The latest offering in Antiquated Future‘s ever-reliable Selected Songs series, Somehow We​’​ll Grow Into Some Overlapping Oak offers a glimpse into the fluid, experimental world of The Binary Marketing Show. The Portland, Oregon-based project has welcomed various members into its fold across over two decades, and this release focuses on the period headed by duo Abram Morphew and Bethany Carder. A time in which the pair created music the label describe as “existing on the outskirts of experimental pop, indie electronic, singer-songwriter, and electro-acoustic composition,” where the line between the familiar and strange is blurred by an immersive blend of homemade instruments, synths, bass and found sounds. Though only representing a snapshot of this style, single ‘Daydream (I Cannot)’ is as good a place as any to enter into this world, offering a sound somewhere between Trouble Books and Cloud Cult in its experimental yet emotionally engaging tone.

Divorce Court – 140

The music of Divorce Court stands as a representation of its creator Lynden Williams’s subconscious, its rich and often hazy soundscapes able to evoke the smallest of distances alongside deceptively cavernous crescendos. The ideal vehicle to explore all things introspective. With new album Two Hours coming later this year, lead single ‘140’ introduces this style with an indirect examination of how therapy and psychedelics helped to restore Williams’s inner child. “No one in your corner / Days almost over,” Williams sings, though the loneliness is counteracted by the vivid sound and the transportive secret inherent within it. That the subconscious is a world of its own, and escapism is possible no matter where you might be trapped. “Your body’s a safe place,” as Williams continues, “Eyes closed and melt away.” Watch the video directed by Trevor Free below:

Two Hours will be released on the 8th July. ‘140’ is available now from the Divorce Court Bandcamp page.

East Forest x Peter Broderick – Landscape

Written and recorded during a stay in County Clare’s karst/glaciokarst landscape known as The Burren, Burren is a new collaboration between multi-genre artist East Forest and composer Peter Broderick. The pair met for the first time in person during the period and arrived with no plan beyond an openness to the surrounding landscape. What emerged is both a testament to the chemistry between the two artists and the striking climate in which they were housed. Single ‘Landscape’ offers a glimpse into the folk-inflected ambient soundscapes they created, managing to convey the fine beauty and fierce drama of the Irish environment as Marissa Radha Weppner’s spoken word vocals add to the mystery of the scene.

Lisa/Liza – Held Together

Under the moniker Lisa/Liza, Portland, Maine songwriter Liza Victoria makes what we have previously described as “deliberate, unhurried songs made in the image of nature’s patient rhythms […] that examine how surrounding landscapes are tied to our most intimate emotions and memories.” In April, Victoria returns with Breaking and Mending, her first full-length since 2020’s excellent Shelter of a Song, again on Orindal Records. Written while working through chronic illness and the heavy legacy of past trauma, the record captures what Victoria describes as her “emotional landscape in the last two years,” and lead single ‘Held Together’ introduces these themes with tender beauty. Constructed of picked guitar and softly crooning vocals, its a song about weathering changing seasons of an internal nature, about holding on for metaphorical buds of spring.

Maruja – Kakistocracy

With a thunderous amalgamation of punk, post-rock and jazz, Manchester‘s Maruja have been winning fans with a sound at once menacing and cathartic for a while now, and debut EP Knocknarea looks to only further their standing. New single ‘Kakistocracy’, AKA ‘rule of the villains’, throws listener into the deep end of the Maruja style, a general sense of foreboding escalating across its length with desperately yelled vocals and driving drums and eventually unhinged sax too. What results is something both crushing and transcendent, like some great rough thing slouching towards us with a decidedly sublime doom.

Knocknarea is out now and available on streaming services.

Michael Cormier-O’Leary – Letter From Alan

Following 2021’s More Light!!, multi-instrumentalist, songwriter & Dear Life Records founder Michael Cormier-O’Leary has a new album on the way later this spring. Titled Anything Can Be Left Behind, the record is a wildly creative meditation on constant change and the bonds of perceived identity. Utilising unexpected melodies, liberating improvisation and a mélange of fact and fiction, it explores life’s oddities and uncertainties in inquisitive and good-natured style, turning up the contrast until every story pops with colour. Nowhere is this more apparent than on latest single ‘Letter From Alan,’ a bouncy indie pop song which, as its title suggests, details the correspondence between two friends. It’s funny, inventive and as one line puts it “a bit surreal and a little mundane,” and somehow feels all the more true because of it.

His letter said:
“It’s your friend Alan
Greetings amigo
From Pamplona, Spain
Didn’t run with the bulls
If that’s what you’re thinkin’
I can get crazy
But I’m not insane!

Mike Tod – The Coo Coo

Described as “a wry and raspy tenor that sings well-worn traditionals,” Canmore, Alberta musician and ethnomusicologist Mike Tod has dedicated his life to ushering old-time folk music into the present day. Next month he will release a new self-titled album, and has unveiled single ‘The Coo Coo’ to whet appetites. Originating in the Scottish borders, the song traversed the Atlantic and was popularized by Ramblin’ Jack Elliott on the rodeo circuit in the forties. Tod’s version is wonderfully dark and ominous, transforming it from cowboy song into something of a psychological horror tale. “If you listen closely to the lyrics of the song, they really are quite horrific,” he explains. “You have all the elements of a horror film: Living on the fringes of society, obsession, potential addiction, loss of love, loss of life.” The video, animated by Molly Little, follows the story using a crankie, a form of storytelling popular at the turn of the twentieth century. Check it out below:

Mike Tod will be released on 13^th April. Pre-order a CD or LP now via the Mike Tod website.

O Slow – Two

The recording project of Brooklyn-based multi-instrumentalist Jacqui Miranda, O Slow is a dream pop project which draws its beauty and ambiguity from the real world. Shaped by Miranda’s time within a religious cult during childhood and her travels across California by train, the songs evoke both internal and external environments with all of their strange nuances intact, as typified by single, ‘Two’.  A track inspired by Miranda’s favourite freeway which allows itself to bask in nostalgia for specific times and places even if the context now loaded onto such periods is less rosy in retrospect. A sign of O Slow’s willingness to sit with conflicting ideas in order to better represent a lived truth—you can still long for something, even if it no longer means what it once did.

Summersets – Afterall

Small Town Story, the forthcoming album by Ontario duo Summersets, has echoes in the history of its creators. Kalle Mattson and Andrew Sowka, who themselves met growing up in Sault Ste. Marie, decided to tell the story of two fictional individuals brought together by chance, following the relationship from this origin to its eventual climax. “I was really interested in telling the story of a relationship across a collection of songs,” as Mattson explains. “Changing perspectives and spanning milestones, both big and small, over the course of a lifetime.” At turns melancholic and hopeful, lead single ‘afterall’ is a great snapshot of the feeling of the album’s style, a song which finds the characters some years down the line with a break-up between them, hinting at the golden threads of reconciliation which will see the relationship continue on through.

The years pass on by
One by one, out of sight
Still there was you & I
The years passed on by

The post Weekly Listening: March 2023 #3 appeared first on Various Small Flames.

He makes heartfelt love songs, with a naive, almost childlike innocence which brings to mind Daniel Johnston. The album opens with ‘Roll On’, a back-to-basics love song which contains lines like, “Hush my sweet darling, darling don’t you cry / The wind is gonna blow, the grass is gonna grow, the sun is sure to shine.” Many of the songs deal with personal struggle and self-doubt, but unlike many other songwriters who take this route, O’Connell always retains the hope of redemption, namely via the phenomenon of love. On ‘You Belong’ he sings, “The strongest weapon they’ve come up with yet / is a way of making a human forget / How to respect and love themselves / and share that love with someone else.”

O’Connell writes songs rooted in a refreshing simplicity, with a classic folk style that brings to mind fellow Canadian Mike Tod. Lots of his songs deal with escape from our modern money-driven culture. For example on ‘Roll On’ he sings, ”Don’t you go chasing those tainted paper greens / Open your heart, don’t fill it up, bust it at the seams.“ In the wrong hands these kinds of messages can come across of happy-clappy hippie-speak, but O’Connell’s disarming naivete means that you really believe what he is saying.

The fact is that in order to solve some of the biggest social and environmental issues that we currently face, we must learn to live within our means. This means that the modern obsession with material wealth and financial growth must be replaced with something else. O’Connell’s suggestion is to obtain the small number of things that we really do need and then enjoy them with people that we love.

You can get Wet Moccasin Moondance on a name-your-price basis via Bandcamp.

The post Lucas O’Connell – Wet Moccasin Moondance appeared first on Various Small Flames.

The songs have that mix of casual and and growly vocals that bring to mind scenes of parading egos in enclosed and sweaty spaces. The opening track ‘When I Found You’ is the connection between Mike Tod’s solo stuff and the garage band sound before the tempo gradually increases across the release. ‘Break a Ghost Part 2’ is a slow sneering challenge, the prelude to the bar brawl in ‘Part 3’, the same song as Part 2 but sped up to have a swaggering sloppiness, a frantic but loose urgency that doesn’t adhere to any sort of sense outside of whiskey and hot smoky rooms.

We have written about Mike Tod a few times (here and here) and he featured on HI54LOFI’s side of our Canada Day mixtape. If you are as big a fan of him as we are, I’m sure you will enjoy No. 0.

Grab it over at The Flying Blackbyrds Bandcamp page for a price of your choice.

The post The Flying Blackbyrds – No. 0 appeared first on Various Small Flames.

We had originally planned for 15 songs each but found it was too difficult to fit in all the artists we felt needed to be included and decided to go with 20 each. Luckily, HI54LOFI included some of our favourites and I think we had some of his on ours, so we helped each other out a bit.

Granted, there are far more than 40 noteworthy Canadian artists out there and there were some hard decisions. Any disappointed acts crying into their maple syrup or taking out frustrations on their teamates on the ice, please don’t despair, there is always next year.

We hope you enjoy listening to it as much as we enjoyed making them. These songs certainly haven’t helped banish our romantic view of Canada.

Wake The Deaf side:

1.Docking Guard – Northern Primitive
2. Drop It – NEEDLES//PINS
3. Flyingshot Lake – The Flaming Moes
4. Ask Me Something – Wind & the Wild
5. Left and Leaving – The Weakerthans
6. Snow Ghosts – Paul Stewart
7. Voyageur – Doug MacNearney
8. The Future Of Tradition – Frederick Squire
9. Bruises – Dusted
10. Ben – Tyler Butler
11. Warning – Postdata
12. Margaret Downe – Aidan Knight
13. Coming Back Home – Zachary Lucky
14. Sask – Donovan Woods
15. Young Glass – Hey Rosetta!
16. Lightshow – Plants & Animals
17. And I Thank You – Pink Mountaintops
18. Cloud Of Evil – Blackout Beach
19. Sing! Captain – Handsome Furs
20. Continuous Thunder – Japandroids

HI54LOFI side:

1. Welcome To The Heart – Eamon McGrath
2. Broken Knees. – Different Skeletons
3. Sunset – Two Bicycles
4. Brook and Branch – The Weather Station (featuring Baby Eagle)
5. Skinny Ghost – HAPPY TRENDY
6. Deny, Deny, Deny – Joel Plaskett
7. You’re Cool – The Joe
8. Oh My God (It Still Means A Lot To Me) – The Wooden Sky
9. Necromancy – Jessica Jalbert
10. Scared – The Tragically Hip
11. Family Tree – Evening Hymns
12. Wind Driving Dogs – Chad VanGaalen
13. Were You In Love With Me – Andy Shauf
14. Big Bird In A Small Cage – Patrick Watson
15. I Need You Closer – LadyFace
16. Where are you? – nick everett
17. The Very Best – Mike Tod
18. Vapours – Islands
19. Sugar Mama – The Deep Dark Woods
20. Road Regrets – Dan Mangan

You can find both mixes here as a collection.

EH? – A Canadian Mixtape (Wake The Deaf Side) from Wake The Deaf on 8tracks Radio.

EH? – A Canadian Mix Tape (HI54LOFI Side) from HI54LOFI on 8tracks Radio.

If anyone can think of any more Canada-themed cliches or stereotypes then please don’t hesitate to let us know for next year’s mix. Going by this collection of songs, being insanely talented might just be one more.

The post EH? – A Canadian Mixtape Complied By Wake The Deaf & HI54LOFI appeared first on Various Small Flames.

Nick Everett & Everybody is a three-animal totem pole of folk-turned-fuck it, a ceaselessly adroit rock tapestry read aloud in what must be the land of giants.

Everett has always been one to experiment and I have seen his music referred to as “noise folk” more than once. And so Elsethings is not a folk record quite as you know it. The band are not afraid to distort things a little, to take what could be an entirely respectable (but conventional) folk song and turn it on its head, to make it sound raw and brash and exciting. The first ten seconds of the album set the tone of things to come in this respect. Any expectations of a delicate and pretty folk record are smashed away with a chorus of yelps and the clatter of a drum kit (as an aside, Travis’ brilliant Cabin Songs bio makes a comparison between Adam White’s drumming and Steven Spielberg’s Jurassic Park – do yourself a favour and read it).

The album continues in this idiosyncratic vein, expanding on its nucleus of orthodox folk music and travelling down some previously untrodden paths. Everett’s vocals are probably the most delicate thing on offer and provide the perfect counterbalance to the record’s noisier elements. Hold On is perhaps the most accessible track on the album, with its almost pop-influenced chorus of “Sometimes its easier to wake up in the morning, drink my coffee and head right back to bed”. Although even this is accompained by the smash of percussion second time around.

You can download the album for however much you like on the band’s Bandcamp page, where you can also buy it on tape for a measly $8 CAD (about £5.15 in the UK). There is a neat little video of the making of the tape cases here. I would also strongly recommend his previous releases; old adventure/love songs (which is a far more conventional acoustic EP – one which Everett himself refers to as “Nick crying in his bedroom”) and rocky top.

N.B. There’s a really good interview with Nick Everett and Tyler Butler from a radio show called Northern Air on CJSR, a campus-based radio station that broadcasts out of Edmonton, Alberta. Listen to the show’s audio here for the interview. I’d also recommend checking out Northern Air on a regular basis, as it plays some really good acts that receive very little attention (at least here in the UK). If anyone knows Kristi then give her a trans-Atlantic pat on the back from us.

The post Nick Everett & Everybody – Elsethings appeared first on Various Small Flames.

The songs were recorded live on tape on a single afternoon (with Scott Munro, from Chad vanGaalen’s band), and it suits the style perfectly. There’s something about a folk song that deserves to be captured in one go, some personality unique to each telling that can be lessened or eradicated with over-production. There’s an interview with Damien Jurado (from the fantastic Room 125 Productions) where he says that he feels that songs always exist and musicians just wait for them to appear; a near spontaneous discovery of a particular song occurs before he writes it down and records it. There is no critical dissection or agonizing over details, just a set of sounds and words that are allowed to live and breathe in their original form. I don’t mean this to sound as if songwriters stumble upon songs, or as if I’m taking anything from the writing, but there is something within songs (something that may well go deeper than the words) than develops and blooms during the performance. Sure, it may work for some people to write a song then continually change parts of it, maybe recording the deconstructed components separately before building it all up again, but I don’t think it suits the true folk music that Mike Tod is creating. He (at least to my ears) discovers songs as their complete entity and shares them as that, with no tricks. This is basically a long-winded way of saying that there is something admirably true and alive about the songs on this record – as if they were innate objects within Tod and people he met and Californian wilderness itself which he harnessed for us to hear too.

Garden song (inch by inch) by Mike Tod

I guess I should describe the music a bit more to give you idea of what it is like. Anyone who is familiar with his previous releases (such as the excellent ’The Northern Country’ album) will find The California Recordings a lot more restrained and melancholic. The catchy foot-stomping whistle-inducing pace has been replaced with contemplative strumming and a noticeable reduction in tempo. There is great variety in the songs and characters on offer; from the old time tale of ‘The Ballad of the Miner’ and the nostalgia of ‘The Lass and The Lad’, to the hopeful ‘Garden Song’ and the sentimental mixture of love and regret of ‘You’ll Have To Excuse Me’. Across the album you get the feeling that the songs have been collected rather than written, tales foraged from the woods and their inhabitants and recorded with a keen ear and expert hand and large heart. The collection of songs feels organic and real.

You’ll Have To Excuse Me from Dylan Rhys Howard.

The album is available to pre-order now on Bandcamp and will be released by Cabin Songs on 26th January with a show at the Lantern Community Church with Tyler Butler, The Bitterweed Draw and Robbie Banks. More details can be found on the Facebook event page. Mike is touring Western Canada in Jan/Feb (dates here) and I have heard whispers that he plans to tour further afield in the coming year so keep an eye out for him near you.

The post Mike Tod – The California Recordings appeared first on Various Small Flames.

Back to my home by Mike Tod

Roll on by Mike Tod

You can buy The Northern Country from Bandcamp.

The post WTD’s Advent Calendar – 18 – Mike Tod appeared first on Various Small Flames.

Hi Tyler, hope all is well in Edmonton? We’re pretty excited about the new EP here at Wake The Deaf. How did Violence come about?

Jon, Edmonton is just fine now. Winter descends upon the city, but the true cold has not yet struck, and I explore the river valley in comfort, enjoying the snow and frost.

Violence is a collection of country songs I worked on for a few months before I went to Grande Prairie in August to play at Landisfest, which is a little festival by La Glace Lake on a bit of farmland. I stayed with the families of my friends Ashton and Courtney, a lovely couple who play music as Goose Lake. We recorded my vocals and guitar for Violence live off the floor in a shed behind Ashton’s house, then overdubbed the organ and slide and harmonies in his basement. The whole process took 13 hours. It is the first time I have let someone else record one of my albums, but the three of us had a great musical chemistry, and we ruined a lot of good takes by laughing.

Place is very important to my recordings, and I struggle to think of a better memory this summer than spending time with my friends around Grande Prairie. If you listen closely, there are all sorts of indicators of where we were and how much we are enjoying ourselves.

I’m completely illiterate musically so this may be a naive questions but how much does instrumentation influence the writing? Have you ever found a particular sound which conveys a mood and written a song around that? Or is it much more tailored to already written the lyrics? I’m thinking of in particular of ‘Waxwing’ on Winter King, where the relentless repetition and gradual quickening really puts across a sense of desperation which supports the lyrics perfectly. I guess I’m asking if the words are the cause or effect on the sound of a song.

Pairing sound with the tone of my writing is always a bit of a challenge. Sometimes an idea finds a few homes before it feels right. In my performances, delivery is always subject to narrative. Winter King was the first album I recorded live. The vocals and guitar are the same track, the same single microphone. In a song like ‘Waxwing,’ the urgency and speed are essential to the story, but not planned as such.

We used a few more microphones on Violence, but the tracks are still live. I believe great art emerges from limitation – the bleed of my voice into my guitar track, the cramped shed, the timeframe. The limitations of our setting are very much a part of the story of this record.

How complete are the narratives when you write a song? Do you get a good line that you think would be effective and build up from there? Or do you have a clearly defined story which you then to condense into the much more abstract collection of couplets and so on?

There is always an overarching narrative at the core of the song, and certain lines and images stick out in that story. I think the perfect story provides enough detail that you share the images I had in mind, but you fill in the details.

That said, Violence is also an attempt to free myself from writing too abstractly. When I wrote Winter King, I focused on developing a strong poetic voice by digging into mythology and language that was very loaded with meaning. I write in a way that makes it is easy for me to hide behind suggestion and metaphor, but I think I can write most powerfully by expressing myself clearly.

What are the biggest influences on your song writing? I guess it will be a whole host of things (including personal experience) but is there a particular medium which provides you inspiration? Do you find what you are listening to or reading at the time has a noticeable effect on what you produce?

Robert Kroetsch, who I had the honour of meeting right before he passed, remains the biggest influence on my writing. Patrick Lane is another poet I really look up to. Mary Wood is a great poet here in Edmonton and we work on a lot of writing together. But folk music is about bringing your friends’ songs with you: I sing a lot of Zach Lucky’s songs, I sang one of Mike Tod’s songs in Calgary two weeks ago, I sneak a Jom Comyn song in once in a while when he is not looking. They all write about Canada in a way that is a little different than mine, but important and beautiful.

I get the impression that many of your songs are set in an older time, some sort of simpler age. Is this how you see it? Even if you don’t envisage the songs necessarily in the past, there is a definite isolation in your lyrics, a removal from the trappings of modern society. It’s a perfect way to capture feelings and emotions, signifying intimacy through simplicity. I was recently reading an interview with the filmmaker/writer Brit Marling and Susan Sarandon where they hypothesize that any real ‘classic’ love story these days has to be written in the past as there are no longer the traditional sorts of obstacles present in a contemporary romance (I guess especially in music as writing about neurotic people with complex anxieties and so on is difficult in the relatively succinct medium of a song). I was wondering whether you consciously thought in this way? Or does your style come naturally?

I certainly value simplicity in my stories, the straight-forward expression of desire and love, a direct relationship between work and fulfillment. I agree: this is a removal from the trappings of modern society, although not necessarily a foray into the past. That interview is very interesting: my stories often reverse the ‘classic’ love story – my male characters are very vulnerable, their emotions and desires are on display, as prominent as their strength. And my female characters can be strong and demanding.

This album is a critique of western masculinity. I live in a place where masculinity often means taking up the most space, being the loudest, having the biggest truck. I think the working characters on this album, and the shift in the sound toward country music provide a critique of this masculinity, showcase a lifestyle in which work is constructive, not violent.

Brit Marling says in that interview, “the bravest thing you’re ever going to find is people deciding to be intimate with one another. I mean really intimate, not just sexually intimate.” What a fascinating and true statement. By making my characters vulnerable to each other, I think I create a strong sense of intimacy. And by displaying my own desires, not shrouding myself to the same extent behind the poetic voice, I make myself vulnerable, allow the possibility for intimacy between myself and the listener.

How difficult (or otherwise) is it to be successfully creative in modern society? I recently saw Evening Hymns play and Jonas Bonnetta was describing the making of their latest album where they basically isolated themselves in a cabin in the middle of winter for weeks. This sounds perfect but I couldn’t help wondering how people manage to do this sort of thing (not to mention month long tours and so on) around going to work and paying rent. Would you say study/employment limits your potential as a musician or a writer? Or are you glad to have something aside from music to fill your days?

I just saw Evening Hymns play here in Edmonton with Andy Shauf and Reuben and the Dark – what a great show. A packed Monday night at Wunderbar.

Art is a product of work. The creative spark and the hard work required to create art are very different processes. I am always thinking creatively, writing down lyrics as they come to me, humming melodies into my phone. But I make time to work on my art: I write daily poems, I schedule time alone to write with my guitar in hand, I practice with my band.

And as I have said, great art rises from limitation. The way the creative mind navigates obstacles either internal or external fascinates me. The constraints upon an artist – budget, time, talent – these are as much a part of art as the narrative or medium. I would rather make the most of what I have than make waste of excess.

Do you ever see yourself in a position to make a living through your art? Would you want to?

I love making music, and I will make music the rest of my life. But I want to do so in a way that is sustainable. I don’t know if music will ever provide my sole income. I don’t know if it can. There may be a point when I raise a family, buy a house, need health care: could music alone provide for me? I want to position myself so that I am still making music in 20 years, 50 years. I work full time at a university here in Edmonton and I tour on my vacations. It’s a balance that is working for me right now.

Finally, what are you listening to right now? Could you maybe give us 4 or 5 artists we should be hearing? It doesn’t matter if they formed thirty seconds or thirty years ago, whatever you are enjoying.

I listen to mostly Canadian artists: The Wooden Sky – I saw them perform at the Royal Alberta Museum recently. Fred Squire might be my favourite artist right now. Nick Everett and Mike Tod are on constant rotation lately.

And Barna Howard released a great self-titled record that I am enjoying very much. He’s from the USA, but let’s not hold it against him.

(Maythorn Live At St. Paul’s Fish Creek from Dylan Rhys Howard)

Thanks go to Tyler for putting so much time and effort into this, I think the result shows how much he though about this. Violence and Winter King are available from Tyler’s Bandcamp page. Make sure you check out the video above which is a beautiful short film by Dylan Rhys Howard and keep an eye on Cabin Songs, a new folky side of Old Ugly, that Tyler runs. I am told they will be releasing some lovely music in the new year. Also I’ve added links to all the acts he mentions in the interview so you can explore them at your leisure.

I hope you enjoy Tyler’s answers as much as I did.

The post Interview: Tyler Butler appeared first on Various Small Flames.