We decided to expand things slightly this year, giving ourselves a chance to write a little something about the albums we wanted to cover but never got the opportunity. Albums which meant something to us at various points through 2021. The list was still incomplete, of course, and we were left with a big list of great songs from great records we didn’t get a chance to mention.

So here are some songs we really enjoyed in 2021. We hope you enjoy them too.

Arooj Aftab – Mohabbat

A take on a piece by Hafeez Hoshiarpuri, Aftab’s multilayered masterpiece is suffused with the patience, sadness and meditative inner wandering of Sufi devotional poetry.

Anjimile – Stranger

As fragile as sandstone, tougher than rock, ‘Stranger’ packages a nuanced assessment of identity as a folk pop hit of which Sufjan would be proud.

Bea Troxel – Getting Where

An empowered anthem for the introverted, slowly circling towards a more truthful self.

Ben Seretan – Cicada Waves 1

Measured and patient piano embedded within an organic field recording, ‘Cicada Waves 1’ plays like a slow day passing in all its quiet details, all its hidden weight.

The Bird Calls – Ritual Crash

With satellites falling from the sky and the burning underworld breaking the surface, ‘Ritual Crash’ presented the most tender, intimate end of the world you were likely to hear in the year of our Lord 2021.

Bria – Buffalo Ballet

Travel to Abilene, TX with this take on John Cale’s “European version of the Old West,” from an EP of covers that both subverts and celebrates country music.

BRNDA – Perfect World

Stable job, accolades, friendly dogs and affirmation. “You’re in the perfect world and doing ok,” sings Leah Gage, voice flat and sardonic as the track eventually tips sideways and falls into an unhinged sax outro.

Canary Room – Lake Effect

Bittersweet folk captured in its best setting, supported by warm lo-fi textures and an ambient embrace of birdsong.

Carson McHone – Hawks Don’t Share

The lid peeled off artistic collaboration, showing the tug of war tension underneath, as well as the lingering regret that results.

Daniel Davies – Spies

On streets as dark and foreboding as this, the question isn’t whether you are paranoid, but whether you are paranoid enough.

Doran – Old Moon

A new song cut from ancient cloth, like a small scrap torn from the drape of the heavens and earth and old moon itself.

Dusted – Not Offering

“I have given up. I’ve given enough,” Brian Borcherdt sings on this tender lesson in regret and letting go. “I was so sure. So it goes, I am not anymore.”

Etran de L’Aïr – Toubouk Ine Chihoussay

A suitably joyous number from Agadez’s premier wedding band, drawing you into its infectious momentum.

Fog Lake – jitterbug

A typically aching and overcast pop song from the master of them.

Frances Chang – eros the love creator dividing chaos

Cosmic spoken word which finds universes within interiors, a daydream transportation away from these sorry lands.

Fust – The Last Days

A song for hard times made warm by the fundamental fondness gained only through shared suffering.

JOHN – A Military Alphabet (five eyes all blind) / Job’s Lament / First of the Last Glaciers / where we break how we shine (ROCKETS FOR MARY)

Some latent thing awoken by our way of living, rising in the name of revenge.

Heka – (a) wall

Anger simmered down to a velvety caramel, coating the tongue on a slow walk through nocturnal alleys.

Hilary Woods – I

One of Hilary Wood’s wordless hymns, to be sung in dark chapels deep underground.

illuminati hotties – Pool Hopping

Working on the logic that slowing down might equal admitting truths or figuring things out, ‘Pool Hopping’ grabs you by the hand and runs.

Indigo De Souza – Pretty Pictures

“I’m always trying to embody a balance between the existential weight and the overflowing sense of love I feel in the world,” Indigo De Souza explains, capturing the bummed-out brightness better than we ever could.

Johanna Samuels – Sonny

With its long shadows and golden light, it’s not clear whether the sun is dawning or setting on ‘Sonny’, but it heralds a new day nonetheless.

JOHN (TIMESTWO) – Return to Capital / Šibensko Powerhouse

The reek of ozone as thunderheads slowly gather / The unleashing of the storm. “I see an opening in the sky, high, wide.”

Keith Secola – Intaglio

Just one of the portals on Keith Secola’s latest record. Looking to the heavens, rooted to the ground, tied to everything in between.

Lael Neale – Blue Vein

“Guardian angel / Gather my losses / Keep them all safe / ‘Til I come to my cross”

Le Ren – Dyan

As warm as a mother’s hand, with all the clarity of an empty room.

Lewsberg – The Corner

Perfectly minimal, just guitar, percussion, and incense-scented violin. All backed up by monologue-like vocals that ring with pure patience.

Loretta’s Museum – The Rodney Ave Garage Sale

Instrumental folk and the ambient sounds of a garage sale combine to evoke one of those perfect glittery springtime days when the sky is blue and the leaves are green and the sun isn’t yet too hot to bear.

Lucie, Too – スーパームーン Super moon

A slice of big, radio-ready indie pop from a Japanese duo that seem destined to blow up.

Mal Devisa – Deja playing guitar

With slow guitar and lilting rhythm, a track which isolates the tenderness and patience within loneliness, yearning for connection with plainspoken charm

Marie/Lepanto – Gramps and Grandma

Justin Peter Kinkel-Schuster on reliably emotive form with the picture of familial love and heartbreak, and Jason Isbell shows up to shred some guitar for good measure.

Maxine Funke – Quiet Shore

A quiet meditation on the mundane aspects of a traumatic moment (a tea tray, a snatched umbrella, a slammed door) that illustrates the potency of memory and how a whisper is often louder than a shout.

Merpire – Heavy Feeling

Has an anxiety attack ever felt so cathartic?

Midwife – God is a Cop

“Am I heartless, or am I soft?” The pressing question at the heart of a track suspended between earnest confession and violent conflagration.

Myriam Gendron – Poor Girl Blues

Gendron combines a traditional Québecois folk song with an old blues one to distil their shared meaning, a lament for the lost, lonely and displaced.

Ovlov – Baby Shea

A 97 second eulogy to Brooklyn’s Shea Stadium played at breakneck pace.

Quivers – Gutters of Love

Ageless Aussie pop that’s a little bit 80s, a little bit 2010s, and a whole lot of joyous reassurance that heartbreak passes and things will be just fine.

Reiko and Tori Kudo – The Deep Valley of Shadow

A soft soliloquy on isolation grows quietly unsettling as warped strings whisper at the edges like anxious thoughts.

Sand Duney – Shadow Outside

Ramshackle country-tinged psych pop built on layered backing tracks thats equal parts meditative and energetic.

Space Mountain – Night Sky

A slacker jam.

Spread Joy – Kanst Du

Just one no wave pop nugget from a record that’s full of them, like pulling a weird sweet and sour German candy from a bag of pick ‘n mix.

Talons’ – Vampire

Talons’ tackle the experience of living through the pandemic in typically raw fashion, centring on an anxiety dream of being maskless in ALDI “between the meat, the fake meat and the gluten-free.”

Tiny Deserts – Wild Mt. Thyme

This beautifully unfussy and intimate take on an old Scots/Irish folk song captures that uniquely summertime feeling where the slow sunny evenings feel at once sorrowful and jubilant.

Trace Mountains – Eyes on the Road

The sound of a late-night self-reckoning while flying down the highway

TV Priest – Lifesize

A slurred and snarling assault on the patriarchal “strongmen” of politics and culture.

Typhoon – We’re In It

A band known for orchestral maximalism hone things to a razor edge in this emotional gut-punch on isolation, drifting friendship and, ultimately, persisting.

Valley Palace – Patch

Sky-blue guitar pop washed in hazy nostalgia that will have you dreaming of summer.

Weakened Friends – Quitter

A very nineties marriage of confession and catharsis, confronting fears over life’s direction by attaching heart to sleeve and blazing on ahead.

World Record Winner – Pockets of Nature

An honest-to-goodness ode to the joy of rooting around in the dirt and leaf litter away from worries and cares.

Wormy – Hungry Ghost (feat. Samia)

A whirlwind tour through the banal and heartbreaking details of life, gathering enough momentum to convince yourself everything might just be alright.

Yellow Ostrich – Timothy

“What’s a man? I’m just as soft as I can be” sings Alex Schaaf on this rumination on connection and the fallacies of masculinity.

If you enjoyed anything on this list, you may also be interested in our list of albums we missed in 2021. And of course, there were lots of amazing songs that we did write about in the last year, so have a look back through our Reviews and Previews sections to find more.

The post Songs We Missed in 2021 appeared first on Various Small Flames.

In anticipation, Johanna Samuels has released the record’s first single, ‘High Tide For One’. The song was written in the aftermath of Brett Kavanaugh’s appointment to the Supreme Court, focusing in particular on the brave ordeal faced by Dr. Blasey Ford as she went up against Kavanaugh and the rest of the American Right. “My heart was broken,” Samuels describes, “I reflected on how much scarcity of space and validation in basic experience there is for all female-identifying people.”

Last night I saw that man on TV
His tears tasted like silver bullet and supremacy
But the woman wasn’t screaming
She remembers the same night only differently

But despite the difficult subject matter, ‘High Tide For One’ sounds rich and reflective, at least on the surface. Samuels’s Rhodes piano is matched by subtle bass and winding guitar, weaving a calm but cloudy foundation from which the vocals emerge. Samuels is joined by backing vocals from A.O. Gerber and Olivia Kaplan, just two of Excelsior!‘s stellar guest list that also features Courtney Marie Andrews and Lomelda.

‘High Tide for One’ is available now via the Johanna Samuels Bandcamp page. Excelsior! will be released Spring 2021 on Mama Bird Recording Co. (US/World) and Basin Rock (UK/EU).

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“[How Strange It Is To See] exists within that small and fleeting pocket in time and space that opens just before you take off from a familiar location, everyday objects taking on new importance as the seconds tick away and your surroundings can be seen outside of the context of your own unimportant worries and wishes”

It was a release that left me with questions, and Knishkowy very kindly agreed to answer a few of them.

Hi Dan, thanks for speaking to us! Congratulations on the release of How Strange It Is To See. I saw you played a release show in a winery?

Thanks! Yeah, a solo show in Pittsburgh, where I recorded these songs. Then we’re doing a full band thing in Brooklyn this week (with Wake the Deaf fav, Ben Seretan).

As I mentioned in my review, the EP was created in the midst of a move, written in one city and recorded in another. Did you intend to write the songs as a direct reaction to the relocation? Or did you just find your life coloured your writing?

There wasn’t much intention at first. I’d been writing songs for a new record, and like most people I know, had developed a love/hate thing with New York. It felt like a good time to try somewhere new for a bit. I was messing around with ‘Everything Is Going To Be Fine’ and the other 3 came out very stream of consciousness. That’s rare for me and I wanted to capture them on record the same way. Quickly and immediately. They’re all in the same key and feel more like one song written from four narrators’ perspectives, so it felt right to put them together in a concise format. To be honest, it’s a bit weird listening now, especially being back in NY, because they are of a very specific moment.

What would you list as the main influences on your writing? Would you say other musicians have had the biggest impact? Have novels/poetry played a role too?

Writing, definitely Jeff Tweedy….people like Neil Young, Elliott Smith, Jason Molina who have this duality of solo acoustic and blown out rock band. On guitar, British folkies like Bert Jansch and John Martyn. Lyrically, Chris Porterfield [of Field Report] is in another world; he completely changed the game for me in terms of what I thought I wanted out of songs.

Honestly, I struggle to break out of familiar points of view, so literature hasn’t found it’s way into the songs yet, but it helps my approach to writing – stuff like Flannery O’Connor, Borges, Murakami, where the seriousness is propped up by an absurdist element. The more fucked up the funnier it is. With music, I just always take shit too seriously. Something to work on.Coming from a background strictly in the written word, I’m always fascinated by songwriting. Having to marry the two strands of music and lyrics from scratch seems like such a difficult task from the outside. How do you go about it? Do you fit the music around the lyrics or vice versa? Or is it some middle ground that only a musician could understand?

Hah, well I’m fascinated by your writing — I feel like we get to cheat because a good melody can pull the weight when the words don’t and vice versa, but every line you write has to stand on it’s own.

Most things start for me on the guitar, but I keep notebooks and iPhone notes to draw from for when that happens. I trade lyrics from song to song a lot, though not always on purpose.

Some of your songs seem pared down to the bare minimum (I’m think of ‘Left on Jewel’ in particular), with a pretty clear narrative condensed into a few short, poetic verses. Do the extended versions of these stories exist in your head, and you distil them to fit into a song? Or do you choose words and imagery more instinctively, allowing the stories to emerge, for you as well as the listener?

I’ve been making a conscious effort to write more concisely. Restraint is such a beautiful thing, but not one of my strengths at all. I usually overwrite (like seven verses for a three verse song) and then edit down. Sometimes the best lyrics aren’t really part of the story and need to be left out, which is a bummer.

I see you are releasing a run of cassettes with Lily Tapes & Discs, who we have covered a few times in various guises. How did this come about? I’m almost completely ignorant when it comes to this sort of thing – did you approach the label? Did they come to you?

Ben Lovell, who runs Lily, is actually an old childhood friend. He taught me about Elephant 6 when we were 12 and I probably returned the favor with something like Through Being Cool. We’d been out of touch for years but started seeing each other at shows in NY and the timing worked out. His own music as Lung Cycles is so great too.

Why did you decide on tapes rather than CD or vinyl? It’s something I’ve thought about a lot recently – if physical releases aren’t the primary method of listening anymore, have they become strictly aesthetic things, nice things to put on a shelf?

I do most of my listening digitally (no streaming, just the old iPod classic), but I buy vinyl at shows. There’s still a level of independent music that’s healthy enough to sell records and make a sustainable income, but for everyone below that level (musicians and labels) it’s become about just connecting with people. There’s been a shift towards limited edition releases, tapes, lathe cuts, etc. which I think is fantastic. With digital music beginning to feel valueless, giving someone a lovingly handmade artefact puts personal value back into that relationship, even if they only play the songs via the download. I love collaboration, so with Ben and Lily that means tapes. He did the art and I think it’s beautiful.

Finally, could you name 4-5 acts you are currently enjoying? Old or new, popular or obscure, whatever you find yourself returning to.

Adrianne Lenker’s a-sides is an everyday listen; The Weather Station, especially last year’s EP; so much Mitski; Will Stratton’s ‘The Relatively Fair‘; Evan Dando’s Baby I’m Bored. I’m biased because I play in her band sometimes, but Johanna Samuels is truly one of the best songwriters around.

You can buy How Strange It Is To See now from the Adeline Hotel/Lily Tapes & Discs Bandcamp Pages.

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