2nd Grade – Favorite Song
Adeline Hotel – Lightning
Adrianne Lenker – Cradle
Allison’s Gate – Traces
Anna McClellan – Heart of Hearts
Advance Base – Christmas in Nightmare City
Badlands – Slow it Down
Bambara – José Tries to Leave
The Beths – Whatever
Bodega – Jack in Titanic
boygenius – Me & My Dog
Camp Cope – UFO Lighter
Campdogzzz – Sorceress
Cave People – I Shall Believe
Damien Jurado – Percy Faith
Dead Painters – Fool on Fire
Dear Nora – Simulation Feels
Dehd – Dying For
Devon Welsh – Vampires
Diva Sweetly – Detox Island
Doe – Heated
Dusted – Outline of a Wolf
Field Report – Every Time
Frankie Valet – Something to do with a mouth
Gia Margaret – Birthday
Goodbye Max – Old Photos
Good Good Blood – Cannot Be Yours Forever
Gorgeous Bully – Patience
Great Health – Lazarus
Hop Along – How Simple
Hour – At the bar where you literally saved me from fatal heartbreak 
Houses – Fast Talk
Hovvdy – Brave
Hypoluxo – Kentucky Smooth
IAN SWEET – Hiding
Kal Marks – Today I Walked Down To The Tree, Read A Book, And When I Was Done, I Went Back Inside
Katy Kirby – Juniper
Kevin Morby & Waxahatchee – Dark Don’t Hide It
Kississippi – Easier to Love
Kraków Loves Adana – The Day the Internet Died
Lala Lala – Destroyer
Lisa/Liza – Tea Kettle
lowly loverboi – Graveyards in Space
Lucy Dacus – Yours & Mine
Mike Pace & the Child Actors – Escape the Noise
Miranda Winters – The Futuristic District
Mitski – Nobody
Moonface – Minotaur Forgiving Pasiphae
Moon Racer – Friendly Ghost
Nap Eyes – Every Time the Feeling
Nice Try – Micah
Nicole Dollanganger – Uncle
No Age – Drippy
Oceanator – Mistakes
Of The Valley – Ride Alone
Pale Kids – St. Theresa
Pat Moon – I Belong
Pema – Depend
Petal – I’m Sorry
Pink Navel – born-100.dev
Pizza Girl – Body Part
Protomartyr – Wheel of Fortune
Remember Sports – Dripping
Restorations – Nonbeliever
Rivulets – Everything Goes
Ryan Von Gonten – Fabrique
Sabriel’s Orb – Holding
Saccharine – Pumpkin Guts
Sam Moss – Snap
Sara Renberg – Take the Summer Off
Sobs – Sundae
Spartan Jet-Plex – Sweet
Strange Ranger – The Wires
Sun June – Slow Rise II
Swearin’ – Dogpile
Talk, Tired Thanatoid – Everything’s Cool
Tomberlin – Any Other Way
Trace Mountains – Salty Sweet
Trust Fall – Wild Fire/Flowers
TVU – All For Nothing
Weakened Friends – Blue Again
Whitney Baleen – Rainer
Why Bonnie – Stereo
Wild Pink – The Seance on St. Augustine Street
wished bone – reasons
Yellowfront – Cool Breeze
Young Jesus – For Nana
Young Statues – Somebody Else
Yowler – Where Is My Light?

If you missed it, we have also posted our favourite albums list, so check that out too.

The post Favourite Songs of 2018 appeared first on Various Small Flames.

First up is Jonathan Chin, resident writer, editor and photographer at the NYC-based blog Cereal + Sounds.

A Meh at Best EP

by Jonathan Chin

1. Song from who you consider the most underrated band of all-time

Do The Method – The Method Actors

I think these guys got lost somewhere during the no/new wave/post-punk movement we had in the States. It’s been said that they’re the 6th most famous band to come from Athens, GA but I’ve only heard about them when their compilation, This Is Still It, was reviewed by publications in late 2010. I actually found out about this band when I had a membership for eMusic and I went on a buying spree with the monthly allowance they gave out. The career-compilation is quite good, and I’d hope they have a DEATH-like resurgence, but that never happened. I highly recommend this band to anyone who loves Wire, The Fall, and Television.

My runner-ups for the most underrated of all time are The Feelies, Yo La Tengo, The Fall, and Chin Chin.

Every Artist Needs a Tragedy – No Age

July 2008, No Age @ The South Street Seaport, was the second concert I’ve ever been to. It was pretty big for me at the time as a 16 year old venturing off to shows by myself, still figuring out the proper showgoer etiquette. I couldn’t convince any of my friends to go with me so I did this one solo. I should note that the Seaport isn’t really a venue, its an area by NYC’s East River and the Brooklyn Bridge where the architecture of old NYC is still preserved. The group that organizes events at the Seaport have always been great every year in putting on free all-age shows, picking bands that I’d throw sacks of money to see. The stage is situated on a dock right next to the Brooklyn Bridge where the NYC ferries take off, with Queens and Brooklyn serving as a backdrop.

No Age was in town to play the Seaport Nouns (one of my favorites to this day) and they had done an interview with Pete Wentz (of Fall Out Boy fame…) for MTV. The interview itself was awkward, where Wentz asked Dean how he stacked up against Phil Collins, the “greatest drummer-singer of all-time”. That NYC summer was a scorcher, and I remember vividly even after the sun had set, it was hot hot hot. When No Age start “Every Artist Needs A Tragedy”, I think the temperature dropped and a strong salt scented breeze kept blowing. The intro to the track is this pretty experimental drone bit that I always get sucked into when listening to it. At that point, I was so overcome by this unfamiliar euphoria I’ve never felt before, I had to taken the rest of the song with my eyes closed. Watching videos of it now, I’ve come to realize it wasn’t that great of a performance, but it’s still THE ONE that convinced me to shape my life around music.

3. Song for the sunniest day of the year

Take It Easy Brother Charles – Jorge Ben

I don’t remember how I got into Jorge Ben, but probably one the more revelatory serendipities I’ve had. Might have been sometime in high school, but prior to this discovery, I had no inkling of what tropicalia or even what “world” music was. Since then I’ve told people, Jorge Ben was my gateway drug to world music. But this track, I feel, will complement any hot, sticky, humid yet bright summer day quite nicely.

4. Song from a different continent

Everything Scatter – Fela Kuti

In my final year college, I had a mini-obsession with afro-pop, which I guess could be attributed to Vampire Weekend in high school. I had a friend who had a world music program at the school’s radio station (which I was a part of as well), and I’d pick up new finds on his show. I had really taken to afro-pop and afro-beat, particularly in its emphasis on rhythm and percussion. The two artists that I listened to a lot were William Onyeabor and Fela Kuti. I’ve always listened to Fela Kuti like I listen to jazz, I just drop into an album at any point and just listen to it on repeat. I feel like this is one of the tracks that best showcases Fela Kuti’s influences and range, like jazz, soul, funk, and psychedelia.

5. Song that brings out your inner cowboy

The Lord’s Favorite – Iceage

This record really threw me off when I heard a preview of it. Combining country music and post-punk seems like a weird concept and honestly I wouldn’t even imagine how it would sound. But this is quite the the song. I was pleasantly surprised at how they were able to make country and post-punk work together and kind of wishing they made more of these. These guys are from Denmark, but it really felt like they immersed themselves in country music for this track.

If you’d prefer to this whole thing in one go, a meh at best EP as it was intended to be heard:

Be sure to read everything Jonathan Chin does on Cereal + Sounds, and check back next week for the next Mystery Mini Mix.

The post Mystery Mini Mix: Jonathan Chin appeared first on Various Small Flames.

Girlpool is Cleo Tucker and Harmony Tividad. The pair met at high school and developed their musical aspirations in LA at The Smell, an all ages, drug/alcohol free underground club that has played a part in the career of a number of noise bands (see The Mae Shi, No Age, Abe Vigoda). Unlike the aforementioned bands, Girlpool make relatively simple indie rock music sans drums, relying on their distinctive vocals and cutting lyrics to make the impact. The result is a slightly skewed guitar-driven EP that feels continuously on the verge of spilling over, restrained but for how long?

You can probably guess the main target of this barely restrained fervour from what I’ve already said about the band’s name. Tasked with listening to the “faceless voices of scientists on dictaphone records,” the women of the Vonnegut’s Girl Pool leave their “cloister of cement” only once a year to go “a-carolling” and get chocolate bars at Christmas time. The song ‘Blah Blah Blah’ captures the ridiculousness of the fact that these women (read: any women) are controlled by “anybody with a dictaphone,” i.e. even the most uninspiring, unoriginal, banal men:

“You leave me crying in the fucking rain
I want you
You’re too busy watching other girls
In the little skirts, with their pretty curls
Why don’t you
Hot one you know you want it
Then when you find you got it
You call me

I hear you talking like
BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH
BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH
BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH”

Next song ‘Paint Me Colours’ looks at privilege through the prism of teenage heartbreak: “I’ll never understand what it means to be a man who is white ‘cos he never has to fight.” This grounding of big ideas (racial/gender discrimination) in ‘normal’ things (teen angst) works really well, although of course the big ideas are intrinsically linked with and impact upon normality. ‘Slutmouth,’ opening with the line “sometimes I want to be a boy,” challenges just what ‘normal’ is in our society, dealing with the belittling ‘norms’ such as street harassment (I don’t wanna get fucked / by a fucked society / cos everywhere I look / someone’s blaming me / I don’t really care about the clothes I wear”) and social expectation (“I go to school every day / just to be made a housewife one day”).

The single ‘Jane’ gets back to more hopeful messages. Detailing how the titular character punches a boy called Tommy in the mouth (bear with me). The song implores people in similar situations to heed their advice, a call to arms to all facing inequality, a conviction that things can and will be better:

“Girls and boys if you are listening
Don’t ever feel imprisoned
Feeling like your mouth is glued tight shut.

You were born for a reason
Share all of your feelings
If you are a Jane put your fists up too.”

While I’ve never seen the cloister of cement, or handed out sweets to it’s inhabitants during the holidays, I’m sure the music world has long had it’s own version of the Girl Pool. Picking up where Bikini Kill et al. left off, Girlpool’s music seems like a reaction against this. But it is to their credit that the album isn’t a scream-filled futile rage but instead an assured confidence, a determination to say things as they are. Coupling lyrics of everyday feelings with high-pitched screams of frustration, they come across not as hyperrealistic freedom fighters, but as real people with a just cause, people growing bolder with every small success, people ready to stand up for what is right. Things have changed for the better but the playing field still isn’t level, and the unerring confidence of Tucker and Tividad plays like the hammer blows against any remaining walls of the cloister of cement.

The EP is out now on Wichita Recordings and you can buy it here.

The post Girlpool – S/T EP appeared first on Various Small Flames.