The circuitous nature of healing featured on ‘Lessons in Textiles‘ too. A single which draws on Moore’s interest in knitting “to weave a metaphor for the personal transformations which so often accompany grief,” as we wrote, “namely the technique of unravelling (or ‘frogging’) a knit in order to rework the stitches, the song describing a person not only undone by loss but slowly fashioned into something new.” Then came ‘Single Wooden Bullet‘, a picture of life after death, be that figurative or literal, inspired by Jim Jarmusch’s Only Lovers Left Alive, which posits that only through embracing imperfection might we persevere beyond an apparent end.

With the release of Zone 2 mere days away, koleżanka has shared final single ‘Hook, Line, Sinker!’ in preparation, and the track is a fitting embodiment of the determination and defiance which ultimately allowed Moore to reclaim music as her own. Because while her surgeon said she would likely never play guitar again, in reality, Moore was back on the horse as soon as her cast was removed. The guitar on ‘Hook, Line, Sinker!’ sounds exactly like an artist given a new lease of life on the instrument, pushing itself with extra swagger and intricacy just because such things are possible.

But more than an exhibition of a talent regained, the track is also a rare love song from koleżanka, reflecting on the tenderness inherent within the care of another, something highlighted when our capabilities are taken from us. “[‘Hook, Line, Sinker!’] is notably one of the only love songs I’ve ever written,” Moore explained in an Instagram post. “A reflection on the day to day routines between my partner and I, our coming together and coming apart in a way that feels like the ecosystem to our home. He had been helping me do such simple things at the time that I couldn’t do, like cut a vegetable for me or tie my shoes. I was finding new realms of gratitude in these new ways of being cared for.”

The post koleżanka – Hook, Line, Sinker! appeared first on Various Small Flames.

“Black water, black water / I am still your daughter.” So sings Claire Cronin on the lead single and opening track of her new full-length The Bruise, immediately positioning the record as a continuation of the project established across a series of releases dating back at least as far as 2015’s Over and Through. Cronin’s music, much like her 2020 memoir-cum-film-study Blue Light of the Screen, collapses the distinction between the worldly and the otherworldly, the living and the dead. A study of personal experience which functions as both ritual and lament, always bending towards the uncanny, loaded with eerie symbols, ominous portents and the shining glint of transcendence. As ever, Cronin is joined by Ezra Buchla, who contributes viola, piano and synth as well as vocals and processing, plus a handful of other guests, resulting in a sound that pushes folk towards its most atmospheric frontiers, be that haunted drone or crushing doom metal. The Bruise will be released via Orindal Records and Cronin’s own new imprint A Moth Object in October, complete with a booklet of lyrics and art, but for now submerse yourself in the somber glory of ‘Black Water’ and we’ll have more to say soon.

The Bruise will be released on the 9th October via Orindal Records and A Moth Object and you can pre-order it now.

Cloudbelly – Oh, Antarctica!

We last covered Western Massachusetts band Cloudbelly back in 2024 with the release of i know i know i know, an album driven by “a sense of hard won conviction,” as we put it. “Lessons learnt not via bright epiphany but the slow grind of living through difficult circumstances. Understanding how to not only roll with the punches but rise from knockout blows.” With a new LP on the horizon, Cloudbelly have now returned with lead single ‘Oh Antarctica!’ to whet appetites. Like its predecessor before it, the track find Corey Laitman and co. facing down challenges with a sense of determination, not least the dispiriting experience of mourning the future in a present world which seems to be tilting in a bad direction. As ever, the result unafraid of darkness yet always charged with energy, and as attuned to the personal moments as the wider global scene.

‘Oh, Antarctica’ is out now and available from the usual places.

Great Klons – Visions of Exile

We have featured several singles from Great Klons, the recording project of Rochester‘s Scott Klon, in recent months. ‘More Beauty in the Rain’, explored “devasting wildfires, parental illness [and] the encroachment of pernicious technology… [with a] decidedly mid-00s feel”, while ‘Hidden Signage’ was “a vivid slice of indie pop rooted in both driving percussion and fresh guitar.” Both songs were taken from an EP, Visions of Exile, which was released last week. The record sees Klon joined by Ben Morey, Katie Morey and Billy Martin, who together whip up a singular style that they say draws on “krautrock, psychedelic surf and indie dream pop.” Tonally it lands somewhere between wistful and weary, everyday worries and self-deprecation sitting side by side with something that feels dangerously like hope. Nowhere is this more apparent that on the title track, a grooving psych pop song about the unease that sits beneath a comfortable surface. “It’s a song that touches upon a common theme in Great Klons’ work,” as the press release puts it. “Hell is often having something to lose.”

koleżanka – Single Wooden Bullet

Following on from 2023 album Alone with the Sound the Mind Makes, Kristina Moore’s koleżanka is set to return this September with brand new record Zone 2, a release which explores the liminal space between trauma and health in the wake of an injury. After lead single ‘Lessons in Textiles‘ worked towards reworking oneself in the wake of loss, subsequent track ‘Levers and Pulleys’ furthered the style. The song “plays like recovery unfolding in real time,” we wrote in our preview. “A process not necessarily as joyous nor neatly linear as we might hope, rather something won hour by hour, day by day as the cells replicate and repair themselves, and the body relearns the world according to its new shape.” With the release of Zone 2 coming soon, koleżanka has shared brand new track ‘Single Wooden Bullet’, a song which takes inspiration from Only Lovers Left Alive by Jim Jarmusch to imagine a life after death, be it figurative or literal, and the embrace of imperfection which such a state might demand.

Lael Neale – Slip Away

Last year Lael Neale released Altogether Stranger, an album which “seem[ed] to promise more of the tight, electrical minimalism established across previous LPs [but] in reality holds some of Neale’s most adventurous work to date,” as we wrote in our review. “Because scratch the sleek surface and you’ll find a dizzying concoction of moods and influences, the album a mirror of the odd, alluring city which serves as its setting, enemy and muse.” Refusing to rest on her laurels, Neale is preparing to return with new LP As Killers Do, the inaugural release from her new label Consensual Sound, and the album promises to be every bit as ambitious. Take lead single ‘Slip Away’, a track which uses her trademark blend of dreaminess and urgency to explore the transience inherent within any human existence, though one which focuses not on the fear or grief of such a fact of life, but the reassuring justice mortality will inevitably mete out, regardless of a person’s status. “We act as little gods. Assuming great import. All that we build, create, collect and become, to be taken away,” Neale explains. “We are not gods. The only consolation I have in a world of megalomaniac billionaires and sociopathic leaders. They all will die. We all will die. The Earth will go on.”

Watch the video below featuring analog stop motion paintings by Neale herself and camera by Guy Blakeslee:

As Killers Do will be released on the 20th November via Consensual Sound and you can pre-order it now.

Marika Che – Bonfire of Tragedy

“Packs an emotional punch yet delivers it within a breezy warmth, drawing the audience in with an easy-going rhythm and assured vocal style. A debut this might be, but there’s clear experience within its craft, and you’d be hard pushed to find a more pleasant soundtrack as summer blooms.” So we wrote of ‘Edge of the Storm’, the lead single from Marika Che‘s LP Bright Flame back in June, the track positioning the LA-based songwriter somewhere between dream pop and Waxahatchee-esque folk rock. With the release of the record approaching, Che has now returned with latest single ‘Bonfire of Tragedy’ to further introduce the emotional depth of the release. “The first song I wrote on the album, shortly after my dad passed away,” Justad explains. “I felt a little lost, and very lonely in my experience of grief.” But from this low point comes a moment of catharsis, as she continues:

I was driving home one night and had this vision of a massive bonfire and all these people being drawn to the warm glow in various states of wellbeing. It was a place to drink, dance, sing, tell stories, unburden yourself without worrying about judgment. A place to howl at the moon and befriend a stranger. It’s pretty sentimental, I guess, but it’s what I needed at the time. This song became that for me, and I feel the cure of it every time I sing it onstage for a room full of people.

Nick Bellerose – About Us

Back in July, we introduced the work of Nick Bellerose, a former international diplomat who decided to pivot more fully towards songwriting in response to a period of personal upheaval. With elements of Elliot Smith, Sparklehorse and Nebraska-era Springsteen, first single ‘maybe i think’ was “characteristically bittersweet,” as we wrote, “the track explor[ing] heartbreak with a world-weary acceptance, ultimately landing somewhere life-affirming,” and latest track ‘About Us’ is no less emotive. This time, Johnny Cash classic ‘Ring of Fire’ serves as inspiration, the song painting the experience of falling in love in all of its overwhelming glory with Bellerose’s trademark style, where cinematic richness meets the intimacy of DIY folk.

NOIA – As Per My Last Email

The recording project of Barcelona-born, Brooklyn-based artist Gisela Fullà-Silvestre, NOIA released her debut album gisela to acclaim in 2023, though has since had to endure one of the most difficult periods of her life, navigating personal loss amid a wider picture of turmoil across the world. The first NOIA release since the debut tackles this experience head on, using a distinctively experimental style of pop to evoke the absurd contemporary phenomenon of never switching off. “It’s what happens when ‘just circling back’ becomes a way of life,” Fullà-Silvestre explains. “A song about the slow collapse of hyperfunctionality, that state of being permanently ‘on,’ answering messages at midnight, running on notifications instead of sleep, until you’re less a person than a broken, over-wired robot still sending polite replies.”

The track comes with a video directed by Varya Rootwood with movement director Viva Soudan, which furthers the themes of the song by taking the office environment out into the natural world, representing how the boundaries between work and life have been eroded in our hypercapitalist society.

‘As Per My Last Email’ is out now via streaming services and available from the NOIA Bandcamp page.

Val McCallum – Fifty Fifty

Chances are, if you’re familiar with the name Val McCallum, it’s down to his forty-year stint as the sideman of Jackson Browne, or maybe thanks to his guitar playing with the likes of Lucinda Williams, Randy Newman and Sheryl Crow. But while he might seem most comfortable as a collaborator, he is also a stellar songwriter in his own right, his work representing something of a well-kept secret among the LA music scene (if an artist who has been covered by Phoebe Bridgers could still be called a secret). But after developing a partnership with the Berlin-based lyricist and producer Rudi Maier, McCallum looks finally set to announce himself on a wider stage with As If We Didn’t Know, a full-length which serves as a long overdue introduction for listeners unfamiliar with his talents, and merely confirmation for those who always knew. The record isn’t out until spring 2027, but lead single ‘Fifty Fifty’ is here to whet appetites. A fittingly filmic folk song about the roles we play in trying to escape our own lives and the people who help lead us back towards authenticity, all the more resonant when you consider McCallum is the son of Hollywood stars Jill Ireland and David McCallum, not to mention the stepson of Charles Bronson.

As If We Didn’t Know will be released on the 19th March 2027 and you can pre-order it now.

Winter – hide-a-lullaby (feat. Peel Dream Magazine)

We’ve featured a couple of tracks from Winter‘s upcoming Romantix Mixtape in recent times, an EP which sees the New York-based artist reimagine the songs on 2025 full-length Adult Romantix. After lead single ‘hollow (mixtape version)‘ (“A song succinct and bound by forward motion, clocking in at almost half the length of its twin sister yet no less atmospheric for it”), Winter enlisted Soccer Mommy for a new version of ‘without you‘ which offered “a cinematic representation of love, loneliness and longing.” And the star guests keep on coming, with latest track ‘hide-a-lullaby’ inviting Peel Dream Magazine to help reshape the sound, stripping things back to an intimate acoustic arrangement which foregrounds the vocals, and further amplifies the songwriting which might otherwise be submerged beneath gauzy textures.

Romantix Mixtape will be released on the 18th September via Winspear and you can pre-order it now from the Winspear Bandcamp page.

The post Weekly Listening: August 2026 #4 appeared first on Various Small Flames.

The song, the first new music from Kristina Moore’s project since 2023 full-length Alone with the Sound the Mind Makes, was a fitting first taste of an album written in the aftermath of injury, Moore penning the record on a borrowed Casio Privia weighted keyboard after surgery on a severed tendon in her middle finger left her unable to play guitar. The period was a kind of liminal space between trauma and health, a time in which everything is slightly strange and the future remains uncertain. “‘Zone 2’ is an anatomical term used to describe the area between the distal palmar crease to the middle of the finger in which a flexor tendon injury can occur,” she explains. “Because of the increased risk of complications and generally unpredictable post-op outcome, it is also referred to as ‘No Man’s Land’.”

With the album set for release this September, koleżanka has returned with new single ‘Levers and Pulleys’. Described by the artist on social media as the record’s “flagship track,” the song is rather more threadbare than its predecessor, stripped back to the harsh and tender truths as demanded by the limitations at its point of origin. “The core of the song was written within the first week of my injury,” the post continues. “I wrote and performed the treble and bass cleft piano at the end with just my right hand on the original demo. It was grueling to learn with both later on, and felt like it became an essential full circle part of my recovery.” The result, like ‘Lessons in Textiles’ before it, plays like recovery unfolding in real time. A process not necessarily as joyous nor neatly linear as we might hope, rather something won hour by hour, day by day as the cells replicate and repair themselves, and the body relearns the world according to its new shape.

learning anatomy
levers and pulleys
and articulations between ends and beginnings
beautiful machinery
broken hand a hand is fixing
trim the threads against your seams
a new line in your topography
back to the drawing board again
I thought I’d written it all down
its all rewritten soon

The post koleżanka – Levers and Pulleys appeared first on Various Small Flames.

Max Wood’s applied communications made a splash back in the noughties, with albums like africa baby, yeah yeah yeah and uhhh sort of winning attention with their singular personality and often chaotic arrangements, though subsequently turned away from music for the next two decades. Only, in a turn of events the 2005-era Wood couldn’t have ever imagined, a TikTok-user-cum-internet-archaeologist unearthed the old releases and revived interest, essentially resuscitating applied communications twenty years after its apparent death. After a pair of EPs in recent times, Wood is now preparing a full-length, and latest single ‘cowboy bebop & eric’s trip’ gives a glimpse at this strange phoenix as it rises from the flames. A characteristically off-the-wall and hyperactive slice of electronic (anti-)pop that comes with all the playfulness and intensity of its predecessors. “I sometimes find myself trying to fit into groups or scenes that seem cool to me, even if (especially if??) I’m going to flail and be weird and feel rejected and get depressed,” Wood explains of the track. “I didn’t mean to write a song about that dynamic, but I think that’s what happened here. I also just wanted to try making a jangly guitar-centered indie rock song because I’ve never been able to pull that off before. I still didn’t pull it off, but I’m proud of the glitchy mess that resulted from the attempt.”

atmos bloom – Everything

London-based duo atmos bloom are set to return this summer with Everythingness, a brand new album on Spirit Goth Records which looks to build upon the dreamy, shoegaze-inflected bedroom pop aesthetic of their previous release Flora. There’s an inherently nostalgic sensibility to this style of music, but Tilda Gratton and Curtis Paterson craft something caught between reflection and forward motion, charting the sometimes difficult space between youth and adulthood, looking to push life in new directions while pining for the old days too. Lead single and not quite title track ‘Everything’ embodies this mood, capturing the sense of flux which marks the entire release. ‘Everything’ explores “the impossible task of trying to be everything all at once, balancing all that life throws at you whilst trying to find yourself and your place amidst it all,” the band explain. “The song explores young adulthood and figuring out the transition between adolescence and womanhood, working through a mountain of contradictory advice and solutions. ‘Everything’ feels like walking a tightrope, wanting to do one thing for one reason and something else for another, knowing each decision pulls you further in a different direction.”

Everythingness will be released on the 24th July via Spirit Goth Records and you can pre-order it now.

Atta Boy – Full Cloud

Back in May we introduced Silt, the forthcoming full-length from LA indie rock outfit Atta Boy with ‘Oh, Mama’, “a song,” as we put it, “which holds up the unique force that is motherly love as something as organic and ever-present as the natural world itself.” With the album’s release now less than a month away, Atta Boy have returned with ‘Full Cloud’ to further establish its mood and themes. With a characteristically upbeat pop-inflected rock style, the single navigates a difficult relationship and all its hidden currents. The tension between the slow suffocation of dependency and the fear of drifting apart (“Leave me alone / Don’t make me your lifeboat,” as one telling verse goes). There might not be a solution within the frame of the track, but it is cathartic to voice such frustrations all the same.

I live here with a full cloud
That never learned to let go of the rain
So it held onto every memory
I am not a cloud
So I will never understand
The very burden of the skies
And all your enemies

Silt will be released on the 26th June and you can pre-order it now.

Grace Cummings – My God

This summer celebrated Australian songwriter Grace Cummings will release Bloodhorse!, the much anticipated follow-up to her acclaimed third album Ramona. “A bloodhorse is a horse expected to be a winner,” Cummings explains of the title, “but they can often also be temperamental, fearful, fragile and easily broken. Sometimes I feel like I’m a trapped animal. And, when I go to sleep, sometimes it’s like I’m in the gate, twitching. And as soon as I open my eyes, I’m fucking running.” Such fight-or-flight energy drives the record, Cummings leaving no stone unturned in her exploration of her own dreams and dreads, no matter how hideous or provocative the result might be. Yet such honesty is less cheap provocation and more an attempt to regain agency within an otherwise restrictive existence, as though to describe the suffocating sensation of living in the plainest of terms is in some way lessen its hold. Listen to single ‘My God’ now, a song “about hatred, jealousy, rage,” as Cumming continues. “The God here is the dark forces that are wrapping around us, that we scroll through, the toxic energy that binds us together in this modern world, and the fear we feed it every day.”

Watch the video filmed and directed by Ben Ulitzka Portnoy below:

Bloodhorse! will be released on the 14th August on ATO Records and you can pre-order it now.

koleżanka – Lessons in Textiles

Aside from her work as part of Foyer Red, Kristina Moore also records solo under the moniker koleżanka, most recently with 2023 full-length Alone with the Sound the Mind Makes on Bar/None Records which emerged from the COVID era to offer “a delicate line between peace and unease,” as we described in our review. “A sensation which fades against the wider tragedy of the pandemic yet resonates deeply all the same,” we continued, “for life’s relentless motion eased for some, and new ways of living began to suggest themselves.” Now koleżanka is back with ‘Lessons in Textiles’, a new single which draws on Moore’s interest in knitting to weave a metaphor for the personal transformations which so often accompany grief. Namely the technique of unravelling (or ‘frogging’) a knit in order to rework the stitches, the song describing a person not only undone by loss but slowly fashioned into something new.

Leilani Patao – kiddy scissors

Last year Hawaiian-American songwriter, broadcaster and engineer Leilani Patao put out daisy, an EP on Audio Antihero which shunned social media and streaming services and thus came to possess, as we wrote in our review, “that emotional authenticity which marked the earlier generations of bedroom pop which relied on little beyond word of mouth” (making the list of our favourite releases of 2025 as a result). Capitalising on the success of the release, Patao is now sharing a brand new deluxe edition of the EP, with the original album tracks joined by three new songs as well as remixes from the likes of Benjamin Shaw and Magana. One of the new cuts, ‘kiddy scissors’, has been unveiled now to whip up excitement, and the song is every bit as tender and genuine as fans will have come to expect. A celebration of “queer joy and trans love,” the single is in many ways the embodiment of Leilani Patao more generally. A song able to evoke the grandest of emotions without resorting to melodrama or spectacle, instead opting to elevate the ordinary, intimate moments of the everyday.

Nathan El – Jubilee // Her Bright Smile Still Haunts Me

Recording under the moniker Nathan El, Pittsburgh-based agriculturalist and musician Nathan Blake creates folk music which looks backwards while moving forward, taking the traditional forms of the genre and reshaping them to conjure something new. Latest release Jubilee // Her Bright Smile Still Haunts Me demonstrates just how Nathan El achieves this, Blake adding ambient tones to deepen and distort classic arrangements, with Claire Sweeney adding supporting vocals as well as fiddle and harmonium. An American traditonal, ‘Jubilee’ opens as something slow and reflective, though kicks into a toe-tapping alt-country number before returning back to its spacious textures, evoking both the romance and melancholy of humble living as time ticks away. ‘Her Bright Smile Still Haunts Me’ reimagines an old English song to similar effect, though this time favours a richer palette despite the aching longing at its heart. Both songs, much like the Nathan El project itself, aim to reconjure the past within the present, unable or unwilling to relinquish that which used to be, and in the process blur the distinction between love and loss.

Jubilee // Her Bright Smile Still Haunts Me is out now and available from Bandcamp.

Richard Tripps – Stone Eating Animals

“Channel[s] the lo-fi aesthetic of The Range of Light, The Velvet Underground, White Fence and early Oh Sees in order to better evoke the environment where the songs were conceived,” we wrote of Richard Tripps‘s 2024 release Between the Morning, Tripps recording a batch of material in his tent cabin in Big Sur and allowing the sense of place to bleed into the songs themselves. This July, Tripps will share a brand new EP which collects the last of the tracks from that period, and single ‘Stone Eating Animals’ shows the result is every bit as evocative and atmospheric as we’ve come to expect. A playful, swaggering slice of slacker rock from the coastal mountains of California, delivered with something between carefree buoyancy and a more ambigious sense of reflection.

‘Stone Eating Animals’ is out now and available from the usual places. The EP will be released on the 12th July.

Taifa Nia – Spellz

You might know Bay Area artist Taifa Nia as the frontman of Same Girls, guitar player in Ricky Lake, founder of Portion Club or collaborator with artists like Brontez Purnell, though he has now decided to record solo under his own name as a newly personal creative outlet. Debut EP Avaratia shows the kind of honesty which marks his dream pop-inflected style of indie rock. “Avaratia is the latin term for greed,” Nia explains. “I look back on this time of my life and I feel ashamed for the level of greed I had. I didn’t realize I had so much, I had creative people around me, I had effortless love that transmuted into effortless art, and everyday I was surrounded by a place that felt the same way. Yet for some reason I was always looking for more, a new home, a bigger stage, bigger achievements, more money than I needed.” The album follows this mindset towards its alienating end, finding Nia slowly being humbled by his surroundings, and coming to realise he’s moved away from himself in pursuit of material luxuries and acclaim. Listen to single ‘Spellz’ now:

Van Chamberlain – The Right Line

Van Chamberlain are continuing to release singles from their forthcoming full-length As Far As the Eye Can See, following tracks like ‘Miracle Drug‘, ‘Solutions‘ and ‘Running Through the World‘ with latest cut, ‘The Right Line’. The record has possessed a decidedly bittersweet tone to date and the new single is certainly no exception, showing that life’s big questions can be confronted with richness and groove. “There was a point where it seemed like everyone around me was going through it at the same time,” Van Chamberlain explains. “I didn’t have any of the answers, but I wanted to be a positive force. This is a song about wanting to give the people around you a reason to smile. It’s easy to write a song about what you’re going through. This time I wanted to write a song for everyone else.”

Wild Pink – Round Of Applause At The End Of The World

Following on from their critically acclaimed 2024 album Dulling the Horns, Wild Pink are returning this summer with brand new full-length Still Coming Down. Much water has passed beneath the bridge from when we first covered the band over a decade ago, with lead John Ross overcoming serious illness and later becoming a father, not to mention a changing musical style which has veered from raucous indie rock to more cinematic, electronic-based arrangements and back again. Yet throughout this time, there’s always been a consistent spirit to the Wild Pink project which is rooted in Ross’s distinctive lyricism. Still Coming Down retains this spirit while pushing the writing further than ever, capturing contemporary America in all of its chaos, confusion and mundanity. Like DeLillo, Ellroy and Mailer before him, lead single ‘Round Of Applause At The End Of The World’ sees Ross succumb to the masculine urge to write about JFK, Oswald and Jack Ruby, painting a swirling picture of conspiracy that undermines even the most trusted facets of society.

Still Coming Down will be released on the 21st August via Fire Talk and you can pre-order it now.

Wolfschmidt – whaler

“An epic alt rock number which faces up to feelings of stasis with a combination of hope and fatalism, looking to break free even while the same cycles seem to repeat.” So we wrote of Wolfschmidt‘s recent single ‘file’, the Gothenburg outfit utilising a propulsive quiet-loud dynamic to achieve cathartic heights. With album INSUFFICIENT FAILURE coming soon, the band have returned with follow-up ‘whaler’ to further introduce themselves. Again it’s the drama and energy which first grabs the attention, but, revolving around ideas of self-sacrifice for the greater good, there’s a meaty thematic side to the track too. A collision of chaos and ordered flow not unlike the marine environment suggested by the title, with the listener invited to take a deep breath and submerge themselves too.

Dive in
Meet me where I end
And you start
Whale fall
Dive in
I descend
Where you are

‘whaler’ is out now and available from the usual places. INSUFFICIENT FAILURE is coming soon.

The post Weekly Listening: June 2026 #1 appeared first on Various Small Flames.

Only, the result might prove surprising. Because though physically confined in time and space, Moore found her mind departing elsewhere. As though only in quiet can memories blossom into their true richness. “Its 1995, before the roads were paved,” she sings in opener ‘Koszmary’, harking back to a childhood in Phoenix, “the dust storms in July testing our tiny legs / laughing at the danger then / watch our bodies disappear.” The song also introduces the album’s distinctive sound, where ethereal and idiosyncratic details coalesce into a kind of carnivalesque playfulness.

The record returns to Arizona in the way of a dreaming mind, a repeated image bubbling to the surface. Take ‘Canals of Our City’, a dispatch from the life of a teenage crust punk which describes a youth spent in the canals of Phoenix with something like fondness. But then the second half moves on to the murder of a boyfriend’s cousin and the fracturing impact of such violence. “You got the call that he was gone / murder in the first degree,” Moore sings as though suddenly back there again, “disappeared for days without a phone, without a warning / cruel are all the ways this world will give you life, unravelling.”

But of course the mind is far from a one channel package, and stillness lets in all sorts of broadcasts. Tracks like ‘Mania’ offer a view into the less welcome visitors, while ‘Slapstick’ dwells on the uncertainty of past social encounters. The theme is continued in ‘Goliath’, a spacious, woozy track where vacuous “pleasantries at a function” descend into the search for an exit, and the yearning for solitude overtakes everything.

go
its ok that you wanted to
fall back into that thing you do
go
it’s ok that you want to go
to a place you can be alone

What emerges is a delicate line between peace and unease, a sensation which fades against the wider tragedy of the pandemic yet resonates deeply all the same. For life’s relentless motion eased for some, and new ways of living began to suggest themselves. “Wander to the window / a patch of sun to see / softening the first snow / softening in me,” as Moore sings on ‘Saddle Up, Cowboy’, as though the slow movements of those days brought physical changes. But then songs like ‘Cheers!’ reveal the anxiety that follows into the quiet too, and of course there were all the good times to mourn.

It is the stripped back ‘A Body’ which reflects on this experience most fully, probing into the strangeness of living as both a physical object and mental state. If Alone with the Sound the Mind Makes discovers anything from its time in isolation, it’s that the wheels of consciousness keep turning, both a blessing and a curse. “Where does the mind go when a body’s finished?” asks the final line, as though having experienced the kaleidoscopic potential of thought and memory. It seems suddenly impossible that something something so vivid and powerful can merely cease to be.

Alone with the Sound the Mind Makes is out now via Bar/None Records and you can get it from the koleżanka Bandcamp page.

The post koleżanka – Alone with the Sound the Mind Makes appeared first on Various Small Flames.