Tracklisting:

Mike Pace and the Child Actors – Everyone Out of the Car
Miranda Winters – The Futuristic District
Exam Season – Strawberry Milk
Saccharine – Pumpkin Guts
Tuvaband – Wolfpack
Devon Welsh – Dreams Have Pushed You Around
Mending – Alan after the Fire
Reddening West – Even If
Valley Maker – Light on the Ground
The Washboard Abs – Return to You
Manatree – Brushfire
Miserable Chillers – Horse Opera
Saint Charles – She Don’t Wanna Know
new casino – going for a walk*
Frankie Valet – Why Blue
Goodbye Max – Old Photos
Adeline Hotel – Habits
Joe Kaplow – I Said I Was Going and I Went
Pecas – Tuesdays
Sun Kin – Neglect
Baby Cages – flowers
Crooked Spine – Skinned Knees
Lauren O’Connell – Out of Focus
Mount Goldie – Summer
Harvey Trisdale – Baby
american poetry club – the sum of your parts
Babehoven – Out of the Country
Adam Arcuragi – Low Parade Rain
Jason Bemis Lawrence – Southern Midwest
Campdogzz – Sorceress
Barfoot – A Thin Place Between Worlds

* not on Playmoss

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

Next months sees the release of the band’s first full-length album, Deltas. The first taste of the record came through the lead single, ‘Even If’, which premiered over at Dimestore Saints last month. The track is a “sonic embodiment of the wide-open vistas the mind’s eye occupies in a contemplative state such as this,” Sam Clark wrote, “a powerful rumination on complacency and vigilance indicative of Reddening West’s slow-burn approach to songwriting.” The description gets close to the heart of Reddening West’s sound—their ability to evoke both landscapes and emotions, opening up spaces of great beauty and meaning while simultaneously closing the gap between artist and listener to allow an intimate communication.

There’s a similarly patient and considered approach in the crafting of the album as a whole, the various elements meandering their own paths and coalescing into a natural rhythm. As such, the instrumentation has an organic spirit, as though not so much written as teased from the Texan land, Reddening West a conduit channeling some ancient cadence, giving it shape and weight.

Though that is not to speak of Matt Evans’ lyrical writing, the human voice nestled with this atmosphere. The marrying of these two forces conjures another sense of pattern and flow, individual experience as part of a wider historical ecology, timeless troubles and emotions that shaped the past and rule the present, and promise to repeat into the future as long as there are people upon the earth to fulfill them.

Today we’re delighted to be able to share a second single, ‘Marjorie’, a song inspired by a tragic event linked closely to Evans’ family history. In 1950, a Douglas C-54D aircraft was travelling from Alaska to Yukon when radio signal was lost and the plane disappeared. Among the 44 military personal on board was Evans’ grandfather, who left behind his wife Marjorie, who at the time was pregnant with Evan’s mother. No trace of the aircraft or its crew was ever found, and ‘Marjorie’ picks up from the grandmother’s point of view.

As such, the track represents something of a call, a late night prayer or shout where a woman speaks to her husband, finding some sense of hope or comfort from talking into the dark. In this way, the song speaks of grief and mourning, and our desire to anchor those lost within our minds, granting them being once more, if only through their continued ability to shape and influence our own experience of the world, no matter how unseen their hand might be.

Album art by Clarke Curtis, photography by Nicola Gell

The post Song Premiere: Reddening West – Marjorie appeared first on Various Small Flames.