“Existing in the strange space between loss and whatever comes next, searching for clues as to exactly what happened, not to mention where the future might lead.” So we wrote of Adeline Hotel‘s 2024 album Whodunnit, a raw picture of codependency and its slow disintegration which offered some of Dan Knishowy’s starkest writing to date. Now Adeline Hotel is preparing to release new full-length Watch the Sunflowers via Ruination Record Co., and it seems the future led to something altogether richer. Because, as new single ‘Dreaming’ suggests, the album is a reaction to the threadbare arrangements of its predecessor, as though, having endured the aftermath of loss, the colour has come back into Knishkowy’s world.

Alexei Shishkin – Magpie

Every single Alexei Shishkin has revealed from new album Good Times has stretched its subject matter in new, apparently unrelated directions, be that computer games (‘Disco Elysium‘), football tactics (‘Tiki Taka 2006‘) or poetry (‘Ode to Carl Dennis’). With the record out now via Rue Defense, Shishkin has returned with final single ‘Magpie’, a track which not only widens the topics covered during the full-length but could be read as a kind of metacommentary on this pick and mix style. Because, like the titular corvid, Good Times sees Shishkin collect all manner of shiny objects as and when they take his fancy. So what better a spirit animal for the album than a magpie? “I was actually going to name the album Magpie, but by the time we got around the finalizing it, Peach Pit had *just* released an album called Magpie, so I obviously couldn’t bite that.”

Altai – Brawl

Back in May we introduced New South Wales duo Altai, that’s multi-instrumentalist/vocalist Tessa Collins and drummer Andrew Wilkinson, with single ‘Like You Need It’. “Released just as the southern hemisphere moves into autumn,” we wrote, “the song is suffused with a romantic nostalgia and the gnawing melancholy of the changing seasons.” With an EP set for release in October via Broken Palace, Altai have new returned with new track ‘Brawl’. It’s a song which explores masculinity and its associated pressures, charged with a sense of urgency as though in attempt to will someone away from the ruinous expectations loaded onto men within the patriarchal system. Collins’s vocals harness this energy, sounding at once stark and compassionate in their willingness to name those destructive forces so directly. Fans of acts like The Weather Station will find much to admire.

Cormorant Tree Oh – The Wrong Kind

Recording under the moniker Cormorant Tree Oh, Dublin-based multi-disciplinary artist and songwriter Mary Keane has established herself as one of Ireland‘s premier practioners of experimental folk, winning much praise for 2024 record Moonish (out via Trapped Animal Records) and sharing the stage with the likes of Lankum. Taken from that album, latest single ‘The Wrong Kind’ is another addition to her catalogue, a song presenting isolation in all of its eeriness and beauty, blurring the line between loneliness and romance with an atmosphere as beguilling as it is austere. The song comes complete with a video made in collaboration with artist Zoe Greenway (formerly of M(h)aol), taking cues from 1948 classic Portrait Of Jennie in its visual style. The video marks a conscious embrace of centring the artistic vision above all else, timed just as Keane has decided, in a move we ourselves also made several years ago, to leave Spotify. “I decided to leave Spotify because Spotify’s CEO David Ek is investing in AI war drones, they pay artists feck all and they are now pushing creepy AI music,” as she succinctly describes. Amen.

Moonish is out now via Trapped Animal Records and available from Bandcamp.

Frog – SPANISH ARMADA VAR. XV

“Even for a band who have made a name for their idiosyncratic style, this might just be their most singular release yet.” So we wrote of THE COUNT, Frog‘s brand new full-length coming later this month via Audio Antihero, when introducing the record a couple of weeks ago. “A concept album which sees lead Daniel Bateman assume the persona of the titular count,” we continued, “a figure straight out of some Warren Zevon song, full of shady history, personal mythology and perhaps even a supernatural edge.” After single ‘BITTEN BY MY LOVE VAR. XI’ (a song “strange, unpredictable and oddly heartbreaking), Frog have now returned with ‘SPANISH ARMADA VAR. XV’. Moving from hushed to hysterical and back again, the track showcases the full plasticity of Bateman’s voice within less than 150 seconds, as well as his ability to present desire and yearning in such a singular manner.

Me and the guys walked over with buckets of fries
Boarding the Spanish armada, that’s what I thought when I saw ya

Lawn – Pressure

Built around co-lead singers/songwriters Mac Folger and Rui De Magalhaes, New Orleans band Lawn have excelled with an idiosyncratic combination of jangly pop and taut post-punk across three full-length albums, defying genre conventions to show that fun and edge need not be mutually exclusive. Coming later this month via Exploding in Sound, new full-length God Made The Highway finds Lawn perfect this style. While previous single ‘Davie’ showed off the bright side of the release, latest single ‘Pressure’ falls on the wiry end of the spectrum. A track which coils like a tightening spring as De Magalhaes mulls over perceived judgement on his life choices from elsewhere, building and building in seething tension as things threaten to spill over into chaos. Whether the feelings are justified or just the product of personal insecurities is left up in the air, but it doesn’t really matter, there’s catharsis in the chorus all the same.

Watch the video directed by Daniel Lynch / Company Businesses Inc below:

God Made The Highway will be released on the 19th September via Exploding in Sound Records and you can pre-order it now.

múm – Kill the Light

We’ve covered a couple of tracks from Icelandic mainstays múm in recent months, previewing their forthcoming new album History of Silence. First ‘Mild at Heart’, what we called “a controlled, ever-curious track that shows the power of understatement while also reaching towards new ground,” then ‘Only Songbirds Have a Sweet Tooth’ which “embod[ies the colour and playfulness of the record as a whole,” as we described, “all manner of glitches and pops play[ing] across the background melody, offering a bittersweet tone which the dual vocals only further in their searching, reflecting style.” With release imminent via Morr Music, múm have shared new single, ‘Kill the Light’, and the song is no less striking. One lighthearted and playful yet evocative too, typical of the sense of nature running through the record. As ever, múm craft with a gentle hand yet evoke things far larger and grander than everyday existence.

History of Silence will be released via Morr Music on 15th September. Pre-order it now from the múm Bandcamp page.

New Balance – Lemon Slice

Originating back in 2017, New Balance was conceived as the solo project of Jeremy Leasure, a space in which to experiment and improvise with help from a rotating band of collaborators. One which appeared to offer a swan song back in 2022 with second album More Love Hours Than Can Ever Be Repaid, as Leasure came to feel the style had reached its apex and thus run its course. However, rather than putting New Balance to rest, Leasure instead evolved the project into something different, the line-up now solidified as a full band with the permanent addition of Jacob Maag, Emily Monnig, Dawson Timpany and Andy Campbell. A full-length is planned for 2026 with Anxiety Blanket Records to fully establish this new era, but for now double single Lemon Slice / Pocket Change gives an indication of what to expect. ‘Lemon Slice’ is perhaps the best introduction, its easygoing sound masking lyrics that focus on everyday disasters, what Leasure refers to in the chorus as “these little devastations.”

Lemon Slice / Pocket Change is out now via Anxiety Blanket Records.

Sweet Nobody – Revenge

Hailing from Long Beach, California, Sweet Revenge are an indie pop quartet whose work embraces the twin joys of melody and noise, utilising both pop and garage rock aesthetics to write songs for the meek and modest among us. Out via Repeating Cloud, latest single ‘Revenge’ shows both the fun and bite of this style, using sunny momentum as a source of energy to confront the phonies and their convoluted ways of living. “It’s hard to feel like you’re the only one searching for the genuine among the accusing masses,” as the band explain. “The hardest thing to face in conflict is knowing that someone is lying and not knowing who it is. This song is for those without an angle. It’s for those who love the straightforward.”

Pick up your pen
Accusations fly again
It’s all pretend
Even your friends
You ride the high
Kill anyone who asks you why
You try to cry
But you’re dead inside

Spirited Followers – Awakened

Cardiff‘s Spirited Followers have steadily built an audience in recent times, practising a singular blend of experimental folk and post-rock which reaches around the globe for influence. The resulting sound invokes the act’s title in its impassioned, enveloping style. With members hailing from Cyprus, India and Wales, Ireland, and England, the diversity of inspiration is perhaps unsurprising, though the work of Spirited Followers pushes beyond those backgrounds too. You’ll hear elements of Appalachian mountain music in the stark guitar, as well as a Greek flavour among several others. Now the band have released their debut single ‘Awakened’ via Roccoco Sŵn, and the track is the ideal calling card. One typical of the project’s sense of detail and scale, ebbing and flowing across its length yet, led by Avaneesh Bavadekar’s striking vocals, always building towards something higher, drawing the audience into its evocative, mesmerised state.

Wide Orbit – He’s A Wizard

Described by label 22Twenty as “a Midwest cough drop for the sore soul,” Chicago’s Wide Orbit are a DIY band in the best sense. A group of college-town buds recording in their cramped room with equal parts heart and playfulness. Suitably titled debut album Introducing… Wide Orbit has just been released, a calling card for the project and its emotive, mischievous spirit, as highlighted by single ‘He’s a Wizard’. The country-inflected indie rock number pairs irreverent energy with almost deadpan vocals, telling the tale of a teenage rogue and their attempts to get the better of their parents (“In May or April of 2006 / my mom bought me a brand new pair of kicks,” as one verse goes. “And I ran every which way even far away from them / And they’d come get me in the Honda Odyssey”). But by the back half of the track, the droll humour ramps up into something different, embracing the sing-a-long energy of a barroom jam.

The post Weekly Listening: September 2025 #2 appeared first on Various Small Flames.

Writing on their debut Blood on the Tracks, which came out on Forged Artifacts back in 2018, we described the Lawn sound as “difficult to pin down,” citing how the pair’s habit of swapping the role of lead gave the record “an unpredictable and off-kilter feel.” With “the immediacy of raw and spiky post-punk” and “golden 60s melodies,” Lawn are a band in constant motion, bouncing between two opposing poles and always surprising us with just where they end up.

The style relies on trust and intuition between Folger and DeMagalhaes. “There is a coolness to being able to lean into whatever comes out,” the former says. “Not worrying about genres or anything like that. I trust Rui to know what to play, and I trust my own instincts too. Just keeping what we came up with the first time.”

This autumn sees the release of Johnny, a brand new album to be released via Community Records and Muscle Beach Records, that continues this work. The record promises to be as varied and inventive as anything Lawn have produced to date, finding inspiration in upbeat 90s indie rock and heavy art-punk. First single ‘Nighttime Creatures’ provides an alluring glimpse into just what this might mean. With a warm spirit and subtle psych flourishes, the song is relaxed but loaded with something more pressing too, clouds hovering over the restrained style, anxieties creeping into even the most inviting situations.

“[The song] is about wanting to be at the party but also hating it,” Folger says. “My own natural inclination to be extroverted and the overwhelming anxiety of being in a crowd. I wrote the words to this song while watching a group of slightly aged-out frat guys yell at each other from my second-story window.”

Johnny is out on the 4th September via Community Records and Muscle Beach Records and you can pre-order it now.

The post Lawn – Nighttime Creatures appeared first on Various Small Flames.

Tracklisting:

Dear Nora – White Fur
Lawn – 2000 Boy
Pearl Crush – True Blue
Dead Painters – Fool On Fire
Slowcoaches – Found Down
Two Meters – Left Behind
Kerem Atalay – Winter 2
Pat Moon – I Belong
Blood Hype – Not Too Good
Talons’ – Driving Home From Shows
The Nova Darlings – I Like Crashing My Car (Into Yours)
Dead Sullivan – Swallow
Onlyness – Comfortable
Of the Valley – Italy
Nice Knees – Backout
Suburban Pets – Candy
Minor Moon – It’s Okay
Caroline Lazar – Georgia
Heatwarmer – American Dog
Jacob Furr – Life Comes At You Fast
Deux Trois – Dave
Grace Turner – Dead or Alive
Britton Patrick Morgan – Southern Drawl

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

Short staccato jags of guitar open ‘2000 Boy’, a repetitive line that every so often tumbles into a fluid tangle. The chorus, when it eventually arrives, is strangely affecting, Folger’s vocals rich with nostalgia as he sings:

“Take me to your show
some day find your rhythm
you’re 2000 boy
show him that you’re with it”

De Magalhaes then takes over vocal duties, first on ‘Rats’, where he gets to show off his hectic warble, and then on the title track, it’s Parklife-style easy conversational style, peaking in a yelped chorus. This back and forth continues throughout, from the driving nocturnal post-punk guitar and breathless yelped vocals on ‘My Boy’ to the psych-tinged jangle of ‘Jackson’, Lawn refuse to settle into a groove. It’s no mean feat, balancing such diverse influences and two frontmen, but Lawn do it brilliantly. What could be confused or jarring instead feels fresh and inventive, and gives you plenty of reason to keep on hitting that repeat button.

You can get Blood on the Tracks now via Forged Artifacts and the Lawn Bandcamp page. Due to our tardiness, the pink cassette edition is sold out, but be sure to snag a download.

The post Lawn – Blood on the Tracks appeared first on Various Small Flames.