I Saw the Egg, the first full-length album by Battle Ave in almost a decade, is inching ever closer. As we described in a preview of lead singles ‘Maya’ and ‘Leo’, the album promises to be a continuation of the signature Battle Ave unpredictability, displaying we we described as “openness to contradiction that allows vastness to sit alongside intimacy, ominousness next to sincerity, and ultimately embraces the beauty and truth of ambiguity.” This week, the band have released the record’s third single, ‘Core’, a big hulking thing that plays like slo-mo shoegaze, lead Jesse Doherty’s comparatively reticent vocals dealing in lines as sparse and opaque as the stories of Diane Williams or Lydia Davis.

I Saw the Egg releases on 1st April on Friends Club Records and Totally Real Records and you can pre-order now from the Battle Ave Bandcamp page.

Deau Eyes – Moscow in the Spring

Taken from Deau Eyes upcoming sophomore record, Legacies, ‘Moscow in the Spring’ gives an insight into the cinematic vision and emotional maturity of Richmond artist Ali Thibodeau. With its speckled synths and sleigh bells, the song conjures an intangible quality, a shimmering sound ghosting around what could otherwise be a classic country tale of longing and regret. Marked by both the dawning excitement of some new frontier, and deepening appreciation of what has been built in the present.

‘Moscow in the Spring‘ is out now and available from Bandcamp. Legacies is out on the 10th June via Subflora.

los nerds- s/t

Super lo-fi but super infectious punk rock from Hermosillo, Mexico. Clocking in at just over seven minutes, los nerds don’t mess around. If you like your catchy melodies buried in fuzz and crackle and general chaos, this is the tape for you. Yelped vocals bounce around with hyperactive intensity, singing about everything from playing Tetris all day to making nuclear bombs in lab class, and even a pretty impressive impression of a car going through the gears on the informatively titled ‘bip bip (“beep beep”).

Jackie West – Amelia

Raised by a musical family in Boston, Jackie West’s musical journey leads from Martha’s Vineyard to Brooklyn and eventually to Paris to record with Lewis Lazar (Oracle Sisters). She returned to New York with a newfound sense of purpose and got to writing the songs that would come to form a self-titled EP on Westernesse. Single ‘Amelia’ is the perfect introduction, a song “about a dear friend who also represents the ‘agape’ love state after you’ve come and gone from each other’s lives many times,” as West puts it. One as rich and heartfelt as that sounds.

Jackie West will be released on Westernesse later this year.

Jana Horn – Jordan

Released last month on No Quarter Records, Optimism by Austin-based songwriter Jana Horn is a lesson in tightly woven and lyrical folk music. Despite the relative minimalism of the arrangements, each track represents its own palm-sized world, none more than the starkly cryptic ‘Jordan’ with its soft-spoken delivery and tacit weight. Check out the animated video by Jaime Zuverza below:

Optimism is out now via No Quarter Records and you can get it from the Jana Horn Bandcamp page.

King of Nowhere – Souls

January saw the return of New York trio King of Nowhere with their self-titled fourth album. Centring on themes of nostalgia and shifting identity, the record is at once vulnerable and empowered, charting the peaks and troughs of coming to terms with yourself in the most honest manner possible. Take the slow, mournful single ‘Souls’ and the way it which it rises out of its downbeat beginnings to realise an affirming climax, complete with vocals from Tetchy‘s Maggie Denning.

Last Quokka – Cue

Carving out a space within Australia‘s rich scene, Whadjuk/Perth punks Last Quokka combine irreverent fun with a fierce antifascist agenda, be it through danceable threats to Nazi scum (“Now it’s time, we’ll tear you down”) or wistful odes to Geoff Gallop (“Yeah look we’re not saying he’s such a great guy / But compared to these other pricks he’s alright”). Ahead of their fifth album on Stock Records and with new members in tow, ‘Cue’ introduces a newly fortified Last Quokka ready for a fresh assault. Slightly more polished perhaps, but certainly no less frenetic, the song dives headfirst into the outback and drags the listener along for the ride.

Mal Devisa – kiid

Having recently signed with Topshelf Records to make her full catalogue available across all streaming services, there’s never been a better time to get familiar with the endlessly inventive work of Mal Devisa. From spoken word poetry through hip hop, pop, folk and jazz, Devisa refuses to settle in any one genre, utilising every tool available to communicate what needs to be heard. 2019’s kiid is a great place to start, a record we previously described as “a personal record [that] plays like condensed version of life, reaching high and falling low, crackling and bursting and simmering under the surface, at times exploding in urgent streams of consciousness as if the words and thoughts can no longer be held in.”

Many Voices Speak – Seat For Sadness

Many Voices Speak returns this spring with Gestures, a brand new record on Strangers Candy. The moniker of Stockholm‘s Matilda Mård, the project has made its name with its luscious dream pop soundscapes, and latest single ‘Seat For Sadness’ shows the new album is no exception. Though within the continued style sits a story of change and transformation, however subtle and modest. “What unites the songs is a need for inner change,” Mård explains, “to handle the things in life that can’t be changed. I’m creating strategies for myself – new ways of thinking, so I can live with certain things.”

No Frills – Copy Cat

In lieu of recording with a full band during a period of lockdown, Daniel Busheikin of Toronto‘s No Frills started their new album Downward Dog in the garage-turned-studio of The Wooden Sky’s Gavin Gardiner, with band members dropping by individually to record their various contributions. Such a process must’ve required a sizeable sense of humour, and lead single ‘Copy Cat’ shows the sardonic blend of pessimism and playfulness that’s a feature of the record. The cartoon video is pretty wild too.

Downward Dog is out on the 1st April and you can pre-order it from the No Frills Bandcamp page.

Ruby Landen – Front Teeth

Writing of Ruby Landen‘s Martyr, well last year, we described how the Brooklyn-based songwriter utilised a classic folk sound to evoke “a kind of duality, between specificity and diffuseness, the wide world and Landen herself.” Back with new single ‘Front Teeth’ via Ruination Record Co., Landen continues this style, the tender acoustic guitar capturing the nostalgic tone of the lyrics, though within the wistful sound lies both cutting commentary and playful humour.

Ryan Dugre – For Clement

Another Ruination record, Look See is a new EP by New York-based multi-instrumentalist Ryan Dugre. Following the ethereal richness of 2021’s Three Rivers, the new release hones Dugre’s sound down to a solo tenor guitar. What results is a streamlined, unadorned exploration of a single instrument, and a lesson in the old adage of less being more. Nowhere is this better highlighted than on the poignant opening track ‘For Clement’, which seems to live far beyond its sub-two-minute runtime.

Saapato – Singing House I & II

Writing about Saapato‘s Bird Sanctuary EP back in 2021, we described how Philadelphia‘s Brendan Principato explores “textural soundscape creation and sound bath performance” to weave songs rooted in his surroundings. Be that composing tracks in the backseat of his car at a New Jersey bird sanctuary, or, as with his new release Singing House I & II, pursuing the full sonic potential of his childhood home. Singing House is a petri dish of improvised ambient performance, field recordings, and loops layered or deconstructed and sent whirring through amplifiers into the air, Principato explains:

From the air they go into an oven, or an attic, or straight into a carpet. A microphone may sit two stories above the origin of the sound, it may sit outside the house, it may sit inside my own mouth as a walk through a hallway. A piano in the garage might be piped through a megaphone inside the refrigerator. A speaker may blast drones from inside a plastic bag submerged in a bathtub. Singing House is without formula.

supernowhere – Basement Window

As if the elastic and endlessly inventive compositions of supernowhere’s 2021 record Gestalt weren’t enough, the trio return this spring with a brand new record on Topshelf Records. Originating from ideas that didn’t make the previous album, the band gave the tracks that extra bit of attention only to see them blossom into Skinless Takes A Flight. For the uninitiated, single ‘Basement Window’ invites the listener into the idiosyncratic and escalating soundscape.

The post Weekly Listening: Feb 2022 #1 appeared first on Various Small Flames.