Australian duo Simon Lam and Hamish Mitchell, AKA Armlock, are releasing album Seashell Angel Lucky Charm later this summer on Run For Cover Records, and single ‘Ice Cold’ is the ideal point at which to dive in. The Armlock style beams electronic music through the prism of indie rock, conjuring sounds at once ethereal and eccentric, something the album opener encapsulates perfectly. A lesson in minimalism which rather than forgo detail, offers it with a sense of purpose and control. Be that in the simple beat and subtle textures, or the pared-back lyricism which lends the track its ambiguous charm.

Ice cold ankle deep
Head tilt, turn a cheek
I won’t be around for the rest of the week
Takes one to know one
We were born in the air sign
I’m gonna come back with the sword you left behind

Seashell Angel Lucky Charm is out on the 12th July via Run For Cover Records.

Cereus Bright – Ride

Following on from recent EP Boys, a release we described as “an ode to every tired soul and person without direction,” Knoxville’s Cereus Bright is back with ‘Ride’, a brand new single via Nettwerk. Boys preached the value of giving in to life’s unpredictable currents, and the new single follows in a similar vein. A brightly peppy track imbued with enough forward motion to propel even the most uncertain person to confront their fears and seize the bull by the horns. “Do you wanna ride?” as the chorus asks, and with the momentum of the drums and warm psych-inflected textures, it’s difficult to refuse the offer. Watch the video below with visuals by Peel:

‘Ride’ is out now via Nettwerk.

 César Alvarez – Normal, IL

“Would it be okay to wander off?” asks César Alvarez on ‘Normal, IL’, the opening track from new album egg. “I’ll take the shitty car, I’ll leave the credit cards / Drive to the Midwest, sleeping at rest stops / Play jazz on the sidewalks.” Delivered with a tone somewhere between wistful longing and boundless curiosity, the song introduces an artist navigating the competing wills to preserve the moment and escape for good. Where life’s tiny details represent the component parts of everything we hold dear. Things to drag around year after year, things to hold tight to your chest in the hope of better days. “A few years ago I was under-employed artist parent trying to figure out how to survive capitalism and still be a composer,” Alvarez explains. “I was genuinely trying to figure out if we could keep surviving in NY. This song is that feeling of being about to give up.”

Gold Dime – Denise

Recently, New York art rock/post punk outfit Gold Dime released album No More Blue Skies via No-Gold, an album which took avant garde sensibilities and elevated them into cinematic experiences. Led by Andrya Ambro (formerly of Talk Normal), the project has long reached for increasingly inventive and immersive sounds. The new record feels like the closest they have come to the zenith of such a style, what the liner notes describe as “a widescreen, fiercely intense, hair standing up on the back of your neck kind of art rock.” Take opener and single ‘Denise’, a song somehow at once opaque and charged with clarity, Ambro’s vocals cutting through the volatile sax and shifting percussion to blur the line between foreboding and transcendence.

Watch the video directed by Andrya Ambro and Joe Wakeman below:

No More Blue Skies is out now via No-Gold and available from the Gold Dime Bandcamp page.

Kathryn Mohr – Cut (Low Cover)

Originating from a conversation between The Flenser and Planning For Burial’s Thom Wasluck, Your Voice Is Not Enough is a compilation of covers celebrating the breadth and beauty of Low‘s musical oeuvre. A whole host of Flenser artists and friends are involved, with VSF favs Midwife and Allison Lorenzen joined by Drowse, Have A Nice Life, Cremation Lily and Holy Water among others. The latest single sees Kathryn Mohr take on ‘Cut’, maintaining the sparse simmer of the original while deepening its shadowy corners with an electrified edge. “It was the lyrics that immediately drew me into this song,” Mohr explains. “The intimacy of a hair cut. The loss of a version of someone you knew as they turn themselves inside out to survive. It’s one of the saddest things in the world to me, watching someone harden and loose themselves to their pain.”

Your Voice Is Not Enough is out on the 24th May via The Flenser.

LEOBLU – full moon & snow boots

Julia Carlsson’s LEOBLU has caught our ears on a number of occasions in recent times, be it the gloom pop of single ‘Cake‘ or more recently a collaboration with Sad Dad which probed into the strangeness of love. “The impression is not one of grand gesture and romantic inevitability,” we wrote of the later, “but rather the sense of being exposed to mysterious forces. The physics of things larger than yourself, moving life beyond your control.” With new EP Blu Lucid Nightmare coming later this year, LEOBLU has returned with single ‘full moon & snow boots’, and again the track sees Carlsson setting personal emotions against larger, almost mystical backdrops. As though the natural world was our own longing manifest. Watch the video, shot in California by Hannah Gonzalez, below:

Blu Lucid Nightmare will be released later this year.

My Best Unbeaten Brother – Time on Our Hands, Spider-Man

Back in January we told you about My Best Unbeaten Brother, the latest project from the Parker brothers of Nosferatu D2, The Superman Revenge Squad Band and Tempertwig. Back then we were writing about standalone single ‘Slayer on a Sunny Day’, but as promised the band are now readying their debut mini-album Pessimistic Pizza, which will be release via Audio Antihero. To whet appetites, they have released lead single ‘Time on Our Hands, Spider-Man’, a mid-to-late-00s style indie rock song electrified with desperate emotion. Ben Parker says the song is about, “being a father and being a son, passing on memories of years and years of processing stuff and turning it into landfill indie, how we all need a Spider-Man or a Superman and how this doesn’t change the older you get,” which goes some way to illustrating the mixture of sadness, sincerity and frustration that sit just below the up-tempo surface.

Wild Yaks – Desperado

With almost two decades and (roughly) five albums under their belts, Wild Yaks have made a name with an affirming and often riotous brand of rock music, filling the gap between hopes and realities with a carefree embrace of the present. Out next month via Ernst Jenning Record Co. latest album Monumental Deeds feels like both a continuation of this spirit and the culminative product of twenty years spent pining and singing and howling at the moon. Born on a drive back to Florida lead Rob Bryn took with his 79-year-old mother, single ‘Desperado’ is a fitting combination of desperation and defiance. When the ghosts of past selves and possible futures are strung out on the road before you, sometimes the only option is to roll the windows down, put the pedal to the metal and feel that wind in your hair.

Watch the video below filmed on VHS tape by Renée Muza and edited by Sameer Kapoor:

Monumental Deeds is out on the 21st June via Ernest Jenning Record Co. and you can pre-order it now.

Zoya Zafar – Clumsy

“Time allowed Zafar opportunity to understand the tracks beyond the usual level, and thus gradually shape them towards their ideal, essential form.” So we wrote of Zoya Zafar‘s Some Songs, an album interrupted by real life difficulties which only came to realise itself more fully in the intervening years. Tracks like ‘Sweet Talk’ “condens[e] months of suffering into a single prayer released into an empty room,” as we put it in a preview, a testament to the value of patience and care brought to life with a tender folk pop style. Latest single ‘Clumsy’ invites the listener further into this space, a song produced by friend Gia Margaret which shares Margaret’s quiet, sometimes cryptic sincerity. “You were the light in the dark,” as Zafar sings, “giving away your sad, sad heart / living inside a house of cards.”

The post Weekly Listening: May 2024 #2 appeared first on Various Small Flames.

With album Mirror, Reflect coming in May via Winspear, Amy O has shared single ‘Dribble Dribble’ by way of introduction. The record charts the experience of new motherhood during the pandemic, where twin forces of uncertainty and isolation ran a deep seam of precariousness through everything. But as ‘Dribble Dribble’ shows, Amy O documents this time with compassion and playful curiosity, the lo-fi pop sound lifting rhyming schemes from the books she read to her daughter to offer a mood at once fun and incisive, and Glenn Myers’s backing vocals further the conversational closeness.

Please don’t let the tide rush in
Held unburdened by the wind
A roomful of familiar
No catastrophes within

Bloomsday – Dollar Slice

The recording project of Brooklyn’s Iris James Garrison, Bloomsday introduced itself back in 2020 with debut Place to Land, an album which charted the fear, loss and joyous freedom inherent within the quest to find one’s true identity. But despite the personal subject matter, collaboration has always been an inherent part of the Bloomsday DNA, and new album Heart of the Artichoke is certainly no exception. Coming this summer on Bayonet Records, the release see Iris joined by Andrew Stevens (Lomelda, Hovvdy), Alex Harwood, Richard Orofino, Maya Bon (Babehoven), Hannah Pruzinsky (h.pruz, Sister.) and Chris Daley, and proves to be not only a celebration of togetherness and community but a testament to the enduring presence of friendship itself. Lead single ‘Dollar Slice’ is a great place to jump in, the cornerstone of the album which hints at the sound’s devotional quality. “I’m not religious,” Garrison says, “But I am into the idea of mystical, higher power—whatever that means – and that power seeing me, and my bullshit, and calling it out. That’s kind of godly to me.”

Cereus Bright – Boys

We introduced Boys, the new EP from Knoxville‘s Cereus Bright, back in February with single ‘Drifting’. “An ode to every tired soul and person without direction,” as we put it, “which offers comfort not through the promise of agency but rather the unforeseen benefits of letting oneself relax into the drift.” With the EP now out via Nettwerk, Cereus Bright has released the opener and title track as a final single. Inspired by stories of a “hard, complicated figure” of a grandfather, the song delves into the tangled world of cause and effect not so much in search of an answer but to instead reveal the layers of complexity which define any given person. As the artist explains: “It’s essential to reckon with the people or institutions that have affected us or hurt us, but some times truly understanding is impossible.” The song comes complete with a video filmed by Follow The Leader which you can watch below:

Boys is out now via Nettwerk and available from Bandcamp.

Fresh – Merch Girl

London punks Fresh have made a name with a heart-on-the-sleeve brand of rock, with tracks like ‘Babyface‘ and ‘Morgan & Joanne‘ typifying the bittersweet celebration of the queer experience offered by LP Raise Hell. Ahead of tours with Teenage Halloween and Los Campesinos!, Fresh are releasing a brand new EP Merch Girl on Specialist Subject Records next month, and have unveiled the title track for an early taste. It’s a song “about living in that space between wanting something and achieving something” as lead Kathryn Woods explains, centring on the titular character as they yearn to break free from the sidelines and make art of their own. “Standing at the back of the room / Wishing I could do what they do,” as Woods sings, “After all, I could play that guitar part better / I could hit those drums much harder / I could sing that song far louder // But I’m just a merch girl.”

I’m tired of living like this
Letting people talk over me for years and years and year and years
Gonna start doing things my way
Gonna write a song with a voice so strong it knocks you sideways

I’m not just a merch girl

Hour – Ease the Work

Though named after an image from a tragic Greek myth, Hour‘s 2018 album Anemone Red had more quotidian concerns. “Hour present the same heartbreak and longing as it occurs today,” we wrote in our review, “repressed and layered behind our day-to-day responsibilities, manifest not in blood-dripped flowers but the slow, sad progression of the world around us.” The project, led by Michael Cormier-O’Leary, returns this spring to build upon this foundation with Ease the Work, a brand new release on Dear Life Records. Challenging any clear distinction between composition and improvisation, the album performs the same small miracle of the previous records, presenting the everyday in all its joy and melancholy, comfort and strangeness. Listen to the title track now:

Jack Name – Cherie’s Eyes

Described as a “homage to the IRL world and its twisted and varied romance with the worlds of our minds,” Fabulous Soundtracks is the fourth album from Los Angeles-based musician Jack Name, out this May on Maple Death Records. Each song on the record is intended as a mini-soundtrack to a specific scene, and Jack Name runs the gamut of genres and stylistic influences in order to create cinematic soundscapes able to elevate these moments into their full surreal potential. Single ‘Cherie’s Eyes’ is the first example of this singular effort, presenting a sound at once odd and strangely intuitive, as though Fabulous Soundtracks functions within the logic and physics of dreams, where everything is off-kilter yet charged with meaning.

 Logan Lynn – To Be Of Use (Smog Cover)

Songwriter, producer, filmmaker, television personality and activist Logan Lynn is releasing new LP SOFTCORE this June on Kill Rock Stars. The album, written in the aftermath of a break-up, serves as a vehicle of rebirth. “A record of my coming alive again, and coming back to myself in the face of pretty extreme betrayal,” as Lynn puts it. “It’s a party album in a way—loud, wild, unhinged and abrasive at times—but it’s also a collection of tender songs about longing and togetherness.” A cover of Smog’s ‘To Be Of Use’ opens the album, a plaintive track which slowly gathers momentum, as though Lynn uses Bill Callahan as a way to shake off the shrouding gloom and turn a new page.

Magana – To My Love

Last month we introduced Magana‘s new album TEETH on Audio Antihero with the single ‘Paul’. “A song where grief is transcribed almost verbatim,” as we put it, “and tenderness, strangeness and plain disbelief can exist simultaneously.” With the album out today to coincide with the Worm Moon’s peak illumination, Magana has released final single ‘To My Love’ to further introduce the witchy rock atmosphere. A strange sound for a strange world, made by an artist determined to use every style available to best communicate their own experience of trying to exist within it.

Pina Palau – We’ve Got No Time At All

“The birds outside my window, they are singing as if the world was still the same.” So opens ‘We’ve Got No Time At All’, the centre point of Get a Dog, the sophomore album by Pina Palau. It’s a song that very directly captures the despair felt by young people across the globe, describing a world of war and mass shootings, heatwaves that “no AC can get us out of.” The Swiss artist put a career in medicine on hold to pursue her musical career, and her creative work is driven by the same fascinations that led her to the path to becoming a psychologist—what label Mouthwatering Records describe as “a desire to understand unvarnished humanity—the motivations, emotions and stories that shape our lives.” Which is why ‘We’ve Got No Time At All’ stands out on an album full of varied emotions. A rare track that stares down a generation’s biggest concerns head-on, blowing out into furious noise in its cathartic climax.

We’re still young they say we have time
But the truth is: we’ve got no time at all

The post Weekly Listening: March 2024 #4 appeared first on Various Small Flames.

Right On sees Undlin joined by Pete Quirsfeld (drums), Pat Keen (bass, organ, percussion, background vocals, synth) and Shane Leonard (percussion, mandolin, background vocals, keys), who together create a folk rock sound that’s undeniably richer that previous Humbird releases. The result is what the label call “the project’s most electric, playful, mettled record yet,” but longtime fans need not worry, the signature Humbird idiosyncrasies and experimentalism remain. “Even so, Right On incorporates friendly winks to the more whimsical, soundscape-y improvisations that audiences have come to expect from a Humbird performance,” Nettwerk continue. “Electrified, gritty, Midwest Americana with a little magic fairy dust thrown in.”

Nowhere is this more apparent than on closer and latest single ‘Song For The Seeds’. The song (rather aptly) grows into its full band arrangement, building from hushed and humble beginnings into a full-bodied country pop song. As the title suggests, it’s inspired by plants and the near-magical transformation from seed to shoot to sapling, finding hope and joy in their resilience, their patience and the hopeful joy of watching them grow. “‘Song For The Seeds’ is a song that could have been hours long,” Undlin tells Under the Radar. “It’s an unending topic of consideration: plants and all they teach us. I realize this sounds fairly hippy-dippy, but I don’t really care and I don’t think the plants do either. It’s the closest I’ve ever gotten to a sort of mantra within a Humbird song yet and I stand by it.””

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I attempted to take the mundane and make it abstract. When you put something familiar in an unfamiliar place, you see it differently. To get there, I explored more mythological and otherworldly ideas and sounds than ever before—while trying to retain the core intimacy of songwriting that I’ve always strived for. I hope what we made is a perfect balance.

If ‘Chasing the Feeling’ “errs towards the optimistic side of things,” as we wrote, “or at least finds itself unable to shake the lingering possibility there might exist a better way to live,” then new single ‘Drifting’ learns to lean into the flow of life in order to arrive at such a destination. An ode to every tired soul and person without direction which offers comfort not through the promise of agency but rather the unforeseen benefits of letting oneself relax into the drift.

The post Cereus Bright – Drifting appeared first on Various Small Flames.

“Moves through sounds and emotions like scenes in a dream, seemingly disparate thoughts and feeling united by an uncanny common thread.” So we wrote of Water Words, an album by Bay Area artist Asha Wells which combined a number of genres to “sit in the strange space at the heart of any new relationship,” as we continued, “the period where nothing is decided in any one direction, the potential of both promise and regret latent within every detail.” Next year, Wells is releasing a brand new EP Tears of a Clown on Anxiety Blanket Records and first single ‘Impermanent I’ shows a clear evolution of this style. A piece of idiosyncratic pop which melds the experience of classical training with a willingness to push beyond conventions to mine the fertile ground outside.

Cloudbelly – November

Last year we featured ‘Leavened‘ by Montague, Massachusetts‘s Cloudbelly, introducing Corey Laitman’s expansive yet personal style which “[found] assurance in their contemplation of identity and relationships.” New single ‘November’ is no less heartfelt and confident, taking the melancholy of the titular month and infusing it with a marching rhythm to evoke the precious fragility of love. “Say my love’s marked ‘return to sender’ / Teach me mercy, cold November,” as Laitman sings. “Hungry lungs, my love’s the space between the notes / I meant them, every word I ever spoke.” Here, the onset of winter is both a threat and a reminder, as well as something which might yet be outrun.

Daphne’s Demise – Bedroom Window

The solo project of Sarnia, Ontario’s Zoë L, Daphne’s Demise has made a name with a home-recorded blend of indie pop, folk and ambient sensibilities. However, the new ‘Bedroom Window’ represents something of a change, with the track seeing Daphne’s Demise take to the studio with a full band. What emerges is a country-inflected labour of love which taps into the dreamy richness of the seventies. But within the enveloping wistfulness and languid drift lies something more direct. “No more can I be / The one that you keep inside your head,” as the opening lines play, “Looming over me is a thing I just won’t see / Can’t watch it spin.”

Through the bedroom window
See it light up green
And fly away

Dead Bandit – Staircase

The recording project of Ellis Swan and James Schimpl, the music of Dead Bandit might be instrumental, but it is decidedly lyrical in spirit. Swan is known for haunting murder ballads within his solo work, while multi-instrumentalist Schimpl weaves expansive soundscapes. So it followed that the debut Dead Bandit album From the Basement combined these sensibilities into a raw, shadowy sound which merged Southern Gothic needle and hauntological strangeness. Again on Quindi Records, new album Memory Thirteen is no less evocative, with single ‘Staircase’ presenting a cryptic mood. Is the past returning to haunt the present? Or is that the future we glimpse breaking through the clouds?

Humbird – Child of Violence

“Another blue sky morning,” sings Humbird’s Siri Undlin on new single ‘Child of Violence’, “In the land of the free to believe / Lies on the Internet and the glamor of money / Missing the real thing.” The Minnesota artist has been releasing a number of singles via Nettwerk in recent months, channelling the politically charged folk rock of yesteryear, and the new track is perhaps the most direct and cutting yet. A song which refuses to treat acts of violence within the US as tragedies or aberrations, but rather a cornerstone of the entire national project. And perhaps most importantly, it identifies how honesty around this fact is central to any hope of change.

I could be a break in the chain
I could be a piece of the change
When I talk about it
I’ll call it by its name

Little Kid – Something to Say

Back in 2020, Toronto‘s Little Kid released Transfiguration Highway, an album “at least in part inspired by an enduring interest in Christian mysticism,” as we described, “and themes of epiphany and revelation allow [lead Kenny] Boothby to explore his own growth.” Next year will see Little Kid return with A Million Easy Payments, a new full-length on Orindal Records, which finds Boothby and co. again probing at the line between the corporeal and the spiritual. Lead single ‘Something to Say’ offers a picture of reality so keenly observed that a sense of latent mystery begins to suggest itself, and with it the possibility of transcendence.

Nora Roy – No Steppy Snik

“Sometimes I want to pull my teeth out / unzip my skin / start over.” So sings Nora Roy on ‘No Steppy Snik’, a new single which pairs surreal detachment and forthright confession to welcome the listener deep into its heart. Joined by Julian Fader (guitar) Brett Nash (bass) and Daniel Siles (drums), Roy follows this dreamlike thread through murmured quiet and towering peaks, though for all of the song’s unreal qualities, the parting sense is that of having been told something true which might not have been communicable any other way. “You love / Like a snake I saw,” as Roy continues, “in a magazine / some time.”

‘No Steppy Snik’ is out now and you can find Nora Roy on streaming services.

Parademaker – Utah

The recording project of Houston‘s Shaun Clarkson, Parademaker creates folk in the mould of John Prine, where heartfelt emotion and wry humour intertwine to form a picture of a specific period and place. New album Good Shit is full of such songs, but single ‘Utah’ encapsulates the spirit perfectly. A story of the second coming where Jesus is kicking about America, looking for somewhere to settle down. “This time he came to live and not to die,” as the lyrics offer. But that’s not to say Christ has no standards when it comes to potential homes. “You won’t find me in Utah / the Latter-day Saints and the petite bourgeoisie ain’t seen a cage they didn’t want to climb inside.”

You won’t find me in U-hecking-tah
the worst damn state that you ever saw
along with Texas, Florida, most of Indiana
and the whole goddam Bible Belt

Prism Bitch – City Nights

Albuquerque’s Prism Bitch originated when Lauren Poole and Chris Walsh met at a small theatre group and imagined creating a band as a piece of performance art. But upon adding Lilah Rose and Teresa Cruces to the line-up, they found themselves shedding the performance aspect and becoming the real deal. Establishing their rambunctious and often flamboyant brand of garage rock, debut full-length Perla showed the switch was more than justified, and it is fitting that new single ‘City Nights’ sees the outfit return to their theatrical roots. A sleek, sensual eighties bop which comes complete with a delightfully tongue-in-cheek video filmed at the Albuquerque public access studio, directed by Lauren Poole with cinematography by Colemar Nichols:

‘City Nights’ is out now and available from Bandcamp.

The post Weekly Listening: December 2023 #1 appeared first on Various Small Flames.

The Cherries are Speaking, last year’s album by Dan Knishkowy’s Adeline Hotel, represented “another step in Knishkowy’s exploratory path,” as we described. “One with no set end or direction, but one pressing on with larger goals in mind. A part of a greater body of work which comes into view one record at a time, edging closer to whatever the full picture might be.” This October will provide the next stage of this journey as Adeline Hotel is releasing new full-length, Hot Fruit, again via Ruination Record Co. A record, as per Andy Cush’s album notes, “characterized by that push-pull interplay between composition and improvisation,” with Winston Cook-Wilson and Scree’s Ryan El-Solh, Carmen Rothwell and Jason Burger all lending their talents. The title track captures the blend of craft and spontaneity perfectly.

Beti Masenqo – much of anything

Beti Masenqo is a songwriter out of California who has recently unveiled debut single, ‘much of anything’. A track which introduces her style of delicate, often reflective folk which ties together melancholy and joy with a wistful thread. Here specifically on the subject of love, where tenderness doubles as a kind of tenuousness. A spell to submit to or break. “Fell asleep in Mexico, fever in the night / I know this must be obvious but your were on my mind,” Masenqo sings in the opening lines. “Felt compelled to tell you that, just to prove I tried / your fingerprints were on my chest, my soul was left behind. I know you will be gone / can’t think this will be much of anything.”

Cereus Bright – Chasing the Feeling

Cereus Bright, the recording project of Knoxville freak-folk songwriter Tyler Anthony, has been operating for the best part of a decade, though the sound has undergone a constant evolution in the interim. Having recently signed with Nettwerk, Anthony has been sharing a run of singles to show off the latest face of Cereus Bright. A style which follows the reflective tone of 2021’s Give Me Time with a newfound focus on the future, looking forwards and confronting all the mystery, uncertainty and potential therein. Latest track ‘Chasing the Feeling’ errs towards the optimistic side of things, or at least finds itself unable to shake the lingering possibility there might exist a better way to live. “’Chasing the Feeling’ charts the kinds of longings we all have,” as Anthony explains. “It’s nostalgic… it felt important to make it more subtle and melancholy. For me, that’s what the core of this feeling really is—a quiet desire to return to something better than today.” Watch the video shot by Ross Bustin and edited by Corey Campbell below:

‘Chasing the Feeling’ is out now via Nettwerk and available from Bandcamp.

KMRU – Along A Wall

The first release from KMRU‘s own label OFNOT, new album Dissolution Grip emerged from a period of study at Berlin’s Universität der Künste, where, under the tutelage of Jasmine Guffond, he used field recordings in a novel manner. Rather than including these recordings directly, he used their waveforms as a guide for his own compositions, essentially tracing over the real-world sounds and recreating them as digital soundscapes. Take single ‘Along A Wall’, a bonus track on the digital release, where the wind of Nairobi is recreated in all of its fickle movement with nothing but electronic tones.

Kramies – Days Of (acoustic version)

Back in 2022 we wrote about the self-titled album by Kramies, describing it as “what feels like the culmination of a career to date. Where everything is consolidated and offered in its most fully realised form. Life in all its surreal wonder and visceral reality. Kramies, told as truthfully as possible, whatever form that truth takes.” Having teamed up with VanGerrett Records and with a new album coming next year, Kramies has unveiled the functionally titled EP, The Original Undecorated Takes from the Kramies LP. Four songs from the album as they appeared when acoustic demos. Lead single and opener ‘Days Of’ highlights the difference from the original, the stark depth swapped for a more intimate sound, though one retaining all of the emotional power.

Pretty Bitter – What I Want!

Self-described “psychedelic synth pop gumball machine” Pretty Bitter is Emelia Bleker and Miri Tyler, along with multi-instrumentalist Zack Be, drummer Jason Hayes and guitarist Chris Smit. Together the outfit craft a sound which lives up to their label, where inventive pop sensibilities are blended with driving indie rock energy and some of the sardonic lyricism and delivery familiar to riot grrrl and post-punk. Latest single ‘What I Want!’ utilises this sound to take on eating disorders and the process of recovery. A combination of gallows humour and rising catharsis which eviscerates those responsible for the outside pressures behind such an experience.

If you’re lonely
Try being someone else

If you’re shrinking
At least they love you while you hate yourself

Could you tell I was not well?

Sinai Vessel – Tangled

Aside from some outtakes and demos, ‘Tangled’ is the first release from Caleb Cordes’s Sinai Vessel since 2020’s stellar full-length Ground Aswim, and introduces the next step in the project’s evolution. The Asheville-based songwriter has long won acclaim for his distinctively emotive and searching style, though Cordes truly stands out for the way in which he layers in other emotions too. This is on full display on ‘Tangled’, where a gentle warmth belies the thread of paranoia running beneath the surface. “We are at the mercy of a tangled web of wires / Snaring one another / strung up by our words,” Cordes sings, voice barely breaking a murmur. “Intent is one among a set of signs / if misaligned, you’ll misinterpret.” Once this dimension of the track clicks, you’ll never quite hear it in the same manner, the hushed style no longer sounding intimate so much as lonely, walled off from others and no longer trusting words as a reliable means to bridge the divide.

There’s no poison like
Believing an enemy’s in sight
When there’s no threat at all

Soft Covers – The Real Housewives of Porpoise Spit

In October, Naarm/Melbourne-based indie pop band Soft Covers will release their debut album Soft Serve on Little Lunch Records and Hidden Bay Records. Previous EP Permanent Part Time set out a jangly DIY aesthetic, and the new record sees the trio go bigger in every regard—instrumentally, thematically, and in terms of ambition—without sacrificing the authenticity that made the original songs so great. Lead single ‘The Real Housewives of Porpoise Spit’ is a great introduction for those unfamiliar, taking the nostalgic fondness of retro jangle pop and injecting a certain momentum, not to mention a playful lyricism that blurs the line between wistful and witty.

Tamra – Omens, Silos

Based between Boise and Los Angeles, Tamra is a band, as per the press release, “animated by the idea that, though there’s nothing to do, there’s still something to say.” Their debut EP Light Reading emerges from the dead expanses of the American landscape and lead single ‘Omens, Silos’ introduces this aesthetic with a staccato, opaque poetry. It melds early 00s college favourites with Astral Weeks-era Van Morrison and a turbulent undercurrent of Midwest emo. The result, with its distorted guitar and vocals that rise and fall on sonic updrafts, is oddly captivating, both gloomy and not, full of inelegant beauty like a deserted stripmall under a bruised and stormy sky.

Light Reading will be released later this year.

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

With her album Utopian Fantasy coming this spring via Nettwerk, LA/London-based songwriter Allie Crow Buckley has unveiled the final single, ‘Cowboy in London’. A perfect introduction to Buckley’s psych-inflected folk rock style, the song exists as something both ethereal and emotive, transporting the listener with its rich and languid sound. “The song is a reflection on my years as a teen and being on my own in London for the first time,” she explains. “It was wonderful and terrifying, and I was totally enthralled.” But running through this carefree spirit is a certain wry humour too, as though calling to attention the naivety which sits at the heart of such a mood.

I could be a cowboy in London
Think I could play the part
‘Cause I’m kinda cheap
And I’m pretty tall

The song comes complete with a video directed by Buckley herself which you can watch below:

Utopian Fantasy will be released on the 19th May via Nettwerk and you can pre-order it now.

Angel Abaya – The Bubble

Next month, LA-based songwriter Angel Abaya will release debut album The Bubble on Earth Libraries. It’s a record which uses the image of its title to explore the various siloes we put ourselves in—be it relationships, friendship groups, identities or physical locations—and how such things can be both comforting and suffocating. As you might expect from a record dealing with conflicted states, the sound varies from bright to dark across its ten songs, and the title track encapsulates the mood. An upbeat pop song carried by Abaya’s soulful and playful vocals, the tone walking the line between confident and confessional.

There are many queens walking circles round this gigantic planet
Not a lot get the credit in the bubble run by princes reciting
Hamlet
Woe is me to be or not to be is that the question
These ladies know what they want and they’ve got too much
time to teach you a lesson

Arthur Moon – 7 O’clock Clap

The moniker of Brooklyn‘s Lora-Faye Åshuvud, Arthur Moon is a project based around intuition and experimentation, as typfied by forthcoming album Chaos! Chaos! Chaos! Side B. Through a combo of pop and electronic styles, they weave sounds full of left-field surprises while always maintaining an overarching sense of control, playing at the boundary between intention and improvisation. “The idea I had was to make an album that was ‘coherently incoherent’,” as Åshuvud explains, capturing the logical diversity of an old-school mixtape. Single ‘7 O’clock Clap’ shows some of this spirit within its two-and-a-half minutes, its shifting moods and tempo evoking the ever-changing phenomenon of identity, and using those cast of ideas to shape what we might ultimately become.

Brother Language – Epley Maneuver

With an album pencilled for release sometime later this year, New York‘s Brother Language has unveiled the single ‘Epley Maneuver’ to give an indication as to what to expect from the record. A slow burning slice of indie rock inspired by a close family member’s diagnosis of vertigo, the song manages to evoke some of the condition’s dizzying force. Its hushed beginning eventually rising into a hefty crescendo, strummed acoustic guitar and a sense of negative space giving way to thumping drums and a scrawl of distorted guitar. Watch the video shot by Abigail Diess below:

‘Epley Maneuver’ is out now and available from the Brother Language Bandcamp page.

Corey Leiter – Lay It Down

After the shadowy tones of 2022 LP Fire Season, LA’s Corey Leiter has returned with brand new single ‘Lay It Down’ on Anxiety Blanket Records which turns to a more compassionate vibe. While living in Echo Park by the 101 Freeway, Leiter came to witness his neighbours living under the overpass, and the track looks to humanise those failed by the system and state while raising money for the Los Angeles Food Bank. Leiter says the song “seeks to feel like a warm hug from a friend,” offering a hand to those in need amid a country all too ready to pretend they do not exist.

Dorio – Lost These Days

Described as hanging “in the liminal space between upbeat orchestral pop and anonymous late-night lounge,” the music of Austin‘s Dorio (AKA Chad Doriocourt) offers a dreamy nocturnal sound indebted to Tokyo’s Shibuya-Kei movement. With new album Strawberry Dreams coming later this month on Earth Libraries, Doriocourt has unveiled new single, ‘Lost These Days’. Introducing the vocals of collaborator Rachel Rascoe, the song offers a typically vivid sound, with the easygoing retrofuturist vibe only accentuated by the clarity of Rascoe’s voice. “When the big night is here is late,” she sings with a tone somewhere between twee and sardonic, “Rest your heart rate, yeah the rush is great! / Legend in your own mind, if you write the lines.”

Hayden – Are We Good

“Are you worried about the past / coming back to you too fast,” asks Hayden Desser, AKA Hayden, on the title track of tenth album Are We Good. “Are you worried about the sea / and what’s going on underneath?” The final image is a pertinent one for an artist who has made a name blending melancholic emotion with a certain slacker rock charm. A sound which might appear untroubled on the surface yet is constantly roiling and drifting below. The new record, his first since 2015’s Hey Love, feels like the perfection of this style, landing in the centre of a Venn diagram consisting of Berman, Malkmus and Berninger. Watch the video for the single directed and edited by Desser himself below:

Are We Good is out now via Arts & Crafts and available from the Hayden Bandcamp page.

Lee Switzer-Woolf – Yucatán

Back in 2022 we wrote about ‘The Negative Twin’ from Lee Switzer-Woolf‘s Scientific Automatic Palmistry, a “sparse and haunting” track which carried “a stark urgency beneath its inky surface.” Switzer-Woolf has a new album Annihilation Signals coming next month and latest single ‘Yucatán’ gives an insight into what to expect. A song which again offers a shadowy atmosphere with a downward suck at its centre, drawing the listener down into a subterranean world this time overtly referenced in the lyrics.

Show me those underwater caves
I’m planning on swimming down
Until the light decays
To the crater that the asteroid made
I need to understand the violence
Of the clean break

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

Life Coach – Monday Morning Revelations

Blending the sample and drum machine style of Casiotone For the Painfully Alone and Meursault with the cutting observational lyricism of Aidan Moffat and Malcolm Middleton, Life Coach is the project of Glasgow-based poet and musician Jamie Cameron. New release ‘Monday Morning Revelations’ was penned during the imposed slowdown of the early pandemic, when Cameron took stock of contemporary lifestyles from that moment of surreal remove and found little to appreciate. What emerged is a song which rails against a society built towards efficiency and productivity at the expense of almost everything, as well as our habit of falling for the system’s false promises and playing its game despite ourselves. “Our holy present shrouded in denial is of little worth,” as Cameron says, “if all we seek is ourselves.”

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With new EP Learning To Love Again on the horizon via Nettwerk, Aisha Badru has unveiled new track ‘Lazy River’. A meditation on the process of healing and the various twists and bends which accompany it, and moreover learning to be kind to oneself while adrift on slack currents. The track’s essence is brought to life by hushed, almost whispered vocals, moving away from the style in which Badru has made her name to explore new sounds and moods. “It’s this freeing of myself and allowing myself to try things that people would not expect of me,” as Badru reveals. “I feel more comfortable not meeting those expectations.”

Time moves like a river, winding and slow
Holding on to you is helping me float
I drift in the breeze as your memory washes over me
I will let you go, eventually

Getting over you is like a lazy river ride
I’ve been taking my time

Watch the video directed by Laura-Lynn Petrick below:

Learning To Love Again is out on the 2nd June via Nettwerk.

Color TV – Planchette

Based in Ypsilanti, Michigan, Color TV is a project led Mark Teachout. Having been self-releasing music since 1993, Teachout teamed up with Animal Tapes for Witching a Well, a full-length released late last year. Opener and single ‘Planchette’ serves as the perfect introduction to the experimental, lo-fi sound. It slowly coalesces into life with a palpable assurance, channelling the likes of Guided By Voices, Sebadoh and Califone in its reflective and enveloping textures.

His His – People, Places, Changes

“A small daydream where one’s wishes are allowed to drift to the surface, and longing is permitted to express its true form.” That’s how we described ‘West Coast‘, the previous track from Toronto’s His His. New single ‘People, Places, Changes’ is an altogether more morose affair, confronting grief in all of its lingering influence. Written after the loss of a loved one, the song plays with a bittersweet warmth, both pining for what has now gone and determined to capture the fondness which persists all the same.

‘People, Places, Changes’ is out now.

Kalila Badali – Panacea

Based in Toronto, Kalila Badali is a singer-songwriter whose musical style combines witchy folk and moody art pop and helps her make sense of the world and its mysteries as a neurodivergent person. She is also a psychotherapist, running a private practice that works with neurodivergent people, LGBTQ2SIA+ people, and arts workers. This other avenue of her life informs her music, something that is sure to be apparent on her forthcoming EP, Panacea. The latest single and title track is a wonderful introduction to the record, an ethereal and melodic folk song that Badali wrote when helping a friend through mental illness. It’s a rare example of a song that explores such struggles from the perspective of a therapist, expressing a deep desire to help a loved one whilst trying (seemingly in vain) the dangers of growing too close in the process.

Unconsciously, I’ve attached myself to you.
Rhizomal, with roots instead of a body.

Noele Flowers – Wait for Me

Describing herself as “a relentlessly optimistic, anxiety-ridden, and friendship-obsessed songwriter,” Massachusetts-raised, Brooklyn-based Noele Flowers is preparing to release a new EP titled Wait For Me. Perhaps the most folk-adjacent song on the record, the latest single and title track is a ballad that pairs acoustic guitar with three-part vocal harmonies and includes piano from Aviv Gilad and strong quartet arrangement played by Tiger Darrow and Chase Potter. It’s a song about falling in love while still recovering from the end of a previous relationship. As Flowers explains: “This song is about the anxiety that comes with feeling like your healing process is going to get in the way of something good—asking someone to wait for you.” But it’s deeper than that too, its message of patience applicable to pretty much all aspects of life.

Pacing – Aliens

“Things are getting kinda weird over here.” So sings Katie McTigue on the new Pacing single, ‘Aliens’. Part of WAVE, a forthcoming compilation by Very Jazzed, the song sees McTigue push further than the playful self-deprecation of recent album hatemail into an altogether darker space. A slow burning folk number which starts out placid but gradually escalates into something disorderly, a lonely nighttime drive suddenly interrupted by something bright and loud. Whether this sudden company is extraterrestrial or something more metaphorical is up to you, but either way, the force imposes itself on the sound and abducts McTigue, forcing her to view the world from above regardless of her opinions of such a vantage.

‘Aliens’ is out now and available on streaming services.

Tinge – Armed to the Teeth

Led by Veronica Blackhawk, an Anishinaabe multi-hyphenate from Lake of the Woods, Ontario and now based in Winnipeg, Tinge follows the likes of Camp Cope in heartfelt yet fierce music unafraid to dig through the most personal depths. Having recently signed with House of Wonders Records, the outfit are preparing the release their debut EP Big Deep Sigh next month and have unveiled single ‘Armed to the Teeth’ by way of introduction. A slow burning confessional which finds cathartic release in its forthright style. “This EP means I am finally ready to take up space and open it up for others going through similar phases in their growth,” Blackhawk explains of the release. “To finally exhale those deep breaths I’ve been drawing in over the past few years.”

TV Room – Stacey

Following on from previous single pretend, which we described as “A song about being close to someone, almost too close to say what needs to be said,” TV Room has returned with Sad Club Records with new track, ‘Stacey’. Another example of Lucy Rushton’s ability to write songs at once understated and charged with feeling, the song confronts the decidedly disheartening prospect of negotiating a friend who might not be that much of a friend after all. “It’s about being around people who have main character syndrome and romanticise all the damage they are causing around them instead of taking responsibility for it,” as Rushton explains. “About giving up hope on trying to understand someone and keep up a connection with a person who is trying to hurt and compete with you instead of appreciating the relationship you have and in turn destroying it.” TV Club might describe bad experiences in relationships, but they find room to say what needs to be said.

‘Stacey’ is out now and available from Sad Club Records.

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