melancholy Archives - Various Small Flames https://varioussmallflames.co.uk/tag/melancholy/ New and independent music Mon, 12 Sep 2016 11:03:36 +0000 en-GB hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.9.4 https://i0.wp.com/varioussmallflames.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/cropped-finalwhite-e1490809629909-1.jpg?fit=32%2C32&ssl=1 melancholy Archives - Various Small Flames https://varioussmallflames.co.uk/tag/melancholy/ 32 32 88787050 Aunts – Third EP https://varioussmallflames.co.uk/2014/07/25/aunts-third-ep/ Fri, 25 Jul 2014 16:38:37 +0000 http://www.wakethedeaf.co.uk/?p=173 Aunts are a self-confessed DIY sadness band from the USA’s midwest. The band unveiled their latest release, a three-track EP called Third EP, earlier this week. The make a weird brand of melancholy pop. The music itself is undeniably indie pop, and could almost be described using those old cliches such as “sunny” and “breezy”. But frontman Matt Geas has these really cool, almost Krug-esque, warbling vocals which somehow skew things. He sounds a little desperate, emotionally unstable, certainly neither “sunny” or “breezy”. The […]

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]]> Aunts are a self-confessed DIY sadness band from the USA’s midwest. The band unveiled their latest release, a three-track EP called Third EP, earlier this week. The make a weird brand of melancholy pop. The music itself is undeniably indie pop, and could almost be described using those old cliches such as “sunny” and “breezy”. But frontman Matt Geas has these really cool, almost Krug-esque, warbling vocals which somehow skew things. He sounds a little desperate, emotionally unstable, certainly neither “sunny” or “breezy”.

The final song ‘Way Gross’ dials down the pop elements a little and offers a straighter shot of unbalanced melancholy. It ends with the lines “You have everything you need to cut my neck and let me bleed out / Just let me bleed all out”. 

You can get the EP on a pay-what-you-want basis over at Bandcamp. While you’re there, be sure to check out their previous EP, Second EP, which is also great.

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]]> 173 Hiva Oa – The Awkward Hello, Handshake, Kiss https://varioussmallflames.co.uk/2013/04/04/hiva-oa/ Thu, 04 Apr 2013 11:10:00 +0000 http://www.wakethedeaf.co.uk/?p=414 Hiva Oa are an Edinburgh-based three piece who “produce music with a fragile sense of melancholy, buried under a brooding darkness”. Last year they produced two excellent releases, both of which were released on Mini50 Records (who also put out Old Earth’s Small Hours). The first was a four-song EP entitled Future Nostalgia For Sale, which definitely should have been included on our Best Free Music List. Intended as a precursor for the band’s first album (more of which later), […]

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]]> Hiva Oa are an Edinburgh-based three piece who “produce music with a fragile sense of melancholy, buried under a brooding darkness”. Last year they produced two excellent releases, both of which were released on Mini50 Records (who also put out Old Earth’s Small Hours). The first was a four-song EP entitled Future Nostalgia For Sale, which definitely should have been included on our Best Free Music List. Intended as a precursor for the band’s first album (more of which later), two of the songs offer a preview of what was to come. ‘Badger’ pulses with a simple synth melody that repeats and repeats like the call of some strange bird, before building to a crescendo of crashing drums. ‘Urban’ is a very different track, although equally arresting. It begins with a simple strummed guitar and delicate vocals (sort of like a Scottish version of bedroom acts such as Talons’) and then a mournful cello floats in like a ghost and the whole thing gets even prettier.

The second release was the aforementioned debut album, The Awkward Hello, Handshake, Kiss. The album smoulders with a brooding intensity, the sombre guitar and lonely cello complemented with a variety of forms of percussion to create an organic piece of art which billows and swirls and seems to seep through your headphones. Hailey Beavis also provides vocals on many of the tracks, allowing male and female vocals to interchange and interact (in a way that on several occasions brought to mind an even more sad and dolorous A Weather).

The Awkward Hello‘s opener, ‘The Floods Have Woken The Quiet Sleepers’ starts with delicate finger-picking and the gentle throb of percussion, punctuated with the aforementioned cello, and continues to build until a glockenspiel twinkles, heralding the crescendo that breaks the song as if it’s a pane of fragile glass, the repeated exclamation of the line “We go down” the beautiful shards that tumble away after the impact. Another of my favourites is ‘Thunder’, which is composed of a forlorn guitar, down-tempo drones and glum vocals. Ensure you stay tuned after the album closer for an incredibly beautiful hidden track that is just man and guitar and sounds like something from very early albums by The Antlers.

You can buy The Awkward Hello, Handshake, Kiss now from mini50 Records for a very reasonable £10. I would also recommend checking out The Good Ship, an album made by Stephen Houlihan (of Hiva Oa) and Hailey Beavis, which is also really quite lovely.

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