‘Catchyalater’ is one of my favourite songs from the album, the perfect blend of wit, emotion and pop culture references. As we wrote in our review:

“With ambient sound clips and gentle, emotive vocals, ‘Catchyalater’ brings to mind The Antlers in their In The Attic of The Universe stage… contain[ing] some irresistibly quotable lines”

To give you an idea, the quotable lines include nods to Alanis Morissette and Patrick Ewing, punks and cokes and flicks at the mall, essentially forming (as is most of the album) an ode to America and the past more generally. The remixes are great too, as you might expect. Jack Hayter slows down the pace but dials up the tortured emotion, while Benjamin Shaw leans on the ambient recordings and serves up a slice of soothing introspection. New track ‘God’s Tinnitus’ feels wrapped up and insular, the receding lulls almost more conspicuous than the clanging piano that punctuates it, the whispered vocals hushed and hurried in equal measure, “Sometimes I think that the crickets are just God’s tinnitus”.

‘Catchyalater’ is out on the 22nd of January on Audio Antihero, but you can listen to the whole release below:

The single release just so happens to coincide with Frog’s imminent tour of the UK (dates/poster below). If seeing the duo live wasn’t excitement enough, the transatlantic trip is serving a second purpose – the creation of the fan-funded blockbuster, Frog: Across the Pond. Yep, the boys have enlisted (or maybe were enlisted by) filmmaker Alex Coppola to make a film about their UK adventure. Described as part concert video, part road movie, this project has all the makings of something special. Put it this way, there’ll be a lot more Oscar-boycotting in 2017 if this isn’t nominated. I mean, check out the tagline:

When two friends discover that their little band is big overseas, they decide to try their luck on the other side of the Atlantic.

If you (unlike us, boo!) can get to a show, check out the dates below and try and immortalise yourself on the silver screen:

Jan 23rd – The Waiting Room, Colchester (with Roy / Sophie Nash / Chris Fox)
Jan 24th – Servant Jazz Quarters, London (with Alex Chilltown / Owl & Mouse)
Jan 25th – Fulford Arms, York (with The Drink)
Jan 27th – The Hug & Pint, Glasgow
Jan 29th – Venue TBA, Edinburgh (with Plastic Animals)
Jan 30th – DIY Space for London, London (with Rainmaker / The Johns / Brunch / Crows An Wra)

The post Song Premiere(s): Frog – Catchyalater Single (w/ God’s Tinnitus + Remixes) appeared first on Various Small Flames.

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

Little did I know that Frog released a self-titled mini-album back in 2013 on the now defunct label Monkfish Records and, luckily for those of us late to the party, Audio Antihero have stepped up to the plate and re-released the record.

Frog might sound a little different from Kind of Blah, but anyone expecting the rough début of a band getting to grips with their sound and style is going to be very surprised. Each track is just as detailed and clever as anything on the follow-up, setting down Frog’s exciting modus operandi. Take opener ‘Ichabod Crane’, a perfect example of their frantic lo-fi folk rock packed to bursting with odd and strangely affecting lyrics. “Head chopped off like Ichabod Crane,” he sings, “oh the things I’d do again. Tongue hacked out like Helen Keller, oh if I could only tell her”.  It’s the weird blend of violent suffering and nostalgia that constitutes many a history, and here its delivered which such veracity you can’t help but get swept up in the flow. The striking similarities to country are unmissable yet somehow you get the impression these songs come from another lineage entirely, as if shaped by similar forces and pressures to good old cowboy music yet no more related than a dolphin to a fish.

‘Arkansas’ features a First World War of dead entertainers and punk kids on stretchers, a sad song of the desperate kind, while ‘Jesus Song’ rises from the ashes like a half-drunk phoenix, or rather like a Jesus Christ if he fronted beach bar country band and sounded like Stephen Malkmus. ‘Nancy Kerrigan’ slows the tempo, the narrator facing a present trauma while trying to seek refuge in the past, trying to wrap himself in the nostalgia-drenched memories and Honest-To-God American images which promise to save us. It’s the saddest song you’re likely to hear for a good while.

“If I could afford it
I would record this
on your mother’s organ
you left back in Oregon
and I put your face
coming through the drapes
stick you in between the lines and the bass
and all the houses we pass will have American flags
and all the sullen sons inside will hug their dads

God bless the state of Texas
and the Dallas Cowboys’ blue
I know darling he’ll protect us

Can I venture an educated guess
have I had some part of your loneliness?
And we put our prayers in Nanny Kerrigan
we put our prayers in Nancy’s care”

‘Space Jam’ is an unexpected Christmas bummer ballad, lost love and heartbreak dangling like decorations, ghosts of past and present swirling in cold night (“Its Christmas time I think so and the air feels just like home”), while ‘Rubbernecking’ is a grotesque drive down into the darkest parts of contemporary psyche. “Last night I fucking killed a man” he sings like some forgotten face from Less Than Zero, “and you know it didn’t change shit”, although the primary emotion is hardly one of detachment. Instead, the narrator seems to revel in misery, in imagery, in death. There’s no obvious meaning, no message or denouement, just a wacko cranking his gears through a vast landscape of boredom illuminated with sparks of terror and dread.

You can buy Frog now from the Frog Bandcamp page, including a rather nice cassette. For those of with with an eye for a bargain, you can also pick up a digital download bundled with the vinyl edition of Kind of Blah for £12. 

The post Frog – S/T 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 album takes on the appearance of a bustling city – or rather several versions of the same city superimposed over one another – overwhelming in its detail, home to everything and more”

In other words, it is the sort of album you want to talk about. Luckily, the band (and their great label Audio Antihero) were willing to hear us out and try to give us a bit more information on what Kind of Blah means to them.

Jon: Hello Frog. How is life in Queens for amphibians this time of year?

Frog: Life in Queens is great!  This is a beautiful time in NYC. Queens in the springtime is a completely different place than it is in the winter.

To my ears, your music seems to draw equally from country music and garage rock, but which would you say you lean toward? In other words, would you say you are a countrified rock band, or a pair of agitated Hank Williamses (or neither)?

When people ask things like this, I never really know what to say because I’m constantly trying to listen to new kinds of things or old kinds of things I’ve never heard before and incorporate them into the band’s ideas. Hank Williams is probably my favorite singer of all time, though, so I guess he’s definitely a big constant influence. The band we were in before Frog was pretty strict folk/alt-country, so in a lot of ways the first record was sort of a rebellion against that; we were finally getting to play loud and scream loud, and it was really fun! Lightning Bolt was also the first band we ever saw together in college, and they’re definitely another influence.

I feel like a major part of the Frog sound is us figuring out how to try to incorporate all the kinds of music we want to play into the band’s bag of moves, which is by necessity garage-y, because we’re both not that good at being a rock band, and because we’re very resistant to add any other members or to try to create music that we couldn’t play live in some way. Part of the band’s ethos, part by necessity and part by choice, is to try to boil down every arrangement into only the most necessary parts. By scraping away all the froth from our tracks, we’re trying to create music that will still sound just as good as it does now in 50 or 100 or 500 years.

Country music songwriting is definitely something I’ve also been interested in for the past few years. I love the way they present emotion, and I love the way that every hook is a pun. I love puns. All my humor is coming up with puns.I made a bit of a fuss about the album being recorded in a disused bowling alley. How did that come about? Was the room recognisable as a bowling alley? I mean, were you tripping over balls and pins? 

The practice space that Tom and I rent used to be a bowling alley, but now its just a moldy, disgusting place with horrible bathrooms and terrible soundproofing between rooms. But its cheap!  If you listen hard to Kind of Blah, you can hear some really loud metal riffs from next door in the quiet parts. I’ve always wanted to find a quiet space that I can make noise in, but thats really difficult to find for anything reasonable in the city.

In a way, Kind of Blah reminded me of a motif that a number of my favourite authors (Don DeLillo, Stephen Wright et al.) use – the narrative is interspersed by sounds or images from the television so that pop culture is constantly bleeding into the scene. Is the pop culture stuff in your music inspired by anything in particular? Or is it just an unconscious product of growing up in a world of TVs and computers?

I think that the pop culture references in the songs are just a product of me trying to write how I live.  My subconscious is filled with big, lit-up Friendly’s logos and McDonalds parking lots, just like yours is, because that’s what makes it real. I think attempting to describe real situations in songs works well because most people write songs with these huge, sweeping, non-specific descriptions of emotions. My memories are of specific things, listening to Jagged Little Pill with my mom, going to 7-11 with my idiot friends; we didn’t just go to any store, and we didn’t listen to just any record, it was those specific ones, and I think that’s important because it immerses you in the image in a much deeper way.

Stephen King in his book ‘On Writing’ says that he was looked down upon because he wrote specific names of brands in his novels, rather than generic ‘shaving cream’ or ‘shampoo’. He thought that if these idiot reviewers actually looked into their own medicine cabinets and saw generic ‘shampoo’ instead of Pert plus or Selzen Blue, then perhaps it was a valid criticism but only then.As a British person who reads your books and watches your movies and listens to your music, I felt familiar enough with a certain idea of the USA to state that “Kind of Blah is America… quirky, joyous, breathless, exhausting, addictive, heartbreaking and downright weird.” As people who live in America, would you say this is a fair comment? Is it as varied and incongruous as artists would have me believe?   

America is an interesting place. There are incredible things about it, and there are horrible, horrifying things about it. I think the thing that’s really interesting about it is that it’s not just one place, it’s a huge number of different cultures all put under one roof.

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. I’ve been living in and around NYC my whole life, and never really left for more than a month or so. I think the record is also a lot about people’s ideas of a place clashing with the reality of the place; Jesus Montero walking around the Bronx and longing for the way it used to be, Judy Garland’s death as a catalyst for the loss of 1940s era American values. In that sense, I thought that quote was quite fitting, because although you might have all these crazy ideas about what living in New York would be like, I can guarantee that it’d be way different if you decided to move here.  But in any case, I took it as a huge compliment! Thanks buddy.

Your album has some killer lines and verses, to the point where my review was almost just a block quote of the entire album. Difficult question: what is your favourite line/verse written by someone else in music? Which do you wish you could have written? 

I’m a big Silver Jews fan, so pretty much anything on Natural Bridge or Bright Flight.  I really like the song “Tennessee”,

“Good bye all you truckers and steady bad-luckers

I’m off to the land of club soda unbridled

I’m off to the land of hot middle aged women

I’m off to the land whose blood runneth orange”

What a great band. I also really like the song ‘Dallas’, which starts with David Berman passing out on the 14th floor and noticing that the CPR is erotic. ‘Glowing cum buckets in her ankles’ is the last line of the verse.  He’s a real badass.  I met him once, and he told me that although he liked my music, I should quit being a musician because there were too many bands.  Good thing I’m stubborn!

I couldn’t go through an interview with a band called Frog without a stupid frog-themed question… who is your favourite famous/fictional frog? Kermit? Frogger? Frog from Frog & Toad?

The best frog in existence has always been frog from Chrono Trigger, whose real name is Glen.  You can peep him here:[Still annoyed that Chrono Trigger never got a UK/PAL release – Jon]

Finally, could you name four or five artists you are enjoying at the moment? They can be friends or enemies, old or new, whatever you find yourself returning to.

Paul Whiteman & his Orchestra – Great arranger, Great music, but what a I really love his how he uses vocals. So many harmonies! Amazing.

Charlie Parker – Mostly because of Phil Schaap, the WKCR DJ. I’ve been listening to the complete Savoy and Dial sessions a lot lately, at the end of the 1st disc is the session that he did when he was strung out and had to be held up to the microphone. Pretty legendary! I think he went home afterwards, burnt down his hotel room and was sent to a mental institution. The tunes are pretty incredible though.

Kendrick Lamar – Guy is great! At first I thought he was just a straight Andre 3000 impression, but if you get over that he makes these insane, visionary, sweeping records. People don’t make albums like this anymore, if they ever did.

Lightning Bolt – I know I already mentioned this but they are really amazing. So many great riffs and such great drumming. This is the best rock and roll made in the past 15 years.

You can buy Kind of Blah now from the Audio Antihero Bandcamp page. We suggest that you do so sooner rather than later.

Photography by Andrew Piccone, artwork by Benjamin Shaw

The post Interview: Frog appeared first on Various Small Flames.

Kind of Blah is a product of this place, an album imbued with the spirits of a sparkling past. Skipping between styles and themes and pop culture references at will, the record is a multifaceted wormhole leading to the various Americas that have existed in the last 50-60 years. There is no prevailing emotion or tone, instead everything is present, a musically-original-yet-strangely-televisual mishmash of eye-opening, heart-lifting, soul-destroying possibilities. Hopeful, fearful and melancholic, joyful, delusional and apathetic, the album takes on the appearance of a bustling city – or rather several versions of the same city superimposed over one another – overwhelming in its detail, home to everything and more. These scenes share a common thread, the American demand for fun and heartbreak and the constant battle to ignore just how empty these sources of entertainment prove to be. Apologies for the long quote but opener ‘All Dogs Go to Heaven’ captures this perfectly:

“The city is a womb of brown brick beds of clay
outside of the bars the lakers are on in the alleyway
but it shines from a time when the waitresses were fine and their
great big bosoms bulged through their hi, I’m jamie signs and
Jesus’s eyes glides across the storefronts as he longs for a city’s
past that drips into the present like honey from a heated glass
and
all dogs go to heaven
all songs end in quiet refrains
smart moms buy generic say it tastes the same”

What’s more impressive is that the entire album is equally quotable. ‘Fucking’ comes across as The Hold Steady meets Modest Mouse meets Ride, a weird aggressive teenage dream in which everything is hugely stimulating yet shot through with an unnamed emptiness that threatens to catch those that slow down (“out of sight out of mind, racing towards a decline”). ‘Wish Upon a Bar’ is a restrained, cross-generational bar crawl through New York with a Christmassy blend of nostalgia and regret, littered with killer lines like “bar moans with calzones and verses from the Rolling Stones.” Interestingly, in another very American-feeling twist, the two band members can be heard laughing in the background of the track, so that heart-on-the-sleeve sincerity and nudge-nudge-wink-wink irony are so intertwined it’s impossible to untangle them. The time-hopping continues on ‘Photograph’, a selection of memories lined up sentimentally like pictures on a mantel, while ”Everything 2002′ paints the innocent uninnocence of adolescents:

“I poured kerosene on my old dirty magazines
mom and dad don’t be mad at me
in a hole in a tree in the woods by the Mattingly’s
there’s a bag full of dvds
I run where no one can see and they’ll console me”

‘Knocking On The Door’ is sloppy classic country, complete with banjos and foot-stamping percussion, but the old-timey American sound masks the contemporary lyrics (McDonalds drive thrus where I kissed you and lied to you and the garbages sighed food as I told you you were mine”). ‘King Kong’ is frantic, the banjo racing as if played by an albino Dickey character and the lyrics spewing forth like those of some demented preacher, again giving the sensation of breakneck forward propulsion, a fevered conviction which ignores consequences (much like those on display in the titular movie). With ambient sound clips and gentle, emotive vocals, ‘Catchyalater’ brings to mind The Antlers in their In The Attic of The Universe stage. Again the song contains some irresistibly quotable lines:

“In comes the doctor in comes the nurse
in comes the lady with the alligator purse
and you turn on ‘lanis Morrisette and learn all the curses
but your aunt turns it off after one or two verses
and the punks say how ya doin’ motherfucker
and the punks say how ya doin’ motherfucker
and you root for Patrick Ewing
and you cant stop doin it you cant stop chewin’ it you tell her
catchyalater”

Another American phenomenon is captured on ‘Irish Goodbye’, the melodramatic spilt followed by automotive escape to new locales and psychic health, while ‘Judy Garland’ is what Hank Williams would have sounded like had he fronted a lo-fi garage rock band. Without wishing to repeat what is now clear, the writing here is superb, somehow managing to capture in words and cadence the bizarre essence of America:

“Jesus couldn’t quell the pains
of Americas in trucks and trains
and tractor trailers on the range
barmen counting their change
and Goldwin Mayer Fred Astaire
slicking back his oily hair
snort benzedrine off of a mirror,
slaps her ass how are you dear
and all the preachers whistle nervous stare
down devils in the back of churches,
meet their luscious daughter in
the smalls beneath the boughs of birches”

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.

The album is out now on Audio Antihero and you can buy it from the Frog Bandcamp page. Also, be sure to read our interview with Frog, and check out our review of their debut self-titled release.

Album artwork by Benjamin Shaw

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