This exploratory spirit is central to Whodunnit, the brand new full-length from Adeline Hotel set for release via Ruination Record Co. next month. It’s an album following a tradition which lists the likes of Gillian Welch, Neil Young and Van Morrison among its practitioners. Songs as a form of stream of consciousness, not only in terms of lyrics but the very sound itself. The sense of having tapped into some wellspring of movement or momentum and choosing to lean into the flow.

The title track was the gateway into this style. “With his acoustic guitar dropped to a deep, open tuning,” Sam Sodomsky describes in the liner notes, “the Brooklyn artist noticed a fragile melody resonating from the strings, stretching out like a neverending highway.” From there came lyrics, emerging as profound meditations that unfurl in a trance-like flow and introducing the central theme of the record. That of transition, existing in the strange space between loss and whatever comes next, searching for clues as to exactly what happened, not to mention where the future might lead. But while the title evokes classic detective fiction, the possibility of cracking the case remains distant. Because what if there was no guilty party or innocent wronged? What if nothing happened but life itself?

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Part of the process involved Max Blansjaar learning the power of authenticity and restraint. “I challenged myself to get straightforward,” as he explains. “Stop chasing complexity and Follow Your Nose!” The album False Comforts feels very much a product of this newfound understanding. The sound of an artist reacting to the fundamental uncertainty of the contemporary moment—be it personally, with Blansjaar reaching the age between school and adulthood, or globally with everything the 2020s have brought—by deciding against any attempt to chase trends or fit into brackets and instead work from the gut.

A line from Brad Liening’s poetry collection Are You There, God? It’s Me, Whitney Houston made an impact. “some explanations / last forever and never / answer a thing.” False Comforts takes such wisdom to heart, finding not frustration in uncertainty or incompleteness, but rather something like freedom. “I knew these songs would be false comforts,” as Blansjaar continues. “They wouldn’t fix anything, they wouldn’t give me answers, they wouldn’t help, they were pointless, unproductive hideouts, explanations lasting forever. And I found a strange comfort in them for that. Maybe someone else will, too.”

Lead single ‘Anna Madonna’ welcomes the audience into such an endeavour. A song which acknowledges the hurtful nature of the world and the resulting temptation to react with anger or bitterness. Yet delivered with a playful rhythm and gentle indie pop charm, it becomes the antithesis to such moods. A message of empathy and sincerity persisting in spite of the hopeless conditions which birthed it.

Anna Madonna, don’t shut the door on me
Don’t block all your windows, so nobody knows you’re here
I know you’re sick of the political climate
And every day you fight a hopeless war
I know you think your girlfriend hates you in secret
But don’t take it out on me
It’s nothing to do with me

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After the success of previous LP Cola, A Beacon School (AKA New York songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Patrick J Smith) has announced a return with brand new full-length yoyo later this year via Grind Select. The previous album was notable for its ability to combine bright pop with shoegaze and electronic elements, and lead single ‘Potion’ suggests the new record furthers this style. A song of sunny tones and pressing energy which provides all the lush textures of dream pop without sacrificing any of the detail or momentum. “‘Potion’ was written in one sitting back in 2019 and has been a live staple since then,” Smith explains. “It’s about feeling a burst of excitement about something new but also the fear that accompanies it.” Check out the video by Chase Wagner below:

yoyo is out on the 13th October 13 via Grind Select and you can pre-order it now.

Bo Milli – Making Friends

Be it the digital age dramas of ‘FOMO‘ or the climate anxiety of ‘Good Kid‘, Bergen-based songwriter Bo Milli is an artist dialled in to the pressing issues of the contemporary moment. Latest standalone single ‘Making Friends’ is no less immediate in its concerns, though its focus has a more timeless quality. A track which charts the rollercoaster ride of young life through the prism of a hectic night out, capturing a sense of both the carefree abandon and creeping loneliness of late nights, new faces and a sense of endless possibility.

‘Making Friends’ is out now and available from the Bo Milli Bandcamp page.

Cal Rifkin – Break My Heart

Based in Washington D.C., Cal Rifkin is the project of Erik Grimm (guitar/vocals), Keith Butler Jr. (drums) and Robin Rhodes (bass) who bonded over a “shared love for greasy Ledo’s pizza, early 90s baseball aesthetics, and rock ‘n’ roll music.” Late last month, the trio released Better Luck Next Time, a five-song EP that plays like a distillation of their signature style, namely hook-laden power pop with singalong choruses, vocal harmonies and enough noisy rock ‘n roll grit to keep the rock heads onside. There’s absolutely no filler across the record, but current favourite ‘Break My Heart’ might be the best introduction. It’s an energetic rock song that skirts the line between cool and sincere, complete with a ludicrously catchy chorus.

So come on and break my heart in two
Could be the best thing you could do

Isabel Crespo Pardo – la l​í​nea será

Based in New York, Isabel Crespo Pardo is a Latinx vocalist, improviser-composer and interdisciplinary artist. Combining music, visual art, text and performance, their work is a web of both composition and improvisation that sets out to explore (and then evolve in response to) what they describe as “the intra/interpersonal spaces they inhabit.” Later this month, Pardo will release an album, el rostro (des​)​cubierto, on Lobby Art Records, “forty minutes of wondering and wandering with hand over heart,” as they put it, “aching in solitude and giving and craving forgiveness.” Lead single ‘la l​í​nea será’ introduces the record’s sound, which sees Pardo joined by Afarin Nazarijou (qanun) Skyler Hill (electric guitar) and Seajun Kwon (acoustic bass) to create something that sounds somehow novel and timeless.

Katie Von Schleicher – Elixir

Since her last record Consummation released in 2020 on Full Time Hobby and Ba Da Bing Records, Katie Von Schleicher has released a handful of singles; first two b-sides from the album and then standalone piece ‘could’ which she described as “a fun foray into the world of strings.” Fast forward a couple of years and the Brooklyn-based artist has unveiled a new single, ‘Elixir’. Released via Durham, NC label Sipsman, the track is a duet with Aly Spaltro (aka Lady Lamb) and showcases a lighter, more playful side to Von Schleicher’s work, all droll delivery and cuttingly sincere lyrics. “How can I reach out to the poems that I’ve loved, embrace plain speech more,” Von Schleicher asks of the song’s inspiration, “and how, for just one goddamned time, can I bring my sense of humour into my music?”

my body with blood – Time and Again

‘Time and Again’ introduces the music of Asheville-based slowcore project, my body with blood. Together with Eli Whitlow (drums), Ivo Pestana (bass) and Cass Dayton (backing vocals), they make a melancholic but never morose sound, probing into the frustrations of a repeating pattern. “I lost a friend, his father tried / To bring me back to Jesus,” goes one of the verses. “The year will end / And I’ll count the ways that I’ve failed.” But there’s a certain sense of reflection to the tone, a perspective only gained by some modicum of distance, and with it the prospect that such cycles might at least be weathered if not entirely conquered.

It’s the same
Time, time and again
I’ve memorized the cycle
The cycle by now

You can find my body with blood on Instagram.

Pony Girl – Laff It Off

Following on from last year’s shadowy Enny One Will Love You, Pony Girl are returning later this year with new LP, Laff It Off, on Paper Bag Records. A release described as a sister record to the previous album, examining many of the same themes and situations but this time with a focus on the playful side of things. The title track is itself the twin of previous single, ‘Running in Circles‘, which we described as “a slow-burning pop number which slowly unravels into something more chaotic as another crushingly mundane day in work pushes the narrator to the brink.” The new single presents us with the same situation but reacts differently, a refusal in the face of the employment grindstone which emerges with bright humanity intact. “We first wrote [the refrain] ‘I don’t wanna be working every day’ as a lark,” the band explain, “but ultimately fell for it as a chant to get through the next shift.” Watch the video below produced by K Collective and directed by DELGATZ:

Laff It Off is out via Paper Bag Records on the 27th October and you can pre-order it now.

Quinn Devlin – Movie Scene

Back in April we featured ‘Lilian’, a single from Pennsylvania-born multi-instrumentalist Quinn Devlin, a track we described as “solo intimacy blown up into something communal, the sound’s careful richness developing into an affirming final chorus.” Devlin has since been picked up by Lorkin O’Reilly’s A For Effort Records, and plans to release full-length album Pair Of Threes later this year. In the meantime, new track ‘Movie Scene’ gives a taster of what’s to come. Its winding folk style paints a summer afternoon in all of its ideal fondness, channelling the country classics to invoke a nostalgically golden hue.

Pair Of Threes is out this September via A For Effort Records.

Stephen Steinbrink – Cruiser

With new album Disappearing Coin coming later this summer on Western Vinyl, Stephen Steinbrink has unveiled a brand new single, ‘Cruiser’. The record’s title refers to a magician’s trick Steinbrink saw on Youtube—where a coin is made to vanish in front of a viewing highschooler—speaking to the blend of ordinary and extraordinary which marks the songs. The new single aims to reach for the perspective of this amazed, awkward bystander. An attempt to write from the perspective of a character embedded within the “conservative defoliated suburban environments,” a landscape familiar to Steinbrink from his own youth, with Boy Scouts (AKA Boy Scouts) lending vocals too. As he continues:

This character feels he has to hide what he loves, hyper-vigilant for opportunities to mold himself into a shape that will be accepted by the people around him, independent because no one is paying attention. There are parts of myself in the character, but it’s mostly an amalgamation of friends I grew up with in the punk/DIY scene in Phoenix in the late 2000s before we all moved away.

Disappearing Coin is out on the 18th August via Western Vinyl and you can pre-order it now.

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This playful and exploratory intention was clear on 2018’s Zion, a record they described as “the first chapter in a musical novel” that aimed to provide a multi-faceted portrait of life in Brooklyn. The band, namely Birnbaum, Nick Jost and Sean Mullins, plus long-time collaborator Katie Von Schleicher, captured a patchwork of emotions with stylistic diversity, throwing influences into a big bubbling pot and serving it steaming hot.

A lot has happened since then, including a further double single, a Birnbaum solo album, and something of a creative existential crisis (something Gabriel talks about at length in The Rumpus piece), not to mention the general global chaos of the last few years. But despite all that, Wilder Maker have returned with a brand new record, Male Models, on Western Vinyl. An album that can be viewed as the second chapter of that musical novel and a very clear sign that Birnbaum is still committed to reinventing indie rock through a plural, diverse sound.

If Zion achieved this via a diversity of styles, Male Models pushes further. Because although the ostensible lead, Birnbaum in fact provides lead vocals on barely half of the songs. The rest are lead by guest vocalists, with Katie von Schleicher returning on several tracks along with appearances from Felicia Douglass (of Dirty Projectors and Ava Luna), Alex Schaaf (aka Yellow Ostrich), V.V. Lightbody, Mutual Benefit and even Adam Duritz of Counting Crows fame. If the two main aims of Wilder Maker are to stretch music beyond the conventions of the traditional rock band and evoke the multiplicity of urban life, then this feels like the logical progression. Open up the band to outside influences. Conjure a chorus of voices by becoming the chorus itself.

This range of voices and genre-bending style means Male Models sometimes feels like the work of more than one band, a comment on the shuffled musical diet of the masses in the age of $potify and giant Youtube playlists. It’s something Birnbaum was conscious of, even encouraged, and which plays into the overarching atmosphere. That shifting, slightly wild vibe of a party where dancing and good times denature into drunken fights and vomit and the inevitable gnaw of dawn-time melancholy. “We all listen to playlists a lot, even us album diehards,” explains Birnbaum, “I’ve been keeping an ever-expanding playlist of songs that I never want to skip, with all of these different voices back to back. I wanted to make a record that sounded like a playlist in this way; it became a kind of songwriting challenge for me.”

Album opener ‘Letter of Apology’ (a song that has been part of the Wilder Maker live set for a while) conjures just such a party in four and a half minutes, written in the shame-soaked aftermath of a particularly bad night. “I’m sorry I was late to your party where everyone was so effortless,” it begins, “I was starting at a wall for no discernible reason counting all the thumbtack holes.” From there our narrator goes on to become the centre of attention for all the wrong reasons—bumming cigarettes, throwing up on the bathmat, making a scene in front of the other guests.

I’m sorry that I told your sister’s boyfriend he was history’s greatest monster
And got up on a chair and announced to the party that we were all living in a fiction

The song plays as the introduction to the album. A recognisable face in the crowd which signals what to expect from the evening, before melting back into the pack as the focus shifts and other protagonists emerge. But even as we move onto the following tracks, voiced by Felicia Douglass and Mutual Benefit in turn, there’s little doubt whose party we’re at. Because the real triumph is how Birnbaum incorporates the various personalities while preserving whatever it is which makes the Wilder Maker sound his own. The collaborators not just guesting on the record but buying into it completely, ensuring the soul of the project remains intact. The songs’ sardonic humour and existential angst, the population of broken characters and unreliable narrators who call them home.

Take ‘Oh Anna’, where Duritz’s familiar vocals simmer with barely concealed venom, taut and terse despite the warm simplicity of the chorus. “I had the immense and surreal privilege of going to record Adam Duritz on lead vocals at his apartment,” Birnbaum explains. “He understood the song completely and delivered it with the serrated edge the lyrics demand.” This commitment to the vision births a character complete with their own situation and history, introducing them so vividly you sense they’ve always lived in Birnbaum’s doom-laden world, regardless of whether we’ve happened upon them previously.

With this established, the question is then just one of where Birnbaum decides to take us, and the answer, it seems, is just wherever he fancies. Smooth pop jams (‘A Professional)’ and electrified indie rock (‘All Power Must Remain Hidden’, ‘5 Train’) sit alongside melancholy piano ballads (‘Jason’) and elegantly lyrical indie pop (‘New Anxiety’). A standout is the Katie von Schleicher-led ‘Silver Car’, a country-tinged swayer which plays wishful desires against lurking instability, a heady mix doomed to crash upon the rocks of physical reality. “Another year of economy cars / Corpse crumpled on the side of the iron divide,” she sings. “There’s not enough coffee in the county to keep me safe from my own mind.” The song captures the record’s mood as well as any other. Dreaming that motion might prove the key to escape, even if that motion is nothing but the ceaseless orbit of the same old world.

Male Models is out now via Western Vinyl. Get it from the Wilder Maker Bandcamp page.

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Around the same time, female voices in literature became a source of inspiration and sanctuary. Von Schleicher cites the likes of Carmen Maria Machado, Rachel Cusk and Rebecca Solnit, and upon reading a piece on Vertigo by the latter, Von Schleicher began to join the dots. Solnit’s essay uses the film to explore the dichotomy between modes of romance; “communion,” i.e. mutual respect and understanding between both sides of a relationship, versus  “consummation,” a term Solnit uses to describe the “wandering, stalking, haunting” pursuit of love depicted in the film. “Told from the man’s point of view, Vertigo is awash with romantic fog,” Solnit describes, “but from the woman’s perspective, it’s about being forced to disappear.”

Taking this idea as a starting point to delve into more private thoughts, Consummation is a formidably personal exploration of trauma which promises to see Von Schleicher “blast past the lo-fi power ballads” of 2017’s Shitty Hits, swelling in various directions both sonic and thematic.

In anticipation, Von Schleicher has released the album’s first two singles. ‘Caged Sleep’ came out a few weeks ago, a song based on a mysteriously significant dream. “While the rest of the songs were being mixed, I had a vivid dream with a snake the color of lapis lazuli,” Von Schleicher describes. “That became ‘Caged Sleep,’ an ode to a dream that ended a period of my life.” It’s something like a pop song, upbeat percussion skipping beneath synths and sax and Von Schleicher’s dream-like croon. This surreal edge is amped up in Matt Strickland’s video, which sees shadowy scenes illuminated in hues of red and blue and sickly green.

The second single is ‘Nowhere,’ a track about both embracing and trying to overcome “the close and tight feeling of being alone.” The dreaminess is softer, less ominous, as Von Schleicher sings of being home by herself before leaving to drive through the night alone, and the song suggests a slower side to what is shaping up to be one of the year’s most ambitious and interesting albums.

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Wilder Maker are back with a double single that picks up where the album left off, adding new layers to the environment it brought to life. “To me both songs are sort of an extension of the Zion universe,” Birnbaum explains. “For example, the character “Cal” appears in ‘Rose Room’ and he’s also the character that the narrator is talking to in ‘Cocaine Man’ off the LP. I like the idea of the same characters reappearing over and over so that I can create a whole universe that’s full of its own connections and clues and locations, the way some authors do.”

First track ‘Love So Well’ is a slow shake of a country song emanating from the aftermath of a relationship, a still, wistful space created when your dreams slide from the canvas and through the cracks in the floor. However, as Von Schleicher’s warm croon suggests, the experience is not entirely unpleasant, something in the fresh air and blank space possessing a soothing effect, as though love was but a fever dream that breaks upon dawn, reduced to flashes of heat and light that haunt the morning air.

As the light falls from my face
All my history is outpaced I find
A new peace of mind
headlights start to dot the lanes
I could be anyone
I aim my future with my hands
I am no one now

Casting itself into the demented world we call our own, ‘Rose Room’ is rock strung out and noodling, shot through with an electric frisson that might be exhilaration or rising dread. How do we keep our heads, the song asks, when our environment is so manic and strange? How can faith in a prevailing good persevere in a place like this? The questions are followed not by blind hope or nihilistic despair but rather a queasy sense of purpose, the vertiginous realisation that there’s no benevolent or correcting force driving home the importance of one’s own actions, with just a thin line of chance and happenstance between survival and ruin.

Love So Well / Rose Room is out now via Northern Spy Records and you can get it from the Wilder Maker Bandcamp page.

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A new volume will be posted every few weeks and will offer a collection of really great songs that we’re determined not to let slip past our radar.

Sleep Movies – ‘Paper Hat’

Skyler Brimmierer from Pittsburgh, PA records invitingly hazy pop as Sleep Movies. If you like your vocals distorted and your instrumentation something akin to fog-like sedation, then his latest release, EDG will be right up your alley. ‘Paper Hat’ is one such example, playing like a tropical scene projected onto your bedroom ceiling as your sink down into the sheets and imagine the sun’s rays.

EDG is out now via Crafted Sounds on a pay-what-you-want basis, though unfortunately the cassettes have sold out.

Katie Von Schleicher – ‘Paranoia’

The beady-eyed (or eared) amongst you will recognise the voice of Katie Von Schleicher from our recent post on Wilder Maker, though the Brooklynite has a burgeoning solo career. The lead single from Shitty Hits, her debut album out later this summer, ‘Paranoia’ is a lush, woozy song straight out of some earlier, grander time. However, beneath the decadent production and sweet country-pop vibe lies a strange neurotic edge, as though the expansive sound is compensating for something, or else signalling the begin of a weird spiral somewhere altogether darker.

Shitty Hits is set for release on the 28th July via Ba Da Bing and Full Time Hobby (UK/EU), and you can pre-order it now from Bandcamp.

Pip Hall – James

We first wrote about Pip Hall back in November, praising her style of rich pop with added synths. March saw the release of her debut EP, James, building on the above formula to craft a haunting, atmospheric sound that also ticks all the boxes of a potential mainstream radio favourite. The title track displays this perfectly, the subtle synths and half-paced clatter of drums supporting Hall’s vocals as they wax and wane with great emotion.

James is out now on My Little Empire and you can grab it from Bandcamp.

Bradford Loomis – Bravery and the Bell

Washington’s Bradford Loomis creates evocative, earnest music concerned with the classic folk themes―love, death, memories―essentially digging down into what it means to be human. Written in the aftermath of his father’s Early Onset Alzheimers diagnosis, Loomis’ latest album is more personal and heartfelt than ever, the shock and subsequent sense of purpose serving to eradicate trivialities. As Loomis explains, “Bravery and the Bell… is about legacy, both the lineage we are born into and that which we pass on. Whether burdened or buoyed by our generational inheritance, this album confronts the drudgery of simply surviving and sounds a call to stand up to the things that stand in the way of us truly passionately pursuing that which we were made to be.”

Bravery and the Bell is out now and you can get it from Bandcamp.

Lord Youth – Blue Yodel #156

The songwriting project of Queens’ Micah Blaichman, Lord Youth makes music too cinematic for bedroom pop and too gloomy for garage rock, a murky, midnight noir to soundtrack your black and white dreams. Taken from the Lord Youth EP released last year, ‘Blue Yodel #156’ is something of a signature track for the band, slightly discordant and populated by wispy moans, as though behind Blaichman’s dejected lyrics lurk sad spirits of previously blue beings.

Lord Youth EP is out now via BB*ISLAND and you can get it on vinyl or digitally via Bandcamp.

Kazyak – ‘Sundial’

Written during a trip to Alaska as frontman Peter Frey prepared for his upcoming wedding, the themes of facing challenges and the natural world run through Happy Camping, the new album from Minneapolis band Kazyak. But this is achieved not in the harsh and difficult way such topics are usually broached. “It’s after you’ve put your pack on your back and set out walking down an unexplored trail, but before you’ve arrived to the foot of the mountain,” Frey says. “This album is the long walk through the open field to the base of the mountain.” As single ‘Sundial’ shows, Happy Camping is a spring album, where life is in a clear forward motion, the clean optimism of progressive snuffing out any signs of death and decay.

Happy Camping, is set for release on the 21st July and you can stay tuned to the Kazyak website for details.

Dama Scout – Paper Boy

The third single from the London/Glasgow three-piece Dama Scout, ‘Paper Boy’ is varied, hard-to-pin track that starts out woozy dream-pop and ends up somewhere far heavier. Indeed, such a shift is the band’s forte, with us describing a previous single as a “stylistic mutant ” and “a surreal ride through a many-eyed storm.” The languorous opening sees Eva Liu’s dreamy vocals float over choppy instrumentation before both coalesce into something more fluid, though the acceleration continues right through the other side, the song breaking down into chaotic disorder by the second half of the track. Imagine a slowly-rotating kaleidoscope gathering pace minute by minute, clicking into the perfect pattern for just a moment before eventually unravelling or exploding in a burst of coloured shards which rain down around your head.

‘Paper Boy’, and the band’s previous singles, can be found now on the Dama Scout Bandcamp page.

Why a fox – Solstice / ‘Young Trees’

The brainchild of Adelaide native, Fukushima resident Hayden Marks, Why a fox blends folk, pop, punk and emo to create heartfelt songs somewhere between Nana Grizol, Camp Cope and The Hotelier. This spring saw the release of Solstice, a verbose album of ramshackle lo-fi tunes notable for their energetic sincerity and bittersweet spirit. As a follow-up, Marks has also put out a new single ‘Young Trees’, taken from the forthcoming album Old Forest. Young Trees. A piano-driven instrumental, the track is something of a departure from the previous sound, though fits right in to the Why a fox aesthetic with its sincere positivity and emotional weight.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CauidHQbkxY

Solstice is out now and available from the Why a fox Bandcamp page. Old Forest. Young Trees is set for release this July, so keep an eye out for that too.

Alanna Eileen – ‘Knowledge’

New Zealand-based songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Alanna Eileen makes lush music that draws upon both traditional and contemporary folk. With Eileen’s soft vocals and warm guitar backed by country ambience and modest piano, new single ‘Knowledge’ is a gauzy number that envelops you slowly. The possibility of sadness or heartbreak lingers just out of focus, neither the lyrics or instrumentation ever quite slipping from their agreeable vibe.

Alanna Eileen is currently working on a debut full-length album with Adam Selzer. In the meantime, check out her previous releases on Bandcamp.

Coastal Clouds – ‘Wanna Come Down’

California’s Roberto Rodriguez certainly choose an apt moniker when naming his new project, Coastal Clouds. As the latest single ‘Wanna Come Down’ attests, the sound is moulded out of the West Coast spirit of sun and surf, an early evening top-down drive where the clear skies and cool breeze conjure a sentimental edge, as though the knowledge such a carefree existence cannot last. Indeed, the lyrics push this further, dealing with the realisation that we must grow up and move on from even our most golden of days.

Keep up with Coastal Clouds via his Facebook page.

For more posts like this, head to the Best of the Rest tag!

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Their latest release, though created under different circumstances and presented in a different context, is an even clearer statement on the Wilder Maker ethos. Opening with a carefree shuffle, the track has a languid lust for life, what lead songwriter Gabriel Birnbaum describes as “an attempt to catch the kind of everyday euphoria and friendship that’s usually taken for granted and forgotten shortly after and put it in a gilded frame, like a Renaissance oil painting of a casual summer night in 2017.” This nostalgia-for-the-present vibe is aided by bright guitar and sleek saxophone, Katie Von Schleicher’s vocals starting out leisurely before rising into a buoyant refrain.

The Document series, which has so far seen a release from Seattle’s Posse, is Saddle Creek’s way of celebrating the individual communities from which their artists hail. Originating in Omaha, Nebraska, Saddle Creek has evolved into something far more global, and they see this series of 7″ vinyls as a way of ensuring they stay connected to grassroots scenes. As founder Robb Nansel explains: “We see Document as a unique way to reference our past, while at the same time reaching out to bands that aren’t already part of the Saddle Creek family and allowing them to shine a light on the art and music of their own communities. It’s our way to try to capture a band and their community in a specific place at a specific time, and share that with the world.”

New Streets is out on 7″ vinyl on the 2nd of June via Saddle Creek and you can pre-order it now. Alternatively head to the Wilder Maker Bandcamp page.

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For those unfamiliar with the previous EPs (I admit I was, until this one landed in my inbox), this piece by Nathan Huffstutter for Paste Magazine serves as a neat introduction into the style and aims of Wilder Maker. After failing to make an impression with 2013’s Year of Endless Light, Birnbaum did the only thing a capital-A Artist can, dig in and make more. The Everyday Crimes Against Objects of Desire trilogy rose from this situation like an idiosyncratic phoenix, reacting to the indifference of a too-busy, painted-by-numbers-favouring world by celebrating experiment and creativity. Despite all dealing with the basic subject matter of a hard break-up, the EPs vary in style and were recorded in different studios. After the opener ‘Hope Springs’, Volume I is dark, angry and desperate, the mood switching between strange (like duet ‘White Knuckled On The Wheel’: “I take you cause you’re mine/forever this time/your teeth are on my neck/I’m ready to die”) and outright apocalyptic (e.g. ‘Zion’: “even in my terror mind when the gates are all wide open and the fire climbs from room to room/and the beasts are screaming and my heart is screaming and the sky is screaming and god is fast asleep and the bottle ain’t no good”). Volume II is sparser, recorded mostly live to give a smooth folk/rock sound akin to Bill Callahan. Heartbreak is once again the focus, with the narrator unable to let go of love yet also fearing the consequences of keeping it. As detailed on ‘Careless’:

“The waiting now is the hardest part
it’s insane I cannot touch you while we lean on your car
oh I can love again, please don’t make me love again”

I have just finished reading Jonathan Franzen’s Purity, a book which, like most of Franzen’s writing, concerns characters of various levels of depth kicking lumps out of one another in the name of love and happiness. As ever his ability to capture the depressing paradox at the heart of a failing relationship. Even the smallest word is packed with malicious intent yet the grandest gesture is found abstract and empty, a fantasy of a solipsistic mind. The kicker for most of Franzen’s characters is that once they achieve ‘freedom’ from the suffocating oppression of a loved one, they learn that the real source of the torment is within themselves, the removal of other people merely removing blame and false hope of reprieve. Which brings us to Volume III of Wilder Maker’s trilogy, where the narrator is experiencing this very realisation in slow motion as the pain of the break-up is eroded by time. Opener ‘Only Wanted You’ plays like the lost words of resignation in a silent aftermath, the sad soliloquy once the phone lines have been cut and new rules drawn, while ‘Summer Drifts’ is an attempted escape into sun and drink and good times where trouble lurks just under the surface. Both songs find the narrator ignoring (or maybe genuinely not seeing/understanding) something vast and dangerous below his own surface, the nagging sense of woe persisting through his new start and leading into the central track of the EP.

‘EZ River’ sounds like Van Morrison meets M. Ward, Birnbaum’s vocals cutting through the meandering soundscape dominated by laconic saxophone. The tone is at odds with the lyrical message though, at least upon first listening, with the easy rhythm hiding a deep uneasiness and sense of caustic, internal pain. However, after a few repetitions and closer attention, the very opposite begins to feel true. The music feels less juxtaposed against the lyrical torment as actively working for it, sweeping the narrator along in an misleadingly strong current of illusionary peace. So, rather than floating away from his troubles, he is floating with them, every metre he travels downstream a second lost in his attempt to be satisfied and happy.

“Oh easy river I want my heart to bend
the way the light just runs you through
but I just feel the sweat begin to bead

oh easy river watching me with my own eyes
too blank to even be a simple enemy I could use
all this splendor laughs at me and my fickle moods

where there should be bliss, oh god
there is emptiness

I am bored to tears counting echoes til I leave this behind
I wait beneath the infinite my toes in the infinite but my my my my
my heart is immeasurable untouchable illegible to me
some days it’s just too much work to love and so I don’t “

But, luckily, that is not the end. ‘California’ comes out the other side, as Katie Von Schleicher takes over lead vocals to produce a slow and eerie song, the aural equivalent of the tentative morning after a storm, while ‘No Xmas In Bushwick’ is a full-bodied pop song with almost celestial backing vocals, the closest thing to liberation on the record. The closing track is a special recording of ‘Hope Springs’, the original version of the song that opened the trilogy on Volume I. While the track is the first one written after the break-up, it is one of hope and forgiveness, where kindness blossoms despite the pain. It’s telling that the project should cycle back to this, as if for all the anger and torment and despair, the default human setting is one of empathy and grace.

Everyday Crimes Against Objects of Desire Vol. III is out on the 9th October on Bleaksploitation Records. You pre-order it from the Wilder Maker Bandcamp page.

Cover Art by David Foarde

The post Wilder Maker – Everyday Crimes Against Objects of Desire Vol. III appeared first on Various Small Flames.

“Genius Loci is partly an experiment to see how much of a set of songs can be unified by a concept or mood, partly an excuse for me to commission new work by some of my favorite songwriters, and partly an experiment in pushing people out of their comfort zones & giving them new creative avenues in their writing via obstacles.”

Volume One, the Summer 2015 edition, is titled Dreams Like Bark Peeled Off By Lightning. The inspiration is the poetry of Frank Stanford, the rule is that all lyrics must be written before any of the music, and the songwriters include WTD-fav Will Stratton, Jonah Furman (Krill), Felicia Douglass (Ava Luna) and Birnbaum himself.  Check out the full tracklisting below:

1. Felicia Douglass – Might
2. Renata Zeiguer – Neck of the Moon
3. Will Stratton – Lightning Dream Shuffle
4. David Lackner – Infants in the Wood
5. Cassandra Jenkins – The Girl With Black Hair
6. Nick Jost – I Am The Captain
7. Tiny Hazard – Thirsty Sponge
8. Jonah Furman – Meat
9. Gabriel Birnbaum – Bright Crimson
10. Katie Von Schleicher – My Body on Through
11. LAUDS – She Was a Fire of Pine Cones
12. Workman Song – Holy Holy Holy

You can pre-order the release digitally or on cassette right now from the Genius Loci Bandcamp page.

The post Genius Loci cassette compilation series appeared first on Various Small Flames.