Tracklist:

Act Of – I am Fungus
Static Animal – See You Around
Skirts – Brite Boy (Alex G cover)
Space Mountain – Cloud
Alexander – Going To Sleep
German Error Message – Murmuring
Thelma – Take Me To Orlando
Jeffrey Silverstein – Make Yr Peace (And Have It Too)
camp counselor – museum of broken relationships
Spartan Jet-Plex – Stop
Lala Lala & Why? – Siren 042
Shrimpwitch – Leerers
Sir Babygirl – Flirting With Her
Spielbergs – Five On It
Stella Donnelly – Lunch
Mentalease – Avert a Gaze
Priests – The Seduction of Kansas
Mike Pace and The Child Actors – Hazy, Hot & Humid
Swim Camp – Circle K
BURLY – Kent Lame
Miserable chillers – Cider Palace
Imp of Perverse – Tripping Thru a Hallway On Fire
Go Fever – Olivia
Polyan – Dan Song
Morning River Band – Bury Me
Nigel Wright – Overcast
Denmark – I Know
Sister Wanzala – I Went Whaling in My Gap Year
Body Meat – Nairobi Flex
Derek Piotr – Repeating Bloom (Simon Whetham Remix)
Michael Chinworth – Good As It Gets
Mesa Luna – Dispel
yot club – jaded

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

The Child Actors tone is pitched somewhere between tongue-in-cheek and totally serious, or perhaps it’s more like tongue-in-cheek performed totally seriously.  As we described in a review of 2017’s Get Soft, “[Pace’s music] feels like neither a sugary nostalgia-trip nor some ironic attack. Instead, and this could be said of the entire Child Actors output to date, it’s more a symbiosis between the two, a celebration that’s as interested in the fun banal stuff as it is with the more human centre.”

To artfully coincide with his fortieth birthday, Pace is releasing a brand new track, ‘Hazy, Hot and Humid,’ a song that continues his delightfully retro and playful style. Fittingly, the song’s genesis lies in the tropics, Pace taking old favourites to the fertile surroundings of beach bums and board shorts and growing his own hybrid sound. “Last October we stole away to island paradise of Bermuda for a long weekend to celebrate my wife’s birthday, sans kids,” Pace explains. “I brought along Paul Zollo’s indispensable Conversations with Tom Petty to read while lazing on the beach and gazing towards the horizon line. Reading about Petty’s songwriting process and absorbing a lot of his back catalog formed the basis of this track, which I think ultimately came out sounding more like 90’s era Lindsey Buckingham (you better believe Out of the Cradle holds up!). I hope it’s indicative of what’s to come from me as I slide gracefully into middle age.”

We’re thrilled to be able to share the video for the track. Written and directed by the ghost of Angus Scrimm, the film is everything you expect from Pace—hard-hitting, achingly cool and entirely, 100% serious.

‘Hazy, Hot & Humid’ is out now via Prickly Pear and you can get it from the Mike Pace and the Child Actors Bandcamp page.

Art by Ken MacLaurin

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Tracklisting:

Mike Pace and the Child Actors – Everyone Out of the Car
Miranda Winters – The Futuristic District
Exam Season – Strawberry Milk
Saccharine – Pumpkin Guts
Tuvaband – Wolfpack
Devon Welsh – Dreams Have Pushed You Around
Mending – Alan after the Fire
Reddening West – Even If
Valley Maker – Light on the Ground
The Washboard Abs – Return to You
Manatree – Brushfire
Miserable Chillers – Horse Opera
Saint Charles – She Don’t Wanna Know
new casino – going for a walk*
Frankie Valet – Why Blue
Goodbye Max – Old Photos
Adeline Hotel – Habits
Joe Kaplow – I Said I Was Going and I Went
Pecas – Tuesdays
Sun Kin – Neglect
Baby Cages – flowers
Crooked Spine – Skinned Knees
Lauren O’Connell – Out of Focus
Mount Goldie – Summer
Harvey Trisdale – Baby
american poetry club – the sum of your parts
Babehoven – Out of the Country
Adam Arcuragi – Low Parade Rain
Jason Bemis Lawrence – Southern Midwest
Campdogzz – Sorceress
Barfoot – A Thin Place Between Worlds

* not on Playmoss

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

Pace began with Best Boy back in 2015, what we labelled “feel-good songs tinged with longing” for kids of the 80s and 90s, and followed up with a double A-side single and an EP that followed a similar pattern. The former we described as sounding as though it “should be filmed for a live concert VHS-special,” and the latter, Get Soft, merged sophisti-pop and jazz fusion to sum up the Mike Pace aesthetic: 

“Because Pace never leans more to one direction, [his music] feels like neither a sugary nostalgia-trip nor some ironic attack. Instead, and this could be said of the entire Child Actors output to date, it’s more a symbiosis between the two, a celebration that’s as interested in the fun banal stuff as it is with the more human centre.”

Which is to say, Pace’s music is nostalgic, but not in the common, empty way where recognition is exploited to shift units. Rather, he seems keyed in to the emotions and feelings that both create and maintain nostalgia, and thereby the reasons why it’s so enticing and thrilling. Such things cannot be condensed into simple explanations, but it seems pertinent that, beneath the familiar touchstones and flamboyant energy, Pace’s music is threaded with a vague yet persistent feeling of sadness, the knowledge that the present will soon be the past, and the past will now always be just that.

Smooth Sailing is a brand new full-length from Mike Pace and the Child Actors, and one which continues this distinctive examination. As always, the record sees Pace draw upon styles from the past, specifically, according to Daniel Kolitz’s bio, “progressive rock and big-tent singer-songwriter stuff from the 1970s.” Though that is a misleadingly reductive characterisation of the influences on show, as Smooth Sailing is a veritable banquet of retro delights, Pace jumping between sounds and styles from track to track in order to create a buffet of bizesized treats from all over the musical spectrum.

From opener ‘Everyone out of the Car’, with its tales of deadly snakes and big “woah oh oh” chorus, to squealing guitar rush of ‘Escape the Noise’, a track about leaving behind the glitz and glamour of rock ‘n roll, these songs are a joyous and unashamed ode to performers of the past. ‘Blaster’ is power pop, ‘Disconnected Heart’ a power ballad, and ‘Troubleshooting’ all round powerful, something between surf pop and bar band rock. There’s even a technicoloured instrumental in closer ‘Americana Manhasset’, a track for dusk or dawn someplace where sky meets road at the edge of the horizon, or rather the soundtrack for this place as seen through an 80s camera lens.

The result is almost postmodern, though without the the prevailing emptiness for which the movement is accused. Rather, Pace utilizes his eclectic and shape-shifting sound as a celebration of and part-eulogy to his array of influences, each change not undercutting the last but adding to a growing, album-wide attitude. Smooth Sailing, then, plays like a roulette wheel of vintage sounds, a jukebox as found at the wedding of an obscure uncle. Or perhaps an old radio from the seventies unearthed during a loft clearance, plugged in and found to be still tuned to frequencies of its time, a twirl of the dial cycling through the ghosts of stations past, each one dedicated to its own specific strain of classic rock joy.

We’re delighted to be able to stream the album in full, so grab your headphones and a pair of sunglasses, and prepare to set sail.

The post Mike Pace and the Child Actors – Smooth Sailing appeared first on Various Small Flames.

However, as always, we want to point out that ‘free’ does not have to mean pay nothing in this context. Indeed, the title of the post says ‘free’ music because it’s snappier than ‘name your price’ music, but really that’s a convenient/attention-grabbing misnomer. Last year we spoke about how paying artists makes for the best soil in which to sow creative seeds, and things are no different now. Indeed, with the dawn of Spotify and the all-powerful algorithms, it is more important than ever to support independent artists and labels, and in reality there are already enough free ways to consume music that we don’t need to encourage another.

So please delve into the below list, curated entirely by humans, and spend whatever is left of your Christmas money when you stumble across something you like. We can vouch for the quality of everything here, so don’t be afraid to judge a record by its cover to begin with.

Here’s a handy mix featuring one song from each of the free / ‘name your price’ albums featured:

The post Favourite Free Music of 2017 appeared first on Various Small Flames.

Various Small Flames’

Songs of 2017

Anamon – Kneel Old
Android Automatic – Dark Roads*
Angie McMahon – Slow Mover
Basement Revolver – Johnny Pt. 2
Baxter Roy Long – Paribanou
Bea Troxel – Let Them Know
Big Thief – Mary
Black Belt Eagle Scout – Soft Stud
Bully – Running
Cayetana – Mesa
Charly Bliss – Percolator
Chastity Belt – Different Now
CHUCK – Happy Birthday
The County Liners – Maria
The Courtneys – Tour
Craig Finn – God in Chicago
Crumb – Locket
Crushing – Emery Board
Cut Worms – Like Going Down Sideways
David Bazan – Care
Distant Reader – First Try
Emperor X – God Save Coastal Dorset
Fits – Ice Cream on a Nice Day
German Error Message – 2017*
Gleemer – Soothe Me
Great Grandpa – Favorite Show
Haley Heynderickx – Oom Sha Lala
Hiccup – Teasin’
Horse Culture – Texaco
Illuminati Hotties – ‘(You’re Better) Than Ever’
Japandroids – No Known Drink or Drug
Jason Isbell & the 400 Unit – If We Were Vampires
Jay Som – The Bus Song
Jeremy Squires – Night Cars
Katie Ellen – Drawing Room
Lizzie No – Monuments
Lomelda – Bam Sha Klam
Mike Pace and the Child Actors – Audits & Surveys
Meursault – The Mill
Mount Eerie – Crow
Nice Legs – Mighty Three
Oceanator – Nowhere Nothing
Ohyeahsumi – Daisy
Old Earth – Pit Dynamics
PASTEL – Stammer
Peter Silberman – New York
Phoebe Bridgers – Motion Sickness
Pope – Talk Me Out of It
Protomartyr – Windsor Hum
Rainwater – Place
Ratboys – Elvis is in the Freezer
Rick Rude – Bald & Fat in Houston, TX
Roadkill Ghost Choir – Classics (Die Young)
Rose Dorn – Dirt
See Through Dresses – Lucy’s Arm
Shannen Moser – A Funeral, A Friend, My Sanity
Sinai Vessel – Died On My Birthday
Slaughter Beach, Dog – Phoenix
SOAR – Fort Funston
Soft Fangs – Jordan // Jackson Elementary
Spartan Jet-Plex – We Believe
Strange Ranger – House Show
Strawberry Runners – Garden Hose
Timid, The Brave – Alice
Us and Only Us – Bored of Black
Vagabon – Cold Apartment
Viewfinder – Instant Moonlight
The Washboard Abs – Veil
Waxahatchee – Never Been Wrong
Wild Pink – Albert Ross
William Ryan Fritch – In Our Blood
The Wooden Sky – Swimming in Strange Waters
Ylayali – Cherry Tomatoes

*Strictly released in 2016, but barely, and we covered it in Jan. 2017.

If you missed it, you can see our Favourite Albums of 2017 list here. Also, the curious can find such lists from previous years here.

The post Favourite Songs of 2017 appeared first on Various Small Flames.

“Music large and loud and lively, the kind of great so-serious-its-not (or maybe so non-serious-its-serious) energy that should be filmed for a live concert VHS-special”

Not content to stop there, the intervening months have seen Pace looking for ways to further flesh out his sound. The answer to moving forward it seemed, involving digging through the past, gathering the multitude of loose ends that constitute his favourite hits and weaving them into one long and complicated rope. As Pace describes: “For this latest batch of tunes, I figured since I’m probably never performing live again, why not indulge my myriad musical tastes by jumping headfirst into hard-to-replicate mini-epics?”

Get Soft is the resulting EP, a release of four songs which “travel from sleek mid 80’s inspired ‘sophisti-pop’ to smooth jazz fusion to mid-tempo psych groove-fests to melancholy synthesized mediations and back.” If this sounds quite the journey then that’s because it is, packing the sort of energy unique to pre-millennium TV, where everything is loud and bright and bursting with positivity.

Opener ‘Audits & Surveys’ is the perfect example, kicking things off like some glorious new dawn of old feelings. With lead vocals by Alana Amram, the track plays like an early 90s corporate lifestyle, maintaining a flashy optimism that seems both genuine and not, as though beneath this world of surfaces lies a fear or dissatisfaction that triggers not some deep existential demise but rather a deeper love of the shiny top layer. So while the lyrics are packed with self-deprecation and regret, the music itself never slips from its jubilant tone, and, because Pace never leans more to one direction, the track feels like neither a sugary nostalgia-trip nor some ironic attack. Instead, and this could be said of the entire Child Actors output to date, it’s more a symbiosis between the two, a celebration that’s as interested in the fun banal stuff as it is with the more human centre.

“I cut corners like a real close shave
Business casual is my middle name
I may look like a fool but I’m really a knave
four out of five would agree”

The title track plays like the theme to the best sunny cop farce never written, Adam Swierczynski and Ian Evans setting the tempo with bass and drums before the delightfully big guitar finale. ‘Caravan the Coast’ sees Lira Yin offer dreamy backing vocals, the track a glad-to-be-alive ode to cross country travelling, and a pop number for optimists more generally. There’s more than a hint of melodrama behind the buoyancy (the enthusiasm for utopian escape must suggest there’s something to run away from, after all), though again Pace refuses to let the elated tone slip, the track building into a frenetic crescendo which serves as a figurative ride into the sunset, even if a literal one is some way off.

“Soon enough we’ll be somewhere warm just beyond the chill
Caught outside in a summer storm
Like you hope we would

Long time leaving – tougher than most
But I’d love to have you join me
Join me as we caravan the coast”

The electronic instrumental ‘Eleuthera’ closes the release with a slice of digital tropicana, perhaps the clearest sign of melancholy on the record. However, with its swelling synths providing a near-spiritual promise of sustenance, it’s unclear whether it’s that late-evening vacation sort of emotion that’s somehow linked to transcendence, or a deeper sadness triggered by the confrontation of yet another image. Maybe the seascape here is being beamed from the fogged-up window of a travel agency’s concrete office, the warmth on your face merely the promise of sun, or just radiation from the screen’s cathode glow.

Get Soft is out now and you can get it on a ‘name your price’ basis via the Mike Pace Bandcamp page.

Cover photography by Greg Andreacchi

The post Mike Pace & The Child Actors – Get Soft appeared first on Various Small Flames.

Henoheno – I Made These Songs Before I Moved (REVIEW)
(RIYL: Bedroom pop, Elvis Depressedly, Alex G)

Henry Demos & Lewtrakimou – I Was trying to Get There But it Was Hard to See From the Balloon (REVIEW)
(RIYL: experimental, psychedelic, lo-fi, incredibly cool/nice people <3)

Hermann Doose – Hawaii Was Beautiful
(RIYL: pop, surf rock, ARMS)

High Bloom – Haloed
(RIYL: ambient, electronic pop, Orchid Tapes)

Honeyuck – very tiny songs (REVIEW)
(RIYL: bedroom pop, twee folk, Frankie Cosmos)

Isabel Rex – American Colloquialisms/Two Hexes (REVIEW)
(RIYL: lo-fi, garage rock, Olive Drab)

The Island of Misfit Toys – I Made You Something
(RIYL: emo, indie folk, hardcore)

Jake Rollins – Spend a Few, Make a Few (REVIEW)
(RIYL: lo-fi, summer pop, slacker rock)

JANK – Awkward Pop Songs
(RIYL: power pop, emo, Algernon Cadwallader)

Jay Som – Untitled
(RIYL: dream pop, woozy rock, dreaming of summer)

Joplin Rice – Low Hum (REVIEW)
(RIYL: indie rock, lo-fi)

Katie Dey – asdfasdf
(RIYL: bedroom pop, experimental, lo-fi)

The Kickstand Band – In the Sun
(RIYL: indie pop, surf rock, )

Kip McGrath – S/T EP
(RIYL: lo-fi, bubblegum pop, twee)

Kitten Crisis – Have a good summer
(RIYL: pop punk, summer days, Radiator Hospital)

Lady Paw – Long Shadow

(RIYL: dream pop, experimental, Twin Sister)

Laurence – Happy Town
(RIYL: bedroom pop, folk)

The Le Sigh – Vol. II (close enough to 2015!)
(RIYL: bedroom pop, compilations packed with goodness, female-identified/non-binary artists)

Letters From Bummer Camp – Vol. 1
(RIYL: punk, Boosegumps/Long Neck/other NJ-indie artists, helping good causes)

Long Neck – Heights (REVIEW)
(RIYL: bedroom pop, Two White Cranes, Cyberbully Mom Club)

Kizzy Hall – one last shame spiral
(RIYL: scrappy rock, basement pop, Coma Cinema)

Mike Pace and the Child Actors – The Flood
(RIYL: box-office music from the 80s/90s, Oxford Collapse)

Miniature Philosopher – Leaving ‘Bula
(RIYL: Paul Baribeau, Nana Grizol, Talons’)

Mini Dresses – FOUR
(RIYL: dream pop, laidback vibes)

The Modern Folk – Surround Me / Leather Jacket (REVIEW)
(RIYL: lo-fi, DIY, shambling rock n’ roll)

Morning River Band – Abyssal Channeling (REVIEW)
(RIYL: folk, country, bar-room rock)

We’ll be sharing a new section of the list every day this week, so be sure to check back for the complete collection. If you find something you like, or think we missed something life-changing, then why not let us know on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Tumblr or good old email.

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The post Wake The Deaf’s Favourite Songs of 2015 appeared first on Various Small Flames.

“Best Boy is for the children of the 80s and 90s, reminiscing about the age where entertainment exploded, where VHS tapes and cable TV transformed us into constant consumers… a wistful celebration of what we had [which] presents some convincing reasons for why we feel the way we do”

Pace is back with a double A-side single which may or may not have been recorded at The Rolling Stones Mobile Recording Unit with the help of “a murderers’ row of jazz ­fusion session talent” including Bill “Church” Wellington (keyboards), Du’vel DiGiorgio (bass), Coke Stevenson (trumpet), Tony Kukoc (soprano guitar) and Dan Van Dyke (drums), the non-fictitious Lira Yin (vocals) and producer Matt LeMay. The release sees Pace expand on the new direction hinted at on Best Boy, pushing toward a more expansive, poppy sound. As he explains:  

To paraphrase REO Speedwagon, badly, it was ‘time for me to [spread my wings and] fly, musically. I don’t really play live these days. I have a young family. I exclusively buy bargain bin progressive and AOR records. I recently got really into tennis. In other words, I like to push the boundaries, and I may as well use all of these things to help  inform and craft my new songs.

The release opens with ‘The Flood’, giving the first taste of the new boundary-pushing Child Actors. Opening with sparkling synths, the track develops into a jubilant pop song which finds glory in a seemingly miserable/dangerous life (the opening line, for example: “Here comes the drugs wash over me/their wake will take us out to sea”). Right up to the final triumphant horns and keyboards, the track does not let up in its elation, pushing a Hold Steady brand of transcendental joy/love, the sort which creeps through the cracks of a life filled with high stakes and morning afters.

“Here come the drums, rain over me stuttering start of the daylight dawning
fathers yell and mothers weep crawl on our knees soon enough we’re walking shed a tear at ‘Hey Nineteen’ another love crashed in-between

Open the floodgates, cut us loose then we’ll catch our stride
Close your eyes and stay by my side the realest thing that you can do tonight”

Second single ‘Red Sauce Revisited’ combines the various ingredients of radio hits from through the ages, opening with 60s surf strums and touching upon 70s rock solos, 80s power pop cheese and 90s melodrama to become a four and a half minute singalong homage to the good old FM stations of the US of A.

“Signs are on the ceiling, writing’s on the wall
There’s a terrifying feeling I won’t see you anymore
and I cannot stop the bleeding so I’ll learn to love the pain
I never thought that this is how it ends”

So basically, if you like your music large and loud and lively, the kind of great so-serious-its-not (or maybe so non-serious-its-serious) energy that should be filmed for a live concert VHS-special, look no further. Michael Pace has arrived, and he has company.

The Flood / Red Sauce Revisited is available for download on a pay-what-you-can basis via Bandcamp.

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