Various Small Flames’

Songs of 2017

Anamon – Kneel Old
Android Automatic – Dark Roads*
Angie McMahon – Slow Mover
Basement Revolver – Johnny Pt. 2
Baxter Roy Long – Paribanou
Bea Troxel – Let Them Know
Big Thief – Mary
Black Belt Eagle Scout – Soft Stud
Bully – Running
Cayetana – Mesa
Charly Bliss – Percolator
Chastity Belt – Different Now
CHUCK – Happy Birthday
The County Liners – Maria
The Courtneys – Tour
Craig Finn – God in Chicago
Crumb – Locket
Crushing – Emery Board
Cut Worms – Like Going Down Sideways
David Bazan – Care
Distant Reader – First Try
Emperor X – God Save Coastal Dorset
Fits – Ice Cream on a Nice Day
German Error Message – 2017*
Gleemer – Soothe Me
Great Grandpa – Favorite Show
Haley Heynderickx – Oom Sha Lala
Hiccup – Teasin’
Horse Culture – Texaco
Illuminati Hotties – ‘(You’re Better) Than Ever’
Japandroids – No Known Drink or Drug
Jason Isbell & the 400 Unit – If We Were Vampires
Jay Som – The Bus Song
Jeremy Squires – Night Cars
Katie Ellen – Drawing Room
Lizzie No – Monuments
Lomelda – Bam Sha Klam
Mike Pace and the Child Actors – Audits & Surveys
Meursault – The Mill
Mount Eerie – Crow
Nice Legs – Mighty Three
Oceanator – Nowhere Nothing
Ohyeahsumi – Daisy
Old Earth – Pit Dynamics
PASTEL – Stammer
Peter Silberman – New York
Phoebe Bridgers – Motion Sickness
Pope – Talk Me Out of It
Protomartyr – Windsor Hum
Rainwater – Place
Ratboys – Elvis is in the Freezer
Rick Rude – Bald & Fat in Houston, TX
Roadkill Ghost Choir – Classics (Die Young)
Rose Dorn – Dirt
See Through Dresses – Lucy’s Arm
Shannen Moser – A Funeral, A Friend, My Sanity
Sinai Vessel – Died On My Birthday
Slaughter Beach, Dog – Phoenix
SOAR – Fort Funston
Soft Fangs – Jordan // Jackson Elementary
Spartan Jet-Plex – We Believe
Strange Ranger – House Show
Strawberry Runners – Garden Hose
Timid, The Brave – Alice
Us and Only Us – Bored of Black
Vagabon – Cold Apartment
Viewfinder – Instant Moonlight
The Washboard Abs – Veil
Waxahatchee – Never Been Wrong
Wild Pink – Albert Ross
William Ryan Fritch – In Our Blood
The Wooden Sky – Swimming in Strange Waters
Ylayali – Cherry Tomatoes

*Strictly released in 2016, but barely, and we covered it in Jan. 2017.

If you missed it, you can see our Favourite Albums of 2017 list here. Also, the curious can find such lists from previous years here.

The post Favourite Songs of 2017 appeared first on Various Small Flames.

If any of the above points make you feel a little down, here’s a playlist of every band we featured during September to cheer you up. As always, click the artist name in the tracklisting to be whisked away to the specific post.

Tracklisting:

1. Hidden Driver – LVL UP
2. Death – CHUCK
3. Seskinore – Hiva Oa
4. Shut Out the Light – Tiny Dinosaurs
5. Foothills – Simon Balto
6. Lie 2 Me – Shana Falana
7. annie – moving in
8. A Lonely Road – Jordan O’Jordan
9. Augustine – The Chairman Dances
10. Golden – Mt. Wolf (feat. St. South)
11. I – Slenko & McKeys
12. zszs – rgz
13. Meditations – Tall Ships
14. Tossing & Turning – Saint Clementine
15. Century Woods – Lisa/Liza
16. Clear Section – Spartan Jet-Plex
17. Trancendless Summer – Peter Silberman
18. Where We Began – Tilman Robinson
19. will you?/you will – Fossil Jane
20. Ya w/Me? – Lomelda (from Swell Tone’s Summer of Sad)
21. Soon Soon – Praything
22. Drive – Mere Women
23. See Through – Suzy Callahan
24. Untitled (Slow) – Jana Irmert
25. Beyond the Stars – The Edge Of The Light
26. Northern Arm – Evening Hymns
27. It’s Not Real – Hazel English

You can check out the previous monthly roundups here, and our various other playlists and mixtapes here.

The post September 2016 Roundup appeared first on Various Small Flames.

“Listening to its twenty minutes now, I experience a fleeting era distilled into a single day. I hear the first few miles of a long ride, hands released from handlebars’ grip, arms splayed out to the sides, coasting with abandon, rounding a blind corner without worry for what might slam into me beyond the immediately visible… These tracks have felt three summers melt away, relearning the same cruelty each year: that summer’s start initiates a countdown to its end, that the first day’s light stretches infinitely outward before shrinking back from a dilating night.”

The slow dawn drone of ‘i’ opens the release, the flutter and hum of one steady note playing like the gradual creep of sun over the land, bringing subtle changes to the tints and hues and angles of light. Following Silberman’s explanation, the track rarely changes dramatically in a short space of time yet seems to be constantly evolving, imparting the sense that what’s been has gone, and what is unfolding will surely follow.

‘ii’ sees something of a disruption, the ambient notes restless and skittish, all set against a background whoosh like that of some desert wind. This gale follows into ‘iii’, though here the instrumentation is warmer and perhaps most-recognisable as that of The Antlers main man, while ‘iv’ is more restrained, swapping out the carefree vibes for distant melancholy so it sounds less immediate, the memory of something dear weathered smooth by constant handling.

Transcendless Summer is out now on ANTI- and Transgressive Records and available on iTunes and Spotify. People Teeth are also making a run of cassettes to be released later in the year, which you can pre-order now. Also, Peter Silberman will head out on a solo tour at the end of the year to “debut new material, repurpose old Antlers songs, undertake covers, etc.”, which sounds like a pretty cool thing. He’s stopping off along the west coast of the US as well as two nights in London:

November 7 – Los Angeles, CA @ Resident
November 11 – San Francisco, CA @ Swedish American Hall
November 14 – Seattle, WA @ Triple Door
November 16 – Portland, OR @ The Old Church
December 7 – London, UK @ Forge
December 8 – London, UK @ Forge

Cover photograph by Peter Silberman

The post Peter Silberman – Transcendless Summer appeared first on Various Small Flames.

Awake is set for release on the 21st October and you can pre-order it now.

Photography by Morghan Verdegaal, artwork by Clotilde Drivet

The post Tiny Dinosaurs announce EP, Awake, with new single ‘Shut Out The Light’ appeared first on Various Small Flames.