Tracklisting:

Frog – American
The Phone Booth – Ballad of Indifference
Spielbergs – 4AM
Neurotic Fiction – Collateral
Neighborhood of Make Believe – Track Names
Pizzagirl – body part
Orchid Mantis – porch song
Gorgeous Bully – patience
Reighnbeau – Trading Heat
Troy Everett – Absent
Amparo – Hounds
REW<< – Victoire Impossible
Okay Embrace – Moving
Young Jesus – For Nana
Vender & The Cobras – Everything is Beautiful
The Lostines – Faith in Love
Haley Heynderickx & Max García Conover – Little Wind
Rivulets – Everything Goes
Balto – Bullshit Dream
Meat Wave – That’s Alright
Docks – Kiosk
Satanic Ritual Abuse – Hurting (Adjective/Verb)
SATU – Growing Up
Anna Tivel – Fenceline
Madison Turner – Richmond, Virgina
Elly Swope – 6.8
Nathan Ball – All or Nothing
Monarch Mtn – canyon blues
Stripmall Ballads – You Were Good (I Was Good For a While)
Katie Mullins – Crocuses
Lisa/Liza – Tea Kettle
free cake for every creature – shake it out
Katy Kirby – Tap Twice
Lung Cycles – hottest day of the year so far (4pm version)

You can find all of our Monthly Roundup playlists here, and peruse a wider range of mixtapes that we’ve put together over the years.

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

[Two Nighttimes is] a dense and sonically diverse album reflecting on questions that often go overlooked. What is the difference between loneliness & solitude? Is being cynical wise or is being idealistic naive? Can you accept fate with humility? Does a dog have buddha nature? […] Frontman Alex Muro resorts to unlikely sources like the surrealist poetry of Vincente Alexandre or the no-stone-unturned history of Robert Caro to find ways to talk about personal questions. Attempting answers indirectly by painting pictures in words.

We have the honour of sharing a video for the single ‘Track Names’, which seems like the perfect introduction to the Neighborhood of Make Believe sensibility. The song poses nagging existential questions in a manner similar to Nap Eyes, though swaps out the ironic energy in favour of a slow-burn orchestral soundscape that feels closer to Okkervil River or Kevin Morby, perhaps with overtones of Beirut. The effect is a generous sound that tends toward a sense of revival, the track pushing toward some sense of joy, however obscure and unnamed.

“You were the one to ask in the morning after hours of sleeping
an incongruous task that grew from the dreams that you were dreaming
oh, I don’t mind a question, but I can’t help it if my answers are fleeting
dreams vanished so fast, I wonder if they have any meaning?”

The video is suitably expansive for such a sound, shot in glorious wide screen and filled with vibrant sky blue, the life of the footage literally seeping through into the track as the voices of it’s inhabitants lift over the music.

Two Nighttimes is out on the 16th November via Five Kill Records and you can pre-order it now.

Photo by Alex Muro, album artwork by Brendan Dalton

The post Neighborhood of Make Believe – Track Names appeared first on Various Small Flames.