When news of the fires broke in January 2025, Verrill’s mind returned to this feeling. “The faces I was seeing online of people who were fleeing, who lost everything, were friends, family, and collaborators,” they continue. “The helpless darkness was creeping in. I grasped for that feeling, that feeling of being held and together and supported that threaded through the music we created on Election Day. I called up Jolie and Carolina about our comp idea.”

The resulting release features over forty tracks by an array of talent, including VSF favs like Karima Walker, Advance Base, Tobacco City, Macie Stewart, Allegra Krieger, Squirrel Flower, Claire Rousay, Lisa/Liza, Stephen Steinbrink, Tasha, Eliza Niemi, Sophia Corinne and many others. But where some compilations which take the maximalist approach end up with a disparate, scattergun feel, If I Could Only Fly maintains a clear, uniting vibe despite the diversity of its artists. A sense of cohesion and togetherness which hints at the radical potential within the collective, something we need to remember now more than ever as the suite of challenges which marks the contemporary moment only widens and deepens. As Verrill continues:

I feel like coming together an creating a Thing like a Comp not only raises cold hard cash for the people that need it now (and we could all be next) it weaves us together in song and solidarity, reminds us we have each other, adds our names to the list of those we could turn to, whether it is the artists who contribute or the dear ears who listen, share, and support. These things matter when things are hard. They matter always

‘If I could only fly’ a comp for LA Wildfire Relief is out now and available from Bandcamp.

Cover art by Lili Todd

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Earlier this Spring, Karima Walker released demos, a new album with Orindal Records and Keeled Scales which paired older versions of some of the songs from 2021’s beautiful Waking The Dreaming Body with new compositions. The release provided a glimpse into the beginnings of the eventual album. With rougher, perhaps more intimate acoustic arrangements and slight lyrical differences. The deviations from what we know as the ‘final’ versions are conspicuous in hindsight, but so to is the sense of latent possibility. The soul of something forming, even if it hasn’t yet realised its true physical body.

The result proves an inadvertent rebuttal of the fears around preserving early drafts. A lesson in the value of looking back, if only to remember the dual nature of creation. A combination of abstract magic and mundane perseverance. The easy inspiration, the mechanical work. For the final thing does not fall into complete existence but rather takes shape in the manner of a natural landscape. An uneven process of slow movement and violent change, where any divine beauty or imagination is underpinned by a long physical act, occurring day after day. The songs of demos are no less representative of the ones of Waking the Dreaming Body than a landscape a hundred years ago is of a landscape today.

demos challenges the binary between ‘demo’ and ‘final’, just as Waking the Dreaming Body challenges other such binaries. “The release is a product of both isolation and connection,” we wrote in our review. “The former fostering the latter in strange ways. In confronting the surrounding environment and considering her place within it, Walker traces lines between the self and the outside so that such boundaries might be challenged and blurred.” Songs crafted by both sound designer and singer-songwriter, deep rooted in conscious and unconscious thought, and both interior and exterior spaces. Environments which might feel complete or permanent within any given moment, but always subject to change.

As Walker prepares to head off on a UK tour with Advance Base, we took the opportunity to ask her a few questions about the new release and her work more generally. Check out the tour dates below then scroll on down for the interview, which Walker answered, fittingly, from an airport with gear and merch in tow.

Aug 28, 2022- Manchester, UK @ Gulliver’s
Aug 29, 2022- Glasgow, UK @ The Hug & Pint (w/ Raveloe)
Aug 30, 2002- Wakefield, UK @ Chantry Chapel
Aug 31, 2022- London, UK @ The Lexington (w/ Herbal Tea)
Sept 01, 2022- Brighton, UK @ The Prince Albert
Sept 03, 2022- London, UK @ St John on Bethnal Green / Daylight Music (w/ Robert Stillman)
Sept 04, 2022- Salisbury, UK @ End of the Road Festival (just Karima Walker, no Advance Base)
Sept 05, 2022- Bristol, UK @ Cube Cinema (w/ SH Davidson)
Sept 06, 2022- Oxford, UK @ Port Mahon (moved from The Library) (w/ Katie Malco)

Thanks so much for speaking with us Karima, and congratulations on demos. Does it feel different releasing a record that’s not quite new?

It does feel different, casual!

As a listener, I’m always fascinated to hear early versions of songs. How the vision for the track might have altered, what seeds would eventually blossom into the finished thing. But if I put on my writer cap, the prospect of going through my own old drafts caused a specific sense of dread. The interest might still be present, but there’s a competing trepidation too. Like you might be dispelling the mirage somehow. Does this ring true? And if so, how did you tackle the unease?

It does feel vulnerable… with “Reconstellated,” I sat with different iterations of it for well over a year. It’s almost like I owed something to the versions that brought so much to the final song, even if they weren’t present in it, in the end. In this state, the demos are still rough but feel like they have potential, so this release feels lighter.

To invert the question, what about the reverse situation? Do you feel your relationship with Waking the Dreaming Body has been altered by returning to the demos? Did you learn anything new about the songs in revisiting their early forms?

I do. On one hand there’s magic in how a song arrives but part of assembling these demos was reminding myself that they don’t always fall out of the sky. A lot of it is a much more mundane process. I’m a ways out from writing WTDB, so as I start writing again it’s helpful to hear the kind of questions I was asking for that record, how I assembled it.

The two versions of ‘Window I’ offer one of the most interesting comparisons because they foreground one of the most striking features of Waking the Dreaming Body. The porous line between a more traditional folk style and an experimental found sound/drone. Do you feel you identify more strongly with any one position along the songwriter-composer spectrum? Does your future seem to lean toward either end, or is resisting any clear binary the only certainty?

I am honestly not sure. I’m very impressionable when I’m listening to something I love, so it changes all the time… I don’t know if I could hang out on one side of those paths forever. I love that porous line, how one thing somehow becomes something else, and all the moments in between that can feel just as complete, or sometimes better than where you begin or end. I do like structure though, framing those moments around questions of perception, gender, the self-other dichotomy… On WTDB, I was wanting songs that felt complete and solid, compositions that felt whole and I wanted them to all happily co-exist together. Right now I’m writing you from an airport, surround by over a hundred pounds of my gear and merch, so sometimes I think it’s time to write folk songs.

To talk about craft more generally, what is the typical process when writing a song? Is it a case of generating a bunch of rough material and returning to hone it once halfway complete, or are you more meticulous within each track? Like, would you perfect an opening or chorus before tackling the rest of the piece? Or follow something through and polish it later?

I try to be open to whatever is coming my way… some days I’m showing up for a song even if I’m not feeling it, and that feels more like the former, documenting what happens through play, then looking back over it and doing the honing/editing work of reading what this body of parts is. But sometimes things do surface with more completeness built in, or more urgency, and I want to be available for that too. If my intuition is saying to dive deep into something then I try to leave room for that.

You wrote about the link between breathing and landscapes when announcing single ‘how it falls apart’, how words come when you’re running and form “a way of mapping or notating a place/landscape.” Could you talk a little on how this phenomenon informed the song, or indeed your work more widely?

When I’m out, moving my body, it’s like I’m shaking loose all the associations and ideas that were up there in my brain, stagnating. But then also, being outside and aware of what’s around me is an endless source of joy and inspiration, it’s hard not to connect to my creative brain when I’m feeling good and alive and awake. All that life around me starts to imprint on my internal world.

In a very physical sense, running over a trail feels like mapping or reading a score. I’m active in the former- moving through the landscape, and receptive in the latter- being shaped by the choices of trail builders, game trails, elevations. I’d noticed how my breathing rhythm would change over the course of a run, so I recorded my breath and footsteps on a trail near my house… I wanted to see if I could listen back to the recording later and remember where the uphills and downhills were. I suppose the audio isn’t technically a map, since a map presents itself visually, all at once, where as an audio recording opens up over time. But we consent to the components of a map or a score when we follow a path. It feels like collaborative performance.

Speaking of landscapes, we can’t talk about your work without touching upon the importance of the environment. There’s something about the balance between reality and unreality on WTDB which feels unique to the desert. Perhaps I’m projecting, writing from a place about as far from a desert as somewhere could be, but it seems a desert is the most real and unreal of places. Are you aware of the landscape’s influence on your work? Do you think it would sound different if you lived elsewhere?

I was just in Florida, and had really only been there once before. I’d walk around, filled with awe, with my mouth hanging open because I just could not fathom the trees and flora… they’re just so different. Huge, weblike, loud, lush worlds. I think I know what you mean by unreal… being in a landscape that is just so incredibly different from what I know, I was left to observe without a lot of language to help me. It’s a very joyful childlike frame of mind. I guess I’d suggest that those emotional, inner and dream realities, though very squishy, are still very real but that language fails in articulating that reality, maybe that’s where the unreal-ness comes from. There’s a knowledge in the body that can navigate those realities in ways my rational thinking brain just can’t. I think I’m aware of the landscapes influence on my work, and I’m pretty certain it would sound different if I was somewhere else, or with people when I wrote.

Talking of places far from deserts, you’re about to head out on a UK tour with Advance Base. It’s a difficult time for obvious reasons, but speaking more generally, what role does touring and live performance play within your work? Does it feel part of the creative process?

Touring, especially with friends, and playing live are sources of real joy for me. Then there’s the connected and slightly different kind of joy, the… maybe more fraught joy of having a creative practice. The logistics of tour give my days structure and purpose, reconnects me to the network of friends and community, that I often only see when I’m on the road, and to places I love very much.

Live performance is immensely fulfilling and at the same time a huge output of energy. I build my sets around a narrative arc and it feels like a theater-healing ritual, to transition through different places and arrive at a resolution of some kind.

demos is out now via Orindal Records and you can get it from Bandcamp.

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Released to coincide with his birthday, and organised by Dan Wriggins (of Friendship) in collaboration with Dear Life Records, You Were Alone: An Owen Ashworth Almanac is a covers compilation featuring versions of Owen’s songs from family, friends, labelmates and fans. A celebration which recognises a birthday but also so much more than that. A body of work and the burgeoning legacy it has and continues to establish, not to mention the blossoming community fostered through Owen’s label Orindal Records.

And community feels like the right word for the compilation. Both in terms of the gathered artists and the characters they bring to life. Because hearing the songs in different voices really brings home the diversity of personalities present across Owen’s work. Pedro the Lion adds a weariness to ‘My Sister’s Birthday’ with his distinctively gruff fondness. Claire Cronin is the perfect person to fully excavate the spookiness of ‘Pamela’. MJ Lenderman and Karly Hartzman raise a glass to poor old Christmas Steve. Sinai Vessel captures ‘Kitty Winn’ in all its sad affection.

Some, like Lisa/Liza‘s ‘Rabbits’ or Karima Walker‘s ‘Same Dream’, take the original versions back to the traditional folk roots, while the likes of Ylayali, Moon Racer and Bedbug lean into the electronic, harking back to earlier CFTPA days. What’s impressive is how the distinctive “Ashworthian” voice remains across the spectrum. Even the tracks with no literal voice, be it Robert Stillman‘s take on ‘Christmas in Nightmare City’ or Gordon Ashworth‘s extended guitar version of ‘Nephew in the Wild’, lose none of their ability to evoke the tales we’ve grown to hold so dear. Because while Dan might have intended to organise a birthday party, it turned out more like a reunion. A gathering of Owen’s characters, our friends. Still here, still living, still with so many stories to tell.

Cover painting by Martha Miller

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These images allowed me to think about immense horror and beauty—something that overwhelms but simultaneously is so hard to look away from, something that holds violence but also reflects a better understanding of ourselves in the context of that immensity and scale. Looking out and looking within, and knowing that the divide is false, but feeling the pain of that division nonetheless.

This dual process of acknowledging and questioning borders is key to Karima Walker’s work. Occupying a variety of niches across the artistic spectrum, the Tucson-based interdisciplinary artist has long probed in directions both various and wide-ranging, extending across visual and performing arts to include collaborations in fields as distinct as sculpture, creative non-fiction and dance. Though even within the discrete category of music, Walker’s art maintains a multifaceted approach. In working as both a songwriter and a sound designer, there is a dichotomous quality to the Karima Walker style, a dualism between modes that might be complementary or contradicting.

Written, performed and engineered by Walker alone (with the sole exception of bass from C.J. Boyd on one song), the release is a product of both isolation and connection, the former fostering the latter in strange ways. In confronting the surrounding environment and considering her place within it, Walker traces lines between the self and the outside so that such boundaries might be challenged and blurred. “I wanted these songs to stand alone as complete worlds,” Walker explains, “and this required a shift in my usual way of writing. I found myself trying to escape from an excess of interiority by exploring outward, by thinking about the mirroring that happens when you seek connection to others and to the natural world—when you try to bring the outside in.”

The sublime of Waking The Dreaming Body is therefore not an attempt to realise the limitations of one’s mind à la Lyotard. Rather, it is an exercise in locating such limits in order to eventually surpass them. “I sought to make arrangements that swell at certain moments and barely hold together at others, moving with my breath and other rhythms connecting my body to the natural world,” Karima Walker continues. “Ultimately, I was seeking to draw myself out, to reconstruct my personal narrative.” 

Written and recorded in seclusion, and often possessing a sense of distance and yearning, it is clear that this objective is far from simple. But there are moments on the record where the possibility flickers in life, brief snatches of some potential future where even if the borders are not conquered, we might perhaps learn to be present within their confines, come to accommodate for their shape.

Today we have the honour of sharing the record’s title track, coincidentally one of the closest encounters Walkers manages with such an experience. “This was the last song I wrote for the record,” she explains. “It became the song that was able to bridge, with a certain kind of peace, a space that I had been in for a long time. It moved from a stuck-and-in-between place to the place I was physically in, which was beautiful and singular. I was outside and camping and I think you know the feeling I’m talking about. All the uncertainty and fear spilled out into something very present and joyful.”

The earth it is shaking she’s taking a breath
while the rest of us hold it
There’s no use in explaining, there’s nothing left
no use in it’s naming
And if I feel the edge, with my fingertips, is it softer than I imagined?
And if I crawled inside you, I mean it I could just die here
between the starry dome above and the rocks beneath my feet

Karima Walker was also kind enough to share a live performance of the track, which, recorded at home, strips back the already minimalist sound into something even more intimate.

Waking the Dreaming Body is out via Orindal Records and Keeled Scales on the 26th February and you can pre-order it now from the Karima Walker Bandcamp page.

Photo by Holly Hall

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The Estok’Gna have survived hundreds of years of genocide and oppression since the arrival of Europeans, and continue to face severe threats to their culture, history and way of life. Now, three natural gas pipelines are planned on traditional Carrizo/Comecrudo Tribe territory, which would destroy scared sites and make it a felony for the Estok’Gna to occupy them. Not to mention the project’s lack of consideration to it’s non-human impacts—current plans will see it destroy over 300 acres of important habitat that is home to 21 endangered species.

As you would expect from Keeled Scales, the album contains recordings from a whole host of great artists. From indie rock heavyweights like Big Thief and Sharon Van Etten, to the countless whose releases we have written about and loved over the last few years, including (takes breath) Black Belt Eagle Scout, Erin Durant, Jess Williamson, Jo Schornikow, Karima Walker, Sun June, Will Johnson, and Tenci.

There is considerable diversity across the 31 tracks, but all are united by a common spirit. Renée Reed brings her distinctive and dreamlike Cajun folk with ‘J’ai Trouve’, while Christelle Bofale shows off her wonderful soulful vocals with a stripped-back demo titled ‘And I’ll Go’ and Aisha Burns sets the tone with the collection’s first track, the beautiful and immersive ‘Chinati’. A personal favourite is Little Mazarn’s take on the classic cowboy folk song ‘Bury Me Not on the Lone Prairie,’ which sounds at once bright and mournful.

100% of donations from the album will go directly to the Estok’Gna to support their fight for their land, culture and very existence. As Keeled Scales put it: “As indigenous people continue to lead the fight against the reckless fossil fuel industry, we are honored to offer this compilation and its earnings in solidarity with everyone in the fight for racial justice and a livable future for all beings on planet earth.”

To the People of the Land is out now and available via the Keeled Scales Bandcamp page.

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Among Horses V saw the turn of Tuscon’s Karima Walker and Nashville-based Katy Kirby to visit the farm. The pairing promises to be an interesting one, as the experimental sensibilities of Walker seem the perfect foil for Kirby’s nuanced folk, and the work of both artists holds some timeless quality that can only thrive in the remote setting.

So far we only have one track to go on, the release’s opener ‘Right By You’. Written on the first night at the farm, Kirby and Walker meeting just hours before, the song taps into the inherent transience of things, finding the small kernels of constant loss within even the newest beginnings. But rather then emerge with cynicism or dejection, the pair channel this knowledge into something altogether more sincere, finding warmth and sadness in the passing of time, and meaning in the mystery of not knowing when the ending shall come.

Two days in already starting to die
tried every window, full and partial sunlight
tried to read the leaves, are you a cactus or a tree
do you need a little desert, would you rather it be raining

I just wanna do right by you
Show me how to
tell me what you need
you’re a mystery, I am too
I just wanna do right you

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From the early days of Casiotone For The Painfully Alone right through to the current moniker Advance Base, the songwriting of Owen Ashworth has always had a humanising quality. Providing glances into the lives of an array of characters, Ashworth produces vignettes of moments of loneliness, vulnerability and grief, or else the slow aftermath where the world’s continued spin does little to shake the feeling. And, while heartbreak and separation are key themes in these stories, Ashworth far from limits himself to the genre favourites of death and divorce. There has been bank robbers, unlucky swimmers, adolescent satanists turned killers—a cast of characters united by a common, human tendency for suffering.

The use of short glimpses into the worlds of fictional characters plays a fundamental role in Ashworth’s style, serving to free the songs from excessive introspection and self-pity. Which is to say, he does not deal in the woe-is-me solipsism of teen mope movies, or indeed that of middle-aged marriage trouble so familiar from quote-unquote ‘high’ literature. Ashworth provides us with people living through pain and loss, not obsessively analysing and attributing it to their own character. And through this, he opens up a space for the very features Robinson fears devalued and lost.

Ashworth is back with a brand new Advance Base record, Animal Companionship, out via Run For Cover and Orindal Records. Though not a concept album, pets (especially of the canine variety) are a recurring motif, and the idea proves fundamentally relevant to his continued examination of the human condition. If love is loyalty, the record asks, then how better to portray it than through the relationship a person shares with their dog?

Opener ‘True Love Death Dream’ is typically rich and narrative-driven, telling the story of the death of a teenage crush over slow and lush keyboard and drum machine. As with much of Ashworth’s work as Advance Base, the story is told from the distant future of middle age, the narrator naming her dog after the long-gone (but certainly not forgotten) boyfriend. It’s a song about intense emotions of love and hurt, set not in their burning midst but from a temporal distance, a wash of blue-grey melancholy punctuated with little jabs of glimmering golden hope. “It was true love,” Ashworth sings, “don’t let them tell you any different,” the sense of heart-strong defiance a reminder that even memories tinged with tragedy can be a solace.

‘Dolores & Kimberly’ follows with another richly imagined story, the narrator leaving behind a life and family for someone in a new city. The most memorable scene comes in the final third, when our narrator gets a divorce, a full two years after moving away, and celebrates by listening to ‘Moon River’ with their new love in an empty bar. “That night after closing,” Ashworth sings, “we opened up some good champagne and we slow danced across the floor.” It’s a story that could have been made seedy or scandalous, or washed with a Raymond Carver-style middle age ennui, but Ashworth writes it with a sense of pathos, sad but never cold or heartless.

“The streets were so empty
you’d think it was the rapture
Our midnight world
Just me & you”

The style draws the mind back to Marilynne Robinson, and her ability to weave heartbreak and suffering throughout her fiction without ever losing a sense of kindness and empathy. ‘Your Dog’ is another case in point, a break up song in retrospect, triggered when the dog of the now-gone other recognises the narrator, flipping out and barking like he always did. The track is devastating in its own gentle way, though its loneliness is derived not from the surface rejection of a failed relationship but a force more nebulous and vague—something to do with time passing, and the endearing yet debilitating innocence that lies at the heart of so many things.

Coming complete with a video by Karima Walker, ‘Christmas in Nightmare City’ is autobiographical, detailing a period of restlessness and insomnia that Ashworth suffered as he tried to give up drinking. The song creates a wonderful late-night atmosphere, a quiet and subdued story of driving around at night, your only company a college game on the radio. As if to up the stakes, it happens to be Christmas too, and no-one writes Christmas songs like Ashworth. His aesthetic and temperament are the perfect medium to capture the strange mix of sad and magical, the way the only promise the ‘most wonderful time of the year’ can keep is that of making tough times worse.

After the daydream pop of The Magnetic Fields cover ‘You & Me & the Moon’ and the instrumental interlude of ‘Walt’s Fantasy’, a lingering weariness heralds ‘Rabbits’. The track pairs a simple and reassuring account of a regular morning (“Woke up late in a fog,” Ashworth sings, “Took a pill walked the dog / Down Levon onto Birch / Heard the sound of the organ inside the church”), with aching recollection (“last that I heard / you’d settled down in South Bend / and married a girl, who’s folks own the bar that you tend”) to make the mundane magical and vice versa. It’s a neat little trick that captures both the simple pleasures of the present and the rich internal dialogue of a wandering mind.

As though to reinforce the commitment to empathetic, outwardly-looking portrayals of suffering, ‘Same Dream’ returns to another trope of Ashworth’s music with the narrator expecting a baby. Though it might well be perceptive, the empathy comes not from Ashworth’s imaginative portrayal of pregnancy but the narrator herself, her struggle through a world that couldn’t care less about her blessing/curse couched in thoughts of another person—her burden directed toward some higher purpose, her dreams no longer merely her own.

The idea could be said to form something of a credo for Animal Companionship, and is reiterated in the strikingly sad ‘Care’. The song paints a relationship through incidences of trauma, a dependency forming within the external violence and loss, two people leaning on one another, propping each other up. The refrain circles around twice, the slight differences providing all the difference. That’s when I knew,” goes the first, in response to a house fire, “that I could take care of you.” “That’s when I could see,” runs the second, a close friend dying of cancer, “the way you take care of me.”

Again, we find ourselves back at Marilynne Robinson. “That’s what the family is for,” a pastor character asserts, willing his family to be as open to receiving help as they are to giving. “Calvin says it is the Providence of God that we look after those nearest to us. So it is the will of God that we help our brothers, and it is equally the will of God that we accept their help and receive the blessing of it.” Advance Base has stripped all dogma and religion from this message, keeping only the important stuff, though the sentiment of ‘Care’ is exactly that of Robinson’s writing.

“The songs are intended to be a comfort for folks going through their own tough times,” Ashworth explained in an essay for Talkhouse. “Commiseration has always been a guiding principle of my songwriting.” Love need not be hugs and hearts and kisses, and loyalty does not necessarily mean hanging in a relationship beyond all reason. But love is loyalty, and Owen Ashworth has been, and seemingly always will be, loyal to those who need it most.

Animal Companionship is out now via Run For Cover Records and Orindal Records and you can get it from Bandcamp on vinyl and cassette, as well as digital. Advance Base is currently on a mammoth North American tour with other VSF favs like Gia Margaret, Friendship and Lisa/Liza, so be sure to check the dates here.

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Today we have the pleasure of unveiling the video for ‘Indigo’, made in preview of the Orindal release and as way of kicking off a US/Canadian tour that Walker has just embarked upon (see full dates below). In our review, we described the intimate track as possessing  “hospitable quiet… calm and serene yet laced with sadness,” which seems to sum up the atmosphere quite nicely. From the ambient background noise and Walker’s counting in to the gentle guitar and crooned vocals, every element feels organic and sincere, like some dateless hymn made familiar on early evening porches and sang from memory. Equally, the lyrics feel both immediate and well-worn, like words for heartbreak handed down through generations, imprinted in the mind and no less relevant for it.

“I’m too tired to throw stones
to hold this memory alone
too stubborn to ask you
to come back home”

The entire album achieves this delightfully paradoxical effect, sounding at once personal and communal, timely and timeless, being neither folk nor ambient yet an enhanced version of both. To return to our original piece, “[Hands in Our Names has] a freedom not just born of trope-avoiding experimentalism but somehow inherent in the very combinations of sounds, as though arranged into secret patterns or codes, magic spells that trump postmodern convictions. Rather than dying in open air upon leaving her mouth, Karima Walker’s communications bubble from within, stirring that dormant empathy that lies somewhere near the centre of us all.”

Hands in Our Names is to be released on Orindal Records on the 24th March and you can pre-order it now via Bandcamp, including a mystery colour vinyl edition complete with heavyweight, full colour Stoughton jacket, a full colour 11×17 poster and a Risograph-printed insert. As we mentioned above, Walker is just setting off on a rather extensive tour of North America, playing with some excellent acts along the way, so be sure to browse the list below and check out any show within your area.

March 14, 2017 – Springfield, MO – Front of House Lounge
March 15, 2017 – St. Louis, MO – House Show >
March 16, 2017 – Rock Island, IL @ Rozz Tox =
March 17, 2017 – Iowa City, IA @ Public Space One =
March 18, 2017 – Ames, IA @ Vinyl Grind =
March 19, 2017 – Lawrence, KS @ Jackpot Music Hall =
March 20, 2017 – Sioux Falls, SD @ Total Drag =
March 21, 2017 – Fargo, ND @ The Aquarium =
March 22, 2017 – Duluth, MN @ Red Herring =
March 23, 2017 – St Paul, MN @ Amsterdam =
March 24, 2017 – Eau Claire, WI @ Oxbow Hotel =
March 25, 2017 – Madison, WI @ Frequency =
March 26, 2017 – Milwaukee, WI @ Cactus Club =
March 30, 2017 – Chicago, IL @ Gman Tavern =+
April 01, 2017 – Grand Rapids, MI @ Sage House =
April 02, 2017 – Kalamazoo, MI @ TBA =
April 03, 2017 – Windsor, ON @ The Rondo =
April 04, 2017 – Toronto, ON @ Silver Dollar Room =
April 05, 2017 – Buffalo, NY @ Mohawk Place =
April 06, 2017 – Nyack, NY @ Kiam Records Shop =@
April 07, 2017 – Brooklyn, NY @ Union Hall ?
April 08, 2017 – Providence, RI @ Columbus Theater *=
April 09, 2017 – Portland, ME @ Oxbow /=
April 10, 2017 – Boston, MA @ Atwood’s Tavern *=
April 11, 2017 – Philadelphia, PA @ PhilaMOCA =#*
April 12, 2017 – Baltimore, MD @ EMP Collective =
April 14, 2017 – Pittsburgh, PA @ Mr Roboto Project *=
April 16, 2017 – Cincinnati, OH @ The Comet
April 17, 2017 – Bloomington, IN @ TBA
April 18, 2017 – Louisville, KY @ Dreamland
April 19, 2017 – Knoxville, TN @ Pilotlight
April 21, 2017 – Marshall, NC @ Marshall High Studios
April 22, 2017 – Atlanta, GA @ Mammal Gallery
April 26, 2017 – Houston, TX @ Notsuoh
April 27, 2017 – Galveston, TX @ Galveston Artist Residency
April 28, 2017 – Austin, TX @ Lemon Lounge

> w/ Dubb Nubb
= w/ Advance Base
+ w/ gobbinjr
@ w/ Amy Bezunartea
? Orindal label showcase w/ Advance Base, Lisa/Liza, Hello Shark & secret special guests
* w/ John Davis
/ w/ Lisa/Liza
# w/ Hello Shark

Photograph by Eugene Starobinskiy

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Hallelujah The Hills – A Band is Something to Figure Out
(REVIEW | INTERVIEW)

“This is an album built from symbolism (one of the tags on Bandcamp is ‘hieroglyphics’, to give you an idea) but, like all the best mysteries, a sense of significance floats to the top, independent of any hidden code. Hallelujah the Hills reconstruct the human experience through sheer enthusiasm, using their joyous hooks and choruses as earnest expressions of emotion rather than ironic juxtapositions.  Walsh and Co. aren’t sitting us down to share a smirk and a wink, or to reel off some abstract philosophical theories, but rather taking us by the hand and running through their strange world, leaving it up to us to catch something meaningful in the breathless blur. And what a world this is, one which has been evolving since their first album, an ecosystem based on a strange molecule – twin strands of confusion and intuition tightly bound and swirled into a double helix – the DNA of Hallelujah the Hills.”

Camp Cope – S/T
(REVIEW)

“For those of us that want to hope that maybe everything doesn’t have to be shit forever, there’s an atmosphere of dissent that seeps into every line. Not in that horrible on-the-nose Billy Bragg/Frank Turner way, but more subtle, funny and heartbreaking, with throwaway lines that leave you a bit off-balanced. I think that’s what I like most about Camp Cope – the constant switch between personal and protest, heartache and anger, and all the while feeling completely and utterly helpless.”

Beat Radio – Take It Forever
(REVIEW | INTERVIEW)

“Beat Radio’s fifth album Take It Forever feels like a culmination of ideas, the product of some long, hard thinking… With a large dose of hope and a pervading sense of goodwill, Take It Forever plays like the manifesto of someone who doesn’t know all the answers but finds meaning in asking the questions, the words not of a revolutionary or prophet but an ordinary man striving to make life extraordinary, just as it should be.”

Talons’ – Work Stories
(REVIEW)

“Explores the pervasive disillusionment in a society that hasn’t yet lived up to what it promised, a society run for interests other than those of the people who make up its majority. A society that offers hopes and dreams of resplendent lives in exchange for your hard earned $$$s, education courses that leave people stranded with more knowledge but no money, opportunities or sympathy. These are songs for people who wonder ‘when did it become not okay to do what I want with my life?’ Work Stories is a reminder that it’s okay to occasionally feel afraid or sad, that the things which trouble you are probably not as much your fault as you think, and most of all that, despite how it might sometimes feel you are never, ever, alone.”

Mount Moriah – How To Dance
(REVIEW)

“Mount Moriah push past their troubles into something positive and mysterious, a conglomeration of symbolism, mysticism, universality and other cosmic forces which pretty much equates to Southern Gothic 2.0. How to Dance is crafted from spirit and faith, carved out of a high, wide hope capable of healing any wounds, giving us the courage not just to survive, but to live.”

The Chairman Dances – Time Without Measure
(REVIEW | INTERVIEW)

“The Chairman Dances succeed in bringing characters to life in three dimensions, though on Time Without Measure the feat is even more impressive as the roster of figures are not only numerous but also known to history in decidedly superhuman terms. Now more than ever we should remember that activists and political heroes, for all of their spirit and unimaginable resolve, are as prone to doubt and death as anyone, and not half as powerful without our support and belief. Likewise, we’d do well to remember that villains and bigots are human too, flames that, however fierce and bright, will be snuffed out without the oxygen that is our backing. This album is a reminder that belief and faith can save us. It’s just a matter of choosing the right thing in which to invest our energies.”

Karima Walker – Hands in Our Names
(REVIEW)

“Hands in Our Names sees Karima Walker reconstruct an array of varied elements into something larger and more meaningful than they could ever be alone. Field recordings from her present and found recordings from someone else’s past swirl above and beneath her own words and guitar notes, drones of every pitch filling the background and stretching the songs into worlds of their own. When atomised into separate parts, the album is impressionistic, blurry and strange and difficult to describe, though when listened to as a whole, a blanket of stitches, it becomes something vivid and intuitive. As such, Hands in Our Names is able to convey things normal songs cannot, a freedom not just born of trope-avoiding experimentalism but somehow inherent in the very combinations of sounds, as though arranged into secret patterns or codes, magic spells that trump postmodern convictions. Rather than dying in open air upon leaving her mouth, Karima Walker’s communications bubble from within, stirring that dormant empathy that lies somewhere near the centre of us all.”

Sioux Falls (now Stranger Ranger) – Rot Forever
(REVIEW)

“Sioux Falls’ sound reads like a melting pot of the last twenty years of rock music. Taking the indie rock of the likes of Built to Spill et al., the band add thoughtful emo (like The Hotelier) and smart pop punk vibes (think LVL UP etc.) to create something wonderfully varied and entertaining, cycling through these genres not just between songs but within them. The narrator is centred within the stories of which they sing, sounding like another confused player in violent, unfair game operating to rules outside of anyone’s understanding. In the face of bewilderment they turn to anger and sorrow and joy, feelings easy to recognise, easy to submit to, decidedly non-ambivalent chemical reactions which remind them that they’re still alive.”

John K Samson – Winter Wheat
(REVIEW)

“The Weakerthans frontman’s first release since 2012 is everything we’ve come to expect, exploring his favourite themes of contemporary loneliness and isolation in his uniquely warm manner, his characters not ready to give up hope that connection (that is, real human connection) is still possible in our digital world.”

Nap Eyes – Thought Rock Fish Scale

“Nova Scotia’s Nap Eyes return with a sophomore album of rhythmic, ear-worming slacker folk rock songs, recorded completely live with no overdubs in just four days. Nigel Chapman’s lethargic monotone vocals give the whole thing the feel of a daydream, like the wandering high-brow thoughts of a sleepy philosophy/psychology major.”

Jeremy Squires – Shadows
(REVIEW | INTERVIEW)

“Does what the very best folk music can do, an outpouring from one human being to a multitude of others. It’s a record borne out of legitimate heartbreak, the end of a marriage and the death of a loved one, a brave and honest attempt to deal with big life-changing events. Deft songwriting allows Squires to expand these specific, individual scenes into large, engaging metaphors, in which we can find shards of our own experiences. The beauty of it is that the finished work is not just healing and revelatory for the artist. It can help us too.”

Loone & Paper Bee – Now I Know You and See How Wide You Are to the World
(REVIEW)

“Now I Know You and See How Wide You Are to the World is a terrific album. It’s as rich and as complex as life itself, steeped in passion and poetry, whirring like the universe and everything in it. There’s a line at the end of ‘Ugly, I’m Sorry’ that sums up the whole release rather nicely, capturing its in a handful of words far better than I am able to in this review: ‘And I wanna hold your hand / and go explore the pulsing humming darkness’.”

Spartan Jet-Plex – Get Some
(REVIEW)

“Taken at face value, Get Some is an indistinct album, the themes and meanings wrapped in layers of abstract lyrics and varied instrumentation. However, this vagueness itself curls and contorts and creeps into your head, eluding inclinations to describe and detail and thus bypassing the whole processing machinery most music must enter. As such, Kells’s thoughts and feelings arrive whole, unaltered, meaning that you feel what’s being said, even if it’s impossible to put into words.”

Kyle Morton – What Will Destroy You
(REVIEW)

“While Typhoon’s fourth record is still in the works, Morton last month released a surprise solo album, What Will Destroy You. Again the twin themes of tragedy and pleasure are central, as is the idea of catharsis and release. However, while mortality is an intrinsic element, the album does not tread the exact same ground as previous Typhoon releases. What Will Destroy You shifts the focus onto love, more specifically what Morton describes as “the ambivalence of erotic love,” leading to an intimate, surprisingly honest album which delves into things both more wonderful and mundane than your average love songs.”

CHUCK – My Band is a Computer
(REVIEW | INTERVIEW)

“Playing like a collaboration between Owen Ashworth and Bret Easton Ellis, the CHUCK brand of observant and at times cringe-inducingly honest indie pop will no doubt prove divisive. But there’s far more to My Band is a Computer than drugs and self-pity and empty sex. Like the Frog release that Audio Antihero brought us last year, it crams an awful lot into its run-time, covering everything that’s terrible and everything that’s not about being a young adult in the twenty-first century, somehow managing to tap into the human kernel at the centre of our zombified lurch of nostalgia and regret.”

Monarch Mtn – Everyone is Here
(REVIEW)

“It would be wrong to consider the music of Monarch Mtn as simply a two dimensional mope-fest, with Farmer’s poetic lyrics and warm delivery hint at something beyond the misery. The palette is undoubtedly gloomy, blacks and greys and deep blues, but Farmer’s warm vocals and poetic turns of phrase flicker across this twilight like threads of gold.”

Claire Cronin – Came Down a Storm
(REVIEW)

“The real success of Down Came a Storm is how Claire Cronin and John Dieterich combine to spin stories and landscapes from their combined talents, every element given equal standing to conjure not only folk tales but the worlds in which they exist. Here you can feel the wind on your skin, hear it move in the trees, smell its scent of salt and earth and ozone. You can feel it move the characters too, propelling them into dark, poetic places where nature rules and comfort can be found in the starkest of elements.”

Adeem the Artist – Kyle Adem is Dead
(REVIEW | INTERVIEW)

“The word ‘sincere’ is often taken as synonymous for affectionate or sentimental. With Kyle Adem is Dead, Adeem the Artist strives to be sincere in every sense, finding the bravery not just to declare his love for his wife but to voice his fears, his weaknesses, his exasperation with life as we live it. With everything on the table, no lingering mysteries or secrets withheld, there is nothing left to corrupt the good things. Because, after all, Kyle Adem is dead.”

Mal Devisa – Kiid
(REVIEW)

“Kiid is a personal record and plays like condensed version of life, reaching high and falling low, crackling and bursting and simmering under the surface, at times exploding in urgent streams of consciousness as if the words and thoughts can no longer be held in. This is an album that refuses to be reduced to something easily describable, persevering in it’s complexity against the binarizing forces of anxiety or genre or gender or race. Kiid isn’t a self-doubt record or political record, nor a sad record or a happy record. It’s not jazz or gospel or indie rock. Kiid is everything. Kiid is whatever it wants to be.”

Lisa/Liza – Deserts of Youth
(REVIEW)

“Wonderfully minimal and psych-tinged songs that will doubtless appeal to fans of  soft and sad outsider folk artists such as Sarah Winchester. At times it’s gossamer thin, with Victoria’s vocals little more than hushed murmurs, though even in these quiet moments her words hold a kind of understated magnetism, a power which draws in the instrumentation and in turn becomes augmented by it. Deserts of Youth shows you don’t necessarily need to raise your voice to make a statement, that even quiet songs can be imbued with a blazing energy.”

Old Earth – Lay For June
(REVIEW | INTERVIEW)

“Trying to put Old Earth’s music into words seems futile and kind of besides the point. There’s never going to be a satisfactory way to describe art so fluid and weird and instinctive, so all we can tell you is what it sounds like to us. It’s operating on a deeper level, one not easily outlined, playing on some atavistic region of the subconscious that reacts to fear and beauty, that treats intense wonder and dread as the same emotion. It’s the same area of the brain that tells us to light candles and throw coins down wells no matter how secular our society becomes.”

What were your favourite albums of 2016? Let us know through one of the usual channels – we’re on Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr and Instagram.

The post Wake the Deaf’s Favourite Albums of 2016 appeared first on Various Small Flames.

Our choice of songs for this one perhaps isn’t the most subtle, and might well highlight our naivety/ignorance when it comes to the geographic differences between American folk music, but we just went with tracks which we felt capture the mood of Hinojosa’s work in some way. The tracklisting carries links to the artists we’ve covered in the past, if you want to read our thoughts on their music.

Tracklisting:

1) Will the Circle Be Unbroken – Marisa Anderson
2) Floating Rhododendron – Sarah Louise
3) Out West – The Coal Creek Boys
4) Fable – Sam Moss
5) Impress My Memory – Stephen Steinbrink
6) Sometimes – Noel’le Longhaul
7) Hands in Our Names – Karima Walker
8) Mexican Blanket – Wes Tirey
9) Stained Glass Eye – The Dead Tongues
10) Around and Around – Mountain Man
11) Revelation Drift – dbh
12) Dark Was the Night – Ry Cooder

The post Rolando Hinojosa – Klail City appeared first on Various Small Flames.