2nd Grade – Favorite Song
Adeline Hotel – Lightning
Adrianne Lenker – Cradle
Allison’s Gate – Traces
Anna McClellan – Heart of Hearts
Advance Base – Christmas in Nightmare City
Badlands – Slow it Down
Bambara – José Tries to Leave
The Beths – Whatever
Bodega – Jack in Titanic
boygenius – Me & My Dog
Camp Cope – UFO Lighter
Campdogzzz – Sorceress
Cave People – I Shall Believe
Damien Jurado – Percy Faith
Dead Painters – Fool on Fire
Dear Nora – Simulation Feels
Dehd – Dying For
Devon Welsh – Vampires
Diva Sweetly – Detox Island
Doe – Heated
Dusted – Outline of a Wolf
Field Report – Every Time
Frankie Valet – Something to do with a mouth
Gia Margaret – Birthday
Goodbye Max – Old Photos
Good Good Blood – Cannot Be Yours Forever
Gorgeous Bully – Patience
Great Health – Lazarus
Hop Along – How Simple
Hour – At the bar where you literally saved me from fatal heartbreak 
Houses – Fast Talk
Hovvdy – Brave
Hypoluxo – Kentucky Smooth
IAN SWEET – Hiding
Kal Marks – Today I Walked Down To The Tree, Read A Book, And When I Was Done, I Went Back Inside
Katy Kirby – Juniper
Kevin Morby & Waxahatchee – Dark Don’t Hide It
Kississippi – Easier to Love
Kraków Loves Adana – The Day the Internet Died
Lala Lala – Destroyer
Lisa/Liza – Tea Kettle
lowly loverboi – Graveyards in Space
Lucy Dacus – Yours & Mine
Mike Pace & the Child Actors – Escape the Noise
Miranda Winters – The Futuristic District
Mitski – Nobody
Moonface – Minotaur Forgiving Pasiphae
Moon Racer – Friendly Ghost
Nap Eyes – Every Time the Feeling
Nice Try – Micah
Nicole Dollanganger – Uncle
No Age – Drippy
Oceanator – Mistakes
Of The Valley – Ride Alone
Pale Kids – St. Theresa
Pat Moon – I Belong
Pema – Depend
Petal – I’m Sorry
Pink Navel – born-100.dev
Pizza Girl – Body Part
Protomartyr – Wheel of Fortune
Remember Sports – Dripping
Restorations – Nonbeliever
Rivulets – Everything Goes
Ryan Von Gonten – Fabrique
Sabriel’s Orb – Holding
Saccharine – Pumpkin Guts
Sam Moss – Snap
Sara Renberg – Take the Summer Off
Sobs – Sundae
Spartan Jet-Plex – Sweet
Strange Ranger – The Wires
Sun June – Slow Rise II
Swearin’ – Dogpile
Talk, Tired Thanatoid – Everything’s Cool
Tomberlin – Any Other Way
Trace Mountains – Salty Sweet
Trust Fall – Wild Fire/Flowers
TVU – All For Nothing
Weakened Friends – Blue Again
Whitney Baleen – Rainer
Why Bonnie – Stereo
Wild Pink – The Seance on St. Augustine Street
wished bone – reasons
Yellowfront – Cool Breeze
Young Jesus – For Nana
Young Statues – Somebody Else
Yowler – Where Is My Light?

If you missed it, we have also posted our favourite albums list, so check that out too.

The post Favourite Songs of 2018 appeared first on Various Small Flames.

Tracklisting:

Dear Nora – White Fur
Lawn – 2000 Boy
Pearl Crush – True Blue
Dead Painters – Fool On Fire
Slowcoaches – Found Down
Two Meters – Left Behind
Kerem Atalay – Winter 2
Pat Moon – I Belong
Blood Hype – Not Too Good
Talons’ – Driving Home From Shows
The Nova Darlings – I Like Crashing My Car (Into Yours)
Dead Sullivan – Swallow
Onlyness – Comfortable
Of the Valley – Italy
Nice Knees – Backout
Suburban Pets – Candy
Minor Moon – It’s Okay
Caroline Lazar – Georgia
Heatwarmer – American Dog
Jacob Furr – Life Comes At You Fast
Deux Trois – Dave
Grace Turner – Dead or Alive
Britton Patrick Morgan – Southern Drawl

The post June 2018 Roundup appeared first on Various Small Flames.

Now Pat Moon is back with a sophomore effort, Romantic Era, which sees Davis continue to craft a sound and feeling that’s all her own. Ethereal and dreamy, and very much focused towards the romance of the title, the record has touchstones as varied as Kate Bush and Cocteau Twins, as well as acts like Nancy Kells’s Spartan Jet-Plex, resulting in 10 songs of goth pop perfection.

First song ‘Moon in Aquarius’ pulses gently with soft keys and Davis’s otherworldly vocals, a synth pop song not for neon-lit cityscapes but rather forest fog and candlesmoke. As the title suggests, ‘Medieval Spells’ has a similar vibe, the Julianna Barwick-esque vocals soaring and echoing across a track as dark and spacious as the night sky.

“There is magic in our eyes
we’re more than body more than mind
life will change it always has
ancient trees burning down”

This feeling continues across Romantic Era. Part spellbook, part hymnal, it’s an album to get lost in, to wade into and float away. ‘Spiraling’ sounds bright and weightless, twinkling keys flashing and whooshing like will-o’-the-wisps, although the lyrics about a troubled relationship cast a long shadow, while ‘Longing for the Infinite’ builds from a dramatically sombre opening, as if delivered from some dark and cavernous cloister, before neon-streaks light the whole thing up, like Elmo’s fire or biblical tongues of flame.

‘I Belong’ is a song fraught with a lifelong sense of displacement and unease, a bitter acceptance that things change and that, sometimes, change hurts. “Time is moving faster now,” Davis sings, “I thought change would lift us somehow, I feel life moving all around, and I don’t think I can settle down.” These relatable sentiments wash over like banks of fog, as if conjured from the midst of some vast ocean, and it’s hard not to attribute some greater meaning or power.

And this is perhaps the most remarkable thing about Romantic Age. The way Pat Moon captures the essence of some very real, twenty-first century woes in a way that’s so far removed from the mundanities of day-to-day life that it feels transcendental. Therefore, the supernatural and mystical links are not so much driving forces behind the creative process, but rather the way the album frames very human problems, repositioning the ordinary as something with an almost religious level of meaning.

You can get Romantic Era now from the Pat Moon Bandcamp page.

The post Pat Moon – Romantic Era appeared first on Various Small Flames.

Take for example Friends For Equality, the benefit compilation in support of Southern Poverty Law Center, ACLU and Planned Parenthood put together by Nancy Kells and Fox Food Records. Collecting the talents of 42 acts, the release features a diverse range of unreleased tracks from all over the world, including WTD favs such as Henry Demos, Henoheno, PAT MOON, Rainwater, Francie Cool, Lewtrakimou, Slumbers and Monarch Mtn, not to mention songs from the creators themselves in the form of Spartan Jet-Plex and Good Good Blood. As you might expect, it’s also a great way to discover new artists, and while there are too many to write about properly, there’s enough variation in style and genre to ensure every music fan will find something to their liking.

Not content with the compilation, Nancy is organising a benefit show at Strange Matter in Richmond, VA on the 17th February, and working to put together a zine for which the theme is “social justice/civil rights – so anything related to that – drawings, photographs, comics, editorials, poetry, short story, etc.” Submissions are currently open until the 2nd January, so email spartanjetplex@gmail.com if you want to participate or help in any way.

You can buy Friends For Equality now via Bandcamp, and be sure to remember that the $5 price tag is a minimum suggestion (and impossibly generous for 42 tracks). Equally, if you don’t have cash to spare, you can help by spreading the word or getting involved (just contact Spartan Jet-Plex via the email address provided above).

Artwork by Ryan McCardle

The post Friends For Equality, a benefit compilation from Fox Food Records & Spartan Jet-Plex appeared first on Various Small Flames.

Tracklisting:

1. Staying in Line – Un Blonde
2. Skinned Knees – Soccer Mommy
3. Dream Wave – Tiny Ruins
4. No Sadness/Furrowed Brow – Good Good Blood
5. Pain – LVL UP
6. Theory Wars – Pop Weirdos
7. Crab Line – Trust Fund
8. Heaven’s Gate – Ghost Camp
9. Holy Ghost – Deer Scout
10. Desert Blues – Nassau
11. Okkervil River R.I.P. – Okkervil River
12. Housemouse – Wyndwood
13. Smash – Varsity
14. Raised By Wolves – Eternals
15. Starting Again – Lisa Prank
16. Feel You – Pat Moon
17. Nothing – Naps
18. Everywhere A Man Can Be (Teaser) – Zachary Lucky
19. Mailbox – Alexandra Gordon
20. Ditmars – Rainwater
21. You Are on the Water – Ben Seretan
22. Pinesol – Fern Mayo

You can check out the previous monthly roundups here, and our various other playlists and mixtapes here. Thanks as always for getting us through another month. Here’s to a good August!

The post July 2016 Roundup: A Mixtape appeared first on Various Small Flames.

While such a statement might conjure the holy icons of celebrities on magazine covers or the communal prayers of sports crowds, or even the near-transcendental flutter experienced at the promise of large sums of money, Wallace’s truth is probably a lot more subtle and personalised, centred around our view of ourselves and the yearning for something more. As such, much of the worship goes on inside our heads, small hopes and habits we repeat over and over, as though incantation and ritual might invoke our better selves.

Don’t Hide From The Light, the debut release from PAT MOON, feels like this sensation committed to music. The solo recording project of Portland’s Kate Davis, who you might know as the face behind Track and Field Records, PAT MOON utilises analog synths and drum machines to create what could be described as dark dream dance or ecclesiastical electro-pop. At once insular and expansive, the album feels like a private ceremony within an abandoned church, solemn and serious and sacred in its own humble way, pertaining to no system of belief beyond that of human experience yet feeling instantly recognisable, a likeness of our own inner-thoughts. Such empathy is present from the first bars of ‘Feel You’, the opener possessing that warm-yet-cold feeling peculiar to cathedrals, where death and guilt and love and life are so entwined they become one.

Other highlights include ‘Show Me a Sign’, an echoing, synth-heavy plea for enlightenment, the spectral chorus of ‘I See You’ and ‘Love Me as I Am’, another song that manages to be at once intimate and vast, submissive and resolute, a steadfast hymn summoned from deep within. Closing track ‘Enter My Mind / All I Know is Now’ is imbued with a certain lightness, a candle-lit organ-drone which seems to brighten across its run-time.

With its melancholic seriousness punctuated with near-mystical frisson, PAT MOON’s debut is a reminder that worship is not some hotline for divine intervention but rather a process of feeling and thinking and believing. Sure, Davis may find her prayers unanswered, her rituals unrewarded, but you get the sense that the very process of acting and asking can be a route to confidence and love. One that does not rely on the whim of a deity or the alignment of the stars.

Don’t Hide From The Light is out now and you can buy it from the PAT MOON Bandcamp page.

Photo by Sam Velenne

The post PAT MOON – Don’t Hide From The Light appeared first on Various Small Flames.