“The good news is that this effect works two ways, and what acts as therapy for Won as a writer/musician has the same effect on us as the listener. It’s one of my favourite things about this kind of music, the way that an entirely personal and cathartic process is released into the big wide world to help others too”

If this sounds good to you then we have good news. Heeyoon Won has teamed up with the good folks as It Takes Time Records to put out a special edition of  on cassette, featuring the eight original EP tracks as well as seven so-far unreleased songs tacked on the end. The first single ‘Meditation’ was released a while back, the track seeing Won’s refrain “When will I see you again?” submerged beneath sparkling synths. The track gives the image of a distant lover missing her companion, staring at a sky full of shimmering stars and streaks and cosmic dust, impossibly the very same sky as the one above the person she is missing.

The second single, unveiled today, is ‘Stole Ur Bike’, a short song clocking in at just over one and a half minutes. While the track consists of little more than a couple of verses about taking someone’s bike (or dreaming of it), it manages to exist as a larger entity, a sincere love story unfolding between the lines, one which has a long beginning and most likely a longer end, somewhere off in the distant future.

“I had a dream I stole your bike,
I had a dream you took it for a ride.
It was new, it was blue,
it was tall, as tall as you.

I had a dream I stole your bike
I had a dream you took it for a ride
I took it when you weren’t looking
You were looking at the train tracks

I had a dream I stole your bike
I had a dream I took it for a ride”

You can pre-order the new edition of now from It Takes Time Records, including on “crazy awesome tape… with crazy awesome thank you note”, which sounds crazy awesome to us.

–

The post New music from Boosegumps: ‘Stole Ur Bike’ appeared first on Various Small Flames.

Won is certainly not afraid to share her feelings with the listener, and I get the sense that that’s kind of the point, that writing songs about the things that get you down can sometimes pick you back up again, or at least give you a sense of perspective and shows how things are not as bad as they seem. The good news is that this effect works two ways, and what acts as therapy for Won as a writer/musician has the same effect on us as the listener. It’s one of my favourite things about this kind of music, the way that an entirely personal and cathartic process is released into the big wide world to help others too.  Some sad music can be dispiriting, sucking the hope from your brain via the auditory canal, but stuff like this has the opposite effect, neatly sidestepping melodrama in favour of unflinching sincerity.

The sound of the album is in that bedroom pop vein (e.g. Kissing Fractures, Alanna McArdle, Free Cake For Every Creature et al.).  ‘Best Friends’ uses a drum machine and twinkling guitar to support Won’s questions of, “Where did all your best friends go?”, while ‘Fade Away’ sounds like jangle pop slowed to half pace. ‘Awake’ is largely instrumental with a slow build and some breathy background aahs and ‘March Sadness’ is all echoey lo-fi with added xylophone.

The songs also contain some really nice writing, such as on the anxiety-ridden, ‘I Feel So Small’, in which Won sings, “Hid in the floorboards til you came home, I feel so small without you” (which brought to mind this image). But it’s a line on the deceptively hopeful-sounding ‘Forever’ which steals the show, and sums up the entire album rather neatly:

“I don’t feel too alive today
this strange feeling won’t go away
I think it is here to stay
forever”

You can download on a name-your-price basis at the Boosegumps Bandcamp page. I’d recommend you get right to it.

P.S. Did you see Boosegumps on our Favourite Free Music of 2014 List?

The post Boosegumps – :) appeared first on Various Small Flames.