As you might expect then, this is an album made for night time. Opener ‘Olivia’ is a chirpy indie pop number, playing with the sort of midnight melodrama that’s fulfilling beneath bright lights, a late drive through neon-drenched streets. ‘Power Couple’ starts cinematic in the traditional sense, before morphing into a rambunctious pop song, while ‘Depressed Surfer’ lives up to its title, possessing a blank cool that feels as wide and flat as your worst day on the waves. ‘Hit and Run’ opens with an almost Western vibe, a sort of this-town-ain’t-big-enough-for-the-both-of-us attitude updated for four wheels and motors, though the lyrics highlight something darker and more sad.

‘Mudd Club’, featuring former Selebrities lead Maria Usbeck, is the record’s most danceable number, playing like some early-hours disco where the good feeling has given way to a not entirely agreeable melancholy, while, with its slow sad tempo, ‘White Boy Stu’ sounds like a lonely walk home with nothing but fading adrenaline and alcohol for company. It’s here the idea of the pharmacy glow becomes palpable, though in reality it’s nothing to do with scientific names or colourful boxes or strip lighting. Instead it’s something less nameable, recognisable only as a departure from what is familiar during the day.

‘Pretenders (Hit 2 Run)’ decelerates even further, decimal points away from reaching a complete standstill, the electronics arising as if from some blank dream space, the vocals either struggling into focus or else drifting out. Eventually the rhythm clicks to form an increasingly un-subdued pop song, fluidity shaking free from the disparate elements.

‘Cheeky’ continues the restrained trend, at least at first, though bombs into near-transcendental life somewhere around the midpoint, as though the album has meandered so far into the late night dark it’s pushed through into some secret, thrilling place. Drawing energy from this, ‘Weeping Roses’ ends with brisk and upbeat indie pop, capping off the release on the crest of a wave.

Screw Your Brains is out now via Invertebrate Music and you can get it from the CVS at Night Bandcamp page (there’s a tape release coming soon, too).

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The first single, ‘Dream’, which premiered on The Grey Estates last week, combines two types of synths, the sparkling wonder of those in the foreground forever surrounded by an ominous background drone, suggesting an atmosphere that could go one of two ways – rise into some numinous joy or descend into something deep and dark and strange. Lyrically, ‘Dream’ plays like an oneiric flattening of time, past, present and future collapsed and presented as one.

We’re delighted to share a second track, ‘Ache’, a dream pop number submerged in chillwavey synths and sci-fi/JRPG-sounding electronics which eventually develop into an rhythmic dance beat. Again, the song is immersed in the dreamlike quality of being overly familiar and unnervingly uncanny, where memories and wishes intermingle to form a vivid-yet-spectral landscape perpetually on the verge of evaporating. Indeed, the meaning of the track is similarly ambiguous, emotions pushing in with tangible weight but diminishing upon closer inspection, like bright lights visiting your patch of sky before passing on, zipping up and away to wherever such things go, leaving only the slow creep of melancholy and a latent anxious twitch.

“All alone, all on my own

Can you sleep at night with the weight of all your fears
Will the visions in your eyes ever disappear
Where were you when I needed you, is this how you want it to be
Scully tells me to move on, Mulder wants me to believe”

Beta Persei is available for pre-order now from Furious Hooves, including a limited edition run of cassettes. Also, if you find yourself in the area, Dæva is having a release show at Catland in Brooklyn, NY on December 2, 2016 (of which you can find detail here).

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Opening the four-track release, ‘Get it Right’ is a half-paced pop song that threatens to tip over into something more angry or rambunctious, toeing the line between intimate and ominous and perhaps slipping into both. The track feels like a relationship coming to a head, approaching some climax that could still swing either way, though the conclusion passes before it can blossom into something meaningful or fall in a trail of flames. The song is perhaps a confrontation, but more likely the spiralling thoughts pre-/post-meeting, all the things they wish they were brave enough to say when face to face.

“If you could see what is in my mind
You would change before my eyes
You were red but my gold turned you green
So you stood there lying through your teeth

And get it right, get it right
If you’re gonna, gonna waste my time”

‘Inches Apart’ is fragile and delicate, playing like a morning after some traumatic event, smells and sounds and phantom feelings wisping their way into the present, leaving the narrator to grasp whatever negligible weight they still hold. By comparison, ‘The World Doesn’t Know’ is expansive, the jittery instrumentation lurking behind Magana’s voice before growing deep and wide, expanding to fill the track.

The closing title track is infused with a melancholic energy in a way reminiscent of Daughter, lonely defiance as sung at the dead of night. “I dream of lives that are far away,” she sings, “Made an escape from a lonely home / Collected years from a novel’s page / So I’d never feel like I am alone”. The song gathers in intensity, the instrumentation breaking through the insularity and allowing the vocals to do likewise, soaring above the clatter with a palpable certainty, finally in possession of a golden tongue.

“Hey something has gone very wrong
Sometimes it will seep out slowly
And you’ll never even know
That you’re lonely until you’re old

Oh Oh

If you can’t quite recall
Maybe you never knew”

Golden Tongue is out now and you can get it from the Audio Antihero Bandcamp page.

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If you have followed our coverage of Beat Radio then the story might sound all too familiar. We’ve discussed the realities of being a modern artist, coming to the conclusion that only a blend of quiet perseverance and an unquenchable need to create will ever allow musicians to survive the money-less, swamped music industry as it currently exists. Indeed, it was Sendrowitz who put us onto Heaven O’Clock, the result of Tim Lannen’s newfound fervour. The EP, existing as five average-length tracks, feels far more nourishing than your typical short release, the songs displaying admirable variety while remaining bound together by a common energy.

Opener ‘I’m a Solution’ feels like something of an introduction, a re-emergence, a tight melody rising out of a disorientating clatter as though Lannen is finally cutting through the confusing fog and finding his groove. “I feel like I should feel,” he sings in the opening verse. “I feel stranger than ever / I’m wandering tall weeds / I figure out falling”. ‘Same Light’ is more restrained musically, though the lyrics glow with the strange emotions of an important relationship, love and anger and pain brimming beneath the surface, never quite spilling.

“I see you trying
To tear out the pages
Ill throw you down a flight of stairs
Before you can finish

She made an impression on me
And all of it makes sense

I could never get enough

We wake up in the same light
And leave everything behind”

‘A Calm I Don’t Like’ pines for this turbulent passion, a song terrified of inaction, of drifting, of missing out on the highs and lows in favour of some bland median. Whether or not it’s his intention, it’s difficult to not apply the lyrics to Lannen’s musical story, the lines reading like the nostalgic thoughts of some sleepless early-night, the lack of tiredness and disappointment not enough to quell the desire to create, to get out and play. ‘Feel Song’ is an electronic-tinged follow-up, wistful but all the stronger for it. “Do you remember how I made you feel?” Lannen sings over and over, perhaps to himself.

Closer ‘Vein In Train’ bounces along with a garage rock clatter, Lannen vocals growling and soaring behind the raucous percussion. “I wanna scream,” he sings/shouts, “when I don’t see the train coming.” From here the song enters a mellow groove, the instrumentation paring back just so, allowing the wistful hope to appear again. Though from these words Lannen seems to draw energy, because he launches back into boisterous, confident noise once more. Heaven O’Clock is an album about taking chances, about enduring the dips in order to ride the crests, and when the guitar takes over to kick it once more, you understand why. He wants to be in a band again.

“There can’t be anymore ‘one more times’
I forget how good it feels to feel alright”

You can buy Heaven O’Clock, Part 1 now from the Tim Lannen Bandcamp page.

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Dead Skin Cells is Efinger’s attempt to deal with a move to New York, an event which offered her first chance to meditate on the dark things in her life whilst being physically removed from them. This caused a lot of rumination on the importance of the familiar, and whether geographic location alone can have an effect on a person. In place of the regular bio or blurb, the album is introduced by a poem by Efinger’s friend Becca Uliasz, which captures this feeling far better than I can:

“maybe the places we are in change what we are
maybe context rubs off on us the way we leave dead skin cells in the places we frequent
maybe it leaves its cells on us the same way
and we just trade back and forth
until we aren’t us or here or there but a new thing altogether” – becca uliasz

Like most of the songs on Dead Skin Cells, opening track ‘mother’ is short and sparse and deceptively dark, just simple ukulele and Efinger’s soft and almost child-like vocals delivering lyrics darkly surreal. “in a dream me’s (?) were crying black blood and water / my mom didn’t see me floating like a sheet of paper.” ‘projection’ doesn’t even break the minute barrier, a sweet song about sending thoughts back home, and the personal stand-out ‘dark hearts’ sounds like its drifting from a quiet bedroom window, a feeling increased by the distant sounds of sirens, and has a chorus that is eerily resonant with the book I’m reading at the moment.

“We break our little hearts
you broke my little heart
when thunder struck your little life
when we were apart”

‘cereal box’ is a song about personal habits and (wrongly) feeling sad and stupid for being the person you are, opening with the perfect lines “he caught you in a cereal box said why do you eat so much? / said why you wasting my money a battle cries a crutch / he caught you in your room at two watching pokemon / said you’ll never do anything why you wasting your day off?” ‘sundrops’ feels reflective and somehow more hopeful, conjuring that golden feeling of watching a sunset and being aware of all your problems but not overwhelmed by them, of feeling like one little person in a very big world and being okay with that. All that’s left then is ‘will you’, which is about missing someone dearly, about sending letters and the solace in looking at the same moon.

The tapes have already sold out, but you can get ratbath’s Dead Skin Cells right now as a name-your-price digital download via the Fox Food Records Bandcamp page or the ratbath Bandcamp page.

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‘Catchyalater’ is one of my favourite songs from the album, the perfect blend of wit, emotion and pop culture references. As we wrote in our review:

“With ambient sound clips and gentle, emotive vocals, ‘Catchyalater’ brings to mind The Antlers in their In The Attic of The Universe stage… contain[ing] some irresistibly quotable lines”

To give you an idea, the quotable lines include nods to Alanis Morissette and Patrick Ewing, punks and cokes and flicks at the mall, essentially forming (as is most of the album) an ode to America and the past more generally. The remixes are great too, as you might expect. Jack Hayter slows down the pace but dials up the tortured emotion, while Benjamin Shaw leans on the ambient recordings and serves up a slice of soothing introspection. New track ‘God’s Tinnitus’ feels wrapped up and insular, the receding lulls almost more conspicuous than the clanging piano that punctuates it, the whispered vocals hushed and hurried in equal measure, “Sometimes I think that the crickets are just God’s tinnitus”.

‘Catchyalater’ is out on the 22nd of January on Audio Antihero, but you can listen to the whole release below:

The single release just so happens to coincide with Frog’s imminent tour of the UK (dates/poster below). If seeing the duo live wasn’t excitement enough, the transatlantic trip is serving a second purpose – the creation of the fan-funded blockbuster, Frog: Across the Pond. Yep, the boys have enlisted (or maybe were enlisted by) filmmaker Alex Coppola to make a film about their UK adventure. Described as part concert video, part road movie, this project has all the makings of something special. Put it this way, there’ll be a lot more Oscar-boycotting in 2017 if this isn’t nominated. I mean, check out the tagline:

When two friends discover that their little band is big overseas, they decide to try their luck on the other side of the Atlantic.

If you (unlike us, boo!) can get to a show, check out the dates below and try and immortalise yourself on the silver screen:

Jan 23rd – The Waiting Room, Colchester (with Roy / Sophie Nash / Chris Fox)
Jan 24th – Servant Jazz Quarters, London (with Alex Chilltown / Owl & Mouse)
Jan 25th – Fulford Arms, York (with The Drink)
Jan 27th – The Hug & Pint, Glasgow
Jan 29th – Venue TBA, Edinburgh (with Plastic Animals)
Jan 30th – DIY Space for London, London (with Rainmaker / The Johns / Brunch / Crows An Wra)

The post Song Premiere(s): Frog – Catchyalater Single (w/ God’s Tinnitus + Remixes) appeared first on Various Small Flames.

Kind of Blah is America, the U S of A in eleven songs – quirky, joyous, breathless, exhausting, addictive, heartbreaking and downright weird, accelerating towards a distant horizon while keeping its eyes firmly on a halcyon past that sure seems like it should have been more fun

Little did I know that Frog released a self-titled mini-album back in 2013 on the now defunct label Monkfish Records and, luckily for those of us late to the party, Audio Antihero have stepped up to the plate and re-released the record.

Frog might sound a little different from Kind of Blah, but anyone expecting the rough début of a band getting to grips with their sound and style is going to be very surprised. Each track is just as detailed and clever as anything on the follow-up, setting down Frog’s exciting modus operandi. Take opener ‘Ichabod Crane’, a perfect example of their frantic lo-fi folk rock packed to bursting with odd and strangely affecting lyrics. “Head chopped off like Ichabod Crane,” he sings, “oh the things I’d do again. Tongue hacked out like Helen Keller, oh if I could only tell her”.  It’s the weird blend of violent suffering and nostalgia that constitutes many a history, and here its delivered which such veracity you can’t help but get swept up in the flow. The striking similarities to country are unmissable yet somehow you get the impression these songs come from another lineage entirely, as if shaped by similar forces and pressures to good old cowboy music yet no more related than a dolphin to a fish.

‘Arkansas’ features a First World War of dead entertainers and punk kids on stretchers, a sad song of the desperate kind, while ‘Jesus Song’ rises from the ashes like a half-drunk phoenix, or rather like a Jesus Christ if he fronted beach bar country band and sounded like Stephen Malkmus. ‘Nancy Kerrigan’ slows the tempo, the narrator facing a present trauma while trying to seek refuge in the past, trying to wrap himself in the nostalgia-drenched memories and Honest-To-God American images which promise to save us. It’s the saddest song you’re likely to hear for a good while.

“If I could afford it
I would record this
on your mother’s organ
you left back in Oregon
and I put your face
coming through the drapes
stick you in between the lines and the bass
and all the houses we pass will have American flags
and all the sullen sons inside will hug their dads

God bless the state of Texas
and the Dallas Cowboys’ blue
I know darling he’ll protect us

Can I venture an educated guess
have I had some part of your loneliness?
And we put our prayers in Nanny Kerrigan
we put our prayers in Nancy’s care”

‘Space Jam’ is an unexpected Christmas bummer ballad, lost love and heartbreak dangling like decorations, ghosts of past and present swirling in cold night (“Its Christmas time I think so and the air feels just like home”), while ‘Rubbernecking’ is a grotesque drive down into the darkest parts of contemporary psyche. “Last night I fucking killed a man” he sings like some forgotten face from Less Than Zero, “and you know it didn’t change shit”, although the primary emotion is hardly one of detachment. Instead, the narrator seems to revel in misery, in imagery, in death. There’s no obvious meaning, no message or denouement, just a wacko cranking his gears through a vast landscape of boredom illuminated with sparks of terror and dread.

You can buy Frog now from the Frog Bandcamp page, including a rather nice cassette. For those of with with an eye for a bargain, you can also pick up a digital download bundled with the vinyl edition of Kind of Blah for £12. 

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‘Hair’, taken from 2012’s Ætherea, is almost certainly the darkest, heaviest track on our release. At first appearing to be a moody rock number, the song grows into something altogether more substantial, the clattering drums and discordant squealing and vicious guitars cumulating into something as dark and ominous as Biblical thunderclouds. Through it all come the vocals, weaving themselves amongst the dense fog like calls from some doom-dream deity.

The art piece for Sondra’s song was produced by Oregon-based artist Rachael Perisho, who you might recognise as the talent behind the Good, Good Blood cover. I’ve been more than a little overwhelmed by the artistic responses to the songs, and this one is no exception. You can find all of Rachael’s work on her website, and be sure to follow her on Tumblr and Instagram too. You can pre-order Quiet, Constant Friends now via the Wake The Deaf Bandcamp page. All tape orders come with super-limited edition postcard prints, and all profits go to Worldreader, so why not treat yourself and feel good about helping a great cause at the same time?

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Knishkowy started How Strange It Is To See in one city and finished it in another, writing while packing up an old home and recording while barely out of boxes in a new one. It’s unsurprising then that the release revolves around ideas of letting go of familiar places and faces and embracing new ones. Opener ‘Everything is Going to be Fine’ sees the narrator still holding on to an old love, waiting for some form of communication and wondering if they are now sharing their life with someone else:

“I heard you’ve been living with someone new
It’s no wonder when your rent is so high
Do you still wear the coat that I left for you,
When I was in a hurry to catch that plane on time?

But everything is gonna be fine
When leaving was the last thing on your mind”

‘Left on Jewel’ starts on a similarly morose note but soon develops into something brighter, the upbeat second half almost akin to The Cave Singers’ jaunty folk. While the lyrics are still concerned with a lost love there is a shift in tone, as if the narrator has moved past holding out hope, now able to look back with fondness without being needled by the sharp pains of regret. The writing is free from animosity and full of clarity and too lovely not to quote in full:

We left, caught in the eye of the storm
Making music of lovers with things that we’d known
Through the snow and the rain, through the bibles of our days,
We sing to what’s gone

That night we became almost “you and I”
From the station to Jewel, you were beaming inside
Til the light of the dawn,
We followed evening’s song there to simpler times

I swore off the city, I swore off the lights
Could’ve  sworn that what wasn’t best was what I left behind
But I swore to myself
When it was time to take that right and leave that night

‘Red Coat’ fits into this sense of enlightenment too, as if the imminent move has triggered a new view of everyday circumstances. As we said in the première post: “The track exists within that small and fleeting pocket in time and space that opens just before you take off from a familiar location, everyday objects taking on new importance as the seconds tick away and your surroundings can be seen outside of the context of your own unimportant worries and wishes”.

The EP closes with the title track, a sparse, finger-picked folk song which bursts with surprising volume at all the right moments. Here the narrator stumbles across his old love weeks before leaving, and while things threaten to slip into their old ways, it seems his mind has been made up, changed. “You ask when I’ll be back / Allure, attack / And I answer with a drink”, he sings. “Tried to make it last for what we had, not what we have / For what we lack“.

You can buy How Strange It Is To See now from Bandcamp, and I believe the good folks over at Lily Tapes and Discs are releasing a cassette. And, if you haven’t already, why not check out Adeline Hotel’s first album, Leave The Lights?

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Dreaming of Notting Hill is a three song EP of new wave-style music, driven by synths and supported with post-punk vocals to give a satisfyingly retro feel. If you can imagine John Maus teaming up with Small Black and The Cure to soundtrack a melodramatic 80s teen movie where the misunderstood hero finds herself walking home alone from the disco time and time again, then it would probably sound a lot like this. And yes, that’s a compliment. Check out opening track ‘KiwiKisses’ below:

You can buy the album now over at the Vacant Magic Bandcamp page on a pay-what-you-can basis. Cassettes are in development so keep your eyes peeled if tapes are your thing.

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