Various Swell Sounds is a new collaborative playlist series from Shana Hartzel of Swell Tone, Jon Chin of Cereal and Sounds, and myself. Instead of constantly exchanging tracks amongst each other, we have decided to work together to bring them to more ears. Every month, we will match a selection of our old and brand new favourites to a specific theme, as decided on a revolving basis month by month.

After the brutal summer, the leaves are finally turning, which can only mean one thing. Yep, it’s the time of year to slip on pavements, make tired jokes about pumpkin spice coffee and hide behind closed curtains to ignore the calls for candy from ghouling children. We’ve made a playlist of songs to see you through the cool and crispy season.

There’s a Playmoss and Spotify version below, so choose what suits you best, though due to incomplete catalogues the are slight discrepancies between the two.

Check out our other Various Swell Sounds entries here and here, and head over to Swell Tone and Cereal + Sounds for the edition over there.

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Vio/Miré are a band from Providence, Rhode Island, led by Brendan Glasson. Their fourth album, You Will be Spending Time Outdoors, in the Mountains, Near Water, came out last September. Their music is a mixture of folk and ambience, with reed organ, cello, chorals and synths used to create lush soundscapes upon which Glasson’s poetic vocals float. Think Sea Wolf mixed with an orchestral Sufjan Stevens, folk songs written over the top of cinematic compositions.

The album is one of contradictions, somehow sounding intimate and expansive, gentle and harsh, poetically abstract and beautifully simple. In this way it manages to mirror nature in all of its guises – spellbindingly beautiful and callous and cruel and innocent in a way humans are no longer able. For example on ‘Dogs 1′:

dogs are barking in an alley way
they’re fighting over bones
I love the moment till I curse the day
breaking bottles over stones
and I have seen the grass’s easy sway
under spruces overgrown
and I have known the near to move away
how the wind was overblown

As with anything related to the natural world, mortality and death is a major theme. Much of the beauty and sorrow on the record can be traced to the transient nature of life, something that manages to be bleak and comforting and harrowing and joyous all at once. Much of this is barely explainable, much better felt through the music than explained by words, but it is something similar to the curious mixture of wonder, satisfaction and melancholy felt when looking at a range of mountains or rugged coastline. ‘Snakes’ closes with a contemplation of life:

sent to hell to stir and swelter,
I returned and sought my love

but if the way were many days,

if present passed as present does,

how would you ask someone how his journey was?

You would be forgiven for thinking this all sounds a bit New Age-y but it is anything but. You Will be Spending Time Outdoors, in the Mountains, Near Water feels less like a 45-minute album than a landscape, a world which existed long before the album was recorded. Vio/Miré offer a way into this place, and you would be a fool not to take their hand and experience it for yourself.

You can buy the album from the Vio/Miré Bandcamp page.

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Sarah Winchester – Northeast Kingdom

(RIYL: folk, sad, A Weather, J. Tillman)

Sea Wolf – Song Spells, No. 1: Cedarsmoke

(RIYL: folk, indie rock, Leaves in the River)

Shipwrecks – Unknown Demos

(RIYL: folk, bedroom pop, sad)

Sledding With Tigers – A Necessary Bummer

(RIYL: folk punk, ramshackle fun, Andrew Jackson Jihad, Paul Baribeau)

Slow Violence – New Teen Angst Pt. 2

(RIYL: ambient, dream pop, super slo-mo R&B)

Splendidid – Finx

(RIYL: dream pop, surfing, summer)

The spookfish – Living Room

(RIYL: experimental, surreal synth pop, age-old folk music)

The Sweater I Gave You – Three / Four

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

Swim Lessons – Winged and Wounded

(RIYL: indie pop, lo-fi, You Won’t)

Thad Kopec – Noble Neighbour

(RIYL: folk, americana, Blind Pilot, Bowerbirds)

Thorsten Nesch – Spilling the Beans

(RIYL: folk, lo-fi, acoustic)

Trashlord – One

(RIYL: punk, fuzzy indie rock, LVL Up)

TV Girl – French Exit

(RIYL: indie pop, hip hop, spoken word samples)

Two White Cranes – Twowhitecranes

(RIYL: folk, singer-songwriter, Emmy the Great)

Un Blonde – Habit Anything

(RIYL: lo-fi, experimental, art pop)

Unknown Tone Records – Unknown Tone Vol. III (Compilation)

(RIYL: ambient, experimental, field recordings)

Unradiant – S/T

(RIYL: ambient, downtempo, electronica)

Violeta Päivänkakkara – Kipinä​.​jp

(RIYL: electronic, folk, chill)

VVhile – More

(RIYL: lo-fi, noise, pop punk)

WALBERT MK – THE ‘WALBERT MK’ TAPE 2K14

(RIYL: pop, electronic, indie)

Walter Mitty and his Makeshift Orchestra – Well Soon

(RIYL: indie pop, acoustic, kazoos)

Water Music – Wolves

(RIYL: folk, indie rock Sparklehorse)

Wet Wood – s/t

(RIYL: experimental, psychedelic, krautrock)

Whatever, Dad – 100% Take Home! Grade Pending

(RIYL: bedroom pop, folk, lo-fi)

Wood Spider – Decadence

(RIYL: folk, punk, gypsy, Defiance Ohio)

The Yellow Dress – Faint Music // Ordinary Light

(RIYL: folk, indie pop, The Mountain Goats, The Magnetic Fields)

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

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The Meanest Creature Ever Known is Matthew Healy and Oliver Roditi from Edinburgh, and they have just put out their first album, You, Having Fun. Apparently the album is about “being alive and a bit sad.” As you might expect from that description, You, Having Fun is folky slowcore release that brings to mind quite a range of influences, from Phosphorescent to talons’

The album is available on a pay-what-you-can basis over at bandcamp.

Kississippi – I Can Feel You in My Hair Still

Kississippi is a sad girl from Phildelphia. She writes songs that are not mere catchy ditties, but instead full blown poetry. Stuff like this:

“You were swallowing god damning dogmas 
rough palmistry your hands could not align 
unsexed you borrowed callow spit, not lost 
no, looking for a space, just not mine 

redolent with skin of unknown 
unwary hands, nomadic ghost 
levied words from my spiteful throat 
understanding where my thoughts go 
you’d build a boat out of my bones.”

You can buy her album on Bandcamp for whatever you can afford.

James Junius – I’ll Hide Myself/Sleepers

Salt Lake City’s James Junius combines folk, ambient and jazz music to make atmospheric tracks “in an attempt to portray the world as he sees and the people he has met in various late night conversations out under the ferments.” Further details on Junius are few and far between, but you can download both tracks via Bandcamp.

Thad Kopec – Noble Neighbor

I stumbled across Thad Kopec’s cover of ‘Fake Empire’ a few days ago (and included it on our latest mix), and as luck would have it, he has a new(ish) album out right now. If folk music (with a touch of ambient music thrown in) complete with Biblical lyrics is your thing, Thad Kopec is probably your thing too. You can buy the album from Bandcamp, or grab it for whatever donation you can muster via Noisetrade.

Sea Wolf – Song Spell, No. 1: Cedarsmoke

The first release from Sea Wolf frontman Alex Brown Church’s Song Spell series, Cedarsmoke is a welcome reminder of how good Sea Wolf are. My listening relationship with the band is eerily similar to that of Jeremy over at HI54LOFI, and I am very much enjoying catching up with what I have been missing. There will be more Song Spell releases in between the ‘proper’ studio albums, so keep your eyes peeled and ears open for what Sea Wolf have to offer. Don’t make the same mistake we did.

Miss America By Wheary – All is Not Lost

Miss America by Wheary have been whetting our appetite over the past few weeks with singles from the EP All in Not Lost. Well you can stop dribbling and chow down on the full release. They make a brand of Americana that brings to minds acts like Jason Isbell and Water Liars, with an added experimental/ambient lilt which gives the whole thing a nice cinematic feel.

You can grab this one from Bandcamp too.

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