Now, after Morton’s strong solo album What Will Destroy You, the band are back with Offerings, a brand new record to be released early next year. In what promises to be their most ambitious work yet, Typhoon channel everything from Bosch and Rorschach to Fellini and Lynch to create a rich concept album centring on a protagonist slowly succumbing to an amnesic abyss. As Morton describes:

“It’s a record from the perspective of a mind losing its memory at precisely the same time the world is willfully forgetting its history. The urgent question becomes: without causality, without structures of meaning, without essential features of rational thought, is there anything that can save us from violence / oblivion?

With no past and no future, there is only suffocating, annihilating present, looping on and on ad infinitum (to me, one plausible definition of hell) and the best you can hope for is that somewhere in the void there exists some small, irreducible certainty—a fragment, a kernel, something—that you may have the good fortune to stumble upon before it’s all over.”

And while we should probably reserve judgement until the full review, the record seems to exist within a wholly post-postmodern space. That is, detailing the reaction to our prolonged exposure to mass media and runaway capitalism, an instinctive (re)turning to primitive modes of belief and ritual in the hope of rescuing some semblance of meaning from our existence. In other words, an important and timely exploration of everything that’s going on in America and the world right now.

There is an extended super-cut preview of the album available (which forms the record’s first of four ‘movements’), but the first single proper, ‘Rorschach’, came out last month with a video directed by Matthew Thomas Ross (Neighborhood Films). Starring the memory-less protagonist described above, the song explores how our current state of information overload can, paradoxically, lead to an increase in ignorance and confusion. Here, the system is whited out in an entropic blizzard, the overabundance of information causing an austerity of meaning.

“Eyes on the screen.
We have all the information now
but what does it mean?
Reason’s a tease.
Drank up all that hemlock,
here I am just reading the leaves”

Offerings is set for release on the 12th January via Roll Call Records and you can pre-order it now.

The post Typhoon unveil new album, Offerings, with lead single, ‘Rorschach’ appeared first on Various Small Flames.

And the usual disclaimer applies, there were too many great tunes to include them all, so treat this more as a selection rather than a comprehensive round-up of the year. Enjoy.

Leanne Betasamosake Simpson – Constellation

“You’re used to quiet words
and so am I
so I’ll just whisper“

Tiny Ruins – Dream Wave

“always a dream wave drawing you off track
dream wave, a coast calls you back“

Magana – Get it Right

“You were red but my gold turned you green
So you stood there lying through your teeth“

deer scout – holy ghost

“I could find a new kind of devotion
I could know you by another name“

Hovvdy – Meg

“Speak because i know you feel a certain way
but ill pass it along anyway“

Bedbug – Leaving Town, Moving to a National Park <3

“I’m too young for that anyways
everyone’s just tryna skip town these days“

Soccer Mommy – Skinned Knees

“i left
burning streets in tennessee
for a north east feel“

Mitski – Your Best American Girl

“Your mother wouldn’t approve of how my mother raised me
But I do, I finally do“

LVL UP – Hidden Driver

“God is peeking
softly speaking
fucking everything
until I slowly do see“

Lisa Prank – Starting Again

“You say you’re not still drinking
you just started again
I swear I don’t still miss you
I just started again“

Dicktations – Dicktations Forever

“It’s hard to say when I first figured out something was wrong“

Joyride! – Running on Empty

“Young and running on empty
you said that you thought I looked pretty with my makeup on
so I went home and I took it off“

Sioux Falls (now Stranger Ranger) – Dom

“Spending too much time on the internet
are you ok? you don’t seem very into it“

Camp Cope – Jet Fuel Can’t Melt Steel Beams

“It’s the trophy wives raising trophy wives raising children on TV
Scared of people like you and me
Just don’t ask questions you’ll sleep peacefully
We will not go out in silence and we will not go quietly“

Fake Boyfriend – BUMTOWN

“Why do I cling to the threads that mean the least?“

Outer Spaces – I Saw You

“I saw you, a shedding snake“

American Enthusiasm – Holy Wow

“Make a note of all the words I cough out on my death bed“

The Hotelier – Soft Animal

“Fawn, doe, light snow
Spots on brown of white 
make me believe that there’s a God sometimes“

Beach Slang – Future Mixtape for the Art Kids

“We’re not lost, we are dying in style
We’re not fucked, we are fucking alive“

CHUCK – Death

“You hold on to whatever kin
that keeps on breathin’ in
that keeps you from driftin’
like paper in the wind“

You Won’t – Ya Ya Ya

“So your daddy was a poltergeist
sent your little sister screaming down the hallway
well I don’t know about the afterlife,
but I can help you to forget about the old days“

Mountain Almanac – Kids Playing Outside

“Saturday morning, cartoon time, let’s go“

Basement Revolver – Johnny

“Please just stay away from Johnny
cos I love him understand“

Boy Scouts – Did You See My Cry

“walking walmart shopping center
i’d never been better
on my own two feet
i guess“

Free Cake For Every Creature – First Summer in a City

“i’ll be singing when i’m 90
climb a tree to see
what tastes to smokey sweet
first summer in a city“

Haley Heynderickx – First I’m Sorry

“Mother knows I drown in my lies
Father knows I learned my lesson the second time.
Ask me where I’ll go I’ll say do not know
No, I do not know“

ARMS – Missing

“I don’t want to force your hand
but wishes disguised as plans will never do
Like the king of deathbed regrets
and the queen of last requests could ever choose“

Naps – Bad Vibrations

“Can’t stand up to the world’s expectations
I’m living on a bad bad vibration“

The Washboard Abs – Day Draws Nearer

“Your backyard
you talked to God
about the heartbreak you forgot“

Trace Mountains – Forgiveness

“old dirt you thrown underneath the stair
is right there
right where you said i’d tremble and stare
at the vast unforgiving spirit lurking there
but it takes time, to realise forgiveness“

Nassau – Desert Blues

“I took a marker and wrote your number on the bathroom stall
That’s just my way of reaching out cos I’m too proud to call“

Adeline Hotel – Near You

“Sleep better tonight
In the heat of red moon light
Whatever we are, whatever we’ll be
I used to live near you, you used to love near me“

Simon Balto – Foothills

“I’ve never been a faithful man
I’ve always been too proud to pray
But won’t you come out to the foothills
And hold me together for one more day“

Cloud Cult – No Hell

“There’s no use in running unless you run like heck
The best things we’ve learned we learned from the wreck
Jesus coming back as a woman this time
Handing out hugs in the clinic line
Someone tell the devil we don’t need no hell
We’re all pretty good at beating up ourselves“

Slingshot Dakota – Break

“And in the end there’s two of us
it was always two of us“

Good Good Blood – No Sadness/Furrowed Brow

“We’ll have no sadness/furrowed brow
There is no shame in dying now
I said from my death bed“

Ben Seretan – Bowl of Plums

“My friends call me when they’re feeling low
We talk quietly for hours and walk the room
Flowers growing in a coffee can
Our lives are wonderful and sad sometimes“

Chris Bathgate – Big Ghost

“I got a Big Ghost
of static in my throat
from coming up too short“

Wintersleep – Metropolis

“The man that you are, the man you were, the man you left
Turn into stars, flowing in through the wilderness“

Mothers – Lockjaw

“I don’t want your kind words
I want your ghost inside a thimble“

Car Seat Headrest – Drunk Driver / Killer Whales

“You build yourself up against others’ feelings
And it left you feeling empty as a car coasting downhill
I have become such a negative person
It was all just an act
It was all so easily stripped away“

Space Mountain – Never Lonely

“Met a friend today
And im feeling okay
She’s in my head
I’m never lonely“

Hallelujah the Hills – What Do the People Want?

“What do the people want?
The people don’t know what they want“

Mount Moriah – Calvander

“Carry on and on and on on
With your cosmic reach
Newport river whispered fate
Spells cast with every crashing wave
Neon lines and a new name“

Frederick Squire – Bike Thief

“The lights are on
And we are sinking way down in our chairs
We don’t say much of anything
Even though there’s still a lot to say“

Kevin Morby – We’ve Been Here Before

“Running my mouth off at the storm
Yelling, “man, what the hell did you do that for?“

Sam Moss – Vertebrae

“Did you watch my vertebrae
Slendering out
Or did you watch your own?
Stretching skin over the bone
I’ve grown
Learning to be proud“

Arlo Aldo – House & Home

“O’er the mountains out past the trees
where the grasslands, meet the sky
you’ll find me singin’ my songs
with my lover in my mind“

Will Johnson – Nervousness Fangs

“Jesus what a mess
what they’re all selling
and what’s being sold“

Jeremy Squires – After All

“There’s an old painting of Jesus on a wall
and a tapestry that hangs by a cross
that weighs heavy on my shoulders now and then
I get caught up with why the things we love ain’t never last“

The Dead Tongues – Stained Glass Eyes

“Fifth wind brought a howl got me in a storm
I saw a lighthouse spinning at the edge of the world
like looking through a window to the day
I was born“

Kyle Morton – Automatic

“It’s my head, it’s my head
breaking itself to make a thought but instead
Just some pornographic images to stave off my death
It’s all automatic“

Keaton Henson – Alright

“Obviously
My wounds are open to see
But don’t take them seriously
I’ll be fine“

Talons’ – Work Stories

“Is this what the end of the world looks like?
Or is this just life?“

Jordan O’Jordan – A Lonely Road

“There are truths we may or may never know friend
and that is the point“

Mal Devisa – Sea of Limbs

“Honey-lover
keeper of the bees
Soft-spoken
seldom-seen“

Young Jesus – Hinges

“I’m pretty sure I’m a kind of collection of things
scattered throughout the backyard
under the moon
pulling weirdo slow dance moves
maybe always losing it a little
i am ashamed to believe in myself!“

Lung Cycles – For a While

“I feel like sharing
so I’ll press record
and I’ll tell you that I had a vision“

Sister Grotto – UNCANNY

“When we go, we go alone“

John K. Samson – Virtute At Rest

“You should know I am with you, know I forgive you
Know I am proud of the steps that you’ve made
Know it will never be easy or simple
Know I will dig in my claws when you stray“

If you missed it, you can see the list of our favourite albums of 2016 here, and stay tuned for our collection of the best name-your-price releases on Bandcamp next week.

The post Wake the Deaf’s Favourite Songs of 2016 appeared first on Various Small Flames.

Hallelujah The Hills – A Band is Something to Figure Out
(REVIEW | INTERVIEW)

“This is an album built from symbolism (one of the tags on Bandcamp is ‘hieroglyphics’, to give you an idea) but, like all the best mysteries, a sense of significance floats to the top, independent of any hidden code. Hallelujah the Hills reconstruct the human experience through sheer enthusiasm, using their joyous hooks and choruses as earnest expressions of emotion rather than ironic juxtapositions.  Walsh and Co. aren’t sitting us down to share a smirk and a wink, or to reel off some abstract philosophical theories, but rather taking us by the hand and running through their strange world, leaving it up to us to catch something meaningful in the breathless blur. And what a world this is, one which has been evolving since their first album, an ecosystem based on a strange molecule – twin strands of confusion and intuition tightly bound and swirled into a double helix – the DNA of Hallelujah the Hills.”

Camp Cope – S/T
(REVIEW)

“For those of us that want to hope that maybe everything doesn’t have to be shit forever, there’s an atmosphere of dissent that seeps into every line. Not in that horrible on-the-nose Billy Bragg/Frank Turner way, but more subtle, funny and heartbreaking, with throwaway lines that leave you a bit off-balanced. I think that’s what I like most about Camp Cope – the constant switch between personal and protest, heartache and anger, and all the while feeling completely and utterly helpless.”

Beat Radio – Take It Forever
(REVIEW | INTERVIEW)

“Beat Radio’s fifth album Take It Forever feels like a culmination of ideas, the product of some long, hard thinking… With a large dose of hope and a pervading sense of goodwill, Take It Forever plays like the manifesto of someone who doesn’t know all the answers but finds meaning in asking the questions, the words not of a revolutionary or prophet but an ordinary man striving to make life extraordinary, just as it should be.”

Talons’ – Work Stories
(REVIEW)

“Explores the pervasive disillusionment in a society that hasn’t yet lived up to what it promised, a society run for interests other than those of the people who make up its majority. A society that offers hopes and dreams of resplendent lives in exchange for your hard earned $$$s, education courses that leave people stranded with more knowledge but no money, opportunities or sympathy. These are songs for people who wonder ‘when did it become not okay to do what I want with my life?’ Work Stories is a reminder that it’s okay to occasionally feel afraid or sad, that the things which trouble you are probably not as much your fault as you think, and most of all that, despite how it might sometimes feel you are never, ever, alone.”

Mount Moriah – How To Dance
(REVIEW)

“Mount Moriah push past their troubles into something positive and mysterious, a conglomeration of symbolism, mysticism, universality and other cosmic forces which pretty much equates to Southern Gothic 2.0. How to Dance is crafted from spirit and faith, carved out of a high, wide hope capable of healing any wounds, giving us the courage not just to survive, but to live.”

The Chairman Dances – Time Without Measure
(REVIEW | INTERVIEW)

“The Chairman Dances succeed in bringing characters to life in three dimensions, though on Time Without Measure the feat is even more impressive as the roster of figures are not only numerous but also known to history in decidedly superhuman terms. Now more than ever we should remember that activists and political heroes, for all of their spirit and unimaginable resolve, are as prone to doubt and death as anyone, and not half as powerful without our support and belief. Likewise, we’d do well to remember that villains and bigots are human too, flames that, however fierce and bright, will be snuffed out without the oxygen that is our backing. This album is a reminder that belief and faith can save us. It’s just a matter of choosing the right thing in which to invest our energies.”

Karima Walker – Hands in Our Names
(REVIEW)

“Hands in Our Names sees Karima Walker reconstruct an array of varied elements into something larger and more meaningful than they could ever be alone. Field recordings from her present and found recordings from someone else’s past swirl above and beneath her own words and guitar notes, drones of every pitch filling the background and stretching the songs into worlds of their own. When atomised into separate parts, the album is impressionistic, blurry and strange and difficult to describe, though when listened to as a whole, a blanket of stitches, it becomes something vivid and intuitive. As such, Hands in Our Names is able to convey things normal songs cannot, a freedom not just born of trope-avoiding experimentalism but somehow inherent in the very combinations of sounds, as though arranged into secret patterns or codes, magic spells that trump postmodern convictions. Rather than dying in open air upon leaving her mouth, Karima Walker’s communications bubble from within, stirring that dormant empathy that lies somewhere near the centre of us all.”

Sioux Falls (now Stranger Ranger) – Rot Forever
(REVIEW)

“Sioux Falls’ sound reads like a melting pot of the last twenty years of rock music. Taking the indie rock of the likes of Built to Spill et al., the band add thoughtful emo (like The Hotelier) and smart pop punk vibes (think LVL UP etc.) to create something wonderfully varied and entertaining, cycling through these genres not just between songs but within them. The narrator is centred within the stories of which they sing, sounding like another confused player in violent, unfair game operating to rules outside of anyone’s understanding. In the face of bewilderment they turn to anger and sorrow and joy, feelings easy to recognise, easy to submit to, decidedly non-ambivalent chemical reactions which remind them that they’re still alive.”

John K Samson – Winter Wheat
(REVIEW)

“The Weakerthans frontman’s first release since 2012 is everything we’ve come to expect, exploring his favourite themes of contemporary loneliness and isolation in his uniquely warm manner, his characters not ready to give up hope that connection (that is, real human connection) is still possible in our digital world.”

Nap Eyes – Thought Rock Fish Scale

“Nova Scotia’s Nap Eyes return with a sophomore album of rhythmic, ear-worming slacker folk rock songs, recorded completely live with no overdubs in just four days. Nigel Chapman’s lethargic monotone vocals give the whole thing the feel of a daydream, like the wandering high-brow thoughts of a sleepy philosophy/psychology major.”

Jeremy Squires – Shadows
(REVIEW | INTERVIEW)

“Does what the very best folk music can do, an outpouring from one human being to a multitude of others. It’s a record borne out of legitimate heartbreak, the end of a marriage and the death of a loved one, a brave and honest attempt to deal with big life-changing events. Deft songwriting allows Squires to expand these specific, individual scenes into large, engaging metaphors, in which we can find shards of our own experiences. The beauty of it is that the finished work is not just healing and revelatory for the artist. It can help us too.”

Loone & Paper Bee – Now I Know You and See How Wide You Are to the World
(REVIEW)

“Now I Know You and See How Wide You Are to the World is a terrific album. It’s as rich and as complex as life itself, steeped in passion and poetry, whirring like the universe and everything in it. There’s a line at the end of ‘Ugly, I’m Sorry’ that sums up the whole release rather nicely, capturing its in a handful of words far better than I am able to in this review: ‘And I wanna hold your hand / and go explore the pulsing humming darkness’.”

Spartan Jet-Plex – Get Some
(REVIEW)

“Taken at face value, Get Some is an indistinct album, the themes and meanings wrapped in layers of abstract lyrics and varied instrumentation. However, this vagueness itself curls and contorts and creeps into your head, eluding inclinations to describe and detail and thus bypassing the whole processing machinery most music must enter. As such, Kells’s thoughts and feelings arrive whole, unaltered, meaning that you feel what’s being said, even if it’s impossible to put into words.”

Kyle Morton – What Will Destroy You
(REVIEW)

“While Typhoon’s fourth record is still in the works, Morton last month released a surprise solo album, What Will Destroy You. Again the twin themes of tragedy and pleasure are central, as is the idea of catharsis and release. However, while mortality is an intrinsic element, the album does not tread the exact same ground as previous Typhoon releases. What Will Destroy You shifts the focus onto love, more specifically what Morton describes as “the ambivalence of erotic love,” leading to an intimate, surprisingly honest album which delves into things both more wonderful and mundane than your average love songs.”

CHUCK – My Band is a Computer
(REVIEW | INTERVIEW)

“Playing like a collaboration between Owen Ashworth and Bret Easton Ellis, the CHUCK brand of observant and at times cringe-inducingly honest indie pop will no doubt prove divisive. But there’s far more to My Band is a Computer than drugs and self-pity and empty sex. Like the Frog release that Audio Antihero brought us last year, it crams an awful lot into its run-time, covering everything that’s terrible and everything that’s not about being a young adult in the twenty-first century, somehow managing to tap into the human kernel at the centre of our zombified lurch of nostalgia and regret.”

Monarch Mtn – Everyone is Here
(REVIEW)

“It would be wrong to consider the music of Monarch Mtn as simply a two dimensional mope-fest, with Farmer’s poetic lyrics and warm delivery hint at something beyond the misery. The palette is undoubtedly gloomy, blacks and greys and deep blues, but Farmer’s warm vocals and poetic turns of phrase flicker across this twilight like threads of gold.”

Claire Cronin – Came Down a Storm
(REVIEW)

“The real success of Down Came a Storm is how Claire Cronin and John Dieterich combine to spin stories and landscapes from their combined talents, every element given equal standing to conjure not only folk tales but the worlds in which they exist. Here you can feel the wind on your skin, hear it move in the trees, smell its scent of salt and earth and ozone. You can feel it move the characters too, propelling them into dark, poetic places where nature rules and comfort can be found in the starkest of elements.”

Adeem the Artist – Kyle Adem is Dead
(REVIEW | INTERVIEW)

“The word ‘sincere’ is often taken as synonymous for affectionate or sentimental. With Kyle Adem is Dead, Adeem the Artist strives to be sincere in every sense, finding the bravery not just to declare his love for his wife but to voice his fears, his weaknesses, his exasperation with life as we live it. With everything on the table, no lingering mysteries or secrets withheld, there is nothing left to corrupt the good things. Because, after all, Kyle Adem is dead.”

Mal Devisa – Kiid
(REVIEW)

“Kiid is a personal record and plays like condensed version of life, reaching high and falling low, crackling and bursting and simmering under the surface, at times exploding in urgent streams of consciousness as if the words and thoughts can no longer be held in. This is an album that refuses to be reduced to something easily describable, persevering in it’s complexity against the binarizing forces of anxiety or genre or gender or race. Kiid isn’t a self-doubt record or political record, nor a sad record or a happy record. It’s not jazz or gospel or indie rock. Kiid is everything. Kiid is whatever it wants to be.”

Lisa/Liza – Deserts of Youth
(REVIEW)

“Wonderfully minimal and psych-tinged songs that will doubtless appeal to fans of  soft and sad outsider folk artists such as Sarah Winchester. At times it’s gossamer thin, with Victoria’s vocals little more than hushed murmurs, though even in these quiet moments her words hold a kind of understated magnetism, a power which draws in the instrumentation and in turn becomes augmented by it. Deserts of Youth shows you don’t necessarily need to raise your voice to make a statement, that even quiet songs can be imbued with a blazing energy.”

Old Earth – Lay For June
(REVIEW | INTERVIEW)

“Trying to put Old Earth’s music into words seems futile and kind of besides the point. There’s never going to be a satisfactory way to describe art so fluid and weird and instinctive, so all we can tell you is what it sounds like to us. It’s operating on a deeper level, one not easily outlined, playing on some atavistic region of the subconscious that reacts to fear and beauty, that treats intense wonder and dread as the same emotion. It’s the same area of the brain that tells us to light candles and throw coins down wells no matter how secular our society becomes.”

What were your favourite albums of 2016? Let us know through one of the usual channels – we’re on Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr and Instagram.

The post Wake the Deaf’s Favourite Albums of 2016 appeared first on Various Small Flames.

Tracklisting:

1. prairie creek redwoods state park, ca – bedbug
2. See the World – Kidsmoke
3. Motion | Sickness – Good Good Blood
4. Downtown – Gabriella Cohen
5. Automatic – Kyle Morton
6. Throwing Roses – Eva Foote
7. vildt+sødt – Eugenia
8. Dicktations Forever – Dicktations
9. Fallen Robin – Wild Leaves
10. Palms – Native Other
11. Not Your Prey – Squirrel Flower
12. Luna – Akira Kosemura
13. Made of Gold – Albert af Ekenstam
14. She Floats – Van-Anh Nguyen
15. Dead Radiance – Ego Death
16. Sponge State – Sløtface
17. Black Mass – Wooden Maria
18. Float – Silver Liz
19. glass machines discovering water – Corvus B.
20. Longshot – The Furious Season
21. The Same Chords – Tiger in My Tank
22. Let’s Go to the Beach – Sophie Longshaw
23. Blue Moon – Many Voices Speak
24. One Footed – MAH KEE OH
25. Country Room – Static Animal
26. The Ground Before Him – Drowning By Numbers
27. Refugee – Cameron James Henderson
28. down (kenny) – ever
29. Strange Tones – Youceff Kabal
30. Don’t Let Love Go By – Golden Suits
31. Sit and Stare – Tiny Dinosaurs
32. Settle Down – Dark Mean
33. telegraph ave. – Betty Becky
34. WEN – glider
35. Nicholas – Holiday Oscar
36. Lyse Striber – True Strength
37. Careless – Stationary Suns
38. Vulnerable – Mark Timmins
39. On & On – Reuben Hollebon
40. Recoiled – William Ryan Fritch
41. Lonely Girl – Praything
42. Drinking the Same Water – Katie Spencer
43. Get It Right – Magana
44. Cheer Up Free Your Mind – Jenny O.

That was October 2016, and if you like what you see/hear, why not check out the other months too?

The post October 2016 Roundup appeared first on Various Small Flames.

While Typhoon’s fourth record is still in the works, Morton last month released a surprise solo album, What Will Destroy You. Again the twin themes of tragedy and pleasure are central, as is the idea of catharsis and release. Opener ‘Poor Bastard’ finds the narrator at his funeral, being lowered into the ground to the sound of a stranger’s eulogy, though he refuses to settle in his eternal bed. “I was done with being dead,” Morton sings, “I leapt out from the casket, looking like Dracula’s revenge”. And while this leads to an awkward moment where the narrator is standing up front laughing as the crowd filters away, kind of put out at the now-deathless funeral, it allows for a post-casket/pre-death epiphany:

“And in that moment I believed in
karma, and in my mouth the mantra formed

It will come back eventually
You will be reborn”

However, while mortality is an intrinsic element, the album does not tread the exact same ground as previous Typhoon releases. What Will Destroy You shifts the focus onto love, more specifically what Morton describes as “the ambivalence of erotic love,” leading to an intimate, surprisingly honest album which delves into things both more wonderful and mundane than your average love songs. Take ‘Innuendos’, opening with playful horns and maintaining a certain joy across its run-time. The track appears full of vim and vigour on the surface yet hides an ordinary character, a narrator full of spectacular thoughts in an unspectacular existence. Amidst this love story he stands naked in front of his partner, feeds birds in his dressing gown and imagines murdering the reckless driver who almost T-boned him, though the encounter ends in awkward apology as hard feelings drift away.

‘Survivalist Fantasy’ is a morose love song about the end of the world in the vein of Strand of Oaks’ ‘Bonfire‘ or talons’ Songs For Boats, though the duo find being the last people alive removes a certain thrill from love, mating rituals made redundant (“The garden’s ours now we’re competitionless / But suppose a third party’s necessary / Just to get it on”). ‘The Aftermath’ is sensual in a literal sense, full of sights and smells and still strong thoughts, a gentle memory growing tragic with the passing of time, while the ‘Gestalt of Original Pain’ is equally backward looking. Here the past is a tangible thing, something with form and shape and weight which pulls at your mind through the day and invites you in at night, its halls dark and empty, its door and windows locked. But hope still pushes through, that bright-white cord of defiance that threads its way through all of Kyle Morton’s writing, insisting that escape from that place is always possible, no matter how long it takes.

“Give yourself a million years to wake up in the morning
And give yourself a million more then if you’re still tired
There is nothing
There is nothing
There is nothing but time
We are not sick you and I
Don’t you listen to lies”

‘Automatic’ is a song of compulsion and addiction, and those who lean on strange comforts when faced with a deeper void, even if such habits create a narcotic fog which only deepens the original issues. “It’s my head, It’s my head,” sings Morton, “breaking itself to make a thought but instead / Just some pornographic images to stave off my death / It’s all automatic”. The track feels startlingly relevant and contemporary, like all those drinking blues folk songs updated for our digital world, where intimacy is never further nor closer than a half-inch through an LED screen. ‘Water Torture’ finds a narrator in a similar stasis, rendered motionless by the absence of his lover, a tragicomedy in which Morton pushes further than most songwriters dare, where the sadness and anxiety are still real and the humour is no cheap gag.

“I’ll be discovered by explorers
My body fossilized in torpor
And all the while
my thoughts repeat like
Chinese water torture

[…]

In disbelief at your misfortune you say
Hell I was only gone the weekend
And then I burst to flames
You see I’ve lived entire lives
In a single a moment”

‘Perverse Fascination’ sees intimacy permitted on one level but withheld on another (“If I couldn’t have your heart / I would have your body,”) while ‘What Will Save You” sees a surrender of aspirations in favour of simplicity, dreams of grandeur dropped for love. This theme continues into closer ‘My Little Darlin Knows My Nature’, the narrator overcoming an aversion to the banality of love as he understood it, thus experiencing the healing, life-altering sort of human-human connection that is strong enough to fill the cracks of life and, ultimately, make living worth your while.

“I never learned to trust a love song
It was not because the words were trite
But I felt the love itself was trite

Now my little darlin I’ll sing you a love song
One you can hang your hat on every night
I will be your witness if you be mine
I will be your witness if you be mine
I will be your witness if you be my wife”

What Will Destroy You is out now and you can grab it from the Typhoon Bandcamp page or on vinyl via Bug Hunt. Kyle Morton is going on a solo tour of the US/Canada this January, and you can find a full list of dates here.

Photography by Matthew Thomas Ross

The post Kyle Morton – What Will Destroy You appeared first on Various Small Flames.

Listen to the mix via the player below, and be sure to check out the other volumes which can be found here, and are available on our 8tracks page.

Tracklisting:

1. Midnight City (M83 Cover) – The Last Bison
2. Anthems For A Seveteen Year Old Girl (Broken Social Scene Cover) – Dancing Years
3. Goodbye Horses (Q Lazzarus Cover) – Hayden Thorpe & Jon Hopkins
4. Native American Summer (Beat Happening Cover) – Small Wonder
5. Semi-Charmed Life (Third Eye Blind Cover) – Frontier Ruckus
6. Passionate Kisses (Lucinda Williams Cover) – Shakey Graves
7. Do You Realize (The Flaming Lips Cover) – Fossil Collective
8. Crazy In Love (Beyonce Cover) – Melissa Laveaux
9. Car (Built To Spill Cover) – Emily Reo
10. Perfect Day (Lou Reed Cover) – Phosphorescent
11. Father & Daughter (Paul Simon Cover) – The River Has Many Voices
12. Blues Run the Game (Jackson C. Frank Cover) – Oscar Lush
13. In Spite of Ourselves (John Prine Cover) – Kyle Morton & Danielle Sullivan
14. Around and Around (John Denver Cover) – Mountain Man
15. I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry (Hank Williams Cover) – Fog Lake
16. The Way the Whole Thing Ends (Gillian Welch Cover) – Night Beds
17. I Am Not Waiting Anymore (Field Report Cover) – Blind Boys of Alabama
18. Will the Circle be Unbroken? (Traditional) – Emily Lacy
19. Oblivion (Grimes Cover) – Wilsen
20. Teenage Spaceship (Smog Cover) – How To Dress Well
21. Fare Thee Well (Dink’s Song) (Dave van Ronk Cover) – Oscar Isaac

The Covers Mix: Volume #10 from Wake The Deaf on 8tracks Radio.

The post The Covers Mix: Volume #10 appeared first on Various Small Flames.