Released to coincide with his birthday, and organised by Dan Wriggins (of Friendship) in collaboration with Dear Life Records, You Were Alone: An Owen Ashworth Almanac is a covers compilation featuring versions of Owen’s songs from family, friends, labelmates and fans. A celebration which recognises a birthday but also so much more than that. A body of work and the burgeoning legacy it has and continues to establish, not to mention the blossoming community fostered through Owen’s label Orindal Records.

And community feels like the right word for the compilation. Both in terms of the gathered artists and the characters they bring to life. Because hearing the songs in different voices really brings home the diversity of personalities present across Owen’s work. Pedro the Lion adds a weariness to ‘My Sister’s Birthday’ with his distinctively gruff fondness. Claire Cronin is the perfect person to fully excavate the spookiness of ‘Pamela’. MJ Lenderman and Karly Hartzman raise a glass to poor old Christmas Steve. Sinai Vessel captures ‘Kitty Winn’ in all its sad affection.

Some, like Lisa/Liza‘s ‘Rabbits’ or Karima Walker‘s ‘Same Dream’, take the original versions back to the traditional folk roots, while the likes of Ylayali, Moon Racer and Bedbug lean into the electronic, harking back to earlier CFTPA days. What’s impressive is how the distinctive “Ashworthian” voice remains across the spectrum. Even the tracks with no literal voice, be it Robert Stillman‘s take on ‘Christmas in Nightmare City’ or Gordon Ashworth‘s extended guitar version of ‘Nephew in the Wild’, lose none of their ability to evoke the tales we’ve grown to hold so dear. Because while Dan might have intended to organise a birthday party, it turned out more like a reunion. A gathering of Owen’s characters, our friends. Still here, still living, still with so many stories to tell.

Cover painting by Martha Miller

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Now Michael Cormier is back with a brand new album, More Light!!, a co-release between Dear Life Records and Oof Records which explores similar ideas with a newfound creative assurance and, yes, brightness. For while anxiety and existential woe make up much of the record’s raw material, in Cormier’s hands it is illuminated from within, highlighting small sparks of joy and wonder in even the most distressing circumstances.

Michael was kind enough to answer some questions about the record. Read on for more in-depth insight into psychedelic insomnia, the relationship between fear and beauty, and that striking cover art.

Hi Michael, thanks for speaking with us. How does it feel to be putting another record into the world?

I feel a mix of emotions. I really love making albums, but the release cycle leaves me feeling pretty gutted. This campaign has been particularly drawn out. The record was totally wrapped back in October of 2020, announced six months later in April of 2021 and is now being heard in its entirety in June. Running a label, I recognize all the moving parts that go into releasing an album, but as an artist it can get to be tiresome. After this process, I am excited to work on some improv projects that can be shared more immediately with a little less (self-imposed) pressure. That’s what I say now, but records always have a way of sneaking up on me.

In a conversation with Wendy Eisenberg, you talked about having a “fermentation period” when writing, with sizeable periods of time between the music, the lyrics, the demos, but also how you maintain a degree of improvisation too. I’m fascinated by the interplay between immediacy and distance within this practice. Does the fermentation part allow for more freedom, a truer spontaneity in knowledge you’re not deciding there and then this is the track?

This is interesting to try to think about because I never consciously decided to work like this. Musical ideas come to me very fast, so I am often sitting on multiple records worth of “song bones,” which are just the contours of what could eventually be songs with lyrics or stand-alone instrumental pieces. These accumulate for some time then eventually I start demoing them. I improvise over the demos which can lead to final arrangement ideas or melodies that are later turned into the lead vocal melodies. By the time I am working on a final recording, I know the song inside and out, which I think allows for me to expound on ideas, throw some out, and follow whatever impulses arise during the session. I know none of it is fixed, because once I take a song to a band to perform live, I know it will change again and sound nothing like the recording.

I actually just played on a new record of Wendy’s, and working with them rewrote the script for me on how to approach recording. I had listened to their demos extensively, but I wasn’t even sure I was going to be playing on the music at all. I showed up as a supportive friend and they said “okay wanna lay down some drums?” It felt very much like a jazz session, with Wendy as the bandleader and me responding to the material in real time while the “tape” rolled. I hope to incorporate this sort of approach in my future work, whether it’s me playing along with myself or with fellow collaborators.

From the very first line (“I twitch before I sleep…”), there’s an anxiety that’s woven through the record, something that sits just beneath the gentle tones and lyricism. Did you set out to write something darker than your previous work? Or is it a product of these strange times we’re living through?

I am fascinated by how fear and beauty interact. My anxiety softens me in a way that allows me to feel more receptive to the transcendent, which can be powerful medicine to ward off the worst fears. Aesthetically, I am never looking for something to be 100% beautiful or 100% gruesome. I am way more interested in how darkness and light exist simultaneously in the same space. I wrote a lot about bars on this record because they feel like the perfect archetypal setting for the comingling of darkness and light. Dim yet iridescent. Solipsistic yet communal.

My fascination with these sorts of oppositions seems born out of a year that kept most of us in our homes, glued to our screens for reminders of human connection. This record doesn’t feel exceptionally darker than my other records though. Days Like Pearls is a lamentation that my childhood only exists in memories I am steadily losing access to. And M-F wrestles with how to give yourself wholly to a partner while working a shitty job makes such generosity feel impossible. The blending of melancholy with jubilation has become pretty central to my artistic output.

In contrast, the title More Light!! gives a very different impression, and the title track in particular focuses more on small pools of light that pop up in a sea of darkness. Could you expand a little on this relationship between light and dark?

I inadvertently alluded to this above, but ya this is my bread and butter! ‘Degradation’ and ‘Empty Mugs’ are both insomnia songs. Having bouts of insomnia felt pretty psychedelic, turning my house into a fucked-up hall of mirrors. Everything looked distorted and gross, exacerbated by the feeling that something was horribly wrong. But at the same time, it allowed me to notice things I’d never really paid attention to. How our neighbors had a chandelier in their dining room that was regularly left on throughout the night. The harsh floodlight our landlord put up on the corner of the house that cast everything in an unsettling pale blue.

Thinking about this, I am reminded how often lights cutting through darkness can be more unsettling than the darkness itself. I think that comes across on the record too, that the metaphor of darkness and light works both ways. There can be comfort in total darkness as there can be comfort in total light, and both can be obscured, disfigured, and manipulated. Songs like ‘Degradation’ and ‘Empty Mugs’, which take place at night, feel the most hopeful, whereas bright sunny songs like ‘Buggin’’ and ‘Yellow Sadness’ feel the creepiest to me.

On a related note, I have to ask about the cover art – who painted it and how much input did you have into the concept?

The cover was painted by Philadelphia-based horror artist Hayden Hall. His work adorns countless posters for VHS Film Festivals and album covers for metal records. I know he was inspired at an early age by the cover of Holy Diver by Dio. I had been a fan of his work for a while and knew I wanted the album cover to look like horror art, which often depicts its macabre subjects in excruciating detail.

I came to Hayden with a rough idea that fused the basic composition of the cover of Tom Waits’ Orphans: Brawlers, Bawlers, & Bastards with imagery inspired by the Northern Lights episode of the show Northern Exposure, a show I cherish deeply. In that episode, set in the darkness of the middle of an Alaskan winter, town DJ/local philosopher Chris steals light sources from people’s homes and workplaces. At the end of the episode, it’s revealed that Chris was constructing a massive art installation on Main St, a monolithic wall of lights. I sent Hayden a clip of the final scene of the episode where the piece is unveiled and asked him to riff on that for the cover with me in the foreground. His flourishes and style were exactly what I was hoping for. Follow Hayden on Instagram @sick_slice.

Although it’s a “solo” album, you had a lot of people contribute and collaborate. How did those connections come about, and was it difficult given the pandemic? What does this kind of collaboration bring to the record?

Honestly it was probably made easier due to the pandemic, because we were all stuck in our houses with not that much to do. Everyone who contributed did so remotely, including folks who I definitely couldn’t have had on the record because they don’t live anywhere near Philly. I really tried to leave a lot more open space than I usually do for the contributions of others. Most of the songs started as guitar, drums, and vocals, then I’d send them over to producer Lucas Knapp who immediately elevated the songs with his additions. I’d sprinkle some more ideas in after that, but each song seemed to demand the work of specific artists I love and trust. The collaborations felt really natural, and took very little management. Most everyone sent in parts that required very few if any notes.

You’re quoted as saying the record is ultimately “about treating our own perceptions as an artistic pursuit,” and I think the idea captures something at the heart of your music. A vulnerability that allows a sense of wonder. Annie Hart spoke of “play in the childish sense” when recording her latest record, and it got thinking of your work too. Childlike in the best possible sense. As open to joy as pain.

Annie’s record is super inspiring to me. We played a show together back in February of 2020, and I was instantly drawn to her work and personality. She exudes so much joy and kindness. She had talked to me later about starting work on instrumental synthesizer music. When the finished record came out, I couldn’t help but notice how teeming with life that music felt. That’s always the goal, to make music that is the embodiment of life the way we would like to live it. Annie was massively successful in that pursuit, and I feel like I am getting a little closer to that with every new project. It’s heartening to know that a childlike sense of wonder is intelligibly communicated on a record that explores my pervasive fear of aging and death.

More Light!! is out now on Dear Life Records and Oof Records. Get it on LP, CD, cassette or digital from the Michael Cormier Bandcamp page.

Photo by Meghan O’Leary, artwork by Hayden Hall

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Medosch says the album is a tribute to and celebration of the “absurd yet strangely dignified world” that Berman created in his music and writing. As she goes on to say:

In every piece of his writing at any point you might stumble upon the most stunning view of the miraculous beauty of decaying American life. Every line had the same opportunity to blow your mind with it’s brutal and transformative honesty, achingly encompassing a landscape of tragedy-turned-comedy and vice-versa.

The roster of artists plays like a who’s who of contemporary bedroom pop, Florry and Fog Lake and Cormier joined by twenty four other artists who each provide their own unique and respectful take on one of Berman’s songs. There are too many to describe in detail, but rest assured that filler is nowhere to be found. Chad Maheny dials back the usual manic intensity of his Emperor X project with a version of Bright Flight’s ‘Horseleg Swastikas’, while Molly Drag provides a suitably melancholic take on ‘Suffering Jukebox’, a lament of a lonely artist playing to themselves in the corner of an otherwise happy room.

Greta Kline (of Frankie Cosmos fame) covers ‘Death Of An Heir Of Sorrows’ under the moniker Franz Charcoal, transforming The Silver Jews original into their characteristically simple and subtly emotive bedroom pop. Pickle Darling’s contribution is even more of a departure, turning ‘Nights That Won’t Happen’ into a stripped-back contemporary pop song. There are some louder moments too, notably as Joyer play ‘Night Society’ and The Funs share a wonderfully scrappy and lo-fi take on ‘Trains Across the Sea’. Final track ‘We Could Be Looking For the Same Thing’ by Hothead and the Baby also has a nice depth of sound, fittingly capturing Berman’s countrified indie rock.

All proceeds from the compilation will go to Shatterproof, an American nonprofit that takes an empathetic and evidence-based approach to combating the devastating effects of addiction. They work to remove the stigma around addiction, campaigning to Congress that it should be regarded like any other disease. It’s incredibly important work and a fitting tribute to the life and legacy of David Berman.

You can get Late Homework – The Songs of David Berman from the Dear Life Records Bandcamp page. And if you haven’t listened to Purple Mountains yet, now seems like a good time.

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Claire Cronin – What the Night is Thinking
Michael Cromier – Foghorn
Ylayali – little caterpillar graveyard
Forrest Moody & Jake Bellissimo – Selige Sehnsucht
Grotto Terrazza – Was Leben Will Muss Sterben
Trying – If I Don’t Get a Job
Giant in The Lighthouse – Sprinting
Soften – Iridescent
Champ Major – Abbeville
Grebes – Plum
Jack M. Senff – Old Days
Sam Lynch – Not My Body
Tyler Key – Change My Mind
Ē – Afraid of the Ocean
Dehd – Wild
Pancho and the Wizards – Rot
TV People – Healthier Days
Plastic Cactus – Mystery Boy
Bibi Club – Jean Rene
It’s Sunday – Comme Un Fool
Little Slugger – Impossible
runnner – fan on
Hostxess – Time
omes – wyd
Oliver Ray – Ol’ Coyote
Will Johnson – Cornelius
Merival – No Brakes
My Father’s Son – Dust to Rust
Jordan Klassen – Virtuous Circle
Ditty – Deathcab

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

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Aside from his roles with these bands, Michael Cormier also records solo under his own name. His latest record, Days Like Pearls, combines the modest introspection of Friendship with the lush melancholy of Hour, utilising everything gained from past acts to form a distinctively new sound. The album is the first release of Cormier’s new record label, Dear Life Records, which, living up to its name, is interested in music and audio-based art  “exploring the tiniest crevices of the human experience.” The label is yet another sign of the cohesion and ambition of Cormier’s artistic vision, extending his dedication to the wonder that lurks amid the minutiae of existence.

Not content with the one new record, Cormier is also announcing surprise album M-F today too, and we have the honour of streaming both.

Days Like Pearls

Woven out of a series of memories from a childhood on the southeastern coast of Massachusetts, Days Like Pearls provides warm and wistful vignettes that home in on very specific details. ‘Yellow Wasp Under the Picnic Table’ charts the insect visitors to an outdoor meal, wasps and flies drawn by the soda, mosquitoes by the warm, beating blood of youth. ‘Dinners’ maps a room by its objects and occupants, the buzzing lights, the telephone, the piano. The fingerprints and lipstick smudges that adorn the glasses on the table. Cormier isn’t presenting memories in a narrative sense, rather (re)building milieux with snapshots of their most memorable features, and tapping into the collective nostalgia for times now gone.

Not that such a strategy is in any way perfect. Indeed, part of the album’s power lies in its acknowledgement of its limitations. Remembering the past does not bring it back, and offering representations, no matter the fidelity, risks replacing the real with the imagined and mis-remembered. Because nostalgia is a form of constant, deepening loss, where the passing of the direct experience is followed by a slow decline of memory too, cherished moments degrading to nothing with each passing day.

Days Like Pearls operates as a conscious struggle against this process, an attempt to dam the river of time so that the past might stay close to us, pool near us, offer us its comfort and pleasures when we need it most. Michael Cormier is trying to not just remember past joys but restore them, cultivate them, coax them back to life by re-engaging with their weight and textures.

M-F

M-F (aka Monday – Friday) is a meditation on life and love in the contemporary culture, where your partner might leave for work before you wake up and return home long after you’ve gone to bed. Therefore, while the sound bears clear resemblance to that of Days Like Pearls, there is a complete flip in the focus of the writing—happiness and meaning not some past forces to be remembered but future ideals to chase, no matter how unfavourable the conditions.

Monotony drawing out the days but collapsing the weeks, the unbearably sluggish present experience somehow blurring into quick siphoning of time. The result is a cruel tension between wishing away the hours and grasping at the months as they pass. How does one live when sanity and survival rely on getting through the days, yet life slips through the fingers in a constant downward spiral?

The answer, Cormier suggests, is to be found within the details. No matter how miserable and mundane the situation, the opportunities for wonder and joy are innumerable. With its worming anxiety and tender earnestness, M-F is thematically similar to that of Mike Tolan’s Talons’ project, though unlike albums such as Work Stories and After Talons’, Cormier’s work maintains a sense of brightness. Where Tolan conjures transcendence from the martyred melancholy of perseverance in lives sacrificed and betrayed, Cormier finds a more sincere, juvenile wonder. “[The feeling of futility is] challenged by elevating the smallest moments of day to day routines to moments of absolute transcendence,” Cormier explains. “The squeezing of a hand becomes an earth-shattering expression of the deepest love imaginable.”

The position contrasts with that of Friendship’s Shock out of Season too, despite the clear stylistic similarities. “In many ways, Friendship are in a Bardo of their own,” we wrote in our review, “caught between how life has been and could be, unsure how and when, if ever, they might pass into the next part.” If Shock Out of Season was concerned with finding an exit to another more fulfilling life, then M-F is determined to make the current one more meaningful, escaping not life itself but our detrimental experience of it.

Days Like Pearls and M-F could be said to be interlinked, or rather moving toward being so from opposite ends of the track. Because the records are performing inverse roles toward the same end—Days Like Pearls mourning and celebrating the loss of the super-sensory meaning of childhood, and M-F seeking to re-engineer such an existence within the present day. Both cement Michael Cormier not only as an ambitious songwriter and multi-instrumentalist, but one with a cohesive and admirably optimistic vision for our times.

Days Like Pearls is out on the 7th June via Dear Life Records and you can pre-order it from Bandcamp. M-F is out today and available from Bandcamp too.

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However, while the album is united by a certain mellowness, to label it one-paced would be to do it a disservice. Opener ‘Beautiful, OH’ is a sparse, elegiac number underpinned by the gentlest swells, the cyclical pattern interspersed with irregular rises in tempo which never quite culminate in anything like a climax, playing like time passing across a landscape. This is followed by ‘The Carter Starter’, a track positively chirpy in comparison, though violin still sweeps across at various interludes to add a wistful dimension. ‘Still New To This’ creeps out of its beginnings with a playful edge. The cyclical motif utilised once more, though each iteration is altered and built upon so that a sense of organic life is imparted to the flow.

As highlighted in the next three tracks, much of Tiny Houses is pitched somewhere between insular and expansive, the echo and hum suggesting loneliness, though one which could apply to a crowded room or wide open plain. Put another way, the sadness Hour conjure could be either external or internal—a mindful person living within a lonely space, or a lonely person trying to feel more at home within an indifferent one. “This collection of songs explores the cracks and crevices of the spaces we occupy and call home,” the press release explains. “Each song balances the transcendence and claustrophobia that can come with sharing those spaces with others, and the decision, at times liberating, at times painful, to leave and start the process over again.”

With its more insistent percussion and experimental sound, ‘Town Meeting’ has a disorientating undercurrent, the intermittent field recordings of wordless babble adding to the perturbed vibe. Samples are a key part of the title track too, with subtle birdsong and the great rush of wind filling out the background of the simple acoustic sound. The ambient hiss of this track continues onto the grand, slow-burning ‘Doxology’—the most cinematic, post-rock inspired song on the record, bringing to mind talons’ minus the lyrics.

The album is closed by ‘From a Bus Window in Central Ohio, Just Before a Thunder Shower,’ and the sincere preciseness of the title is a good indicator of the sound. Again, the song emerges in gentle waves, a naturalistic patience that eventually rises into some of the most affirming moments on the record. As a finale, it feels like a message of sorts, Hour’s insistence that there can be value and meaning within the simplest of things, beauty within quiet calm, a home within any place, no matter how great or small.

Tiny Houses is out now on Sleeper Records and you can get it from Bandcamp. Also, Hour recently put out three videos which, speaking to The Line of Best Fit, Cormier describes as “attempts at capturing slices of three distinct artistic lives and visions, in process and imperfect, connected by songs from the latest Hour release.” Check them out on Youtube:

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