Back in February we described how the music of self-described “depression pop band” bathtub cig lives up to the image of their name. “A project which looks to evoke those private moments of contemplation and small comforts,” as we put it, “be they born of wallowing or self-care.” With EP Good Mourning, I love you out now, bathtub cig are back with new single ‘Marry Me’, a perfect example of an album about loving in a time of loss. “Meet me at your mom’s, boyfriend’s old farm house,” as the song opens. “I’ll be in the field with crickets singing and the frogs.” And it is a testament to the writing that the song fits a number of relationships, doubling as both an ode to platonic friendship or bi love.

Caroline Strickland – Loving You Right

Writing last year, we described how the work of  New York-based songwriter Caroline Strickland combined abrasive energy and intimate tenderness to explore a gamut of conflicting emotions, and her latest single ‘Loving You Right’ builds upon the style expertly. The first taste of EP Martha’s Calling, which is forthcoming on Good Eye Records, the song looks to work through a period of uncertainty and distance through sheer momentum. “The thesis of the song is this,” as Strickland explains. “Mannequin Void. I felt like a hollow, plastic body, a frame, a pencil sketch. I said, ‘I wonder if someday I should take the time to break the MANNEQUIN VOID and give it one last try. Have I been loving you right?'” The mission to break this feeling is applied almost literally, the song gathering a head of steam as though Strickland plans to thrust herself into something hard at high speed in the hope of shattering that which imprisons her.

Martha’s Calling is coming soon via Good Eye Records.

Circus Trees – Trap Door

“Circus Trees makes music that doesn’t fit with their age, their gender, their living conditions;” explains the bio of the Marlborough, Massachusetts band. “They are young, they are sisters, they spend their lives in the wastelands of suburbia.” The sibling trio make a raucous, evocative brand of indie rock capable of evoking the sadness and frustration of suburban living. Coming later this month via Five By Two Records, new full-length This makes me sad, and I miss you shows how cathartic this style can be. Offering a hefty, emotionally charged sound, Circus Trees mine their own personal struggles for the universal experiences of pain, and in doing so invite the listener to burn off their own difficulties through the power of energy and sound.

This makes me sad, and I miss you is out on the 20th September via Five By Two Records and you can pre-order it now.

Dummy – Blue Dada

Last week saw the release of Free Energy, the new album from LA’s Dummy, on Trouble in Mind. The record is a wildly ambitious one, even for a band who have made a name for their creative spirit and left-field choices, taking the basic formula of 2021’s Mandatory Enjoyment and making everything bigger, better, weirder. Think shapeshifting psychedelia, insistent motorik rhythms, jangly guitar rock experimentation and looped vocals and catchy choruses straight out of smash hit electro pop. It’s an album impossible to capture in one song, but perhaps the best introduction is final single ‘Blue Dada’, which takes all of the above and wraps them in a coat of 90s throwback atmospherics. “This was one of the first songs that really came together for Free Energy,” Dummy describe, “with the idea of cross-wiring genres, between ambient dance music, á la Seefeel, and revved-up drone-pop, á la Dunedin sound. ”

Field Report – Trust In Movements Made

Back in 2023, LOTUS Legal Clinic—an organisation in Milwaukee which helps survivors of human trafficking and sexual violence by blending comprehensive civil legal services, victims’ rights representation and therapeutic arts programming—reached out to Field Report‘s Christopher Porterfield about being an artist-in-residence. The following period saw Porterfield work with five writers to create original music inspired by poetry they had written during the program’s creative writing workshops. The resulting five songs are being released as Trust In Movements Made, an EP released under the Field Report name but truly collaborative in practice. “I consider myself co-writer of these songs, along with the original authors,” as Porterfield explains. All proceeds from the release will be donated back to ensure LOTUS can continue their vital work.

Kid Tigrrr – Therapy

Singer-songwriter and visual artist Jenna Fournier made her name as the lead of Cleveland shoegaze outfit Niights, though after a couple of studio recorded albums and international tours, found herself wanting to explore a different kind of music, both in terms of process and style. Hence Fournier split from her record label and started out solo under the moniker Kid Tigrrr. She turned to home recording and production as an antidote to her previous studio experience, and uses the project as a vehicle to explore intensely personal themes and challenge stigmas around mental health, addiction and abuse. Debut album Stoned + Animald therefore represents a fresh start for an artist pining to work with a new level of intimacy, and latest single and album opener ‘Therapy’ is the ideal introduction.

Leif Vollebekk – Peace of Mind (Evening)

“As confident as it is poignant, furthering Vollebekk’s investigations into the deepest of themes. [Namely] the phenomenon of love as it stretches over time. Longing as some echo through the years.” That’s how we described ‘Southern Star’, the recent single from Leif Vollebekk‘s upcoming LP Revelation on Secret City Records. With the release fast approaching, Vollebekk is now back with new track, ‘Peace of Mind (Evening)’, an alternate version of a song on the record which lives up to its title with its golden crepuscular shine. ““This is the evening version of ‘Peace of Mind’,” Vollebekk explains. “This version isn’t even on the record. It just wanted to be its own thing…The melody came along fully formed right after I’d spent a few weeks’ vacation with my family. I rediscovered my solitude for the first time in a while. And, in the stillness, I sang about them. I dreamt a child placed a dandelion on my grave. For some reason, I awoke incredibly peaceful. What does that mean?”

Revelation is out on the 27th September via Secret City Records.

Leila Dandan – my room’s a mess

Hailing from Huntington Beach, California and currently based in Dallas, Texas, Leila Dandan is a songwriter who takes various vulnerabilities and stitches them into a blanket—something capable of offering comfort and protection if you are brave enough to wear it proudly. New single ‘my room’s a mess’ typifies the kind of song Dandan has made their own, embracing their own insecurities in an effort to overcome them. “I wrote this song amid a panic attack,” Dandan explains. “I was at a point where I felt like I couldn’t really tell anyone because I was afraid of being so vulnerable. I didn’t want people to see the mess because it felt embarrassing, but in reality, things wouldn’t have been so messy if I had let myself rely on others for a little help.”

‘my room’s a mess’ is out now and available from the usual places.

Meagre Martin – Never Thought

With Gut Punch, released last year via  Mansions and Millions, Berlin’s Meagre Martin showed off their evocative, politically aware style, from existential ‘The Big Death‘ to the nostalgic ‘Malcolm‘. With a string of appearances at the Reeperbahn Festival, Pop Montreal and Pitchfork London approaching in recent weeks, the band have put out a brand new single, ‘Never Thought’. An example of Meagre Martin’s more relaxed side, the song draws on elements of folk and blues to inform its languid indie rock style, though its seemingly easy-going vibe belies the doubt and desperation running through the lyrics. “‘Never Thought’ questions how well we know the people in our lives, and how our security in them can still be shaken even after years of knowing them,” the band explain. “The chords and melodies encircle and repeat, much like the rumination of thoughts in our heads.”

Moira Smiley x tUnE-yArDs – Go Dig My Grave

Though made popular as the lead single and opener of Lankum‘s most recent album, the song ‘Go Dig My Grave’ has a far longer history, with versions (often titled ‘The Butcher Boy’) stretching back to the 1920s and verses being taken from songs older still. Part of new album The Rhizome Project, Moira Smiley’s take on the track traces its roots back to the haunting Appalachian spirit of Jean Ritchie. Merrill Garbus (AKA tUnE-yArDs) helps craft the stark arrangement, where ominous strings simmer behind the vocals, charging the delivery with the desperation and fury of the song’s forsaken lead, what Smiley describes as “this beautiful, dissonant cry against a loss of bodily autonomy in 2022.”

The Rhizome Project is out now and available from the usual places.

Video Age – Record Shop

Last month we wrote about the release of a new version of Video Age‘s single ‘Out In The Country’ featuring Esther Rose, a reworking of a track which first appeared on the 2023 LP Away From the Castle. Now the New Orleans duo are back with ‘Record Shop’, the A-side of a 7″ single featuring ‘Out In The Country’ released as part of an expanded edition of Away From The Castle on Winspear. Described as “a theme song for record shop employees,” the track charts the days of a humble store clerk with all the lonely nobility of a modern cowboy. “I got my job at the record shop, I play the songs that I like a lot,” as the chorus goes, “My two girlfriends are a broom and mop / And they dance with me when the needle drops.”

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Back in 2019, she released For As Briefly As I Live, a collection of quirky piano-based pop songs on Virginia mutual aid-oriented label Grimalkin Records which explored themes of love, death and commitment “from the perspective of a frequently shy, nervous, and lonely trans woman.” Next month, Dani Lee Pearce returns to Grimalkin Records to release a brand new album. Titled Spider Mountain, it looks to continue her creative evolution, from early no wave-influenced experimental compositions to what Grimalkin describe as “synth-rooted progressive pop with a distinct queer ethos.”

Today we are sharing the record’s second single, ‘Foxhood and Twink Lucifer’. Opening with lush, crystalline synths, the song soon morphs into something unabashedly dramatic and impassioned, drawing on left-field pop icons from the last half century. It’s a track that weaves its own mythology, full of strange dream-like logic and oblique imagery. Whether the events it describes are literal or allegorical seem besides the point, but regardless, this is not some timid reverie. There are serious barbs built into the sound, specifically ones pointed at the callous parts of society. “A rich man is a bitch man, this we know,” Pearce sings at the close, “a rich man is a snitch man, this we know too.”

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His self-titled debut album, the first solo blues record Fat Possum Records have released in almost twenty years, stays true to this goal. “Part of my intent, making myself more comfortable with this release, is putting more Black stories into the genres of folk and blues,” Nichols explains. “Listening to this record, I want more Black people to hear themselves in this music that is truly theirs.”

Lead single and opening track ‘Lost & Lonesome’ introduces just what this sounds like. Lines of gently detailed acoustic guitar capture the wistful reflection of Nichols’s delivery, rising and falling with his own searching tone. The style has a downbeat charm, marked by the modesty and loneliness of a wanderer cast into another unfamiliar place. But within this mood something else emerges. Some shimmered light playing at the edges. Some hope perhaps, or else just steadfast determination. The sense that the questioning is not futile. The search has an end.  A home lies at the end of the road.

Photo by Dustin Cohen

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Following on from 2017’s Peach Colored Oranges, we’re delighted to be able to share a brand new Eric & Magill single that is being released today. Opening with a lapping warmth of drones, ‘Thanks to Sciences’ is a gentle slice of dream pop made grand by orchestral flourishes, providing the kind of benevolent spirit familiar to Radical Face. The blend between humble quietness and expansive, almost post-rock swells offers a sense of curiosity and wonder, casting us as small viewers in a majestic and ever-changing world.

B-side ‘Valhalla Baby!’ offers a similarly ethereal tone, the track’s modest vocals eventually giving way as an array of instrumental and electronic elements merge into a crescendo. Once again the duo’s uncanny talent at combining genres is utilised to full effect, with folk, pop and even electronic sensibilities drawn upon to create a unique sound that exceeds the sum of its parts.

‘Thanks to Sciences’ comes complete with a whimsical live/stop animated video that accentuates the childlike marvel that marks the atmosphere of the track. Check it out below:

‘Thanks to Sciences’ is out today and you can listen via Spotify.

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As with previous releases, the latest offering from Old Earth, The Friends ∴ The Gods, is several smaller songs stitched into one long track, resulting in a shapeshifting beast that moves with its own instinctive dream logic. First segment ‘Stand Me When You Can’t’ is propelled by percussion and probing guitar, Umhoefer spinning his usual opaque but apposite lyrics, arcane wisdom tangled in shards of riddles like the mutterings of some old-time sage.

“O me, O the light
Oh unlock the way
Hold me to a line
Oh unlock the way
Ivy on a pine
Oh unlock the way”

Things are pulled taut on ‘Hunting the Chime’, the drums fading to a hush as tense guitar ticks and twitches, Umhoefer urging the listener “don’t come around and don’t let ’em find you there!” Things then whip up with energy, like on ‘A Life Worth Leaving’, which clenches its jaw for a slice of echoing and mean folk rock.

The instrumental ‘In THAT Dream, She Carried Me’ is driven along by acoustic guitar, before settling into ‘Who Cures the Shaman?’ Here Umhoefer’s voice rises from the hush with characteristically ambiguous words that nevertheless possess a strange magnetism, charged with some energy that’s not quite from our realm.

“We haven’t passed a hill for days
We pass the moments on the way
I hear your voice not what you say
and you hear me counting plans to stay”

The Friends ∴ The Gods is yet another great addition to the Old Earth canon, so do yourself a favour and head to the Old Earth Bandcamp page to buy it.

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The first two Field Report records might have explored a range of moods, but they certainly veered toward the colder seasons. Such categorisation is reductive, but their self-titled debut could be said to be the winter album, and follow-up Marigolden an autumnal offering. As the title suggests however, the new record has different intentions. It’s fuller, more polished, intentionally bright and uplifting with relatively simple singalong choruses. A pop album, in short. This change in direction is clear from the beginning, opener ‘Blind Spot’ coming complete with a slick chorus that seems designed to stick in heads. It’s initially a startling departure from the often chorusless verbose poetics of previous albums, but longtime Field Report fans need not worry, the band haven’t sacrificed much in terms of writing or feeling. Porterfield is still the master storyteller, able to convey so much in simple descriptive sentences. And there’s something strangely reassuring about realising that this is still the band we loved, that you don’t need to peel back many layers of shiny production to find their beating heart.

Things might be sunnier, but Porterfield explores familiar material, the only thing that’s changed his vantage point, now looking back at the tough times, and embroiled in new ones. As we explored in our review, Marigolden was a record about an attempt to break a cycle of addiction and dissatisfaction, to straighten a circular path into a direct line home. How successful the quest was open to interpretation, and the superstitious hope of closing track ‘Enchantment’ suggested that the whole thing might be more a matter of belief in any case. We drew on the writing of Denis Johnson to elucidate how the belief is change was key to the whole enterprise, its presence or absence the difference being floating and sinking.

[Like Marigolden], Angels and Jesus’ Son are populated with sad men trying to find something like this Home, then refusing to believe it or else not liking what they see when they get there. Instead they return to the old bars and the new women and the extraordinary promise of an endless search. Whether Porterfield’s character is doomed on these lines is not clear, but if he is then he hasn’t yet grown cynical with it. The closing lines are infused with belief, the marigolden hope that is woven through album.

With the narrator waking face down in the air bag of a wrecked car, some reviews have cited ‘Blind Spot’ as an immediate relapse from the promise of Marigolden, though it would be fairer to call it a continuation of the themes rather than the narrative. The present-tense promises of change still remain, though Porterfield is positioned ahead of the event, looking back rather than living through, possessing not only the same will to be well but a newfound appreciation of the difficulties of such a state.

‘If I Knew’ makes this clear, not least in the chorus of “If I knew what I know / So far yet to go.” The track does contain relapses, the starting of drinking and stopping of meds, though exactly where and when is not clear, the chronology perhaps not as simple as the order of records. Again we find Porterfield ahead of the crisis, looking back from perhaps not comfort but at least something like critical distance, though this does not influence the immediacy and vividness of his writing:

“And then a car crashed through the wall,
and there you were, in the room,
and the blood red blood bled your outline and it coloured you in.

You were close enough to cough on
and your breath smelled like creme de menthe,
headstones, dialtones,
you said ‘hey fucker, where you been?’”

Indeed, to view these songs as a singular continuation of the Marigolden narrative is to perhaps miss the point. Summertime Songs was made during the 2016 US election cycle, a period when Porterfield and his wife were also expecting their first child. There was also a lot of emotional turmoil around when the songs were conceived. “There were a lot of people in my life whose relationships were coming to an end,” Porterfield told Artist Waves, “there was a lot of mourning, reflection and hurt in the air as these songs were coming.”

One interpretation of the record is one of multiplicities, a collection of narrators linked thematically but not personally, a collective struggle against common demons stalking an entire nation. Worry and doubt are the prevailing emotions of the album, the characters that populate the songs going through all manner of difficulties which speak to the listener both on their own terms and against the country’s tumultuous political backdrop. So rather than cast a Trumpian bogeyman, Field Report explore demons older and more insidious and more personal too, conditions woven into the Western experience of which any contemporary figures are merely manifestations, like distorted reflections projected large and loud to highlight our own failings.

For example, ‘Never Look Back’ could be taken as a break-up song or a make-up song, but beyond the personal lie lines ominously pertinent to the present in light of an imperial past. “Turn the telescope back around,” Porterfield sings, “With these troubles out of view / Forgiveness does not excuse, it’s to prevent everybody from destroying you.” This is followed by ’60 Second Distance Run’, a song of searching questions in view of an approaching reckoning, while the spacious ‘Every Time’ provides the most impassioned and insistent moment on the record. If the past here haunts the narrator, then it is a spirit of poltergeistic nature, something capable of seizing and moving and throwing its weight.

“Last night I had a dream there was tartar on your teeth
And you had me gently, with a knife, loosening it free
And then spread it all around like sunscreen at the beach
And we were laying there for hours, your head resting on my knee
While the late season ice was sneering from the shade
I’m gonna keep you under glass and keep trapped in amber memory
The secret anniversary of a first date”

‘Healing Machine’ is something of a waking dream, an insomniac’s hope of redemption, while the thematic centrepiece and spiritual title track, ‘Summertime’, opens in an almost jarring manner, the vocals not quite clicking into the rhythm of the instrumentation. However, soon the floor drops away and suddenly it’s all swaying hips and swooning hearts, a smash hit Springsteen-style jam. This energy belies the anxious lyrics, the delicate existence of sobriety and parenthood colliding with a tumultuous cultural moment to produce a kind of paralysis that the music fights to escape.

And escape seems to be achieved, because ‘Tightrope’ plays as something of a continuation, as though ‘Summertime’ was the getaway car and this the heady freedom thereafter, a manic disregard of danger in the hysterical relief of a wider reprieve. ‘Occupied Mind’ sees the tempo slow, a tale of finding solace within others, while closer ‘Everything I Need’ is slower still, an emotive piano ballad, Porterfield’s vocals aching with a sense of warm and uncertain contentment and the hope of personal connection. “I don’t trust this moment,” he sings, speaking of everything outside, “but I want to believe.”

This the crux of the record. 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. Although more morose, Marigolden‘s autumnal setting set up an album-wide metaphor of change, the very environment shifting in colour and shape as its inhabitants fled toward warm burrows. Summer might be stereotypically viewed as a more positive time, by Porterfield uses it as a long, well-lit stretch of looking forward and back, relatively changeless in comparison with what has been and what will come. This extends to the position of the narrators too. Vast change belongs to spring and autumn, flurries of growing and dying capable of wiping the slate clean. Summer offers no such reprieve. 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.

Summertime Songs is out now on Verve Forecast and you can get it from the Field Report website.

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Umhoefer’s latest release, Two Torches, at a Place Where Three Roads Meet, finds all the building blocks of the Old Earth sound present once again. Guitars are looped and interwoven, the lyrics opaque but pregnant with meaning, the overall atmosphere one of a strange dream or ritual. The three tracks began as “stragglers” from last year’s Six Around One, and are at once concise and wildly ambitious, with a thematic reach far beyond that of most music. Umhoefer wrote a Facebook post that introduces some of these themes, which revolve primarily around neopagan spiritualism. “Old Earth has always been a projection of matriarchal values,” Umhoefer explains. “These pieces speak to the manifestation of wisdom through the model of the Triple Goddess (Maiden, Mother and Crone).” So expect esoteric explorations rich with symbolism, from the aforementioned lyrics to the moon on the cover art, but free from any sense of performance or appropriation, the imagery not aesthetic but instinctive.

As if to prove this point, ‘Pit Dynamics’ is lean and powerful, Umhoefer’s vocals like some focused mantra as he delivers lines like “Hugging the ceiling something like a ghost / Humming around in waves.” Notions of the religious often bring to mind ideas of great complication, vast narratives fashioned into endless mazes of allegory and metaphor. For all of the references to various belief systems, Old Earth strips religion to its essence, a fundamental mystery hardwired into our souls or strands of DNA, but also much bigger, passing all around us. With this in mind, the opening lines begin to read like Umhoefer’s artistic modus operandi. “I get a feeling something like a call,” he sings. “Open the door and wait.”

Following on, ‘Quiet Your Arms’ begins with tense and reserved guitar, the vocals ringing at the centre of things, radiating outwards like rings on a disturbed pond. Again, Umhoefer’s words have a natural cadence, an almost breath-like rise and fall that conjures the same paradoxical sense of intimacy and awe—a representation of some power, great and peaceful.

“It’s the only thing we build that doesn’t break
It’s the only kind of love that doesn’t fade”

Indeed, such a force plays into a key thematic element of the collection: the ancient Egyptian concept of balance, order and justice. This is personified as a goddess who regulates not just the movement of heavenly bodies but also the early ones of us mortals too. “I’m also pointing towards Maat”, says Umhoefer, “calling for judgement above and beyond self-righteousness—instead one of righteous discernment”.

Perhaps this explains the serenity at the centre of the songs, present again on ‘Park Witch’. Layered guitars orbit careful and considered vocals repeating the same handful of words, Field Report’s Christopher Porterfield adding an atmospheric and wordless croon. So often, peace is framed as an escape, but this is peace as a confrontation—be it psychological, cosmological, theological—facing up to something incredible as a way of dismantling your trivial self.

“What cold came over us?
What depth?
What distance?
What height before we called it enough?”

The three songs are as singular as anything Old Earth has released to date, and are so thematically rich as to transcend mere indie rock. You don’t need to be fluent in the principals of ancient Egypt or neopaganism to appreciate the record, with the need for harmony and truth among chaos and disorder as prevalent now as any ancient time. It’s unlikely that Maat is going to descend from the sky and restore order, but we can all play a part, however small, to make a difference. As Umhoefer puts it in his introduction of the release:

“In order to destroy hate and inequity, we have to find peace within ourselves”.

You can get Two Torches, at a Place Where Three Roads Meet now from the Old Earth Bandcamp page.

If you’re new to Old Earth then explore the tag, and consider reading the interviews we’ve done with Todd in the past.

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“There’s never going to be a satisfactory way to describe art so fluid and weird and instinctive… It’s operating on a deeper level, one not easily outlined, playing on some atavistic region of the subconscious that reacts to fear and beauty, that treats intense wonder and dread as the same emotion”

As with anything fluid/weird/instinctive, the only way to get a true handle on Old Earth’s music is to speak to Umhoefer himself. We first asked him some questions back in 2013, though we thought the time was right to follow up with more.

Hello Todd, thanks for speaking with us. How’s life now that Lay For June is out?

Thanks for giving me the opportunity to talk about the work! The response is the strongest and most positive I’ve ever received, so I also want to thank everyone who took the time to listen, write back, and very graciously to those who bought downloads.

It’s good to have it off my shoulders. The last EP proved to be an unexpected stumbling block- I tried recording it 3 times and really struggled with the lyrics, which slowed me down. For the sake of the larger narrative, I prefer the ladder had to come out first, though. Lay for June is deep and somewhat painful, so I was living in that darkness a little longer than I should’ve. I tend to carry art making pretty far, so I’m always surprised I’m not deranged by now.

You mentioned that the record will be “the last Old Earth record for a while”. Can you put us out of our misery and expand upon this? Are we talking a refreshing break? Indefinite hiatus? Do you have any other projects lined up?

“Indefinite hiatus” is probably the best way to describe it. This project was a vital place to work out existential concerns, but my spiritual practice has developed to a point where I don’t need to put it into music as much. Sometimes the line between solitary art making and self-absorption gets thin or moves… I just feel a call to be in more immediate service to others. I’ve been thinking that I more or less made the point I wanted to make with it, and it took me to a lot of unexpected places.

I’m still finishing the things I’ve committed to, like some local performances and a little tour in the summer. I’m not rushing out of this, as it’s my life’s work and deserves my respect.

Having proven to myself that I can write cohesive long-form pieces, I’m now excited about writing songs that stand alone, and to see how much ground I can cover in shorter running times. I have about 7 songs in varying degrees of finish, and the idea is to work on them slowly, which is a pattern of concentration I’m not used to. Also, I’m about to record a film score… When all that’s done, who knows? It’s not like I’m quitting music altogether.

Lay For June was originally scheduled for release on the 1st February, the day of Imbolc. Our review had a stab at ascertaining the relevance, but would you care to explain what the day means to you and the album?

Tying release dates with pagan holidays has been on my mind for a while, and a celebration of the simultaneous death of winter and birth of spring definitely made sense for this album. You did an exceptional job of talking about the relevance. I think you summed it up so poetically that people should refer to the review!

There’s been a growing interest in mysticism and occult knowledge for a long time, and I’m all for it. What’s wrong with viewing the planet and its inhabitants as sacred? Old Earth has always been very matriarchal, putting intuition, emotion, creativity, and a search for wisdom first. It’s about trying to ask good questions. A lot of things that took our ancient ancestors generations to discover has been destroyed, so it’s important to go back and share what’s left.

Lay For June was recorded in one take, with only the vocals overdubbed, which seems such a vital part of the sound. How much do you find things changing as you’re recording? Did the final take surprise you in any way?

Yes, single takes are definitely a vital part of the sound. I love the sense of struggle that just doesn’t show up any other way. It’s not trying to be perfect. The last song wouldn’t sound the same had I not played the entire record leading up to it, you know? It almost wouldn’t mean as much. The content on this one was especially personal and draining, and I think it would’ve been bad for me to do some of those songs over and over again.

Things don’t change much while recording because I rehearse a lot beforehand, and am focused on what I want to get done while I’m there. You won’t catch me fucking around on a phone. I’m really into how tight musicians had to be 50 or 60 years ago… There’s no faking it 20 minutes in to a 30 minute continuous take, where a single misplaced note could pull the whole thing apart. It’s a fun risk, somewhat of an ordeal, filled with moments of doubt and confidence, drifting between being lost in the music and an inner dialogue, wondering if the performance is take-worthy, should I start over, is the engineer about to punch in and say something isn’t working, what’s the next song, how far out of tune is the guitar, dare I fix it mid-take, all while trying to appreciate the moment and enjoy how special it is to be in a nice studio, recording with someone who is very good at what they do and believes in the work… I forgot a few guitar parts here and there, but also ended up making a few things up on the spot, so it all evened out. I don’t think I could’ve played it noticeably better at the time, and that’s the most I hope for.

The biggest surprise was the amp setup, which was big and loud and a real joy. It definitely affected how I was performing, because I rarely get the opportunity to play guitar at a high enough volume to feel the sound blowing through and around my body. Scott Evans at Antisleep Audio put a lot of thought into the session ahead of time, and I was happy to go with his ideas. This was the first Old Earth album I didn’t mix myself, which really speaks to my trust in Scott. He worked on it in a way that says he’s invested in the project.

I later recorded Ashley Jarrett’s vocals myself, sent the files to Scott, and then it was out of my hands! That was well outside of my comfort zone, but important… Also, it should be stated that Ashley sings like an angel and this record would’ve been lesser without her.

Even in the nebulous category of ‘experimental’ music, I consider your work unconventional. The lyrics, the structure, the sound itself, even the way you often release long songs comprising of several parts. Do you have any image of a listener in mind when recording? Or do you just work in the way which compels you?

They’re all based on intuition. The best ones develop unconsciously, indeed from feeling compelled to create. Often the challenge is to get out of the way of what the song wants to be, yet rehearsed enough so that if you’re given one of those fully-formed songs from seemingly out of nowhere, you can do it justice… A sensitivity and trust in the process develops, but it’s never dependable or predictable. I try to make up for that with a lot of time, patience, practice, and consideration. One of the experimental artists I’ve learned the most from is Tim Kinsella. He’s given some great interviews, and I’m paraphrasing here, but he basically said he creates the kind of records he’d like to see exist. That’s so simple and beautiful in intent, and it takes the power away from outside judgement or internal limiting.

Unconventional things make fair comparisons difficult, so how do you even know if you’re missing a mark? And what mark? I’m well aware that most people aren’t going to resonate with what I’m doing, so trends and a hypothetical listener/non-listenership have no impact on the music. Pandering is insulting to the listener in every way… Also, the records never turn out how I hear them in my head, which can be frustrating, but I have to remind myself that that’s just part of the deal too.Lay For June has striking art from Jamie Morgan, and Jennifer Mehigan’s painting on A Wake in the Wells was equally arresting. How do you decide on the artwork for your releases?

Visual art has been a lifelong interest, so I try to pay attention to what’s happening out there. I used to do all the art myself, but as with music, adding another voice can create counterpoint and depth. I usually play around with rough layouts while writing, and that has definitely influenced the songs, titles, and sequencing. You could also say I got a little sick of doing every single step myself, haha. I now see that it was important for me to let that go. I still do the art sometimes, the last one being …until they’re called. As for the mixtapes, I usually google the title in quotes and take an image that fits in some inexplicable way, and is obscure enough that I probably won’t get in trouble. That process is really really fun and full of surprises. It’s asking the collective consciousness for relative imagery.

Jennifer Mehigan’s work was on an art blog, and she was unbelievably giving and humble when I reached out to her… I had most of the songs done by the time I came across the image, and there are numerous reasons why it worked for me. A Wake in the Wells is somewhat centered around a house changing shape and changing hands.

I found Jamie Morgan’s work just checking out Instagram. The roadkill and flowers series is amazing, and she’s always up to something new. Also, she happens to know someone I went to school with, and he connected us. I wish I could’ve given Jennifer and Jamie a million dollars each, they’re both outstanding artists.

7) Finally, could you name four or five acts you find yourself returning to at the moment?

Shopping around Bandcamp recently, I found a wonderful record by You Are Plural called Rabbit Rabbit. I’ve been recommending it a lot lately, and it’s one of the few non-rap things I’ve been listening to.

For people who like things downtuned, plodding, yet catchy and very smart, they should hear Scott Evans’ band Kowloon Walled City. Their recent album release show performance was one of the best metal sets I’ve ever seen, and I’ve seen a good many over the last 20+ years. Very very inspiring…

I mainly download free legal mixtapes from Hip Hop TXL and dig through 40 garbage songs for the 10 good ones. I’ve been doing it for years and have refined a great collection from their series. That’s what’s always in my headphones.

Also counting down the days until Gucci gets released, anticipating a new prolific flow of his music and opportunities to see him perform again. Once I saw him on my birthday!

You can buy Lay For June now from the Old Earth Bandcamp page, along with the rest of his discography. Read our review here.

Photos by Scott Evans, apart from the silhouette image, which is by Adam Ryan Morris 

The post Interview: Old Earth, Part II appeared first on Various Small Flames.

“Sung to a tower that echoes the home,
‘Don’t knock the boat as long as it floats’

On down the row and on down the road
Killed on the row and killed on the road”

‘Ship to Ship (rough running)’ is somehow both desperate and wistful, as if sung from the strange relief experienced upon giving in to disquiet, and ‘trace parts (you, me, & us)’ emerges wide-eyed and gripped by feeling, Umhoefer’s words echoing in a pocket of crystalline silence still vibrating from past violence. “In case,” he sings, “the dust is all that’s left of us / underneath the growing rust / undone”. ‘Nothing Gives Way’ heralds the return of something, an unnamed wonder or dread which rises to a near-celestial crescendo (“Here came that breath from the cave /Here came that thing that you hold over and over again… unspeakable”), before ‘All No Few Many Any’ sees the return of the shredding click. Here the instrumentation is off-kilter and warped, played on fast-forward or out of control, threatening to break into a deep white static. Umhoefer’s words appear with sudden clarity once again, so clear and obvious it seems any problem with regard to understanding their meaning must lie with the listener.

“It was the fall-
blame it on the roof,
don’t blame it on us

led, closed, involved

You count those stars from the roof, but a light becomes mine
when I’m holding my eyes to the ground”

It seems pertinent to mention that Lay For June was first scheduled for release on the 1st February, the day of Imbolc. A celebration of the lengthening of the days, the Gaelic festival is associated with Brigid, the goddess of fertility, healing and poetry, and has been carried into Christian practice as St Brigid’s Day. Imbloc is celebrated by lighting candles and fires and visiting holy wells, by leaving coins and clooties or offering milk to the ground and porridge to the sea, by cleaning your home in preparation for longer, lighter days. Lay For June is not the easily-traceable giant spring metaphor you might expect, but the festival is relevant. The past is important here, as is the future, and particularly communication through ritual and symbolism. Questions and answers are transposed and made strange, hope and faith required for powers both internal and external, the narrator walking a tightrope of wonder and terror.

‘Woke Down’ is a wordless track from which ‘book to book (crooked on both sides)’ creeps in whispered fervour. “Didn’t you love all the other men?” he demands. “Didn’t you love a man who sang it blue?” The track is the closest thing to a traditional fingerpicked folk song, the final line delivered in near-silence, before the wheels begin turning again and ‘Named- for, or belonging to’ materialises with familiar ticking and incipient dread. “Won’t find comfort in day,” he warns, “you know what comes when you call its name / You know what comes when you dance in the forest at night”. ‘one Eye at a time’ is a haunting acapella section, while the dual vocals with Ashley Jarrett on ‘Read and Keep’ give the words an increased weight, no longer a single opinion but a shared sentiment you can’t ignore.

“You should’ve paid attention,
all of the caves gave a cause for the sound

You should’ve paid attention,
‘This is not mine, this is not what I am'”

“that thing / that haunts / that whole day” is a restrained instrumental piece, twitching and grasping before catching into a steady rhythm, from which ‘When I started walking, it was light out’ surfaces, a song as sincere and explicit as anything on the record. “Cut from the line / ageing from the wrong kind of time / and what of those ruins we climbed? / Oh how I miss you, Darlin’ I miss you”. ‘near Nothing’ continues, playing like spoken thoughts in dead houses, homes grown black and lost yet throbbing with time which passed you by (“Mom, it’s me / Mom, it’s ME”), while ‘unbonded, unbroken’ continues as if drawing energy from previous utterances, finding a groove in the sonic etchings through which something important will be found.

“There’s no kind of right mind for this.
Don’t get excited!
Close your eyes and sit down,
Leave the calls alone”

If all that sounds vague and unclear then, for once, we won’t apologise. Because, though it’s strange to say after this, the latest of several attempts, trying to put Old Earth’s music into words seems futile and kind of besides the point. There’s never going to be a satisfactory way to describe art so fluid and weird and instinctive, so all we can tell you is what it sounds like to us. It’s operating on a deeper level, one not easily outlined, playing on some atavistic region of the subconscious that reacts to fear and beauty, that treats intense wonder and dread as the same emotion. It’s the same area of the brain that tells us to light candles and throw coins down wells no matter how secular our society becomes. But that’s just us. Kick back with some decent headphones and decide what it means to you.

You can buy Lay For June now via the Old Earth Bandcamp page. There’s also a generous offer on for the entire discography, so why not pick that up?

Cover photo by Scott Evans, album art by Jamie Morgan

The post Album Premiere: Old Earth – Lay For June appeared first on Various Small Flames.

I’m always amazed by Umhoefer’s ability to make his sprawling songs sound so focused. I mean, there’s not an ounce of fat on this track despite the fact it breaks the 12 minute barrier. Although the track arguably isn’t a single song at all, but a neat package of three songs which meld and dissolve into one another in dream-like fashion, doors opening not just into different rooms but into different houses altogether. It could just be the way my brain is wired, but OE music has this trance-like quality that is almost impossible to describe. It’s music that isn’t satisfied with making pretty sounds in the background, that gets right to the root of things.

The EP begins with a segment titled, ‘slept in shoes to catch it in The Dark’, a lean and wiry guitar line at the fore, lower rumbles in the background. Umhoefer delivers the vocals in his usual insistent manner, lyrics vague and indeterminate but steeped in meaning, like the lines of some arcane invocation:

What was the omen, and
what did the stars read?
Where did the river turn, and
where were the trees?
When did the day end, and
what was the moon’s phase, and

When did the tone change?

The track also provides the first glimpse of a new side to Old Earth. The move to California has allowed Umhoefer to work with a new group of collaborators, one of whom (credited as “Lopez”) provides female vocals which serve as the ideal counterpoint to Umhoefer’s. There is also help from people ambiguously named Burnett, Moen and Fritch (who I believe to be musician/composer/producer William Ryan Fritch).

Things take a new direction after around four and a half minutes, segueing into a segment called ‘demystified!’. Here the female vocals become even more prominent and provide perhaps the closest thing to a chorus Old Earth has ever produced, “Come with me we’ll sail away / I know a place without a name”. Then, around the 8 minute mark, some instrument starts whirring like an agitated bee and the track shifts quickly with hand claps and insistent guitars. This is the beginning of the final segment, ‘One kinda dream inna place lie thisss’ and this time it’s Lopez’s turn to chant vocals,

“Bright lights
Lost sight
Crossed eyes
Cold fights
Low cries
Oh why why why why?”

Umhoefer then brings proceedings to a close with a typically surreal final line, “Undercut in overtone, the kind of hum that isn’t fully groan / Down a hall that doesn’t way, we’re windowing a rope to hang a sway”. Make of that what you will, but be sure that none of this is simple gibberish. Put …until they’re called on repeat and listen and listen and I guarantee you’ll start to divine its meaning.

Get the EP from the Old Earth Bandcamp page and get one of the nice limited edition prints while you’re at it?

The post Old Earth – …until they’re called appeared first on Various Small Flames.