Ahead of a West Coast tour with STRFKR, Ruth Radelet has now returned with ‘Shoot Me Down’, a brand new single that further develops these ideas. Building from an brightly insistent opening, the track offers a rich and airy sound which belies the difficult experiences from which it was conjured. “Although this song is very personal to me, I think it tells a story that many people can relate to,” Radelet explains. “It started out as a sad girl piano ballad, written after a particularly bad night, and in the end became one of the most fun tracks I have ever worked on. I believe that creating music is a way to transmute pain, and making this song was healing in that sense. I feel joy when I listen to it now, whereas when I wrote it I could only feel the hurt.” What results is a kind of alchemic process. Pain and suffering not only overcome by music, but transformed into a curative substance which leads towards future empowerment.

The post Ruth Radelet – Shoot Me Down appeared first on Various Small Flames.

Described as a song “about having the capacity to love different people (friends, partners, etc) in different ways, using a lot of silly car and public transit metaphors along the way,” ‘Something Like a Honda Odyssey’ is the latest single from Cambridge, Massachusetts artist Banti Gheneti, AKA Banti Buli. The track emerges with all the heart and playfulness this description suggests, with a languid rhythm ticking over below Gheneti’s verbose vocal style, refusing to commit fully to irony or sincerity, instead hovering in the ambiguous middle ground. As though a song about relationships couldn’t really function without equal doses of heartfelt emotion and tongue-in-cheek humour.

My love is no tesla model e
It’s something like a honda odyssey
Don’t worry though, it’ll play nice with a model e
If that’s how you want things to be
So let me know what you think
Any takers out there?

Gorgeous – Raindrop

Gorgeous are a “frenetic yet friendly” noise pop duo from New York, comprising of Dana Lipperman (guitar and vocals) and Judd Anderman (drums). Next month they will release their sophomore album, Sapsucker, via Sad Cactus Records, which promises to develop the band’s dynamic signature blend of fractured rhythms, cynical lyricism and sweet and sour melodies. The record features songs about everything from “technological dread,” to “literal and figurative monsters, liars, dreamers, and true believers,” and lead single ‘Raindrop’ drops us in the deep end. “Our bones are made of cosmic dust,” Lipperman sings over jerky clockwork percussion before the track slams into life, “exploded stars, we’ve come apart.” Strange, unpredictable and gloriously noisy. What’s not to love?

Graves – Little Dumb Dogs

California-based Greg Olin has been releasing music under the Graves alias for almost two decades. On his next release, Gary Owens: I Have Some Thoughts, which comes out late June via Perpetual Doom and Curly Cassettes, he adopts a new name as a kind of Country music alter-ego. The album’s sixteen songs are a throwback to Nashville’s golden age, loaded with a sense of bittersweet nostalgia and a wry humour that brings new vigour to a timeless style. As Perpetual Doom put it, “[they] sway with the moonstruck sweetness of classic country, blending the sounds of golden age AM radio with a laidback West Count vibe.” Lead single ‘Little Dumb Dogs’ is a good introduction, its laidback atmosphere and gently cutting lyrics (“If little dumb dogs and the finest of drugs don’t kill you / and a smile from a child and walking down the aisle don’t thrill you”) capturing the album’s essence in less than two minutes.

Gary Owens: I Have Some Thoughts will be released on 30th June. Pre-order it rom the Perpetual Doom Bandcamp page.

The High Water Marks – American Candy

Led by Hilarie Sidney, founding member of the revered Elephant Six Recording Company and flagship band The Apples In Stereo, The High Water Marks are making their third ‘comeback’ this summer, with album Your Next Wolf coming very Minty Fresh. Based between Lexington, Kentucky and Grøa, Norway, the outfit had never played in the same room before opening for Pavement in Oslo is 2022, and the new record is their first recorded together and in-person. If latest single ‘American Candy’ is anything to go by, the set-up was conducive to the band’s creative energies, kicking along with an infectious momentum, capturing all the addictive sweet and sour overtones of its namesake and drenched in fuzz for good measure.

Lauren O’Connell – Joangeline

‘Joangeline’, the latest single from LA-based multi-instrumentalist and songwriter Lauren O’Connell, is a song of strength and vulnerability. “I saw me there in the half light / As shapeless there as the dawn,” they sing near the beginning of, a tenderness juxtaposed by tangible weight of the the drums. “And every promise it brings / Dying to feel even half right.” What quickly becomes apparent is that the source of the fragility is not any sense of uncertainty or hesitation, rather the inherent sensitivity of exposing core truths. Shedding outer armour as an act of defiance, deciding to be open no matter how much pain this might invite.

And all I wanted to know
All I wanted to know
Who would want me
The way I want you

Drag me out, baby
Drag me out, baby I’m in it now

Leeann Skoda – Little Star

With EP Living Room Sessions out later this month, Leeann Skoda has unveiled the slow-burning ‘Little Star’ by way of introduction. Emerging from the “familial Americana scene” of LA’s The Grand Ole Echo, and recorded with on one afternoon in the living room of Malachi DeLorenzo (Langhorne Slim, Izaak Opatz), the release is one built around an authentic folk spirit, and the single embraces the style with its lush, intimate warmth. A track stripped of all excesses, standing instead on its own simplicity, like some lullaby which has been crafted through years of repetition into a perfect state of function.

Living Room Sessions will be released on 26th May and is available via the Leeann Skoda Bandcamp page.

Paper Lady – Starcross

Back in January we introduced Paper Lady, an “immortal crone” brought to life by Allston’s Alli Raina and company in a kind of musical ritual. Previous single ‘Five of Swords‘ saw the project push their spiritualism out into noisier, shoegaze territory, and new single ‘Starcross’ continues the path with gauzy textures and a pummelling momentum. Described as “a scathing account of an almost-romance with a farmer gone awry,” the song burns with what could be spurned fury or frustrated embarrassment, building nonetheless into with unerring intensity of an ancient curse.

You feel it
Logic overrun
Conceal it
What else is there to be done

‘Starcross’ is out now and available via streaming services.

Ruth Radelet – Leaving the Table

Though best known as the front of synth pop stars Chromatics, Ruth Radelet has recently turned toward solo music as a means of exploring dimensions perhaps neglected in her work thus far. The Other Side EP confronted classic themes of love, loss and renewal after a traumatic period, with songs like ‘Crimes’ retaining the vivid Chromatics sound while those such as ‘Strangers’ allowed Radelet to break new ground with its almost orchestral pop tones. Ruth Radelet’s latest single, a take on Leonard Cohen’s ‘Leaving the Table’, straddles the fence between pop and folk, with the timeless vocals and echoing melancholy adding a dash of Julee Cruise to Cohen’s classic.

‘Leaving the Table’ is out now and available from the Ruth Radelet Bandcamp page.

Symbol Soup – Airglow

Writing of previous single ‘Overdressed‘, we described Symbol Soup (AKA London‘s Michael Rea) as a combination of “classic British folk charm with something rather more American, including faint notes of country and a couple of spoonfuls of Alex G-style lo-fi indie rock.” Latest track ‘Airglow’, again on Sad Club Records, continues the arrangement, the intimate sensibilities of bedroom pop polished with a golden psych-folk sheen, resulting in a sound able to evoke the slow hours of a summer afternoon without sanding down the snags and edges beneath the surface. The sound plays into the themes too, with Rea offering a take on the information overload of the internet age, though subverting its usual framing to instead present it on more grounded terms. So there’s no dystopian chill here, just a willingness to float above the sea of data and embrace peaceful ignorance instead.

‘Airglow’ is out now via Sad Club Records and available via the Symbol Soup Bandcamp.

The post Weekly Listening: May 2023 #1 appeared first on Various Small Flames.

ash tuesday is the bedroom pop project of Georgia-based Ashlynn Kilcrease, who has fostered a steady following over the last few years sharing her music on TikTok. Her latest single, ‘No Blood, No Needles, Nothing’ released last week and is the perfect introduction to her emotive songwriting. Whereas previous tracks have been built on electric guitar and percussion, ‘No Blood, No Needles, Nothing’ is stripped back to the bare bones, just acoustic guitar and Kilcrease’s vocals. The raw production values add to the turbulent atmosphere, as the lyrics paint images of broken glass, insecurities and a sense of latent violence. “Thinking you never were really safe,” Kilcrease repeats in the finale, her voice swirled with others that seemingly come from nowhere, like anxious thoughts rising to the surface.

Blue Yonder – Wise Blood

Retreating to an isolated cabin in the wilderness might be a tried and tested way to record a new album, but while the likes of Justin Vernon found romance in the solitude, Blue Yonder had a different experience. While in the woods of upstate New York, they were forced to contend with a variety of trials and hazards, from a potentially haunted tape machine and bad mushroom trips to the escape of their house cat (named, fittingly, Bigfoot). But these experience only furthered the emotional immediacy of singer and guitarist Karalena Fjortoft’s songwriting. The resulting record Wise Blood, out next February via Earth Libraries, is therefore charged with an energy difficult to replicate, the title track hinting at the intimate yet often cinematic style. Check out the Jodorowsky-inspired video below:

Wise Blood is out via Earth Libraries on the 24th February.

Corntuth – F-001

Described as a post-apocalyptic concept record, the forthcoming album Letters To My Robot Son by Brooklyn-based ambient musician Corntuth promises to be a lesson in world building. “Like the analog synthesizers of the mid-80s,” they explain, “robot children are programmed via sequenced sound on magnetic cassette tapes. These tapes, supposedly, can teach a machine to feel.” Lead single ‘F-001’ gives some indication of how such a detailed story can be brought to life in instrumental ambient songs. With slow washes supporting playful details, the track achieves both bright curiosity and meditative grace, with an underlying melancholy too.

Daisy the Great – Time Machine

Fronted by  Kelley Nicole Dugan and Mina Walker, Brooklyn pop ensemble Daisy the Great combine the sincerity of Bridgers/Dacus indie rock lineage with lush folk harmonies, and a sprinkling of bedroom pop vulnerability thrown in for good measure, though latest single ‘Time Machine’ shows off another dimension to their new album, All You Need Is Time. It’s the frantic and cutting tone which marks the Anthropocene, where the sense of impending doom is matched only by a desire to go back to better times, though one complicated by the nagging doubt we’d do things exactly the same over again, no matter how costly. Check out the video directed by Scott Felix below.

The sea is crying
The moon is sighing
It’s terrifying
It’s terrifying

It’s all around us
The end has crowned us
The star has found us

All You Need Is Time is out now and available from the usual places.

Dan Croll – How Close We Came

Following on from the success of LP Grand Plan and EP On Top in recent years, Dan Croll has returned with brand new single, ‘How Close We Came’. A stripped back and compassionate song about the immediate aftermath of a long-term relationship, Croll’s packing his belongings into boxes, kissing the cat goodbye. But far from the traditional picture of regret and longing, the song captures the break-up from an angle seldom offered. One of bright fondness, an appreciation any of it happened at all. “After the initial heartbreak, it was something I felt quite proud of,” Croll explains. “We’d been through so much together and really grew into much better people, and [the song] was about that period of looking back with pride on such a profound experience.”

‘How Close We Came’ is out now Communion Records.

Doom Flower – Telehealth

After the release of the self-titled album late in 2021, Doom Flower are set to open 2023 with a brand new record, Limestone Ritual. Again released via ‘record label’, the album sees Jess Price (Campdogzz), Bobby Burg (Joan of Arc, Make Believe, Love of Everything) and Matt Lemke (Wedding Dress) combine their sizeable experience into something new not out of necessity but the simple pleasure of creating. Latest single ‘Telehealth’ gives a view into the spirit of the record. A hazy, laid back shuffle which simmers beneath Price’s vocals, the words emerging with an almost disinterested gloom, though within the murmured rhythm stirs something hypnotic.

Ian Davies – Stubborn

Back in 2021 we wrote about The King of Bedroom Country by Ian Davies, an album which offered a sound “at once laid back and fatalistic”, capturing something of the classic country spirit in a more contemporary setting to convey how “no matter how painful or dispiriting, there’s some connection to be found within melancholy.” With new releases on the horizon, Davies has returned with a single ‘Stubborn’. It’s a track which delves into the overthinking mind and the illusions it is capable of conjuring, the easygoing seventies style juxtaposed against the torment of the narrator’s position, where various compulsions have obscured the truth of loss.

Kraków Loves Adana – When The Storm Comes (ft. Ruth Radelet & Adam Miller)

We’ve covered the work of Deniz Çiçek’s Kraków Loves Adana several times in the past, each time struck by their ability to weave atmospheric dream pop soundscapes at once human and digital. “A space,” as we described in a review of 2021’s Follow the Voice, “in which the boundaries between physical reality, virtual reality and dreams began to merge and blur.” Ahead of new record Oceanflower out early next year, Kraków Loves Adana has teamed up with Ruth Radelet and Adam Miller of dream pop icons The Chromatics for new single, ‘When the Storm Comes’. A song about finding some strange beauty in present turmoil while also looking forward to some better future. Check out Wesley Doloris’s video below.

Wake me up
When the storm comes
I wanna be impressed
At least for a second or two
Before everything ends

Oceanflower is out on the14th February and you can pre-order it now from the Kraków Loves Adana Bandcamp page.

Steven van Betten – I Didn’t Mean To Do That

Los Angeles-based Steven van Betten is gearing up to release his first solo record Friends and Family sometime in 2023 via Future Gods, and new single ‘I didn’t Mean To Do That’ serves as an introduction as to what to expect. It’s a gentle, warm song which explores mistakes in all of their guises. “Some mistakes (though painful at the time) can age quite well,” van Betten explains. “They become funny, entertaining, and even cherished memories; parables of personal growth shared openly with friends around the dinner table.” But of course there’s kind of mistake too. “The kind that hurt those we love most—can haunt us.” ‘I Didn’t Mean To Do That’ takes stock of both, recognising mistakes as a fundamentally human experience, and using this fact as a path toward forgiveness and compassion.

The post Weekly Listening: November 2022 #1 appeared first on Various Small Flames.