Arena Rock Appetizer, the new EP from LA‘s Bridey (coming this summer on Anxiety Blanket Records), is a release which explores the sensation of “coming out of a fog.” “Sometimes it’s tough for me to see the light from whatever tunnel I’m in at the time,” she explains. But the EP fuses heartfelt emotion and upbeat energy, not only acting as a reminder of the promising glow somewhere down the line, but moreover having fun while doing so. Lead single ‘Her’ channels such a spirit, written after travelling to stay with her sister and newborn niece after a downer spell, finding some healing magic within the act of caring for other people. “It was intense and tiring and so cool,” Bridey explains. “I even bought a book about becoming a doula, but I never finished it. Maybe one day.”

dani mack – Nothing Better

We first wrote about Texas-born songwriter dani mack back in 2022 with the release of ‘someday‘, a track we described as displaying “a careful balance between strength and vulnerability,” where the “bright and disarmingly straightforward sound star[ed] the past straight in the eye and refus[ed] to blink.” Mack is now preparing to release her debut EP on Future Gods, and latest track ‘Nothing Better’ offers another assured and introspective glimpse into the personal. Though this time the slow-burning build carries with it a certain wry humour too, facing up to the chronic habit of overthinking. “What a lovely idea / letting go of things / that we have absolutely no control of,” she sings with a calm remove, “but I think I’m going to pass / and just drive myself mad / completely fucking mad.”

‘Nothing Better’ is out now and available via streaming services.

Juan Wauters – Modus Operandi

This summer, Uruguayan songwriter Juan Wauters is releasing his new album Wandering Rebel on Captured Tracks. Whether he be in Latin America, travelling north to collaborate with the likes of Mac DeMarco and Homeshake, or on the endless road of the tour, Wauters leads a nomadic existence—the titular wandering rebel manifest. Latest single ‘Modus Operandi’ captures some of the restless energy that marks his career. Wauters invites Frankie Cosmos into the fray for an earnest back-and-forth on place and movement, and reasons why people might leave and stay put in any one location.

See, it might be just my opinion
But it’s happened time and time again
That when it gets rough out here
People that have options go back to their suburbs
To them it was just like some kind of Disney World
Some kind of commodity
Dust them off a little bit
And see their real M.O.
Their modus operandi
Modus operandi

Watch Fatos Marishta’s video below as Wauters and Cosmos try to locate one another between NYC and Montevideo:

Wandering Rebel is out on the 2nd June via Captured Tracks and you can pre-order it now.

paper bee – I Don’t Talk To You

paper bee, the indie rock project led by Nick Berger, haven’t released a proper record since their 2015 debut Now I Know You and See How Wide You Are to the World, a split release with Loone. When the pandemic hit, Berger and a new lineup of bandmembers (including Maryn Jones of All Dogs/Yowler and Radiator Hospital‘s Sam Cook-Parrott) quarantined together in a cabin in rural Pennsylvania and recorded a brand new album, Thaw, Freeze, Thaw, which will be released by Get Better Records later this spring. Berger, who took his first shot of testosterone two days after wrapping up recording, describes the record as ” the last documentation of my old singing voice which I loved a lot […] a story about love and harm between traumatized trans people.”

Ryan Bourne – 100 Years

With new LP Plant City coming later this spring, Calgary‘s Ryan Bourne has unveiled latest single ‘100 Years’ to introduce another dimension of the album’s diverse sound. Because though the record spans glam rock, garage pop and baroque styles, the single highlights the psych folk spirit central to its sound. An idiosyncratic mood achieved via a woozy amalgamation of synths as well as samples of warped bird calls and the crackle of dried plants, resulting in a sound submerged in reflection. “The lyric came from a golden hour walk overlooking a neighborhood I’d lived and loved (and lost) in,” Bourne explains, “the kind of birds eye view of the landscape lending a beautiful sense of futility to the memory as it rose.” Watch the video by Rebecca Reid and Bourne himself below:

Plant City is out on the 5th May and you can pre-order it now.

Selah Broderick – I Am

Having been born into a strict Catholic family only to be freed by the countercultural turn of the sixties and seventies, Selah Broderick followed a love of music and art around the country, though ultimately put her own aspirations on hold when falling pregnant with her children. Fast forward a number of decades and Pegdoll Records are releasing Moon In The Monastery, a collection of songs by Selah Broderick ranging from the late seventies to the contemporary moment, as collected by her son Peter Broderick and featuring music from him and his sister Heather Woods Broderick. Single ‘I Am’ hints at the richness and depth of the work, with Peter’s neo-classical backdrop supporting Selah’s poetic spoken word inspired by her deep interest in non-Western spirituality.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q6AdLPVJAYc&ab_channel=PegdollRecords

Moon In The Monastery is out on the 9th June via Pegdoll and you can pre-order it now.

Speedy Ortiz – Scabs

Their first new music in five years, ‘Scabs’ is the latest single from indie rock cult heroes Speedy Ortiz, released via Wax Nine, the Carpark Records imprint record label and poetry journal run by lead Sadie Dupuis. What Dupuis describes as a song “about self-designated ethicists who don’t quibble about crossing a picket line for individual benefit,” ‘Scabs’ is a both wryly humorous and downright furious attack on those whose activism starts and ends with empty words and public gestures. “Born-to-scab solipsists are boogying for big commission,” as the opening goes. “Yes in your backyard you take handshake squeezes to extremes. Nihilistic greeting to a flytrap hungry for a fist. Don’t talk to me. Don’t talk.”

‘Scabs’ is out now via Wax Nine Records and is available from the Speedy Ortiz Bandcamp page.

Sun Kin x Guppy – I’m in the Band

Described as a “cross-collaboration” between Kabir Kumar’s LA post-pop project Sun Kin and punk band GUPPY (with whom Kumar plays lead guitar), ‘I’m in the Band’ is something of a meta-single. A song about writing songs, and all the ickiness which comes with such a revealing experience. The music was written in collaboration with Miguel Gallego (aka Miserable chillers) and Guppy frontperson J Lebow helped with the lyrics, which they says are about “how expressing yourself through music can be a vulnerable and embarrassing affair, but worth it for the self-esteem it can give, and the relief of pressure it provides for the people who love us.”

Your Heart Breaks – Snow Dusted Ponies

Led by musician, artist and filmmaker Clyde Petersen, Your Heart Breaks is a project based in a Bellingham “townie dream house” which gave artists the space to experiment outside of pressures and expectations. Released via Kill Rock Stars, new album The Wrack Line feels like the culmination of years of friendships and memories, as typified by the line-up which brought it to life. With a band consisting of Eli Moore and Ashley Eriksson (of LAKE) and Katherine Paul (Black Belt Eagle Scout), as well as a stellar line-up of guest stars including the likes of Kimya Dawson, Christine Fellows, John K. Samson, R.Ring and Nana Grizol‘s Theo Hilton, the album is a sonic manifestation of something larger. Single ‘Snow Dusted Ponies’ gives an indication of the tone, with Fellows and Samson backing Petersen’s vocals in their affirming sincerity.

The Wrack Line is out via Kill Rock Stars on the 7th July and you can pre-order it now.

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Tracklisting:

Basement Revolver – Johnny Pt. 2
Ramonda Hammer – Too Much, Too Recently
Nana Grizol – Photos From When We Were Young
Blood Cultures – Detroit
Spartan Jet-Plex – All the World Pt. 2
Why Not – Ground
Horse Culture – Ruins
Devon Sproule – Trees At Your Mom’s
somesurprises – Late July
Midwife – Song for an Unborn Son
Alder & Ash – The Merciless Dusk
Matt Paxton – Baby Don’t Go
Captain – Hotel Room
Decoration Day – Palms
Magana – Inches Apart
Lizzie No – Monuments
Wilt – Pane of Glass
Blaketheman1000 – Blake
The Wooden Sky – Black Gold
Phoebe Bridgers – Motion Sickness

Be sure to check out our previous monthly roundup mixes, and stayed tuned in August for yet more of the good stuff.

The post July 2017 Roundup appeared first on Various Small Flames.

All that said, we’ve heard ‘Nightlights I’ before, on a four-song EP from 2014. The track is the perfect reintroduction to Nana Grizol, Hilton delivering his trademark carefree, heart-on-sleeve poetics on the bewildering and beautiful nature of life and love. When Orange Twin Records describe the NG sound as “a potent mix of revved up melodic folk punk, laced with intricate horn arrangements and sleazy, ripping guitars,” this is exactly what they’re getting at, a kind of sweet and sour blend that lends the music its organic energy. “It alternates between contemplative, beautiful folk arrangements and blasting rock and roll,” the label continues. “Often within the same song.”

‘Bright Cloud’ feels equal parts contented and wistful, all horn exclamations and lyrics exploring growing up, changing in some ways but not others and, most of all, hopes and visions of family. Things are reassuringly classic on ‘Mississippi Swells’, a driven indie pop song jam-packed with unpretentious musings and light-based imagery—glowing cities viewed from planes and a metaphorical flashlight pointed towards an uncertain future. The track captures what Nana Grizol have always been best at, a stream of consciousness-style lyricism that fuses laidback casualness and deadly sincerity, confronting pain and injustice with a heady sense that all can be well in the world.

The title of ‘Photos from When We Were Young’ tells you all you need to know, conjuring that magically bittersweet feeling of finding a box of Polaroids at the back of a closet. The song is a mixture of fond nostalgia and real pain, sharing both memories of both good times and the trials of growing up knowing you’re different from what’s expected. From the hazy opening verses, with lines like “some sweet recollection of redwoods and raspberry vines /of boys you wrote postcards to numerous times,” to the more directly regretful:

“And I think of you when I put on your old clothes
We don’t talk all that often, who ever does?
But I’ll visit you soon and sing you a tune
About finding a family somewhere in the ruins”

‘Nightlights II’ has a Modern Baseball vibe, lean and dynamic and breathlessly untethered, like running flat-out along an abandoned highway, while ‘Tacoma Centre 1600’ is a song inspired by a private immigration prision Hilton visited during a protest. “‘Tacoma Center 1600’ is about the Northwest (deportation) Detention Center, a really terrible place run by a terrible company called GEO”, Hilton explains on the Nana Grizol Bandcamp page. “I had gone there for a protest and saw how it was nestled in an old industrial park, with all these billboards around advertising lawyers and politicians and whatever. I really wanted to write about how clearly there were these forces coming together and wrecking people’s lives.”

With such ideas in mind, Nana Grizol’s kindness is seen in its true light, not some twee construct but a deep human empathy, and the final song, ‘Window’, is one of the most reserved and heartfelt tracks on the record. It feels like one final reminder, a gentle word in our ears before the end.

“But yeah I’m trying to drop this habit of always apologizing
This patterns is a trap, it’s agonizing
Only I will make it go away

So we can lift them
And focus on the moments that we live in
Leave apprehensions and the headaches that they’ve given
My heart beats, it has better things to say”

On Ursa Minor, Nana Grizol return as if they’ve never been away. These intricately woven narratives somehow manage to explore not only personal themes of family and relationships, but also national/global ones too. Whether it’s a sign of the band maturing or just a reflection of these politically toxic times is besides the point, the message being that we have to stand up for others on both a personal and wider level, that there are many ways to be kind and accepting, all of which are worthwhile and, more than that, important.

You can get Ursa Minor now from the Orange Twin Records Bandcamp page.

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There is no oar, and probably no Bobby. Rather, Bobby’s Oar is Greg Hughes and friends from Orlando, Florida. Hughes has now moved to Seattle, but before leaving he managed to record his début album The Weeds in Your Garden which came out this month. Coincidentally, Hughes is also in the band Among Giants, who we reviewed back in 2012 saying:

“There is some shouting, some emotion  and some sounds that would fit nicely on the soundtrack of Tony Hawk 2. In other words, all the things you could want in an album”

While Bobby’s Oar is a change of direction, the above points still apply, which has to go down as a win. You could describe The Weeds In Your Garden as Americana or punk or indie-folk but a mixture of all three gets a little closer to reality. This is clear from opener ‘Into the Woods’, a slow-burner which explodes into an exuberant chorus of ‘oohhs!’ or ‘whoas!’ mid-way through, showing that the emo melancholy is more than balanced by a genuine joy. ‘Highway 95’ is more restrained, showing that the melancholy is more than real too:

“Because its nights like these when I’m alone,
that make me wish I had more time,
to spend alone.
And there’s a point with your friends,
when they don’t seem like friends.
So I head out and take a deep breath.
It’s just this city, I say”

‘Turtle Bay’ soon ramps things up again though, a boisterous clatter of instruments and triumphant trombone supporting Hughes’ gruff vocals. ‘Heart’ comes off as a half-frenzied unloading of thoughts, especially the part “so watch me as my world comes crashing down”, (you’ll know when you hear it), a half-glorious sweaty sing-a-long, you can just imagine an entire room proclaiming “but I didn’t mean to break your heart!” Other standouts include ‘Shoestrings’, a frenetic Americana song with some finger-shredding guitar, ‘Flatlands’, which starts off wistful before growing into something defiant a la Paul Baribeau, and ‘Worn-Out Fretboard’, the closing song which teeters on the edge of hardcore with its screamy/shouty vocals.

You can get The Weeds In Your Garden now on a handmade CD or a pay-what-you-can basis via the Bobby’s Oar Bandcamp page. You also get it on cassette via Ronald Records!

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But with the internet, oh boy, I didn’t even have to look! I just clicked a few links that looked vaguely interesting and now I’m sitting here listening to Truesdale, trying to describe why this modest, minimal little piece of music is so damn beautiful. If you liked Small Wonder’s Wendy or Adieu Caribou’s I Do Care About You, then I think you will like this.

This is a very personal album, one of those ones that you just know was borne out of compulsion rather than a desire to please. Citron says it best himself:

“This album was not written for anyone other than myself, and I am wary to upload such a personal lens into myself onto the public of the web. So all I ask in return is your support if you enjoyed it! Share it! Tell your sad, sad friends who enjoy sad, sad music!”

So sad friends, if you’re out there, please enjoy this album. You can download Truesdale on a pay-what-you-want basis over at the Fairweather Currents Bandcamp page.

P.S. Fairweather Currents also have two collections of covers including takes on tracks by The Antlers, Nana Grizol, Waxahatchee, Coma Cinema and many more. They’re pretty lo-fi and morose but also really nice.

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