It turns out the single was a perfect encapsulation of the release. A collection of songs where melancholy and something like fondness constantly compete and intersect. Take opener ‘Apartments’, a slow burning track which reveals its depth with an almost reluctant air. As though wishing to commit to the burgeoning momentum but afraid of where it might lead. “On the parquet floor said I’d want it more if I could find / Some kind of makeshift fix that could make me stick for the meantime,” Lina K.O. sings in a fitting line. “But I couldn’t promise it’s not a slow drift over a fault line.” But nevertheless the cautious build continues, the sparse indie still blossoming into an almost orchestral finale to reveal the heart underpinning it all.

Such nuance shows itself in various forms across the release. Be it the nocturnal hush of ‘Grips’ and its whispered confessions, the brooding simmer of ‘Manual for Life’ or the vivid, digital spaciousness of ‘Arrhythmia’. Each track sparking from quiet hesitance into something more ardent, even if the crescendos never reach the full catharsis of complete assurance. ‘October’ is a notable closer for this very reason. A track informed by everything which has come before, a product of hard lessons learnt, yet still not emerging with total clarity or conviction. Rather an acceptance of things as they are, and an acknowledgement of the inevitability of change.

You’ve been going ‘round cursing the dark
Maybe all that you need is a battery charge
I took your lead and we closed down the bar
Made a mess of things, but it’s still a good start

Earth Apple is out now and available from Bandcamp.

The post Lina K.O. – Earth Apple appeared first on Various Small Flames.

It turns out the track closes Dan Croll’s brand new full-length album, Fools, coming this May on Communion Records, and it seems its conscious decision to appreciate the positive side of things runs through the rest of the record too. Take new single ‘Slip Away’, a song born of the fatigue resulting from the endless treadmill of standing still in this world which nevertheless repurposes its frustrations into something more optimistic. “I’m not the type of guy to quit, but sometimes I’d like to / I’d run for the hills,” Croll sings brightly. “Had enough of Hollywood and all the city surrounding / Can I go it alone?” Dreaming of reconnecting with nature, fleeing the trappings of life to live in a simpler way. A reminder that there’s no time like the present to act upon wishes, no matter how idealistic or foolish those desires might be.

Time is never going to stop or hesitate
Why are we spending all our money just to sit and wait?
I’m packing my bags, making a play
Oh man what a feeling it could be to slip away

Check out the video directed by Croll himself below:

Fools will be released on the 19th May via Communion Records and you can pre-order it now.

The post Dan Croll – Slip Away appeared first on Various Small Flames.

Spirit Tamer, the forthcoming Mia Joy album on Fire Talk Records, acts as something of a chronicle of Rocha’s history. A way of collecting the seemingly disparate pieces that make up a life in the hope of making sense of them, and learning more about the resulting whole. The range of influences on show add to this form, like snapshots from different times accumulating into something personal and unique, as well as always growing.

The first glimpses of the record highlight both the varied nature of its mood and tone, but also reinforce how such a changeable atmosphere evokes a cohesive, compelling picture of a human life. Dealing with Rocha’s experiences of suicidal ideation, ‘Haha’ is richly textured and wryly amusing, a balance of naked vulnerability and self-deprecation that ends up being something of a protection spell. In refusing to settle into any one-dimensional view of the situation, Mia Joy brings to life the true depth of such things, where conflicting and counterintuitive shades of emotion can exist side by side. If the ultimate fear is the binary of life and death, the track suggests, then embracing ambiguity might be the key to transcending the dread.

Though in a different manner, second single ‘See Us’ is equally nuanced. The final song Rocha wrote for the record, it found her beyond some of the troubles referenced elsewhere, and within a new love. “I could see a promising future with plenty of opportunities,” she explains, “filled with optimism of love and expansion that we could better our lives.” Months after the track was finished, the pandemic hit and took the relationship as one of its many casualties, revealing what was ostensibly a song about new beginnings to be something more distant and interesting. Not a track about the new dawn, but rather the possibility of any number further down the line, waiting to save us just in time.

Spirit Tamer is out via Fire Talk Records on the 7th May and you can pre-order it now from the Mia Joy Bandcamp page.

The post Mia Joy – Spirit Tamer appeared first on Various Small Flames.

Hamstrung by the pandemic in the intervening months, Wild Cat Strike looked to continue to work under the new limitations. Luckily, there was something of a precedent, with 2019 release The Blood Orange Sessions being built from acoustic or reworked tracks from the full-length, Rhubarb Nostalgia. After being asked to work on an acoustic show for a Big Scary Monsters project, the band already had some alternate versions of songs from Mustard Coloured Years, and decided to follow the same blueprint. “We were working out a few acoustic arrangements for a BSM pop up shop to play alongside our friends in Delta Sleep and Orchards,” the band explain, “and when lockdown hit and it cancelled, we didn’t stop and just followed this path further.”

The result is Red Brake Light Sky Sessions, a brand new EP that sees Wild Cat Strike swap out the amps and distortion peddles for an array of acoustic instruments. From banjos and violins to marimbas and melodicas, the release reimagines the outfit’s sound while retaining the spirit, a feat made all the more impressive by the fact that the band members were confined to their individual homes for the process. No less inventive or adventurous, the new tracks lose some of the weight and heft of the previous versions yet continue the impassioned, often caustic tone. A sound fitting for our current predicament. Soundscapes reduced and concentrated, left to turn strange behind closed doors. Emotions stripped back to their individual components, still burning all the same.

Today we’re delighted to be able to share ‘Swamp’, the lead single from the release. Where the original flirted with post-rock in its sprawling peaks and troughs, the new version must settle for more modest ripples. When there is no energy to get lost in, no noise to hide behind,  another level of detail emerges. The emotional drive of the track is slowed but not neutered, and in the newfound intimacy Wild Cat Strike bring forth the melancholic nostalgia that has long underpinned their music.

Artwork by Melissa Kitty Jarram

The post Wild Cat Strike – Swamp appeared first on Various Small Flames.

fan on sees runnner perfect the aesthetic they introduced in debut Awash, smooth and emotive bedroom pop combined with DIY folk leanings to explore the bittersweet nostalgia imbued in the minutiae of the day-to-day. “[fan on] is made for & from little moments spent at home,” the band describe. “It’s background chatter during daily routines. It’s daydreaming at a party. It’s a fan on in the back of the room.”

Despite the intimate tone, Weinman and Lichtenberger get lots of help to round out runnner as a full band. Evan Rasch adds guitar, Dan Rasch synth, Rosie Tucker and Olivia Gerber provide vocals and Ben McPeek and Jordan Leicht bring sax. The result is not your average bedroom pop, veering between earnest folk and melodic pop in one cohesive package.

Opener ‘sublet’ is a subtle and typically emotionally wrought track that takes the relatively routine act of moving out of an apartment and makes it affecting, small actions like changing bedsheets and waiting for the bus transformed into moments charged with meaning. “Do I want this bad enough?” Weinman asks in a rare moment of naked self-reflection.

In our preview, we described ‘eggshell’ as “the breezily reflective folk pop of Pinegrove meets the kitchen-based everyday introspection of early Trace Mountains.” It sounds as infectious as it does introspective, a reminder that pop songs don’t need to be big polished soulless things, grounded as it is in the mundane—no matter how melancholic or indeed desperate such an existence can be.

i’m sleeping later every day
i let my time all go to waste
i’m cracking eggshells in the pan too much
i don’t know if i’m washing my hands enough

i’m keeping it close to the surface
but that’s not really making it hurt less
nothing to do but keep texting my therapist
so many half assed attempts to get over this

As its title suggests, ‘super lotto’ is a song about unsuccessful scratch cards, reverberating percussion and a manic sax section elevating it from gentle bedroom pop into something more complex, the maximal late-80s parts accentuating the sections of stripped-back guitar and vocals. “I can’t guess what’s on your mind,” Weinman sings on the more reserved title track, a song built on banjo and swelling synths. “Feel so dumb for even trying.” Though by the time the trumpet rings out at the outro, the track is gilded with a sense of golden nostalgia.

In many ways, closer ‘frame’ captures the essence of everything that’s come before, confronting the effects of twenty-first century ennui on things like productivity and relationships. The song is imbued with a restless sense of dissatisfaction, of sliding into the future with little if any purchase on the present. It’s the perfect illustration of fan on as a whole, somehow at once low key and blazingly expressive, distinctive and relatable.

Fan On is out now and you can get it from the runnner Bandcamp page.

Artwork by Claire McClusky, photo by Nell Sherman & Silken Weinberg

The post runnner – fan on appeared first on Various Small Flames.

Today we have the pleasure of unveiling the video for the album’s title track. Directed by Mike Walden and starring Charlotte Weinman, it sees a dazed protagonist on a late-night shopping trip being bombarded with images of colourful cereal boxes and psychedelic Cheerios. The protagonist seems suitably bewildered by such a display, wandering the aisles with a wide-eyed blankness, as though such noisy detail is all too much, a kind of fake, superficial layer over real life.

The track feels rich and full of life, like the woods in evening at the end of summer, guitar and banjo and percussion mingling like the chorus of nature, sleepy birds and unseen bugs weaving the wild white noise of forest floors. The yearning vocal harmonies hint at a chill in the air, the suggestion that summer won’t last much longer. But this isn’t a sad song, rather one that conjures a not-unpleasant feeling of wistful nostalgia—a kind of reflective sadness you can wrap yourself within.

You can get Awash on a name-your-price download from the runnner Bandcamp page.

Photo by Nell Sherman & Silken Weinberg

The post Video Premiere: runnner – Awash appeared first on Various Small Flames.

Place is a travelling album, documenting a trans-American trip as Luley relocated from New York to the Pacific Northwest. Thus, the ‘place’ of the title is a strange and vague one, a series of fleeting images as seen from the car window, each a home to stories and histories and ways of life, yet passed on by and replaced by the next location. If there’s a certain loneliness to this feeling, then it’s not an entirely unpleasant one, the roadside hush and constant motion producing a kind of wistful freedom, where no sadness or doubt can pin you down as long as the wheels are still turning and there’s asphalt left to cruise. This sense of isolation circles back thematically to Luley’s move—leaving familiarity behind, passing by all of these places that others call home, heading for a place in which you can only hope to feel comfort and belonging.

The meandering flow of ‘Driftwood’ picks up these ideas, speaking of the element of chance circumstance involved in any relocation, and ‘Coffee’ follows with a drowsy lack of focus, as though being cast between the past and future, old home and new, has sapped any sense of purpose and identity. Then, despite it’s sunny disposition, ‘Ordinary Pain’ confronts this head on, asking the question overtly:

“Will I know the pleasure
of settling down, being better off?
Will it bring me joy to know
I can settle down and let it go
or will I just hold this ordinary pain?”

‘Rolling Train’ has a sense of motion built into its very DNA, the dreamy vocals pining for movement and progression, before the rich instrumental interlude of ‘Burt’ heralds the closing title track. A warmly ambient song, ‘Place’ is again explicit in its questioning, playing like late night thinking where no amount of playing cool or keeping busy can stave off the obvious worries:

“How longs it take to forget a place?
The light it gives and the life it takes?
Is all of the waiting in vain?
What a waste”

However, in keeping with the release as a whole, ‘Place’ ends with a gentle sense of kindness (“Hold on, take the time to breath / Know it’s time and what you need “) which swells into a triumphant crescendo, as though through acknowledging then dropping concerns allows life in the moment, one where questions do not need to be answered right away, and decisions are not judged on the immediate results.

Place is out now via Furious Hooves and you can get it from Bandcamp, including a lovely cassette edition.

The post Rainwater – Place appeared first on Various Small Flames.

The result is a noisy and volatile album that’s exciting and rough, like an unfamiliar acquaintance you could never quite trust but hang around all the same, hoping some of the reckless energy might rub off. Opener ‘Wabbata 1’ introduces itself with huge guitars and only lets up in brief windows of calm, while ‘Trapezoid’ pulls the opposite trick, a simmering energy sparking into clamorous noise that propels itself with an almost physical weight. Lead single ‘The Goose’ is doubly unpredictable, channelling the unstable weirdo vibe of Krill, shifting and swelling into a whirlpool of guitars.

“Watching TV feels like family now I’m fully grown
and I pray that I won’t go back on the scene
with lurid fantasy where the danger’s unknown
step away from the window”

There’s little in terms of let up: ‘The Table’ bringing to mind the drifting dreamlike desperation of Strange Ranger, ‘Yet’ starting slow before sweeping you up into its currents, and ‘Useless’ Furniture’ twitching in several directions at once, the anxious, jumpy nature present even within lines, within single words. ‘Swell’ does it’s best to iron out the kinks into a regular indie pop song, but the rhythm is still distorted, the vocals still prone to sudden violent bursts. “Sorry that I raised my voice,” Brook sings, as though it’s as much of a shock to him as it is to us.

Perhaps the heaviest song on the record, ‘I Drive’ opens in a lurching storm of noise that never quite passes, a great vibration that chatters the teeth and rattles the bones, at odds with the laconic vocals. That said, ‘Teeth’ does it’s best to top it, a pulsing din on which Brook rides, coming off confident and brash. Closer ‘Wabbata 2’ is likely the most restrained, at least at the beginning, though a looming sense of foreboding heralds the inevitable crash. However, won over by the brunch aesthetic, by now you are expecting it, demanding it even, staring up in awe as the crest blocks out the sun and falls all around you.

Useless is out now on Hanger Records and you can get it on cassette via Bandcamp, or digitally from the brunch page.

The post brunch – Useless appeared first on Various Small Flames.

Viewfinder is the recording project of Joel Burton, the latest addition to the Memorials of Distinction roster. Burton makes music that straddles many genres, but is probably destined to rest finally in the bedroom pop bracket. According to the label’s bio, his latest album was made during a period of personal upheaval. “After disbanding his Edinburgh based noise-rock band and dropping out of university”, it reads, “Joel Burton returned home to London disillusioned. Using cheap synths, an FX unit, and some multi-track cassettes as his compass, he set about re-discovering how to write songs with subtlety and meaning.”

The result is Born Ticking, an album that may not be instantly recognisable as “bedroom pop”, in the original Orchid Tapes-led definition, but ticks all the boxes in terms of pure self expression. It’s part slacker rock, part lo-fi pop, part post-post-punk with some rickety, almost country-style nostalgia thrown in. Add to this lyrics that read like the paranoid poetry of a listless wanderer and your getting close to the Viewfinder style. A straightforward mope record this is not.

The title track, one of the album’s strongest, makes this clear from the off. A beautifully meandering song with echoes of Mazzy Star and the languid folk rock of Nap Eyes, this is an opener loaded with vague but significant turns of phrase and a sense of cynical fatalism.

“some nasty spirit mixer
drunk in the church
so far has it come
so deep has it sunk
and buried beneath
all the crap and the junk
that funnelled itself
from the sky since the start
into the mouth of the babe freshly bawling
born ticking”

In comparison, follow-up ‘Money’ is from a different universe, a bold and brash descent into some weird, wobbly weekend, where wide boys stumble upon a briefcase stuffed with fifties and trip out in a mixture of fearless delight and creeping paranoia. The track is the first sign that Viewfinder doesn’t intend on playing by the rules, at least not those set by anyone other than himself. Much of the album feels personal in this way, painted in broad and instinctive brush strokes, with an almost free associative approach to themes and imagery. ‘Vibrations’ is like a twisted ‘Parklife’ for the Twenty-First Century, the spoken-word vocals full of Millennial angst and crippling self-awareness, the narrator becoming increasingly panicked and clammy before descending into blazing insect-induced madness.

There are also two instrumental tracks on the the record, which, instead of offering brief respite, feel as urgent and necessary as any of the other tracks. ‘Instrumental 1’ is all elegant piano and shuffling drums and croaky horns, all the while maintaining some intangible sense of unease. The second wheezes slowly into life, eventually opening with sparse piano and the unfurling clatter of drums.

‘Instant Moonlight’ is another standout, a down-tempo lo-fi indie pop song that despite its sprawled and exhausted misanthropy (“you didn’t ask to be born” goes the opening line), somehow sparkles with some kind of positivity. The effect is like seeing a divine image in the burn mark your cigarettes have left on a battered sofa, or some symbolic order to the constellations of bargain beer cans that litter the carpet. Closing track ‘Nightime Rider’ is sparse and clear, Burton’s vocals ringing with newfound clarity over muffled drums and subtle electronics, building throughout into an almost devotional bright-white glow.

With Born Ticking, Viewfinder has not only shown why bedroom pop is such an important genre, he’s also challenged just what the tag entails and in the process epitomised why we champion DIY artists. The album takes a melting pot of influences and creates something entirely new, something that’s difficult to put into words. Yes, it’s a record borne out of feelings of confusion and imperfection, but it somehow works through these struggles simply by presenting them in a raw and unique way. As MoD put it, “There is melancholy, sadness, and a rumbling undercurrent of anger—yet creeping out of Born Ticking’s meditative tape-hiss is a profound sense of hope.”

Born Ticking is out now and you can get it on cassette or name your price download from the Memorials of Distinction Bandcamp page.

The post Viewfinder – Born Ticking appeared first on Various Small Flames.

Ohyeahsumi – Daisy

Ohyeahsumi are Rena and Lena Vernon from California, a pair who describe their journey as going “from wombmates to bandmates to your mates.”  Their album, Your Friends Are Looking For You, is due out at the end of the month on the ever reliable Sports Day Records, and you can hear the first single, ‘Daisy’ right now. Dark and languid, the track plays like the midnight meandering of some city river, dreamy and dappled with light yet mildly dangerous, as though beneath the fascinating surface lies something altogether more strange and ominous.

“Scared of being pretty
Room is dirty, mind is filthy
My dress curves clearly
At the waist”

Your Friends Are Looking For You is to be released on the 31st March and you can pre-order it now via Bandcamp, including a special edition cassette complete with cards designed by Bronwyn Walls.

Lizzie No – Crying Wolf

Lizzie No is a songwriter and harpist based in Brooklyn who is set to release her debut album, Hard Won, this spring. Written during a “lonely night shift at the box office of a midtown venue in NYC”, lead single ‘Crying Wolf’ is energetic-yet-dark folk song. No’s vocals, led by the music or else leading, possess a repetitive cadence which suggests an almost trance-like quality, a gradually dawning delirium from which wisdom is channelled.

Hard Won is out this spring, so keep on eye on Lizzie No’s Bandcamp page.

Amanda Glasser – Bed

Amanda Glasser is a multi-instrumentalist and songwriter from Baltimore. Not content with her output with her band Purrer, Glasser is set to release her solo debut album, Caelesti Radio, an album which she says “is a light that shines on the difficult emotions surrounding trauma, love, fighting to be heard and moving on.” ‘Bed’ is our first taste of the album and has certainly whet our appetite, a superior slice of bummed out, downbeat indie rock. It’s reminiscent of Low in its use of plaintive melancholy and A Weather in the way it melds the sad and insular rainy-day vibe with swelling instrumentation, primarily throaty guitar and galloping drum beat.

It’s a great introduction and has me anticipating the album impatiently. Keep an eye on the Amanda Glasser Bandcamp page for details.

Batwings Catwings – Sky Blue Haze

LA’s Batwings Catwings make what they describe as “Inspired radio-friendly noise pop with no pretences”. On a recent tour of Japan, the band made a video for the three minute blast of infectious noise that is ‘Sky Blue Haze’, the standout track from last year’s Coast to Coast. The video captures visually what the song does aurally, just a rollicking, no-frills good time that highlights the raw energy of a band with a growing reputation for their live shows.

You can get Coast to Coast now via Broken World Media or the Batwings Catwings Bandcamp page.

Caroline Lazar – Nevermine

Taken from a forthcoming EP of the same name, Caroline Lazar’s ‘Nevermine’ introduces her pop/folk fusion, all built up around striking vocals which gather in slow intensity, the energy and intent inching forwards with fluid force like an approaching tide. By the finale Lazar seems barely held together, her voice positively exploding with a depth and energy beyond her years.

Nevermine is set for release on the 24th March and you can pre-order it now from Bandcamp.

Why a fox – Cleland

Why a fox is the recording project of Australian-native, Japan-based songwriter Hayden Marks. With his debut LP Old forest. Young trees. set for release this April, opening track ‘Cleland’ sets the tempo with a pacey, lyric-filled two-and-a-half-minutes, like a cross of Camp Cope and the Tony Hawk Pro Skater 2 soundtrack.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gsCi5wtlAt8

You can pre-order Old forest. Young trees. now from the Why a fox Bandcamp page.

Brice Randall Bickford – Paro

Brice Randall Bickford made his name with the folk-country band The Strugglers back in the 2000s, before moving back to North Carolina in 2011 and starting to record under his own name. His latest album, Paro, released recently on Keeled Scales explores “themes such as humanity’s tendency toward greed, control over others, systems of government, and the consequences of the adoption of agriculture”. Standout ‘The First Grain’  makes good on this promise, what at first appears a pleasant country-rock song slowly revealing its world-weary literary edge.

“When you cut your teeth on
Whatever you were handed
The first time thinking, I don’t belong
You didn’t know the half of it”

You can get Paro now from Keeled Scales webstore and the Brice Randall Bickford Bandcamp page.

Lizzie Kent – EP

Lizzie Kent is a singer-songwriter from Vancouver, BC, who released her debut self-titled EP last summer. Luckily for those of us who missed it the first time around, the songs are probably more suited to these grey windy days than August’s sun, so now is a great time to right the wrong and get to know Kent’s sound. ‘Secrets’ is a good place to start, a melancholy, nostalgia-filled song where the vocals take centre stage while guitar plucks at the surrounding silence.

“Take me back to just last spring,
when the flowers bloomed and the birds would sing
Take me back to the time in our lives
when all things lost were bound to survive”

You can buy the Lizzie Kent EP now from Bandcamp.

Mt. Doubt – Tourists

Edinburgh-based Leo Bargery, AKA Mt. Doubt, has teamed up with Dunfermline band Foreignfox to put out an AA-side single Tourists / Lights Off, Carry Me Home, out the end of the month on Scottish Fiction. Mt. Doubt’s ‘Tourists’ is best described as a happy collision between The National and The Twilight Sad, Bargery’s baritone vocals and joined by insistent drums and sizeable guitars which sweeps you up within its heft, even possessing a manic Berningerian on-the-verge-of-losing-it shouty finale.

The single is out on the 31st March and you can pre-order it now, though it’s also the first single from a forthcoming EP The Loneliness of the TV Watchers, which judging by the title is a record that’s going to be right up our alley.

The post Best of the Rest: Things We Have Missed #10 appeared first on Various Small Flames.