However, as always, we want to point out that ‘free’ does not have to mean pay nothing in this context. Indeed, the title of the post says ‘free’ music because it’s snappier than ‘name your price’ music, but really that’s a convenient/attention-grabbing misnomer. Last year we spoke about how paying artists makes for the best soil in which to sow creative seeds, and things are no different now. Indeed, with the dawn of Spotify and the all-powerful algorithms, it is more important than ever to support independent artists and labels, and in reality there are already enough free ways to consume music that we don’t need to encourage another.

So please delve into the below list, curated entirely by humans, and spend whatever is left of your Christmas money when you stumble across something you like. We can vouch for the quality of everything here, so don’t be afraid to judge a record by its cover to begin with.

Here’s a handy mix featuring one song from each of the free / ‘name your price’ albums featured:

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

“The work that Casa Ruby is doing for their community is both inspiring and needed. We’re very appreciative of what the work of Ruby Jade Corado and her organization has done for countless LGBTQ+ youth and adults and hope that this compilation is representative of that appreciation from not just us but the community at large from all across world, and hope that, in some way, it will serve as a reminder that, no matter what, no matter who you are, you are not alone, you have an entire community of people behind you, supporting you, every step of the way.”

The compilation features 24 songs from an array of artists, including some we have written about (Adult Mom, Ricky Eat Acid, Unraveler etc.) and some we will probably be writing about in the future. Discovering new music while supporting a very worthy cause sounds like a win-win all round in our book.

You can buy the compilation now on a pay-what-you-can basis via Bandcamp.

P.S. There has a bit of controversy surrounding the inclusion of certain artists, and Garza has addressed this in a statement now available on Funeral Sounds. She also welcomes people to email her should they wish to discuss the issue.

The post Funeral Sounds Presents: a Compilation for Casa Ruby appeared first on Various Small Flames.

Young Jesus

“I think you can confront darkness with sincerity and that the best stuff acknowledges the light that is in the dark and vice versa” – an interview with Young Jesus, chatting about concept albums, life-changing novels & the balance between darkness and light.

Sharon Van Etten

“Heartfelt, brave and benevolent, not exactly an answer but a reassuring hand to hold while you’re working on the question” – You should be excited about the new EP from Sharon Van Etten.

Elvis Depressedly

“Elvis Depressedly will not mend broken bones or cast out demons or have you walking across hot coals. Instead they… offer an achievable version of optimism, one which does not require manic enthusiasm or God-like goodwill but instead a pinch of determination and a firm belief in love” – we get to grips with the new Elvis Depressedly record New Alhambra.

Bells Atlas

“Blending the visceral emotions of R&B and soul with an off-the-wall, avant-garde vibe akin to Dirty Projectors and tUnE-yArDs” – ‘Bling’ welcomes you to the eclectic world of Bells Atlas.

Gay Angel

“The sound of one creative mind expressing itself in the most maximalist way imaginable” – The second floret of Gay Angel’s 100-song bonquet is .

Zee Town and the Dog Boys

“Think Beach House in their sad teenage bedroom years” – the self-titled album from Zee Town and the Dog Boys combines shoegazy fuzz with intimate bedroom pop.

Aisha Badru

“The confessional, angry-but-still-in-love style of all the best break-up songs” – an introduction to the organic folk of Aisha Badru.

Noah Gundersen

“A rousing, textured love song that would be a radio hit in any just world” – we get the first taste of the new Noah Gundersen album with ‘Slow Dancer’.

Ruth & Trudy

“An unorthodox brand of lo-fi pop that blends a laidback hipness with heartfelt naivete” – Still Pond Songs, an album from Ruth & Trudy, out on Slovakian label Z Tapes.

Alynda Segarra

“Blues women foreshadowed a movement of feminists of color that is vibrantly alive today… leaving behind the embarrassing and soul crushing caricatures of women of color that I was fed my whole life” – Hurray for Riff Raff leading lady Alynda Segarra (who we have had the pleasure of talking to) has written a great piece on the feminist legacy blues women for American Songwriter.

The Weather Station

“Country songs are always about driving, journeys, and these sorts of things. I found that these songs were about journeys but not” – Exclaim talk to Tamara Lindeman about Loyalty, the excellent new album from The Weather Station.

Bedroom Pop

“The qualities they share are somewhat intangible, more emotional than sonic, and can be more easily felt than described” – Jacob W. Moore wrote a primer on bedroom pop for the uninitiated, citing bands such as R.L. Kelly, Ricky Eat Acid, Alex G and Foxes in Fiction, as well as the overwhelming influence of the folks at Orchid Tapes. Head to Flavorwire to check it out and then browse our ‘bedroom pop’ tag as further reading.

Sufjan Stevens

“The striking sense of solemnity hangs like a noose around its neck, rugged and impossible to ignore, from the first moment to the last” – A little late to this one, but GoldFlakePaint’s review of Sufjan’s new album is really lovely (and mentions Cormac McCarthy, which is never a bad thing).

King of Cats

DIY Magazine are streaming the new King of Cats album, which will be released on Art Reeks, a joint label that combined Art is Hard and Reeks of Effort…

Barna Howard

…and you can stream the new Barna Howard album at Line of Best Fit.

Bellows

Bellows did a Tiny Desk Concert at NPR!

And Finally… the 8tracks Playlist of the Week

The inaugural winner of this coveted accolade is Ratfriend, with this round-up of the best music so far in 2015:

Be sure to follow us on Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr and 8tracks to keep up to date with the best new music.

The post Week in Review: #1 (11-15th May 2015) appeared first on Various Small Flames.

NAH – WOE

(RIYL: hip hop, noise, Death Grips)

Naked Days – Chai Knees

(RIYL: indie pop, lo-fi, Neutral Milk Hotel, Clap Your Hands Say Yeah)

Names – Billow Green

(RIYL: experimental, folk, Akron/Family)

Nana Grizol – Night Lights I-III & Tacoma Centre 1600(free d/l but donations go to charity!)

(RIYL: indie rock, punk pop)

Nathaniel – Fellatio

(RIYL: hip hop, soul, steamy jams)

Nature Walker – Clairvoyance

(RIYL: experimental, ambient, psych, lo-fi)

NEO – Snufkin Left, Never to Return

(RIYL: Strange things, Final Fantasy soundtracks, Moominwave)

Nice Legs – Lullaby Land

(RIYL: dream pop, lo-fi, Twin Sister. Song: Two)

Noah Young – Colorado

(RIYL: folk, singer-songwriter, Blind Pilot, Bright Eyes)

Nouns – Still

(RIYL: indie rock, punk, heavy emotion)

Of Us Giants – Nova Scotia

(RIYL: Punk, Hardcore, Manchester Orchestra)

Oh, Rose – 1919

(RIYL: indie rock, Angel Olsen, Mitski)

Old Amica – Fabula

(RIYL: ambient, experimental, electronic folk)

Orchid Tapes – Boring Ecstasy: The Bedroom Pop of Orchid Tapes (Compilation)

(RIYL: bedroom pop, ambient, dream pop, Orchid Tapes)

Orlok – Linear Story of a Relationship

(RIYL: electronic, ambient, dream pop)

Oquoa – S/T

(RIYL: folk, Americana, Great American Desert)

Painted Zeroes – S V A L B A R D

(RIYL: indie rock, “dream punk”, The Pixies)

The Past – AIRLESS

(RIYL: pop, experimental, Fang Island)

Petrichoral – S/T EP

(RIYL: surf rock, summer jams, The Beach Boys)

Pill Friends – Fade Into Nothing

(RIYL: indie rock, punk, lo-fi)

Piqua – Finds God

(RIYL: lo fi, punk folk, Defiance, Ohio)

QUARTERBACKS – Quarterboy

(RIYL: indie rock, lo-fi, Radiator Hospital, Julia Brown)

Radiator Hospital – Torch Song

(RIYL: power pop, bedroom rock, Born Ruffians)

Real Life Buildings – It Snowed

(RIYL: indie rock, lo-fi, bedroom pop)

Real Swell – Dull Dreams

(RIYL: bedroom pop, lo-fi, Happy Trendy)

Remambran – Drawing Out Cassette

(RIYL: indie rock, lo-fi, Krill)

Rick Ross – Bright Moon Cottage

(RIYL: experimental, electronic, samples)

Ricky Eat Acid – Three Love Songs (D/L here)

(RIYL: ambient, electronic bedroom pop, film scores)

rituals. – Ceramic Spaces

(RIYL: ambient, experimental, new age)

Run The Jewels – Run The Jewels 2

(RIYL: hip hop, rap, Killer Mike, Danny Brown)

Favourite Free Music of 2014 (N-R) from Wake The Deaf on 8tracks Radio.

The post Favourite Free Music of 2014 (N-R) appeared first on Various Small Flames.

Keep In Touch is a year long subscription series that re-imagines the bygone era of pen pals. Each month you’ll receive a 7” x 7” postcard with a record pressed directly into a full color image curated by that month’s artist.

Just to clarify- the postcard can be played on your turntable! If you’re as impressed with that as I am then you’ll be rushing off to sign up right now. There is already an impressive list of confirmed contributors – including:

The So So Glos
Sadie Dupuis of Speedy Ortiz
Ava Luna
Cloud Nothings
Ricky Eat Acid
Mutual Benefit
Big Ups
Into It. Over It.
TOPS
Girlpool

…and lots of more!

So if you know someone who likes really cool music, and you think that someone would like to receive said really cool music in the post every month (on a musical postcard!), then why not sign them up to Keep In Touch? They’ll have that Christmas-morning feeling once a month for a whole year!

Subscribe now on the KIT website. Do it before the 21st December to be in with the chance of winning a second subscription (you can keep TWO friends happy!)

The post Keep in Touch Vinyl Series appeared first on Various Small Flames.

As with the majority of Orchid Tapes releases, expect lots of pitch-perfect lo-fi pop, undercut with a decidedly gloomy, lonely atmosphere. As with Coma Cinema before him, Alex G has a downbeat feel with an almost monotone delivery that kind of embodies the detachment of many young people today. Some tracks do buck this trend slightly, while keeping with the general distaste of arriving into adulthood at present. For example ‘Harvey’ has a Why? vibe, with lyrics and vocals that possess that heart-on-your-sleeve sincerity with a slightly weird/self-deprecating underbelly that is so familiar to Yoni Wolf’s writing.

I don’t want this to descend into a typical blogger over-analysis – where something that is good/true because it is simple/real is intellectualised to become less simple/real, and therefore less good/true – but I do feel this whole idea is an important one. It is the success in capturing this detachment in music that makes Alex G (and other acts in this crowd, Ricky Eat Acid, Matt Cothran’s Coma Cinema/Elvis Depressedly, etc.) such important songwriters. They are amongst the few people who are tackling the current feeling of young people (or Millenials, but that seems to be a frowned-upon buzz word used by authors of think pieces).

The bottom line is that most music (and indeed art) ditches any attempt at tackling this in favour of some form of escapism (be it nostalgia, melodrama, adrenaline, etc.). Those that do try usually use irony to ridicule the situation – the Youtube ‘star’ Sam Hyde and his MillionDollarExtreme videos are a good current example, and there have been many books that aim for the same thing (Bright Lights, Big City by Jay McInerney etc. etc.). The problem with mocking vapidity is that after a while it becomes just as shallow and empty as problem in the first place.

Alex G and his colleagues seem to be doing a bit more. There seems to be an element of positivity, even if that positivity is nothing more than a connection, an appreciation that we are not alone. Even bringing up the emptiness faced by young people risks appearing naive or falling victim to the everything-is-lame ironists (I can imagine this post being made fun of as I’m writing it), so laying things out in a way that is open and halfway-constructive is as admirable as it is important. It’s sort of like saying that yes, sometimes thing are shit, and no, we don’t have any real answers and no one would listen if we did, but we are here feeling the exact same thing as you and that has got to count for something, right?

So, umm… this wasn’t really much of a review, but DSU is a special album and you should buy it. Maybe I’ve got the wrong end of the stick, but if the album speaks to you as strongly as it does to me then it has done it’s job, and the rest is a matter of interpretation.

You can get it on vinyl from Orchid Tapes (currently on its third pressing, after proving hugely popular via pre-order. I can attest that the folks at Orchid Tapes are really nice and throw in goodies like stickers and sweets and teabags), and on a pay-what-you-can basis from Bandcamp. and be sure to check out Alex G’s back catalogue on his Bandcamp page.

The post Alex G – DSU appeared first on Various Small Flames.

The album opens with the brief ‘A Fog’ in which Lacey declares, “Your hearts a strong thing / That you’ve learned nothing about”. This line proves an early taste of the lyrical nature of the album, which comes across as Lacey’s latenight thoughts, vague questions and accusations, pleas and promises and confessions.

‘Home’ opens with a music-box melody and blossoms into a beautiful slice of dream pop. The beat picks up and adds an urgency to the chorus line of, “They see their father’s eyes / When the sun comes up he promises that they’ll be alright”. As I said last time, the horns during the finale seem to herald bigger things, a jump in scope and ambition, the product of an extremely talented musician hitting his stride. This is also apparent in the instrumentation elsewhere on the album, for example, the instrumental ‘Heart//What if This Were It?’ sounds cinematic, like the soundtrack to a tragic finale of a movie.

‘Stranger’ opens with these lonely, floating atmospherics before the onset of a really nice guitar melody. Yes it’s a sad song, but it’s not a typical syrupy dirge, it has a groove, the sort of hip swaying melancholy of later Bon Iver releases. Again the lyrics offer fragments of isolation and self-doubt.

Another of my favourites is ‘Time’ which opens with a simple mournful piano which repeats and repeats, becoming almost hypnotic by the time it fades out at the end. Lacey delivers the vocals.

It sounds like r&b minus the swagger, the masculine posturing. It’s more concerned with existential angst than beautiful girls and trite professions of love. But that’s not to say that Their Bodies in a Fog is simply cynical and pessimistic navel gazing. Lacey certainly wears his heart on his sleeve, this is one of the most earnest albums I’ve heard for a long time. But it never becomes too much, presumably because, as the listener, we feel that he’s telling the truth. The angst on show is real and sincere, and I think we can all relate to that.

You can get Their Bodies in a Fog as a pay-what-you-like digital download via Bandcamp, or on limited run cassette tape via Orchid Tapes.

The post arrange – Their Bodies in a Fog appeared first on Various Small Flames.

Miss last month’s edition? Listen to our January round-up.

February Mix from Wake The Deaf on 8tracks Radio.

The post February 2014 Roundup – A Mixtape appeared first on Various Small Flames.

So… what was the epiphanic moment? I reached the opinion that my inability to nail down exactly what is good about the album is a sign of what makes it special. And when I say ‘what is good’ I don’t mean I had to look for something obviously good in the craft or the writing, we all know that Sam Ray is excellent, but rather what I was feeling that made it such a compelling listen.

Three Love Songs is the kind of record that demands your attention, expecting a little bit of effort or perseverance before the payoff. The first section is foggy and indistinct and you feel as if you are experiencing it through some sort of filter, like those dreams where your vision in impaired it some strange way. Around halfway through things come into focus as bit more, and the picture becomes clearer. Yet you are still left with a nagging sense that something weird is going on, that you aren’t quite able to experience it in its purest form. The sensation drives you back to the beginning to look for clues, probing every second of each track for the missing piece of the puzzle. Most albums would be happy to have the listener sit back, content, with their thoughts wandering. Ray has reached the level where he wants more.

Aside from all this overwrought description, and ignoring the possible injustice of pigeon-holing something so amorphous into a genre, Three Loves Songs is a great example of ambient/experimental music. The fact that Ray manages to cram so much food for thought in what are essentially twelve tracks of weird dance music is an achievement worthy of high praise.

I hope that explanation is halfway coherent. The task of writing this has been akin to describing a smell or flavour without referencing the direct source – a head full of thoughts is useless without the right words to set them on a page.

You’d be best off just buying the album right now and listening to it for yourself. Get it on beautiful transparent or baby pink vinyl via Orchid Tapes, or as a name-your-price download via the Ricky Eat Acid Bandcamp page.

The post Ricky Eat Acid – Three Love Songs appeared first on Various Small Flames.

It’s an introspective ambient track built on a single loop that shifts and shimmers behind some really nice piano. I can’t wait for the album.

We featured another track from the album back in the very first edition of our Head In The Clouds series. Check it out here.

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