Evening Hymns – Quiet Energies
(REVIEW | INTERVIEW)

“The album takes the suffocating, nebulous shadow of grieving and distils it into something small and hard and strangely tactile, a mysterious object that will always be there in your pocket, radiating its secret and peculiar brand of comfort. This isn’t about forgetting death, or even really ‘moving on’, instead its about coming to a deeper understanding of one’s life, about how a person can be so shaped by another, and how such an impact can and should be a source of immense pride and joy, no matter how hard some days can be. In other words, Quiet Energies is about understanding how it is in fact life, not death, which shapes us and our view of the world.”

Kathryn Joseph – Bones You Have Thrown Me and Blood I’ve Spilled
(REVIEW)

“This is a simple album about things so complicated that it’s almost impossible to put them into words. It’s about those thoughts and feelings that we all experience but never admit, the things that we, be it through etiquette and embarrassment and fear, dare not confess to others or even ourselves. Bones You Have Thrown Me and Blood I’ve Spilled is an album about people: lonely and loved, corporeal and divine, mortal and terrified yet enduring with a resilient hope that never quite goes out.”

Young Jesus – Grow / Decompose
(REVIEW | INTERVIEW)

“As the title describes so neatly, Grow / Decompose speaks of the familiar paths that human lives follow. Despite all the strangeness, the characters here are going through the age-old problems – depression, anxiety, identity crises, existential terror – the problems of being You and You alone, Molina’s “curse of a human’s life”. For all of the complexity of our existence, we are still locked in the atavistic pattern of life and death, everyone more or less condemned to the same mistakes and fears and joys that we as human beings have been experiencing for generations.”

Danielle Fricke – Moon
(REVIEW)

“Moon is a lesson in stillness, a moment stretched out, questions asked but not answered, a monologue that might never leave the room. The wonder of the album is that the human emotions of love and longing never evaporate, continuing to push through the frost where they are warmed by earthshine, opening up the possibility that the very feelings which caused the pain could be the things which end it. So while the narrator is trapped, they never submit to the vacuous silence of space. Hopes are still hoped and dreams are still dreamed and wishes are cast from cold, cupped hands, skywards.”

Yowler – The Offer
(REVIEW)

“Burns with quiet intensity, its strange lyrics feeling oddly personal, giving the album the intimacy of hearing about someone else’s dreams. Guitars sidle and prowl like shadows and the whole thing seems on the verge of something vaguely dangerous. All eight tracks are a study in the art of minimalism, of the exchange between poetry and negative space. It’s certainly a lot more than just quiet and pretty folk music”

Advance Base – Nephew in the Wild
(REVIEW)

“I don’t know Owen Ashworth, and maybe I’m completely wrong, but he seems like a kind and empathetic generally nice human being, in the same way the best writers seem like people you could be friends with. Even if none of that is true, I guess it doesn’t matter – what is indisputable is the fact that he’s a damn good writer who tells stories that speak to and help us all. While it’s easy to cast him as the lonely boy in front of a keyboard, the truth, at least in my eyes, is that he’s often hardly there at all, a transparent gateway into the lives of people you’ve never met, feeling things you thought you had to suffer through alone.”

Siskiyou – Nervous
(REVIEW)

“Nervous is an album of dizzying scope and ambition, quite literally the tumult of sound and emotion inside one man’s head. It is by turns dark and creepy, shimmering and vibrant. Siskiyou have never sounded so eerie, so threatening, or so expansive. And I have to admit, I don’t think they have ever sounded so good.”

Samantha Crain – Under Branch & Thorn & Tree
(REVIEW | INTERVIEW)

“These are songs played like inner thoughts or secret diary entries of persons not usually able to or justified in expressing their true sentiments, people who are not as tough as they let on, but tougher than they think in the middle of the night. A selection of underdogs living the lives they have been given, not pining for more or complaining at a cosmic injustice. Quiet, noble people in the trenches of everyday life, those with the broadest shoulders and smallest voices and a hard, buried sense of pride who treat hardship like a member of the family.”

Lejsovka & Freund – Fatal Strategies
(REVIEW)

“Fatal Strategies inspires a multitude of strange, lateral thoughts – a soundtrack that doesn’t need a film. The musical translation of the postmodern ruminations of an over-active, twenty-first century brain. Music unearthed by a post-society people, who’ll turn it up loud and sit in their ruined cities, reclaimed by branches and vines, and wonder and wonder about us.”

Frog – Kind of Blah
(REVIEW | INTERVIEW)

“Kind of Blah is a product of this place, an album imbued with the spirits of a sparkling past… Judy Garland is America. Lusty teenagers are America. Jesus Christ is America. So is Dr Pibb and dusty valleys and shut-down bowling alleys and all the communal memories shared by millions just like you. Kind of Blah is America, the U S of A in eleven songs – quirky, joyous, breathless, exhausting, addictive, heartbreaking and downright weird, accelerating towards a distant horizon while keeping its eyes firmly on a halcyon past that sure seems like it should have been more fun.”

Oh, Rose – SEVEN
(REVIEW | REVIEW OF ‘SEVEN’, THE VIDEO)

“Olivia Rose’s voice carries the tracks beyond the genre norms into peculiar territories. Raw and versatile, her vocals range from whelps and wails to quiet, haunted whispers. On their début full length SEVEN, a record on which, if anything, Rose pushes things even further. Lean and wiry guitars lead proceedings while a lo-fi buzz envelopes everything, Rose’s words cutting through like shards of glass. The vocals have the quality of an exorcism, like the unnatural utterings of a twelve year old as some jaded man of faith flicks holy water at her forehead.”

Valley Maker – When I Was a Child
(REVIEW | INTERVIEW)

“When I Was a Child is an album about belief and love in a variety of guises, about the big and unknowable questions, from love and growth and family to God and everlasting life. It’s an album about all of us, basically.”

Eskimeaux – O.K.
(REVIEW)

“O.K. is about reality, the moment we live in and the people we share it with. It’s about the things we want and the things we wish for and the things we can’t control. It’s about doing the best you can and hoping it’s enough, about accepting and learning and growing so that whatever hand you’re dealt, you carve out some semblance of meaning and happiness to make everything worthwhile”

Aero Flynn – S/T
(REVIEW)

“This is not an album in which the emotional arc is self-contained and easily mappable… The redemption is the very fact that Scott is creating words and sounds, that he is letting others know where he is and how he is and why he is. The album is the flare of hope hanging in the night sky, burning bright and incandescent.”

Hip Hatchet – Hold You Like a Harness
(REVIEW)

“[Speaks] of that vulnerable core at the heart of every man, and the desperate, ridiculous attempts to suffocate it with cigarette smoke or drown it in whiskey or cover it over with scars. Hold You Like a Harness is an album about tough guys who know deep down that they aren’t so tough. Yeah they fight and drink and make merry, but they’re also sentimental and lovesick and terrified of everything.”

Mike Pace & the Child Actors – Best Boy
(REVIEW)

“Best Boy is for the children of the 80s and 90s, reminiscing about the age where entertainment exploded, where VHS tapes and cable TV transformed us into constant consumers. Of course, as consumers we were sold promises, told we merely needed x, y and z to be happy and successful and pretty and popular. It’s kind of ironic that a time built on visions of the future is now seen as a utopia locked in the past. Pace gets at this feeling by writing feel-good songs tinged with longing, nothing too sad or serious, nor a Father John Misty-style ironic assault. Instead, Best Boy is a wistful celebration of what we had and presents some convincing reasons for why we feel the way we do.”

Fanpage – LYA
(REVIEW)

“Fanpage’s music occupies a space between life and imitation, too mechanical to be described as organic yet too intuitive and mysterious for machines. It wanders a strange distance ahead of the human race, amongst a chaos born of our need for order. Love and delirium and bright white fear roil beneath the feedback, humanity kicking and twisting within a noise filled with myth and magic and dread. Terrifying and beautiful and glorious, LYA is an album for the information age, where data has exploded to incomprehensible volumes and become its own wilderness.”

Titus Andronicus – The Most Lamentable Tragedy
(REVIEW)

“Life (and especially mental illness) isn’t a neat Freytagian pyramid, so why should a representation of it conform to expectations? […] You are left with the impression that the band have said “fuck it, we’re doing it our way”, rejecting a clear genre in favour of whatever felt right at any given time. This kind of zealous self-belief in their own work is interesting, as it’s at odds with Our Hero’s struggles to accept himself as Himself, and sees Titus Andronicus cutting swathes through the field of wannabes, imposters and pretenders and stepping up to the plate as the twenty-first century’s bona fide punk rock band.”

Elvis Depressedly – New Alhambra
(REVIEW)

“This is not a born-again Love-The-World-Because-Life-Is-Great sort of album. Elvis Depressedly will not mend broken bones or cast out demons or have you walking across hot coals. Instead they say that afflictions are not all there is, that you are not defined solely by your circumstances. They say that peace and hope are never out of reach and offer an achievable version of optimism, one which does not require manic enthusiasm or God-like goodwill but instead a pinch of determination and a firm belief in love.”

Nathaniel Rateliff & The Night Sweats – S/T
(REVIEW)

“Nathaniel Rateliff & The Night Sweats could be your favourite anti-heroes of the sixties, the forgotten friend of Otis Redding and Sam & Dave, or maybe from even further back, a band of villains rolling into nameless pre-war towns to cause shitstorms in cowboy brawl-bars and put smiles faces for one night only. That there is a serious side is less a surprise than a foregone conclusion, because no man has conjured this kind of bone-level fervour out of a pleasant existence. No, here are people staring down the barrel, people stranded in a sea of beer, locked inside some breakneck motion in which a grin and a grimace are practically indistinguishable. Whether this is a defiant two fingers or last hurrah seems unclear even to Rateliff, himself too caught up in a compulsion to dance and scream and shout. Whatever you take from this record, one thing is clear: They can’t put you in the ground if you’re still moving.”

What were your favourite albums of the year? 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 2015 appeared first on Various Small Flames.

“[David] descends the spirals of grief after losing his wife… With death and decay quite literally pervading his house and life, David finds himself both terrified by his situation yet drawn towards some obscure peace with it, as if giving in to a dark and fungal siren”

Amelia Gray is back with her third collection of short stories, Gutshot. As the title suggests, this is an uncomfortable book. Like, being-shot-square-in-the-guts level uncomfortable. There’s a man who vomits every time he speaks (and carries an empty pop bottle for convenience), mutual genital mutilation between a couple struggling to conceive a child, a family who carve up an over-sized heart with kitchen knives. There are giant snakes and desecrated graveyards and twins within twins. And yes, there is blood and shit and mucus in large quantities. 

As in Threats, many of the characters in Gutshot seem aware of their situation but unable to change, as if passengers on a train called Life or Destiny which they understand will arrive at its destination regardless of anything they might do. These are people caught in a strange stases, pervaded by vague sensations they can see and feel but not avoid, sensations which eat away at their insides until they are hulled and hollow. Opener ‘In The Moment’ is a good example, a story where a couple eradicate all references of the past or future from their apartment, removing all context from their existence and thus making life at once fascinating and impossible. See also ‘Away From’, the tale of a kidnapped woman who freezes at the top of the stairs when trying to escape. Reading these stories is like watching a fungus bloom across a wall, like watching a slow-motion video of yourself going up in flames.

This feeling hangs over the majority of the stories, even those in which the characters are decisive. Even ‘The Labyrinth’, which sees a not-so-brave man decide to be brave teeters toward a cryptic ending, or rather ends cryptically before any real conclusion. This is typical Gray, never quite giving the reader that satisfying click of recognition, the realisation of where a story is going or what it means. Good people aren’t rewarded and bad people aren’t punished and even passages that first appear clear allegories or fables skew into confusion. In ‘The Labyrinth’, the narrator, Jim, is forced to carry an (heavy) enigmatic disk through the maze:

“I don’t know about this,” I said.

“It’s the Phiastos Disk,” Dale said. “I paid a pretty penny so mind where you set it.”

It did seem to be imbued with some significance.

And so Jim takes the disk into the labyrinth without ever understanding why. Gray’s grotesque imagery is much the same. It remains important, vital, to her work without serving any clear function (ie. any ham-fisted metaphorical purpose), as if its meaning is so large it’s impossible to focus on. ‘Year of the Snake’ is set up like a strange and ambiguous fairy tale that never narrows down to some moral principle, while ‘The Swan as Metaphor for Love’ begins like an amusing love-is-actually-terrible gag before subverting the subversion, delving so far into horrible, biological truths that you’re left with an existential consideration so primal it registers as a taste in the mouth.

I could go on: ‘Device,’ ‘These Are Fables’ and the title story all seem to tee up some valuable punchline without following through, highlighting something that makes Gray’s writing so special. By not giving answers, or sending explicit messages, she manages to create characters and situations which feel real despite their surreality. Whether they have a device which can predict the future, an unending compulsion to say thank you or a prostitute locked in the heating ducts of their home, each and every character is vividly, fatally, human.

To review the collection as a whole is a difficult job. The book reads like a carefully constructed chaos too nuanced to be unified into a clear theme. Occasionally an image or theme is amplified by what seems like inadvertent recurrence, while other times they clash messily leaving once-clear messages and morals adrift in ambiguity. This gives Gray’s design an decidedly organic feel, each piece, ignorant of the rest, fulfils its own role as if it is the most important thing in the world, creating a system of blind parts working furiously toward some obscure goal, and giving Fernando Vicente‘s artwork a whole new meaning.

Gutshot is out now, published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

Seeing as we are primarily a music website, we thought we’d included a playlist of songs to accompany each book review. The tracks aren’t necessarily directly related to the anything in the stories, but rather get close to the same sorts of imagery and moods. Enjoy.

The post Amelia Gray – Gutshot appeared first on Various Small Flames.

Adeline Hotel

“Exists within that small and fleeting pocket in time and space that opens just before you take off from a familiar location” – we premièred the first song from an upcoming Adeline Hotel EP

Morning River Band

“Songs about those men down on their luck but too stubborn to change… doomed to making the same old mistakes and who continue chasing the same misguided remedies” – we wrote about Abyssal Chanelling, the latest album from Morning River Band

On The Water

“A strange stop-motion collage that sits perfectly with the lyrical themes of death, decay and, naturally, life” – we premièred a video by Nnamdi Ogbonnaya for ‘Born in Reverse’, the opening track from On The Water’s Cordelia.

Bells Atlas

“Using precise imagery to trace imprecise, unknowable things, the words coalescing with the music to create something unclear but imbued with meaning, as if reaching somewhere deeper within your brain or soul than you can consciously go” – the vibrant and mystical Hyperlust EP from Bells Atlas

Frog

“Queens is the most diverse county in America, and maybe the world. Kind of Blah is about living here, in this city, which is sometimes incredibly wonderful and other times feels a lot like prison and most times probably both at once” – we spoke with Frog about listening to Jagged Little Pill with your mom, the brilliance of Lightning Bolt and some terrible advice from David BermanFuneral Sounds

“Casa Ruby strives to enable people to be treated as people” – a benefit compilation from Funeral Sounds in support of multicultural LGBTQ organisation Casa Ruby

Girlpool

“In a weird way, Girlpool have grown up – becoming confident enough to share their dreams and vulnerabilities and in turn galvanise a lonely generation too afraid of ridicule to live the lives they desire” – Girlpool’s new album Before The World Was Big sees the band offer a sustainable and productive antidote to the pressures of growing up

Advance Base

“Sweetly sad stories about lonely Midwesterners trying to make sense of their troubled pasts” – mark your calendars, August will see a new album from Owen Ashworth’s Advance Base

Two White Cranes

“A clear advancement from anything on Two White Cranes, fleshed out with electric guitar and drums and focussed in its writing” – we previewed Radisson Blue, the forthcoming album from Two White Cranes

Evening Hymns

“I could go on about how [Evening Hymns are] brave and heartbreaking and intensely personal, or how [they] made me feel okay and less alone” – Evening Hymns has us very excited for their new album Quiet Energies

Mitski

“I’m not the white boy. I’m not in a position to be heard whatever I make” – Mitski spoke with Caralyn Green for Pittsburgh City Paper about being an introverted person of colour in music. [See our review of Bury Me at Makeout Creek]

Katie Dey

“I remembered that I had earphones in my coat pocket. I plugged them into my phone and listened to asdfasdf and rested my head on the train window. Closing my eyes, what was initially a gloomy train ride turned into something more cathartic” – Gold Flake Paint talked about Katie Dey’s asdfasdf and the restorative power of music

Ornette Coleman

“A giant of 20th century music, pushing jazz into new harmonic territory and reconceiving the way in which musicians improvised” – Stewart Smith wrote about the career and legacy of Ornette Coleman for The Quietus

Long Neck

“An album with no season, or maybe it’s every season, or maybe it’s just the season when you feel most alone” – Stereogum are streaming Heights by Lily Mastrodimos’s Long Neck

Mitski (again)

Out of Town Films shot Mitski playing ‘I Will’ in the middle of nowhere

Swell Tone’s Summertime Sanity

“Getting lost in the heat and the sense of freedom inherent in the forthcoming season is tempting, to say the least” – Shana over at Swell Tone has put together a selection of summer songs, including Yowler, Girlpool, Hot Palms and The Washboard Abs. Any playlist that opens with ‘Skin of Your Yellow Country Teeth’ gets a thumbs up from us.

Kathryn Joseph

We liked Kathryn Joseph’s Bones You Have Thrown Me Blood I’ve Spilled an awful lot. Last week she played some songs for the Roddy Hart Show on BBC Scotland and it sounded great. Check it out on the BBC iPlayer.

And Finally… the 8tracks Playlist(s) of the Week

This week’s winner is mix-master Adam, AKA Songsfortheday, and his summer soundtracks. There are separate day and night editions, so he has you covered for all your musical needs.

The post Week in Review: #5 (8th – 13th June) appeared first on Various Small Flames.

The May Roundup mix below contains a track from every artist we featured during the month (apart from Sharon van Etten and Noah Gundersen, sorry!), so plug your headphones in and enjoy some new music. Click the artists’ names in the tracklisting below to be taken to the post in question.

Tracklisting:

1. No More Sad Songs – Elvis Depressedly
2. Catchyalater – Frog
3. The Day Draws Near – The Washboard Abs
4. Every House is On Fire – Island Eyes
5. Forever – Boosegumps
6. Open Casket Hidden Meaning – Molly Drag
7. The Arp – Aidan Knight
8. Atheist Money – Adam Stafford
9. Lynx – The Tarantula Waltz
10. Milo – Young Jesus
11. Slow Dark Water – Furnsss
12. Aubrey – Debris Slide
13. Foreign Hands – Aisha Badru
14. I Need Never Get Old – Nathaniel Rateliff & The Night Sweats
15. Outside the Pale – Samantha Crain
16. Home – The Modern Folk
17. Staggers and Rise – Small Houses
18. Yannina – Jake Houlsby
19. To the Black Horizon – Mark Timmins
20. Heart – Bobby’s Oar
21. Bling – Bells Atlas
22. And You Meant the Sea – Ruth & Trudy
23. Party – Lake Michigan
24. Growing Leaves – Gay Angel
25. On and On – Zee Town and the Dog Boys
26. Travel Map – Hip Hatchet
27. Zoa – Batte Ave.
28. The Bird – Kathryn Joseph
29. …Until They’re Called – Old Earth

May 2015 Roundup from Wake The Deaf on 8tracks Radio.

The post May Roundup – A Mixtape appeared first on Various Small Flames.

Hip Hatchet

“Speak[s] of that vulnerable core at the heart of every man, and the desperate, ridiculous attempts to suffocate it with cigarette smoke or drown it in whiskey or cover it over with scars”- Philippe Bronchtein weaves timeless folk tales about the vanity and pride of tough guys who have been on the road too long.

Frog

“The U S of A in eleven songs – quirky, joyous, breathless, exhausting, addictive, heartbreaking and downright weird, accelerating towards a distant horizon while keeping its eyes firmly on a halcyon past that sure seems like it should have been more fun.” – some words about Kind of Blah, the excellent, endlessly quotable album from Frog out now on Audio Antihero.

The Modern Folk

“Folk songs don’t require banjos and fiddles, it’s something a little deeper than that” – some bona fide folk music from The Modern Folk.

Kathryn Joseph

“A simple album about things so complicated that it’s almost impossible to put them into words” – we used Marilynne Robinson to describe what makes Kathryn Joseph’s Bones You Have Thrown Me and Blood I’ve Spilled so special.

Island Eyes

“Confronts the uncertainty of every life, admitting his fear about pretty much every possible scenario while finding solace in the fact that this uncertainty binds us all” – The self-titled album from Derek Janzen’s Island Eyes is an epic metaphor for your everyday quests.

Adam Stafford

“Could quite easily make solid, radio-friendly, painted-by-numbers pop music that would be lapped up by the undiscerning masses, but instead endeavours to make innovative, progressive music” – Adam Stafford’s new single ‘Atheist Money’ bodes well for his forthcoming album on Song, By Toad.

Bobby’s Oar

“If you placed Nana Grizol, The Front Bottoms and The Hotelier in a blender and seasoned them with acoustic guitars, throaty emo vocals and the odd mathy flourish…” – The Weeds in Your Garden by Bobby’s Oar is a passionate, defiant slice of pop-punk-folk.

Debris Slide

“Lo-fi rock music that sits at a crossroads between shimmery shoegaze, oddball experimentalism and early nineties noise pop” – some noisy, deranged pop songs from Nottingham’s Debris Slide.

Women in Music Journalism

‘“What’s the big deal? You’re a groupie.” She replied, “I’m a woman who writes about rock and roll.” His answer: “Same difference.” Groupies have proved an enduring stereotype of women’s participation in rock: worshipful, gorgeous, and despised.‘ – Anwen Crawford explains why the world needs female rock critics in The New Yorker.

Spotify: a Good Thing?

“As both an independent musician and a music fan, I’m here to give you a new headline: I believe Spotify is saving the industry” – David McMillin of Fort Francis writes for PopMatters on how Spotify might not be as bad as some would have you believe. We don’t know what to think anymore…

The State of the Music Industry (or, Goodbye Thrash Hits)

“It still pains us to see other, larger organisations dumping content online with little thought to the medium they’re working in or the audience they’re speaking to” – Thrash Hits went on an indefinite hiatus with this closing piece on the state of music industry and journalism in 2015.

Henry Demos / Lewtrakimou / Nice Legs

“I could be wrong here but I have a theory that people want to make loud music everywhere in the world” – START-TRACK spoke to Henry Demos & Lewtrakimou about Nice Legs, solo work and the South Korean music scene.

Fields / Molina

Another week, another great Jason Molina tribute article over at Common Folk Music, this time courtesy of Jeffrey Fields of The Morning River Band. Be sure not to miss the cover of ‘Whip-Poor-Will’ while you’re there.

Casiotone For The Painfully Alone

“I was pretty much always nervous in those days. The memories of my awkward, fidgety & depressed early 20’s have come rushing back to me, leaving me feeling awkward, fidgety & depressed all over again” – Owen Ashworth, now of Advance Base, came across an old CD of a radio session he did as Casiotone For the Painfully Alone back in 2001. Check it out on Bandcamp.

HI54LOFI’s Mix Tape Radio

Jeremy over at HI54LOFI posted episode 55 of his Mix Tape Radio series and it’s brilliant as usual.

Swell Tone’s MEGA SUMMER BABES

The cool people over at Swell Tone have put together a great summer playlist which should see you set for the coming months.

And Finally… the 8tracks Playlist of the Week

It’s this one by Annievain. I stumbled across it and it’s really dreamy and cool.

we’re changing from annievain on 8tracks Radio.

The post Week in Review: #3 (25-29th May) appeared first on Various Small Flames.

The record opens with ‘the bird’, a song that utilises animal analogies to describe the strange intimate-yet-remote relationship we share with loved ones. “You bring me dead birds and then you go” sings Joseph, “and it sounds like all our lives and it sounds like you do not know me and never will.” The track is both unsettling and comforting in its honesty, facing up to the awful truth that we will always be separate and distinct, even from those we love the most. While this is something that is usually ignored (for the sake of our sanity) or magnified into melodrama (quite probably also for the sake of our sanity), Joseph (paradoxically, I know) lets the listener into her innermost thoughts in a way normally only possible in the strongest, most unflinching of novels.

In this way Bones You Have Thrown Me and Blood I’ve Spilled brings to mind Marilynne Robinson‘s Housekeeping. At various points during the novel the narrator Ruthie finds herself alienated from-/abandoned by her mother and sister and aunt, leaving her alone in the world. Rather than write this as the the usual hard-luck-with-happy-ending Hollywood story, Robinson’s character confronts and travels through confusion and grief and studies them from the other side, coming to appreciate the fragility of human relationships and realise that our desire to maintain them is what makes life so beautiful:

“They walk ahead of us, and walk too fast, and forget us, they are so lost in thoughts of their own, and sooner or late they disappear. The only mystery is that we expect it to be otherwise.”  

But before the clarity, Ruthie sees and does a lot of strange things, actions which barely make sense to her or those involved, let alone others around them. You get the impression that the characters are subject to forces larger than themselves, things they are not equipped to understand. With this album, Joseph paints a similar picture by presenting her feelings straight, appreciating their importance without being able to grasp their context, an autobiography that goes beyond superficial times and places. Poetic and strange but never contrived, she appears to be trying to convey something that sits just outside of her view, or else is so large that it is only possible to see a small speck at any given time. What’s more, she seems to realise that what feels vital to her is foreign to others, but, without any other option, strives on regardless, surrendering to a diligent ignorance, a promise to try and to love in a world too detailed and complex to understand.

To write about something so deep requires a skilful balance between the explicit and implicit, lyrical and beautiful yet clear and true. Thankfully, like Marilynne Robinson, Joseph proves more than capable. By knitting together abstract imagery and phrases, she crafts something larger than the sum of its parts, forgoing clear song structure and even good grammar in a way which accentuates the deeply personal feel. “I hear your babys here your babys here your babys hear your babies,” she sings on ‘the blood’, “and the wind will blow and the seed be sown and the made of blood is the only loved.” Every song contains similarly striking language, and Joseph’s voice and melancholy piano make the whole thing creepy in the way that we all secretly think we’re creepy . Take ‘the bone’ for example:

“Under the bird of the prey and black hole made of what will not grow back still and the born of the loved and lost heart hard of stone and mouth of dust you are the bone sticking in my throat”

This is a simple album about things so complicated that it’s almost impossible to put them into words. It’s about those thoughts and feelings that we all experience but never admit, the things that we, be it through etiquette and embarrassment and fear, dare not confess to others or even ourselves. Bones You Have Thrown Me and Blood I’ve Spilled is an album about people: lonely and loved, corporeal and divine, mortal and terrified yet enduring with a resilient hope that never quite goes out.

You can buy Bones You Have Thrown Me and Blood I’ve Spilled now via Bandcamp (and via Hits the Fan Records).

P.S. Bones You Have Thrown Me and Blood I’ve Spilled is up for the Scottish Album of the Year award. Joseph has some stiff competition (we really like The Twilight Sad) but gets the nod from us. You can vote too, so head on over to the website before the polls close at midnight tonight to make sure your favourite (*whispers* Kathryn!) lifts the cup.

The post Kathryn Joseph – Bones You Have Thrown Me and Blood I’ve Spilled appeared first on Various Small Flames.