But regardless of form, Sondermann’s music always constitutes a document of a life, one that has known its fair share of hardship. Prior to the release of 2017’s Antnumbra Pull, his partner Ed was diagnosed with cancer, a life-changing development which understandably became the focus of much of the songs. The result served as a “reminder that everything we have in this life deserves our utmost love and attention,” we wrote at the time, “and that we’d do well not to take it for granted for a single second.”

After Ed’s death in June 2019, Sondermann began writing songs in isolation, creating a mass of demos that would become the new Pleasure Systems album, Visiting the Well which releases on Orchid Tapes later this week. If previous records were about suffering and worry, this is an album about grief. An album where pain, confusion and love are woven into twelve songs as unflinchingly direct as diary entries, presenting loss as it is processed in real time. The lyrical immediacy is countered by an often dreamy and drifting sound, a duality that conjures the weightless aftermath of loss where time is both too quick and too slow. A shapeless pocket within which there is little to do but collect signs of what has been and what remains, a deep hollow in normal time that feels like it might just go on for ever. “This summer stretches to an empty swollen blur,” goes a particularly emblematic line on opening track ‘Blur,’ “I spend the days making mosaics out of hurt.”

Visiting the Well exists within and around this cavity, Sondermann never far from its mysterious depths. Emotions range from quiet despair (e.g. on ’10:13) and yearning (as on ‘Blur’ or ‘Through Your Eyes’), to a sense of pure disbelief. “Mom is it real?” asks ‘Life Sized,’ “oh I swore he would heal, I could feel it.” But even amongst the album’s bluntest moments, Sondermann retains an ability to find beauty in the most unlikely places. Like on ‘When Your Beard Fell Out’, which likens the moment his partner’s hair turned white overnight to the turn and fall of leaves in autumn. “There is beauty,” Sondermann sings, “in the colour palette of demise.”

It’s in this way that, almost inadvertently, Visiting the Well becomes as much a celebration of love as a document of loss. Immediate thoughts coalesce with memories, anguish swirls with past joys and the current stark absence muddles with a previous, very real, presence. As with all loss, there is no simple lesson learned, no lasting consolation. There is only what was and what still can be, all there below the surface. Love, like grief, is a depth that will always be present. You can visit it at any time.

Clarke was kind enough to answer some questions about the record, so read on for more in-depth discussion on style, working with Orchid Tapes, and grief in twenty-first century America.

You describe Visiting the Well as “pretty raw, even embarrassingly earnest.” Even for someone who’s used to writing and sharing music about personal subject matter, this one must be scary to release into the world?

It’s very intimidating for me to release, and I’ve gone through a lot of cycles of wanting to scrap it or even move on from making music altogether. Ultimately, my personal hope in releasing these songs is to achieve a sense of catharsis; holding onto these songs over the last year has felt like a heavy secret and I’m ready to get it off my chest.

The album is being released on Orchid Tapes, which is very cool. How did that come about?

I’ve been a long time admirer of Orchid Tapes, and connected with Warren Hildebrand (who runs the label) online last year. We started talking after he responded to a video I posted of me taking my PrEP dose while drinking a grapefruit Moscow mule, which is absurd in retrospect, but we became good friends shortly after. At some point I sent him the album and he said that it “destroyed” and “devastated” him, which I took as a good sign.

I had already been talking to a couple other labels, but decided I wanted to work with Orchid Tapes because of Warren’s careful respect for the project and willingness to let me maintain control over the direction of the release. He approaches releases from the perspective of collaborating to make something beautiful, rather than maximizing market appeal. As it turns out, I wouldn’t have been able to finish the album without his guidance, encouragement, mixing help and excellent mastering.

Since finishing this album, we’ve also been working on a slate of new songs collaboratively, where we send each other barebones song ideas and help each other flesh them out, which I’m really excited about. Warren’s a brilliant musician and engineer, and working together continues to be one of the best collaborative relationships I’ve found.

Musically speaking, the new album is a pretty big departure from your last release, Terraform. What were you aiming for style-wise when writing it, and where do you see it fitting in your body of work as both Pleasure Systems and The Washboard Abs?

I had actually set an intention for myself to not consider any kind of “listener” or share any of my work with friends for the first six months of writing after my partner’s death, so I wasn’t making conscious decisions when it came to style or sound. Removing the consideration of how it would be received was very generative for me – this album is a trimmed collection of 35 songs that I wrote one after another in a pretty fluid way during that time.

The most obvious departure from my typical process was that I got very interested in playing guitar again after having steered towards electronic music. At that time I was living with my close friend Kasra (of the band Palm) and he let me borrow his nylon string guitar for months on end, which helped everything click and pour out of me. I was still finding great comfort in listening to a lot of minimal synth music – I was particularly obsessed with Colleen’s album A Flame My Love, A Frequency, Steve Hauschildt’s album Strands, and Meitei’s album Komachi. I think that deeply listening to such beautiful and environmental yet sparse electronic albums informed the arrangements and meshed well with the confessional, guitar-oriented writing I was doing.

I’m curious about the title – What does Visiting the Well refer to and why did you choose that phrase to name the album?

It was actually directly inspired by a tweet I was really impacted by, which feels funny to say. One of my favorite accounts, @chunkbardey tweeted “my experience of grief has been that the deep well of sadness has never gone away I just visit it less.” I loved this visual, but I wanted the title to be a bit of a double entendre as well. In the year and a half leading up to my partner’s death, my life was completely enmeshed in a world of sickness, spending endless days and nights in hospitals. Emerging from that world felt like I was merely visiting the “well,” as opposed to the “sick.” A huge part of me felt like it was still stuck in the hospitals. Funny enough, one of my close friends, who records under the name Body Meat, came to a similar place independently of me with his single ‘The Well’ from last fall. I think it’s a really versatile visual.

We last did an interview like this for Antumbra Pull in late 2017. One of your quotes stood out. “I’m sitting with a lot of fear and it shows up in the songs more than I want it to,” you said, “so I’m consciously trying to shift into writing from a more hopeful perspective.” Do you hear courage and hope in these new songs?

Not really, to be honest. I think it’s a fairly direct style of songwriting, like an observation log of whatever I was reflecting on that day. The album isn’t entirely sequential in terms of the order the songs were written in, but the final two songs, ‘When I Picture You Now’ and ‘The Maze’ I wrote several months later than the rest. My grief had transformed and settled a bit by then, and I think there’s an audibly different perspective in those two – a little more acceptance maybe, but not quite hope. It was a devastating loss and I’m still processing it in many ways. I think that trying to twist it into a hopeful narrative would have been dishonest to both myself and the listener.

Was making the album a purely personal way for you to move through your feelings? Or do you think about the effects it will have on that nameless, faceless “listener” too?

It was purely personal – like I said before, I forced myself to go at least six months without even showing friends what I was working on. Once I had the songs selected for the album, it took me over a year to finish editing and refining them, but the motivation was much more to make something that felt true to my experience as opposed to just making songs that would be well received.

This is a difficult time for lots of people, and many are going through similar experiences of grief. If there is someone reading this who is going through what you have/are, would you like to say anything to them?

Part of my anxiety around releasing this album is that, as you said, this is an incredibly difficult time for so many people, and there is so much grief surrounding all of us right now; the immediate grief of those lost to Covid, but also grieving the loss of our “normal” lives for a year now, grieving the more existential idea of lost futures, the disappearance of more hopeful political futures, etc.

Our society in America champions individualism above all else, and I do in some ways feel conflicted about promoting such an individual and isolated account of loss when we are all embedded in such a profound communal grief. I wish I was better equipped to tackle these things through a strictly collectivist lens. But, in the depths of my own grief, I benefited a lot from hearing my experience reflected back to me in music that centered something comparable to what I was going through. If my work can have a similar impact on someone else in the throes of grief, then it’s all worth it. There is a beautiful kind of solidarity in the connection that the listener can have with intimate, emotionally-driven music.

Visiting the Well will be released on 26th March. Pre-order it now on LP or cassette from the Orchid Tapes webstore, or digitally via their Bandcamp or the Pleasure Systems Bandcamp.

Photos by Emily Burtner, cover painting by Tina Scarpello

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Opener ‘Inside Out’ has a light skating synth line and elastic guitars and Allison’s warmly bored-sounding vocals delivering lyrics that are at once pained and nostalgic (“there’s a sort of feeling that you make me have / snow cones and your dad’s baseball cap”). Another stand-out is ‘Skinned Knees’, a grey and gusty bedroom pop song with strummed guitar and a gentle whistle. Allison’s vocals tell tales of the tumult of youth, of the titular skinned knees and faking stomach aches to get out of school and skinny dipping in the neighbours’ pool. It also hints at her relocation to New York:

“I left
burning streets in Tennessee
for a north east feel
but summer
always hurts think of you first
and your skin peel”

‘Bloody Honey’ has an almost bluesy rollick, while ‘Grown’ is murky and subdued, a song that takes on times a’changing and the existential worries of getting older. “It feels crazy that we’re getting so old”, Allison sings, “it feels crazy that we’re all so”. Closer ‘Switzerland’ is as straight-up a love song as you’ll find on the album. It sounds sweetly sad, just the stark twinkle of guitar and Allison’s vocals and an almost tangible negative space, as if recorded in a dark and empty room. Eventually a kick drum thuds and synths stir, threatening a cathartic crescendo that never quite arrives.

“we could go some place alone
don’t you see
we could go somewhere it snows
just you and me
we could go to Switzerland
never come back home again”

Soccer Mommy’s third release is undoubtedly centered on the pains of youth, but frames these struggles from a distance, both temporally and spatially. That’s not to say that this distance lessens the impact of the songs, but instead fogs them in a nostalgia that is both unpleasant and all-consuming. If this collection of songs is anything to go by, Allison has moved away but not quite moved on.

You can get For Young Hearts on sparkly gold cassette, or name-your-price download via Orchid Tapes or the Soccer Mommy Bandcamp page.

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I wrote about Alex G last year when DSU came out on Orchid Tapes, where I praised his ability (and that of the other Orchid Tapes alumni) to capture the detachment of young people in contemporary society. Rather than sugar coating the situation and pretending everything is fine, or being completely sad or angry to the point of fruitless nihilism:

“Alex G and his colleagues seem to be doing a bit more. There seems to be an element of positivity, even if that positivity is nothing more than a connection, an appreciation that we are not alone”

Beach Music is Giannascoli’s seventh release, impressive for any 21 year-old, and looks to be his most considered, developed album to date. Whereas the others were written, recorded and uploaded to Bandcamp in a matter of days, Beach Music came into being while Giannascoli was on tour. Without the necessary time for his usual recording process, he was forced into a more drawn out method, where writing was more sporadic and recording came months later.   

If ‘Bug’ is anything to go by, the change has been a successful one. Or at least, has made no difference, the track sounding like the music you fell for in the beginning. Falsetto vocals, acoustic strums, electronic drums, even a strange chipmunks-meet-Donald Duck final refrain, major label or not, Alex G is still very much his own man. The lyrics are equally beguiling, reading like a conversation you have fallen into with no introduction, unfolding gradually to reveal the greater meaning:

“he doesn’t know me
no pain for my gain
callin my cellphone
no time for that shame
a yes man
you know i love you back kid
but i skid
i never knew ya
a yes man
you know i got your back kid
but i fib
im flyin through ya

and when you go there
you stay there
bug in the crosshair
you stay there

a fuck brain
just tryin to get himself paid
but behave
a big pain
but love him all the damn same

bug in the crosshair”

Beach Music will be released on the 9th October by Domino. You can pre-order it now via the Alex G Bandcamp page (although all the good stuff has sold out), or alternatively through the Domino website.

P.S. Our silence does not equal apathy. We are few and the musics are many.

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Fresh from signing up with Run For Cover Records, Spencer Radcliffe has announced his new album, Looking In. His discography to date has seen a wide variation of sounds and styles, and the latest record promises to see the multi-instrumentalist push his work further in numerous directions. As the press release puts it:

“Traditional songwriting methods come apart naturally elsewhere through tumbling Rhodes piano, modified electronics, and brass in disarray. The one instrument that stitches the album’s atypical patchwork together is Radcliffe’s voice, allowing listeners to draw up their own impressions of his often equivocal work”

Spencer Radcliffe has released ‘Mia’ as a taster of the new record. The songs falls between the Orchid Tapes bedroom pop aesthetic and the garage rock of The Narrator (and even includes familiar introductory dog barks), with Pavement-esque vocals and lyrics which flitter between wit and emo.

Looking In will be released on the 2nd October on Run For Cover Records. You can pre-order it now.

Cover photo by Nathan Dragon

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Farther Reaches was first released in January of 2013 and is a perfect example of what Aaron Powell strives to with the project. It’s lo-fi pop for the drone kids, sometimes atmospheric and echoey, sometimes blissfully dreamy, with faraway vocals and a warm gauzy ambience, like a downer version of Youth Lagoon’s début.

Virgo Indigo was released more than a year later, and this is reflected in the production quality, although the album still retains Fog Lake’s signature solitary and inward-gazing aura. Think the doleful bedroom pop of Coma Cinema meets the experimental pop music of Broken Social Scene. The album was originally released on cassette by Orchid Tapes, but has long sold out, so this is a great opportunity for anyone who missed it first time around.

You can get Virgo Indigo / Farther Reaches right now on double cassette via Z Tapes.

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‘Renegade’ is a placid intro, just Powell’s hushed voice and piano and atmospheric background vocals, the vague lyrics dealing with old mistakes and current worries, while ‘Andy’, a short and sweet track that clocks in at under two minutes. sets gentle, almost whispering, vocals in front of layers of instrumentation.  ‘Shanty Town’ is a slight change of direction with its looped drum sample, athough Powell’s morose vocals are still present, creating (in a typically opaque manner) a sense of regret and refusal to move on. Next up is ‘Antidote’, a lo-fi pop song which is all slapped drums and minimalist off-centre poetry:

“chew me out of this hole dear
ward me off with amethyst
half built walls still setting in
sold my soul to the devil yeah”

The title track is piano-led with earnest vocals, a sad song but one with something intangibly upbeat, some glimmering glow that suggests things aren’t all bad. Following that is ‘Running Out Fast’, with its echoey vocals and clinking percussion and dreamy vocals gliding through the gloom. ‘No Innocents (Bad Moon)’ is slow and winding, inching along in an eerie, shadowy ambience, and ‘Autumn 1998’ is led by acoustic guitar and sits on a backdrop of minimal piano and atmospherics, ending in an extended outro that buzzes and hums and whines. ‘Disposable Comatose’ sounds like a dream pop Coma Cinema track played at half pace, and ‘Bury My Dead Horses’ has chilled-out shambling rock and roll drums and sad mumbling vocals, eventually building with squealing electric guitars, as if something has come unloose and broken through the thick murk. ‘Midnight Cross’ is sad and sedate, with breathy floaty background vocals and an audio sample. It’s a lovely track and feels like sweetly sad, like a dream about a loved who has been dead for a long time. Closer ‘Dog Years’ is a slow and melancholy finale, with synth lines which swing around in slow motion.

Victoria Park is perhaps Fog Lake’s most accomplished effort to date, a complex collage of nebulous angst and heartfelt nostalgia, although not the rosy golden kind you might be used to. The cassettes are sold out, but you can still get it on a pay-what-you-want basis via the Fog Lake Bandcamp page.

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Oh, Rose

“The vocals have the quality of an exorcism, like the unnatural utterings of a twelve year old as some jaded man of faith flicks holy water at her forehead” – “we reviewed SEVEN, the excellent and vaguely supernatural new album by Oh, Rose”

Amelia Gray

“Reading these stories is like watching a fungus bloom across a wall, like watching a slow-motion video of yourself going up in flames” – we started up a new ‘Books’ section with a review of Amelia Gray’s short story collection, Gutshot.

The Wooden Sky

“[The] distinctive vocals… [are] not pristine or manufactured but rather a product of a feeling, making the protagonists alive and nuanced enough for us to care” – we bumped our review of The Wooden Sky’s Lets Be Ready as it was released worldwide on Nevado Records.

Sean Henry

“When confronting big, complicated things like love, imperfection and death in art, surely the most fruitful method is not to sugar-coat the message in high production values and carefully constructed narratives but instead try to replicate the messy, fractured nature of our lives and consciousness?” – we got deep when previewing Sean Henry’s new album with his first single, ‘The Crow’

O-FACE

“Whirring like a well-oiled machine of cogs and gears which achieves so much more than its composite parts suggest” – a belated review of O-FACE’s EP Mint, out on Father/Daughter and Miscreant Records.

Glen Hansard

“A perfect example of a folk song made pop, a smooth and sentimental tale of goodhearted promises that are impossible to keep” – Our thoughts on ‘Winning Streak’, the first single from Glen Hansard’s new album

June Roundup

Miss anything in June? We have you covered with a playlist featuring every artist we covered during the month.

The Wailin’ Smithers

“The album is packed with smash hits from an alternate dimension, an easygoing universe in which everybody gets along just fine” – The self-titled album from Bloomington rockers The Wailin’ Smithers.

Quick Before It Melts

The music blog celebrated Canada Day by releasing a compilation of Canadian Bands covering Canadian songs.

Alanna McArdle

“Why do women have to work so much harder: why does it always feel like I’m trying to pass a test to prove that I deserve to call myself a musician?” – Alanna McArdle’s essay for The Talkhouse on the perceived role of the frontwoman and why she hates being referred to as just “the singer”.

Ezra Furman

“I’ve embraced the liminal zone that so many of my heroes occupy. I’ve declared independence from categories that don’t work for me…We exist in a multivalent world filled with ambiguities, and I aim to move through it like Lou Reed: independent, continually transforming, free.” – Ezra Furman writes for The Guardian on how he found freedom by embracing ambiguity in both his music and persona.

Noisey / Owen Pallet & Warren Hildebrand

“I found out about the Les Mouches album some time in 2006 and got it from a private torrent site or something similar. It really blew me away when I heard it…It means a lot, being able to help put together a new release for an album that’s been so important to me for so long is so crazy and cool to me.” – Noisey spoke to Owen Pallet and Orchid Tapes’ Warren Hildebrand about the latter’s label reissuing an album from the former’s project Les Mouches.

Fog Lake / START-TRACK

“I would say to keep it as true-to-heart as possible. Stop thinking about what other’s want to hear and start thinking about what you wanna hear. Don’t worry about being technical. Don’t worry what your parents think. Give it your best shot.” – Aaron Powell, aka Fog Lake, has some good advice for creative types in this interview with the cool dudes over at START-TRACK.

Advance Base / Ben Weaver

Daytrotter, the undisputed kings of the live session, served up two gems this week with sets from Advance Base (who has an album on the way dontcha know?) and Ben Weaver (whose album we liked a lot).

Titus Andronicus

Titus Andronicus released a music video / short film which features not one but six songs from their forthcoming album, The Most Lamentable Tragedy, which we will not stop plugging.

Gurr

The Le Sigh premièred a video from Berlin-based “sassy brat punk” band Gurr, featuring live recordings and vintage found footage.

And finally… the 8tracks playlist of the week:

This week’s playlist, from Music Means Family, is collection of songs from artists playing Eaux Claires music festival in Wisconsin. Features some of our favourites like Aero Flynn, S. Carey and Field Report.

The post Week in Review #8 (29th June – 3rd July) appeared first on Various Small Flames.

Young Jesus

“I think you can confront darkness with sincerity and that the best stuff acknowledges the light that is in the dark and vice versa” – an interview with Young Jesus, chatting about concept albums, life-changing novels & the balance between darkness and light.

Sharon Van Etten

“Heartfelt, brave and benevolent, not exactly an answer but a reassuring hand to hold while you’re working on the question” – You should be excited about the new EP from Sharon Van Etten.

Elvis Depressedly

“Elvis Depressedly will not mend broken bones or cast out demons or have you walking across hot coals. Instead they… offer an achievable version of optimism, one which does not require manic enthusiasm or God-like goodwill but instead a pinch of determination and a firm belief in love” – we get to grips with the new Elvis Depressedly record New Alhambra.

Bells Atlas

“Blending the visceral emotions of R&B and soul with an off-the-wall, avant-garde vibe akin to Dirty Projectors and tUnE-yArDs” – ‘Bling’ welcomes you to the eclectic world of Bells Atlas.

Gay Angel

“The sound of one creative mind expressing itself in the most maximalist way imaginable” – The second floret of Gay Angel’s 100-song bonquet is .

Zee Town and the Dog Boys

“Think Beach House in their sad teenage bedroom years” – the self-titled album from Zee Town and the Dog Boys combines shoegazy fuzz with intimate bedroom pop.

Aisha Badru

“The confessional, angry-but-still-in-love style of all the best break-up songs” – an introduction to the organic folk of Aisha Badru.

Noah Gundersen

“A rousing, textured love song that would be a radio hit in any just world” – we get the first taste of the new Noah Gundersen album with ‘Slow Dancer’.

Ruth & Trudy

“An unorthodox brand of lo-fi pop that blends a laidback hipness with heartfelt naivete” – Still Pond Songs, an album from Ruth & Trudy, out on Slovakian label Z Tapes.

Alynda Segarra

“Blues women foreshadowed a movement of feminists of color that is vibrantly alive today… leaving behind the embarrassing and soul crushing caricatures of women of color that I was fed my whole life” – Hurray for Riff Raff leading lady Alynda Segarra (who we have had the pleasure of talking to) has written a great piece on the feminist legacy blues women for American Songwriter.

The Weather Station

“Country songs are always about driving, journeys, and these sorts of things. I found that these songs were about journeys but not” – Exclaim talk to Tamara Lindeman about Loyalty, the excellent new album from The Weather Station.

Bedroom Pop

“The qualities they share are somewhat intangible, more emotional than sonic, and can be more easily felt than described” – Jacob W. Moore wrote a primer on bedroom pop for the uninitiated, citing bands such as R.L. Kelly, Ricky Eat Acid, Alex G and Foxes in Fiction, as well as the overwhelming influence of the folks at Orchid Tapes. Head to Flavorwire to check it out and then browse our ‘bedroom pop’ tag as further reading.

Sufjan Stevens

“The striking sense of solemnity hangs like a noose around its neck, rugged and impossible to ignore, from the first moment to the last” – A little late to this one, but GoldFlakePaint’s review of Sufjan’s new album is really lovely (and mentions Cormac McCarthy, which is never a bad thing).

King of Cats

DIY Magazine are streaming the new King of Cats album, which will be released on Art Reeks, a joint label that combined Art is Hard and Reeks of Effort…

Barna Howard

…and you can stream the new Barna Howard album at Line of Best Fit.

Bellows

Bellows did a Tiny Desk Concert at NPR!

And Finally… the 8tracks Playlist of the Week

The inaugural winner of this coveted accolade is Ratfriend, with this round-up of the best music so far in 2015:

Be sure to follow us on Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr and 8tracks to keep up to date with the best new music.

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New Alhambra is held together by a variety of samples, snippets of recordings that act as tiny, fervid interludes between the deadpan songs. From wrestling commentary to the title track’s televangelist, these clips are packed with half-remembered meaning, sharp, alluring passions which time has driven out of reach. The result appears to be indifference, the waves of agony and joy synchronising perfectly and flat-lined by destructive interference. For every wound avoided is a comfort missed, the roulette wheel of pleasure and pain thrown out in favour of a vague and nagging ache that no amount of distraction can overcome. The question is, do we accept this trade-off?

For me, this begins to get at the biggest misconception about Cothran’s songs. Many view his impassive style as the message of his music, the emotionless delivery sucking life from his poetic words, showing his deadened apathy toward a meaningless life etc., but really it’s the other way around. Cothran is challenging his numbness with his words, refusing to give in, attempting to break out as opposed to barricading himself in. Do we accept the trade-off? On New Alhambra, as typified by closing track ‘Wastes of Time’, Cothran says no:

“If you try I will try,
when we fuck up it’s alright,
there is always more to life,
than all these wastes of time.”

When you take a second look you find the entire album illuminated in this way, light seeping through the cracks in the shadows. What first appear brief sparks are revealed to be points of a sustained blaze which guide you from the murk, like some form of celestial navigation for our age of smog and light pollution. Suddenly the samples begin to sound sincere, what was mistaken for an ironic smirk revealed to be the fragile, vulnerable smile of someone who doesn’t get much practice. The tables have turned 180°, no longer stark, bravely honest songs confronting darkness but rather straight-faced, easily-mockable hymns of the light. This is made clear on ‘N.M.S.S.’ (‘No More Sad Songs’), a song whose I initially assumed ironic that turned out to be an ode to the unshakeable faith of a better future:

“Someday never came so I keep waiting
I will go to sleep still believing

No more sad songs
I will serve no purpose
I love everyone that I have ever known.”

This is not a born-again Love-The-World-Because-Life-Is-Great sort of album. Elvis Depressedly will not mend broken bones or cast out demons or have you walking across hot coals. Instead they say that afflictions are not all there is, that you are not defined solely by your circumstances. They say that peace and hope are never out of reach and offer an achievable version of optimism, one which does not require manic enthusiasm or God-like goodwill but instead a pinch of determination and a firm belief in love.

New Alhambra is out now on Run For Cover Records, including some rather lovely vinyl editions.

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The album opens with the sprawling ‘Ticonderoga’, which sounds like the lovechild of Fang Island and Parts & Labor. Clocking in at just under eight minutes, the track is a suitable flag-bearer for the rest of the album. The only lyric present is the song’s title, a name he repeats over and over with mounting feeling as the guitar and percussion become increasingly agitated. This is followed by ‘Light Leaks’, another seven minute epic that mixes the finger-picked complexity of traditional folk music with a mathy electronic sound. Here we get the first real glimpse at the truth at the heart of the record, a naked sincerity which forgoes being hip or clever or cool in an attempt to communicate openly and truthfully and connect with the listener. The song holds an improbable weight, opening with two simple verses and the refrain of “Hey, it’s all right. Light leaks from under the door”, it seems like the sonic version of the sort of simple but impossibly meaningful gesture from someone which begins to pull you from your darkest hour. Next Seretan delves into repetition once again, and the clear cycle of uncomplicated words means that by the halfway mark the listener is singing along, each phrase swelling in size and feeling, filling that soul-shaped part inside your ribcage that isn’t taken by your heart or your lungs, becoming a chant, a hymn.

“You will be stronger tomorrow
You will be wiser tonight
You will find new love without warning
You will find new joy with every breath”

If ‘Light Leaks’ is the epiphany then ‘Meadowlark’ is the sustained attempt at being well, a slow-burning new dawn that demands with a country rock swagger, “Put your might in something good. Sing out with the Meadowlark”. Lyrically, ‘Blues for Ian M. Colletti’ follows a similarly encouraging theme (“You are a blessing on the world”), but the sound is far more restrained and ethereal, the late night heart-to-heart to ‘Meadowlark’s morning optimism. ‘The Confused Sound…’ and ‘Two Black Wings’ are nostalgic/oneiric returns to ramshackle rock, again using swirling repetition to build atmosphere and emotion, before the final two tracks close off the album with a clear return to the hope and joy that runs through the record. ‘My Lucky Stars’ is short and stripped back, based around the lines “I’m in love with you, I thank my lucky stars for you” and the album ends with ‘Swing Low’, a seven-minute loop of the joyful “swing low, sweet chariot. Coming for to carry me home”.

There are clearly Bad Things which inspired the record too, but these are not the focus. Rather, these Things bring into relief everything we stand to lose, everything worth fighting for, the good and the bright and the beautiful. This is an album that tries to remind us why Bad Things are bad in the first place by holding aloft what is good. Seretan has ECSTATIC JOY tattooed on his chest for goodness sake! To quote him again:

There are lots of [Bad] Things for everyone. You might be going through a Thing right now. I am, for sure. But making music isn’t about those things, exactly. Not for me, at least. It’s about me and my loved ones planting a flag – brilliant, billowing, as wide as a city block and covered in pink and yellow sequins – and letting it unfurl on the stone face of the outcrop.

This is why Ben Seretan is such an admirable record. To write sincerely involves opening up, which is not only icky and messy and embarrassing but also leaves you open to ridicule, the dreaded patronising smirk. Yet the only way to enable real connection is to stand out in the open, trusting that those you meet feel the same way. The only way is not to hide. And let it be known: there is nowhere to hide on the stone face of an outcrop, especially when you are holding aloft a gigantic flag full of sequins.

You can buy Ben Seretan on CD and vinyl via Bandcamp, or grab a cassette from Hope For The Tape Deck. If you want to read more about what the album means then head on over to Seretan’s Tumblr for some rather lovely writing.

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