With the album’s release on the horizon, Tomlinson has returned with brand new single, ‘My Hand in Yours’. Again imbued with the joy of being alive, the track is unapologetic in its status as a love song, not only dedicated to close family but inspired by them too. “My wife once told me about an exercise where you close your eyes and let someone lead you down the street to understand what it’s like to be blind,” as Tomlinson explains. “We lived on Amhurst Road, across from Hackney Central, and tried it one Saturday on our way into town. You can picture that while listening for some added comedy. It struck me that often, that’s all we’re ever doing—following the path of a friend, a companion, someone we love. How in most ways, it’s the only path we ever need.”

The sound is every bit as bright and compassionate as this description suggests, hardly ornate in its arrangement and all the more authentic for it. Jacken Elswyth (who you might know as part of Shovel Dance Collective) adds banjo to lift the song’s closing section, and in tandem with field recordings of birdsong, only furthers the gentle sensitivity at its heart. “My hand in yours / Is a path that I can follow,” as the refrain goes. “Your voice in my head / So I don’t get lost and / My hand in yours.”

Like the title track before it, ‘My Hand In Yours’ comes complete with a visual essay by Andrea Zvadova, which you can watch below:

Die To Wake Up From A Dream is out on the 11th July via PRAH Recordings and you can pre-order it via the MF Tomlinson Bandcamp page.

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With 2023 album Cleaning Up With Big Mess, Copenhagen‘s Big Mess introduced a genre-spanning style which tapped into the unbridled joy of good old-fashioned punk rock, and new release Terry EP indicates they have no intention of slowing down. The record is out now via Specialist Subject Records, and opener and title track shows off the vibe of the collection. Repurposing Kirsty MacColl’s hit into a power pop gem, ‘Terry’ distils the wry humour and bite of the original into their purest states. The result races into life from the off and never lets up, harnessing MacColl’s cheeky defiance as its own form of momentum, and proving as cathartic as it is fun.

Ciao Malz – Clementine (Elliott Smith cover)

Back in December, Ciao Malz released their debut EP Safe Then Sorry, a four-song grab bag that veered between alt-country twang and woozy pop confidence. Now Malia DelaCruz is showing another dimension to the project with a cover of Elliott Smith’s ‘Clementine’, recapturing the hushed intimacy of the original in all of its sincerity and narrative depth. “‘Clementine’ is probably my favorite Elliott Smith song,” as DelaCruz explains. “The way he picks up on a bartender singing and turns it into something so eerie and beautiful is wild. The harmonies are something I’ve always wanted to nail, and I love experimenting with them when I’m recording. And yeah, sometimes it’s just fun to channel Elliott Smith for a while.”

You can find Ciao Malz on Bandcamp.

Committeemen – Therapy

Consisting of DJ Gilmore-Innis (vocals/guitar), Ken Dannelley (drums), Matt Kast (bass), and Graham Bell (guitar), Houston punk rockers Committeemen owe as much to post punk royalty like Gang of Four as they do contemporaries Osees and Parquet Courts. But, they’re no cheap copy, managing to recombine this range of influences into something wholly their own. With a new EP on the way via Rue Defense, single ‘Therapy’ highlights the searing intensity of their sound. Taking aim at the burgeoning ecosystem of quacks and narcissists which seems determined to tell us how to live, this is blistering punk complete with yell-along chorus, treating this vapid, insidious cohort of podcasters, Youtubers and televangelists with the contempt they deserve.

Daily Toll – Killincs

Described as “eleven songs traversing three years of forged friendships, collaborative experimentation and a shared love of growing through words and song,” new album A Profound Non-Event sees Sydney post-punks Daily Toll take the next step in their evolution, building upon what came before with a growing sense of confidence and conviction. With the release coming this June on Tough Love, the trio have shared lead single ‘Killincs’, and the track embodies the sound of a band striving towards their most truthful form while appreciating such a quest might prove unending. “The light reflects an upside-down image of a life I might never visit,” as lead Kata Szász-Komlós sings. “Too far to touch, not far enough to forget.” And as the song progresses, its verbosity belying the relatively understated, assured tone, it becomes clear the unresolved is something to be accepted, even embraced. As a later line states: “I have the key still, but I’ve buried the path.”

Watch the video directed and edited by Szász-Komlós below:

A Profound Non-Event is out on the 20th June via Tough Love and you can pre-order it now.

eggcorn – Observer Effect

Taking its name from the phenomenon where an observed system is disturbed by the very act of being observed, eggcorn‘s new album Observer Effect sees songwriter Lara Hoffman explore the ways in which reflecting on one’s life and surroundings can shape our experiences. Moving away from the synth pop sensibilities of debut Your Own True Love, the album adopts a pop-inflected brand of chamber folk which combines sincere compassion with unerring honesty, a sound able to probe deep into the heart of the matter and unafraid of getting dirty in the process. The lead single and title track is the ideal entry point, Hoffman using the impatient frustration of a slow-healing injury to delve into unpalatable truths about herself and the desires therein, baring vulnerabilities and reckoning with their implications without sacrificing a certain playfulness.

MF Tomlinson – Die To Wake Up From A Dream

Over a series of releases in recent times, Brisbane/Meanjin born, London based artist MF Tomlinson has challenged genre conventions, progressing beyond classic folk styles with the addition of psych, rock and other sensibilities. This summer will see him return with Die To Wake Up From A Dream, a brand new album via PRAH Recordings which continues this exploration of the possibilities of folk. Described by Tomlinson himself as a treatise on “resilience, hope and the frankly wildly psychedelic experience of being alive,” the lead single and title track shows one such possibility, drawing on everything from John Martyn to Talk Talk and My Bloody Valentine to create a sound which might originate in folk but ends up beyond any easy genre categorisation.

Watch the accompanying video—described as a “visual essay”—by Andrea Zvadova below:

Die To Wake Up From A Dream is out on the 11th July via PRAH Recordings.

sachi’s mirror – a new shape

The recording project of Oakland-based experimental violinist and composer Shaina Pan, sachi’s mirror offers rich, genre-bending soundscapes which use pedal effects to push the violin to new ground. Classically trained, Pan dipped a toe in experimental music as a vocalist and bassist for Bay Area art-punks Juicebumps during the pandemic, and is now reaching further across ambient, avant-garde and art pop sensibilities to weave her own compositions. Taken from debut release coral miracle church, single ‘a new shape’ embodies the style, a song full of space and intricate detail which grows with subtle grace. Spoken word samples further the mood, and the result feels like a doorway into some adjacent, ethereal world.

Serfing – no new friends

Consisting of Austin Weber and David Caploe (Singer of Hate Drugs, BEST DAD), LA‘s Serfing are preparing to release their debut EP to properly introduce themselves to the world. Lead single ‘no new friends’ is the first taste of what to expect. Painted in long, relaxed strokes, the track offers a dreamy meditation on making connections with other people, its languorous tempo able to draw out both the warmth and anguish inherent within such a process. “It’s hard to keep yourself from falling / falling in love,” as the opening lines go. “Spend enough time with somebody / falling in love.” But true to the ambiguous mood of a sound that could be taken as dawning fondness or anxious hesitancy, the lyrics soon offer conflicting thoughts.

Why even plant a tree to cut it down?
you know those roots are staying in the ground
better off just being no-one
than falling in love

The Taxpayers – Outline of Your Blood

We’ve covered a number of singles from Circle Breaker, the new full-length from  Portland, Oregon emo outfit The Taxpayers, in recent weeks, be it ‘At War With The Dogcatchers‘ with its search for love amid tragedy and cruelty or ‘I Am One Thousand‘, an ode to those afflicted by war and its adjacent sufferings. With the album now out via Ernest Jenning Record Co., The Taxpayers are releasing a new single, ‘Outline of Your Blood’, as a celebration. The closing track to the album which encapsulates everything which came before, stricken by discouragement and burgeoning doom yet unable to shake a sense of hope despite it all. As the title suggests, this is an album of cycles, the grandest of which being the circle of life itself, and no matter how dark the present, The Taxpayers want to remind you that new life is always being born too.

Circle Breaker is out now via Ernest Jenning Record Co. and you can get it from Bandcamp.

Wishy – Over and Over

“Everything fans of the band have come to love.” That’s how we described ‘Fly’ back in February, the lead single from Wishy‘s forthcoming EP Planet Popstar. “A song,” as we put it, “that looks to move beyond heartbreak with a mix of affirming energy and wistful longing.” With the EP coming next month on Winspear, the Indianapolis outfit are back with fresh track ‘Over and Over’. With vocal duties shifting back to Kevin Krauter, and Nina Pitchkites offering backing harmonies, the song sees fingerpicked guitar melded with breakbeat rhythms, offering a sound packed full of detail while maintaining a languid calm, and further marking Wishy as one of the most inventive acts working today.

The song comes complete with a video directed by Demi Fenicle, edited by Aaron Agler and with visual Effects by Stephen Orban, which you can watch below:

Planet Popstar is out on the 25th April via Winspear and you can pre-order it now.

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The first glimpse of her debut full-length Swirl which is coming later this year on 22Twenty, ‘Auto Icon’ is the latest single from London-born, Paris-based songwriter Flora Hibberd. Recorded at the Bungaleau in Eau Claire, WI with Shane Leonard, the track pairs assured confidence with a certain ambiguity, Hibberd’s assured composed guiding the listener beyond the bright rhythm towards something more uncanny. Indeed, the album has been described as “a cycle of songs about codes and decoding,” with Hibberd drawing on her background as a translator of art history texts to seek out those instances where errors and happenstance come to take on a deeper level of meaning.

Watch the video by Victor Claass and Hibberd herself below, with cinematography by Lola Hewison:

‘Auto Icon’ is out now and available from Bandcamp. Swirl will be released via 22TWENTY on the 15th November.

Guidon Bear – Animal Child

Back in 2022 we wrote about Unravel, an album by Olympia-based folk pop duo Guidon Bear on Antiquated Future which saw Mary Water (Little Red Car Wreck) and Pat Maley (Lois, Courtney Love) continue a collaboration now in its third decade. The album offered a realistic, refreshing take on time passing and everyday suffering, “striving forward not out of some misplaced romanticism,” as we put it, “but the mundane and often painful process of simply continuing on.” Now the pair are back with Internal Systems as if to prove the determination of this spirit, an album “about trying to stay well in an unwell world,” as the label put it. Single ‘Animal Child’ taps into this spirit with all the invention and heart we’ve come to expect from Guidon Bear, capturing the experience of real life with a unique sound somewhere between twee folk and indie pop.

Kishi Bashi – Make Believe (feat. Linqua Franqa)

“This song started as a beat that reminded me of that proto-funk-rap from the early ‘80s,” explains Kishi Bashi‘s Kaoru Ishibashi of ‘Make Believe’, the latest single from upcoming LP Kantos. “The only way the verse vocals sounded appropriate was if there was that kind of rapping, so I gave it a go!” Inviting friend and collaborator Mariah Parker, AKA Linqua Franqa, to help, Ishibashi set to creating a song which combines hip hop and psych rock sensibilities to hint at the stylistic depth of the album. Because Kantos is an ambitious release, drawing on both cult sci-fi series Hyperion Cantos and the work of Immanuel Kant to produce something of an apocalyptic party album. When so many threats appear to be coalescing over humanity’s head, Kishi Bashi has returned with a timely reminder of how good old fashioned fun might be the key to fostering the kind of connection we need to escape intact.

Watch the video directed by Ryan Hover below:

Kantos is out on the 23rd August via Joyful Noise Recordings and you can pre-order it now.

knitting – Sleeper

This September, Montreal‘s knitting will release their debut album Some Kind of Heaven via Mint Records, the outfit working with Scott Munro of Preoccupations to bring their nineties-inflected alt-rock sound to life. The result is every bit as dense and noisy as you might expect from such an arrangement, but latest single ‘Sleeper’ offers a more restrained cut from the record. A meditation on Mischa Dempsey’s experience growing into their trans identity, the song maintains a hazy style but swaps out some of the usual knitting intensity to offer more intimate, earnest emotion.

Lia Kohl – Car Alarm, Turn Signal

Chicago-based cellist, composer and multidisciplinary artist Lia Kohl has made a name blurring the borders between music and sound art, utilising an array of media and styles to create soundscapes able to evoke existence in all of its magic and mundanity. Which is to say, new record Normal Sounds is at once normal and very much not, or else it is extraordinarily normal—with Kohl turning her attention to the acoustics of everyday living and presenting them back to the listener as something as something new. The titles give a clue as to what each track offers (‘Tennis Court Light, Snow’, ‘Ice Cream Truck, Tornado Siren,’ ‘Airport Fridge, Self Checkout’) but the first single turns towards the road. ‘Car Alarm, Turn Signal’ represents “an attempt to capture the overlapping polyrhythms of the streets around my house,” as Kohl explains, with Ka Baird joining on flute to bring the soundscape to life.

The video by Kohl herself performs the same action as the song itself, focusing on a seemingly mundane aspect of a street with such attention that its strange beauty is revealed.

Normal Sounds is out on the 30th August via Moon Glyph and available to pre-order from Bandcamp.

lots of hands – rosie

lots of hands have kept audiences on their toes since their inception in 2019, releasing a string of albums, EPs and singles which float between rock, folk and electronic sensibilities without a care for typical genre conventions. The inventive, shapeshifting style has led to tour slots with the likes of Deerhoof, Cola and Claire Rousay, and live shows only see them push their sound further with sax and flute elevating it towards almost orchestral territory. Which is to say, it can be difficult to know what to expect from a new lots of hands release in the best way possible, and latest single ‘rosie’ is every bit as idiosyncratic and interesting as you might anticipate. Released via Fire Talk Records, the single opens as an intimate bedroom pop with melancholic textures and acoustic guitar before lifting towards something altogether more charged and weighty.

rosie walks in from the rain
with her lips she said
i don’t want no pain
i don’t mean any harm
i just wanna know
where i’m from

‘rosie’ is out now via Fire Talk and you can get it from Bandcamp.

MF Tomlinson – Mary (Big Thief Cover)

We’ve covered the work of MF Tomlinson several times in recent years, with album We Are Still Wild Horses winning us over with its attention to detail and bittersweet emotional landscapes. A style which makes the songwriter the ideal candidate to cover something like ‘Mary’ by Big Thief, a song which feels very much in line with the tone and themes Tomlinson and his band reach for. “I first heard Big Thief’s ‘Mary’ whilst on tour with Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever,” Tomlinson explains. “Late night driving, hyperfocused on the road appearing and disappearing in the narrow headlights, I was swallowed up by the quiet and immense power of the piece—an enormous turning wheel of emotion that summons your earliest and most fundamental places. It just felt fucking huge and at the same time incredibly close and tender. That feeling never left me, and so here we are with this recording.”

Silverware – No Expectations

The recording project of San Francisco-based artist, producer, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Ainsley Wagoner, Silverware has long been something of a shapeshifting entity. Previous LP No Plans might have been best described as art pop, though drew from an array of different genres. Follow-up One True Light, coming later this summer on Ghost Mountain Records, appears equally uninterested in simple stylistic conventions. The result is fluid, unpredictable yet always finely crafted, with fittingly titled lead single ‘No Expectations’ introducing the spirit of the record. A vivid pop soundscape precisely mapped but intuitive in style, all anchored around the rich depth of Wagoner’s delivery.

Talk Bazaar – quiet yr mind

Talk Bazaar is the recording project of Brooklyn‘s Alex DeSimine, self confessed “multi-instrumentalist, big pillowy softie, film composer, collaborator [and] confidante.” Upcoming album WHATSPACE? takes all of these facets to capture what DeSimine describes as “the frenetic feeling of both isolation and community, of always trying to slow down and not knowing how to stop.” A whole host of guest musicians lend their talents to better achieve this aim, the wide collaboration a fitting feature of an artist always reaching for new sounds. The record’s closing track, latest single ‘quiet yr mind’ winds things down with an air of soft and smoky contemplation, with contributions from Rebecca El-Saleh (aka Kitba) and Mike Haldeman (Moses Sumney, altopalo, Mk.gee) encapsulating the richness of an album crafted with the kind of care and invention only possible with equal doses of isolation and community.

This Frontier Needs Heroes – Carolina Peaches

Hailing from Brooklyn, NY, but having spent time in Nashville and Jacksonville, FL and Barcelona among other places, Brad Lauretti of This Frontier Needs Heroes has written, recorded and performed music quite literally all over the world. A folk artist in the traditional sense, wandering and entertaining audiences with equal parts playfulness, protest and heartbreak while always pining for places left in the rear view mirror. Latest single ‘Carolina Peaches’ charts such an experience directly, portraying a life on the move in all of its ups and downs, and always haunted by that old love never quite bettered no matter how many miles of road pass beneath the wheels.

I want to live 1000 lives, but where do I want to die?
Somewhere where the peaches are falling from the sky
When I got back on that train lord I knew I wanted to cry
Was that my biggest mistake I guess i’ll always wonder why

The post Weekly Listening: July 2024 #3 appeared first on Various Small Flames.

Cave Cricket is the project of Portland, OR‘s Kira Sassano, who makes drone and ambient-inspired folk music that seems to emanate from another plane entirely. Her latest album, The World, is being released later this week on cassette by the good folks at bud tapes, a release in which the label say “cascading tones and abounding noises ebb and flow like the mellow waves of a lake or sand on a beach shifting in the breeze.” Lead single ‘The World Pt 1’ offers a glimpse of this in action, a song that feels at once spacious and intimate, Sassano’s vocals ringing out like an otherworldly choir above soaring drones and pulsating drum machine.

There are so many problems in our world
Oh the world moves so fast
it makes my head spin
Oh the world is so vast
with all its moving parts

hojascirculares – asleep

hojascirculares is the recording project of Mexican-American producer, songwriter, and visual artist Ara Hernandez. Latest single ‘Asleep’, released to coincide with last month’s full moon, sees hojascirculares continue to perfect a dark and spiritual brand of synth-based ambient music. There’s a ghostly, gauziness to the song, something which shares an uncanny alignment with its overall sense of dissociation, of feeling somehow unreal. “It’s about those states, gliding through life like a ghost, stuck and frozen inside my own mind,” Hernandez describes. “Paralyzed by my fears of the unknown, the future.” But the song isn’t a simple descent into inky anxiety, it offers a sense of reprieve and respite too. “But I know the flood always returns and sets me free again.” she continues “I am grateful for those moments, when I can feel everything again.”

MF Tomlinson – A Cloud

Born in Brisbane/Meanjin and now based in London, MF Tomlinson is a singer-songwriter who knits psych and sixties sensibilities into his folk style to conjure something as detailed as it is evocative. Having recently signed with PRAH Recordings, Tomlinson has unveiled new track ‘A Cloud’ in preview of his second album which is due sometime next year, developing his sound into an almost orchestral richness. The song picks up where the last record left off, finding Tomlinson suspended within a bittersweet dream-state, where the pain of longing is counterbalanced by an appreciation of the beauty inherent in even the smallest moments of life. Check out the video by Daisy JT Smith below:

‘A Cloud’ is out now via PRAH Recordings and you can grab it from Bandcamp.

PACKS – iknowiknow

Fresh off the back of debut album Take the Cake released via Fire Talk Records and Royal Mountain Records last year, Toronto‘s PACKS is back with a brand new EP, WOAH. We described the previous release as “a delightfully fuzzed-out balance between dreamy stasis and forward motion, all tied together by [Madeline] Link’s inventive, wry lyrics.” WOAH continues the conversational-yet-poetic style within more subdued, acoustic arrangements. Latest single ‘iknowiknow’ is a great example, a confessional track undercut by a sardonic edge that’s all tumbling acoustic guitar and downbeat vocals.

RA Washington / Jah Nada – Bobbi Lynn

It seems futile to attempt to sum up In Search of Our Father’s Gardens with a single track. The debut record from Cleveland duo RA Washington and Jah Nada out later this year on Astral Spirits, the release is an epic double LP split into four sides (or five, if you count the bonus digital addition), with each taking on very different moods and styles. They are even designed so that they can be played simultaneously if you have two record players at hand. All that said, single ‘Bobbi Lynn’ isn’t exactly an average song either. Representing ‘side D’ of the album and a culmination of everything which comes before, it clocks in at over eighteen minutes and highlights the full ability of the supporting fourteen-piece ensemble.

Trout – bugs

Trout is a throwback to the golden age of MP3 blog gems, when mysterious projects emerged from nowhere with no social media presence, no EPK or press campaign, hardly any information on who they are at all. New single ‘bugs’ is “about watching the bugs outside your window be more productive than you,” is as much as we get by way of explanation, though no more is needed. A song sitting between bedroom pop confession and gauzy Gleemer-esque weight, its downbeat drift captures a day passing in a torpor, sparks of energy appearing and disappearing like flares of frustration.

Waterbaby – Thin Air

Avant pop duo Waterbaby, AKA sisters Martha and Jessica Kilpatrick, have made their name weaving soundscapes which play with the distinction between lightness and weight. Having signed with untitled (recs), the pair are back with single ‘Thin Air’ to further this style, a track at once ethereal and dense. “It’s a song about duality,” they explain. “We shapeshift from being in the driver’s seat to going along for the ride […] and travel from day to night.” And further changes take place across this journey, not least a rise and fall which offers the listener both the joy of the ascent and the rush of the plummet back down. As the band put it “Throughout the song you soar and crash, sometimes looking down on the world below, existing somewhere in the clouds like an angel watching earth.”

‘Thin Air’ is out now via untitled (recs) and you can find it in all the usual places.

Zoon – Oil Pastel / Dope Sick (ft. Cadence Weapon)

A few weeks ago we previewed Big Pharma, a forthcoming album from Hamilton‘s Zoon on Paper Bag Records. An exploration of the “enduring face of colonialism via the power and violence of the pharmaceutical industry,” as we described, which also worked to uphold indigenous language. Latest single ‘Oil Pastel/Dope Sick’ invites Cadence Weapon to meld shoegaze and hip hop into a sound rich and detailed enough to capture the experience of being on the ground amid the opioid crisis. His intuitive, flowing verses take aim at the corporations who caused the catastrophe, looping in meditative cycles until they become something like a mantra for instigating change from the bottom up.

Big Pharma is out now via Paper Bag Records and you can pre-order it now from Bandcamp.

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