Out later this month on Specialist Subject Records and Plastic Miracles, the record sees lead Lily Mastrodimos joined by a whole host of collaborators, with John Ambrosio, Marlene Bellissimo (Dreamsounds), JB Fulbright (Prior Panic), Emma Witmer (gobbinjr) and R N Taylor (Sparky Deathcap/Los Campesinos!) all lending their talents, as well as Mastrodimos’s cousin Jessica Taylor and even her child baby Rudy. A supportive cast which furthers the record’s sincere, communal tone. Together they create a space in which Mastrodimos need not walk on her knees in order to make a record, but rather rediscover the joys of songwriting in the spirit of Oliver’s soft animal.

The record follows 2020 release World’s Strongest Dog, Long Neck’s self-released second album which experienced more than its fair share of problems. Soft Animal sees Mastrodimos emerge from this period a little tentative, definitely changed, trying to figure out where writing songs fits amid the trials of an insecure music industry and general despair of the wider world. An attempt, that is, to look beyond these obstacles and return solely to the pure motivation to create. “This is an album about addressing these instincts and attempting to reconnect with a dormant part of your being,” said Mastrodimos. “I recorded it to prove to myself that writing music is something I can still do, and that I still love doing. I wrote it as an act of self-love, tenderness, and as a way to process the anger and frustration that stems from living through a pandemic.”

Lead single ‘The Gardener’ gives an insight into just what this sounds like. A song which starts out deceptively bare with its wary guitar, Mastrodimos’s unguarded delivery both intimate and uncertain. “Every dream I’ve had this week has taken place at night,” she sings, “Nothing in the sky, no planes passing by / when the sun emerges I am baffled by its glare.” But as the song emerges so does Bellissimo’s violin, its lush warmth not so much replacing the cautious tone but lending it a compassionate weight. The effect is furthered by backing vocals at opportune moments, a gentle yet stirring addition which gives another meaning to the phrase. Backing as in having your back. “Mornings are unbearable / I said to no-one / and they responded / but won’t you miss it when its gone?”

The post Long Neck – Gardener appeared first on Various Small Flames.

Here is a list of songs from 2020 that we liked but didn’t get around to writing about.

If you find something you like, follow the link in the embed to support the artists and labels on Bandcamp. And of course, there is a whole year’s worth of pieces on releases we did manage to write about, so have an explore through our reviews, previews and interviews from 2020.

The post Music We Missed in 2020 appeared first on Various Small Flames.

Thanks for being with us.

Advance Base – Animal Companionship

Run For Cover Records

““The songs are intended to be a comfort for folks going through their own tough times,” Ashworth explained in an essay for Talkhouse. “Commiseration has always been a guiding principle of my songwriting.” Love need not be hugs and hearts and kisses, and loyalty does not necessarily mean hanging in a relationship beyond all reason. But love is loyalty, and Owen Ashworth has been, and seemingly always will be, loyal to those who need it most.”

REVIEW / BUY

Basement Revolver – Heavy Eyes

Sonic Unyon / Fear of Missing Out Records

“An expansive and spacious sound that’s lit up with a slow-burning emotional resonance, centring around Hurn’s impassioned vocal delivery. Their music combines the magnitude and granular glitter of shoegaze, the personal songwriting of bedroom pop and the cathartic noise of 90s indie rock. [Basement Revolver] play a double game of big and small, switching from quiet personal sentiment to big bombastic broadcast, often within the same song.”

REVIEW / BUY

Benjamin Shaw – Megadead

Audio Antihero

“For all the frustration and (self-)loathing in show, there’s also something else. Perhaps the defining characteristics of Shaw’s music is its ability to transcend its own themes. He may be singing about hating his job, about going nowhere fast, but in doing so colours these things with meaning. To create art is to communicate, and as such the songs represent the antithesis to their own concerns, the simulated happiness and artificial connection punctured through their ironic presence.”

REVIEW / BUY

Campdogzz – In Rounds

15 Passenger

“[Closer ‘Sorceress’] at first might seem a slightly strange segue for a final track soon straightens out into an intuitive sense of logic and belonging, as though the album-long teeter on the edge of some epiphanic transformation has finally fallen headlong at the last moment.”

REVIEW / BUY

Damien Jurado – The Horizon Just Laughed

Secretly Canadian

“While it might be tempting to view [Jurado’s] songwriting career as a fruitless quest for his true identity, perhaps the complete opposite is true. His career is his identity, splinters of truth arriving through dreams or divined from another realm entirely, fractals that can be arranged into a whole that far surpasses the meaning of any one component. A manifesto of sorts, one full of prophecy and history, though rather than country-western stars of [Joseph Billie] Gwin’s vision, the Ten Prophets of Damien Jurado are merely alternate versions of himself—past, present, future, dream—each record its own style or consciousness, born of him, yes, but equal to him too.”

REVIEW / BUY

Dear Nora – Skulls Example

Orindal Records

“You can be anyone, we are told, do anything, though only superficially, a multitude of simulations all working toward to same goal, the means to the end of shifting units and making money. Dear Nora’s music attempts to undermine this by playing the same game, crafting an unreal reality of their own to overlay the other. And, by neutering the money-making end, they in effect invert capitalism’s technique, reestablishing the means (ie. living) as the purpose. Yes, Skulls Example might be a simulation, but it is one of the most meaningful and rewarding you could hope to find.”

REVIEW / BUY

Field Report – Summertime Songs

Verve Forecast

“The summertime theme might conjure ideas of cloudless, uptempo good times, but to limit Field Report’s use of the season to a more poppy sound is to miss the deeper point […] We cannot rely on grand promises or paradigm shifts. Rather, we must commit to the slow, considered process of letting go and working through, of deciding who we were and who we want to be. In these times, we’d be foolish to trust that will be enough, but belief in small moments of agency and human connection is more productive than misplaced prayers for epiphany.”

REVIEW / BUY

Free Cake For Every Creature – The Bluest Star

Double Double Whammy

“free cake for every creature don’t make sad songs exactly, usually tending toward a kind and hopeful feel. Yet there is something intangible about them, a strange sensation that weaves its way into quiet moments, like a kind of everyday poetry or nostalgia that we all recognise but don’t have a name for. The case in point is the penultimate song, ‘be home soon’, which somehow portrays a subway ride home as something beautiful and magical.”

REVIEW / BUY

Frog – Whatever We Probably Already Had It

Audio Antihero

“Contains lines of total sincerity that feel disarming in the face of what has come before, as though the truth of things slips out in quiet whispers to oneself, the party over and room emptied out. The truth being the soul-shearing reality of the American Dream, the tragicomedy of understanding your dreams and desires to be complete fictions while leaning on them with all of your weight.”

REVIEW / BUY

Gia Margaret – There’s Always Glimmer

Orindal Records

“The palette of Gia Margaret is built from shades of sadness—loss, regret, wistful longing, the arresting trap of nostalgia and plain old hurt—though again and again Margaret provides a counter-shade, as though the darkness’ true purpose is merely to highlight the warm, weak glow within. Because, while people up and leave, and time is certainly no kinder, Gia Margaret is here to prove that value is inherent in life itself, meaning and fulfilment not in spite of troubles, but within them. No matter how dark, there is always glimmer.”

REVIEW / BUY

Haley Heynderickx – I Need to Start a Garden

Mama Bird Recording Co.

“I Need To Start a Garden is the perfect album for the onset of spring. It’s all about growth and the hope of new beginnings, but also doesn’t shy away from the necessary hard work that makes such growth possible. It’s a reminder that plants are not the only things that need to be tended and cared for, but also that they’re not the only things that can flourish and bloom either.”

REVIEW / BUY

Lisa/Liza – Momentary Glance

Orindal Records

“The context [of bereavement] is important not because we wish to suggest some ‘romantic’ mythology behind the record (indeed, the songs were written before the tragedy occurred), or that there is magical healing power in the making/consumption of art. Rather, Momentary Glance is a symbol of the power of community, generosity in the face of grief, and the album’s use of placidity over bombastic melodrama is indicative of such an authentic spirit.”

REVIEW / BUY

Long Neck – Will This Do?

Tiny Engines

“Despite the difficult circumstances, there is also a sense that things will be okay, that our narrator has gained the sense of strength and self-reliance necessary to move on. Or rather, is working toward being strong enough and self-reliant enough, with this album being the furthest possible reach forward toward that place. Of course, it’s likely full strength and self-reliance will never be achieved, but it’s the strive toward those ideas that is the most important. Of course this will do.”

REVIEW / BUY

Lung Cycles – S/T

Lily Tapes & Discs

“The placid natural flow continues whether we voice our concerns or not, and nothing in this external sphere is working to exacerbate our feelings. In this way, Lung Cycles reveals anxiety and melancholy to be no more than parasites of the human psyche, forces all too willing to consume us should we centre our existence within our own heads, but soon found dead in the vacuum of natural quiet.”

REVIEW / BUY

Monarch Mtn – days of sleepwater

Self-released

“Darkness breeds darkness, and allowed to fester can become a self-perpetuating thing that metastazises unto ubiquity. Here, Monarch Mtn do not pretend that suffering is abating, or can be dispelled by a mere shift in perspective, but rather choose to fight the phenomenon. days of sleepwater exists to fight the creeping dark, and not embrace it.”

REVIEW / BUY

Naps Eyes – I’m Bad Now

Paradise of Bachelors

“Behind the heavy-lidded blasé exterior lies a rich and tangled inner life, an invitation to fall into the folds of Chapman’s brain and watch his thoughts pass by […] Those with enough curiosity or desire can try to arrange the Nap Eyes lines into a magical formation, wrestling with the existential questions in the hope that they will be the first to figure it all out. The rest can take a back seat and let the Big Stuff drift around them, finding comfort in the fact that there are things bigger than us, and beauty in the understanding that they are beyond our grasp.”

REVIEW / BUY

Remember Sports – Slow Buzz

Father/Daughter Records

“Sincerity could be said to represent Slow Buzz as a whole, though sincerity not as some sentimental force rather a commitment to what feels true, no matter how messy and conflicting. There’s something in the Remember Sports story at the heart of this earnestness, the possibility of progressing without sacrificing an entire ideal, of reincarnation where one returns not as some different creature entirely, but a new version of oneself. A truer version, at least for now.”

REVIEW / BUY

Sun June – Years

Keeled Scales

“Years is a record shaped and propelled by the gentle forces of the world, currents in the substrates of the earth and life itself, invisible yet profound, capable of changes both minor and major […] a number of the tracks returning to a repeated phrase, cyclical patterns that rise in intensity like incantations, or else echo out into the fabric of the sound.”

REVIEW / BUY

Swearin’ – Fall Into the Sun

Merge Records

“We live in a time obsessed with the past. Our dreams now look backwards instead of forward, our deepest wish not for some utopian future but rather a return to an unreal past, one sanded of all trials and troubles by nostalgia and the constant passing of time. With Fall Into the Sun, Swearin’ rebel against such a mindset, redirecting our hopes toward the future once more, and compelling us to pay attention to the present while we still can.”

BUY

Talons’ – After Talons

Self-released

“Talons’ capture the futility and hopelessness of a content life in a creaking hyper-capitalist society, an existence often devoid of meaning and full of shame at the hypocrisy in caring about the world but doing little to change it. But it’s also kind-hearted too, its glowing core of humanity somehow comforting despite the heavy subject matter. In other words, there’s no optimism here, but there is hope.”

REVIEW / BUY

Valley Maker – Rhododendron

Frenchkiss Records

“Built upon a thematic bedrock of faith and religion, but anyone who baulks at the R-word need not worry, [Valley Maker] is uninterested in creeds and doctrine, instead exploring metaphysical mysteries that we can all wonder about […] Crane is not foolish enough to offer answers, though his words and voice work as a reassuring balm, even while acknowledging the ambiguity and turmoil that surely awaits. ”

REVIEW / BUY

The Washboard Abs – Lowlight Visions

Antiquated Future

“Clarke Sondermann’s music has always been intimate, but this album treads deeper into this ideal than any of his previous work. In the circumstances, it would be relatively easy to make an album of sad songs, but it’s a brave artist who takes the very personal worry and suffering and uses it to build something that’s this complex and multifaceted, vulnerable but not hopeless, forgoing nihilistic dejection in favour of a strange kind of love, an appreciation of what stands to be lost.”

REVIEW / BUY

The World Without Parking Lots – Seventh Song Counts the Engines

Self-released

“Seemingly simple but rendered dense and cryptic with the addition of Parcell’s poetry […] Seventh Song Counts the Engines is a beautiful collection of songs, one which somehow makes a bold statement in a circuitous whisper, deceptively complex instrumentation and ambiguous lyrics capturing decidedly unambiguous emotion.”

REVIEW / BUY

Young Jesus – The Whole Thing is Just There

Saddle Creek

“How do you adopt a more sincere, hopeful position without becoming a flat Sincere, Hopeful Person, and everything that image entails? Young Jesus have put their hope in a spontaneous, endlessly recursive form of questioning, where every hard fought answer only exists to be questioned further. The endeavour might well take a life time, but the prospect of circling closer to the truth is something of a solution in its own right. So, while it’s tempting to think that the true message or meaning of the songs on The Whole Thing Is Just There is always just out of frame, the reality is in fact the other way around. The message of the songs is that meaning is always just out of frame, and that there is no more valuable an enterprise than the constant search outside and beyond.”

REVIEW / BUY

Yowler – Black Dog in My Path

Double Double Whammy

“The writing is vague and affecting, words imbued with an esoteric power that fuses intimate internal thoughts from the corporeal world with something altogether more supernatural. “I bear the mark, I am sigil,” Jones sings, “to the spirits and the sprites, but I promised not to listen and stay in my life.” The natural and supernatural converge on Black Dog In My Path, and Jones has re-purposed Yowler as the conduit between these two dimensions.”

REVIEW / BUY

We’re be sharing our favourite songs, books and Bandcamp name-your-price releases in good time, so keep an eye on the ‘Lists‘ category for those.

The post Favourite Albums of 2018 appeared first on Various Small Flames.

Tracklisting:

Typhoon – Rorschach
Cloud – Two Hands Bound
Trust Fall – do it right
Wooing – In Colour
Tree House – Nonsense
Long Neck – Milky Way
Sara Renberg – Take the Summer Off
Special Moves – Half and Half
Lying Down – Betty and Barney
Pastel – Close
Monarch Mtn – Saint in Armor II
Doomking – I Laid the Prairies to Rest
vierzig skizzen – passwords
Old Robes – The Spider and the Spectator
Jeremy Squires – Gift
Bill Vuono – Think of Me (feat. Earl McVeigh)
Kraków Loves Adana – Rapture
Cool American – Focus
Bucolic – Blue Tree
There’s Talk – Give It Up
Airium + Double Honey – Concrete House Of Dreams And Pools
The Saxophones – Just You
Jelani Sei – LVNDR TWN
Why Dogs Why – Linus

You can find all of our monthly roundup mixes here, and be sure to stick around into March to see what musical goodies we’ll be sending your way. And, of course, please reach out on Facebook, Twitter or Instagram if you have something you think we should hear.

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

“[The album] reflects life rather nicely, with moments of hushed quiet and moments of spiky energy, of worry and sadness and carefree abandon […] captur[ing] 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 […] growing up is an exhausting, exhilarating series of events that takes a lifetime to complete”.

The themes on new album Will This Do? have moved on from the post-college worries of past releases, shifting the focus onto a recent period of turmoil, both in terms of break-ups and the passing of loved ones. The change is mirrored by a new line-up, the full-band Long Neck featuring Kevin Kim, Alex Mercuri, and John Ambrosio, putting meat on the bones to add a little indie rock dynamism to Mastrodimos’s personal songwriting.

This is apparent right from the beginning, as opener ‘Mine/Yours’ teams sincere vocals with crashing drums and taut, energetic guitar. It’s a song about being away from home, based on a period of touring Mastrodimos did with Jawbreaker Reunion. “It’s a very distant kind of song,” she tells Stereogum, “where you’re away from people you care about and you just want to be with the ones that you love, even though you’re doing something great.” The song also explores the fine balance between expressing your individuality and giving yourself over to the ones you love, a concept that is captured with disarming simplicity in the chorus.

“I want to say this simply
I want to make it pure
I wanna be mine and I wanna be yours”

‘Elizabeth’ is energised by the idea of returning home, the loneliness and worry of the previous track not quite beaten but at least tempered by the lights of New Jersey. The track is the perfect example of the new full band sound, though not all the songs are blazing rockers. ‘Matriarch’, one of several which originally appeared on 2016’s Spring Cleaning, is still essentially a folk song, backed with acoustic guitar and resplendent piano. The lyrics here are thick with nostalgia, a touching tribute that serves as both a pining for and celebration of the titular matriarch, and in the process fulfilling a wish of her grandmother.

The first of several tracks the overtly utilise the imagery of the natural world, ‘Lichens’ returns to the rock sound with a boisterous crashing. And we’re not talking some poetic description of leaves swaying in the wind, but rather actual ecology, presumably inspired by Mastrodimos’s scientific background, with the symbiotic lichen and its commensalist relationship the trees upon which it flourishes. ‘Love Letters’ is a sub two minute blast that rollicks around sweet lyrics about love letters written by grandparents, while things on ‘Ashes’ are heavier, big crunchy guitars and lyrics that deal with the ashes of more than just a cigarette (“we had a song we used to sing / fill our lungs, it was everything”). Returning to the natural world, ‘Hive Collapse’ then uses the threats facing honeybees as an allegory for exhaustion and unhappiness.

“What’s a body without sleep?
Hive collapsing around it’s bees
no buzzing no sweet dreams
just empty space where there should be honey”

‘Milky Way’ is the record’s main point of catharsis, framing personal worries against the incomprehensible vastness of the universe (“oh you said don’t be sad,” she sings. “I gazed upon into the black, the belt of the milky way, billions of bright blue stars gazed back”). But the final repeated refrain feels somehow triumphant, even if it details an emotional breakdown, probably because Mastrodimos takes a moment of vulnerability and loss of control and has it yelled in a chorus, which at least in part neuters the worst of such moments:

“I sat to watch the sunset
and I just fucking lost it”

Finale ‘10,000 Year Old Woman’ returns to the acoustic sound, perhaps the most emotional song on the record, and one which most explicitly deals with the themes of a breakup. “Please don’t tell me you love me,” Mastrodimos sings, “not now.” But, despite the difficult circumstances, there is also a sense that things will be okay, that our narrator has gained the sense of strength and self-reliance necessary to move on. Or rather, is working toward being strong enough and self-reliant enough, with this album being the furthest possible reach forward toward that place. Of course, it’s likely full strength and self-reliance will never be achieved, but it’s the strive toward those ideas that is the most important. Of course this will do.

You can get Will This Do? from Tiny Engines and the Long Neck Bandcamp page.

The post Long Neck – Will This Do? appeared first on Various Small Flames.

Tracklisting:

Twelve Gardens – maria
Gorgeous Bully – oh why
Girl K – Neighbours
Kintsugi San – Time
Brunch – The Goose
Young Jesus – Feeling (Half Stop Session)
Wych Elm – School Shooter
Steve Maloney – Exits
Haley Heynderickx – Oom Sha La La
M.A.G.S. – Mexico
Iris Jupiter – Buzz Cut
Ylayali – Cherry Tomatoes
Anamon – Stubborn Comfort
Micah Vaultz – endless rain, for limitless pain
Pavey Ark – Leaf By Leaf
Henry Jamison – The Last Time I Saw Adrianne
Shamir – 90s Kids
SALES – Talk a Lot
Nassau – Ain’t It Time
Long Neck – Cavity
Pastel – Silhouette
Old Earth – Pit Dynamics

You can find all of of monthly mixes here, plus an assortment of other playlists and song collections. Stayed tuned for October!

The post September 2017 Roundup appeared first on Various Small Flames.

Well, great news! Next month sees the release of Sugar Rush Volume Two, a brand new collection of songs to be sold in support of Queer Oriented Radical Days of Summer. QORDS is an overnight camp for queer or gender non-conforming young people from the American South. Using music and community as forces of queer empowerment, the organisation helps create intersectional spaces where people can pursue self-discovery safely and, most importantly, meet others from the entire queer spectrum, be they lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, queer, questioning, intersex, asexual, or whatever else. In other words, a pretty cool place indeed.

We’re delighted to share a new track from the release, one from another of our favourites, Lily Mastrodimos’ Long Neck. Relying on nothing beyond acoustic guitar, the song opens with an immediately warm and wistful sound, Mastrodimos’ vocals pitched somewhere between fondness and heartbreak, a not entirely uncomfortable place where affection is allowed to linger. Eventually, the guitar is joined by some fleshed out instrumentation, including some whimsical whistling, making for a dreamy, charming close where loss looms light and loose, free of any regret.

“I thought he and I were so alike
same dumb smile with a half closed eye
same big heart and love of all things sweet
same crooked teeth

I got lost in that reflection”

Artwork by Kassie Salas

The post Sugar Rush Volume Two: Long Neck – Cavity appeared first on Various Small Flames.

And, of course, being comprehensive is impossible these days, so let us know if we missed your favourite and maybe we’ll add it to the collection.

If I Die in Mississippi – Artless
(RIYL: bedroom pop, ambient, Sam Ray, sad)

In Love With a Ghost – Let’s Go
(RIYL: electronic, chillwave, dream pop)

Jake Bellissimo – Piece of Ivy
(RIYL: indie pop, Gay Angel)

Jemima Coulter – lampshade ep
(RIYL: bedroom pop, chilled out, Volcano Choir)

Joyride! – Half Moon Bay
(RIYL: pop punk, indie rock, All Dogs)

Julia Brown – An Abundance of Strawberries
(RIYL: experimental, indie pop, Elephant 6)

Lake Michigan – Gleaming
(RIYL: bedroom pop, late night vibes, Arrange)

Lance Bangs – Lance Mountain
(RIYL: lo-fi, indie pop, Colin Thibodeauxxx)

Lazy Legs – s/t
(RIYL: shoegaze, noise pop, feedback)

Little Kid – Flowers
(RIYL: fuzz pop, bedroom folk, reflective thoughts)

Long Neck – Spring Cleaning
(RIYL: bedroom pop, Cyberbully Mom Club, Jawbreaker Reunion)

Max Gardener – Memory Lounge
(RIYL: dream pop, bedroom pop, slacker)

Mineral Girls – Seven Inches of Release
(RIYL: noise pop, emo, indie rock)

Moin Moin – Dawn
(RIYL: folk, bedroom pop, delicate, quiet)

MOLAR / Pale Kids – Split
(RIYL: pop punk, riot grrrl, The Courtneys)

Molly Drag – Tethered Rendering
(RIYL: bedroom pop, experimental, dreamy vibes)

Monarch Mtn – Everyone is Here
(RIYL: grand melancholy, nighttime)

Monster Rally – Mystery Cove
(RIYL: experimental, hip hop, tropicana)

Moving In – Sunburn
(RIYL: bedroom pop, lo-fi, teenage heartbreak)

Naps – Happy All the Time Forever Always
(RIYL: ambient, experimental, tape hiss)

No Museums – The Drifting Knives
(RIYL: basement rock, indie pop, lo-fi)

Nice Try – s/t
(RIYL: lo-fi, indie pop, Frankie Cosmos)

Nikolas Escudero – 100
(RIYL: lo-fi, indie pop, slacker)

No Dice Tapes – 2016: the year all bad things went away and everything turned out to be fine
(RIYL: lo-fi, indie pop, good causes, ironic titles)

Noname – Telefone
(RIYL: hip hop, rap, courageous poetry)

Be sure to check out the previous sections of our favourite free music list here.

The post Favourite Free Music of 2016: I – N appeared first on Various Small Flames.

Remember, we’re on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and Tumblr, so don’t hesitate to get in touch and let you know your favourite tracks from June. Or July. Or whenever.

Tracklisting:

1) Gofer – Yucky Duster
2) The End Parts One and Two – Paper Bee
3) Pas De Deux – Brenda’s Friend
4) Mostly Homely – Exam Season
5) rosy – Long Neck
6) Cool It! – Terry vs. Tori
7) best thought – Honeyuck
8) buttery sprouts – Trace Mountains
9) Green Ennui – Flying Circles
10) Memento Mori – Jake Bellissimo
11) Same Light – Tim Lannen
12) Golden Car – Tincho
13) Can’t Take My Mind – Skyjelly
14) E.V.I.L – Medicine Boy
15) Bike Thief – Frederick Squire
16) Oh Well – Adeline Hotel
17) Offering – Loone
18) Something Profound & Meaningful – See You At Home
19) Bowl of Plums – Ben Seretan
20) Muted Colours – Chain Wallet
21) Little One – Aaron Holm
22) Fear O’ the Light – Katie Dey
23) Protracted – William Ryan Fritch
24) Dizzy – Danielle Fricke
25) Uncanny – Sister Grotto
26) Hands in Our Names – Karima Walker

The post June 2016 Roundup: A Mixtape appeared first on Various Small Flames.

The release follows a similar blueprint to previous Long Neck output, folky bedroom pop songs that straddle the line between reflective and hopeful. ‘the magician’ is a sparse and quiet track about thinking of someone late at night, about wanting to call them and not knowing why. It’s followed by ‘rosy’, a gently bittersweet bedroom folk song about having fun in the snow with a fearless dog and losing someone close to you, about recovery and trying to see the world (and yourself) as a place that’s amazing and kind and hopeful.

“To wear a pair of rosy lenses
and to see a world in myself progressing
is everything”

‘artemis and orion’ is something of a break-up song, while ‘matriach’ is a seemingly long-promised ode to a strong and beloved family member, as Mastrodimos sings “you summoned flowers from the ground, said ‘don’t let the bastards get you down'”. ‘lichen’ uses the titular organism as a metaphor for human symbiosis (“let me cling to you when conditions are right, and i can shrink away at the coming light”) and closer ‘southern cities’ is about as jolly as this collection of songs gets, a travelling song about seeing amazing things on the road and wishing certain people were there to see them too.

You can get spring cleaning on a name-your-price basis from the Long Neck Bandcamp page.

The post Long Neck – Spring Cleaning appeared first on Various Small Flames.