“I avoided it for a long time because I had a hard time hearing anything in it besides how frustrated and anxious I was that year, but in coming back to it recently I was kinda surprised to realize that it sounded like music made by a different person than who I am now, and that I was able to enjoy it on its own terms.”

On Being Lumpy contains all the things that we’ve come to love from Lung Cycles (and Lily Tapes in general). The atmosphere is meditative, gently experimental songs for the twenty-first century. Think part ambient electronics, part insular lo-fi bedroom folk. ‘Snow Falls on One Side of a Window’ opens with guitar as gentle as falling snowflakes, the background drone muffled like the sounds of the city beneath a cold white blanket. This is followed by ‘Field of Glass’, which adds Lovell’s soft vocals, as he sings about running across a beach in the early morning.

“I woke up every morning
put on my shirt from the night before
to join up with another
as we jog across the shore”

The album continues in this contemplative manner, particularly at its centre point. ‘After Everyone Else Left’ is a beautifully reflective instrumental piece based around elegaic piano, stretching beyond the ten minute mark, allowing the listener plenty of time to get sucked into its pensive atmosphere. Personal favourite ‘For a While’ is another long song, although this one goes back to the guitar and vocals formula, eventually blooming with percussion into something of a ramshackle folk hymn. Lovell’s vocals stretch into desperate cries, the fragility that has so far defined the album breaking into something raw and anxious.

Things are delicate and isolated on ‘The View From There’, before the arrival of flittering percussion, like moth wings around a candle, and multi-tracked vocals that sound like dissenting voices in Lovell’s head. There’s a windswept devotional feel on ‘Like Chlorine’, the lonely ode from some hillside monastery, the grinding crunch that finishes the track either the sound of clattering wind chimes or glass bottles breaking in a trash-strewn alley.

Lots of On Being Lumpy is like this. It possesses a kind of duality, the paradoxical result of beautiful art and self-expression arising from anxiety and doubt. It’s a decidedly cold album, but cold in the way of a long winter night rather than devoid of emotion. Perhaps it’s for this reason that the album holds a special place in Lovell’s heart and is being re-released? Perhaps, even if it dawned with great delay, making this album was important. As he explains in his introduction to the re-release, “I had been making music for a long time before this album, but it’s the first thing I made that I would describe as “personal,” even though the songs weren’t really about anything or anyone in particular. I think I was trying to make music that felt like coming in from the snow”.

You can get On Being Lumpy on cassette or as a digital download from the Lily Tapes & Discs Bandcamp page.

The post Lung Cycles – On Being Lumpy appeared first on Various Small Flames.

“[How Strange It Is To See] exists within that small and fleeting pocket in time and space that opens just before you take off from a familiar location, everyday objects taking on new importance as the seconds tick away and your surroundings can be seen outside of the context of your own unimportant worries and wishes”

It was a release that left me with questions, and Knishkowy very kindly agreed to answer a few of them.

Hi Dan, thanks for speaking to us! Congratulations on the release of How Strange It Is To See. I saw you played a release show in a winery?

Thanks! Yeah, a solo show in Pittsburgh, where I recorded these songs. Then we’re doing a full band thing in Brooklyn this week (with Wake the Deaf fav, Ben Seretan).

As I mentioned in my review, the EP was created in the midst of a move, written in one city and recorded in another. Did you intend to write the songs as a direct reaction to the relocation? Or did you just find your life coloured your writing?

There wasn’t much intention at first. I’d been writing songs for a new record, and like most people I know, had developed a love/hate thing with New York. It felt like a good time to try somewhere new for a bit. I was messing around with ‘Everything Is Going To Be Fine’ and the other 3 came out very stream of consciousness. That’s rare for me and I wanted to capture them on record the same way. Quickly and immediately. They’re all in the same key and feel more like one song written from four narrators’ perspectives, so it felt right to put them together in a concise format. To be honest, it’s a bit weird listening now, especially being back in NY, because they are of a very specific moment.

What would you list as the main influences on your writing? Would you say other musicians have had the biggest impact? Have novels/poetry played a role too?

Writing, definitely Jeff Tweedy….people like Neil Young, Elliott Smith, Jason Molina who have this duality of solo acoustic and blown out rock band. On guitar, British folkies like Bert Jansch and John Martyn. Lyrically, Chris Porterfield [of Field Report] is in another world; he completely changed the game for me in terms of what I thought I wanted out of songs.

Honestly, I struggle to break out of familiar points of view, so literature hasn’t found it’s way into the songs yet, but it helps my approach to writing – stuff like Flannery O’Connor, Borges, Murakami, where the seriousness is propped up by an absurdist element. The more fucked up the funnier it is. With music, I just always take shit too seriously. Something to work on.Coming from a background strictly in the written word, I’m always fascinated by songwriting. Having to marry the two strands of music and lyrics from scratch seems like such a difficult task from the outside. How do you go about it? Do you fit the music around the lyrics or vice versa? Or is it some middle ground that only a musician could understand?

Hah, well I’m fascinated by your writing — I feel like we get to cheat because a good melody can pull the weight when the words don’t and vice versa, but every line you write has to stand on it’s own.

Most things start for me on the guitar, but I keep notebooks and iPhone notes to draw from for when that happens. I trade lyrics from song to song a lot, though not always on purpose.

Some of your songs seem pared down to the bare minimum (I’m think of ‘Left on Jewel’ in particular), with a pretty clear narrative condensed into a few short, poetic verses. Do the extended versions of these stories exist in your head, and you distil them to fit into a song? Or do you choose words and imagery more instinctively, allowing the stories to emerge, for you as well as the listener?

I’ve been making a conscious effort to write more concisely. Restraint is such a beautiful thing, but not one of my strengths at all. I usually overwrite (like seven verses for a three verse song) and then edit down. Sometimes the best lyrics aren’t really part of the story and need to be left out, which is a bummer.

I see you are releasing a run of cassettes with Lily Tapes & Discs, who we have covered a few times in various guises. How did this come about? I’m almost completely ignorant when it comes to this sort of thing – did you approach the label? Did they come to you?

Ben Lovell, who runs Lily, is actually an old childhood friend. He taught me about Elephant 6 when we were 12 and I probably returned the favor with something like Through Being Cool. We’d been out of touch for years but started seeing each other at shows in NY and the timing worked out. His own music as Lung Cycles is so great too.

Why did you decide on tapes rather than CD or vinyl? It’s something I’ve thought about a lot recently – if physical releases aren’t the primary method of listening anymore, have they become strictly aesthetic things, nice things to put on a shelf?

I do most of my listening digitally (no streaming, just the old iPod classic), but I buy vinyl at shows. There’s still a level of independent music that’s healthy enough to sell records and make a sustainable income, but for everyone below that level (musicians and labels) it’s become about just connecting with people. There’s been a shift towards limited edition releases, tapes, lathe cuts, etc. which I think is fantastic. With digital music beginning to feel valueless, giving someone a lovingly handmade artefact puts personal value back into that relationship, even if they only play the songs via the download. I love collaboration, so with Ben and Lily that means tapes. He did the art and I think it’s beautiful.

Finally, could you name 4-5 acts you are currently enjoying? Old or new, popular or obscure, whatever you find yourself returning to.

Adrianne Lenker’s a-sides is an everyday listen; The Weather Station, especially last year’s EP; so much Mitski; Will Stratton’s ‘The Relatively Fair‘; Evan Dando’s Baby I’m Bored. I’m biased because I play in her band sometimes, but Johanna Samuels is truly one of the best songwriters around.

You can buy How Strange It Is To See now from the Adeline Hotel/Lily Tapes & Discs Bandcamp Pages.

The post Interview: Adeline Hotel appeared first on Various Small Flames.

Knishkowy started How Strange It Is To See in one city and finished it in another, writing while packing up an old home and recording while barely out of boxes in a new one. It’s unsurprising then that the release revolves around ideas of letting go of familiar places and faces and embracing new ones. Opener ‘Everything is Going to be Fine’ sees the narrator still holding on to an old love, waiting for some form of communication and wondering if they are now sharing their life with someone else:

“I heard you’ve been living with someone new
It’s no wonder when your rent is so high
Do you still wear the coat that I left for you,
When I was in a hurry to catch that plane on time?

But everything is gonna be fine
When leaving was the last thing on your mind”

‘Left on Jewel’ starts on a similarly morose note but soon develops into something brighter, the upbeat second half almost akin to The Cave Singers’ jaunty folk. While the lyrics are still concerned with a lost love there is a shift in tone, as if the narrator has moved past holding out hope, now able to look back with fondness without being needled by the sharp pains of regret. The writing is free from animosity and full of clarity and too lovely not to quote in full:

We left, caught in the eye of the storm
Making music of lovers with things that we’d known
Through the snow and the rain, through the bibles of our days,
We sing to what’s gone

That night we became almost “you and I”
From the station to Jewel, you were beaming inside
Til the light of the dawn,
We followed evening’s song there to simpler times

I swore off the city, I swore off the lights
Could’ve  sworn that what wasn’t best was what I left behind
But I swore to myself
When it was time to take that right and leave that night

‘Red Coat’ fits into this sense of enlightenment too, as if the imminent move has triggered a new view of everyday circumstances. As we said in the première post: “The track exists within that small and fleeting pocket in time and space that opens just before you take off from a familiar location, everyday objects taking on new importance as the seconds tick away and your surroundings can be seen outside of the context of your own unimportant worries and wishes”.

The EP closes with the title track, a sparse, finger-picked folk song which bursts with surprising volume at all the right moments. Here the narrator stumbles across his old love weeks before leaving, and while things threaten to slip into their old ways, it seems his mind has been made up, changed. “You ask when I’ll be back / Allure, attack / And I answer with a drink”, he sings. “Tried to make it last for what we had, not what we have / For what we lack“.

You can buy How Strange It Is To See now from Bandcamp, and I believe the good folks over at Lily Tapes and Discs are releasing a cassette. And, if you haven’t already, why not check out Adeline Hotel’s first album, Leave The Lights?

The post Adeline Hotel – How Strange It Is To See appeared first on Various Small Flames.

Ben Seretan Group

“I wanted these recordings to sound huge. I wanted them to sound massive, gravitational, full of a swirling largeness that could eat up large portions of iTunes libraries” – we previewed Yellow Roses, a new release from Ben Seretan Group.

Yucatan

“Ethereal, celestial ambient post-rock” inspired by the Welsh landscape – we reviewed Uwch Gopa’r Mynydd, an album from Welsh band Yucatan

Benjamin Shaw

“comfortably sad and vividly alive, like watching rain fall onto a city from the window of a train” – a few words about ‘Pylon Pile-on’, the first song from Guppy, the upcoming album from Benjamin Shaw.

Long Neck

“Captures that feeling of creeping slowly over that threshold into adulthood and the revelation that it turns out not to be the whole new room you always thought” – Heights by Long Neck offers candid and reassuringly familiar thoughts on the plight of post-collegiate life.

Cyberbully Mom Club

“Music that feels like the words of an old friend, the sort of person who requires no formalities or effort and is happy to just sit and shoot the breeze” – a few thoughts on ‘For Luck’, the first song from a forthcoming EP by Cyberbully Mom Club.

Estan

“Raging against the pompous nature of professionals and academics…how ridiculous we are to think we can assign logic to a universe of chaos far too big for our tiny heads” – Our review of The Vanity of Reason by Estan.

Trenton Point

“Imagine John Maus teaming up with Small Black and The Cure to soundtrack a melodramatic 80s teen movie where the misunderstood hero finds herself walking home alone from the disco time and time again” – The three-song EP by Brooklyn’s Trenton Point, out on Vacant Magic.

The Wandering Lake

“Part indie rock and part psychedelic folk, all weaved together with Kupillas’ distinctive vocals, which are not quite a warble and not quite a croon and sometimes drawn out landscape-scale without a hint of breaking.” – we reviewed A Wend to Why, the new album from The Wandering Lake.

Ylayali / Lung Cycles

“enclosed in a sense of everyday melancholy…that feeling of long afternoons in gloomy rooms, when the rest of the human population seem faraway and indistinct, like figures from barely remembered dreams.” – Another great split cassette release from Lily Tapes & Discs.

Damien Jurado

“Jurado writes songs that reflect what it is like to be alive in the years either side of the millennium, songs for a landscape both cruel and kind, everyday and surreal, songs that can be sad and exciting and slightly scary and sometimes weird as hell” – We selected our very favourite Damien Jurado songs for our latest Through the Archives feature.

Mike Comite / Hop Along

“When I think about new rock idols, I don’t envision sold out arenas. I don’t hear Top 40 singles or perfect pitch, and I don’t think about stage personas and attitude. What I do think of is transparency, and a struggle” – Not quite last week, but Mike Comite of Old Best Friend wrote a fantastic piece about Hop Along for Property of Zack.

Coke Machine Glow / Jenny Hval

“Have you had breakfast? I was just about to make some eggs and huma—forgive me, I meant to say ham. Wink wink” – Coke Machine Glow presented a conversation about Jenny Hval’s Apocalypse, Girl between Hannibal‘s Hannibal Lecter and Will Graham, suggesting that I’m not the only person in the world who finds the show a little… overblown. All we need now are some meaningless close-ups of food and we’ll have an ‘intellectual’ TV hit.

Grantland / Jason Isbell

“It’s hard to keep up a James Dean type of facade if you’re thanking somebody for your salvation. But when you’re writing the kinds of songs that I do, I think your job is to try to be as honest as you possibly can and write about those things that make you uncomfortable sometimes.” – Stephen Hyden of Grantland talks through a list of Jason Isbell’s most gut-wrenching songs with the man himself.

Aero Flynn

We liked Aero Flynn’s self-titled album an awful lot. That’s why it’s so cool to see the band perform this live session for Audiotree.

Distant Records

“An hour of radical ladies influenced by that vintage surf rock reverb because, you know, it must be summer or something.” – Joanna, the face behind Distant Records, has a show on KPSU called The Muse in Music. This week’s show, ‘Must Be Summer or Something’, is all about… you guessed it, summer! Stream below or download this and previous shows over on the KPSU website.

Nice Legs

Seoul-based band and all round good eggs Nice Legs put together a video diary of a recent tour, featuring some lovely shots of the pair doing pretty much everything besides playing music. Check out their Youtube channel for other visual goodies.

And Finally… the 8tracks Playlist of the Week:

Heartbreaking Bravery‘s roundup of the best 2015 has had to offer so far is pretty comprehensive.

2015: Halfway Home from heartbreakingbravery on 8tracks Radio.

The post Week in Review: #7 (22nd – 26th June) appeared first on Various Small Flames.

“Each [artist] present[s] a side of music that doesn’t sound written or recorded as much as spilled out and gathered back up quickly, out of necessity and through broken and hurried means. Busy and tired but still distracted, holding on to memories like crumpled drawings pulled from the trash”

If that doesn’t make you want to listen then I’m afraid you’ve wandered into the wrong corner of the internet.

Ylayali gets side A and starts as he means to go on with ‘Clicking Clanking’, counting himself in with some DIY knocks before presenting a lovely little lo-fi acoustic track, complete with reassuringly miserable lyrics such as, “Today I left my room twice, recorded a song I don’t really like”. ‘Blab’ is mainly all lo-fi guitar again, joined by some minimal percussion. It feels patient and intimate, enclosed in the same sense of everyday melancholy that makes Talons’ so great, that feeling of long afternoons in gloomy rooms, when the rest of the human population seem faraway and indistinct, like figures from barely remembered dreams.

“I really miss that shirt and that watch that I lost
and also spending every weekend together
and every summer
going further away from home”

‘Pinkies’ is a short song which follows a similar thread, full of vague lines which you feel mean the world to the characters involved. “There if you need me, not if you don’t”, he sings. “Walk to the store with you for us both. I want you to know that our pinkies broke”. ‘Crud’ is shorter still, clocking in under a minute yet carrying the same emotional heft (“Something good came out of both of us instead I saw some little bit of crud, a little thing about to fall off of the bigger better thing”), while ‘Cool Burnout’ starts with a jittery looped drum sample before vocals enter and the percussion settles into a simple beat, like the sound of someone striking a hollow bamboo shoot over and over. “After dinner the day feels over” Lyons sings, ensuring that the air of despondency lasts until the very end. The track finishes side A with some heavier reverb-laden guitars, which themselves cut very abruptly, paving the way for the next act.

‘April Journal Excerpts’, the first offering on Lung Cycles’s side B, is a sonic collage of slightly distorted audio clips and ambient recordings, things like people chattering and birdsong, what could easily quite literally be diary entries of the aural variety. After a while some gentle guitar work enters too, ticking over like time on fast-forward. ‘Pull Me Apart’ is a very pretty song with swirling tumbling guitar and hushed vocals, while the closer, ‘Hottest Day of the Year So Far (11pm version)’, is a measured guitar track with a background hum of tape hiss that sounds like running water or falling rain in some analogue dreamscape.

You can get the album on cool limited release cassette (see below), or as a digital download, via the Lily Tapes & Discs Bandcamp page.

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