And, of course, being comprehensive is impossible these days, so let us know if we missed your favourite and maybe we’ll add it to the collection.

Peach Club – The Bitch Diaries
(RIYL: punk, rock, lo-fi)

Pet Cemtery & Henoheno & Brittle Brian & Francie Cool – Split
(RIYL: bedroom pop, sad music, lo-fi)

Porridge Radio – Rice, Pasta and Other Fillers
(RIYL: lo-fi, bedroom pop, carbohydrates)

Post-Trash – Volume Two
(RIYL: compilations, bedroom pop, indie rock)

Psychic Shakes – Psychic EP
(RIYL: lo-fi pop, chilled out vibes, down-tempo beats)

Ratbath – Dead Skin Cells
(RIYL: bedroom pop, folk, sad)

Ravetank – Wasting Your Life From 9-5
(RIYL: alternative, pop, lo-fi)

Real Swell – everything else is terrible!
(RIYL: lo-fi, experimental, lo-fi pop)

Rhucle – Rustic Lullaby
(RIYL: ambient, mindfulness, field recordings)

Ryan Tanner – Promised Land
(RIYL: folk, Americana, country)

Ryder Eaton – Peach Pit
(RIYL: folk, lo-fi, experimental)

Saint Clementine – If We Are Falling / I Wish I Knew What You Did Last Summer
(RIYL: indie rock, lo-fi, pop punk)

The Saxophones – If You’re on the Water
(RIYL: ambient folk, dream pop, alternative)

Sea Offs – Sea the Blind
(RIYL: ambient, folk, dream pop)

See You At Home – The Future’s Here and It’s Terrible
(RIYL: indie, emo, dream pop)

Shalash (or, ШАΛАШ) – X
(RIYL: ambient, drone, compilations)

Skittish Arm – The Dog EP
(RIYL: ambient, drone, experimental)

Soccer Mommy – For Young Hearts
(RIYL: bedroom pop, lo-fi, indie)

Svelte – svelte EP
(RIYL: post-rock, noise, shoegaze)

Swell Tone & Z Tapes – Summer of Sad
(RIYL: bedroom pop, sad songs, compilations)

Be sure to check out the previous sections of our favourite free music list here.

The post Favourite Free Music of 2016: P – S appeared first on Various Small Flames.

There are also some original tracks, for example from Pet Cemetery, Real Swell and EP. The latter’s track, ‘Such a Clatter (No Christmas)’, a slightly hyperactive-sounding lo-fi casio track. Check it out below:

This being a benefit compilation, you can rest assured that all profits go to a good cause. As Filip explains:

“This year we wanted to do something special for Christmas and give something back to people that need help. We created this Christmas compilation to support a small, but amazing Slovakian organization running a shelter for battered women and helping kids without proper families in a small town, not far away from the place where I grew up. I met them this summer, and from that point on I wanted to help them financially. They need a lot of money. Therefore all profits from this compilation will go towards their honest work. Please help this organization build a better home for people in need.”

You can get the Z Tapes Christmas Benefit Compilation now via Bandcamp. You’ll get some great festive music in time for Christmas and you’ll help out some people who really need it. What have you got to lose?

The post Z Tapes – Christmas Benefit Compilation appeared first on Various Small Flames.

On a related note, things are gradually getting busier for us in other areas – Liam works full-time and I’ve gone back to school – so the old two posts a day routine might not be maintained too often any more. That said, in an effort to keep things ticking over, we’re going to introduce a new ‘Flash Review’ feature where we cover albums in less words than we would otherwise use. It’s not ideal but a short piece is better than no piece. There’ll still be a good smattering of the usual style too.

Tracklisting:

1. Birthstone (Reprise) – Pet Cemetery
   2. Vice – Roundheels
   3. Forever – Boosegumps
   4. So Long – Heavy Boots
   5. Long Walk To All Sorts of Place – Fanpage
   6. Feathers & Leaves – Ocean Floor
   7. Down Predator Souvenirs – Lejsovka & Freund
   8. Vacation – Florist
   9. 2. – Old Earth
   10. Never Good Enough – Eerie Summer
   11. EZ River – Wilder Maker
   12. Thumbs – Claire Cottrill
   13. If I Were A Portal – Evening Hymns
   14. Jenny Come Home – Andy Shauf
   15. Only Friend – Valley Maker
   16. The Flood – Mike Pace & the Child Actors
   17. Close Call (Adderall Anxiety) – Shaky Shrines
   18. Nancy Kerrigan – Frog
   19. Kaleidoscope – Arbes
   20. The Book of Love – ARMS

The post October Roundup – A Mixtape appeared first on Various Small Flames.

Opener ‘dc’ is a gentle and reflective instrumental, full of wistful lo-fi acoustics which serve as a nice intro for what’s to come, before ‘alright’ gets things started proper, a bedroom pop track that will appeal to fans of Coma Cinema with its hazy downer vocals and clap-along percussion. The lyrics speak of a narrator severed from his surroundings, a collection of abstract images and innermost thoughts jumbled together in deadpan poetry.

“Sick until my hands fell still
my brother talks more than I do
I’m tired & skipping meals
laughter fills the living room
I can’t hear it’s so loud
eyes water from rubbing out

our parents hold the secrets
we’re trying to believe it”

A slower number, ‘Magick’ is just as morose, with the refrain “sit and wish for rain” filled with a little too much longing, while ‘champ’ is frustratingly fleeting, one of those songs that finishes almost as soon as its begun and has you reaching for the repeat button immediately. ‘Milk’ is even shorter, not managing to break the 30 second mark, sounding like a lost Johnny Foreigner demo recorded on a dictaphone. The song sees the narrator resorting to drastic action in an attempt to feel something:

“The treehouse we burnt down looks alright
the kids it belonged to cried & cried
i’m sick to my stomach
I feel alive tonight”

If the music is anything to go by, arson might well have done the trick. ‘Birthmark’ is warmer, not exactly happy but definitely gravitating somewhat to the positive end of the spectrum, the heavy lo-fi guitars threatening to swamp dreamy vocals but never quite managing it. ‘Birthstone (reprise)’ sees the positivity blossom. An instrumental track based around an audio sample of Dustin Hoffman’s philosophical discourse from the film I Heart Huckabees, the track sees a sense of wonder return to what has otherwise been a drab, defeated point of view, like watching the very beginning of a sunrise over a grey familiar city that can still surprise you in certain lights.

The final track ‘spirit world’ is once again instrumental, this time with electric guitars and shiny shimmering background atmospherics. As a finale it feels mightily hopeful, a far cry from the glumness that pervades a lot for this genre (and even the beginning of this EP), and leaves the release with a strange, vaguely transcendental aftertaste, a feeling which would make life much easier if only you could experience it at all times. The overall effect is one of change, a gradual warming, as if the narrator is being drawn through the vacuous space of depression and apathy to somewhere brighter and more fulfilling. Maybe he finally “got” the blanket thing.

You can get dietary requirements on cassette or as a name-your-price digital download via the Z Tapes Bandcamp page. If you can, get a cassette, because tapes are cool.

The post Pet Cemetery – dietary requirements appeared first on Various Small Flames.

Tracklisting:

1. Red Coat – Adeline Hotel (Interview)
   2. S.O.B. – Nathaniel Rateliff & The Night Sweats
   3. Daughter of the Sea – House of Wolves (Interview)
   4. Monarchy – Table People
   5. Ruin – Doomking
   6. Lonely Boy – Titus Andronicus
   7. New York Hardcore – talons’
   8. Roar of Nothingness – Sun Organ
   9. Slow Dark Water – Furnsss
   10. You Are Arrived (But You’ve Been Cheated) – The Spirit of the Beehive
   11. It Was Gone – Orchid Mantis
   12. Big Sis – SALES
   13. No Comprende – Low
   14. The Washing Machine – SPORTS
   15. Shark? – Shark? (Everything Is Teeth by Evie Wyld and Joe Sumner)
   16. Christmas in Milwaukee – Advance Base
   17. Only Friend – Valley Maker
   18. My Track ’92 – Pet Cemetery
   19. Dusk; Falling Asleep, Know That You Are Loved – Sabbatical Wilderness
   20. Theremin Demonstration – Leon Theremin (Us Conductors by Sean Michaels)
   21. The Lemon’s Cousin – Boy Scouts
   22. Audrey Horne – Teen Love
   23. Mia – Spencer Radcliffe
   24. Return To The Moon – EL VY
   25. Bug – Alex G
   26. Wild Hearts – Kodiak Deathbeds
   27. Waves – Abby Gundersen
   28. UR = UO – No Touching
   29. Sparrow & Stone – Eva Foote
   30. What Can Be Taken – ÒOR

The post August Roundup – A Mixtape appeared first on Various Small Flames.

Well, Amber Sweet, a two song tape, is the latest release from yet another project, a solo venture under the moniker Pet Cemetery. The title track kicks things off, a brisk song which falls between Brit guitar music and shoegaze, the lyrics occupying that strange space where sleep won’t come yet full lucidity is lost.

“stop
do you wanna talk about
all the things left in last year
you pain pictures in my skull
so I can’t get to sleep

let’s listen to william &
list our insecurities
your back came undone
i’ll sew until my fingers
bleed”

In the recent premiere of the track’s video over at Noisey, Watkins had this to has about it: “Amber Sweet was written 2 years ago and is the first song I wrote for Pet Cemetery, kinda to test the water. It’s about someone I didn’t get to know too well and don’t know anymore. It’s also about my favourite band William, Black Hole by Charles Burns, and how sometimes you can’t sleep because your brain has like a million thoughts and you’re so tired but you can’t turn your thoughts off.”

The second track on the release, ‘My Track ’92’, is what happens when punky kids write sad songs, slow and sad in a romantic way, reminiscent of the Washboard Abs album we reviewed a while back. The style leans more towards the bedroom pop end of the spectrum, with a wash of tape hiss ever present.

“we walk by the riverside
and we talk about our
futures and the things
we put in our hair
we walk by the riverside
and we talk
just to say

these small buildings
that house al of our
concerns
let the light in
like fireflies chasing birds
we spent our summer
sleeping outside
saying nothing ’til green
eyes fell tired

i don’t ever want to know”

You can buy Amber Sweet now from the Havana Records Bandcamp page, and be sure to check out the Pet Cemetery back-catalogue too.

The post Pet Cemetery – Amber Sweet appeared first on Various Small Flames.