The recording project of Chicago-based violinist and songwriter Mallory Linehan, Chelsea Bridge is something of a shapeshifting entity. One as likely to entice the listener in with hazy dreamscapes as it is blast them with intense noise, willing to present sensual and detached sensibilities side by side. Perhaps not a shapeshifter, then, but rather something fluid, an amorphous thing able to exist across and between fixed points. It is therefore fitting that new album K, coming next month via Whited Sepulchre, could be described as both the most accessible and experimental Chelsea Bridge record to date. A collection of songs which sees Linehan reach for pop sensibilities as naturally as she might classical or avant garde, as though to prove such a distinction is of little consequence to an artist fully embracing an intuitive mode of working. Single ‘The Morning’ introduces the result, where plucked violin seems to work hand over hand to tease a lush pop soundscape into life.

cryer mya – Leylines

Based in south London by way of Bristol, cryer mya is the new recording project of songwriter Rishi Saluja. Having previously played in bands with psychedelic influences, Saluja uses the moniker to combine such sensibilities with more personal tastes in soul and folk, resulting in a richly realised sound sure to grab the ears of fans of Sam Evian and Alice Phoebe Lou. Lead single ‘Leylines’ provides the first taste of the cryer mya style, taking a languid summer rhythm and populating it with vocals both heartfelt and searching, the easygoing warmth belying the depth of a track which explores themes of spirituality and mystery.

‘Leylines’ is out now and available from the usual places.

 Ead Wood – Menu

Ead Wood might hail from Bristol in the UK, but their Americana-inflected sound positions them closer to acts like Friendship than any of their British brethren. Following on from last year’s EP A Sparkling Gift, the outfit have returned with new single ‘Menu’ on Breakfast Records. A song which typifies the balance between sincerity and playfulness which marks the Ead Wood sound, delving into an ostensibly mundane situation to reveal the deeper meanings beneath the surface. “‘Menu’ is a (somewhat) lighthearted song about decision making anxieties,” as lead Ed Soles explains. “[That feeling] of being frozen in fear of making the wrong choice, even in those situations where it may not seem to even matter. This is never more apparent than ordering at a restaurant, where I often get the same as whoever I’m with to avoid having to make my own decision, even if it’s not something I want.”

‘Menu’ is out now via Breakfast Records and available from Bandcamp.

Holy Matter – Prince Gloom

This autumn, Leanna Kaiser will release her debut album under her Holy Matter moniker. Titled Beauty Looking Back, the record explores “the changing seasons of life and the passage of time,” featuring intimate meditations on the cyclical patterns of past, present and future that attempt to capture the paradox of time and how we experience it. Namely, how things seem at once immutable and ever-changing. “Holy Matter comes from Leonard Cohen’s novel Beautiful Losers,” Kaiser explains. “There’s one passage that has stayed with me, since – a page with the repeated mantra ‘I change; I am the same.’ This, I would say, is the best description of what this album is about.” Latest single ‘Prince Gloom’ is dreamy and diaphanous, unfurling in a slow, almost tropical swirl.

Japandroids – Chicago

Seven years after their last record, Vancouver indie rock legends Japandroids have announced one last album before they lay the project to rest. Billed by duo Brian King and David Prowse as a parting gift to fans, Fate & Alcohol seems intent on going out in a blaze of glory. “On our last record we wanted to broaden the definition of a Japandroids song,” King explains, “and purposely left our demos quite open and malleable so that we had more flexibility to experiment in the studio.” If lead single ‘Chicago’ is anything to go by, this translates to a sound that’s bolder and more widescreen than anything Japandroids have made to date. Which is saying something for a band who have always been unapologetically maximalist, combining punk rock energy with good-time, fists-in-the-air classic rock.

Kitty Fitz – Laughing Stock

Inspired by both 90s power pop and contemporary pop songwriters like Lorde and Caroline Polachek, the work of London’s Kitty Fitz combines a sometimes chaotic, danceable energy with candid and introspective explorations of turbulent relationships and self-doubt. Less poppy than last year’s debut EP All My Own Stunts, new single ‘Laughing Stock’ has been honed on the live circuit for over a year, forgoing the more bombastic synth pop elements in favour of something a little more poignant. What Fitz describes as “the epitome of me attempting to pass off my own fear of commitment and rejection as character flaw, as being cool and aloof, or once again feeling in a way ‘unloveable,'” the song’s breezy surface is something of a facade, beneath which squirm anxious thoughts and fears.

Maya Ruth – oblivion

“Chapped lips / But nothing like the harshness of smoke / We fall asleep restlessly / Counting the years on our toes.” So sings Maya Ruth in the opening of new single ‘Oblivion’. A song which began life as a poem before morphing into a grungy rock hit, the track mines the banality of every day life for its inherent absurdity, offering a bittersweet sound of sweet textures and edgy bite. The result is both alluring and slightly unnerving, as though beneath the monotony of our normal experience lies something more exciting, something more dangerous. “Die with me here / And you’ll be asking for more,” as Ruth sings in the chorus. “Doesn’t it scare you? / But don’t you feel good?”

‘Oblivion’ is out now and available from the usual places.

Merce Lemon – Backyard Lover

Following recent single ‘Will You Do Me a Kindness’, what we called “a song that ebbs and flows between quiet introspection and a wild, barely-restrained energy,” Pittsburgh songwriter Merce Lemon has announced a new record, Watch Me Drive Them Dogs Wild. Released via LA label Darling Records, the album promises to marry quiet vulnerability with cathartic power, something immediately apparent on lead single ‘Backyard Lover’. What starts as a warm and swaying country song, complete with propulsive percussion and wistful pedal steel, gathers into a sharp point of wailing guitar and emotional release. It’s a glimpse at a theme that winds throughout the record, and Lemon’s work in general.  “So many of my songs are touched by and explore death, specifically in relation to the loss I experienced of my best friend when I was fifteen years old,” she explains. “That loss has forever changed me and who I am in my relationships to lovers, friends, family.”

Watch Me Drive Them Dogs Wild will be released on 27^th September via Darling Records. Pre-order a copy now from the Merce Lemon Bandcamp page.

Nuisance – Holy Basil

Over recent years, few could have done more to work against the traditional studio-based recording process than William Seidel and Ryan Weber of Nuisance. Whether working as part of Eric & Magill or REW<<, Weber has created albums in some of the world’s remotest areas while serving as a Peace Corps Volunteer, while Seidel has worked on music in hotels and mini-cab taxis during his extensive travels. Not to mention their development of the virtual sounds database Poetic Devices which underpins Nuisance releases. The pair are now back with Squash Blossom Necklace, a new full-length which furthers their exploration of possibilities within this frame of working, bending genre conventions in order to incorporate pop, folk, electronic and classical sensibilities into something unique to them. Listen to single ‘Holy Basil’ now:

Sylvia – Found and Lost

With members hailing from all over Australia, Sylvia is a Melbourne/Naarm-based band which is equally diverse in its points of reference. Gemma (vocals/guitar) is one half of dream pop duo Earache, Murray (drums) used to power Brisbane noise-rock outfit No Sister, Dee (bass) also plays in dystopian industrial band Red Hell while Sean (guitar) spent time in powerviolence as part of Canberra’s Hygiene. United as Sylvia, the result draws on all of this past experience to create something straddling shoegaze, power pop and indie rock, while maintaining a certain intensity of noise too. New EP II is a good place to jump in, with single ‘Found and Lost’ seeing noisy rock and twee pop collide in a short, sharp burst.

variety – Plover

Earlier this year, Austin-based outfit variety—That’s Jordan Emmert (Porcelain/Pleasure Venom), Nick Stout (New Strangers), Rhys Woodruff (Borzoi/Leche) and Zach Wood (Borzoi)—released ‘Plover’, the first single of their forthcoming album pencilled for release this autumn. A twitchy rush of anxious energy, the song uses the titular wader and ornithological themes more generally to paint a picture of an ecosystem gripped by a constant tension. As though every environment is a network of individuals with competing desires, be they animal or human, and each organism is set on edge by the presence of everything else. Watch the video directed by Taylor Browne below:

‘Plover’ is out now and the variety album is coming soon.

Wild Pink – The Fences of Stonehenge

Following on from 2022’s hit ILYSM and John Ross’s successful collaboration with Laura Wolf under the moniker lilts, Wild Pink have signed with the good folks at Fire Talk and announced new full-length album, Dulling The Horns. But if Ross’s recent output has seen discursions into dreamy and often ornate pop styles, the new record is a recentering of Wild Pink as a rock band. One ready to be more immediate, less polished and finely crafted. “I wanted to make economical songs,” as Ross explains. “Music that is very much at its core three or four people rocking.” First single ‘The Fences of Stonehenge’ leads the way, heralding not only a fresh collection of songs but what feels like a new era for the band. One which finds them revitalised and ready to commit wholeheartedly all over again.

Dulling The Horns is out on the 4th October via Fire Talk and you can pre-order it now.

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

With this in mind, the previous releases were ambitious enough, but the latest Nuisance project takes those ideas and pushes them to new heights. Coming next month on Katuktu Collective, triple album SAND, STONE, GLASS follows the template set with Kuchisabishii and Qanisquineq but with the dial twisted to eleven. “SAND, STONE, GLASS is an album that was recorded before it was written,” the band explain. “Selected instruments were deeply sampled then coded and designed into a series of 31 virtual instruments by the artist(s) and used exclusively in the making of the record(s).”

Nuisance left no stone unturned when collecting these instruments. They include everything from a refurbished abandoned felted piano and heirloom oud, to a vintage home organ borrowed from Facebook marketplace and synths crafted from experimental found sounds. But the expanded library was only the beginning of the project’s vision. Because just as Scott Robert Allen and Eric Osterman reimagined songs from Kuchisabishii to make the Qanisquineq EP, the triple album invites the collaborators to make two entirely new records from the nineteen songs of the first. The result is essentially three variants of the same album: SAND, STONE, GLASS.

Lead single ‘Sepia’ gives a view into how this plays out. The SAND version of the track is what Nuisance describe as “indie folk meets bedroom pop with a pinch of doo wop,” its acoustic washes drawing the listener into rich world of ambient textures, piano and organ beats. But the STONE variant favours a starker ambient style, the acoustic elements stripped out and replaced with a sense of space, while the GLASS offering leans much further toward the piano, maintaining the expansive atmosphere of its predecessor but offering a fonder, poignant tone.

SAND, STONE, GLASS will be released on 3rd March via Katuktu Collective. You can listen to all three iterations of ‘Sepia’ and ‘Davenport’ now via the Nuisance Bandcamp page.

The post Nuisance – Sepia appeared first on Various Small Flames.

William J. Seidel and Ryan E. Weber (REW<<, Eric & Magill) have returned with a brand new EP, Qanisquineq, a release which builds upon the foundations of Kuchisabishii, reimaging some of its tracks and creating original material too. The songs are crafted from the same fifteen virtual instruments coded in the Poetic Devices database, but this time are reconfigured by Scott Robert Allen and Eric Osterman into brand new interpretations. The result is a release which highlights some of the new sounds available to the duo, not only pushing the songs in novel directions but opening up entire avenues for the project to explore in the future.

The all new title track blends ethereal dream pop with the melancholic weight of a passing day, its detailed sound washed with an unguarded poignance. Not dream pop so much as daydream pop. A humble fantasy imagined into an empty room. The organic pattering of ‘Equanimity’ on Kuchisabishii is replaced by a starker, stripped-back style, while the spacey sci-fi synths of ‘Accouchement’ are slowed down and blown up into near cinematic textures. ‘Vestige’ sits somewhere between the two, its intro hollowed out from the previous version but soon growing vivid in its slow plaintive manner. Each track recognisable in its link to its predecessor but distinctively different, standing as a testament to near endless versatility the Poetic Devices library now offers.

The post Nuisance – Qanisquineq appeared first on Various Small Flames.

Binker & Moses – Accelerometer Overdose

The recording project of saxophonist Binker Golding and drummer and composer Moses Boyd, Binker & Moses are representative of a new wave of acts within London who look to combine the jazz tradition with hip-hop, Caribbean rhythms and various electronic styles. The latest single from forthcoming record Feeding The Machine on Gearbox Records, ‘Accelerometer Overdose’ welcomes the tape loops of Max Luthert, pushing things into ambient territory and further increasing the possibilities of the Binker & Moses sound.

Sun June – Somewhere + 3

Last year saw the release of Sun June’s excellent album Somewhere on Run For Cover Records, which recently featured on our Albums We Missed in 2021 feature. The record was released from isolation, and when the band were finally able to get back together they channelled both the frustration of those lost months and the joy of being reunited into new songs. The result is Somewhere + 3, a deluxe edition of last year’s record with three previously unreleased tracks.

The vibe of these new songs is captured perfectly on lead single ‘Easy’. “[It] is a romantic struggle song,” explains says Laura Colwell. “It’s about love and partnership and longstanding arguments that are hard to get past.”

Want it to be easy
Swore we’d be better by now
Picture of your mother
In Vietnam, 1977

Widowspeak – Everything is Simple

“Everything is simple ’til it’s not,” sings Molly Hamilton of Widowspeak on ‘Everything is Simple’, the lead single from the New York duo’s forthcoming album, The Jacket. It’s a song about how things grow complicated with time, how even situations which begin as pure potential eventually become knotted with limitations, and how, unreliable narrators that we are, we often bend reality to adapt. But despite that, the song sounds surprisingly vibrant, unfurling with a patient confidence that we’ve come to expect from Widowspeak. Check out the video, directed by OTIUM, below:

The Jacket is out via Captured Tracks on the 11th March and you can pre-order it now from the Widowspeak Bandcamp page.

Good Good Blood – The Dizzying Parade

Back in November we introduced you to The Dizzying Parade, the latest album from Good Good Blood on Team Love Records, with single ‘Green Bank’. “A densely layered track which balances a propelling drum beat with an dreamy weightlessness,” we described, “Smith’s vocals finding that neo-psychedelic line between attitude and ethereality.” Ahead of the album’s release this week, Good Good Blood have unveiled the title track. Another propulsive song which gradually builds in intensity as it unfolds, the tension growing and growing before unravelling into a sonic kaleidoscope of colour and sound. A finale as disorientating as the title suggests.

Allegra Krieger – Taking It In

Brooklyn-based songwriter Allegra Krieger is back with Precious Thing, a new LP out via Northern Spy Records this spring. Lead single ‘Taking It In’ introduces the album’s distinctively inviting and wistful sound, Krieger’s gentle croon sitting within a changeable arrangement of strings that conjure the sense of memories ebbing and flowing around the present moment. “Where am I now? Where was I three years ago?” she asks, “Where is my mother where is anyone I know?” Check out the video by Samuel Ogoe, Melissa Lozada-Oliva and Koa Ho below:

Precious Thing releases via Northern Spy Records on the 4th March and you can pre-order it now from the Allegra Krieger Bandcamp page.

 chores – Trip Wire

chores are a post punk slash dream pop band from Rochester NY. They recently released their debut single, ‘Trip Wire’, taken from a forthcoming EP. It’s a wonderful introduction, the kind of lo-fi indie pop gem that would be right at home on an early 90s Sarah Records sampler. As the title suggests, it’s a song about trying to avoid all those little everyday triggers that spark anxiety. As lead Heather Swenson sings “it’s a thick mire, avoiding any tripwire / that could signal friendly fire somewhere in my brain, so many times a day.”

Melk – Yankee Division Highway

Self-described “aspiring optimists” from Washington D.C., Melk make dreamy, punky indie pop that nevertheless traverse some pretty serious emotional depths. Comprising of Melissa Kain (guitar & vocals), AJ DiGregorio (bass) and Alex Scheuer (drums), Melk have just released their second EP, a three-song collection called Somebody, Nobody, Anybody. The standout is the slow-burning final track, ‘Yankee Division Highway’, a song the band say is “about how apathy can erode the trust you have in loved ones.” Kain guides us through the patient build, matching the intensity of the instrumentation before drifting into a rueful croon.

Carrie Biell – See Through the Trees

“I’ve been living my whole damn life trying to make everybody feel alright,” sings Seattle-based singer-songwriter Carrie Biell in latest single, ‘See Through the Trees’. “Maybe I’m sick of trying.” The line captures the track’s strange relationship between uncertainty and conviction, where beliefs are felt with palpable force even when solutions might not be easy or accessible. “This is about feeling maxed out in life by people and life commitments,” Biell explains, “but still trying to open up and be vulnerable in a new relationship. It’s about responding to your own needs while also giving to a new partner and learning to trust.”

Modern Nature – Performance

Rising from the ashes of previous band Ultimate Painting, Modern Nature is the new moniker of London‘s Jack Cooper. A project which takes the compositions and songwriting developed with Ultimate Painting and builds upon them with a newfound willingness to improvise and experiment. This month sees the release of latest record Island Of Noise on Bella Union, with lead single ‘Performance’ offering a glimpse of what’s to come. A song “written from the perspective of someone seeing or realising something overwhelming for the first time,” as Cooper puts it, consisting of a multitude of moving parts that mimic a kind of irrepressible curiosity.

Check out the video by Conan Roberts, Phoebe Cooper and Cooper himself below:

Island Of Noise is out on the 28th January via Bella Union and you can pre-order it from the Modern Nature Bandcamp page.

Pompey – Overwhelmed

Montreal based artist Pompey has played in a variety of acts within the city, lending his talents to the likes of Thanya Iyer, Corey Gulkin and Paper Beat Scissors, but Overwhelmed is the first full-length album of his own. Released by Anything Bagel, the record is a self-professed pandemic album. A product not so much of the prolonged anxiety of the present but rather Pompey’s methods of coping. A deliberate search for comfort and kindness within the constant pressure, carving out a space in which to rest. The title track illustrates the mood as good as any on the record, delivered with a deliberate tenderness which invites the listener to share the safe harbour for a while.

I try not to frown
Smile spreads light throughout my crown
I will trust myself
Over time

Nuisance – Kuchisabishii

A collaboration between William J. Seidel and Ryan E. Weber (REW<<, Eric & Magill), Nuisance craft a version of dream pop coloured by folk and classical sensibilities, though the process is far more notable than that. Weber spent two years recording instruments and coding them into software, building up a library of sounds which can be downloaded at Poetic Devices. After such a laborious process, the pair decided their first use of the program should be as immediate as possible, and the first Nuisance album Kuchisabishii, (out now via Katuktu Collective) came together in just two days. A shifting, impressionistic exploration of intimacy and immediacy, it’s a wonderful example of music made from the ground up, from atomic level building blocks to an album-sized ecosystem.

Don’t Worry – Crushing Weight / Head’s Chocka

Fronted by co-leads Ronan Van Kehoe and Samuel Watson, Don’t Worry have won recognition with their blend of wry observation and nostalgic charm. Following last year’s single ‘As If By Magic‘, the outfit are returning with full-length Remorseless Swing on Specialist Subject Records, and the first singles suggest the Don’t Worry style is evolving in several directions beyond their indie rock/emo roots. Be it the poppy (or poppier) rhythms of ‘Crushing Weight’ or the sweet romance of ‘Head’s Chocka’, though the lyrics still have signature flashes of wit.

Why can’t we just take this moment
Flatter it with rapturous applause and leave early doors
Listen, my head is chocka
But I can no longer forget here and now

Oh, how
I’m tongue tied over you

The post Weekly Listening – Jan 2022 #1 appeared first on Various Small Flames.