After the release of single ‘Had To’ last year, Richmond‘s Blush Face have returned with a new EP, Mirage Island. ‘Had To’ offered a maximalist sound to “confront the gap between expectation and reality, [looking] to find solace in the action,” and the new EP’s first single ‘Libby’ suggests the rich style continues into the new release. With the guitar, bass and percussion of four core members accentuated by violin, cello, trumpet and saxophone from a variety of guests, the song presents a lush and layered sound. One rooted in dream pop but grounded by a tangible physicality, blurring the line between reality and dreams. Fitting for a track about trying to manifest something dearly desired but never experienced through nothing but the imagination.

Bo Milli – FOMO

“Think Soccer Mommy meets The Beths, telling tales of hungover bus rides, dancing to The Strokes and a lingering unease that persists despite.” That’s how we previously described the work of Bergen‘s Bo Mili. Latest track ‘FOMO’ again taps into the zeitgeist to explore the pitfalls of love in the digital age, where everything is recorded and curated for your viewing no matter how uncomfortable it might be. “You make me feel dumb / sitting at home,” Bo Milli sings, “wondering if you’re out with someone / staring at my phone.” There’s genuine feeling to the song as it gathers momentum, but no small amount of wry humour too. This is the strange world we inhabit now, and blissful ignorance is a thing of the past.

Bobbie Lovesong – Inner Sea

Bobbie Lovesong is the recording project of Madelyn Strutz, whose debut album On the Wind is set to be released early next year via Woodsist. Written and recorded in an unfinished Earthship in Taos, New Mexico where a small group of musician rode out the lockdown, the album promises to be a surreal kaleidoscopic ode to the region, bringing together sixties pop, oddball psych and LSD-warped Americana. Lead single ‘Inner Sea’ is a great introduction, a strange warbling pop song that feels conjured from Taos’ desert landscape, the melody and ethereal vocals refracted into dreamlike unreality. Check out the video by Michael Stasiak below:

On the Wind will be released on 20^th January via Woodsist. Preorder it now from the Bobbie Lovesong Bandcamp page.

Greyon Greene – Sunken Meadow Causeway

After the release of the crepuscular creeper Belong To It on Lily Tapes & Discs in 2019, Grayon Greene turned to their Low Pressure System catalogue with the release of LPS001. A series of compositions described as “Weather Channel music” which combines ambient textures and beats to conjure something at once nostalgic and unreal. The third in the catalogue, Transactional Memories furthers this style, slowly weaving a world based on our own but somehow separate too. Soundscapes drawn from charts and maps but made dreamlike with computerised graphics, digital textures and neon overlay.

Hack-Poets Guild – Daring Highwayman

A collaboration between Marry Waterson, Lisa Knapp and Nathaniel Mann, Hack-Poets Guild is a project with a forward-looking attitude to traditional folk styles. Their debut Blackletter Garland will be released next year via One Little Independent Records, a high-concept album which draws on history and folklore to dig into meaty themes of life and death with a decidedly idiosyncratic style. Lead single ‘Daring Highway’ is the introduction to this world, a breathless tale of the titular rover which crackles with danger and volatility, the rhythm conjuring a sense of lawless freedom sliding toward some climax, be it glorious or calamitous or some fickle combination of the two.

Jessica Breanne – Bad Shape

Released earlier this month via Perpetual Doom, Jessica Breanne’s Rosebud Queen is album concerning resilience in the face of difficult conditions, and how the spirit finds ways in which to survive. An attempt to find joy and beauty in the darkest situations, be it through hard perseverance or openness to change. Single ‘Bad Shape’ feels like an encapsulation of the album, a piece which began as a short story and gradually evolved into a song, morphing into what it needed to become to communicate its message most fully. Then director Kevin Doyle came along and took the concept further, adding his own ideas to create a new narrative for the video, and serving to highlight the way in which connection can create new things in unexpected ways.

Rosebud Queen is out now via Perpetual Doom and you can get it from Bandcamp.

The Bird Calls – Auditioning For The Part

The recording project of the prolific New York songwriter Sam Sodomsky, The Bird Calls has released over thirty records across the last decade or so, with the most recent Tarot on Ruination Record Co. his first with a label. Later this week Sodomsky returns to Ruination with My Life in Hollywood, a brand new record which continues the style established on Tarot—an idiosyncratic take on on classic country and folk which utilises and often subverts genre tropes to create something decidedly new. Take latest single ‘Auditioning For The Part’, a song fully aware of its place in a lineage of songwriters, or rather at the convergence of several lineages, be it George Jones and Johnny Paycheck or something more like The Mountain Goats, and thus able to play with the listener’s expectations in a way only the more learned songwriters can.

TV Room – Pretend

Back in December last year, we wrote about ‘Balcony‘, the debut single of Lucy Rushton’s TV Room released via Sad Club Records. Described as a subliminal message to someone they were unable to speak to, the song represented “an earnest if indirect attempt to communicate the nuances of emotion,” as we put it. “A human song in which no feeling is held back.” Rushton has now returned with a brand new single, ‘Pretend’, a track no less emotionally charged but something of an inversion of its predecessor. A song about being close to someone, almost too close to say what needs to be said. A love unrequited, even as the significant other goes through the motions and says all the right things.

‘Pretend’ is out now via Sad Club Records and you can get it from Bandcamp.

Will the Whale – Next to Me

The new solo project of Will Boesl, Will the Whale is gearing up to release debut album Only Things of the Heart Remain early next year, and single ‘Next to Me’ gives an indication as to what to expect. With Bennett Littlejohn (Hovvdy, Katy Kirby) joining on bass, the track is described as a “celebration of commitment and deep love.” A love letter to Boesl’s wife penned amid a myriad of personal and collective challenges, aiming to reassert what is the most important facet of any life. And furthering this compassionate style, all proceeds from the album are going to the Oceanic Preservation Society (OPS), with Boesl hoping to encourage further links between art and social action, using creative means as a positive force. You can find the video for ‘Next to Me’ below:

Only Things of the Heart Remain is out on the 24th February.

The post Weekly Listening: November 2022 #5 appeared first on Various Small Flames.

Best Fern is the ambient pop collaboration between New York’s Alexia Avina and Montreal’s Nick Schofield. The pair met while in residence at the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity, where they drew on the surrounding Rocky Mountain landscape to devise a style that sits in the ethereal middle ground between ambient and pop. The debut Best Fern album, Earth Then Air, releases early next year on Backward Music and Youngbloods, and lead single ‘Way Inside’ is an indicator of what is to come. A track at once soaring and earthy, the fecund mistiness eradicating any distinction between organic and dream matter. The song comes complete with a video directed & edited by Hugo Bernier. Watch it below:

Earth Then Air releases on 3^rd February via Youngbloods. Preorder it now via the Best Fern Bandcamp page.

CO-ED DORMS – Milk Drinker

Part of what they call the “Neo-Classical Post-Industrial Post-Punk Revival,” English four-piece CO-ED DORMS have shared new single ‘Milk Drinker’ as a statement of intent. A finely crafted track which grasps for a number of stylistic influences, the lush instrumentation held in line by almost marching percussion, while the near spoken-word vocals are sardonic and playful and wry.  Think Black Country, New Road fronted by Mark E. Smith, this time sponsored by Big Dairy. Drink the damn milk.

Cynthia Hamar – Where Your Love Lives

Back in June, we wrote about Alberta-born Métis singer-songwriter Cynthia Hamar, labelling single ‘Shaken’ as “a track which finds a balance between soulful confidence and poignant sadness, led by the kind of bitter assurance gained only from learning the hard way.” Again out via Neon Moon Records, latest track ‘Where Your Love Lives’ is no less mature and reflective in its tone, taking a nostalgic look at the past in all its bittersweet glory. Charting the things gained and lost along the way, and the slow change constantly unfolding. The song’s video furthers this excavation of bygone years, with director Korban Hamar and editor Jessica Lowe creating a collage of home videos from Hamar’s family collection.

‘Where Your Love Lives’ is out now via Neon Moon Records and you can listen in the usual places.

Dunebug – Still Dreaming

Now based in London, Dunebug is the project of Manchester-born Chi Limpiroj. Regular readers will be familiar with her work as we’ve covered a couple of singles in the last few years which, along with a self-titled EP released in 2019, have established a distinctively bittersweet lo-fi indie pop style. Now Dunebug has returned with a new single, ‘Still Dreaming’, the latest release ahead of a forthcoming debut album. Limpiroj describes ‘Still Dreaming’ as “a song about being afraid to sleep due to recurring nightmares of an abusive past lover,” but despite this heavy subject matter it’s presented as a surprisingly sweet laidback pop song. The track comes complete with a contradictorily bright video by Alyssa Mello, which you can check out below:

‘Still Dreaming’ is out now and available from the Dunebug Bandcamp page.

Esme White – Pearly Gate Crashers

Hailing from New York and now based in London, singer-songwriter Esme White started writing during the early months of the pandemic and has worked with Spiritual Records in Chalk Farm on new tracks. Single ‘Pearly Gate Crashers’ is a great introduction to White’s sound, an infectiously upbeat folk rock track with real narrative weight. God is real but heaven is closed, great crowds gathering at the gates demanding to be let in. Shady snakes in suits bribe angels for backdoor entries as old ladies threaten to burn the whole thing down, the rhythm building as a sense of desperation grows.

Yeah I may be human
but that’s not on me, that’s on you, man

‘Pearly Gate Crashers’ is out now. You can find Esme White on Instagram.

LIES – Camera Chimera

The new project of Mike and Nate Kinsella, LIES have won attention with a string of singles which combine beauty and strangeness into something fitting for the contemporary moment. Latest track ‘Camera Chimera’ further develops this style, an exploration of life online which starts out seductively mellow and soon morphs into something dark and unnerving. “It’s about not only feeling manipulated by others, but also being confronted with the reality and consequences of your own lies and manipulation,” Mike Kinsella explains, “and how that can mentally and emotionally cause one to spiral.” The song comes with a video directed by Rachel Cabbit of POND Creative which furthers these themes, amplifying the mood of shadowy mystery by printing and scanning frames to produce a distorted, lo-fi style.

‘Camera Chimera’ is out now via Polyvinyl Record Co. and available from the usual places.

Mizan K – Go

‘Go’ is the latest single from New York’s Mizan K, an effortless pop song that bubbles with quiet energy that she describes as a “four-minute fever-dream inspired by fragments of fantastical children’s novels.” Built on an infectious melody and adorned with quirky embellishments, the track is a strange, kaleidoscopic commentary on our hyperactive, money-focused world. As Mizan K goes on to explain: “A dozen celestial characters including myself, float in a space-casino and chase their fate in a speedy and unstable world. The singer (me) is a trickster, presenting glimmers of opportunity, then changing voices to relay worldly wisdom and warnings of failure. The song winds its way through a frantic universe while angling towards fun and optimism.”

My Politic – Cursing at the Night & the Morning

Next month, Nashville-based duo My Politic will release Missouri Folklore: Songs & Stories From Home, an album grounded in the landscape of the Ozark Mountains which looks to explore the nuanced and often conflicted identities of those who call Missouri home. “There are songs about judgment, existentialism, forgiveness, love, death, growing, and healing,” as Kaston Guffey explains. “It’s a lot of material focused on the nuance and mundanity, in some sense, of being a person.” Latest single ‘Cursing at the Night & the Morning’ captures this spirit of imperfection with a keen eye and careful charm, steeped in the wistful ache of all the best folk music but choosing to confront this nostalgia too.

What I know and what I’ve heard
Are different things I’m sure
But the differences all blur
Cuz time’s a warping glass

Siv Jakobsen x Ane Brun – Sun, Moon, Stars

With new album Gardening coming next January on The Nordic Mellow, Oslo songwriter Siv Jakobsen has unveiled latest single, ‘Sun, Moon Stars’. With Jakobsen joined by renowned Norwegian songwriter Ane Brun, the track weaves a plaintive mood scored with careful details and evocative harmonies. An ode to the people who stand steadfast through the worst moments, reliable points which allow us to navigate our own ways through. The song is “inspired by my least favourite month of the year and the heaviness I tend to feel during it,” as Jakobsen explains, “as well as the beauty and hope I’ve found in a companion that has the ability to pull me out of the dreariest corner of my mind, even during the darkest month of the year.”

Gardening is out on the 20th January via The Nordic Mellow.

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