For those unfamiliar, Thomas Dollbaum combines the stylings of alt-country that are very much en vogue with a beefier brand of heartland rock, tracing a lineage back through Molina and Springsteen as far as van Zandt, though there’s another set of influences that cannot go unmentioned. A parallel bloodline of writers (think Breece D’J Pancake, Barry Hannah and Larry Brown) who capture the beauty and sorrow in an often rough and tumble Southern existence. Interestingly, arguable heir apparent Ashleigh Bryant Phillips, whose short story collection Sleepovers is one of the best contemporary example of this literary genre, writes the liner notes and has a great interview with Dollbaum in Southwest Review, which digs deeper into the album’s literary influences, from Raymond Carver to the poetry of Jay Hopler, C.D. Wright, Joy Harjo and Philip Levine.

The country-rock-album-as-short-story-collection might not be a new idea, but paired with the aforementioned immediacy with which the songs were recorded, Birds of Paradise feels less like a set of penned vignettes and more like short glimpses at lives themselves. Each song drops the listener alongside its characters within their Southern homeland, people often on the margins of society, eking out a living within the transient space between a lost past and unknown future. Lead single ‘Dozen Roses’, arriving after the subdued and tender opener ‘Visitation’, plays like the album’s mission statement in this regard. A meditation on loss and the soothing wonder of the natural world that’s full of taut energy and forward motion, even while the narrator cycles back to the same sentiment, repeating themselves with increasing urgency.

When you were still around
I’d carry you across the river
I’d ramble through the dark until the time would deliver
Before the time would deliver

Many of the songs on Birds of Paradise are repetitive in this way, swinging back around to the same verses as if Dollbaum is working through thoughts in real time, lingering over memories both positive and not so much. This internal world provides a neat counterbalance to the present tense of many of the tracks which is altogether more transient. Our narrator(s) look for sure ground in the uncertainty of the in-between, or at least acceptance that the time spent on the “backroads leading to I-95” or “rambling through the pines” is not so much a path towards something as the body of life itself. Poignant closer ‘Blue Meets Blue’ confronts the idea head on, an ostensibly a fatalistic track (“There’s nowhere to go this is just a circle,” as Dollbaum sings, “there’s nowhere to run this is just landlocked blues”) that transforms acquiescence into a kind of charged catharsis.

It’s not too much of a reach to say this cyclical nature evokes another of the album’s key themes. Imagery of nature is abundant, and its rhythms extend across the songs as a backdrop to the very human emotions that often take centre stage. A place choked with vine and timber, where the waterbirds are strange and tall and coyotes howl at night. You only have to peek at the album art (an incredible embroidered quilt by Cora Nimtz) to understand the kind of picture Dollbaum paints across the record. Nature as something vivid and precious and undeniably peculiar, like some half-understood miracle which happens to occur all around. Yet, true to its setting, Birds of Paradise has dirt beneath its fingernails. Wonder and violence sit side by side. No more directly than on ‘Rabbits’, where the childhood innocence and bursting life is depicted as its own inversion, kids running through the burnt fields of Okeechobee with iron bars, trying to beat their siblings to the song’s titular prey as their mother watches on, keeping count.

This same mix of animation, desperation, melancholy and absurdity run through many of the songs, regardless of their subject matter. Take ‘King’s Landing’, with its childhood dream of a pilot’s license and the freedom it offers giving way to the mundane (“So lets go home and watch Judge Joe Brown / And reruns of Cops episodes in our home town”), though without ever extinguishing the desire and imagination which kicked off the fantasy in the first place. Or ‘Pulverize’, where a narrator fights the urge to look back through forward motion, then ‘Coyote’, where stasis seems to hold latent potential, as though some drastic act might materialise out of boredom itself. ‘Big Boi’ sees a teenaged Dollbaum act as chauffeur for a feuding couple strung out and desperate and looking to score. “Big Boi showed me his tattoos all down his arms,” Dollbaum sings, “said he got his nickname for being so goddamn large,” before switching the tone several shades darker, painting the titular character as a victim of the opioid crisis with the deft brevity of a poet.

Scars all from the emergency room
Asked me if I could fill a script too
Says he’s in a lot of pain right now
Who am I to say no to him anyhow?

Dollbaum might have recorded the album in the blink of an eye, but these are songs born of a lifetime in the worlds they inhabit. Places ignored by many, full of the kind of sensations we all too often forget. The dejection and sadness, yes, plus the weight of aborted dreams and all associated regrets, but also a nascent wonder which sits at the edge of our vision. A peculiar light which illuminates the future, colours the pictures of our memories. This might be human or mystical or else just something out in the wild, but we would do better if only we looked for it. Even if it can never really offer a satisfactory answer to whatever afflictions we’re called to bear. “I know you never believed / And me not in a long while,” as Dollbaum sings on opener ‘Visitation’, a fitting conclusion if you view the album as a cycle in itself. “But the older I get, the more I do magical thinking / About how the birds ride out on the sky / How the echoes hang out in the wind / How them ghosts are here in the light/ But you cant talk to any of them.”

Birds of Paradise is out now via Dear Life Records and available from the Thomas Dollbaum Bandcamp page.

The post Thomas Dollbaum – Birds of Paradise appeared first on Various Small Flames.

With Punisher coming this September, Sweetbreads are back with brand new single ‘Open Mic’, and the song very much continues this struggle between hope and disallusionment. As the title suggests, this time the focus is on the artistic pursuit, and how a desire to create can often seem insignificant or futile amid the distracted present. “I was sitting in this dingy dive bar waiting hours for my turn to play one song amongst a sea of people who were there for the same reason,” Stolpp explains. “I felt kind of pathetic and self-involved chasing what seemed like a dying dream.” But more than a voicing of frustration, ‘Open Mic’ pushes deeper to meditate on the emotions underlying ambition and disappointment, and how we might show up for one another in order to better navigate the bumpy road.

Punisher will be released on the 25th September. ‘Open Mic’ is available from the usual places.

The post Sweetbreads – Open Mic appeared first on Various Small Flames.

The release of As Far As The Eye Can See is fast approaching, and Van Chamberlain are back with brand new track ‘Fantasy TBD’ to keep the momentum going. What might be the band’s most propulsive single to date, the song grapples with the long tail of a break-up, attempting to break free from the spell of a relationship that won’t quite let you go. “We felt like a song about breaking free needed to literally sound like breaking free, so we turned the ’67 Vibrolux up to ten and let the breakup of the amp reflect the breakup in the lyrics,” Chamberlain explains. “This might be the loudest song off the new record, and it also might be the most cathartic.”

The post Van Chamberlain – Fantasy TBD appeared first on Various Small Flames.

Tether is a fitting name for the release, speaking to both the connection between Hellmuth and her supporting cast—bassists Logan Kane and Miller Wrenn and drummer Justin Brown (Thundercat, Aja Monet)—and how group, and indeed the audience, act something like a leash within the spontaneity of improvisation. The musicians might play themselves out into unexpected territory, but there’s always a line to bring them back into the heart of the group.

After lead track ‘Face The Wall’ introduced the raucous and visionary nature of this sound, subsequent single  ‘Microfictions’ pushed further. The song “wastes no time in pitching the audience into the depths of her adventurous approach,” as we continued, “drawing on Anthony Braxton’s Ghost Trance Music to create a style of improvisation centring on melody. Scurrying percussion adds a sense of urgency, while Hellmuth’s trademark sax skates over the surface with virtuosic personality.”

With the album’s release imminent, Alden Hellmuth has shared one final single, ”Definitely Not Friends’. But despite what the title might suggest, the song is an embodiment of the trust and intuition shared between Hellmuth and her bandmates, as well as their elastic habit of playing out in all directions but always snapping back into the heart of the group. The result, like Tether as a whole, is imaginative, daring and often frantic, driven as though by the compelling force of like-minded musicians encouraging one another forward. The listener is cast as an extra party within the experience, themselves an extra member of the ensemble, pushed and pulled between the various elements so as to become fully immersed within the sound.

Tether will be released on the 26th June via LEITER and you can pre-order it now from the Alden Hellmuth Bandcamp page.

The post Alden Hellmuth – Definitely Not Friends appeared first on Various Small Flames.

Latest single ‘Sirens’ turns to the past in order to continue this investigation. Namely Greek myth and the story of Persephone, herself something of a contradiction. The goddess of death and the afterlife, as well as that of vegetation and spring. Otracami weaves these mythic elements with personal reflection, the track a folk song at heart yet blooming into something altogether richer and more nuanced as it develops. How far do the obligations of loyalty extend? Ortiz asks, using the tale of Persephone and her handmaidens. When you are linked to a person involved with something bad, how much responsibility are you expected to take? The themes are expanded upon by the accompanying video, starring Ortiz and made by long-term collaborator Sai Tripathi along with PA Dylan Karlsson, which pushes the song towards something closer to performance art. Watch below:

Runoff will be released on the 20th March via Figure & Ground and you can pre-order it now.

The post Otracami – Sirens appeared first on Various Small Flames.

The single was a fitting introduction to a decidedly existential record. Rudick uses the songs to dig into every facet of his identity in search of answers to life’s needling questions. Everything from the relationship between children and parents to the complications of maintaining a marriage, not to mention the spectres of violence and substance abuse (‘Fist Fight’), and the not insignificant effort of persisting in a band at a time when creativity is so often disregarded or disabused (‘Buyer’s Market’).

Those familiar with Young Elk’s previous work will recognise the atmosphere which emerges from such themes. Calm Down exists beneath the shadow of some great weight, representing the accumulated baggage of life that haunts every minute of our days whether we are aware of it or not. “I was also figuring out how to process the toxicity of my family after realizing their implications in childhood trauma and abuse,” as Rudick explains. The album does not offer an escape from this history, it doesn’t even try. Instead it acknowledges exactly what it is which sits above our heads in the hope that honesty and openness might go some way to lightening the load.

Living up to its title, ‘Little String’ explores these ideas further by positioning the American ideal of the family as a kind of tenuous binding, something which is supposed to hold a life (and society) together yet too often sees individuals lashed to people and places which drag them into darkness. “Give your fingertips some time / to unwind that tiny little string / that you used to bind your inner life / to someone’s complicated feelings,” Rudick sings in the opening verse, his voice as ever charged with equal parts compassion and fury, fighting to hold onto restraint amid the gravity of the realisations bestowed upon him. But, of course, it is not as simple as untying a knot. The past returns no matter what we do to release ourselves from its bindings. As demonstrated in the closer ‘Palmer ’68’, a song every bit as stark and tragic as anything else on the record, yet lit from within by something like love in spite of everything, even if it feels pitiful to admit.

palmer, alaska ’68
you were missing mother in a terrible way
you wrote her the same letter everyday
saying ‘baby, i still love you. are you ok?”

are you ok?

Calm Down is out now via Rue Defense and available from Bandcamp.

The post Young Elk – Calm Down appeared first on Various Small Flames.

Those familiar with previous Léna Bartels releases will appreciate how this multifaceted style applies to the very sound of her music. From the punchy, cathartic indie rock highs of debut Preservation to the intimate, wintery folk of recent split It’s Gonna Be a Wonderful New Year, the Portland-born, Brooklyn-based songwriter has explored a vast amount of terrain in a short space of time. The Brightest Silver Fish pushes this variation further still. Seventies songwriters such as Judee Sill are a touchstone, but so are alt rock and grunge acts from the nineties, electro pop and even mainstream country. The latter apparent on single ‘Bad Sugar’ with its simmering verses and bright, confessional choruses, as well as the genre’s classic concerns like working too hard for too little. But for all the stylistic shapeshifting, the album is notably cohesive, each venture out in a new direction not the consequence of idle wandering but the very thing demanded by the emotional landscape of each specific track. As though the songs are not traversing new spaces at all, rather showing the same thing viewed under a changing light.

Indeed, the image of light recurs across the record, reinforcing this sense of competing perspectives. Consider the morning rays on ‘Give Myself a Way’, a song loaded with double meanings right down to its playful title. Give myself a way easily becomes give myself away, agency flipped into submission depending on how you choose to hear it. Or ‘Amber’ with its rose-coloured curtains and shadows moving slow, at once a towering, shoegaze-inflected rock song and late night confession voiced to an empty room, where what might be a parent or lover speaks to the person submerged in their protective instincts. “While you’re sleeping I’ll brush the knots out” Bartels sings, an image that can again be split in two. A demonstration of tender intimacy that grows stranger and more foreboding within the song’s dark heft, the fine line between care and control blurred by the desperation of love.

Unfurling with slow grace, ‘Fighter’ approaches a similar situation from a different angle. The narrator is another mother or lover twisted up with the blessing of caring for someone, afflicted by the curse of being unable to guarantee that person’s constant comfort and joy. The taut, urgent rhythm of ‘I Knew’ captures the same despair in a very different manner, playing like an anxious thought on a loop. The result is curious, its perpetual motion paradoxically suggesting stasis, like a mind struck in a single groove. And while the whispered opening of tentative follow-up ‘Nothing Makes Me Feel Touched’ could hardly be more contrasting in style, the effect turns out to be very similar. “I confess that nothing’s getting on me / And nothing gets me off / And so I lay back in the twirl / As they are watering the brush” Bartels sings in another image of inertia, only for the track to again into a fervent, noisy conclusion based upon a repeated refrain: “When I insist there’s light to see / When I hold it up.”

Given the title and the artwork, it is tempting to return to the metaphor of the fish. One hooked in the mouth perhaps, being reeled through its surroundings with dizzying speed, overcome with pain and panic and doubt. Until the moment the surface is finally breached and the angler confronted, this fish can have no idea of the future before it. Whether its fate is to be kissed and released to go on swimming, or cracked on the head and stowed hollow-eyed on ice.

It is this torment of not knowing, both for themselves and those they care about, that concerns Léna Bartels’s narrators. Figures stuck between the simultaneous desire to fight against the line and submit to its inevitable pull. The Brightest Silver Fish offers no solution to the problem, just a picture of those muddling through. Consider the title track again, opening as a hushed, almost hesitant folk song, the lines delivered with a contradictory tone somewhere between intense concentration and absent-minded distraction. As though something intense and dramatic is unfolding outside the frame of the track and Bartels is determined not to look at it. Feeling, perhaps, to ignore its presence is to make life liveable. To be occupied within the song is to go some way toward shaping the conditions of the world.

Only the brightest silver fish
Shows when the light hits
I suppose I imagined it
Gasping for air in the beak of a gold goose
Greedy to want and dumb to refuse

The Brightest Silver Fish is out now via Glamour Gowns and available from the Léna Bartels Bandcamp page.

Photo by Morgan Healani Mein

The post Léna Bartels – The Brightest Silver Fish appeared first on Various Small Flames.

Now Blue Deputy are back with a new single ‘Big Fleece’, and again the track finds an outfit willing to mix and match their stylistic influences in order to craft their own singular sound. The press release sites Alvvays, Slow Pulp, Indigo De Souza and The Beths as touchstones and with good reason, the song retaining the emotional vulnerability of its predecessor but adding shoegaze revival richness and sunbleached indie rock wooze. The resulting mood is also a patchwork of conflicting feelings, where the allure of romance and rawness of pain compete for the upper hand.

Watching through a lens, and getting in my head
Paralysed and seeing ceiling eyes
I target a flare to whom I feel it’s fair
The nerve I pressed, maybe I guess I acted out of turn

When you sink to cruelty, I button up my big fleece
And iron over the crease
And I will love you for just a bit too long

The post Blue Deputy – Big Fleece appeared first on Various Small Flames.

Wilder Maker’s forthcoming album The Streets Like Beds Still Warm is a very different record to Male Models. One even more ambitious in scope (it’s the first of a planned triptych to be released across the next eighteen months) and unique in its creation which nevertheless seems driven by the spirit of its predecessor. As though the band itself was one such figure looking to move and progress and reach for something different. Birnbaum has called The Streets… “the inverse of the typical songwriter record,” the music recorded during open-ended sessions where core band members Adam Brisbin, Nick Jost, Sean Mullins improvised and swapped instruments at will, and guests including Katie Von Schleicher, Joseph Shabason, Macie Stewart, Chuck Johnson, Will Shore, Rebecca el-Saleh (Kitba) and Cole Kamen-Green added their own touches too, before Birnbaum took the result home and slowly whittled it into the form it takes today.

The result, made possible by both a band now experienced in working together and a label in Western Vinyl willing to trust them, swaps the sleek psych and goodtime rock sensibilities of its predecessor for something altogether more stark and lonely, less a house party than a late-night wander through unfamiliar streets. Which is not to suggest minimalism, the sound owing much to experimental and alt-jazz forebears, but rather the presiding mood. One indebted to the shadow and subtle desperation of noir cinema, the perfect soundtrack as Birnbaum’s worldweary narrator flits between bars and hospital rooms while nursing concerns both trivial and existential.

The trilogy of albums promises to chart an entire night in the city, with The Streets Like Beds Still Warm taking us from dusk to sometime after midnight. And the style makes good on the form. These are songs free from traditional structures but never sprawling. Ambiguous and often hypnotic but governed by linear motion. A path down which we follow the protagonist, watching as he moves through the night and the night moves through him, his own character and state of mind shifting as the hours slide on by. “Film noir detectives always start out looking immaculate, but by the end of the film they have a torn collar, a black eye, their slacks are stained, and they’ve started slapping people around in desperation,” Birnbaum says. “Are they the good guy anymore? I find this fascinating and I love the visual cues reflecting the internal landscape.” 

With the album set for release in September, Wilder Maker have unveiled the two opening tracks as singles. Listen to ‘Strange Meeting with Owls’ and ‘Skewered by the Daystar’ below and take your first few steps into what will be a long night indeed.

The Streets Like Beds Still Warm will be released on the 19th September via Western Vinyl and you can pre-order it now from the Wilder Maker Bandcamp page.

Photo by Keegan Grandbois

The post Wilder Maker – Strange Meeting with Owls / Skewered by the Daystar appeared first on Various Small Flames.

All that said, latest single ‘summer’s scorch’ shows My sunny oath! is far from a one-dimensional release. More restrained and tender than the EP’s other tracks, the song utilises additional instrumentation from Farrar (drums, bass, guitar, keyboards) and Libby Rodenbough (strings) to reveal the record’s contrasting spirit. A blend of soft and heavy, dark and light tones to create something gritty yet still in possession of real heart.

Get induced with rolling sickness
When I feel my heart get bigger
Don’t watch movies but I’ll try
Feel the earth rest in my thighs

Watch the video by Harrison Shook below:

My sunny oath! is out on the 13th June via Winspear and you can pre-order it now from the Jahnah Camille Bandcamp page.

The post Jahnah Camille – summer’s scorch appeared first on Various Small Flames.