“Throwing out the notion of binary happy-or-sad songs, [The EP] opts for something in between, or rather everything at once. Samantha is happy, sad, optimistic, pessimistic, cynical and hopeful within each song… and if you want your art to somehow imitate or represent life then surely that’s the only way to go.”

However, there is one drawback to having strong, literary writing (and a book-heavy music video) – you become a prime target for the Lit Links strand of our Quiet, Constant Friends project. So, I started bugging them by email and, luckily, lead Eric Krewson was more than happy to contribute.

Marilynne Robinson’s Home
by Eric Krewson

Marilynne Robinson is no stranger to success. Her first novel, Housekeeping, won the PEN/Faulkner Award; her second, Gilead, took home the Pulitzer. Even those outside her field have taken notice: President Obama, for example, honored her with a National Humanities Medal and, just two months ago, interviewed her for the New York Review of Books. (That is correct. The President of the United States of America interviewed Robinson, not the other way around.)

And yet, despite these achievements and brushes with fame, despite Faber & Faber recently reprinting Housekeeping as part of its Modern Classic series, Robinson is—by any polling of the public consciousness—largely unknown, unread. My goal is to give a brief primer of her books and, because each differs significantly in tone and content, suggest a starting point for potential readers based on their interests.

Philosophers – Do you spend your days marveling at the world, the seen and unseen? Do you love literature, metaphysics, science, art? Ah then the place to begin is Robinson’s essays, and I suggest the collection The Death of Adam, which includes an illuminating essay—illuminating, especially, for us progressives—about the writings of Charles Darwin. A progressive herself, Robinson muses on the fact that we moderns have rescued Darwin from his own bigotry, rescued him from his own abominable conclusions. From Darwin’s Descent of Man:

At some future period, not very distant as measured by centuries, the civilized races of man will almost certainly exterminate, and replace, the savage races throughout the world. At the same time the anthropomorphous apes. . . will no doubt be exterminated. The break between man and his nearest allies will then be wider, for it will intervene between man in a more civilized state, as we may hope, even than the Caucasion, and some ape as low as a baboon, instead of as now between the negro or Austrailian or the gorilla.

Dreamers – Do you while away your weekends writing poetry? Do you bore your friends with lines from bards? Do your favorite books collapse the boundaries of time and space, presenting a world that, while anathema to journalistic objectivity, is much more real, much truer than the one reported on the evening news? Well then, Housekeeping and Lila are for you. All of Robinson’s novels are poetic, at times ecstatic, but thanks to luminous female narrators, every page of these books is bathed in mystic light.

Hybrid – Do you enjoy poetry and essays equally? Did you get a B+ or higher in both History and English? We are alike, my friend, and the books most suited for us are Gilead and Home. The latter, my favorite Robinson work, is narrated by Glory Boughton, who is herself both a dreamer and a philosopher. (She is, by profession, a teacher.) In the novel she narrates, Glory has moved home, both to regain her footing after a failed relationship, and to care for her elderly father who has grown impossibly frail since the death of his wife. From the first pages of Home:

Their father said if they could see as God can, in geological time, they would see [the oak] leap out of the ground and turn in the sun and spread its arms and bask in the joys of being an oak tree in Iowa. There had once been four swings suspended from those branches, announcing to the world the fruitfulness of their household. The oak tree flourished still, and of course there had been and there were the apple and cherry and apricot trees, the lilacs and trumpet vines and the day lilies. A few of her mother’s irises managed to bloom. At Easter she and her sisters could still bring in armfuls of flowers, and their father’s eyes would glitter with tears and he would say, “Ah yes, yes,” as if they had brought some memento, these flowers only a pleasant reminder of flowers.

I first read Home in 2008, a few months after my twenty-second birthday. The world economy was bottoming out, and my peers and I were overwhelmed by a very urgent, very real anxiety to find a livelihood where no livelihood existed. We were encouraged to snatch at any flake of subsistence, to wrest it out of the hands of one’s neighbor, if necessary. I had been putting off writing music, which is, if not my calling, certainly my joy, in order to appease this anxiety. Glory spoke to me in reasonable, calm, motherly tones. She taught me that it was OK—even good and right—to stop, to assess. And more importantly, she taught me that it was OK to make art, to say “no” to the zeitgeist and “yes” to my curiosities and convictions. I remember the day I stopped applying to jobs I didn’t want. I wrote a song.

But I still haven’t convinced you to read Robinson? Well then, here is a musical representation of Home, culled from my modest library. Perhaps it will sway you.

You can buy Samantha Says now from The Chairman Dances Bandcamp page.. The Quiet, Constant Friends compilation is available on our Bandcamp page, including the limited edition tape and art print bundle.

The post Lit Links: The Chairman Dances appeared first on Various Small Flames.

Because we still have a fair amount of tapes left, and obviously want to raise as much as possible for Worldreader, we have decided to run a special holiday offer. So, as suggested below in stylised sans serif, entering the code ‘HOHOHO’ at the checkout on Bandcamp will get you a handsome 40% off both digital and physical copies of the compilation. This will still cover the production cost of the cassette, but remember all profits go to charity, so every extra pound you give will be a pound well spent.To refresh your memory, here’s what you’ll be getting if you put some of your hard earned cash towards Quiet, Constant Friends:

Side A

Danielle Fricke – The Well
Lotte Kestner – Cattleya
Wes Tirey – Akhnilo Blues
Pasture Dog – Everything That Rises Must Converge
Old Earth – Pretty Steep
Salt Altars – Little Big Man
Henry Demos – Not Her
Beat Radio – Mexico City
Sondra Sun-Odeon – Hair

Side B

Nathan Amundson – Haruki Murakami
Windmill – Jim & The Rather Large Nectarine
ARMS – The Book of Love
Oh, Rose & Sawtooth – TV
Free Cake For Every Creature – Don’t Go Away (Ahumpf Acgroof)
John Ross – The Overlook Hotel
Kissing Fractures – I Drank Phosphorus With Aunt Lucy
Nice Legs – Past Lives
Ben Seretan – King of Crumbs
Trouble Books – Oak and Linden Tree Abridged
Lewtrakimou – I’m a Book on Tape
Nadia Reid – Runway

Grab a download or cassette now via our Bandcamp page, and be sure to remember to use the code ‘HOHOHO’ for your discount.

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The band haven’t put out a full-length album since 2012’s Time is Past, but did have a song (and award-winning video) on the OIM Records compilation out this summer. Not ones to rest on their (film festival) laurels, the act recently reworked Joanna Newsom’s ‘The Book of Right On‘, composing a completely new arrangement that is clearly novel yet still imbued with the special something Newsom weaves into all of her work. The result is a haunted indie pop song, the vocals (which are far crisper than Newsom’s) circled by an array of plucked guitars, glockenspiel and distortion and stalked by a vast empty space illuminated by pedal effects and echoes. Have a listen to the track below and download it for free via Soundcloud:

Discovering the track coincided with us planning Lit Links: a new, semi-regular feature as part of our Quiet, Constant Friends project, one which will hopefully allow us to examine to relationship between music and literature from a different angle. The idea is to create a playlist of songs that are in some way relevant to a particular book, be they songs which are related to the plot or themes, exist within the same general mood, or just bring to mind certain passages for whatever reason.

Well, the link might be tenuous but we saw ‘book’ in the title and thought Foxtails Brigade might be the perfect people to kick us off. Luckily for us, Weinbach agreed, and has put together an excellent piece/playlist centred on Like A Velvet Glove Cast In Iron by Daniel Clowes.

Daniel Clowes and Like A Velvet Glove Cast In Iron Speak To Me
by Laura Weinbach

Despite mild disappointment and passively hoping for something better, there is a kind of entertainment factor to simply observing the innately crude, grotesque nature of the world. Daniel Clowes has a knack for magnifying that film of abhorrence clung to most people, places and things. When I picked up my first issue of Eightball as an early twenty-something year-old, I was hooked from the get go feeling like this was was something that sees the world the way I do and Like A Velvet Glove Cast In Iron immediately became the series within that I most anticipated.

What’s cool about Clowes, particularly with regard to Like A Velvet Glove, is that he captures an essence that feels uncensored and honest and without seeming to try too hard; there’s fluidity to the pages. As a result, the story reads like the transcription of a dream in a mood of impending desperation on the brink of total apathy. But unlike just hearing someone talk about some dream they had that isn’t real and doesn’t make sense to the listener, this isn’t boring because it feels like it’s the reader’s dream too.

Anyway, there’s no doubt that this book and much of Clowes’s other work, has had an integral impact on my developing psyche and pushed its influence one way or another through the stuff I make. Though it’s sometimes hard to really know or see what’s at the core of one’s own art, I sense a similar condition to Clowes’s (or at least his characters) inside much of what I do.

Tunes To Listen To While Thinking About Like A Velvet Glove Cast In Iron
(in no particular order):

1. Laura Palmer’s Theme – Angelo Badalamenti
2. Can We Kiss – Calvin Johnson
3. Took You Two Years To Win My Heart – Final Fantasy
4. Never Had No One Ever – The Smiths
5. Lightening Rods – Faun Fables
6. Shine On You Crazy Diamond – Pink Floyd
7. The Artifact and Living – Michael Andrews
8. Red Head Walkin – Beat Happening
9. In Boxes – Aurora Aksnes
10. I’m An Outlaw – Kurt Vile
11. Unloved – Foxtails Brigade
12. Barragan – Blonde Redhead
13. Seven Two – Blonde Redhead
14. Another One – Mac Demarco
15. The Perfect Timing – Nedelle Torrisi (from the 2013 Paradise In Piano Album)

To find out more about our Quiet, Constant Friends project you should head here. You can buy the Quiet, Constant Friends compilation now from the Wake The Deaf Bandcamp page: All tapes come with limited-edition postcard prints (which you can browse here) and all proceeds go to the global literacy charity Worldreader.

The post Lit Links: Foxtails Brigade appeared first on Various Small Flames.

“Have a drink and think about
the way the shrubs just moved
Is this place talking to me?
Or am I crazy?”

Remember that you can (and should) order Quiet, Constant Friends on cassette via the Wake the Deaf Bandcamp page. Each tape comes with a postcard print of one of the original artworks, so it will be a package full of pretty little things. Every penny of the profits go straight to Worldreader so what are you waiting for? Tell your family, friends and enemies too.

The post Quiet, Constant Friends: John Ross – The Overlook Hotel appeared first on Various Small Flames.

Surely you have all heard of ARMS? We have certainly mentioned them a few times. For the uninitiated, ARMS is Todd Goldstein, the ex-Harlem Shakes guitarist, and a variety of friends. We were honoured and delighted when Todd offered to record a version of ‘The Book of Love’ by The Magnetic Fields.

The book of love is long and boring
No one can lift the damn thing
It’s full of charts and facts and figures
And instructions for dancing

But I, I love it when you read to me
And you, you can read me anything

You can buy Quiet, Constant Friends now via the Wake The Deaf Bandcamp page. Remember, all tapes come with super-limited edition art print postcards. You’d be a fool to miss out!

The post Quiet, Constant Friends: ARMS – The Book of Love appeared first on Various Small Flames.

“The tape is packed with so many vivid images that the bigger picture becomes indistinct, like the recollections of a man so old and tired that the border between reality and fantasy has become porous”

The track draws inspiration from two works of literature: The title is taken from the James Salter story ‘Akhnilo’ and the falcon/falconer imagery was plucked out of Yeats’ ‘The Second Coming’.

The artwork for this one is by Erika.

You can buy Quiet, Constant Friends now the Wake The Deaf Bandcamp page. All tapes come with super-limited edition postcard art prints, and all profits will go to Worldreader.

The post Quiet, Constant Friends: Wes Tirey – Akhnilo Blues appeared first on Various Small Flames.

We’ve been big fans of Oh, Rose for quite a while now, feelings which peaked over their latest album SEVEN, an album of quite spectacular ferocity and strangeness. As we wrote in July:

“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. Here Rose sounds quite literally possessed, as if channelling something old and malevolent and playful in a mean, spiteful way”

Sounds cool, right? So cool in fact that we asked Oh, Rose to be a part of our project. Accepting the offer, they teamed up with fellow Olympians Sawtooth to make ‘TV’, a song which first appeared on Because Mountains Are There To Climb, an excellent compilation from the ever-reliable Fox Food Records.

How does this tie in with the books theme, I hear you shout! Well, let’s just say it’s down to your own interpretation. I think there’s an interesting discussion ongoing on books vs. TV/internet, and the slow deliberation of reading vs. instant gratification, and even the most square-eyed among you would admit that having something so easy to digest being beamed out of the various screens in your home might have a tiny influence on your reading habits. But anyway, buy the compilation, listen to the song and stare in a catatonic daze at the artwork below.

You can pre-order Quiet, Constant Friends now on our Bandcamp page, and all profits go straight to Worldreader! Why not grab a tape, complete with super-limited edition art prints?

The post Quiet, Constant Friends: Oh, Rose & Sawtooth – TV appeared first on Various Small Flames.

We wrote about Aimee Lin’s Kissing Fractures late last year, describing how she writes “candidly about her fears and anxieties in simple but poetic verse” on Lost Self. We were therefore delighted when she agreed to be part of Quiet, Constant Friends, submitting a new song. ‘I Drank Phosphorus With My Aunt Lucy’ is a similarly short-but-oh-so-sweet track, disarmingly sincere and sad, sounding like a late autumn afternoon where the fading sun casts everything in a melancholic light. As Don DeLillo once wrote, “…the time of year, time of day, for small insistent sadness to pass into the texture of things.”

The artwork for this one is by Liam.

You can pre-order Quiet, Constant Friends now via the Wake The Deaf Bandcamp page. All tapes come with super-limited edition postcard prints, and all profits go to Worldreader. Treating yourself + helping somebody = win/win.

The post Quiet, Constant Friends: Kissing Fractures – I Drank Phosphorus With My Aunt Lucy appeared first on Various Small Flames.

So we’re unveiling the tracks one by one in a sort of music-streaming drumroll, and tonight we are delighted reveal a song by New Zealand’s Nadia Reid. ‘Runway’ closes out the compilation, a track as fitting as it is beautiful. Here, as with all of Nadia’s music, she speaks with the rich texture of experience beyond her years, her words defiant and fragile and human in the very best sense of the word.

“When I hit the ground in all my glory
I will know
where I have come from.

In the shadow of the doubt that meets the morning
I have come,
I have faced it”

If you like what you hear her record, Listen to Formation, Look for the Signs, is out on the 27th November on Sputnik and Scissortail Records, so be sure to get your pre-order in.

The artwork in response to ‘Runway’ is by the brilliant Heather Swenson, who uses an array of different techniques and styles for her strange, vibrant pieces. You can find all of her work on her website, follow her on Tumblr and keep an eye on her work with Mt. Home Arts. Christmas is coming, you know. Who wouldn’t like something to put on the wall?

Remember that you can/should order Quiet, Constant Friends on cassette via the Wake the Deaf Bandcamp page,* a limited release which comes with a few postcard prints of original artworks. Who knows, you might get Heather’s. Better still, every penny of the profits go straight to Worldreader, so you can spoil yourself and help others in one fell swoop.

*Digital downloads are available for those of you living in modern day society. And of course all tapes have downloads too.

The post Quiet, Constant Friends: Nadia Reid – Runway appeared first on Various Small Flames.

We covered Henry Demos, the solo project of Mark Lentz of Seoul-based Nice Legs, back in April, writing about his split release with Lewtrakimou on Fox Food Records and utilising superlatives such as ‘kinda weird” and “thoroughly original & enjoyable”. ‘Not Her’ is a slight departure from the semi-psychedelic rock of I Was Trying To Get There…, a swirling, mostly-instrumental track that sounds positively cosmic, which is perhaps unsurprising as the finale contains what is allegedly the world’s oldest poem (although don’t hold us to this fact):

“Your eyes

The stars

Ten thousand years

Your eyes

The stars”

The artwork is by Wake The Deaf’s resident artist Erika (who also designed the album cover), drawing upon the mewling of the opening.

You can pre-order Quiet, Constant Friends now ahead of its release on the 17th October, including some rather pretty cassettes (even if I do say so myself).

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