“I wanted to write a record that I needed to hear in high school.” That’s the mission statement behind Blvck Hippie‘s Basketball Camp, a new album coming in June on The Record Machine. Backed by Casey Rittinger (drums), Tyrell Williams (bass, backing vocals) and Joe Kyle (guitar, talk box), lead Josh Shaw weaves elements of indie rock, dream pop, post-punk, jazz and emo into a sound as inventive as it is immediate, reflecting on past loneliness with with equal parts sympathy and catharsis. Lead single ‘Streetlights’ introduces the style by musing on a particularly low moment some years previous. “Oh how I wish things could have been different / Why can’t I be what you need?” they sing in the closing refrain, Shaw’s delivery maintaining its sincere yearning quality as the backing vocals descend into desperate yelps.

 Glom – Below

Based in Brooklyn by way of Washington, DC, Glom have established their weighty yet accessible blend of alt and indie rock across a number of releases, managing to repurpose the dark and heavy vibes of the genre into something textured enough to wrap around yourself for comfort. Ahead of a tour later this spring, the band are back with ‘Below’, a new single which furthers this style. A meditation on getting older which takes heart in accepting there might never be a moment where you become the person you always imagined. “I was 29 and creeping up on the next decade of my life, a decade where I thought I would have it all figured out,” they explain. “A year and a half later, I don’t have it “all figured out” and probably won’t for another few years, but the cathartic release of the final chorus illustrates me being ok with the fact that my journey won’t have all the answers I’m looking for right away.”

‘Below’ is out now and available from the usual places. You can find tour dates on the Glom website.

Kyle Andrews – Old Fashioned

“Somebody told you / You were nothing / Why was it easy to believe?” So asks ‘Old Fashioned’ the new single from Wisconsin-based songwriter Kyle Andrews. Having released his first album on Badman Recording Company back in 2006, Andrews went on to set up his own label Elephant Lady Records and put out a string of releases over the years, always sticking to his DIY bedroom recorded roots while pushing the possibilities of such a set up to new heights. Subsequent singles and their accompanying videos have won accolades from the Guggenheim, triggered mass participant water fights and launched cameras hundreds of thousands of feet into the air on a weather balloon. But for all the viral success of such ideas, it is the songwriting which has been the constant, as displayed on the new single ‘Old Fashioned’. The song lands on the reflective, wistful end of Kyle Andrews’s pop-inflected folk style, though is shot through with the kind of authenticity and warmth which has come to mark his every release.

Watch the video filmed and edited by Andrews himself below:

Grab ‘Old Fashioned’ now from Bandcamp.

Membra – Always Blue

The recording project of Brooklyn-based composer, sound designer and filmmaker Ned Porter, Membra utilises the full diversity of its creator’s artistic sensibilities to create experimental pop songs at once intricate and intuitive. Described as “a musical terrarium,” the appropriately titled debut Membra album Blocks of Color Blocks of Sound welcomes the audience into a miniature world which reveals itself in increasing detail the closer you look. Take single ‘Always Blue’, which on the surface can be enjoyed as a left-field pop number, though any listener willing to peer deeper will be greeted with a teaming environment of found sounds and tape loops, elements Porter expertly tessellates into something beyond even the sum of its many parts.

Molly Drag – Dogfight

Michael Charles Hansford’s Molly Drag has been writing atmospheric, often melancholic songs for almost a decade now, first appearing on VSF back in 2015 with Deeply Flawed and more recently in 2019 with album Touchstone. The latter saw a chink of light pierce the project’s gloomy mood for the first time, something subsequent albums have built upon while maintaining the original Molly Drag spirit. Out next month on I’m Into Life Records, new full-length Mammoth represents the next step in this evolution, as highlighted by lead single ‘Dogfight’. The lyrics are full of the visceral emotion and deep yearning which has long marked Hansford’s intimate style, but are delivered here against a sound charged by bright shimmering momentum. What results is a track again centring on raw emotion and suffering, but one which refuses to be buried by the accumulated weight of life, instead reaching towards the surface in search of reprieve.

Mt Fog – Drifting

Described as “a creation of love and a response to the world’s chaos and absurdity,” Seattle‘s Mt Fog employ a combination of folk, pop and electronic styles to conjure the antithesis of such disorder, welcoming the listener into richly woven soundscapes as a kind of safe harbour. With new album ultraviolet heart machine coming soon, the band have unveiled new track ‘Drifting’ as an early taster, and the track is indicative of Mt Fog’s ability to merge the earthly and ethereal. Or rather to position the earthly as its own kind of ethereal space, offering the natural world as a place to escape into and revealing the magic and healing potential therein.

My Dear Companion – These Words

Gothenburg‘s My Dear Companion is the recording project of Lea-Marie Sittler (Lea & The Loved Ones), Agnes Åhlund (Glitterfittan) and Hannah Shermis (Eldstorm), but listen to the way the trio’s vocals coalesce on new single ‘These Words’ and you’d be forgiven for thinking they had merged into single force. A tale of love and loss timeless in its themes yet full of the immediacy of yearning, each of the trio draw from the same well of emotion so as to collapse the space between them. The result is warm and fond and loaded with nostalgia, affirming with the knowledge that such sadness is omnipresence for us all.

‘These Words’ is out now.

Sofia Bolt (ft. Stella Donnelly) – Bus Song

Next month France-born, LA-based songwriter and producer Sofia Bolt will release new album Vendredi Minuit via Born Losers Records. Building upon the nostalgic tones introduced on debut full-length Waves and subsequent EP Soft Like a Peach, the record sees Bolt employ a hazy, reflective tone to explore her relationship with time—from the small personal moments which shaped her to the wider familial and historical forces which mould us all. And if Vendredi Minuit is a tour through the decades, then latest single ‘Bus Song’ encapsulates the theme most directly, inviting the audience onto an LA bus to contemplate life as it passes by the window. Welsh-Australian favourite Stella Donnelly lends vocals too, and the result is a careful balance between tension and catharsis as the taut vocals find release in the chorus’s languid rhythms.

Watch the video by Will Evans below, including Arthur H. Virtue’s footage as part of the Al Larvick Conservation Fund:

Vendredi Minuit is out via Born Losers Records on the 10th May and you can pre-order it now.

TESHA – Come Down

TESHA has made a name crafting evocative and often strange pop sounds, with Growing Pains II channelling the likes of Fever Ray to offer something “ethereal yet rooted in personal suffering” and singles such as ‘Like a Man’ seething with anger both personal and political. Latest single ‘Come Down’ is no less striking, simmering with a latent energy which collapses the difference between sensuality and rage. The final third sees something of a pivot in tone as the momentum decelerates into a languid croon, though the mix of allure and danger at the track’s heart never quite fades away.

‘Come Down’ is out now and available from the usual places.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Ruth Garbus – Strash
Mauno – Vampire
Outer Spaces – Gazing Globe
Benjamin Shaw – Long Ago and Oh So Far Away
Erin Durant – Islands
Daughter of Swords – Dawnbreaker
Melissa Mary Ahern – Maria, Maria
Oscar Lush – Kind Living
Midwife – Angel
Young Elk – False Paradise
Wilder Maker – Love So Well
Big Joanie – Way Out
Secrecies – Life We Live
Beat Radio – Everyone I Know, Just Holding On
American Poetry Club – pro pic?
So Totally – sike
halfsour – Paper Window
Joyer – Here
Marbling – Wisdom Teeth
High Sunn – Grateful
Slow Pulp – New Media
Molly Drag – Out Like a Light
Van Houten – Moon
Birdspotter – Riverbed
Tender Perennial – Delivered
JR Samuels – In Brend 2
Elly Swope – Habits
Derek Piotr – The Sign
Fighting Kites – Kita Senju
Nathalie Joachim – Papa Loko (Interlude: September 24, 1918)
Kali Malone – Sacrificial Code
Kate Tempest – Holy Elixir
Little Musket – Fever Blister
Gold Baby – 500/1
Tennis Club – Stay
Young Mammals – Lost in Lima
Abe Hollow – Paradise
bdrmm – Question Mark
Briston Maroney – Fool’s Gold

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

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

The song, inspired by the first open casket funeral he attended as a child, as well as the death of his first dog, Noah. As you might expect, the sound is sad and remorseful in a child-like sort of way, the existential anxiety of adults not yet formed so that his grief can occupy a pure, selfless sort of level.

Subsequent albums like Tethered Rendering, Whatever Reason and last year’s Thumper doubled down on the sad vulnerability, working emo sensibilities through fogged, weary soundscapes. With each release came a newly developed outlook, Molly Drag serving as a lesson in craft as Hansford worked on new ways to bring his visions and feelings to life. The result grew more succinct and atmospheric as time went on, the pain and nostalgic longing presented in a way that might just allow in some rays of light.

The forthcoming record, Touchstone, might just be the album where the light finally begins to overwhelm the darkness,  signalling a new dawn for Molly Drag. “Touchstone feels like the beginning of a new segment for this project I started five years ago,” Hansford told The FADER, who premiered the new single. “It’s not as gloomy as it once was. Personally I’ve noticed a lot of things around me change and how I react to my surroundings. I definitely am a lot happier than I use to be whilst recording this record. Everything seems clearer now.”

All we have to go on for now in lead single ‘Out Like a Light’, and though the video (created by Elijah Zimmerman) is suitably morose, there is something in the sound that suggests a change, however subtle, is underway. The guitar still sounds stark and lonely, but offers a gentle glow, like a lamp in an empty room. When the animation in the video suddenly blooms into technicolor, you realise that the song sounds warm and, dare I say it, hopeful.

Touchstone is out on the 4th October via EggHunt Records and you can pre-order it now.

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And, of course, being comprehensive is impossible these days, so let us know if we missed your favourite and maybe we’ll add it to the collection.

If I Die in Mississippi – Artless
(RIYL: bedroom pop, ambient, Sam Ray, sad)

In Love With a Ghost – Let’s Go
(RIYL: electronic, chillwave, dream pop)

Jake Bellissimo – Piece of Ivy
(RIYL: indie pop, Gay Angel)

Jemima Coulter – lampshade ep
(RIYL: bedroom pop, chilled out, Volcano Choir)

Joyride! – Half Moon Bay
(RIYL: pop punk, indie rock, All Dogs)

Julia Brown – An Abundance of Strawberries
(RIYL: experimental, indie pop, Elephant 6)

Lake Michigan – Gleaming
(RIYL: bedroom pop, late night vibes, Arrange)

Lance Bangs – Lance Mountain
(RIYL: lo-fi, indie pop, Colin Thibodeauxxx)

Lazy Legs – s/t
(RIYL: shoegaze, noise pop, feedback)

Little Kid – Flowers
(RIYL: fuzz pop, bedroom folk, reflective thoughts)

Long Neck – Spring Cleaning
(RIYL: bedroom pop, Cyberbully Mom Club, Jawbreaker Reunion)

Max Gardener – Memory Lounge
(RIYL: dream pop, bedroom pop, slacker)

Mineral Girls – Seven Inches of Release
(RIYL: noise pop, emo, indie rock)

Moin Moin – Dawn
(RIYL: folk, bedroom pop, delicate, quiet)

MOLAR / Pale Kids – Split
(RIYL: pop punk, riot grrrl, The Courtneys)

Molly Drag – Tethered Rendering
(RIYL: bedroom pop, experimental, dreamy vibes)

Monarch Mtn – Everyone is Here
(RIYL: grand melancholy, nighttime)

Monster Rally – Mystery Cove
(RIYL: experimental, hip hop, tropicana)

Moving In – Sunburn
(RIYL: bedroom pop, lo-fi, teenage heartbreak)

Naps – Happy All the Time Forever Always
(RIYL: ambient, experimental, tape hiss)

No Museums – The Drifting Knives
(RIYL: basement rock, indie pop, lo-fi)

Nice Try – s/t
(RIYL: lo-fi, indie pop, Frankie Cosmos)

Nikolas Escudero – 100
(RIYL: lo-fi, indie pop, slacker)

No Dice Tapes – 2016: the year all bad things went away and everything turned out to be fine
(RIYL: lo-fi, indie pop, good causes, ironic titles)

Noname – Telefone
(RIYL: hip hop, rap, courageous poetry)

Be sure to check out the previous sections of our favourite free music list here.

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The May Roundup mix below contains a track from every artist we featured during the month (apart from Sharon van Etten and Noah Gundersen, sorry!), so plug your headphones in and enjoy some new music. Click the artists’ names in the tracklisting below to be taken to the post in question.

Tracklisting:

1. No More Sad Songs – Elvis Depressedly
2. Catchyalater – Frog
3. The Day Draws Near – The Washboard Abs
4. Every House is On Fire – Island Eyes
5. Forever – Boosegumps
6. Open Casket Hidden Meaning – Molly Drag
7. The Arp – Aidan Knight
8. Atheist Money – Adam Stafford
9. Lynx – The Tarantula Waltz
10. Milo – Young Jesus
11. Slow Dark Water – Furnsss
12. Aubrey – Debris Slide
13. Foreign Hands – Aisha Badru
14. I Need Never Get Old – Nathaniel Rateliff & The Night Sweats
15. Outside the Pale – Samantha Crain
16. Home – The Modern Folk
17. Staggers and Rise – Small Houses
18. Yannina – Jake Houlsby
19. To the Black Horizon – Mark Timmins
20. Heart – Bobby’s Oar
21. Bling – Bells Atlas
22. And You Meant the Sea – Ruth & Trudy
23. Party – Lake Michigan
24. Growing Leaves – Gay Angel
25. On and On – Zee Town and the Dog Boys
26. Travel Map – Hip Hatchet
27. Zoa – Batte Ave.
28. The Bird – Kathryn Joseph
29. …Until They’re Called – Old Earth

May 2015 Roundup from Wake The Deaf on 8tracks Radio.

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Old Earth

“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” – New EP …until they’re called sees Old Earth in typically scintillating form.

The Washboard Abs

“Sad but in a cosy, reassuring way…like being alone in an empty room on a rainy afternoon, when the not-quite-twilight has that blue-grey quality and the only sounds are raindrops on the glass and the shooooshing of passing cars” – WHATEVERLAND by The Washboard Abs is the second great Z Tapes release in a week.

The Tarantula Waltz

“Reminds us that no matter how hard, life holds pockets of goodness and wonder, providing moments of fierce, bright joy which light up the dark” – Lynx EP by Swedish folkster The Tarantula Waltz

Molly Drag

“Sad and remorseful in a child-like sort of way, the existential anxiety of adults not yet formed so that his grief can occupy a pure, selfless sort of level” – ‘Open Casket Hidden Meaning’, the brand new track by Molly Drag.

Furnsss

“A return of the gloriously sloppy rock that Furnsss purvey” – Burlington lo-fi rock act announce new EP via our good pals at 80N7.

Nathaniel Rateliff & the Night Sweats

“Continues with the jaunty, boisterous vibes that set apart Nathaniel Rateliff & The Night Sweats from his solo work, sounding like mid-barroom, drunk-but-honest proclamations” – Nathaniel Rateliff gathers his band in anticipation of their debut EP.

Aidan Knight

“Starts off as a smooth and kinda groovy soft rock track which threatens several crescendos before the horned-filled celebratory climax around the halfway mark” – Aidan Knight has put out a new song in preparation for his third album, coming this autumn on Outside Music.

Small Houses

“So here’s the deal. You pledge on small amount of money in return for a digital download pre-order, and Quentin gets to make a new record and eat something other than craisens” – Small Houses needs your help on GoFundMe to make his new album.

Eskimeaux

“It’s about finally feeling okay with not feeling okay” – Impose has a substantial piece on Eskimeaux’s new album, O.K.

The Epoch

“A sweet, introspective sort of songwriting is the tendency, though hardly the rule. As an inspiring support system and model for artistic collaboration, their cult following is quickly growing” – The Epoch Collective find themselves in good company in Brooklyn Magazine’s round-up of the twenty people defining Brooklyn music in 2015.

Matheny / Molina

“Molina always seemed to know exactly which cards not to show, and with his deep body of work created music that is somehow both haunting and comforting in equal measure” – William Matheny of Southeast Engine shares his memories of Jason Molina and serves up a great cover of ‘Just Be Simple’, all over at Common Folk Music.

Best of 2015

A week late on this but the ever-reliable Gimme Tinnitus has put together a list of the best music of 2015 thus far. Well worth digging through to uncover a few unheard gems.

Nick Cave / DrFasutusAU

A few weeks late on this but it’s worth sharing: Artist DrFaustusAU has drawn a Dr Seuss-style cartoon version of Nick Cave’s ‘Red Right Hand’. You can read more about it on Faster Louder or click the image below to see the whole storybook.

Protest Music

“A reminder that soulful dissent can be both entertaining and politically efficacious. Soulful protest is the work of skillful musicians using their gifts and raising their voices to recreate the world so that everyone has an opportunity to fully participate and no one else’s voice ever again has to remain suppressed or unheard” – Jason King over on at NPR Music has put together 100 hours of protest music, using R&B and the genres which came before that helped form the genre.

Frog

“An attempt to engage modern musical ideas from a 1950s style of arrangement… [it] was a complete failure in that respect but a success in most others” – The Line of Best Fit are streaming Kind Of Blah, the new album from Frog that could well be the soundtrack of your summer.

Summer Camp

“Inspired by 90s Point Horror and Fear Street books and teen horror films, and the idea that a bad relationship can be just as terrifying as a serial killer” – Noisey are streaming Summer Camp’s Bad Love before it’s release next week on Moshi Moshi.

Shamir

And finally, Shamir walked around Brooklyn and played some songs for La Blogotheque:

The post Week in Review: #2 (18th-22nd May) appeared first on Various Small Flames.

Admissions of weakness and misery paradoxically suggesting bravery or strength in a weak-to-be-strong sort of way. The whole thing is admirable and relatable and impressively moving, holding a flame to the inherent confusion and grief of being young in the twenty-first century.

Hansford is back with a new track, ‘Open Casket Hidden Meaning’. The song, inspired by the first open casket funeral he attended as a child, as well as the death of his first dog, Noah. As you might expect, the sound is sad and remorseful in a child-like sort of way, the existential anxiety of adults not yet formed so that his grief can occupy a pure, selfless sort of level.

“It’s my fault I don’t believe,
don’t waste time in saving me.”

You can listen to the song now thanks to the good folks over at Indoors Outdoors.

Be sure to grab your copy of Deeply Flawed over on Bandcamp. If tapes are your thing then you can grab one at a show, or I believe you can get in touch which Hansford personally to strike a deal.

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Ruth & Trudy is the recording project of Mitchell Young who lives in Houston, Texas. His latest album is called Still Pond Songs a record he describes as, “songs of earth, love, heartbreak, family, encounters with the occult, and fun”. If that doesn’t capture your attention then you’re reading the wrong music blog buddy. Luckily, the music sounds as good as its description, an unorthodox brand of lo-fi pop that blends a laidback hipness with heartfelt naivete.

The opening track, ‘Greens’ is a ramshackle indie pop song complete with keyboard, tambourine and handclaps. The song also gives us our first glimpse of Young’s vocals, which he delivers in a slightly detached manner, capturing the feigned indifference of youth. Next up is ‘Star Projector’, a brisk instrumental number that’s all playful xylophones and swirling guitars, while ‘Late Swim (tfl)’ brings a mellow lo-fi aesthetic, a drum beat emerging around the halfway mark, a beat which sometimes overtakes the guitars and sort of stutters back in time. This gives the track a slightly agitated air, like that feeling when you can’t quite get your mind to focus right. The lyrics add to this unsettling feeling,

“who was there
standing on the lake
under the moon
above you
is he your friend
do you trust him
is he even alive?”

‘Pond Scum’ begins with a warbled vocal sample which loops and loops as the track continues as a slice of lo-fi folk, bringing to mind the Lucas O’Connell album we featured last year. ‘Captain Falcon’ is a blast of sunny indie pop, complete with kid giggle samples, sounding like a lazy summer afternoon, a tall glass of icy lemonade sweating in the sun. This is followed by another instrumental track, ‘Cop Island’, an almost tropical 70 seconds of shimmying guitars and gentle percussion, before ‘Provide For Family’ announces itself with odd little rattles and squelchy sounds, like the shambling whir of some clockwork contraption. The lyrics are about what the title suggests, “make sure your mother still feels she’s needed” it begins, before the oddly uplifting chorus of:

“provide for your family
uplift their spirits
we all share the same fears
no one wants to lose their loved ones
no one wants to die”

Then we get ‘Diane’, a sweetly unpolished love song, ‘When You Can See Your Breath Outside’, which rumbles along with the now familiar echoey vocals, and the finale ‘Here Last Year (Era Crathmania)’, which switches things up with a slice of rousing, 80s-tinged electro-pop, not unlike M83 at their most shimmering. But my favourite track is number 10, ‘And You Meant the Sea’, which is just the epitome of summer, all sea and sand and surf. Even the guitars seem sun-drunk as the track strolls along, a tale of beachside romance:

“we were eating candy at the beach
and I was playing with your hands
our hair was blowing in the wind
do you remember what it feels like
when our skin in sunlight would meet?
‘come on in,’ you said
and you meant the sea”

You can get Still Pond Songs on super-limited cassette tape or as a name-your-price digital download via the Z Tapes Bandcamp page.

P.S. Stay tuned for a review of the second Z Tapes release in the very near future!

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