Ruth Garbus – Strash
Mauno – Vampire
Outer Spaces – Gazing Globe
Benjamin Shaw – Long Ago and Oh So Far Away
Erin Durant – Islands
Daughter of Swords – Dawnbreaker
Melissa Mary Ahern – Maria, Maria
Oscar Lush – Kind Living
Midwife – Angel
Young Elk – False Paradise
Wilder Maker – Love So Well
Big Joanie – Way Out
Secrecies – Life We Live
Beat Radio – Everyone I Know, Just Holding On
American Poetry Club – pro pic?
So Totally – sike
halfsour – Paper Window
Joyer – Here
Marbling – Wisdom Teeth
High Sunn – Grateful
Slow Pulp – New Media
Molly Drag – Out Like a Light
Van Houten – Moon
Birdspotter – Riverbed
Tender Perennial – Delivered
JR Samuels – In Brend 2
Elly Swope – Habits
Derek Piotr – The Sign
Fighting Kites – Kita Senju
Nathalie Joachim – Papa Loko (Interlude: September 24, 1918)
Kali Malone – Sacrificial Code
Kate Tempest – Holy Elixir
Little Musket – Fever Blister
Gold Baby – 500/1
Tennis Club – Stay
Young Mammals – Lost in Lima
Abe Hollow – Paradise
bdrmm – Question Mark
Briston Maroney – Fool’s Gold

Check out our previous Monthly Roundup playlists, and be sure to read or Reviews and Previews throughout the month.

The post July 2019 Roundup Mix appeared first on Various Small Flames.

Fever Blister is a frustrated album, occupying a grouchy, sleep-deprived headspace where every little nuisance rubs you up the wrong way. The tone is set from opener ‘Dolly Parton’, a track that emerges from the throes of a teeth-aching hangover and imagines an escape from the realities of existence. “Sunday morning, wake up,” Conley sings over racing grunge guitars “I take off all my make-up / from the night before / and I am so hungover.” The blend of exhaustion and regret and the inescapable, cyclical nature of the habit has her turning for fantasy. “At times like this I could really use a friend,” she declares, “at times like this I think again and again and again and again, I wish I was Dolly Parton.”

Droll self-deprecation aside, the track could be viewed as a deeper dive, the hangover standing in for the mildly toxic experience of life itself, Dolly Parton the unachievable image of success. Viewed this way, the frustration of the song does not instigate the dreams of escape but vice versa, the unending tension between how we’ve been told life should be and how it actually turns out.

The idea is woven through Little’s Musket’s music. ‘Home for The Summer’ explores the dead months of the year, boredom crushing down as the collegiate fantasy is suspended until September, while the title track favours a brooding discontent. Here exasperation is stretched from one day to the next, repressed feelings gathering in an internal storm, a humidity that builds and builds until precipitating in the screamed release of the rambunctious closing minutes.

Highlighting the elasticity of Conley’s vocals, ‘Burn Out’ finds her more gentle and reflective until the chorus bursts in with a clear-eyed ferocity, and closer ‘Stoney Baloney’ shakes from sluggish beginnings into a nostalgic weave of regret and longing. Both tracks, and indeed the whole album, are conjured from the liminal space between hopes and reality—the inability to let go of what has been and might be causing the present to be a little greyer, a little more boring than anyone would wish. Fever Blister is a railing against this feeling, not with some self-help spurt of positivity but rather good old fashioned anger.

Why not join Little Musket and embrace your moody mindset? Take the plunge below:

The post Little Musket – Fever Blister appeared first on Various Small Flames.