This year saw Swick team up with Nashville label Like You Mean It Records, releasing a cover of Gillian Welch’s ‘Look At Miss Ohio‘ as part of a sampler before moving on to create new DoomFolk StarterKit material. The process for these new songs is different from what came before, as highlighted by the latest single, ‘Sun Self’. Because while previous releases aimed to excise second-guessing, the new track is a collaborative effort, with Allie Cuva (Allie), Bennett Littlejohn (Bendrix Littleton, Hovvdy, Katy Kirby), Lou Turner and Trevor Nikrant (Styrofoam Winos) all lending their talents.

With its warm and reflective rhythms, the track retains the intimate tone of previous DoomFolk StarterKit releases, though there is a newfound tension too. The song “centers on the two-sided coin that is an introspective reflection,” Swick explains. A questioning of self-contemplation, or at least a firmer understanding of its implications. “[Introspection is] an absolutely healing practice that can carry destructive potential when one sits in it too long,” Swick continues, “where it moves from meandering rumination to self ruination.”

This lasting sentiment is shot through both the creative practice and the song itself. A reminder that stepping outside of one’s own thoughts is sometimes needed. That ideas and problems can be shared, others invited to help.

and it feels like
I should take a break from my brain

Cover photo by Savannah Kee, lower photo by Emily Barrett

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‘Traffic!’ again deals in the “duality between surface-level joviality or tenderness and the underlying pain and darkness,” that we previously described, upbeat and melodic indie pop instrumentation supporting Kirby’s subtly vocoded vocals. The song explores the spectrum of suffering, taking issue with the habit of lamenting every relative nick and graze of ordinary life when far greater pain and trauma exists in the world. The thought arose after Kirby grew close to someone “objectively cooler and hotter” than herself, and found their habit of reacting badly to the most mundane setbacks immensely irritating. “It seemed so obvious that he’d been spared from much of human suffering’s broad spectrum,” she says:

The song turned into something like a meditation on what counts as actual injury [..] What right do I have (nevermind the person I wrote this to, or everyone else) to self-interest, when the damage I sustain generally seems to roll right off me, like a cute lil’ Wile E Coyote running ‘round in the twilight of democracy, being absolutely fucking fine?

well it’s easy for you to say
standing there with your future
all aligned
but it isn’t for you to say
when you get off easy every time
nobody has it better than you

The video, directed and shot by Noah Hanson with art direction by Hunt Pennington and Tyler Squires, captures these twin energies—the playful, almost slapstick style elucidating the absurdity of the subject matter.

Cool Dry Place will be released by Keeled Scales on the 19th February and you can pre-order it now from the Katy Kirby Bandcamp page.

Photo by Jackie Lee Young

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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

The post Karima Walker & Katy Kirby – Right By You appeared first on Various Small Flames.

2nd Grade – Favorite Song
Adeline Hotel – Lightning
Adrianne Lenker – Cradle
Allison’s Gate – Traces
Anna McClellan – Heart of Hearts
Advance Base – Christmas in Nightmare City
Badlands – Slow it Down
Bambara – José Tries to Leave
The Beths – Whatever
Bodega – Jack in Titanic
boygenius – Me & My Dog
Camp Cope – UFO Lighter
Campdogzzz – Sorceress
Cave People – I Shall Believe
Damien Jurado – Percy Faith
Dead Painters – Fool on Fire
Dear Nora – Simulation Feels
Dehd – Dying For
Devon Welsh – Vampires
Diva Sweetly – Detox Island
Doe – Heated
Dusted – Outline of a Wolf
Field Report – Every Time
Frankie Valet – Something to do with a mouth
Gia Margaret – Birthday
Goodbye Max – Old Photos
Good Good Blood – Cannot Be Yours Forever
Gorgeous Bully – Patience
Great Health – Lazarus
Hop Along – How Simple
Hour – At the bar where you literally saved me from fatal heartbreak 
Houses – Fast Talk
Hovvdy – Brave
Hypoluxo – Kentucky Smooth
IAN SWEET – Hiding
Kal Marks – Today I Walked Down To The Tree, Read A Book, And When I Was Done, I Went Back Inside
Katy Kirby – Juniper
Kevin Morby & Waxahatchee – Dark Don’t Hide It
Kississippi – Easier to Love
Kraków Loves Adana – The Day the Internet Died
Lala Lala – Destroyer
Lisa/Liza – Tea Kettle
lowly loverboi – Graveyards in Space
Lucy Dacus – Yours & Mine
Mike Pace & the Child Actors – Escape the Noise
Miranda Winters – The Futuristic District
Mitski – Nobody
Moonface – Minotaur Forgiving Pasiphae
Moon Racer – Friendly Ghost
Nap Eyes – Every Time the Feeling
Nice Try – Micah
Nicole Dollanganger – Uncle
No Age – Drippy
Oceanator – Mistakes
Of The Valley – Ride Alone
Pale Kids – St. Theresa
Pat Moon – I Belong
Pema – Depend
Petal – I’m Sorry
Pink Navel – born-100.dev
Pizza Girl – Body Part
Protomartyr – Wheel of Fortune
Remember Sports – Dripping
Restorations – Nonbeliever
Rivulets – Everything Goes
Ryan Von Gonten – Fabrique
Sabriel’s Orb – Holding
Saccharine – Pumpkin Guts
Sam Moss – Snap
Sara Renberg – Take the Summer Off
Sobs – Sundae
Spartan Jet-Plex – Sweet
Strange Ranger – The Wires
Sun June – Slow Rise II
Swearin’ – Dogpile
Talk, Tired Thanatoid – Everything’s Cool
Tomberlin – Any Other Way
Trace Mountains – Salty Sweet
Trust Fall – Wild Fire/Flowers
TVU – All For Nothing
Weakened Friends – Blue Again
Whitney Baleen – Rainer
Why Bonnie – Stereo
Wild Pink – The Seance on St. Augustine Street
wished bone – reasons
Yellowfront – Cool Breeze
Young Jesus – For Nana
Young Statues – Somebody Else
Yowler – Where Is My Light?

If you missed it, we have also posted our favourite albums list, so check that out too.

The post Favourite Songs of 2018 appeared first on Various Small Flames.

Tracklisting:

Frog – American
The Phone Booth – Ballad of Indifference
Spielbergs – 4AM
Neurotic Fiction – Collateral
Neighborhood of Make Believe – Track Names
Pizzagirl – body part
Orchid Mantis – porch song
Gorgeous Bully – patience
Reighnbeau – Trading Heat
Troy Everett – Absent
Amparo – Hounds
REW<< – Victoire Impossible
Okay Embrace – Moving
Young Jesus – For Nana
Vender & The Cobras – Everything is Beautiful
The Lostines – Faith in Love
Haley Heynderickx & Max García Conover – Little Wind
Rivulets – Everything Goes
Balto – Bullshit Dream
Meat Wave – That’s Alright
Docks – Kiosk
Satanic Ritual Abuse – Hurting (Adjective/Verb)
SATU – Growing Up
Anna Tivel – Fenceline
Madison Turner – Richmond, Virgina
Elly Swope – 6.8
Nathan Ball – All or Nothing
Monarch Mtn – canyon blues
Stripmall Ballads – You Were Good (I Was Good For a While)
Katie Mullins – Crocuses
Lisa/Liza – Tea Kettle
free cake for every creature – shake it out
Katy Kirby – Tap Twice
Lung Cycles – hottest day of the year so far (4pm version)

You can find all of our Monthly Roundup playlists here, and peruse a wider range of mixtapes that we’ve put together over the years.

The post November 2018 Roundup appeared first on Various Small Flames.

Opening track ‘Tap Twice’ is the perfect introduction, opening like a quiet sunny morning, just Kirby’s vocals and gentle guitar. The song soon blooms into rich folk-pop, although the golden atmosphere belies the narrative of the lyrics, particular the final verse which paints a picture of a pretty desperate scene.

“when I almost broke my wrists trying to bring you back
and you thrashed around like goldfish in a garbage bag
it seems like you’re only high when you’re holding your breath
you’re only bright when you’re broken in half”

The duality between surface-level joviality or tenderness and and the underlying pain and darkness is a motif of the Katy Kirby sound. The gentle grooviness of ‘Peppermint’ masks what is a kind of idiosyncratic lovesong, the lyrics of loss and longing opaqued by the foggy head of our narrator, and the EP closes with the smooth, sauntering title track that is equally nuanced. Not unlike the Haley Heynderickx album from earlier this year, the song uses imagery of plants and gardens to get at something left unspoken. Here happiness and sadness is not some stark binary but more the various shades of a rich emotional environment, one so diverse and fertile that the taxonomic differences between each fade into obscurity.

true blue juniper
never got around to asking her
the difference between weeds and herbs and flowers

You can get Juniper now on cassette via Keeled Scales, or as a download from the Katy Kirby Bandcamp page.

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