Founded in 2018 by musician Adam Kinner and artistic director/writer Jacob Wren, and now expanded into a wider ensemble, The Air Contains Honey is a Montreal-based project which crosses artistic boundaries to meld the musical and the literary in a genuinely innovative way. After gradually evolving over the years, the project is now preparing to release their first full-length, The Air Contains Honey Sings Quotes, via Quindi Records, and the album quite literally lives up to its name. With arrangements orchestrated to be performed by nineteen musicians, the record sees the group sing quotes from across literature and theory (lines from Agnes Martin, Diane di Prima and Chris Kraus feature, to name just a few), resulting in a novel form which sits between indie pop, jazz and something like musical theatre. Lead track ‘Sexuality’ is the perfect example of the release’s ambition and invention. A number built around words from Kathy Acker’s Great Expectations which encapsulates not only the artistic vision of the record but also the welcoming communal spirit with which it is brought to life.

Damn Shame – Making Habits

“Every year that passes / taking stock with where we’re at and / Making plans to break through and make change.” So sings Portland, Maine multi-instrumentalist Robb Paniconi, AKA Damn Shame, on the closing track of new EP For Lack of Trying, out now via Repeating Cloud. As the title might suggest, the release is crafted around this sense of striving, be it towards a better future or healthier version of oneself. But it is forever held back by some self-defeating dimension, or else the hectic distraction that is the contemporary world. ‘Making Habits’ is a summation of the project musically as well as thematically, Paniconi bolstering his songwriting with an array of experimental flourishes, from found sounds and field recording to synths and tape loops. The result is all the more sincere and sympathetic as a result, positioning him alongside the likes of Ben Cooper’s Radical Face or even the slower side of Trace Mountains.

Daniel Glenn Padgett – Geraldine x Rocky Top!

Blurring the lines between DIY experimentalism and classical composition, the work of US-born, UK-based artist Daniel Glenn Padgett draws utilises both analogue and electronic modes to collapse the distance between the past and the present, bringing forward that which seemed lost or else opening up a nostalgic path backwards. Latest single ‘Geraldine x Rocky Top!’ is the ideal introduction to this style, a glitchy dance-based number which opens with a voice note from Parisian photographer Geraldine Morat and grows to incorporate a samples from the anthology of American folk music. On the surface, the result is an infectious slice of pop which hums with a bright energy for its brisk two minute run-time, though delve slightly deeper and the true nature of DGP’s work reveals itself. A cross-pollination between the contemporary and the traditional which charges both which newfound energy, as though commingling these ostensibly mismatched styles allows a kind of mutual invigoration.

David James Allen – So Much Pain

Prince Edward County, Ontario-based songwriter and multi-instrumentalist David James Allen has shared a number of singles from his new full-length Jubilation Potpurri in recent months, and now the album is finally out via Littleknown Records, he is sharing one more. Following on from the likes of ‘By Your Side‘ (“an ode to the safe harbour of a significant other, where calm might be found no matter how stormy the outside world might prove”) and ‘Dukes Up (Since You’ve Been Gone)‘ (“a vow to confront life’s struggles head on, standing on your own two feet, fists raised and ready for anything”), latest track ‘So Much Pain’ explores far more uncertain, vulnerable headspace, though you wouldn’t know it from the sound itself. “There’s so much pain / Seen so much pain / It hurts to be alone / Feeling scared on my own,” Allen sings in the opening verse, though the arrangement is full of soulful swagger and confidence, redirecting the needy longing of the lyrics into something altogether different. As though, in voicing such vulnerabilities, Allen isn’t so much underscoring his fear of solitude as championing its opposite, connecting to the universal human experience of loneliness to better communicate the power of connection.

The French – Maybe Tomorrow

The ongoing mission to make Darren Hayman‘s vast back catalogue available online shows no sign going down (read more on the project here), with Audio Antihero now unearthing some deep cuts Hayman’s bands Hefner and The French recorded during sessions with the legendary John Peel. “When Hefner became a ‘Peel band’ and recorded their first session, I felt that a true life goal had been achieved,” he explains. “Many bands, much more revered and successful than myself, would have wished they’d recorded a Peel session. I could die a little happier.” Invited to a session with no record to promote, Hefner instead recorded a collection of gospel singles, with Peel delighted by a band using his sessions to push themselves and break new ground. Hence, when it came time for The French to visit a year later, they followed suit with another experimental idea, this time recording their own versions of four television theme songs, released here as TV Themes. Alongside ‘Crockett’s Theme’ and ‘Theme from Hill Street Blues’ and ‘Big John, Little John’, Hayman and John Morrison also recorded ‘Maybe Tomorrow’, their take on the theme from The Littlest Hobo which shows both the nostalgic spirit of the project and the invention with which they brought it to life.

henry o henry – There

Back in August we previewed henry o henry‘s new full-length Apocrypha, describing how the Dublin-born, US-based songwriter uses “the experience of being an immigrant in America for over thirty years to observe the country from the novel perspective of an adopted son.” After lead single ‘The Fool‘ (“worn and wistful and weathered but with a glint in its eye, moving with a sincerity and easy grace that comes with experience”) came ‘The Parade’, “an example of the careful patience which marks so much of the album,” as we put it, “understated yet strangely hypnotic, as though its mellow rhythms slowly envelop the listener and hold them within their world.” With the record now out via Western Vinyl, henry o henry has shared final single ‘There’. An album highlight which serves as a metacommentary on the creative process which brought it to life, specifically how making art can take personal feelings and transform them into something greater and long-lasting. “It feels like a triumph over something,” as henry o henry says, “even if you’re a bit embarrassed by some of the sentiment.”

Jonathan Something – The Garden

“A prime example of how One More Lonesome Cowboy Song lives up to its name, the track manages to evoke both the intimacy of personal experience and something far larger, bringing in the melancholy of the archetypal wanderer in search of meaning.” So we wrote of ‘Gasoline‘, a single from Jonathan Something‘s new album forthcoming via High Shelter, back in August, a song typical of a record all about yearning for something more. The record’s release is now less than a month away and Jonathan Searles has shared new track ‘The Garden’ to pave the way. “‘The Garden’ is a collection of epiphanies I had regarding self growth while wrestling demons.” as Searles explains. “I kept the conclusions and deeper meaning behind each verse as cryptic as possible to avoid preaching while still resonating as widely as possible. The goal was to offer my hand to hold for those who needed it and a high five for those who just wanna vibe.”

One More Lonesome Cowboy Song will be released on the 16th October via High Shelter.

Josephine Illingworth – Who Burnt The Mountain

After the release of EP Bright Things I Found In The Dark earlier this year, London-based songwriter Josephine Illingworth returns with new single ‘Who Burnt The Mountain’ in partnership with Sounds Right, a global music initiative that allows nature to generate royalties on streaming platforms. Released as part of the Sounds Right and EarthPercent Climate Week NYC releases, the track confronts the urgent ecological crisis by drawing on the sounds of nature itself, though these gradually distort and denature as the song unfolds to mirror the ongoing loss of habitat and biodiversity. “‘Who Burnt The Mountain’ is a rallying call against the desecration of our wild spaces, and an expression of grief that I, as a young woman, feel in seeing the wilderness that has been a space of sanctuary and identity for me being literally burnt out of existence, often thanks to the decisions of distant male politicians,” Illingworth explains. “The song is about wildfire and deforestation, and the flattening and privatisation of these wildernesses in the UK. I gradually distorted the bird field recordings as the song goes on, ending so that they sound almost like human screams.” Watch the video filmed by Reuben Denison below:

Who Burnt The Mountain is out now via Sounds Right, with royalties donated to frontline conservation projects around the world.

MANAS (Tashi Dorji & Thom Nguyen) – 100 sunset

The project of Asheville-based duo Tashi Dorji and Thom Nguyen, MANAS gather threads of free jazz, noise, punk and experimental music into propulsive improvised tracks that pay attention to small details while possessing a physical intensity and unpredictability. “Improvised music, this music-making in the immediacy and now, in the moment, feels way more radical than anything I’ve ever done,” says Dorji. “Making improvised music and creating radical music with the intention of opening people’s ears.” October sees the release of a new MANAS record, The most yielding thing in the world will overcome the most rigid, via American Dreams. The album came into being as the score to 100 Sunset, the debut feature film from director Kunsang Kyirong. Our first glimpse is the opening track, which is named for the film, a 13-minute exercise in restrained forward motion that builds toward a blown-out crescendo, the pair merging guitar and percussion into a single, unified instrument of urgent power.

Melissa Weikart – L’amour se construit

Back in July, we featured ‘Crash’, a single by French-American songwriter Melissa Weikart. Calling it “lush, immersive and slightly warped at the edges,” it was the perfect introduction to an artist who exists “between the poles of experimental improvisation and crowd-pleasing pop.” Weikart has just announced that the song was our first taste of a new album, titled Contact, which will be released via Midnight Special Records at the end of next month. To coincide with the album announcement, Weikart has unveiled a second single titled ‘L’amour se construit’. Translating into English as “love is built”, it’s what Weikart describes as “a plea to not only accept but welcome the inevitable messiness that accompanies our emotions around love.” Musically this translates into something as strange as it is sophisticated, drawing on foundations of both jazz and smooth seventies folk and bending them into dreamlike shapes with a psychedelic flourish. Watch the suitably surreal Ruby Cicero-directed video below:

Contact will be released via Midnight Special Records on 23^rd October. Pre-order ti now from the Melissa Weikart Bandcamp page.

summersets – Forgetting For The Better

“Drunk conversations, uncomfortable truths / Daily routines, bills that are due,” so opens ‘Forgetting For the Better’, one of the standout tracks on Pine Trees In A Perfect Row, the new record from Kalle Mattson and Andrew Sowka’s summersets project. The line is indicative of an album that is very much grounded in reality, exploring the contemporary moment without sanding away its uncomfortable edges. The pair of childhood friends reunited in their northern Ontario hometown of Sault Ste. Marie after being priced out of the big cities, and this frankness and economic realism is littered across the record. Mattson calls it “a (complicated) love letter to Northern Ontario and small town Canadian identity and experience… with the intention of speaking to a (hopefully) universal sentiment: that you never really leave your home.” As that quote might suggest, there is a glimmer of magic braided throughout too. ‘Forgetting For the Better’ is the perfect example, a gentle folk song that explores life’s ups and downs (from car crashes and playoff defeats to “the words that I said”) with a combination of wistful regret and mellow warmth.

The post Weekly Listening: September 2026 #3 appeared first on Various Small Flames.

Now David James Allen has returned with brand new single ‘Dukes Up (Since You’ve Been Gone)’. Taking some inspiration from Frederick Knight’s ‘I’ve Been Lonely (For So Long)’, the track adopts a sunny tone for what is essentially a statement of defiance. A vow to confront life’s struggles head on, standing on your own two feet, fists raised and ready for anything. The sound is suitably rich and assured, with layers of guitars, bass, drums and electric piano, alongside organ from Andrew Ivens, building into something of a buoyant momentum. “On the surface, ‘Dukes Up (Since You’ve Been Gone)’ sounds like a breakup song, but I think of it more as a departure song,” Allen explains. “It’s not about any one person. It’s about those moments in life when someone you’ve relied on is suddenly gone, and you’re forced to learn how to navigate the world on your own.”

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“A song which shows how the age-old themes of work, loss and responsibility are as much a facet of contemporary folk as any other era.” That’s how we described ‘Platform No. 12 (Old Friends)‘ last summer, the first taste of David James Allen‘s forthcoming album Potpurri Jubilation. The Prince Edward County, Ontario-based songwriter and multi-instrumentalist “writes classic country songs,” as we continued, “full of aching longing, wistful reflection and undying hope, as well as a small cosmic twist,” and latest single ‘By Your Side’ further cements these sensibilities ahead of the album’s release later this year via Littleknown Records. “There’s something in the way that she loves me / that keeps me warm through the coolin’ of the night,” Allen sings in the opening lines, immediately pulling the listener into the warmth and fondness of the track. An ode to the safe harbour of a significant other, where calm might be found no matter how stormy the outside world might prove. Tune in and allow the pressures of work, money and self-doubt to dissolve, if only for a while.

Fugue State – We Are Lasting

The new collaborative project fronted by Northampton, MA-based composer, producer and engineer Dan Langa, Fugue State refuses the typical distinction between solo project and traditional ensemble. An outfit which treats collaboration as its own form of compositional methodology, Langa practising what the press release describes as “an obsessive cultivation of studio recordings with a rotating cast of musicians, transformed into spectral, unrecognizable forms.” Released to celebrate signing with Switch Hit Records, and featuring vocalist Maia Friedman (Dirty Projectors, Coco) and VSF fav Erika Dohi on piano, single ‘We Are Lasting’ provides our first glimpse into this new world. The style draws on Langa’s wealth of experience across music, film and multimedia, as well as the sensibilities of its collaborators, though also follows the direction the present moment suggested. “That improvisation became the foundation, and we slowly built everything on top of it,” as Langa describes. “This was the first track that really found its identity, and I often found comfort in it during the creative process—whether for inspiration or just a moment to breathe.”

Gia Margaret – Everyone Around Me Dancing

“A picture of solitude not as some lonely retreat but rather the path towards recognising the wider connection of things. That sweet dark warmth of the whole world.” That’s how we described Gia Margaret‘s 2023 album Romantic Piano, a collection of careful, considered compositions which held a kind of melancholic curiosity for its surroundings. Now Margaret is gearing up to release her much anticipated follow-up, an album titled Singing coming via Jagjaguwar this spring, and opening track and lead single ‘Everyone Around Me Dancing’ suggests a continuation of such themes. The record might be the first to properly feature vocals since 2018’s There’s Always Glimmer (the consequence of illness, as we covered when reviewing Mia Gargaret), but it is far from a simple reversion to a previous mode of working. Rather, Margaret considers every lesson learnt through the difficult process, the resonance of every person she has ever been. The vocals might have returned, but Singing understands something greater. The voice is only part of who we are. There are deeper ways of communicating.

Watch the video directed by Catherine LoMedico below:

Singing will be released on the 24th April via Jagjaguwar and you can pre-order it now.

Little Lungs – The Heat

Little Lungs is a Baltimore folk rock project led by songwriter Leena Rhodes. With Brendan Russell (bass), Eli Simms (drums), Ricky Schwarzenberg (guitar) and an assembly of other friends and collaborators in support, Rhodes creates soundscapes inherently intimate yet often sweeping too. Songs personal, compassionate and often affirming, driven by equal parts warmth and energy. Next month, Little Lungs will put out the full-length album The Heat, and Rhodes and co. have shared the title track to establish the mood and themes of the record. A typically emotive track build around Rhodes’s vocals and the braid of tenderness and strength they are able to evoke. “Face down against the bed frame / You woke to the fire alarm,” she sings, in an opening snapshot that captures the vulnerability on display throughout.

Mary Ocher – The Narrative (First Movement)

“Has roots in the early twentieth century, both in terms of the minimalist sensibilities and the overarching themes, but it is impossible to think of the intra-war period of the 1900s without hearing ominous echoes of the present day.” So we wrote of Mary Ocher‘s forthcoming album Weimar back in January. The challenging, politically-charged album was introduced by lead single ‘The Dance’ (what we called “a mournful dirge for that which is slipping through our fingers”). And now Ocher has shared taut, plaintive new single ‘The Narrative (First Movement)’. Though it is perhaps the video which will earn the most attention. The expressionist piece is by Boris Eldagsen, one of the first ‘reputable’ artists to explore the possibilities of AI who nevertheless carries a strictly critical approach to the nascent medium (back in 2023 Eldagsen refused the Sony World Photography Award after winning for an AI-generated image). Whether this self-awareness might justify the use of such artistically disheartening technology is still very much in question, and personally we’d query whether the video achieves anything which might be unobtainable via more organic means, but if nothing else it fits into Ocher’s overall project in its willingness to push into uncomfortable places and ask the audience to examine exactly how they feel.

Weimar will be released on 13th March and is available to preorder via Bandcamp.

Miserable chillers – Bikeman

“I’ll be the bike, man / the basket and the bell / the breath before I fell / Open skin up to the air / my mouth to taste the day.” So sings Miguel Gallego in the opening lines of ‘Bikeman’, the delightfully smooth and strange introduction to Miserable chillers‘ latest album, Innocent victims, coming soon via Baby Blue. The New York-based composer and artist has covered plenty of ground with the Miserable chillers project over the years, moving from devotional to danceable and back again, or else occupying both moods simultaneously. But the uniting spirit across all releases has been one of curiosity, a mood delivered in sleek, eighties-adjacent pop that allows Gallego to push into surreal territory without losing an anchor to real life. With its anthropomorphic bicycle, ‘Bikeman’ might be the perfect encapuslation of the Miserable chillers aesthetic, and one which whets appetites for the full release.

Natalie Jane Hill – Colors

Natalie Jane Hill‘s forthcoming record Hopeful Woman is one of our most eagerly anticipated releases of the first half of this year. A collections of ten modest but supremely assured songs that explore love in its many facets. Hot on the heels of ‘Never Left Me’ and ‘I Thought Love Meant’, Hill has unveiled a third track, ‘Colors’ another richly imagined but still down to earth rumination on romance. “Simply put, ‘Colors’ is a love song- specifically about the beginning period of falling in love with someone,” Hill describes. “But it’s also about having a better understanding on personal boundaries and not losing yourself entirely in the potential of something new. It’s being able to enjoy the colorfulness of it, while leaving space for the mystery, too.” The song has a fittingly Spring-like feel, tender like new green shoots and ripe with a glorious sense of possibility.

Old Man of the Woods – Edges of Pleasure

Taken from the album Tendrils, Old Man of the Woods‘ most recent single ‘Meditation’ was “a self-described  ‘breathy, minimal ritual'” as we wrote in 2025, “[a song] which performs its own form of transubstantiation, taking a desire which might otherwise appear absurd and changing it into something charged and devotional.” Miranda Elliott appears to have taken such a style to heart, because new album Cape Perpetua sees the Seattle-based artist embrace aesthetics both religious and ecological to push their ambient avant-pop into an increasingly sacred terrain. Elliott intends to release a track every week, building up to the full release in March, and opener and single ‘Edges of Pleasure’ highlights the meditative style. A song of swirling layers which draws on the choral accumulation of Gregorian chants to conjure something that’s at once otherworldly and fundamentally present.

Turner Cody – Recognize a Friend

In a present milieu where country songs are as likely to be about Disneyland and Pepsi as heartbreak and whiskey, St. Louis-based songwriter Turner Cody shows that the traditional and alt forms of the style can coexist. Out via Capitane Records, latest full-length Out for Blood has all the thematic concerns of the giants of the field, mining the American psyche to explore ideas of freedom and fate, individualism, sin and salvation in a way which would make Van Zandt proud. Yet, as songs like single ‘Recognize a Friend’ show, there’s a playfulness within his style too. An idiosyncrasy which, by way of Prine, allows Cody to sit as comfortably next to his alt-country contemporaries as the old masters. The narrative of the track is a familiar one. Ordinary man Billy finds himself gradually growing despondent as he drifts from youthful optimism into the doldrums of normal living. The personification of an entire demographic which finds itself slipping out of its countercultural pep.

Watch the video below, directed and shot by Cam Kennedy, with editing by Ben Chace, co-direction by Ben Chace and color grading by Thomas de Hemptinne:

Out For Blood is out now via Capitane Records and you can get it from Bandcamp.

The Yum Yum Tree – Shine

It has been nineteen years since Georgia-based indie rock outfit The Yum Yum Tree released their last album Paint By Numbers, a hiatus long enough to make even the most optimistic fans fear for the future of the project. After all, the band have other things to think about, not least lead Andy Gish who has spend over two decades as an ER nurse, as well as working in harm reduction. But good things come to those who wait, and this April will see The Yum Yum Tree return with brand new full-length Turn Down the Noise, an album which builds upon the foundations of its predecessor while proudly displaying the extra wisdom, self-awareness and emotional bravery which comes with near enough twenty years of living. Single ‘Shine’ embodies the spirit of the release, packing that nineties-flavoured indie rock punch while showing a newly unguarded, introspective personality. “Shine is about wanting something that doesn’t belong to you,” as Gish explains, “being able to sit with that and still wanting the best for them.” Watch the video directed by Katherine Lucas below:

Turn Down The Noise will be released on the 10th April and you can pre-order it from Bandcamp.

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