After a hiatus from music, Yasi Lowy moved to San Francisco in 2018 and returned as Bad Tiger. Released in 2020, album The Goat and the Bad Tiger was the first product of this new period, but far from being the full realisation of Lowy’s goals, it merely opened the doors to new possibilities. With new ideas in hand, Bad Tiger worked with Mackenzie Bunch at Coyote Hearing Studio on a new EP, Sanctuary. ‘Clear Vision’ is our first taste of the release, a bedroom pop track stretched taut with strength of feeling. A track which holds paradoxes in its palm with a sense of curiosity. “I know what I want so long as it’s gone,” Lowy sings, “so long as it’s out of sight, I’ve got clear vision.”

Head to the Bad Tiger Bandcamp page for info on pre-ordering Sanctuary.

bedbug – songs about ghosts

When bedbug released their last full-length, life like moving pictures, back in 2020, it was something of a conclusion. The final part of a trilogy of albums that began with on 2016’s if i got smaller grew wings and flew away for good, it marked the end of a significant stage of the project’s life. It served “not only as a conclusion,” we wrote in a review, “but a summation of what bedbug has come to mean over the previous few years.” So the natural question was, what comes next?

After a little wait, the answer is now revealed. bedbug has evolved Pokémon-style into a full band and announced a self-titled EP, to be released in March on the inimitable Disposable America. To display this new direction, bedbug have unveiled the EP’s lead single, a reimagining of ‘songs about ghosts’, which initially featured on if i got smaller…. Check it out below:

Big Nothing – A Lot of Finding Out

Philly-based outfit Big Nothing are set to release their second record Dog Hours this coming February. Their first on Lame-O Records, the album captures the buoyant blend of compassion and confidence that makes Big Nothing so compelling. Equal parts intimate alt-country and bold power pop, as highlighted by lead single ‘A Lot of Finding Out’ with its acoustic guitars and elastic bounce.

Julia Blair – Waste Away

Making her name fronting Wisconsin country rock outfit Dusk, whose 2018 self-titled record on Don Giovanni Records won wide acclaim, Julia Blair has gone solo for brand new album Better Out Than In on Crutch of Memory. After the bright and fierce nineties-inflected pop rock of lead single ‘Relax’, new song ‘Waste Away’ shows off another side to Blair’s work. A considered meditation on the dissolution of a relationship wrapped within a rich arrangement of strings. The track comes complete with a video directed by Finn Bjornerud, with choreography by Monica Endres.

Better Out Than In is out via Crutch Of Memory and you can pre-order it from the Julia Blair Bandcamp page.

Bryde – Silver Suns

Hailing from Pembrokeshire and now based in London, Bryde has won acclaim with an emotive and cathartic brand of indie rock. Following on from 2020’s The Volume of Things, Bryde is opening 2022 with the first taste of a brand new record. With its tenderhearted piano foundations, ‘Silver Suns’ explores the diversity of love, pushing beyond the stereotypical images to delve into ideas of self-acceptance and non-judgemental affection.

Georgia Harmer – Austin

Following on from first single, ‘Headrush‘, Toronto‘s Georgia Harmer returns with new track, ‘Austin’, on Arts & Crafts. Building on the rich and nostalgic sound of the first song, ‘Austin’ tackles homesickness and familial love with a special focus on Harmer’s father and his experiences as a touring musician. Indeed, Harmer Snr. plays lead guitar on the track, recorded in the family living room. A tangible link to the connection which sparked the song in the first place. “Went to Austin Texas for a day / To everyone I saw I said your name,” she sings in the opening line. “The setting sun the hot wind on my face / Felt like home an unfamiliar place.”

We were cowboys in another life
But I am you your other life is mine
Often when I speak to you I cry
Never can explain the reason why
Never understood the reason

KASHKA – isolation

Last winter saw the return of Toronto-based dream pop project KASHKA with latest release, soft. Part of Kat Burns‘s ever-evolving style, the record lived up to its title with its gentle and welcoming sound, providing a nook in which the listener can sit and contemplate the current moment. Single ‘isolation’ captures this mood through the muted beauty of a snow day, looking for common humanity within the experience of being cut off from the world.

soft is out in February and you can find it on the KASHKA Bandcamp page.

Lofi Legs – My Silence

Combining garage rock and bedroom pop with psych and surf sensibilities, San Francisco‘s Lofi Legs are out to capture the highs and lows of life. Ahead of their album Leg Day on Italian-American label We Were Never Being Boring Collective, they have unveiled lead single ‘my silence’ to welcome us into this style. A song smack back in the middle of a Venn diagram between poignant and playful. “‘My Silence’ started as a conversation on shrooms about how I had gotten quieter,” explains Paris Cox-Farr, “and in the song I am picking apart my silent vulnerability to see if there’s something happening inside.”

Night Shop – Let Me Let It Go

Next month sees the release of Forever Night, the full-length album from LA‘s Night Shop on Dangerbird Records. To add to the anticipation for what we’ve described previously as a “triumphant meditation on nocturnal life,” Justin Sullivan has unveiled a brand new single, ‘Le Me Let It Go’. With a band featuring Meg Duffy (Hand Habits), Will Ivy (Flatworms) and Anna St. Louis, as well as engineering from Jarvis Taveniere (Woods), the song finds a bona fide supergroup at the height of their chemistry. Check out the video by Jeff Davenport and Cooper Kenward below:

I was halfway through my time on this earth. When I had a strange feeling like I had at my birth. Surrounded by strangers, crying in some room. I felt myself at such a remove. And I loved them all but I couldn’t say how, I just screamed a lot and then I shut my mouth.

Forever Night is out via Dangerbird Records on the 11th February and you can pre-order it from the Night Shop Bandcamp page.

Quiet Hollers – Garden of Love

Louisville outfit Quiet Hollers returned this January with Forever Chemicals, what they describe as their “joyfully nihilistic” fourth record. True to their genre-bending spirit, the album draws from all facets of the rock style to create a sound at once mischievous and sincere, leaning toward the darker end of the spectrum without sacrificing the steely will beneath the gloom. Single ‘Garden of Love’ is and example of the record’s earnest side, a yearning track fired by propulsive drums and lifted by the evocative delivery of lead Shadwick Wilde.

Rascal Miles – Locusts

We’ve previously described Rascal Miles‘s Tailor-Made as an examination of “both the violence and banal practicalities of becoming the person you are meant to be,” and latest single ‘Locusts’ is no different. Taking inspiration from Ennio Morricone and the world of Spaghetti Westerns, the track confronts post gender transition dysphoria and the hostility of the world with a sense of defiance. “I am who I am, and sometimes it seems like the whole world is out to get me, but even if we’re marching into an outnumbered battle in our fight for acceptance, we’re stepping out of the shadows and into the light,” Miles explains. “No more hiding. No backing down. Bring on the locusts.”

You can grab a copy of Tailor-Made from the Rascal Miles Bandcamp page.

Lee Switzer-Woolf – The Negative Twin

Having been a part of bands like Launch Control and The Seasons in Shorthand, 2022 sees Reading-based artist Lee Switzer-Woolf step out on his own with debut single, ‘The Negative Twin’. Taken from full-length Scientific Automatic Palmistry, out by All Will Be Well Records this February, the song introduces the darkly ruminative tone of Switzer-Woolf’s sound. A sparse and haunting track which nevertheless carries a stark urgency beneath its inky surface. Like an undercurrent pulling toward some unfortunate conclusion.

Erisy Watt – New Same

This spring sees the release of Eyes like the Ocean, a new record from Portland’s Erisy Watt on American Standard Time Records. Lead single ‘New Same’ welcomes us into the world of the record, one as indebted to contemporaries like Haley Heynderickx as the sixties stars of the genre. “I was reflecting on habits, trying to break the old and shape the new, and I was feeling stuck,” Watt explains. “We all want to blossom into the best versions of ourselves and often forget that it takes time, that it’s never a linear path. Old voices linger. Old behaviours crop up.” ‘New Same’ is a recognition of this fact, learning to adapt one’s outlook as the landscape shifts below.

Anna Westin – Bright Burning Mess

‘Bright Burning Mess’ finds Canadian poet and songwriter Anna Westin working at the intersection of her various artistic outlets. With both spoken word and sung lyrics populating the lushly ethereal folk arrangement, the track slots in alongside those contemporaries like Cassandra Jenkins. Songs looking to push the possibilities of language within the indie folk movement, and elevate the emotions found within.

‘Bright Burning Mess’ is out now more about Anna Westin’s work on her website.

Kimberly Morgan York – Real Thing

Though it was recorded way back in 2006, only to be released in 2022, Kimberly Morgan York’s debut LP Found Yourself a Lady transports you far further back than that. Recorded with The Everlovin’ Band and featuring Brad Morgan of the Drive-By Truckers, Found Yourself a Lady is a country record in the classic sense. A collection of songs occupying a timeless space of love and loss, as demonstrated by single ‘Real Thing’. A romance so fierce it could never burn for long, but oh how warm it is in the moment.

Call your momma we ain’t coming tonight
I need some lovin by the pale moon light
She’ll forgive you and I won’t wait
Tomorrow I’ll call in late

Found Yourself a Lady is out now and you can find more about Kimberly Morgan York’s work on her website.

The post Weekly Listening – Jan 2022 #2 appeared first on Various Small Flames.

Locate S,1 – Personalia

Recording under the moniker Locate S,1, Christina Schneider stretches the boundaries of pop to create strange, beguiling songs that play light and dark off of one another. Following a successful tour with Frankie Cosmos in 2019, Locate S,1 signed with Captured Tracks and will release their second album, Personalia, this April.

The title track is the record’s first single, and represents the ideal welcome into the world of the album. Taking it’s title from a Mary Ruefle poem, ‘Personalia’ rises from a period of personal darkness toward something brighter, its clever, determined lyrics pitched somewhere between honesty and self-deprecation. It’s a potent mix, a spell which conjures life, and by the close Schneider is fired into orbit by her own energy once again.

Almost killed myself so I went home
I just cannot take these local shows
Tom T. Hall said don’t let your music kill you
But I’m no country boy
I’m just some punk

Personalia is out on the via Captured Tracks and you can pre-order it from the Locate S, 1 Bandcamp page.

Ratboys – I Go Out At Night

After the success of previous records AOID (2015) and GN (2018), Ratboys are back this month with the third album, Printer’s Devil, on Topshelf Records. Crafted around themes of instability and change, the record seeks to make peace with upheaval by defusing the fear it brings, and such a headspace proved conducive to a real development of the band’s sound. “There’s definitely a lot of uncertainty about what’s next,” explains lead Julia Steiner. “But I like to think that, in the midst of creating a lot of vulnerability for ourselves, we’re confident and becoming more self-assured.”

Latest single ‘I Go Out at Night’ makes good on that sentiment, finding Ratboys building upon the style they’ve been developing across their previous records. Settling as a four-piece, with Marcus Nuccio (drums) and Sean Neumann (bass) joining founding duo Dave Sagan and Steiner, the project has fully transcended its acoustic beginnings while preserving the original spirit—delving into power pop, garage rock and alt-country to not only highlight the Ratboys range but also best chart the ever changing world in which it is created.

Printer’s Devil is out via Topshelf Records on the 28th February and you can pre-order it now.

Sea Offs – Will (You)

The collaborative project of songwriters Olivia Price and Rashmit Aror, Sea Offs make an atmospheric collision of folk and rock that manages to inject a tangible urgency without puncturing the enveloping ethereal tone. Released in 2017, album What’s the Point? displayed just how evocative a blend this can be. “Every moment on the album, from the dazzling highs to the locked-away lows,” we wrote, “is threaded not just with an unshakeable sense of isolation but the equally persistent suspicion that things need not always be this way.”

This spring sees the band return with a brand new release, and lead single ‘Will (You)’ shows that they have lost none of their impact. Let loose into a delicate miasma of ambient tones and driven by a deep drum beat, Price’s vocals move from crooned questioning to steely determination, eventually rising into a cathartic closing section. Thematically, the song “discusses body ownership in a relationship,” the band explain. “The detachment one can feel sexually when there is no emotional connection to serve as a basis.”

Greg Mendez – Bike

Philly native Greg Mendez has been making music since 2006, self-releasing CDs from home alongside his presence on Myspace and the not-yet blossoming DIY scene in the city. Years struggling with addiction, homelessness and mental health issues meant that his output was sporadic through the 2010s, but Mendez released his debut full-length ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ in 2017, and is now back with a brand new record, Cherry Hell.

A joint release between Forged Artifacts and Devil Town Tapes, the album represents another link the chain of American songwriting, taking the themes of Townes Van Zandt, Connie Converse and Elliott Smith and casting them in the bedroom pop spirit of today. Lead single ‘Bike’ is one such example, a song based around “wanting to change and longing to be someone else” that dreams against the restrictive nature of our one single life—pining for experiences wide and disparate so as to exist more fully, free from the accumulated dirt of our positions in the world.

Mount Sharp – Ordinary

Writing back in August, we describe Mount Sharp‘s ‘Apostate’ as a song “indebted to the past but shaped by present conditions, concerned with the personal and the political when exploring what it means to be pushed away from someone or something.” The track was the first single of forthcoming album That Shadow, a record that will finally be released this month.

To increasing the anticipation, the Brooklyn band have release a brand new single, ‘Ordinary’. Ramping up the energy from the half-paced ‘Apostate’, the track is one of jangling confidence, bringing to mind the way Nap Eyes juxtapose loose-limbed inquisitiveness and deadpan lyrics, though injecting a punk energy too. There’s a dark humour to the way the track ebbs and flows, the lulls shaking into intense collisions of noise, as though firing itself through its own gathering motion, all tied together by the cutting lyrics.

How many times before it starts to feel ordinary
How many (how many) before
Cause I heard I’ll start to feel things relatively
And I don’t know if that sounds good or bad anymore

Normal’s just what you’re used to
And you’re surprised
So find all the space your anger takes
And try not to make all of it about you

That Shadow is out on the 22nd February and you can pre-order it now from the Mount Sharp Bandcamp page.

Silo’s Choice – Annwn

Silo’s Choice is the moniker of Chicago resident Jon Massey, a musician interested in pushing the boundaries of rock to further its conceptual and political scope. Forthcoming album Twilight on the Trail dials back slightly on the more idiosyncratic elements of previous releases, allowing a sincere immediacy to flourish (“less Mahler and more Joni Mitchell,” in the words of the artist), yet still the art-rock foundations remain. As such, the record seems perfectly positioned to explore big themes without straying too far into the inhuman abstract.

Lead single ‘Annwn’ is a clear progression in this sense. Named after the otherworld of Welsh mythology, the track takes on theme of death and mourning from an oblique angle, focusing not on the usual sadness and suffering but rather the mystery life’s end. Annwn was a world of peace and eternal youth, death with the pain removed, and Silo’s Choice uses it as a foil to examine mortality in a new manner—melancholic perhaps, but also joyous, lost in the sublime of that which we do not know.

and how i long to see the old things
the old world written in the old words
consumed with my body in a long fire
and wake up to the sound of a new chord

do you float?
does your spirit sink into the earth?
i think you slip sideways into a new birth

Jesse Blake Rundle – Radishes and Flowers

“A story of longing arranged into a bed of radishes and flowers.” That’s how Jesse Blake Rundle described his latest single, aptly named ‘Radishes and Flowers’. Adapted from Wallace Stevens’s ‘Cy Est Pourtraicte, Madame Ste Ursule, et Les Unze Mille Vierges’, the song is the title track of an entire collection inspired by the poetry of Stevens, crafted to match the source material in both theme and shape.

Rundle is a self-taught musician who utilises unconventional tuning to form a singular style, an aesthetic that proves the perfect mode with which to capture the nuanced life of Stevens’s Florida. As the title track shows, Rundle’s arrangements are capable of both whimsical creeps along the small details of our world and grand swells of emotion, achieving a balance between macro and micro that makes for a striking and beautiful sound.

Ursula, in a garden, found
A bed of radishes.
She knelt upon the ground
And gathered round,
With flowers blue, gold, and green

Isadora Eden – Anhedonia

Hailing from Colorado, Isadora Eden is a songwriter who pairs dark, searching lyrics with a moody sound, ranging from intimate simplicity to something altogether fuller and more striking. The lead single from a forthcoming EP, ‘Anhedonia’ makes this apparent, its stark style lending the sound a haunting edge.

The track is produced by Corey Coffman of Gleemer, and there’s certainly a shared emotional depth between the projects, the sounds so rich and evocative that their undoubted melancholy takes on an affirming quality. Opening with little beyond a simple acoustic guitar and Eden’s poignant vocals, the track soon welcomes jags of guitar and a driving drum beat, swelling beyond its minimalist beginnings and taking on an elevated form.

i’m alone again
like i wanted to be
didn’t i say
that i wanted to be
i guess it’s easier now
i guess it’s easier now

there’s gotta be a break
someday
i don’t wanna be left behind

Shadwick Wilde – Rain

You might know Shadwick Wilde as the front man of Louisville band Quiet Hollers, though he is writing solo music too. Latest single ‘Rain’ was written after Wilde was asked to perform at the Climate Strike in 2019, in particular a song for Greta Thunberg who was in attendance via her solar powered yacht. Originally averse to the idea, Wilde latched onto a a song he had started months earlier, the line “clean on the inside, free as the sun” suddenly taking on a new meaning as this young person arrived on her boat.

With help from Sarah Balliet (of Murder by Death) on cello and Shelley Anderson on bass, Wilde crafts a sullen soundscape of dark tones, the plaintive strings weaving their way over backdrop and conjuring a place of perpetual rain. There’s a fatality to the track, though hope too, as though the narrator has given up their own future but retains a vague belief in the possibility the next generation might somehow succeed.

We’ll leave our home to you
our fugitive daughter
and all we’ve built for you
will be reclaimed by the water
giver of life and destroyer of worlds
red, gold and coral, mother of pearl

Wilde expects to release an album later this year so be sure to follow him on Twitter for more news.

Thanks for stopping on by! Be sure to check out the Reviews and Previews sections for more in-depth writing, and do let us know what you’ve been listening to on Twitter, Facebook or Instagram.

The post Bright Sparks: Vol. 32 appeared first on Various Small Flames.

Featuring:

Petal – I’m Sorry
Wild Pink – The Seance On St. Augustine St
Big Thing – Spin
Bombshell Nightlight – Death Day
Mount Goldie – Summer
Elsa Lester – Pretty Bad, Man
Why Bonnie – Gold Rush
Devon Welsh – Vampires
Max García Conover – Another Travelling Man
Floating Room – Dog
Izaak Opatz – Bathing in the Ganges
Free Cake For Every Creature – Around You
Indigo De Souza – Home Team
Museum Food Court – bad song
Crisco Dreams – I Like Your Bed
You’re Sister – I Think About You
Russel the Leaf – Let ‘Em Run
Fresh – Daytime
Stevhen Peters – Phone Talk
Tender Age – Don’t Mind
Lord Youth – Do You Have Anything To Add?
Quiet Hollers – Addicted
Blue J – Hard to Know
Post Moves – The Arc of Life
Angus & Julia Stone – Nothing Else
Gia Margaret – Birthday
Sun June – Discotheque
Campdogzz – Souvenir
Field Report – Every Time

*(Due to various issues of availability and licensing, neither playlist has the complete quota of acts, but welcome to the modern age).

You can find all of the previous instalments of Bright Sparks here, and be sure to check back in a few weeks to see what makes the next edition.

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

Many of their songs feature people alienated from a hostile world, their environments either antagonistic to the characters’ presence or else collapsing altogether, and dragging everything with them. This doomed dimension is supported (or accentuated) by wry observations on the banality of contemporary life, the narrator often finding his hopes and dreams to be disintegrating, illusions dispelled by an unkind and dissatifying reality.

2017’s follow up Amen Breaks continued this trend, looking back to the 70s as a parallel to the present moment, where conspiracy, corruption and violence permeated society in new ways. The record took a more experimental approach, drawing upon a greater degree of influences, and saw the band evolve their sound while maintaining the same spirit. As such, the lyrical nature of the tracks remained as important as ever, forgoing any sense of optimism or trite reassurance in favour of a more open-ended form of questioning, placing hope in the idea that merely asking the big cultural and existential questions is some substitute in lieu of any answers or comforts.

Quiet Hollers are back with a brand new single, ‘Addicted’, inspired by the opioid crisis currently gripping the US. While Wilde himself has lost a family member to fentanyl, the song casts its gaze wider than personal tragedy. In this way, Wilde and co. treat the epidemic as a symptom rather than a disease, the product of a wider cultural malaise that is tightly bound with the way society is set up in the twenty-first century.

Quiet Hollers are also currently on tour. Check their Facebook page for dates.

The post Quiet Hollers – Addicted appeared first on Various Small Flames.

Tracklisting:

1. I Don’t Know – Tina Refnes (+ Lit Links)
2. If I Were a Portal – Evening Hymns
3. Cradle Robber – Tyler Butler and His Handsome Friends
4. Calvander – Mount Moriah
5. The Way It Is, The Way It Could Be – The Weather Station
6. Porch – Long Beard
7. Small Wind Power – Fraternal Twin
8. Mourning Dove – Danielle Fricke
9. 3 – Cat Be Damned
10. Cold Apartment Floors – Vagabon
11. I Used To Be A Bird – Fairweather Currents
12. Drive-Thru – Honeyuck
13. Ghosts – The Washboard Abs
14. Litany – Tyler Key
15. Aviator Shades – Quiet Hollers
16. Book of Right On (Joanna Newsom cover) – Foxtails Brigade (Lit Links)
17. Judy Blume – Mal Devisa
18. So Long – Dot & Logic
19. A Swift Thing – EP
20. Stuck w/ Me – Home Lives
21. Close Call (Adderall Anxiety) – Shaky Shrines
22. Boys – Dicktations
23. Nothing – Strange Friends
24. Careful Creators – Summering
25. Blinding White – Vapour Night
26. Pull – Slow Dancing Society (Hidden Shoal compilation)
27. Calmest – Naps
28. As He Walked Into the Field – Robert Stillman
29. Church Bells – Tommy Perman, Simon Kirby & Rob St. John
30. Seven – Oh, Rose
    31. No Hell – Cloud Cult

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

“I wear my aviator shades
navigate into the grocery maze
I’m gonna murder my weekend in a haze
I wear my aviator shades

Sarah, can’t you hear me fadin? (fadin)
You know I stay like this for days (fadin)
Sarah, can’t you hear my voice from far away
behind my aviator shades”

The entire album charts similar sensations of detachment and doubt, a banal life sliding by your best attempts to smile. If this sounds at all familiar, and you like your music a blend between Americana and 90s college rock, then look no further. Quiet Hollers are the band for you.

RIYL: Ola Podrida, Pela/Augustines, The Rosebuds

Favourite tracks:

You can buy Quiet Hollers now from Bandcamp.

The post Flash Review: Quiet Hollers appeared first on Various Small Flames.