With this sense of possibility comes a wider sonic palette, Howard choosing to sacrifice tightness and order so that he might encompass all of the styles which have informed his work over the the previous decade. “I sort of underwent a crisis as I became a more confident producer and instrumentalist,” he explains. “The more I could imitate or recreate a sound, the more I would confront demos I’d made and think ‘this is good, but it doesn’t feel like it’s mine.’ This was a new problem for me. I scrapped two albums worth of semi-finished material, carrying my personal favorites over to this final release. As a result, it’s probably my messiest record, but I grew to appreciate that. It’s a full genre-map of everything I’ve made over the last ten years. I made sure every song meant a lot to me.”

Fittingly, the changeable nature of the sound matches the themes of the record. In Airports was named for a period in which Howard found himself stuck in an airport for almost a week, left with nothing to do but watch people and wait. The surreal experience offered what might be the ultimate image of ephemerality, the people around him constantly changing, his own time ticking down as the delayed flight approached. Orchid Mantis has long employed a dreaminess but here it carries a confessional, reflective edge, as though newly aware of the shifting world around it, and the slow, gradual losses accumulated over time.

The idea is present from the very first track, ‘Generation Loss’, titled after the technological phenomenon where data degrades which each copying process. Howard positions personal memory as a similarly fragile thing, vulnerable to decay. But while there is sadness in the realisation, there is something warmer too. Call it fondness, call it love, the feelings all the more meaningful for the transience of their focus, and the purpose of art only deepened in its conservational efforts. “I know you / in the rearview / passage of time / falls behind you,” as Howard sings in the rich, romantic ‘Comedown Phase’. We’re constantly losing everything we’ve been given, which makes attempt at preservation all the more beautiful.

In Airports is out now via Start-Track and available from Bandcamp.

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Recorded in an old church near the birthplace of lead Daniel Hedin and taking years to bring to fruition, ‘Hideous Form’ is the new single from Det Hemliga Folket, a collaboration between Hedin and Budapest‘s Marton Fogl. The sound feels intrinsically tied to the origins of the track, offering an austere space full of shadow and cryptic weight, Hedin reaching beyond his surroundings and the present mood to re-engage with something more elemental. A song fitting for a project built around Hedin’s desire to connect with heritage, be that the ancestors who walked the land before him or the very earth of Sweden itself. Det Hemliga Folket is “a re-connection with the wild north inside me and the ancestral blues that whispers within the sound of the earth, the whispers in my head of the very fabric of the land,” he explains. “I hear the ocean and the silence of the forests that raised me like mothers and fathers. The darkness that’s been a part of me is an engine that never can die. It’s not just me, it is the earth where I am from, the deep beneath the soil of the north that is always calling me home.”

Dylan Henner – I Used To See Her On The Way Home from School and She Lit Up The Sky with her Beauty

A collection “which explores both the tactile experience of adolescence and the nostalgia of times now past.” That’s how we described Star Dream FM, the new album from Dylan Henner out via Phantom Limb, with previous singles ‘We Ditched School and Climbed Over the Neighbour’s Fence to Swim in their Pool All Day‘ and ‘We Walked all the Way to the Lake and The Water Was So Still We Jumped in Naked‘ “embracing not just a sentimental fondness for the specific moment but one wider in scope,” as we put it, “longing for the kind of curiosity and carefree spirit which marks youth.” With the album now out, Henner has shared another single and the title of the track says it all. ‘I Used To See Her On The Way Home from School and She Lit Up The Sky with Her Beauty’ is “about the frenzy and passion of love in adolescence,” as Henner explains. “About how your crush can change the whole universe with their presence, make everything feel bigger than you could possibly handle sometimes or so delicate you could lose it in an instance at others. The harp was supposed to represent the sort of angelic ascension of renaissance or classical beauty, which is the only lens you can ever see your crush with when you’re seventeen.”

ERIKA DOHI – Myth of Tomorrow

Later this week, Osaka-born, New York-based composer and pianist Erika Dohi will release Myth of Tomorrow, a brand new full-length via Switch Hit Records and Figureight Records. Described as “a sonic meditation on catastrophe, resilience, and rebirth,” the album builds upon the eclectic style of predecessor I, Castorpollux to push Dohi’s sound in new directions, utilising a variety of sensibilities from dance, jazz, ambient and classical modes to create soundscapes as singular as they are striking. The record draws its title from the Taro Okamoto’s mural of the same name, and the title track draws the clearest line between the two artworks. A song concerned with the endless cycles of existence, not only asking what they demand of us but also how we might find peace and healing within the recurring patterns of life. “For me, the song reflects on resilience and regeneration in the face of life’s relentless cycles,” Dohi explains. “Through its lyrics, I explore the contradictions of modern existence—the struggle to find happiness in repetition, the unspoken burdens we carry, and the illusions we chase in pursuit of fulfillment. Yet, amidst all of this, the song also asks us to pause, breathe, and reconnect with the beauty in the everyday: the sun rising without fail, the moon’s quiet waning, the resilience of a dandelion growing through cracks in asphalt. It’s a song of introspection that invites us to confront our disconnection and rediscover what moves us to live and hope for tomorrow.”

Myth of Tomorrow will be released on the 24th October via Switch Hit Records and Figureight Records and you can pre-order it now.

Haley Heynderickx & Max García Conover – Fluorescent Light

Haley Heynderickx and Max García Conover are no strangers to collaboration, the pair releasing Among Horses III back in 2018 on Son Canciones and the anniversary single ‘How Does the Horse Go Home?‘ five years later. “The genius of both Heynderickx and Conover is their ability to draw a relatable emotion from their subject matter,” we wrote, “tapping into a universal sense of nostalgia and longing and presenting it back to us, shaping and polished into its most gleaming form.” Based on the life and work of Woodie Guthrie and this time to be released via Fat Possum, What of Our Nature is a brand new full-length by the pair which builds upon the chemistry they’ve crafted over the years to offer songs as inventive and heartfelt as anything they’ve released to date. After the verbose and sometimes frantic ‘Boar’, latest single ‘Fluorescent Light’ highlights a more delicate, restrained dimension to the record, though true to Guthrie’s spirit, there’s a seam of social commentary running through it too. A tone at once playful, melancholic and cutting, able to take aim at the banalities and cruelties of contemporary life without losing its airy brightness.

Kramies – Goodbye Dreampop Troubadour

Back in August we introduced Goodbye Dreampop Troubadour, the new album from Kramies on Hidden Shoal, with single ‘Hollywood Signs’. The track showed the album’s nuanced nature, the sound following “a newly nostalgic direction, full of dreamlike longing and evening colours,” as we put it, yet one which possesses “something strange and quietly unsettling, full of the mysterious allure which Kramies has always offered.” With the record out now, the title track has been unveiled as a new single, the cornerstone of the record which embodies all of its richness and duality. Blending autobiography with fiction, ‘Goodbye Dreampop Troubadour’ rises from relative restraint into something enveloping, Kramies moving from a spacious, drifting sound into something rich and triumphant, playing like a metamorphosis witnessed in real time.

Langkamer – Crows

Following on from 2024 album Langzamer, as well as lead Josh Jarman’s solo release under the moniker Classic Trucks earlier this year, Bristol‘s Langkamer are preparing to release their fourth album in as many years. Coming early next January via Breakfast Records, No was recorded in the Spanish hills at Zarzalico and carries some of the Mediterranean clarity in its sound, creating enough space to examine the full scale of our frenetic contemporary life. Lead single ‘Crows’ gives a taste of what to expect, a track fired by nervous energy and unanswered questions, barrelling forwards despite its clear desire to stop and change. “’Crows’ is a song about the crazy shapes we contort ourselves into trying to create art in the era of late-stage capitalism,” the band explain. “Working a thousand jobs. Writing songs with the left hand while writing emails with the right hand. Your day is already doomed the moment you open your eyes. Everything’s a bad omen.”

Orchid Mantis – Strange Heaven

Change and evolution are key features in the career of any artist, especially one as prolific as Orchid Mantis. “Over the years, Atlanta, Georgia-based artist Thomas Howard has used the [project] as a space in which to explore a host of musical styles,” we wrote back in March, “each release responding to and building upon that which came before it so that the work was always in flux.” In Airports, the second Orchid Mantis full-length to be released this year, not only continues this process but meditates on the very meaning of such an endeavour. What does it mean to commit to a life making music? And how might it help chart all that is lost and preserved over the years? The result feels like the culmination of everything Orchid Mantis has done to date, returning to old styles and techniques as readily is it breaks new ground, and thus becomes something of a mission statement for the project. A declaration of intent to give the past and future equal billing, full of the spirit which has been pieced together over the years yet open to possibility. New single and closer ‘Strange Heaven’ expresses the sentiment most succinctly:

as it fades away
we could keep drifting
we could form a star
we could be lifted

The Planes – Tear the World Apart (MFLB Version)

We last wrote about New York indie rock outfit The Planes back in 2023, describing ‘First Breath After Mask’, a single from EP Dark Matter Recycling Co., as “a song at once depressed and affirming. As though from with its own inertia stirs some last attempt at catharsis.” Now the band are back with Motel For Lightning Bug, a brand new release which sees them continue their own idiosyncratic mix of rock and pop influences, harnessing some of the energy of their livewire shows without losing a sense of emotion or reflection. It is fitting that opener and single ‘Tear the World Apart (MFLB Version)’ is a reworking of a fan favourite from live shows, what the band call label as “slacker indie rock bubblegum” which deals with loss with equal parts wistfulness and wry humour, not to mention an infectious sense of momentum which only builds across the length of the track.

Sister Wanzala – Now You’re Mine

Back in 2022 we heralded the apparently triumphant return of London sibling trio Sister Wanzala, singles ‘Perfume‘ and ‘Top Drawer‘ appearing after a three-year hiatus which started soon after the release of 2019 EP The Circus and signalling an almost reluctant determination to pursue making music in an age which can often appear to be designed to convince you otherwise. Fittingly, both tracks featured dreams as a central motif, though rather than some inspirational battle cry to all those who which to pursue their passions, they either described these dreams as full of disaster (‘Top Drawer’) or declared a desire to have them removed entirely (‘Perfume’). You can already guess what happened next. The return was a false dawn, Sister Wanzala retreated into their shells again, only… what’s that? A new track, two years later? Another self-deprecating press release declaring their career a failure and promising more of the same? You’ll understand if we don’t call ‘Now You’re Mine’ anything more than another small blip in might otherwise be a pristine half-decade of silence, but as soon as the jazzy opening unfurls with all its nineties daytime TV swagger and the cold groove settles with effortless cool, you’ll be glad you got anything from the project, no matter how alluring and brief.

The post Weekly Listening: October 2025 #2 appeared first on Various Small Flames.

Having orbited around one another in the LA music scene for a short while, Derek Ted and Braden Lawrence gradually began to collaborate, helping one another with solo work, producing other artists, then eventually writing original material as a duo. The product of the relationship is beaming, a brand new project which will release its debut self-titled EP this June via Rose Garden, and lead single ‘slow sinkin’ gives a flavour of what to expect from the outfit. With Field Medic adding guest vocals, the track possesses all of the earnestness fans of Ted and Lawrence’s solo work will know well, the bright rhythm and heartfelt tone the sonic equivalent of shaking clarity into a clouded mind. “Lyrically, it’s about looking back on the past and how easy it is to get caught up in your own BS,” the band explain. “It’s our most acoustic track on the EP, and we wanted it to feel more natural and organic.”

Watch the video directed by Olivia Alonso Gough with cinematography and colour by Michael Greenwood below:

Beaming EP is out on the 13th June via Rose Garden and you can pre-save it now.

Bouquet – Hold On

Almost a decade since their previous album was released, LA-based dream pop duo Bouquet are preparing to unveil a brand new full-length. Consisting of interdisciplinary artist, writer and composer Carolyn Pennypacker Riggs and songwriter and producer Max Foreman, the project made a name with a rich and romantic style that championed restraint within a genre often prone to excesses, and new single ‘Hold On’ represents a continuation of the style. With Pennypacker Riggs providing vocals and guitar and Foreman vocals, synthesizer and drum machine, the song is a lesson in precision, not drowning the audience in reverb and haze but instead beckoning them into its ethereal, wistful world.

Course – Hue Mirror

Led by Jess Robbins, Chicago synth pop outfit Course formed in the months before the pandemic, so adapting to challenging conditions has always been part of the project’s DNA. Their third album Hue Mirror is no exception. After suffering with chronic pain for years, Robbins was diagnosed with the autoimmune condition ankylosing spondylitis, and wrote the record within the vertiginous early days of processing the news. The lead single and title track introduces the tone of the record, one delivered with equal doses of tenderness and fear. “I wrote this song during the confusion and uncertainty of my future,” Robbins explains. “The song touches on the idea of how a medicine for this disease comes at a price, the pain I had been having for so long, and the sneakiness of not knowing when the next flare will come.”

You find me again
And again
Driving fear
Comes over me
In the light of pain

Hue Mirror is out on the 25th April and you can pre-order it via the Spondylitis Association of America, with all proceeds being donated to research.

Jess Kerber – I Wonder If I’ll Forget This

Born to musician parents, and a guitarist herself since the age of twelve, Nashville’s Jess Kerber makes warm and timeless songs that feel like worthy entries to the American folk tradition. New single ‘I Wonder If I’ll Forget This’ is a case in point, a wonderfully understated track that aches with real emotion. Kerber’s vocals are flanked by acoustic guitar and the barely-there texture of organ drone, an arrangement that allows the songwriting to shine through. It’s impressively mature, particularly in the way it combines genuine vulnerability with a sense of steadfast tenacity, a sensation Kerber likens to “the feeling of being little and learning to swim, grabbing the edge of the pool.”

‘I Wonder If I’ll Forget This’ is out now via Felte Records and is available on streaming services.

JLJR – Arms For Eyes

With new EP The Rest of Your Life coming soon via Paper Moon Records, JLJR has shared new single ‘Arms For Eyes’. Building upon the mix of emotion and narrative which marked the JLJR debut, the track adopts a tone both reflective and defiant to chart the end of a distinctive kind of relationship. One troubled and difficult to live through, yet equally one whose closure takes something from you too. “It’s a reflection on the disintegration of a bad friendship,” as JLJR puts it, “and the struggle to be yourself after someone robs you of part of your identity.”

‘Arms For Eyes’ is out now via Paper Moon Records.

Luah – Wanting You

“Something like a memory, or rather several memories superimposed. A way in which to not so much return to the past as view it more vividly, somehow striking in both its intimacy and remove. That place we long for but can never return to.” So we wrote of ‘Ocean O. (home 4 the holidays)’ by Brendan Paul Sullivan’s Luah back in January. It was a song which embodied the sincerity and heart of the project, not to mention the gentle patience with with emotion is brought to life. With album Some Blue Heaven coming next month, latest new single ‘Wanting You’ takes this sense of patience even further. A layered, slow burning psych folk song that taps into the rhythms of the diurnal cycle, moving from day to night as it progresses and gradually coalescing into something almost cosmic.

Molly Ganley – Comparisons

Last week saw the release of Eldest Daughter, the debut album from NYC indie folk artist Molly Ganley. Described as “a nostalgic and honest account of finding your way,” it’s a very human record about growth and change and navigating life’s strange turns with as much grace as is possible. One standout is ‘Comparisons’, a track that sits at the centre of the album and proves the perfect introduction to what Ganley does so well. Backed by pedal steel, piano and backing vocals from country folk duo Raising Daughters, the song confronts the futile and needless woes that result from comparing oneself to others.

Monnone Alone – Dry Doubt

Eighteen months ago, Melbourne‘s Monnone Alone released single ‘Loose Terrain’, a stellar slice of jangle pop where bright playfulness was shadowed by the slightest mark of wistful longing. With three albums already under their belt, the track seemed to be a culmination of their talents and experience, only for the project to settle into a prolonged period of radio silence. Such quiet can go one of two ways in the music industry—positive or negative—but luckily for us, in Monnone Alone’s case, the answer is the former. Because while they might have have appeared inactive from the outside, the truth was they were hard at work on brand new full-length, Here Comes the Afternoon. Pencilled for early May, the release is a joint endeavour, with Lost And Lonesome (Aus), Meritorio (EU), Safe Suburban Home (UK) and Repeating Cloud (US) teaming up to spread the record far and wide. Album opener and new single ‘Dry Doubt’ suggests ‘Loose Terrain’ was anything but a flash in the pan, so the date can’t arrive soon enough.

Orchid Mantis – Spirit Circle

Over the years, Atlanta, Georgia-based artist Thomas Howard has used the Orchid Mantis project as a space in which to explore a host of musical styles, each release responding to and building upon that which came before it so that the work was always in flux. Coming this spring on Daydream Records and Start-Track, the latest Orchid Mantis full-length Possession Pact pivots towards a nineties slowcore style, channeling forebears like Low, Bedhead and Codeine to offer a new dimension to the project. Opener and lead single ‘Spirit Circle’ typifies the understated brooding atmosphere. A song bathed in shadowy textures and melancholic quiet, always threatening to rise into something more intense but for the most part maintaining its muted darkness.

Steven van Betten & Andrew Rowan – Cloud Behind the Sun

Back in 2023 we wrote about Friends and Family, the debut solo full-length by Steven van Betten on Future Gods which highlighted the LA songwriter’s distinctively compassionate, humane style. Now van Betten has returned with brand new EP Cloud Behind the Sun, though has parked the solo venture in favour of continuing a collaboration with composer Andrew Rowan which stretches back more than a decade. The lead single title track shows the three-song release to be every bit as thoughtful and heartfelt as its predecessor, taking the ostensibly ordinary experience of passing an ex on the street and mining the moment for all of its depth and weight. Something made possible not least thanks to Rowan’s almost cinematic arrangement, its intricacy revealing itself as slowly yet decisively as spring through a thawing winter ground.

Wryn – Only Thing

We’ve covered a couple of singles by Californian songwriter Wryn in recent weeks, with both ‘Snake‘ and ‘Slow Down‘ introducing the themes of change and self-actualisation which run through their upcoming full-length, Shapes. The record’s release is fast approaching on Ani DiFranco’s Righteous Babe Records, and Wryn has returned with new single ‘Only Thing’ to further expand upon these ideas. The song opens with a spare, almost hesitant tone, but gradually builds in momentum, as though deciding to embrace life’s inevitable forward motion. “Life is always shifting and evolving,” as Wryn puts it, “and that’s a good thing. Change is the only constant.”

Watch the suitably literal video directed by DanTroon-Sazani below:

Shapes will be released on the 28th March via Righteous Babe Records and you can pre-order it now.

Zoya Zafar – I don’t love you

Writing of release Spring Songs in April of last year, we described how Lahore-born, Orlando-based songwriter Zoya Zafar utilised a controlled, unadorned style to communicate a considerable depth of feeling. “Zafar uses minimalism not as an austere stylistic choice but as a tool to hone her music’s emotional weight,” as we put it, “suffusing it with warmth despite its direct and unfussy arrangement.” New single ‘i don’t love you’ is no less charged in its mood, beginning life with no accompaniment other than acoustic guitar before Max Helgemo helped evolve it into something richer without sacrificing the poignant spareness.

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A song that she says “comes from acknowledging the type of magic that exists all around us and yearning to get a taste of it,” ‘rosemary’ is the new single from addy (the project led by Philadelphia’s Addy Watkins). Her first new music since last year’s temperance, the song takes indie pop and stripped-back folk and refracts them into a new shape entirely, something warm and fond and all-enveloping.  “I was in love with a witch once,” Watkins describes of the song’s inspiration, “who taught me rosemary hung over my bed would help with my crippling nightmares. which it did and still does whenever I remember to hang it.”

Alice Hebborn – Saisons – Movement 2

December sees the release of Saisons, the debut album from Belgian composer Alice Hebborn on Western Vinyl. Created following a move to the countryside, the record draws inspiration from theories of ecofeminism and environmental harmony and presents a world cast volatile and disordered in the wake of human impacts. Across seven movements, built of piano and electronics, Hebborn imagines a different future. One in which humans cease to throw the natural balance and instead become a key link in a harmonious web of reciprocal relationships. Lead single ‘Movement 2’ is “the starting point of Saisons,” Hebborn describes. “It was written in the spring and draws its inspiration from the captivating images of this season: the awakening of nature and our senses, the great activity of all living things.”

Banti Buli – Hennessy Song

“Refusing to commit fully to irony or sincerity […] as though a song about relationships couldn’t really function without equal doses of heartfelt emotion and tongue-in-cheek humour.” So we wrote of Banti Buli‘s ‘Something Like a Honda Odyssey’ last year, a song which mixed languid rhythms with a distinctively verbose lyricism. Ahead of an album due next spring, Banti Gheneti is now back with ‘Hennessy Song’, a track which see the US-based Dutch-Oromo artist take samples from his surroundings to build an earnest soundscape exploring the transience of even the most steadfast habits. “The closest thing to a home (the Ethiopian corner store) becomes a hole in the ground and your lover leaves you,” as Gheneti says. “Even routines and promises are ephemeral.”

figure eight – 1999 (cherry)

A mainstay of the Bay Area scene, figure eight originated as the experimental noise project of duo Nash Rood and Abby Goeser, starting out with nothing but a distorted synthesizer and acoustic drum kit. However, on welcoming a number of additional members in recent years (including Nicholas Coleman on bass and Nicky Esparza on drums), the band has now evolved into something altogether more full-bodied. Take new single ‘1999 (cherry)’, a song with finds the outfit at their most boisterous and reserved within the same three minutes. The searing opening is indebted to hardcore, though the crushing momentum soon breaks into something almost delicate. These twin threads of lightness and weight weave across the track into what appears to be the spirit of this new version of figure eight—a band aware of the transcendent power available at both ends of the spectrum.

His His – My Friend Wants to be a Freemason

We last featured Aidan Belo’s His His project almost exactly a year ago when we covered the single ‘Ford Econoline’, a song about life in a tour van that we said felt “like the sensation of returning home in your mind as you cruise down an unfamiliar stretch of highway in some faraway city.” The Toronto-based artist returns with a new EP, Good Gold, coming out next month, and has just released the final single ahead of the release. Informatively titled ‘My Friend Wants to be a Freemason’, it’s a track about a childhood friend who became obsessed with joining a masonic lodge. “The idea of joining this secret society consumed my friend, and for a couple of months it was all that he’d talk about,” as Belo describes. Musically the song follows a familiar His His formula, a gentle and folk-inflected indie pop song that wears an air of weary wistfulness like the grain in an old film photograph.

Good Gold is due to be released on 15th November via Victory Pool Records. You can pre-save it now on streaming services.

Kassie Krut – Reckless

Kassie Krut are wasting no time introducing themselves. “K / A / S / S / I / E / K / R / U / T / T / T / T,” goes the opening line of new single ‘Reckless’, a de facto theme song for the new project of Kasra Kurt, Eve Alpert (formerly of Palm) and Matt Anderegg (Mothers, Body Meat). The band have just signed to Fire Talk Records, and new single offers a glimpse at the core of the project. Something undoubtedly contemporary yet possessing a rawer dimension too, as though through the idiosyncratic art pop style comes an altogether more atavistic, primal energy. Directed by Guy Kozak, the video for the song was filmed at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, and offers a visual representation of the sound’s frantic playfulness.

‘Reckless’ is out now and available via the Kassie Krut Bandcamp page.

Mark Trecka – Witch’s Hat (ft. Midwife & An Heap)

The work of Mark Trecka never sits still, the Chicago-born artist and activist utilising sound to explore a diverse set of styles and themes in a practice as inventive as it is ambitious. More recent work has turned towards post-punk as an avenue of exploration, and latest single ‘Witch’s Hat’ continues to plough that same furrow. Recorded between Paris and Colorado, the track is described as Trecka’s “Halloween song,” existing with the common ground between that which is haunting and beautiful. Midwife joins on backing vocals and An Heap on synths to further elevate the dynamic, the song moving from apparent minimalism into a gauzy atmosphere as though pushing through the layers of time itself.

Michael Younker – Bad News

Michael Younker is a Detroit-born, Brooklyn-based production designer who also makes rock & roll music that he says “melds lighthearted cynicism with unashamed big rock motifs.” He has just released his debut EP, Sweet Things, a four-song record that’s brash and chaotic and amped up with bratty energy. “Sonically & lyrically, Sweet Things feels like the kid who ate too much sugar, bounced off walls, and passed out on the floor,” Younker describes. “Music of obsession, excess, indulgence, and…consequences?” ‘Bad News’ is perhaps the best place to start, capturing the EP’s manic motion and carefree bravado. “I can’t make you love me,” Younker sings, before snottily trying his best anyway in the following line – “C’mon, give it a go!”

Old Man of the Woods – Ghost

“A visceral exploration of a villain’s arc, tracing her devolution from possession to obsession to dissolution.” So reads the album notes for Triptych I: Devolve, the latest release from Seattle-based project Old Man of the Woods. The first in a series of EPs, the three-song collection offers a self-described “goth ethereal mycelial” sound to chart a fall from grace in all of its tragedy, majesty and strange avenues of agency. Such as with single ‘Ghost’, where the central character moves from resentment to something closer to power with the realisation that the ability to haunt can represent its own form of control.

Orchid Mantis – Dead Malls (feat. Cathedral Bells)

Following a collaboration with Sign Crushes Motorist earlier this year, not to mention several more singles in the meantime, Orchid Mantis (the recording project of Atlanta‘s Thomas Howard) has returned with a new single ‘Dead Malls’. This time featuring Orlando, Florida shoegazey bedroom pop act Cathedral Bells, the track uses imagery of an abandoned shopping mall to explore emotions altogether more personal. Where past hopes, once bright and shiny and full of promise, have withered on the vine, now little more than empty husks. But the atmosphere is not downbeat, rather wistful and hazy, looking back on old memories as though flickering warm and grainy from an old film projector.

The post Weekly Listening: October 2024 #1 appeared first on Various Small Flames.

With a ninth album coming later this year, Orchid Mantis is back with a brand new single ‘Another Life’. A song which not only explores new styles but also continues the trend of Howard enlisting outside help. Offering a morose intimacy typical of the best bedroom pop and slowcore, the song plays like inner longings as murmured to an empty room. Lyrics written and performed by Sign Crushes Motorist, one of Belfast artist Liam McCay’s several projects, elevate the mood further, and raise the Orchid Mantis sound to new levels of melancholic charm. It’s reportedly the first song from a forthcoming album, so stay tuned for more info in the near future.

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With second album Still Life coming later this year on Lay Down Recordings, Lisbon‘s April Marmara has shared brand new single, ‘Who Knows Where the Love Goes’. It tells the tale of a love forbidden yet unyielding, persisting even through a lifetime of separation. Marmara’s warm and mysterious folk style elevates the story toward an almost mythical plane, teasing out the unknowable facets of the heart in all of their human nuance. Check out the video produced by Pipa Marinho/Lay Down Recordings and directed by Martim Braz Teixeira:

Still Life will be released later this year on Lay Down Recordings.

Clementine Was Right – Takes Tall Walks

We last wrote about Clementine Was Right, the songwriting project of poet and fiction writer Mike Young, just over a year ago when we previewed the album, Can’t Get Right With the Darkness. It was a record which left “no emotion untapped as they aim to paint the most vivid version of each story possible,” as we described in our piece, letting the shadows take their full darkness if only so that the joy might burn brighter. New single ‘Take Tall Walks’ retains this spirit while moving the style into new territory, what Young calls “a push away from Americana into full-throated Sam Fender/The Killers western emo.” A tone able to broach the weight of the topics at hand, the lyrics dealing with missed opportunities to reach out and reconnect, playing as one last chance to say what needs to be said.

Hall Johnson – OMWO

This spring, Texas-based outfit Hall Johnson are releasing Haymaker, their debut full-length via The Record Machine. Powered by an upbeat energy and seemingly fond vocals, the track plays as a confident and cheerful number, though scratch the surface of the lyrics and there’s a more conflicted mood underneath. Because ultimately the song is a meditation on a failed relationship and the accompanying missteps, packaged so as to work for any listener, no matter where along the spectrum of love and regret they might be.

July Talk – When You Stop

Toronto‘s July Talk have made a name for themselves with an expert balance of ferocity and control, and new album Remember Never Before feels like their most confident, impassioned yet. Single ‘When You Stop’ serves as a distillation of the album’s themes, and thus serves as the ideal introduction to July Talk’s vision across the record. A visceral and cathartic message of persistence delivered from within a culture all to ready to snuff out such ideas. Above all, a willingness to hope in something more. As the liner notes put it “an album of matter over mind. Instincts. Guts. Radical acceptance of who we are; giant hopefulness for who we can be.”

you say you feel
you don’t believe in anything and it doesn’t matter anyway
you say you feel there’s no one listening
been hearing that a lot these days

when you stop you’ll find out what yer running from

Check out the hand-drawn and animated video by band co-leads Leah Fay Goldstein and Peter Dreimanis below:

Remember Never Before is out now via Six Shooter Records and available from Bandcamp.

 Laveda – Clean

With their full-length album A Place Your Grew Up In on the horizon, Laveda are back with a new single, ‘Clean’. Previous track ‘Surprise’ was what we called 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,” and the new track is similarly bittersweet. An examination of growing up that captures both the fondness and loss inherent in the process. “I think for the first time I truly realised that growing up was an inevitable fate,” Ali Genevich explains. “It’s such a strange thing, knowing you’re only to grow further and further from innocence as life goes on. I never wanted to think about getting older as a kid, I wanted to stay eight years old forever. I think there’s a part of that feeling that will always stay with me.”

I’m getting older
You say it’s fine though
Am I playing my cards right
Me and the devil

Check out the video directed by David Martucello, Ali Genevich and Jacob Brooks below:

A Place You Grew Up In releases on 14th April on PaperCup Music. You can preorder it now via the Laveda Bandcamp page.

Nico Paulo – Time

Nico Paulo is a Portuguese-Canadian singer-songwriter who’s based in St John’s, Newfoundland & Labrador. In April she will release her self-titled debut LP via Forward Music Group, a record that promises to follow the nuanced, tender lineage of songwriters such as Gal Costa, Feist and Victoria Legrand. Latest single ‘Time’ is the perfect introduction, a rich folk pop song full of smooth melodies and almost tropical rhythms, like a long-lost seventies masterpiece that you dig out from a crate in a garage sale. Lyrically the track is sparse on detail but strong on imagery, the narrator urging a friend to let go of inhibitions. “’Time’ is a song about friendship, admiration and change,” Nico Paulo explains. “It’s a dialogue between two characters that investigates the discrepancies between them — one is more rigid and one is more free.” Check out the video by LA creative studio Sing Sing below:

Nico Paulo releases on 7^th April and you can pre-order it on a variety of formats via Bandcamp.

Orchid Mantis x surfgoth – time and space

We’ve long appreciated the work of Orchid Mantis, with most recent release How Long Will It Take on Spirit Goth Records exploring time in all of its dimensions, from reflection to predestination. But never one to rest on their laurels, the project has teamed up with Wilmington’s surfgoth for brand new single, ‘time and space’. Another suitably glimmering slice of lo-fi pop which tempts the listener in with its wistful textures and holds them there with enveloping layers of vocals.

roman around – Comes With Age

Back in June we introduced roman around with single ‘Rhythm‘ on Trailing Twelve Records. The Fresno-based drummer, multi-instrumentalist and teacher “draws on personal experiences as a non-binary, pansexual person, as well as spiritual themes from their upbringing within Native American and Mexican communities,” as we explained, using a palette across post-punk, pop and R&B styles to do so. roman around has now released their debut full-length Tell Me All About You, and single ‘Comes With Age’ offers a glimpse at the hazy side of their sound. A gauzy space through which confessional vocals drift, though the vocals flash with deceptively sharp edges too.

Species Traitor – Acheulean Handaxe

“I used to work as a gardener, and now I’m an archaeologist,” says Joey LeBrun of Species Traitor. “That seems relevant.” The Vancouver band’s self-titled album explores the tension of climate change from this perspective, balancing the dread of an impending doom with the temptation to submit altogether, all presented with an off-the-wall energy. The result achieves the Berman paradox, sounding at once overwhelmed in the immediacy of the present and commenting from a wry remove. A gardener and archaeologist both. Inspired by the work of Anne Carson, single ‘Acheulean Handaxe’ is a good place to start—the tale of a monster who wants more than everything to be nice, only for the world to push him toward a violent end.

Throw your glass in the fire and we’ll make a whole scene
Where everything around you is pouring red to the sea

Wednesday – Chosen to Deserve

“Though Twin Plagues is a record of memories, there’s nothing polished about the experiences being relayed, no rose-tinted gloss applied through repeated telling. There’s no nostalgia either. No intention to preserve or wish to return. Rather, Wednesday portray the past as something still present. The rugged surface across which the present is overlain.” That’s how we described the previous record by Wednesday, released via Orindal Records. Having now signed with Dead Oceans, the Asheville outfit are set to return with new full-length Rat Saw God, and latest single ‘Chosen to Deserve’ suggests they are pushing this style to new heights. There’s pool hopping, Benadryl abuse, Sunday school, a loneliness everywhere and in everything. But like those of bandmate MJ Lenderman, Karly Hartzman’s lyrics offer no distinction between the good and the bad, the fascinating and the mundane, but rather recognise everything as another dimension of life in all its peculiar beauty.

Rat Saw God will be released via Dead Oceans on 7th April and you can pre-order it now.

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Last month we introduced Real Love, the forthcoming album by Beat Radio on Totally Real Records. An examination of personal turmoil against a wider context of intergenerational trauma which “prob[es] into some of the most tender areas in order to address the wound.” The first song Brian Sendrowitz wrote from the record, latest single ‘Radioactive’ not only sets the album’s fuzzed out tone but established the stakes too. “You were radioactive / And its taken its toll,” Sendrowitz sings, “But you’re learning to change / And to make yourself whole / It’s a fight for your soul.”

Real Love is out on 21st October via Totally Real Records and you can pre-order it now from Bandcamp.

Bollards – Crimestopping

Described as a “relentless rush of blood to the head”, ‘Crimestopping’ is the latest track from London outfit Bollards. The song is a blend of post-punk and art rock sensibilities which captures a decidedly urban milieu. Spacious atmospherics coupled with claustrophobic cul-de-sacs and an overarching instability hovering above. This semi-hysterical tone informs the lyrics too, where paranoia about surveillance is matched only by the incessant desire to surveil in turn. A world where you can trust no-one, and no-one trusts you. Check out the video co-directed by Mars Washington and Jonny Dickens:

‘Crimestopping’ is out now and is available from the Bollards Bandcamp page.

claire rousay – wouldn’t have to hurt

LA‘s claire rousay returns this month with wouldn’t have to hurt, a benefit album for the Trevor Project, the world’s largest suicide prevention and crisis intervention organization for LGBTQ young people, via Mended Dream Records. Woven from a fabric of field recordings, midi instruments, guitars and piano, as well as guest strings from Theodore Cale Schafer, the title track sees unguarded and forthright spoken word from nurse and Youtuber Madison Van Dine. A discussion of mental health stripped of any mawkish sentiment or quick-fire solutions, just working through things and facing up to every day. An encapsulation, that is, of rousay’s intentions with wouldn’t have to hurt. Still here and communicating to others, no matter how injured, frustrated or flat.

Crooks & Nannies – control

This month saw the return of Crooks & Nannies, AKA West Philadelphia duo Madel Rafter and Sam Huntington, with their first new music in a number of years. Released via Grand Jury Music, ‘control’ is a single which explores the knife-edge of mental health and the often unseen work which goes into maintaining the balance. The gentle progression slowly ramps as discordant noises punctuate the background, soon escalating into a chaotic rhythm. “I wanted to capture the feeling of walking through an art museum and holding all of your muscles tightly because if you don’t, you might give into some crazy impulse and do something really really bad,” Rafter explains, “like pull a painting off the wall and put your foot through it.” Check out the video with art by Sam Huntington and animation by Sarah Alvarez below:

‘control’ is out now via Grand Jury Music and you can get it from the Crooks & Nannies Bandcamp page.

daarling – Metamorphosis

Chicago-based indie rock band daarling are gearing up to release their debut full-length, and new single ‘Metamorphosis’ gives an insight into what to expect. A simmering, brooding number which dwells on the inevitability of change and the friction which results, with lead Erin Lyle riding the peaks and troughs of the instrumentation to find a tone both cutting and cathartic. “Metamorphosis is bullshit / I’ll cultivate my state either way,” she sings. “Your idleness affects no one / You confuse stability for stagnation.”

Kevin Dorff – Impossible Objects

Kevin Dorff is a songwriter and playwright originally from Des Moines, Iowa and now based in Brooklyn, who recently released his debut LP Silent Reply. A record which explores the lasting impact people have on our lives, even after their death, Silent Reply combines elements of folk and Nineties indie rock into a sound that shifts effortlessly from poignant to energetic. Dorff’s style is thanks at least in part to its influences—he cites the songwriting of David Berman and Craig Finn as big inspirations, but also the novels of Rachel Cusk and portraits of visual artist Alice Neel, which goes some way to explaining a tone that’s both sincere and wryly humourous. A standout is ‘Impossible Objects’, possibly the most touching track to ever name check M. Night Shyamalan and Toy Story 3.

Orchid Mantis – Lucid Dreams

The prolific Orchid Mantis is gearing up to release their seventh album via Spirit Goth Records, and first single ‘Lucid Dreams’ gives an indication of direction Thomas Howard is taking on the new tunes. After the newfound optimism of Visitations, an album we described as “an attempt to push beyond the past, keeping a clear-eyed focus on the present and what comes next,” the song finds itself inevitably turning back toward the past, even if just in the night-time visions suggested in the title. “Back out on my friend’s porch / or down by the church,” Howard sings, “feels like a lucid dream / like it was 10pm in 2016”

and nothing feels the same
but nothing really changed
i’m filling up my head
with memories that
i don’t ever want to resurrect
i wake up again

‘Lucid Dreams’ is out now and available from the Orchid Mantis Bandcamp page. How Long Will It Take is out via Spirit Goth Records on the 11th November.

Ross Jenkins – Plain as Day

Writing back in March, we described Free All Day by Vancouver’s Ross Jenkins as a record marked by “a sense of restraint and quiet grace,” which brought to mind “the solo records of Canadian songwriting heavyweights Bry Webb and John K. Samson.” Recorded during the same period as that album, latest single ‘Plain as Day’ embraces this style once more while also leaning into the seventies-era psych sensibilities which also reared their head. The gentle rhythm belies the strength underpinning its intentions, coming off as an assured statement and worthy addition to Jenkins’s catalogue.

Sweetbreads – Out of Range

Led by Melody Stolpp in collaboration with Nick Watt, and featuring a rotating cast of musicians, Brooklyn’s Sweetbreads make a hybrid of alt-country and pop which aims to get your toes tapping and hearts swelling in equal measure. Latest single ‘Out of Season’ follows protagonist June and her quest to resist the thankless treadmill of modern living, opting for an unproductive and entirely more positive way of life. Complete with a “muppet-inspired” background chorus with over forty voices, the song celebrates breaking conventions in the most joyous way possible, and ends up as the perfect antidote to the breakneck bluster of the world we call home.

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The latter felt fully focused on endings, the sense of finality before new directions, so it is fitting that forthcoming record Visitations, out this autumn on Z Tapes, sees new possibilities come to fruition. Even if the directions are not necessarily those Howard set out wander. “I wanted to make a really quiet, droning record without any electronics; something slower and moodier than what I’ve done before, which didn’t really end up happening,” Howard explains. Because amid work on the record, his personal circumstances underwent significant changes for the better, something mirrored in the compositions that emerged. “I was writing and recording incessantly about this one thing, and ended up with something really focused and hopeful.”

Which isn’t to say the original intentions were shelved entirely. “There’s a lot of acoustic guitar,” he continues, “a choice that carried over from my original ideas for the project. I really wanted to make something more organic.” This desire extends further on several tracks, the live instrumentation extending to pianos, clarinets and sampled saxophone, though it is telling that Howard says these are the older songs on the record, as though the release serves as a kind of map for his progress from one frame of mind to another.

Lead single ‘Never Knows Best’ invites us inside this newfound optimism. With its combination of the organic and electronic, whatever nostalgia present in the soundscape is shaken up by the pressing drum line. The track as a whole feels like an attempt to push beyond the past, keeping a clear-eyed focus on the present and what comes next. So while the imagery is often strange and haunting, with references to angels and ghosts and beams of light, Howard refuses to take his eye from what is before him, and emerges with a steadfast will to progress.

and never knows best
whatever comes next
i’ve made up my mind
i’ll see things through
to the end of the line

Visitations is out on the 1st October via Z Tapes and you can pre-order it now from the Orchid Mantis Bandcamp page.

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As evocative as the aesthetic proved, circumstances pushed the Orchid Mantis focus in a different direction. A relationship came to an end, college faded into the rear-view. Howard moved back home after years away, and all of the things that had come to represent his life had suddenly vanished. But rather that mourn the past, this time he chose to confront the present. Forthcoming full-length album Far From This World is the result. “This is the first thing I’ve recorded that doesn’t feel retrospective or past-oriented,” Howard explains. “This feels like a transitional time, and in the face of such uncertainty we often look for an escape. That’s what this album did for me.”

The newly present style is clear from the opening of latest single ‘Light Beyond (Right Now)’, the nostalgia of previous Orchid Mantis releases cast aside in favour of something more direct. “Like many tracks from the new album, [‘Light Beyond’] contains some of my most direct and personal lyrics to date,” Howard says. “This year has been a tumultuous one for my own life, involving the shedding of many things I relied on for stability in my life: moving back home after living with the same roommates for several years, the dissolution of a 3-year relationship, graduation from college, etc.”

This personal uncertainty has been mirrored by the intensification of global problems, every new emergency only reinforcing the fragility of our way of life. ‘Light Beyond (Right Now)’ exists on such precarious ground, in a world changing not in fifty years or ten but right before our eyes. As such the track is racked by anxiety and fear but there’s something else too. A hope however distant that the change might meet everything, even the systems of comfort and control that hold us back and keep us under. The idea that, within a crisis, we might (re)discover ourselves, and correct the course of things towards a better way of living.

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The oneiric consistency of these tracks is not some adolescent lesson in performative weirdness, but rather an attempt to engage with reality beyond its strict physics […] surreality born of Howard’s own experiences, where coincidence and happenstance prove a little too convenient, and strange connections form between moments in his life.

Titled Light As Leaving, the EP is the first of two small collections that Howard wrote in the aftermath of Yellow House. “After three consecutive albums working at a certain sound I wanted to give myself space to experiment without expectations,” he describes. “I pushed myself to try some things I couldn’t seem to get right in the past, while drawing from a lot of what I’d learned recording the last album.” The result is a release concerned with the transience of life, how what we hold dear can change in ways we could not predict, even down to a title that is taken from lyrics that have since been scrapped.

Today we have the pleasure of unveiling first single, ‘Where You Are’, which features Josh Augustin of Vansire, making it the first Orchid Mantis song made with a collaborator. Starting as a demo written on a Casio sampling keyboard and a Univox SR-55 drum machine, the song conjures a rich soundscape that is soft and textured, the edges removed like a memory recalled fondly. Augustin’s vocals, worked into the track while it was still in its flexible formative period, feel wholly at home amongst the other elements, a pebble rounded in the same pond.

‘Where Are You’ also comes complete with a video by Joseph Skillas, which you can check out below:

Light As Leaving is out tomorrow (30th August) and you can pre-order it from the Orchid Mantis Bandcamp page.

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