With new full-length How Lucky To Be Somebody coming early in 2025 via Repeating Cloud and Safe Suburban Home, Little Oso have shared single ‘Other People’s Lives’ to introduce this bittersweet style perfectly. Our first taste of an album which “chronicles all of the multiple truths of what it feels like to exist,” as Berman says, “and how at the end of the day, at least we get to be here to experience something together.” Nostalgic dream pop tones and Berman’s fond vocal style possess a real sense of sincerity, as though attempting to celebrate the tenuous present as it gets squeezed smaller and smaller by a variety of looming threats. As the refrain goes: “We could build a good life / in the end times.”

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Back in 2022 we featured ‘Metamorphosis’, a single from Chicago-based outfit Daarling which we described as “a simmering, brooding number which dwells on the inevitability of change and the friction which results.” This month saw the release of Daarling’s debut album The Deep Within, which develops the style seen on ‘Metamorphosis’ further to occupy a space between dream pop and post-punk. Take the way recent single ‘Cherish//Flourish’, which again builds from modest beginnings into something both spacious, detailed and prone to sharp rises in intensity, Erin Lyle’s vocals more than a match for the dramatic soundscape which results.

The Duke of Norfolk & This Is A Kit – The Yeast in the Sugar

“An ode to an uncertain relationship, finding beauty and joy in the present despite the lurking doubt, attempting to be grateful no matter how fragile or transient the tie.” That’s how we described The Duke of Norfolk‘s ‘As The Heralds Revere You‘ back in 2019. The track was typical of peripatetic folk musician and multi-instrumentalist Adam Howard’s project, exploring the porous border between reality and myth with a careful, compassionate tone. New song ‘The Yeast in the Sugar’ is a collaboration with This Is the Kit, and continues this style with a decidedly patient quality. A meditation on what it means to wait, to develop slowly in a world which demands immediate gratification.

James Jonathan Clancy – Had It All

Perhaps best known as lead of art punk ensemble His Clancyness (plus noise group Brutal Birthday), it has been seven years since James Jonathan Clancy released a record. In the interim he founded the record label Maple Death Records, and slowly but surely worked to refine his own creative work. The result of that period of focus and innovation is Sprecato, a record Clancy will release on his label early next year, the first under his birth name. Written and recorded between London and Bologna and featuring a transnational ensemble of collaborators, the album takes inspiration from the ‘apocalyptic pastoralism’ of Michelangelo Setola’s Gli Sprecati, though ends up pushing into a territory all of its own. Single ‘Had It All’ is a good place to jump in, taking equal parts cosmic folk and spacious ambient styles and applying them to a more traditional singer-songwriter sound.

Joseph Shabason – Welcome To Hell

“Soundscapes full of detail, movement and laidback swagger, which get at something almost intangible, the spirit of the era.” So we described Joseph Shabason’s Welcome to Hell, an album on Western Vinyl and Telephone Explosion Records which uses the eponymous Toy Machine video as a jumping off point to paint a sonic picture of the nineties skate scene. With the record now available, the final single and title track is a fitting point of entry, taking the most rewound part of the tape—the bail segment—and reimagining the soundtrack as an out-of-body ambient chill. The resulting video presents a strange mix of ballet and body horror which Shabason’s soft vocals instil with all the longing and glory of the best memorial.

Welcome To Hell is out now via Western Vinyl and Telephone Explosion Records.

The Juniper Berries – Role Model

Fronted by Josh Stirm, The Juniper Berries are an Austin-based outfit preparing to release their album Death and Taxes next spring on Earth Libraries. Lead single ‘Role Model’ introduces what to expect from the album, with the upbeat country rock style mapping the complicated edges of grief and attempting to use loss as an impetus to keep on living. Storytelling is a big part of the record, with fictional narratives employed as a kind of distancing force, but the single holds up intensely personal circumstances to ground the themes of the record. The experience of going through the process of mourning as it is made all the more difficult by the knotty relationship shared in life.

I got a little bit closer to the edge last night than I had planned
you were running through my mind,
you’re up there all the time
but now I’ll never, ever, see you again

Looms – Hologram

The Dogs of Doubt, the latest EP from Brooklyn‘s Looms, is the kind of release which most fully rewards the patient and curious. For while the tracks are immediately impressive in their careful craft and emotional resonance, those willing to return to them will witness Sharif Mekawy’s songs unfurl with graceful depth. Take the understated build of single ‘Hologram’, which presents itself as a tender folk song, though is complicated by its subtle layers. The track’s true nature seems to be revealed by its outro, like a book which only makes perfect sense on reading the final chapters. The wise listener will return to the beginning to repeat the process, thereby lowering themselves more fully into the beguiling world of Looms.

Malachi Graham – Together for the Kids

What she calls “a hymn for the exhausted,” Caretaker is the forthcoming new album from Portland singer-songwriter Malachi Graham. The record was inspired by a bad breakup and its aftermath, in which the scales fell from Graham’s eyes and she began to see pathological behaviour everywhere—be that in others and herself. Single ‘Together For the Kids’ introduces the record’s uncompromising exploration of these behaviours and heralds the more rock-oriented style Graham has embraced to capture the experience in all of its chaos, starting tense and bitterly wistful before blooming into a gloriously noisy catharsis.

Caretaker is out on the 15th January and you can pre-order it now.

nudista – Different Eyes

We last wrote about London band nudista early last year, calling single ‘inasmuch’ (from debut EP Halfway Here) “a clarified dream pop which seeks to communicate directly and honestly.” Now the duo, Pilar Matji Cabello and Robbie Carman, are back with a new single ‘Different Eyes’, released by the ever-reliable Sad Club Records. The song explores what Carman calls “a distrust of my own narrative […] a gradual realisation that I have outgrown some previously held opinions,” and again focuses on communicating as directly and plainly as possible. This is delivered with a little more verve and rough edges, adding a country-gaze rock swagger to their careful emotion. Oh, and the chorus is a killer.

You never want to be here
You’re always somewhere else
You’re always chasing something
Trying to be someone else

‘Different Eyes’ is out now via Sad Club Records and available from the nudista Bandcamp page.

Sierra Ferrell – Fox Hunt

“Well, take the path down to the river, it is hunting time / Clothe the kids and feed the children, oh, the meat is fine.” So opens ‘Fox Hunt’, the new single from country artist Sierra Ferrell, a track which harks back to bygone days to capture the thrill of the hunt. But this is no sleepy, sepia-toned pastoral scene, its racing strings and stomping percussion capturing the breathless rush through a forest in all of its boisterous, full-blooded glory. “The lyrics may be straight old time,” Ferrell says of the track in a piece for Rolling Stone, “but the music is pure adrenaline… and maybe that’s what I’m here for.”

Watch the animated video (hand drawn by Rob Fidel) below:

‘Fox Hunt’ is out now and available via streaming services.

Teenage Halloween – Melodrama

“Burning through the bullshit to occupy your space in the world.” That’s how we described Teenage Halloween’s new LP, Till You Return, in a preview of single ‘Armageddon Now‘. With the album now out via Don Giovanni, the New Jersey outfit have unveiled latest single, ‘Melodrama’. A sub-two-minute ripper which lives up the same spirit, refusing the slide towards pessimism and nihilistic tendencies with a bracing sense of momentum. Life is hard and things are often beyond our control, but with enough propulsive force we might fight to keep our heads above water yet.

Watch the video by Alex Cihanowic below:

Till You Return is out on the 20th October via Don Giovanni Records and you can pre-order it now.

The post Weekly Listening: October 2023 #4 appeared first on Various Small Flames.

First single ‘Getting Bitter‘ saw bassist Tricia Marshall take on vocal duties to “[channel] the love and angst of the Teenage Halloween sound into a picture of addiction in all of its tangled complications,” as we described in a preview. “Where a desire to help a loved one struggling with such issues is counterbalanced by an unavoidable frustration.” In contrast, latest track ‘Armageddon Now’ hands the reins back over to Eli Frank and Luk Henderiks for a searing take on the pitfalls of avoiding the difficult parts of life.

“‘Armageddon Now’ urges the listener to find strength to speak their truth in the face of adversity,” as Henderiks explains. “It channels the feeling that others are steamrolling your thoughts and actions and how you have to just follow your own path in the end. The only way to feel heard at times is to keep on pushing your voice, even when it’s not the loudest one in the room.” And Henderiks is more than willing to live up to their own advice, the vocal delivery harnessing the sound’s momentum to achieve a tone both caustic and cathartic. Burning through the bullshit to occupy your space in the world.

I could never charm
Could be good to speak up
Maybe just show honesty
Avoid armageddon now
In the end you’ll leave
Get over it in time
Even when you were entitled to my mind

The song comes complete with a video directed by Chris Warner and director of photography Alex Korpi. “‘Armageddon Now’ is a collaboration born out of our shared love for the Queer Punk Outlaws wrestling nights that take place in Brooklyn; and which our bassist Tricia’s cousin Judith Henry is involved in,” Henderiks continues. “We invited Judith, our old friend (and previous Teenage Halloween touring member) Mem Pahl, and long-time scene acquaintance Reid Worrol to come bring some of their righteous moves to this celebration of queer strength and an embracing of chaos.”

Till You Return is out on the 20th October via Don Giovanni Records and you can pre-order it now.

Photo by Okie Dokie Studios

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After releasing their sixth album See Through You on DedStrange last February, post-punk icons A Place To Bury Strangers are sharing a series of remixed singles from the record. After offerings from the likes of The Pleasure Majenta and GIFT, the most recent sees Annie Hart take the reins for a reimagining of album opener ‘Nice of You to be There For Me’. A version which strips the harsh immediacy of the original in favour of something reflective and shining, the original’s needle replaced by an ethereal air. Where Oliver Ackermann previously railed against greed with a building volatility, here his words carry the melancholy of hindsight. Mourning mistakes rather than threatening to set them straight.

Illbe – It’s Time

Described as being inspired by the “‘beyond the grave feel’ of Nick Cave’s radical introspection,” Illbe’s latest single ‘It’s Time’ introduces the dark and alluring tone of forthcoming EP, Long Gone. The project is the alter ego of Liège’s Gauthier Gilissen, a musician who draws upon cinema as the source of his sound, aiming for something between the nocturnal paranoia of neo-noir and a Lynchian surrealism. ‘It’s Time’ finds its narrator navigating such a world. Searching for answers within an unforthcoming environment, the patient Cave-esque delivery furthering the existential mystery at the heart. Check out the video directed by Corentin Cuvelier below:

‘It’s Time’ is out now and you can get it from the Illbe Bandcamp page. Long Gone will be released next month.

Kelsey Magnuson – Faking It

Following on from previous single ‘Beep Beep‘, Olympia‘s Kelsey Magnuson has unveiled another track from forthcoming debut Don’t Budge on Earth Libraries. Closing out the album, the song again highlights Magnuson’s ability to sound at once earnest and playful, as though the thoughts communicated are entirely meant, yet delivered with a certain self-awareness. But ultimately the needle settles on the sincere side of things, ending on a sense of hope which feels all the more heartfelt for its plainness. “Cuz growing up feels like were faking it ’til we learn to fake it better,” Magnuson sings in the final lines. “Growing up up feels like were faking it so why don’t we fake it together?”

Laveda – Surprise

The music of Laveda always promises lush textures and heartfelt emotion, and new single ‘Surprise’ is no exception. Introducing an upcoming second album to be released later this year on Papercup Music, the single offers a bright, upbeat sound which belies the turmoil of the lyrics. A juxtaposition which both embraces the nostalgia of the dream pop/shoegaze style while also refusing to retreat fully from the realties of living and working through pandemics and other challenges. “Being alive is just getting old,” Ali Genevich sings, “I’m not surprised that I’m not sober.” Check out the video directed by Genevich herself and shot By Derick Noetzel and Valerie Barbosa below:

‘Surprise’ is out now and available from the Laveda Bandcamp page.

Mali Obomsawin – Odana

Mali Obomsawin is a Wabanaki bassist, composer, and songwriter whose work opposes the Western idea that indigenous cultures are somehow inflexible and backward looking, highlighting the continuous process of resistance and adaptation required to survive in the face of colonialism. Obomsawin recently announced a new album, Sweet Tooth, on Out of Your Head Records. A collection of songs which draws on many threads—jazz, folk, Wabanaki stories and Catholic hymns—to explore contemporary indigenous life and celebrate its endurance and creativity, even when faced with great violence and cruelty. “My people have had to innovate endlessly to get our stories heard,” Obomsawin explains. “Learning to express ourselves in French, English, Abenaki… but sometimes words fail us, and we must use sound.” Lead single ‘Odana’ introduces the record perfectly. A ballad first written in the 1700s, it pays homage to the Abenaki reservation in Quebec, Odanak, founded by Obomsawin’s Sokoki and Abenaki ancestors in 1660 as they fled to modern-day Canada to escape Royally-sanctioned persecution by English colonizers.

Pale Angels – Casper

Based between the Welsh city of Swansea and Rahway, New Jersey, Pale Angels make what label Specialist Subject Records describe as “transcontinental punk trash.” They have just announced a brand new record, their first in six years, titled Plastic Legacy pt II and lead single ‘Casper’ is a glimpse of what to expect. For all of its punk rock fuzz and grittily desperate vocals, it’s actually a lot more sincere than SSR’s label suggests. Founding members Jamie Morrison and Michael Santostefano are joined by Vacation songwriter Jerome Westerkamp on drums to create something with a real emotional punch.

Rival Consoles – World Turns

Rival Consoles, the recording project of London-based musician and producer Ryan Lee West, is set to release new album Now Is via Erased Tapes next month, and latest single ‘World Turns’ welcomes listeners into the blended, digital and acoustic soundscapes West creates. There’s a certain minimalism to the Rival Consoles sound, even if the tag doesn’t quite do justice to the detail of the songs. A sense of clarity developed via a central repetition. This single, for example, is “built around this pendulum-like bass, that constantly drives the piece forward,” as West explains. Minimalism in the way of fine machinery. An elegant coherence to design. “I like having parts in music which are repetitive but everything else is changing around it,” West continues, “almost like a kind of hidden structure, because the repetition becomes more subliminal.”

Secret Shame – Luxury Bitch

“A ferocious, no holds barred descent into the depths of a psyche, emerging if not triumphant then somehow born again.” That’s how we described ‘Hide’, the last single from Asheville post-punks Secret Shame. Next month sees the release of the band’s long-awaited new album Autonomy, and new single ‘Luxury Bitch’ is every bit as intense, barrelling headlong into anxieties surrounding mental health and the knock-on effects such struggles can bring. “Will you still be there / to hold me when I am trying,” asks lead Lena Machina, “when I am losing and when I lose?” If Autonomy represents Machina pivoting towards a new direct approach to songwriting, then ‘Luxury Bitch’ shows exactly what you can expect.

Sheenah Ko – Eyes of the Ego

Montreal electronic artist Sheenah Ko makes introspective and sophisticated pop music in the vein of Kate Bush or Björk. Earlier this summer, Sheenah Ko released her sophomore album The Future is Now, what she described as “a cautious reminder to take advantage of the little time you’ve been given in our wonderous world.” Since the record’s release, Ko has unveiled music videos for several of the tracks, the latest being for ‘Eyes of the Ego’. Directed by Anne Marie Munoz, the video was made with a 100% female, majority LGBTQ+ cast and crew, starring filmmaker/artist/actor Katharine King So and Le Couleur vocalist Laurence Giroux-Do alongside Ko. “Passion and anger are manifestations of the ego; that can drag us deeper and deeper into our minds, into a dream where we can’t escape,” Ko explains “This video is a representation of the exploration of the self, to identify and accept the ego as a part of us, but it does not have to be us or define us. To realize we are the eyes behind our ego and that we can be the observer of the ego.”

Future Is Now is out via Lazy At Work and you can get it from the Sheenah Ko Bandcamp page.

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To celebrate the arrival of their brand new record, Embody, Hamilton’s Basement Revolver have unveiled the final single, ‘Dissolve’. We previously described how the album displays a “willingness to confront the intricacies of modern life with a newfound steel and depth,” and the new single is full of the compassion and solidarity which makes this possible. An ode to figuring things out together.

Carli & The Dark – Voicemail

Carli & The Dark is the folk rock project of Phoenix-born, Brooklyn-based songwriter Carli Naff. Latest single ‘Voicemail’ concerns losing a parent, specifically that strange half second when the urge to contact them arises out of well-worn habit, a wish to share a simple moment of a day. The song emerges from this brief period where they are still alive, still waiting, and follows it through the renewed sense of loss before culminating in a compassionate group refrain which features Naff’s mother and siblings among other loved ones. “All my peeps who grieved together,” as she puts it. “It’s a little detail that really brings me a sense of safety at the end, of being held.”

Saying my nickname in a voicemail from your car
You were there, there you are
And though you are not around,
You would love this song I found

Cinder Well x Jim Ghedi – I Am a Youth That’s Inclined to Ramble

Cinder Well and Jim Ghedi have teamed up for a new two-song single, reinterpreting traditional folk ballads. ‘I Am a Youth That’s Inclined to Rambled’ highlights how the pair accentuate the stark loneliness of the material with sparse arrangements haunted by foreboding drone. A song of vast distances and separation, sung into a soundscape as empty and inscrutable as the ocean itself.

I Am a Youth That’s Inclined to Ramble is out now via Free Dirt Records and is available from the Cinder Well Bandcamp page.

hemlock – to carry (feat. Laith)

Described as an “interstate phone-fi bedroom folk saga of sorts,” talk soon is the full-band Chicago-based project hemlock. Latest single invites long-time friend and collaborator Laith Scherer and explores the nuances of a relationship as it changes over time and distance. A song of hushed yet heartfelt vignettes which rises toward an impassioned finale, providing snapshots of love in its various guises.

it’s okay
we carry our pain
in separate ways
on different days
but I’ll be there for you

Jeremy Squires – Drift

We’ve written about North Carolina native Jeremy Squires numerous times, an artist working in the American songwriting tradition of sharing heart and soul with generous helpings of grit and honesty. Ahead of a new album, slated for release later this year on Blackbird Record Label, Squires has unveiled a new single, ‘Drift’. It’s a song that finds him at his devastating best, built on just acoustic guitar, harmonica and vocals that quaver with both exhausted despondency and a steely inner strength. “I was sad,” he sings, “Now I’m lost / I forgot where I belong.”

Knuckle Pups – Soft Attraction

Ahead of their upcoming album, TV Ready, Denver “soda punk” outfit Knuckle Pups have unveiled single ‘Soft Attraction’. The track is an encapsulation of what such a genre entails, taking the fizzy energy of indie and adding an anarchic punk edge, though the songs are far from one-dimensional sugar rushes. Principle songwriter Oliver Holloway writes songs spread across the gamut of moods and tones, making room for earnest emotion and ironic playfulness within the same track, and as the new single shows, this often builds into triumphantly cathartic crescendos.

TV Ready is set for release sometime later this year.

Mouse – Pinned To An Avalanche

Based between Sunshine Coast and Brisbane, Mouse formed over a mutual appreciation of noisy DIY music, and thus set about making it themselves. The first single from forthcoming debut Here Was Then on Kitty Records, ‘Pinned to an Avalanche’ is all about escaping worry and doubt through some larger, consuming present, and Mouse oblige by recreating the descending wall of snow with their dense and hefty sound. Check out the video directed by the band and shot by Harley Jones:

Here Was Then will be released by Kitty Records later this year.

nudista – inasmuch

Next month sees the release of nudista’s Halfway Here EP on Sad Club Records, but in the meantime they have unveiled a new standalone single, ‘inasmuch’. The song is a great introduction to Pilar Matji Cabello and Robbie Carman’s work, a clarified dream pop which seeks to communicate directly and honestly. “It is a message to say that we are capable of evolving and moving forward even when it is scary,” as Cabello puts it, the gentle rhythmic pull drawing the listener close and compelling them onward.

Oceanator – Bad Brain Daze

April sees the return of Oceanator with Nothing’s Ever Fine, a brand new album on Polyvinyl Records and Big Scary Monsters which looks to build upon the apocalyptic themes of 2020’s Things I Never Said. Lead single ‘Bad Brain Daze’ typifies the duality of tenuous optimism and crushing pessimism which marks the record. The sound of existing within an unfolding disaster where the conclusion is still unclear, and nevertheless delivered with Elise Okusami’s characteristically triumphant energy. Check out the video directed by Chris Farren below:

Nothing’s Ever Fine is out on the 8th April via Polyvinyl Records and Big Scary Monsters and you can pre-order it now from the Oceanator Bandcamp page.

Sonic Løland – Up to You

Norwegian musician Anders Løland spent much of 2020 experimenting with styles and sounds, building up a library of ideas and demos which would form the basis of And Then The Sun Came Up, the debut album of his Sonic Løland project. Due for release this autumn via Koke Plate, the album shows off the full spectrum of Løland’s inspiration, creating a new brand of indie folk with ambient styles, electronic drums and rich 60s sensibilities, as shown by lead single, ‘Up to You’.

And Then The Sun Came Up will be released by Koke Plate this coming autumn.

Stephen Durkan – Prayer

Combining spoken word with electronic and ambient styles, Glasgow’s Stephen Durkan seems the latest in a long line of cynical Scottish preachers, bitter and sardonic yet bursting with a verbal energy. Written in collaboration with multi-instrumentalist/producer Niko O’Brien and released via Upcycled Sounds Records, his debut EP The Stories We Tell Ourselves About Ourselves both confirms and subverts this label. The anger and frustration are palpable, but beneath this lies something else. A flimsy belief in the continued value of critiquing the society in which we find ourselves, in imagining something new. Check out the first single ‘Prayer’ below:

Teen Idle – Burning

The music of Teen Idle might be an almost entirely solo endeavour recorded in a New Jersey basement, but you’d never guess it from the sound. For Sara Abdelbarry rejects the lo-fi aesthetics of many garage and bedroom acts for something more full-bodied. Take latest single, ‘Burning’, its rich sound featuring electric guitar, bass guitar, keys, synth, shaker, maracas, claps, lighter and sound effects all played by Abdelbarry, with only the drums delegated to Danny Murray. What emerges is an examination of unrequited love in all of its vivid detail, hope, bitterness and unabashed emotion rising into a huge climax.

I climbed up to the top alone
And watch the city burn below
If you won’t help me put her to rest
I’ll dig the hole by myself

The post Weekly Listening: Feb 2022 #3 appeared first on Various Small Flames.

A collaboration between long-time friends Katherine Dohan and David B. Greenberg, New Jersey‘s Ambrosia is a project based around spontaneity and sincerity. Their Tears EP draws on elements of bedroom pop, indie rock and psychedelia to realise this goal, their style as stirring as it is playful and full of affirming joy. With its upbeat rock rhythm, eponymous opener ‘Ambrosia’ shows the duo at their most energetic, while ‘I Saw Your Heart’ offers a more cryptic tone—an off-kilter pop sure to win over fans of acts like Dear Nora.

Billow – Swimming Pool

Based in Veselí Nad Moravou, Czechia, Billow is a lo-fi pop three piece led by Lenka Zborilova. Ahead of latest EP IV coming later this month on Z Tapes, they have unveiled a brand new single, ‘Swimming Pool’. Taking an altogether lighter tone from previous album III, the single is indicative of the intimate warmth of the new release, though its fond textures are shadowed by a pervasive melancholy too.

Crake – Winter’s Song

Exploring grief and cruelty through an evocatively cryptic style, Humans’ Worst Habits by Leeds-based outfit Crake take Nan Shepherd’s focus on the natural world and add the unsettling dark of Shirley Jackson. A collision of the organic and metaphysical which sees lead Rowan Sandle conjure a world both alien and very much our own. Such a paradox is just one of the complexities at work on the record, and is nicely captured by latest single, ‘Winter’s Song’. “That time I saw the moon rise / And I swore it was a sun set,” Sandle sings. An image remarkable or ominous, or perhaps both simultaneously.

Fontanarosa – OH ID

Are You There ?, the debut album of Lyon-based Fontanarosa, is coming next month on Howlin’ Banana Records and lead single ‘OH ID’ gives a glimpse into the excitable sound which awaits. Combining agitated post-rock angles with smooth pop energy, the band practices tight execution within an off-the-wall playfulness, leading to something of many moving parts that will get your parts moving too. Check out the video by Documavision below:

Are You There ? is out on the 18th March via Howlin’ Banana Records.

Frog Eyes – When You Turn on the Light

Despite supposedly splitting up four years ago and repurposing as Soft Plastics, Toronto-based indie rock stalwarts Frog Eyes are set to return this spring with a brand new record, The Bees. Lead single ‘When You Turn on the Light’ captures the idiosyncratic style lead Carey Mercer has made the Frog Eyes M.O. A song somehow both sprawling and understated, partially inspired by the time Mercer painted a fresco on the wall of his rented Vancouver apartment. “A hellish umber landscape” which poisoned the air with paint fumes and accelerated if not wholly caused Mercer’s subsequent eviction. Check out the video directed by Derek Janzen below:

The Bees is out via Paper Bag Records on the 29th April and you can pre-order it now.

Granny Smith – Out Of My Head

The recording project of Toronto‘s Jason Bhattacharya, Granny Smith is a one man band indebted to the classic pop of yesteryear. Latest track ‘Out of My Head’ is a bite-sized meditation on the dissociative episodes Bhattacharya faced after being put into a coma by a series of seizures. An unreal swirl of piano and dreamy vocals are underpinned by a variety of bass lines shooting off in different directions. “I wanted to express the feeling of having multiple narratives going on at once,” Bhattacharya explains, “trying to listen but your mind is telling you a thousand things.”

KMRU – shela

Under the moniker KMRU, Nairobi’s Joseph Kamaru has made a name crafting expansive yet intimate compositions through a layered variety of ambient, drone and field recording styles. A sound at once thoroughly immersive and thematically probing, examining the relationship between people and their surroundings, as well as change both spatial and temporal. Taken from latest release there was nothing in between, ‘shela’ exists within the slipstream of the present moment. An energetic bustle already haunted by its coming absence.

Melanie MacLaren – Deep Dark Sleep

Writing of single ‘Graveyard Shift‘ last summer, we described the music of Nashville-based songwriter Melanie MacLaren as “indebted to the past and the present without being beholden to either, managing to possess the timeless country spirit without sacrificing any sense of immediacy.” The final single from her EP Kill My Time, ‘Deep Dark Sleep’ continues this style. Its classic wistful tone rooted in the acoustic guitar, the sound made richer with washes of synths, all coalescing around the piercing clarity of MacLaren’s vocals.

Kill My Time is out now and you can find out more from the Melanie MacLaren webpage.

Ross Jenkins – Small House

Next month sees the release of Free All Day, the latest album Vancouver-based songwriter Ross Jenkins. Building upon the DIY style first shown on 2019’s Green EP, the records sees Jenkins joined by Ryan Jewell (drums) and Barry Walker Jr. (pedal steel) and making his richest, most considered songs to date. Spacious first single ‘Music is Sweet’ showed both the sharp writing and easy-going confidence which informs the new album, and latest track ‘Small Houses’ not only doubles down but opens up new avenues too with a subtle mysticism.

Sadurn – snake

Originally the solo project of Genevieve DeGroot, Philadelphia‘s Sadurn have evolved into a quartet and announced their debut album on Run For Cover Records. Recorded in a DIY studio the band created in an Airbnb in Pennsylvania’s Poconos Mountains, Radiator sees everything that was good about the lo-fi early Sadurn recordings polished up, dusted off and matured into a folk-inflected style that draws as much genuine emotion from its melodies as it does its introspective lyrics. Lead single ‘snake’ is a good example and you can check it out below:

Sooner – Thursday

Ahead of the debut album Days and Nights on Good Eye Records, Brooklyn’s Sooner have unveiled a brand new single, ‘Thursday’. The track is an encapsulation of the band’s style. A melding of dream pop lightness with heavier alt/shoegaze elements, the vocals of lead Federica Tassano proving equally malleable in their ability to pivot from soft croon to urgent energy as they chart a toxic relationship. Juxtaposition lies at the heart of the Sooner sound, and ‘Thursday’ is the perfectly bittersweet introduction.

Days and Nights is out via Good Eye Records on the 25th March and you can pre-order it from the Sooner Bandcamp page.

The post Weekly Listening: Feb 2022 #2 appeared first on Various Small Flames.

But that all changes with the release of a brand new single, ‘Call Me Caligula’. Though smoothing out some of the edges of the previous EP, the track retains the the Constant Companion spirit, a confident sense of motion supporting the inventive lyricism. And it is here where the band really stand out. Their idiosyncratic mix of references and introspection performs the tricky feat of sounding at once sincere and deadpan. How else to write a love song based around a vain tyrant?

But the concept is more than an exercise in mismatched possibility. Rather a study of imperfections, and how love has a habit of superseding them, or indeed ironing them out. “I hang on every word / You breathe in my ear,” goes one verse. “The most mellifluous / Sheer propaganda.” The sense of giving in to something. Feelings stronger than sense.

I am a simple man
I don’t have many wants
If love’s a murderer
Call me Caligula

Cover art by Erin Kuhn

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Following on from the EP, next month sees the release of the debut full-length Aurora Aura record, a self-titled album out via Totally Real Records. Lead single ‘Purity’ builds on the aforementioned style, again evoking a sense of gentle patience in the way it slowly builds. Sebes’s guitar loops act as a kind of downward spiral, a slow deepening that draws the listener in, while Fawn’s abstract imagery finds fertile ground within the shimmer. The result is something poetic and intuitive, an organic unfurling complete with the easy beauty of nature, and the latent melancholy that exists behind its every view.

Never saw you
could you really live
In a perfect dewdrop?
Could – you – really
Could you live in
Cooling breeze?
I feel something
Dream gleam
I sense something
I feel a purity
I know you like when I sing
I know you like I when I leave little piles of berries, little wrapped up twigs I sense something

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Fast forward a year, a boxset is back with batch_six, a brand new EP to be released on Devil Town Tapes. Not one to rest on his laurels, the album sees Dunphey jettison the structured songwriting approach of the previous record in favour of something more instinctive. And the result is perhaps boxset in its truest form, indebted to no conventions or expectations, allowing their sound to flow naturally and following the current.

Lead single ‘jar’ gives a glimpse of the result. Despite the slightly heavier, grungier tone, the song agile and bright. The carefree motion and sun bleached charm point to a slacker rock influence, but there’s an added edge to both the guitars and vocals that avoid the genre’s most ironic side. Which is not to say the track is not playful. Its strange lyrics tell the tale of scavenging ants and the casual cruelty of higher powers, lending a surreal atmosphere that lifts the track above its contemporaries and marks Dunphey as a songwriter to watch.

heading out early
lighting all around me
sun is beating on me
the maker left something in my way

can i head over?
i think i’ll head over
i’ll let the others know
what was sent

i saw it there
above me
my skin is burning
a lens is burning

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Very much a product of our ludicrous times, Shapes & Colors ​sees, as the band put it, “autofictional, surreal protagonists making do against a technicolor backdrop.” The tone exists somewhere between sincerity and absurdity, a George Saunders-esque appreciation of not only the bizarre excesses of our society but also the people striving to live beneath them. With subject matter ranging from brand paranoia to escapist fantasies both forward-looking and back, this is a record by and for folks stranded amidst the roiling sea of late capitalism, clinging to anything and everything in an effort to stay afloat.

“In my first year after graduating from college, commonly referred to as ‘the beginning of the rest of your life,’ I held onto books, songs, anything I could relate to as much as retreat to,” Waldron explains. “The aim of this album really is for others to use it the same way.” To further these themes and ideas, Sailor Boyfriend have also put together a full color, 4.25″ by 5.5″ zine, filled with illustrations based on each song from Kat Schneider, Laura Marciniak, and Waldron himself.

Today, we’re lucky enough to be able to share a new single, ‘The Battle of Sugarhill’. The perfect example of Sailor Boyfriend’s uncanny ability to create songs both sleek and playful, the track is a taut, neon-flashed display suspended within a dreamy dark. The hip mood and style belies the comic farce of the lyrics, Waldron detailing a war as seen through the eyes of “disco sucks” DJs

You know you gotta believe
Pray loud enough ‘till they scream

Marching with our crimson platform shoes
Kneeling on our Velvet leather pews

took on Sugarhill
Dahl scoffed, “oh, this landfill?”
i asked if he’d been but he just grinned
and rung his decibel

bearing flags of artistry
we were screamin’ like an infantry
They’re ready to shock? i’d die on this rock and
Take back our industry

Album art by Andy Waldron

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