With the album now out via Strolling Bones Records, we’ve now got the full picture of just how stylistically and tonally diverse a collection of songs it is. “I was playing a lot of chess when I wrote this album, so I started to think about these songs as if they were all different pieces on the board representing varying aspects of my songwriting, personality and experience,” Reynolds explains:

Each piece has its own specific purpose and its own strength to utilize, but you can’t play the game with only your queen or your knights, or whatever. That became such a comforting idea and ethos to operate within – not just accepting variety but finding its inherent value. I went into the studio without any fear of being all over the board. I wanted to be limitless in letting my influences shine through the music in different ways. The throughline of Rose Hotel is my lyricism and my voice, but musically, I wanted to stretch out.”

The chess metaphor comes to the fore on ‘A King and a Pawn’, a country-inflected indie rocker that paints a picture of a relationship at an impasse. It explores the temptation to linger in a situation that has reached its end, the frustration of being caught static in a difficult situation, and the risk of making the next decisive move for fear of being checkmated further down the line. “Cornering each other, avoiding every move,” Reynolds sings, “refusing to surrender, even when it’s the best we could do.” But despite the overall sense of deadlock, the song itself is energizing. Propelled by percussion towards a cathartic chorus.

All we got left
is a king and a pawn
we’re caught in a stalemate, baby
and that’s just what’s wrong

Other tracks on the record explore similarly difficult circumstances. ‘Not Like That’ “explores the dissolution of a friendship in a way which attempts to make personal opinions clear while acknowledging the other person’s feelings too,” as we put it in a preview, while ‘Drown‘ delved into ideas of intergenerational trauma and mental illness in an attempt to reclaim a sense of agency by relinquishing those familial relationships that might never be smoothed over. “[‘Drown’ is] about realizing that the only way to break the cycle is to address it head on and choose to heal instead of continuing the patterns of violence and abuse,” Reynolds explains. “It’s my attempt at claiming power and ownership over my own life by releasing familial relationships that may never heal.”

And that proves to be the take-away sentiment of A Pawn Surrender. It takes the myriad of messy relationships and emotions and attempts to view them not as unbearable burdens but as something that can be figured out and overcome. It preaches the virtues vital to any good chess player—patience, strategy, self-reliance—and applies them to life in general. It’s a reminder to rely on your strengths, to accept and work on your weaknesses and ultimately approach things in a slower, more considered manner.

A Pawn Surrender is out on the  7th June via Strolling Bones Records and you can pre-order it now from the Rose Hotel Bandcamp page.

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Such nuance is a signature of A Pawn Surrender, brought to life by an equally fluid and inventive sound. Indie rock, psych and folk influences are all clearly apparent, Reynolds drawing from each to better capture the gamut of emotions she details. “It’s caused me a lot of anxiety in the past,” she explains. “Even in the studio when we were mixing the new album, Drew [Vandenberg] and I had a conversation about how this is a bit of a gamble, making a record that’s not easily identifiable as one thing, because some people might not know what to do with it.” But with her distinctive vocals as the anchoring thread, the result feels less like a jumble of genres as an artist selecting specific tools for each occasion. Each style can do something others cannot, and Rose Hotel does not want to cut itself off from such possibilities.

Latest single ‘Drown’ pulls some slacker sensibilities into the mix to explore ideas of blissful ignorance. Or as one line puts it: “I won’t drown if I don’t look down.” “Drown is about facing the reality of intergenerational trauma and mental illness,” Reynolds explains. “It’s about realizing that the only way to break the cycle is to address it head on and choose to heal instead of continuing the patterns of violence and abuse. It’s my attempt at claiming power and ownership over my own life by releasing familial relationships that may never heal. The slacker-rock energy feels like my inner rebellious and sardonic teenager finally getting to tell ‘em how I really feel.”

The track also comes with a video directed and edited by Reynolds herself with cinematography and color by Pedro Rocha. Watch it below:

A Pawn Surrender is out on the  7th June via Strolling Bones Records and you can pre-order it now from the Rose Hotel Bandcamp page.

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Perhaps best known as a founding member of legendary left-field hip hop act Anti-Pop Consortium, Beans has been making abstract and poetic rap music since the mid nineties. His latest release is ZWAARD comes out next month, a collaboration with Finnish producer Sasu Ripatti (aka Vladislav Delay and Luomo) that sees a fusion of the pair’s singular and uncompromising styles. Latest single ‘ZWAARD 2’ is a great introduction, Beans hitting his formidable flow over Ripatti’s plinky and ramshackle backdrop which has all the homebrew complexity of a Rube Goldberg machine.

ZWAARD will be released on 13th March and is available to order via the Beans Bandcamp page.

Casters – Lines In The Sand

We last wrote about Casters back in 2023, describing how single ‘Memory’ saw Andrew Strader and a rotating cast of musicians create “a dreamy drift that marbles fondness and regret into sound so rich you could suspend yourself within it.” Latest single ‘Lines in the Sand’, again released via  Like You Mean It Records, sees Casters invoke a trip from Santa Fe to Great Sand Dunes National Park to weave another rich soundscape, this time coupled with a sweeping wistfulness fit for the vast environment in which the first seeds of the track took hold.

‘Lines In The Sand’ is out now via Like You Mean It Records.

 Dinah – Winter Black Lake (Stripped)

Released at the end of last week, Dinah! is the almost self-titled sixth album from Toronto‘s Dinah (FKA Dinah Thorpe). It’s comprised of 17 short sharp jabs of raw emotion, possessing a tactility that you can almost feel sock you around the head. This is thanks in no small part to Dinah’s distinctive voice, full of smoky feeling and tender physicality. Much of the album is made up of restrained electronic pop songs, but my favourite is ‘Winter Black Lake (Stripped)’, a reworking of an early track that comes towards the end. Here, the staccato, mechanical rhythms of the original give way to clear air, allowing the vulnerable side of Dinah’s music to flow in and fill the space.

Dinah! is out now and available from the Dinah Bandcamp page.

Kaycie Satterfield – Jetsam

Following debut EP Sweet Tooth and last year’s single ‘Dog Year’, LA-based songwriter Kaycie Satterfield is back with a new single, ‘Jetsam’. Released via Earth Libraries, the song is at once dreamy and punchy, shifting from bendy elastic guitar and peppy percussion to a soaring, shimmering chorus. Satterfield says it’s a track “for the girls. Specifically, the girls who always stay a little messy, who could never quite get their hair to fall neat.” A duality which shows up in the very sound itself as it shifts from attitude to sweetness and back again, refusing to settle into any tidy box.

I hope somebody on this airplane’s talking to God because
I lost touch, it would be impolite
to show up asking favors after all this time

Minor Moon – Under Beyond

“Well they found us / We were fresh off the bridge / With strange new lives / Oh! and in strangers tongues / They sang a new sound into our minds.” So sings Sam Cantor of Minor Moon on ‘Under Beyond’, the latest single from upcoming album The Light Up Waltz on Ruination Record Co. The title refers to a fictional band who tour the bleak landscape at the end of the world, and the song paints the act in a mythic light as a wider comment on the strange magic of being on tour. “Most of the time, for me at least, traveling around playing music tends to be comically unglamorous and humbling,” Cantor explains, “but within that experience there can be a feeling of intense, private freedom, like you’ve tapped into some collective secret that allows you to transcend the mundane. There’s something endlessly romantic about all of that to me, even if it’s kind of untethered to reality.”

Rose Brokenshire – Habit To Help

Canadian songwriter Rose Brokenshire makes warm and gentle music that is suffused with kindness and patience. Drawing on folk and dream pop, her songs convey powerful messages of healing and self-belief in a whisper rather than a shout. Latest single ‘Habit To Help’ is no different. “This song is about learning to be there for yourself in difficult times,” Brokenshire describes, “the way it is easy to be there for your friends.” The track unfurls with a hushed intimacy, though beneath the hazy croon lies something firmer and fierce. As though under the surface sits an unyielding conviction in the value of empathy, even if we sometimes need to run our hands over it in order to remind ourselves of its presence.

Could you tell me again
what you felt when I said
it would get easier
I know I said it myself
It’s just a habit to help
a friend feel better

Rose Hotel – Not Like That

A Pawn Surrender, the forthcoming album by Rose Hotel (Atlanta songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Jordan Reynolds) on Strolling Bones Records, is an album concerned with relationships in all of their guises. Across the ten tracks which combine folk and indie rock with psych sensibilities, Reynolds considers romantic, platonic and even environmental relations, not to mention the relationship one holds with their own internal self. Single ‘Not Like That’ explores the dissolution of a friendship in a way which attempts to make personal opinions clear while acknowledging the other person’s feelings too. “I’m calling them on their bullshit, but also trying to have empathy for how hard it is for them to see it themselves,” Reynolds explains. “Wishing they could be honest with themselves and the people who love them about who they really are, but knowing that they don’t have the capacity to do so.”

 Scott Lippitt X Josaleigh Pollett – Is This a Good Time?

Across a series of albums and EPs, Salt Lake City‘s Scott Lippitt has made a name with a bittersweet brand indie pop, combining bright sincerity with pensive reflection to produce songs which possess tangible feeling. Upcoming album Me, You, and the Avenues sees Lippitt evolve this style with the help of a whole host of other musicians, with each of the twelve songs a collaboration with a Utah-based artist. The likes of Rachael Jenkins, Yuccas and Maren Gayle are involved, but single ‘Is This a Good Time?’ is the turn of Josaleigh Pollett, whose stellar album In the Garden, By The Weeds won our attention last year with what we described as “an excavation of the present which inevitably tends pastward, tracing a presiding cynicism back to its roots in search of a cause.” The combination is a strong one, with Pollett’s talent for nuanced emotion the perfect foil for Lippitt’s own heartfelt style.

Shaina Hayes – Kindergarten Heart

Following advance singles ‘New Favorite’ and ‘Sun and Time’, which we said “combine whimsy and serious emotion,”  Montreal songwriter Shaina Hayes has released her second album, Kindergarten Heart via Bonsound. As its title suggests, the record explores life’s ups and downs with childlike wonder, its fresh and vibrant sound a reminder that one need not grow cynical and world-weary with age. This message is delivered most directly on the title track, a song of soft piano and bubbling acoustic guitar which captures childhood’s fizzy sense of curiosity and excitement. Its message is clear, these feelings and ways of approaching the world can and should be preserved into adulthood, and in fact are one of the few true paths to meaning and joy.

Sparkle. Sunny days. I get older
In every way that won’t matter
Kindergarten heart in me
Magic. Green and blue. I am wilder
In every way that I choose

Kindergarten Heart is out now via Bonsound. Get it from the Shaina Hayes Bandcamp page.

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Building on the success of the record, Rose Hotel is back with a brand new double single with Cold Lunch Recordings. Along with Tim Gratz (guitar, backing vocals), Vinny Restivo and Adam Weisberg (rhythm section), Reynolds weaves a sound that refuses to settle in any one place. There’s a nocturnal slink to the songs, a kind of foreboding simmer behind the country-inflected rock style, but there’s a paradoxical warmth too—something accentuated as both tracks were captured in analog and mastered to tape.

This duality extends to the themes, both singles caught between a desire for independence and an ever-lurking loneliness. Moving with a melancholic motion, ‘Drive Alone’ floats by like a night time drive, a previous relationship left in some other town, long having fallen out of the rearview mirror. “The interstate is empty, Highway 24,” goes the opening verse. “From Bowling Green to Atlanta looking to find more / of that freedom I’ve been searching for.” As more lines pass beneath the car’s wheels, and the space opens up between the past and the future, a newfound perspective emerges, leaving Reynolds to write some of her most searing lines yet.

And now I’m left to wonder, was it all for show
Did you really love me or did you just wanna know
How it felt to be inside a woman’s body and a woman’s mind?

I just wanna drive alone tonight

‘The Constant’ is altogether more sinister, a tense and twitchy take on the perpetual flow of information, and the loneliness it reinforces. Just like the phenomenon it explores, the track flickers with volatility, threatening to rise to some final crescendo that never arrives. The result is constantly on edge, neither willing or able to look away.

Don’t try to fight it
It’s so inviting
The Constant

Drive Alone / Constant is out now via Cold Lunch Recordings and you can get it from the Rose Hotel Bandcamp page.

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Real Life Buildings – Racing the Sun
Nice Apple – Are You Still There?
V.V. Lightbody – Babe, Honestly
Nico Hedley – Late Bloomer
Gracie Gray – Morphine
Spencer Radcliffe & Everyone Else – Bloodletting
Pleasure Systems – Heirloom
Ana Roxanne – Slowness
Kin Hana – Fog
Rainwater – Pink Flowers
Christelle Bofale – U Ouchea
Prudence – Smile & Nod
Operators – Faithless
Belaver – Driver
Mr Husband – Friends
Rose Hotel – Running Behind
Jeremy Squires – Somersault
Bad Books – Lake House
Yammerer – Poisonous Reptilian Colleague’s & Co
Britt – Trial Period
Wild Yawp – Femme Girl
Forest Management – Blue Leaves
Robert Stillman – Ritual
Everyone is Dirty – Hit-Girl
Merin – Coral Island
Lavender Bones – Over Again
Luke De-Sciscio – R.O.B.Y.N.
Anna Wiebe – Fortune
Young Elk – Gossip Magazines
Emma Frank – I Thought
Eamon McGrath – GUTS
Jacob Faurholt – The Dark Isn’t Right

Like what you hear? Catch up with the rest of our Monthly Mixes.

The post May 2019 Roundup Mix appeared first on Various Small Flames.

Spencer Radcliffe & Everyone Else – Hot Spring

Joined by Ben Austin (cello), Grant Engstrom (lead guitar), Pat Lyons (pedal steel),
Tina Scarpello (vocals) and Jack Schemenauer (percussion)—AKA Everyone Else—Spencer Radcliffe has made a new record to be released this month on Run For Cover Records. Adopting something of a country vibe, the release of Hot Spring is timed perfectly, the record concerned with transitions and seasonal change. The title track finds snow once more, winter clinging on or returning unannounced, while second single ‘Bloodletting’ finds something of a reprieve. “Spring is done, the battle’s been won,” Radcliffe sings. “Everyone survived the unloading of guns.” The order of the tracks is flipped on the album itself, lending a new weight to a line in the former: ” You know it’s best not to believe in everything you’re told.”

Christelle Bofale – U Ouchea

Based in Austin, Texas, Christelle Bofale combines soul, dream pop and jazz to form a distinctive sound, drawing upon her Congolese roots to further add to the personal nature of her music. Thematically, the record is one of conflict, from the juxtaposition of gentleness and ferocity in the sound to the lyrical explorations of bravery, honesty and doubt—coalescing into an evocative meditation on the contemporary black experience. Single ‘U Ouchea’ is a worthy introduction, its cyclical nature unfurling slowly across the seven-minute run time, yet underpinned by an oblique tension, some inner force running against the ethereal style.

Emma Frank – I Thought

There’s no one genre tag that will adequately describe the music of Emma Frank. With the pursuit of a number of styles, often within the same song, the New York artist has created a uniquely shifting sound that is never satisfied with remaining in any one place. Be it folk, pop, jazz or R&B, Frank dips into any number of stylistic influences, though the sound is tied together by the honeyed warmth of her vocals.

Having signed with Justin Time Records/Nettwerk, Frank has recently released a brand new single, ‘I Thought.’ The track confronts the impulsive and drastic, the people who change their lives on the whim of tenuous crushes, burning bridges with all that came before in the blinkered blur of the moment. Frank considers herself a member of this group, but the track is a reminder of the value of a slower kind of living—the meaning of things cultivated over time, weathering fleeting fancies to achieve a more substantial weight.

Don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater
Don’t burn the bridge that you’re walking over
But I lay the first brick down in the wall between us
I kept the first secret
I kept the first secret

There’s never a limit to how much we change
And I thought we’d finished
I thought I was to blame

Check out a video from the visual artist Ayo Tsalithaba below:

Keep an eye on the Emma Frank website for news of more releases.

Operators – Faithless

Montreal-based project Operators sees Dan Boeckner (Wolf Parade, Handsome Furs), Devojka and Sam Brown (Divine Fits, New Bomb Turks) combine their talents to form an urgently electronic sound. The project feels like the sonic progression of Handsome Furs, synths and beats weaving a pressing sound somewhere between Cold War and sci-fi, Boeckner’s familiar vocal style only adding to the insistent motion.

Ahead of new record Radiant Dawn, Operators have released the single ‘Faithless’. With its rigid beat and cold synths, the song opens as a kind of brutalist pop song, though eventually takes on a variety of other elements so as to form an almost transcendental crescendo.

Radiant Dawn is out on the 17th May via Last Gang Records.

Bad Books – Lake House

Bad Books is a collaborative project between Kevin Devine and Andy Hull and Robert McDowell of Manchester Orchestra. Their first album in seven years, III will be released this summer on Loma Vista Records, and sees Devine and Hull alternate writing duties. The first single, ‘Lake House’ is Hull’s creation, leaning closer to his Right Away, Great Captain! sound than Manchester Orchestra, his distinctive brand of morose hope feeling as striking as ever. “‘Lake House’ is quite a personal song to me, Hull explains. “We tried to place it in a sonic environment that felt three dimensional. Instead of just hearing the song left and right, we wanted to have the sounds feel forward, backwards, above and below.”

III will be released digitally on the 14th June, and physically on the 21st June via Loma Vista Recordings.

Robert Stillman – Reality

Hailing from the northeast United States but now based in the UK, Robert Stillman composes experimental music that incorporates features of classical, jazz, minimalism, electronic and folk, pairing the futuristic digital sounds with a more traditional American style. His latest record, Reality, intends to, as Stillman puts it, “draw attention to, and unconditionally praise, the directly experienced world,” something achieved through an intense attention to detail that conjures a sense of intricacy and wonder. With an intuitive, spontaneous style, the album possess an organic, living spirit, each track its own ecosystem within which the various elements interact and converse.

Rose Hotel – Running Behind

Marking a change from the lo-fi intimacy of debut EP, Always A Good Reason, the forthcoming Rose Hotel (AKA Jordan Reynolds) album embraces a full-band sound. But the record promises to retain the earnest tone that made the debut so special. As such, while I Will Only Come When It’s A Yes displays a variety of influences, from shoegaze to retro girl group, Reynold’s burning spirit acts as the through line. ‘Running Behind’ attests, the track’s upbeat country rock distorted in a kind of Neutral Milk Hotel manner, Reynold’s vocals soaring and swooping within the clamour.

Check out the video directed by Reynolds and filmed/edited by Casey Doran:

I Will Only Come When It’s A Yes is out on the 31st May and you can pre-order it now.

Yammerer – Poisonous Reptilian Colleague’s & Co

One of Liverpool’s best kept secrets, Yammerer eschew promotion and social media presence in favour of old fashioned hype, developing a psych-tinged brand of post-punk that’s only as odd as the world from which is emerged. Take new single ‘Poisonous Reptilian Colleague’s & Co’, which combines the dark prophecies of Nick Cave with The Fall’s caustic charm and creates a sonic beast of many heads—each snarling and sneering and prone to howls of execration.

‘Poisonous Reptilian Colleague’s & Co’ is out now via Restless Bear Records and you can grab/hear it from all of the usual places.

Anna Wiebe – Fortune

New Behaviour, the 2016 debut record of Guelph songwriter Anna Wiebe, might have utilised relatively simple folk arrangements, but rich harmonies and Wiebe’s offbeat style transformed them into nuanced and genre-challenging songs. Her follow-up record All I Do Is Move, said to be concerned with “cycles, and the mental growth and movement that comes with life’s lessons,” promises to see an embrace of more complex arrangements. Though it is Wiebe’s idiosyncratic eye that will again prove to be its biggest strength. Lead single ‘Fortune’ gives us a glimpse at the evolution, the creeping, snaking vibe grown vivid by a full band, Wiebe’s vocals combining with the instrumentation to form a near-hypnotic rhythm.

Merin – Coral Island

Describing themselves as a “melancholy power pop quartet,” Winnipeg-based band Merin combine the bummed-out vibes of slacker rock with a more hopeful spirit, leading to a sound that’s at once grounded and bright. The title track of their latest EP, Coral Island, is perhaps the perfect example. “As I get older and fatter,” sings lead Cole Neusteaeder in the opening line, “I try my best not to just get sadder,” imagining an escape to a tropical island as though warmer climes might stave off the concerns. Only this is the twenty-first century—the coral reefs are dying and the pacific islands are being reclaimed by the sea. At least at the end of the world, we no longer have to worry about growing old and fat.

Check out the literal garage rock video below:

Coral Island is out now and you can get it from the Merin Bandcamp page.

Wild Yawp – Femme Girl

New York’s Wild Yawp is perhaps best described by their own name—WILD (adj): uncontrolled or unrestrained, especially in pursuit of pleasure, YAWP (n): a raucous noise; a cry; a shout. With Emily Bielagus on vocals/guitar, reba hasko drumming and sid solomon providing bass/backup vocals, the band create a boisterous, in-your-face sound that is equal parts fun and aggressive. New single ‘Femme Girl’ being a case in point, taking on the arrogance of Straight White Males with all the energy of a runaway train—combining the caustic wit of The Coathangers with the breakneck snarl of Priests to transform an uncomfortable situation into an affirming one.

Eamon McGrath – GUTS

Eamon McGrath’s prolific career has encompassed a wide range of styles and genres, though his music has always been united by a heartfelt spirit and DIY attitude. Latest single ‘GUTS’ sees an introspective turn, tackling addiction and its accompanying emotions of guilt and sadness with an affirming openness and vulnerability. The tone therefore veers between self-deprecation and a strange kindness, working to acknowledge the frustration of dependence and the poison that brings, while trying to carve out an opening to relieve the pressure in order to start the slow healing process.

The song comes complete with a video by Sheila Roberts and Ryan Brough, with art and performance direction from Michael Bright. Check it out below:

‘GUTS’ is out now and you can get it from the Eamon McGrath Bandcamp page.

If you enjoyed Vol. 24 then be sure to check out all previous Bright Sparks lists, and head on over to our Reviews page for a more in-depth read.

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