk concerned with both the personal and the societal, centring the classic Americana style within the unique circumstances of the present (“The climate is collapsing, diseases rising, robots striving to take over the globe, and still there’s not enough money for the people who actually need it,” as we wrote of the latter album, “still the future holds a distant promise, the past haunts with its glory and regret”). Out via Fluff and Gravy Records, new single ‘Edge of Lost’ is every bit as heartfelt and urgent. Inspired by Davey Schaupp’s No Place to Grow Old, a documentary interviewing people experiencing homelessness or the threat of it across Portland, the song explores the strange contradictions of such a life. Where existence is at once heavier than it should be yet also translucently thin, the eyes of society sliding past as you though barely exist at all. “I tried to capture the chasm between the housed and unhoused,” Martin explains, “and how the psychological burden of that divide is a very difficult thing to hold as people try to navigate their way out of homelessness.”

Jillian Lake – Tactile

“There’s a city in my head,” sings Jillian Lake on latest single ‘Tactile’, a line repeated across the track in what might be warning or explanation. Based in Vancouver, the singer-songwriter has made a name with intimate, personal folk songs, though has increasingly pushed her sound into richer, more urgent territory without sacrificing any of the heartfelt charm. The new single is a lesson in how effective such a combination can be. Indeed, the refrain can be held as a key to the song’s spirit, presenting an exploration of grief in all of its complexity, an emotional landscape as bustling, nuanced and contradictory as any urban space. ‘Tactile’ is about how grief is this invisible and intangible thing that is so hard to navigate,” Lake explains. “A scraped knee, a black eye, a broken arm—is so much easier to make sense of than something you can’t pinpoint. Something you can’t bandage or brace.”

‘Tactile’ is out now and available from the usual places.

Jouska – Flower Moon

Jouska is the recording project of  Norwegian songwriter and producer Marit Othilie Thorvik. Originally a duo, the project started out making pop-orientated electronic music, but now that it’s Thorvik alone, the atmosphere has evolved into something more intimate and introspective. New single ‘Flower Moon’, Jouska’s first since 2023 record Suddenly My Mind Is Blank, leans into dream pop dimension of the project to invoke a sense of detachment, the vocals drifting through a wash of ethereal tones as though untethered yet longing for solid ground. “I was anxious,” as Thorvik explains, “distracted by things at home. Physically in one place, emotionally somewhere else, missing out on both.”

múm – Mild At Heart

Icelandic experimental royalty múm have established themselves as one of the most interesting and atmospheric projects since their inception in the nineties, each of the six previous albums building upon the last while always exploring new territory. Their first full-length in over ten years, History of Silence finds the band as ambitious as ever. An album “recorded, deconstructed, put back together again, refined and finished over the course of two years,” the release blends electronic and analogue sounds to explore ideas of distance in our fast-changing world, the songs rejecting linear progress to instead embrace tangents and digressions. Take the way lead single ‘Mild at Heart’ shifts and drifts across its length, a controlled, ever-curious track that shows the power of understatement while also reaching towards new ground.

Watch the video filmed & edited by Sigurlaug Gísladóttir below:

History of Silence will be released via Morr Music on 15th September. Pre-order it now from Bandcamp.

The Noisy – Twos

Back in 2024 Philly dream pop outfit The Noisy released The Secret Ingredient is More Meat, an album written for and funded by the queer community which served as a celebration of their kinship, performance, joyous excesses and plurity. Now The Noisy are preparing to release a deluxe version of the record via Audio Antihero, appropriately titled The Secret Ingredient is Even More Meat, offering reimagined versions of the songs. Single ‘Twos’ and its gloriously cinematic video by Sam Cush indicates the new direction they take. “I wrote this song like a pop song but wanted the production to bend towards Mannequin Pussy with sludgy guitars and twinkly keys,” frontperson Sara Mae Henke explains. “The music video literalizes the too much-ness of the story, Buffy the Vampire Slayer meets Grey Gardens meets two dates to the prom.”

‘Twos’ is out now via Audio Antihero and available from Bandcamp.

Tyler Bradley Walker – Because of the Many

We introduced The Sun The Moon The Earth and Me, the debut solo album from Tyler Bradley Walker, back in May, describing how the artist best known as one half of electronic rock duo Gone to Color was every bit as ambitious and adventurous in his solo work. ” Single ‘Moon Broke Quiet’ offered “a spacious, evocative soundscape which seems to sit at an angle to reality,” we wrote, “everything a little stark and surreal and strange […] occup[ying] that nocturnal liminal space between waking life and dreams.” With the album now out, TBW has shared opening track ‘Because of the Many’ as a new single, an experimental pop protest song that takes aim at modern day USA. The track’s idiosyncrasy and slow-burn intensity is intensified with a video every bit as odd.

Out gunned, not done
The fucking light is green
No one eats their eggs that way
Wise man funny man
Write your own story
Very large worlds untouched untouched

Watch the video directed by Andrew Petersson and produced By Carson Cox (Mod Visual) below:

The Sun The Moon The Earth and Me is out now and available to purchase from the Tyler Bradley Walker Bandcamp page.

Will Orchard – Something’s Gotta Go

If you’ve been reading VSF over the last few months, you may know that Nashville-via-New England songwriter Will Orchard has a new record, Behind the Shadow Glass, coming out later this year. The initial two singles ‘Down’ and ‘Nothing Fog’ gave a pretty good idea of what to expect, and now we have a third cut to further whet appetites. Titled ‘Something’s Gotta Go’, the song finds Orchard with his sleeves rolled up as he digs through the dirt. Crunchy Americana meets Neil Young folk rock which sees him picks through internal knots and tangles that have been tripping him up over the years. “[The song] is a cathartic release, and an acknowledgement of self-inflicted pain.” Orchard describes. “It’s about getting into the pattern of never being satisfied with yourself. Calling the song finished was somewhat of a challenge because of how raw and in some ways, non-poetic it felt. But that’s the spirit of the song, just putting it all out there and letting go of your will to try so hard.”

Wombo – Neon Bog

“Feeling every inch the product of a band nearing ten years together, [Danger in Fives] finds the Wombo sound realised in its purest form,” we wrote of the Louisville trio’s new album coming later this summer on Fire Talk Records, “combining the experimentation and risk-taking which marked their earlier releases with the growing confidence so evident on Fairy Rust. That is, the sound of project which has come to understand its spirit and ambitions and is now committing to them with total conviction.” Latest single ‘Neon Bog’ shows just how deep such conviction runs, the band embracing happenstance and happy accidents during the recording process to create something as atmospheric as it is idiosyncratic.

The song comes complete with a video directed by Cameron Lowe along with assistant director Scotty “Sleepy” Anderson. The film leans further into the haunting tones of the song, using practical effects a la Michel Gondry. “I’ve been watching a lot of the TV show Ghost Adventures and have been somewhat haunted by the implications of the paranormal,” as Lowe explains. “I thought the video was a good outlet for expressing that in an abstract way.”

Danger in Fives is out on the 8th August via Fire Talk and you can pre-order it now from the Wombo Bandcamp page.

The post Weekly Listening: June 2025 #4 appeared first on Various Small Flames.

So it was a lovely surprise when the band emailed us about a new collaboration with Icelandic band Benni Hemm Hemm. Faults is a lush album of Celt-flavoured folk which draws upon a wide range of instruments and vocal styles, not surprising considering that both Second Hand Marching Band and Benni Hemm Hemm consist of impressively-numbered ensembles (see the list of members here and here). Opener ‘Cling Onto Those You Love’ emerges in orchestral swells, the strange, cryptic lyrics made clear by the titular refrain. ‘Dawn Raid’ begins with Malcolm Middleton-esque gloom, details of a mundane life coupled with a dejected outlook and general unhappiness (“Shuffle on shoes and light / A cigarette path as you scramble for life / I was the plan until today walked in”), and though it warms with the addition of vocalists and further instrumentation, the track never quite escapes this sense of grief:

“You leave me with no light in your eyes
You leave with no pulse in your neck
And you hover from one foot to the next”

‘Grandstanding’ is wracked with self-doubt, asking where one’s artistic endeavours fits amongst the classics, while ‘In a Serious Way’ is positively chirpy with its triumphant horns and harmonies, before ‘Shipcracks’ sees the tempo drop in favour of considered writing and clever worldplay, swelling into something carefree before the halfway mark to become a classic travelling song about looking back and moving forwards and marking the moment as it is lived, all at once.

“Skies on sea and shit from birds on the canopy
I’m lying, sunbathing on the deck, burning my neck
And I don’t remember if I’ve ever done anything else
I’m listening to shipwrecks and silence, and seagulls
Silence and shipcracks”

‘Misery’ is a strum-along folk song shot through with a sense of mischief, while ‘Skeletons’ is stripped back for the most part but comes alive in the closing third, urging us to choose a life of risk and wonder over seclusion and fear (“It makes more sense to know nothing / than to take a chance and clip your wings / So come on, I’ll take you round”). ‘Retaliate’ is deceptively intricate, an organic folk song full of poetic turns, a story reduced to a series of evocative images and implorations. The self-titled closer is simple but profoundly affecting, the staggered harmonies sounding like echoes or ghosts, words passing from times before us and after and fundamentally the same.

“The faults create mountains and cracks in our face
They won’t cover our mistakes in a million days
We take rocks to the summit as if we were great
Though the sky won’t fall, the earth still shakes”

If you like your folk and/or indie pop to come with French horn, glockenspiel, accordion and goodness knows what else, then Faults is probably the album for you. You can buy it now from Bandcamp, including on CD (though the special editions have sold out because of our positively glacial response time in writing about the album).

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This new EP, entitled Lights, is a continuation of the sound we have come to associate with Mt Judge. White creates an otherworldly ambience, influenced by acts such as Emeralds and Stars of the Lid. The music is also complimented by several field recordings which White made himself on a trip to Iceland, taken at Hallgrímskirkja in Reykjavik, and around Mt. Akrafjall, which I believe is just across the bay. Iceland has a reputation for being natural and ethereal and Lights does little to correct this, channelling the warm beauty of bands like Sigur Rós to create gorgeous, breathing soundscapes. Perfect for putting on your headphones and watching the world go by.

Lights is available on cassette tape or as a pay-what-you want download from the Mt. Judge bandcamp page.

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The above is a quote attributed to David Foster Wallace (as a scribbled note at the bottom of a manuscript of ‘Good Old Neon’, a story featured in Oblivion: Stories). It’s a comforting thought, in a way. That ghosts aren’t these creepy figures that wander around at night, rattling chains and tapping on the window pane, they’re just what we have left of the people we used to know. I found myself thinking about it after a few consecutive spins of Fireworks and the Dead City Radio, the new album from Sketches For Albinos. The album uses voice recordings to provide the sole vocal accompaniment to the music. Some of the recordings are clear, others almost unintelligible.  We hear men, women and children. I have no idea who these voices belong to, and I don’t think it matters.

Sketches For Albinos is the recording project of composer and “sound artist” Matthew Collings. Fireworks and the Dead City Radio is the project’s first album since 2010’s Days Of Being Wild and Kind, although Collings does also release music under his own name, as well as comprising one half of Graveyard Tapes with Euan McMeeken of The Kays Lavalle. The album has been brewing for six years, and symbolizes a period of great development and upheaval in the life of its creator, “a time where the possibilities of life unfolded in a profound and life changing manner… where euphoric joy and great sadness collided.” The album is being released on the ever-brilliant Mini50 Records, home to WTD faves Old Earth, and fans of any of their previous releases would be well advised to check it out.

Collings experiments with electronics to create something truly unique. The strange mix of ambient, drone and noise creates a surreal, dream-like atmosphere, an atmosphere only heightened by the juxtaposition between tracks. A good example is the transition between track five, ‘the sailor in the city is buying up time’ and track six, ‘she drew a pentagon’; the former sedate and peaceful with this almost underwater-sounding piano, the latter buzzing with reverb or feedback and is more garage rock than drone. The other notable aspect of the album is the aforementioned voice recordings. They add something that traditional vocals could not and, for me, really make the album what it is. I wish this album had been around when we were trying to get our Voicebox mixtape together many moons ago, it would have been perfect.

The album is deep and challenging, but not oppressively so. Collings leaves room for the listener to breathe and to think and, perhaps most importantly, to feel. It’s an emotionally charged record, despite not having conventional lyrics, perhaps even for that very reason. It feels like Collings put something tangible into making this, as if each track is a little slice of his mind, of his thoughts and wishes and memories. Of the ghosts of his past, the voices inside his head. Perhaps that’s what those voices are after all.

Sketches For Albinos’ Fireworks and the Dead City Radio is out on the 24th of March on Mini50 Records.

EDIT: You can now purchase the album here.

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Austistici is David Newman, a Sheffield-based composer. His album Beneath Peaks is a sonic exploration of the Peak District, using samples he took when walking around the area. The result is a beautiful portrayal of nature, with hundreds of tiny details collectively creating an expansive and complete enitity that, to those who look closely, is teeming with life.

Stream and buy the album at Bandcamp.

The second is a collaborative EP between Matthew Collings and Dag Rosenqvist (Jasper TX). Both men are experimental, with layers of drums, voices and recordings to support their guitars. The release is much darker than Austistici, as perfectly demonstrated on ‘Precipice’ below,  with ominously struck piano keys heralding fierce drums and unsettling drone.

Again, the EP can be bought from Bandcamp.

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P.S. Also check out Úlfur’s previous project Klive.

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