The album, out now via Earth Libraries, sees Cohen take inspiration from the moth’s elegant and drastic act. A collection of songs which “proffers the value of giving oneself up to tension and turmoil rather than fighting against it,” as we wrote. To cease struggling in favour of decisive action, whatever the end result. Sitting at the centre of the record, ‘Ghost Story’ served the perfect example. A deceptively tender track detailing a different character in different circumstances, but one entirely informed by the moth. It’s a song Cohen describes as concerning “annihilation and acceptance,” ending up both “hopeless and serene.” Carrying a simple if challenging message. “If you wanna wake up, you’re gonna have to jump.”

we rubbed our elbows raw
we placed phone calls
I’m no genius, but I know when Rome falls

said, “strike while it’s hot”
said, “I know I’m gettin’ burned here,
& if you never return, dear, well, at least there’s alcohol”

If the certainty of this epiphany is not undercut by the album’s title, then it is at least complicated. The pratfall, a staple of the slapstick routine, where the actor falls in a humiliating fashion. A physical act which blurs the line between comedy and violence. Jackie Cohen cites Meryl Streep as a maestro of the form. “When you see it, you gasp and hold your breath because it’s so violent that you worry it’s real. You want to look away but you can’t, not until she gets up,” she says. “And when she does finally jump up and say ‘tah-da,’ you’re so relieved that it was all just a bit that you burst out laughing.”

Pratfall exists within the beat between the act and the realisation. The split second before the brain has a chance to process the moment, where it is undecided whether pain or delight will follow. This porous line between injury and humour is central to Jackie Cohen’s songs, a certain playfulness persisting even into the record’s most serious or anxious moments, a wit perhaps born as much from shock or embarrassment as genuine mirth. An attempt at distraction, styling out, but also a confession. Because while the title track boasts of perfecting the pratfall technique, ‘Moonstruck’ offers a different view. “Well, I’ve had some trouble stickin’ my landin’ / So if you need someone to understand you / I understand.”

The result is an album which feels rooted not in the wise retrospection of country music, nor the idyllic forward-facing dreams of indie pop, but the present moment. Songs unapologetically in the here and now, marked by reflexes and adrenaline rushes, the physical period before the brain can properly think. A mood captured in the opening track where the listener is pitched in alongside Cohen, listening to her reactions, pain and humour in real time.

why did you say
my name
so gently
like smoldering flame
all you wanna do
with you life
is cause me pain
it seems
ah ha
ah ha
ah ha ow

Pratfall is out now via Earth Libraries and you can get it from Bandcamp.

The post Jackie Cohen – Pratfall appeared first on Various Small Flames.

London‘s Automotion, AKA Jesse Hitchman (vocals/guitar), Lennon Gallagher (vocals/guitar), Otis Eatwell-Hurst (drums) and Luke Chin-Joseph (bass), have followed up their debut EP In Motion with a new release that builds upon its ideas. The band identify a multifaceted approach as a key component of their work, and Ecstatic Oscillations sees them lean into dynamic changes. As the title suggests, each song oscillates at its own unique frequency, the fluctuations between tracks lending the EP an almost collage-like style. Latest single ‘Desire’ offers one such example, itself a track of peaks and troughs which plays off the understated, downbeat vocals with real energy and weight.

Ecstatic Oscillations is out now and available from streaming services.

Jackie Cohen – Ghost Story

Back in 2020, amid a personal crisis, Jackie Cohen found herself asking whatever powers might exist for a sign that things would work out alright in the end. At that moment, a large moth swooped in and committed self-immolation via the oil lamp at Cohen’s side. The incident came to inform Pratfall, an album recently released via Earth Libraries which proffers the value of giving oneself up to tension and turmoil rather than fighting against it. To reach for catharsis, find sublime release in motion, heat and light. Single ‘Ghost Story’ weaves an entirely different story to that of the moth, but the abrupt and decisive beauty of its act remains. “It’s a song about annihilation and acceptance,” Cohen explains. “It’s hopeless and serene… Essentially, if you wanna wake up, you’re gonna have to jump.”

Pratfall is out now via Earth Libraries and you can get it from Bandcamp.

Marlais – Out of the Window

Recording under the moniker Marlais, Michael Culme-Seymour draws upon British and Irish folk traditions to create reimaginings of old songs. Tales he can step inside and live within, if only for a moment. Out via Treibender Teppich Records, new album Stream of Forms is a collection of such reworkings, its traditional instruments supported by digital choirs and electronics. Single ‘Out of the Window’ demonstrates how Marlais evades any sense of anachronism or irony in this practise, the sound coalescing into a convincing whole, the emotions explored readily transposed onto a new place and period. “Time and time again I am amazed at the cut-throat nature of traditional songs,” Culme-Seymour explains. “How hopes and dreams can be dashed in one line or couplet.”

Melanie MacLaren & Lorkin O’Reilly – Clearance Aisle

Ahead of a forthcoming EP, and with a joint tour of the UK and Ireland on the horizon, songwriters Melanie MacLaren and Lorkin O’Reilly have released new single, ‘Clearance Aisle’. It’s a duet which allows both artists to display their storytelling chops and knack for conjuring intimate emotion. The track is set within two distinct spaces, the mundanity of real life, as represented by the Walmart clearance aisle, but also the less tangible plane of hopes and regrets. Just how pleasant and welcoming either of these places prove varies day to day, but the truth at the heart of ‘Clearance Aisle’ is that we have no choice but to inhabit both, day after day.

Queen Kwong – Sad Man

This summer saw Queen Kwong release their latest album, Couples Only, on Sonic Ritual. It’s a record which sees Carré Kwong Callaway confront the despair of loss and deception with caustic anger, its ominous nocturnal tones conjuring a noir-like combo of swagger and danger. Single ‘Sad Man’ is the perfect introduction, showing off both the wrath and wry humour of the album, and a new video directed by Joe Cardamone and starring Johnny Knoxville as the titular sad man takes inspiration from Abel Ferrara’s Bad Lieutenant to further elevate this heady blend.

But I just wanna grow up
I’m too old for this shit
Paying rent by selling guitars and DJing shitty bars
I don’t want to be another sad man in another sad band Dropping the same names
Playing the same games
I just wanna grow up
He’s a sad sad man

Couples Only is out now via Sonic Ritual and you can get it from Bandcamp.

Raavi – no bodies

“Its nods to the 90s are evocative without feeling derivative, and for all its blunt honesty and self-deprecating worry, it rocks hard enough to bring a genuine sense of catharsis.” That’s how we described ‘Lazy Susan‘ from Raavi‘s last EP, It Grows on Trees, back in April. Since then, Raavi Sita has wasted no time in working on new material. Released as part of the Hardly Art Records 15th anniversary single series, the project has just unveiled brand new single ‘no bodies’. A meditation on the pitfalls of striving for success in the music industry, where reaching the top of one ladder merely sees you emerge at the bottom of a bigger, more dauting climb.

Remember Sports – Leap Day

Philadelphia‘s Remember Sports returned this month with Leap Day, a brand new four-song EP on Father/Daughter Records. With a slightly less frantic tempo than the sound they’ve perfected over four records, the release offers a more reflective, patient side to the band, though do not be fooled. The emotional ferocity and immediacy that has so long marked Remember Sports has not been lost but redirected. Their energies channelled into a newly layered sound with drum machine, electronics and distortion complimenting the pop rock anthems we’ve come to love.

Leap Day is out now via Father/Daughter Records and you can get it from the Remember Sports Bandcamp page.

Ruby Gill – I’m gonna die with this frown on my face

Last year we wrote about South Africa-born, Melbourne/Naarm-based artist Ruby Gill, describing single ‘You Should Do This For a Living‘ as “setting its sights on the overbearing, patronising force of male entitlement,” and “aris[ing] from a very personal situation but end[ing] up speaking to a far wider experience.” Gill has now released her debut full-length I’m gonna die with this frown on my face, and the title track shows that the same combination of fury and compassion underlines these songs too. “I’m gonna die with this frown on my face / they’re going to lower me down,” she sings in the opening lines. “Asking why I’ve been this angry all of my days / even when you came around / and I don’t have the answers.” Check out the video directed and edited by Samuel H. Galloway below:

I’m gonna die with this frown on my face is out now and available from the usual places.

Yara Asmar – it’s always october on sunday

Yara Asmar is a multi-instrumentalist, video artist and puppeteer based in Beirut who recently unveiled her debut release on Brighton label Hive Mind Records. Titled Home Recordings 2018 – 2021, the album is a collection of pieces Asmar recorded to cassette and her phone in the last few years, utilising a range of instruments from piano and synths to deconstructed music boxes and an old accordion she found in her grandparents’ attic. Add in field recordings of Lebanese hymns sung in churches across the country and you’ve got an ambient/classical collection quite unlike any other. Opening track ‘it’s always october on sunday’ is a good place to start, its pensive atmosphere capturing something about the record as a whole. As the label put it, “The atmosphere of melancholy that pervades the album should be familiar to anyone living in the twenty-first century.”

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