Here is a list of songs from 2020 that we liked but didn’t get around to writing about.

If you find something you like, follow the link in the embed to support the artists and labels on Bandcamp. And of course, there is a whole year’s worth of pieces on releases we did manage to write about, so have an explore through our reviews, previews and interviews from 2020.

The post Music We Missed in 2020 appeared first on Various Small Flames.

Stella Donnelly – Boys Will Be Boys

After the success of debut EP Thrush Metal, Australian songwriter Stella Donnelly is preparing to release her debut full-length album, Beware of the Dog, this spring on Secretly Canadian. The record looks set to continue the defiant tone that made her previous release so striking, confronting personal and social issues by looking them right in the eye, and refusing to move until they flinch.

That this is achieved through delicate folk rock is a testament to Donnelly’s writing abilities, and single ‘Boys Will Be Boys’ is a case in point. The track laps in gentle rhythm no matter how dark and violent the lyrics, Donnelly’s tone somewhere between earnest, wistful and searingly sardonic. A nightmare in lullaby clothing, that just so happens to be waking reality.

Go Fever – Olivia

The recording project of Australia born, Texas-based songwriter Acey Monaro, Go Fever look to explore themes such as love, sex, outsiderness and mental health through a feminist lens, using a New Wave-inflected indie rock as the vehicle. Following up 2017’s self-titled album, Go Fever are back this winter with a brand new EP, Daydream Hawker, and single ‘Olivia’ gives a hint as to what we should expect from the album.

Part dreamy, part surfy, and with more than a hint of 70s sensibility, the track is a vivid take on a friendship turned sour. “You don’t have to pretend anymore,” Monaro sings, hinting at the anger stitched into the warm textures of the song. “I’m tired of the sight of you.” Understandably, the song is far from a happy one, though the buoyant sound of the instrumentation lifts the tone from self-pity into grim celebration.

Nigel Wright – Overcast

Raised in Georgia but now working out of Bandon, Oregon, Nigel Wright is a songwriter, composer, artist and former carpenter’s assistant who put out his first record in 2010. After the experience of a European tour, Wright worked on his second album in 2014, and has since been storing up his songs for a new full-length, Kyht, that will see the light of day at the end of February.

‘Overcast’ serves as a strong introduction to the record, the instrumentation imbued with a sense of lightness and motion, Wright’s distinctive vocals like weather-worn rocks within the flow. Thematically, the track is clearly that of an artist, the push and pull of obsession and obscurity, where a keen vision burns brightly, but always just out of frame. Wright’s role it seems, is to get as close to that clarity as possible, and hope that it brings focus for others too.

“You said so long to my meaning
back to as you were
no it aint your assignment to measure your worth
you just gotta do the work”

Priests – The Seduction of Kansas

When Washington D.C.’s Priests put out Nothing Feels Natural back in 2017, the band cemented their position as one of the most interesting bands around, their fierce, freewheeling sound pitched somewhere between furious and funny. The band are back with a brand new record, The Seduction of Kansas, and the title track suggests a slightly different direction for Priests, swapping out the raw punk sound in favour of sinuous art rock. Still, the writing and delivery is as cutting and arresting as ever, the band taking on ideas of national identity and Americanness with acerbic wryness, referencing everything from the Koch Brothers to Castle Pizza.

The track comes complete with a video by singer Katie Alice Greer, and the film belongs to the valuable bracket of music videos that actually seem to add to the meaning and impact of the song. Check it out below:

The Seduction of Kansas will be released on the 5th April via Sister Polygon Records and you can pre-order it from the Priests Bandcamp page.

Polyan – Dan Song

Polyan are a psych-folk band for the post 9/11 age, their old timey twang having one foot in dusty campfire tunes and another in the twenty-first century. ‘Dan Song’ shows this off, the hypnotic flow of the instrumentation and the lazy slur of the vocals lendimg a dangerous, temperamental dimension, threatening to spill over into something altogether more unhinged. Eventually, the song follows through on this dark promise, the vocals rising into a deafening screech that blows through the mics and stings your soul.

Sir Babygirl – Flirting With Her

Sir Babygirl was born when new Hampshire’s Kelsie Hogue had an Ebeneezer Scrooge-style experience, the ghosts of pop past and present (the holy trinity of Britney Spears, Christina Aguilera, Whitney Houston) visiting her in a dream and convincing her that there is no higher form of art or self-expression. The epiphany saw ambitions in Chiacago’s DIY and comedy scenes dropped, Hogue now devoted to creating a pop persona worthy of her heroes.

Taken from debut album Crush On Me, single ‘Flirting With Her’ provides a tour through the gaudy pop world that has been crafted in response, the flashy plastic decorations and glitterball diva energy making what the press release calls “unabashedly bubblegum, unashamedly queer pop for a future free of genre boundary and the gender binary.”

Mesa Luna – Dispel

The recording project of Vancouver multi-instrumentalist Justice McLellan, Mesa Luna melds dream pop and shoegaze to form shimmering soundscapes, the rich textures tied together by resolute rhythms that pull you through the spacey haze. Taken from the debut Mesa Luna album that’s due out early this spring, ‘Dispel’ shows off McLellan’s balance between energy and space, where the fuzzy tones are guided by a lucid conviction, leading to a sound translucent yet crystalline.

Body Meat – Nairobi Flex

Philadelphia’s Body Meat is primarily a duo of Chris Taylor and Matthew Anderegg (of Mothers and Infinity Dance Complex). They create contemporary pop/R&B that’s made weird by skewed time signatures and superimposed polyrhythms. There newest song, ‘Nairobi Flex’, is a great example. At once jittery and smooth, the song combines collaged staccato samples and smooth pop vibes, creating something that’s as infectious as it is adventurous.

The song comes complete with a video by Daniel Patrick Brennan, which you can check out below:

Head to the Body Meat Bandcamp page for previous releases.

yot club – jaded

Not much information exists about yot club, the recording project of someone named Ryan that pitches a glimmering blend of dream pop and chillwave. This month saw the release of aquarium, the debut yot club release, a deliciously lo-fi synth pop album that combines sadness and bounce to create its infectious sounds. Bringing to mind the likes of Pizzagirl, lead single ‘jaded’ puts bummed out disaffection next to tropical pop, like watching a day end from the bottom of a chlorinated pool.

Lala Lala & Why? – Siren 042

Yoni Wolf and Lillie West of Chicago’s Lala Lala have known each other since the “golden, olden days when Lillie used to sneak backstage at Why? shows,” and have now come together to make a collaborative single. ‘Siren 042’ sees West take the lead, infusing the track with a sense of melancholic self-confrontation, while Wolf and some beautifully dreamy guitar brighten the palette. The accompanying video, directed by Scott Fredette, sees the pair running through a variety of landscapes, constant backward glances suggesting they’re desperate to flee rather than get somewhere new.

“and i’m sorry i was evil
i don’t do that anymore
i just copy other people
try to forget what was before”

Imp of Perverse – Tripping Thru a Hallway On Fire

In addition to drumming for Austin band Sherry, and his membership of now-defunct favourites π and The Halfways, Sean Lochridge also records solo as Imp of Perverse, where he gets to show off his skills as a multi-instrumentalist. As the title might suggest, new album Imp In Reverse collects four of Lochridge’s previous releases and presents them in reverse chronological order, creating what the label describes as “one gigantic, shifting, psychedelic auditory flashback totaling in 22 songs and nearly an hour and a half in runtime.”

Such a project might sound impenetrable, so why not cut your teeth on opening (and potentially most accessible) track ‘Tripping Thru a Hallway On Fire’? In opposition to the titular immediacy, the song is a detached dream-float prone to eddies and swirls in its tempo. For their part, Lochridge’s vocals remain even and barely audible. It’s is something of a trap door through which you fall into the truly weird recesses of the album, though it is certainly worth trusting Imp of Perverse to be as delightfully odd as possible.

Swim Camp – Circle K

Swim Camp is the bedroom pop project of Philadelphia’s Tom Morris. His latest single ‘Circle K’ is a soft and mumbled song that combines the intimacy of a home-recording with a touch of lush studio production. Guitar sits at the forefront, slowly unfurling as percussion ambles along in the background, creating something akin to slo-mo indie rock. Morris’s vocals only adds to the atmosphere, sounding weary and sober as he delivers minimal lines that nevertheless have distinct emotional resonance.

“to tell the truth
i forget what i want
so ill keep on asking
and praying to god”

Thelma – Take Me To Orlando

Natasha Jean Jacobs established herself as Thelma with a self-titled record back in 2017, exploring the pure/impure dichotomy with a tone at once delicate and caustic, proving a valuable meditation of self-worth. Much has transpired in the meantime, but this February sees Jacobs back with a brand new Thelma record, The Only Thing.

Lead single ‘Take Me To Orlando’ employs a similar ambiguity, drawing on the nirvana of simulacra that is Disney World to dig into ideas of performance, fantasy and longing. “I love how you play with illusion,” she sings to someone/thing she’d decided to call Orlando, “cause you know how badly we need them / to live our silly lives.” Check out the video directed by Stephanie Gould below:

The Only Thing is out on the 22nd February and you can pre-order it now.

German Error Message – Murmuring

We’ve covered German Error Message numerous times in the past, from the beautiful album Haunts and a spilt with Lung Cycles to standalone single ‘2017‘, the latter of which we describes as “quietly devastating […] late-night solitude made strange by stark, staccato forces emerging from the sky or within the skull.”

The good news is that German Error message is putting out a brand new record, Mend, in 2019, and we’ve been given ‘Murmuring’ to set the scene. As ever, the song is one of great atmosphere and feeling—joy and dread creeping side by side, twin forces of transcendence that promise to lift us from the contemporary loneliness.

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The statement is disjointed and muddled, and indeed Gwin himself, sitting next to Close, appears confused and uncertain as his words are read out. He interjects with clarifications that clear nothing up, and, reading over Close’s shoulder, occasionally tells the host to leave sections out. Gwin seems less like the author of the treatise than its messenger, certain of its importance but powerless to alter or interpret it. All in all, he seems just as bewildered by his story as the rest of us—a man alienated not only by the real world, but by his own fictions too.

This sense of estrangement could be said to mark The Horizon Just Laughed, the latest album from Damien Jurado. While the true ideas and narratives are difficult to untangle, the record is united by a pervasive, consistent uncertainty, the various protagonists (or various versions of the same protagonist) disoriented and disaffected by the world around them. Fittingly, Gwin himself makes an appearance, the track ‘Percy Faith’ dedicated to his Watchman inspired convictions and bringing to life the desperate unease that marked his actions.

Alice in disguises
Bill Close taken hostage
“Dear Loretta, these are my demands”
I’ll be selling Arizona to the next potential buyer
Who comes in from the north in search of sand

Mr. Allan Sherman, I am writing from the future
Where the people never look you in the eye
And there is no need to talk, and the
Sidewalks they walk for you
I know everything and yet no one at all

To position Jurado as an analogue of Gwin might seem to insult his artistic genius, but there is something in his methods that makes the comparison valid. Speaking with Thomas Britt for Popmatters, he expanded upon his strange songwriting philosophy. “By the time I did Visions,” Jurado said, speaking of the third and final album of his Maraqopa trilogy, “I was honestly open to there being a fourth or a fifth or a six or seventh [entry in the Maraqopa series]. I was open to it because at that point I realized that it’s not really me that decides. It’s the song that appears, you know?”

Just like Gwin, Jurado seems just as confused and delighted by what he has written as the rest of us, his role not that of a songwriter but a conduit that can transport songs from whatever dimension they occupy prior to being written. The idea might explain how he went from the devastating, narrative-driven folk of his early career to the experimental dream-psych of the Maraqopa trilogy, and then straddling both on The Horizon Just Laughed—the first step in a natural amalgamation of the two styles.

The album opens with ‘Allocate’, a smooth shuffle that continues the Maroqopa aesthetic, though the snaking confidence of the instrumentation belies the fundamental disquiet of the lyrics. If Maraqopa was born of a dream, the protagonist a dream Jurado or prophetic Jurado or Jurado from a past life, then The Horizon Just Laughed is an attempt to square these possibilities in the real world. Only, this is a real world that has been shaped by the fictional, the dream life informing the real, passing on its DNA to successors as sure as any corporeal ancestor. Is the narrator of ‘Allocate’ Maraqopa’s Jurado pulled from a dream, or past life Jurado taking a different turn, ending up in some parallel dimension? And, if Jurado the artist is merely a conduit, are these alternate Jurado’s the truths or the distortions?

“I don’t know who I am,” he continued to Britt. “You know what I’m saying? I don’t know who I am, I guess is what I’m trying to tell you. I mean, my name? But I’m not my name.” The schizophrenic nature The Horizon Just Laughed attests to this, the easy Sunday morning rhythm of ‘Dear Thomas Wolfe’ all feels like a continuation of the Maraqopa lineage, as does the dreamy ‘Marvin Kaplan’ and strutting ‘Florence – Jean’, whereas ‘Over Rainbows and Rainier’ is return to the classic Jurado sound—slow and fingerpicked, his vocals both whispered and cavernous.

The aforementioned ‘Percy Faith’ is a hybrid, confident flow meeting insistent emotion, the desperate persistence that drives the verses born of mistrust. The paranoid tone is warranted, the song depicting a new world of constant news, a dog eat dog America of a billion separate callings—deals being shut and guns being shot, men convinced of their own importance, their own mission. On the other hand, the album’s centrepiece, ‘The Last Great Washington State,’ is a great, stirring thing, it’s patient yet consistent build circling around some central truth, honing closer and closer but never quite landing.

Never be sorry for the lack of response
Your hand on my arm before we were lost
The horizon just laughed to see us fall off
Your face in a jar I constantly dropped
You have him now but I’ll have you later
The phone is a gossip
The clock is a murderer
My time is her burden
Your voice is his slumber
How long have we been here?
I can’t quite remember my name

These two tracks, the standouts on a record of standouts, take divergent paths but tackle the same themes, showing that no matter how varied his approaches, Damien Jurado is concerned with a central question. “This kind of all goes back to the character, the protagonist in The Horizon Just Laughed,” Jurado told Popmatters. “He has the continuation of feeling that he doesn’t know his place. He is on a plane that doesn’t land. Or he does land, but every area that he’s landing in, he’s not familiar with the present time, but he is familiar, but he just doesn’t connect with it.”

Because, rather than obscuring the truth behind his identity, maybe this image is the closest thing to describing who or what Damien Jurado represents. While it might be tempting to view his songwriting career as a fruitless quest for his true identity, perhaps the complete opposite is true. His career is his identity, splinters of truth arriving through dreams or divined from another realm entirely, fractals that can be arranged into a whole that far surpasses the meaning of any one component. A manifesto of sorts, one full of prophecy and history, though rather than country-western stars of Gwin’s vision, the Ten Prophets of Damien Jurado are merely alternate versions of himself—past, present, future, dream—each record its own style or consciousness, born of him, yes, but equal to him too.

The Horizon Just Laughed is out now via Secretly Canadian and you can get it now via the Damien Jurado Bandcamp page.

P.S. If you’re unfamiliar with Damien Jurado, and want someplace to start, we made a list of a few of our favourite songs a few years back. Obviously it’s missing any of the newer stuff, but it’s a good introduction nonetheless.

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Goshen Electric Co. – The Gray Tower

We’re huge fans of Jason Molina here at VSF, so imagine our excitement when it was announced Strand of Oaks‘ Timothy Showalter was standing in for him for a special tour, as Magnolia Electric Co. (Mike Benner, Jason Evans Groth, Mikey Kapinus, Mark Rice, Peter Schreiner) welcome Showalter into their ranks to form Goshen Electric Co. In addition to a tour, the new outfit are releasing a single, and the first track is available to hear now, complete with a video from Colin Kerrigan and Rocco Avallone.

‘The Gray Tower’, which was first released as a single in 2002, is a perfect fit for Showalter’s delivery, capturing the atmosphere of the original where the foreboding and dread is matched only by the naked humanity beneath. “Jason’s lyrics were darkly heroic,” Showalter says. “Trying to fight against it. Just the word ‘try’—whenever he says ‘try,’ it’s just magic to me.”

The Gray Tower B/W Ring the Bell is to be released by Secretly Canadian on the 2nd November and you can pre-order it now.

Lea Thomas – Upstream

Lea Thomas is a songwriter, textile artist and “lifelong student of ecology” from Maui, Hawaii, and her music draws upon these features in its distinctive style. The opening song of new EP Part of This Place, single ‘Upstream’ is the perfect example—a track through which nature is interwoven, the patient and delicate sensibility hiding a sense of permanence and grace, the parts coalescing into a organic whole. Indeed, much of the album came to life during a stay in the Vermont wilderness, with Thomas embracing any imperfections within the recording as part of the naturalistic aesthetic the music exhibits.

“When I feel the soil breaking free
Sliding down the banks between the colors of spring
I feel the warmth of a woman pouring out of me”

Part Of This Place is out now via Spirit House Records and you can get it from Bandcamp.

Elly Swope – Idea

Having become a well-known face in the Portland music scene, playing with the likes of Kelli Schaefer, Roseblood, Genders, Sunbathe and Deathlist, this autumn sees Elly Swope’s first proper solo release. Despite playing much of the parts herself, Swope’s sound subverts all conceptions of what solo music can entail, possessing a rich texture and runaway energy that any full band would envy.

Lead single ‘Idea’ is a case in point, sparking into life with a momentum that lets up only to climb toward a bigger release, Swope’s self-assured vocals more than a match for the angular guitars and furious drums. Thematically, the track charts the deconstruction and subsequent reconstruction of identity that follows the end of a relationship. “This song is about the ways in which we dissociate after a breakup,” Swope explains, life separated into what is personal and what was shared, and what must now be let go.

It Feels the Same Everytime is out via Rue Defense on the 9th November. Per-order it now via Bandcamp.

Massage – Crying Out Loud

Massage is a new project from Alex Naidus, who you might know as a founding member of Pains of Being Pure At Heart. Taken from their debut album, Oh Boy, single ‘Crying Out Loud’ is a bittersweet song which delves into “the frustration of deeply caring about someone but not being able to spend time with them without something going wrong.” The sentiment is set against an upbeat tempo to produce a sunny kind of sadness, a wistful sense of loss that’s almost as affirming as it is painful.

The track comes complete with a video from director Thaddeus Ruzicka, and the film textures of the footage capturing the Massage aesthetic perfectly.

Oh Boy is out now via Tear Jerk Records and you can buy it from Bandcamp.

Belaver – Grave Robber

With new single ‘Grave Robber’, New York’s Belaver aims to give the listener a guided tour of “a world of exhumination,” a place of dark unease “where the past is a crypt of memories to rob and a skeleton yet to be discovered.” After time fronting doom-folk band listenlisten, such a style is fitting for B.E. Godfrey, his music exploring the dark and dingy corners of the human experience. Indeed, this latest single follows the killer-themed EP, Wild Desperation, which he put out in 2015.

Utilising a mix of acoustic guitar and synths to support Godfrey’s distinctive vocals, ‘Grave Robber’ feels like a cross between Mt. Eerie and Monarch Mtn—twilit and noir-ish, traipsing through ancient catacombs and holding a torch to whatever dusty relics are found.

You can find Belaver on Spotify and Soundcloud.

Spencer Segelov – Sacred Songs

Spencer Segelov is a musician and songwriter from Caerphilly in South Wales. Previously working under the moniker Spencer McGarry Season, Segelov has explored a diverse range of styles in his time, from rock and jazz to a whole range of pops—indie pop, synth pop, baroque pop—and his new record Loser Leaves Town continues the multifaceted approach. In contrast to the barroom jazz of the title track, ‘Sacred Songs’ is a piano ballad that blurs the line between earnest and playful, though the chorus settles firmly within the sincere end of the equation.

Loser Leaves Town is out now via Country Mile and all the major download services.

Lazy Legs – Nosebleed

We’ve featured Portland grungers Lazy Legs a few times here at VSF, writing about their self-titled EP back in 2016 and describing how previous single ‘Gloss’ “pull[ed] off the quiet/loud dynamic effortlessly […] managing to be both woozily captivating and cathartically empowering.”

The duo are back with a new single, ‘Nosebleed’, the first taste of a forthcoming record, Moth Mother. ‘Nosebleed’ delves into a raw and spiky dreamscape, dropping the psychedelic flourishes of the previous release in favour of a crunchy, heavier sound. The result is still very much of the Lazy Legs aesthetic, though suggests the new album will see the band orbiting closer to their grunge and slowcore influences.

Grab ‘Nosebleed’ now on a pay-what-you-can basis from Bandcamp.

Annie Dressner – Fades Away

We last featured Annie Dressner back in 2013, and now the UK-based American is back with a brand new album, Broken Into Pieces. For those unfamiliar with Dressner’s sound, opener ‘Fades Away’ provides a good example, blending a delicate guitar line with a conversational tone to create an intimate sound. The track is fleshed out with various other instrumental flourishes too, becoming a vivid, warm song of surprising weight, the simplicity of Dressner’s writing only adding to the poetic nature.

Broken Into Pieces is out now and you can get it now from the Annie Dressner Bandcamp page.

Marc Ferrino – Like a Spark

Working in bands such as Black Before Red and Low Line Caller, Marc Ferrino forged a reputation as one of Austin’s best vocalists, and 2019 will see the release of his debut solo EP on Wren & Shark. So far we only have one song to go on, though ‘Like a Spark’ is more than satisfactory in terms of building anticipation for the record. Pitched between indie rock cool and a celebratory style of pop, the track serves as one final hurrah for the summer—a grand, sweeping ode to ephemeral warmth.

Like a Spark is set for release in 2019 via Wren & Shark. Keep an eye on their website for pre-order info.

The post Bright Sparks: Vol. 17 appeared first on Various Small Flames.

Ben Seretan Group

“I wanted these recordings to sound huge. I wanted them to sound massive, gravitational, full of a swirling largeness that could eat up large portions of iTunes libraries” – we previewed Yellow Roses, a new release from Ben Seretan Group.

Yucatan

“Ethereal, celestial ambient post-rock” inspired by the Welsh landscape – we reviewed Uwch Gopa’r Mynydd, an album from Welsh band Yucatan

Benjamin Shaw

“comfortably sad and vividly alive, like watching rain fall onto a city from the window of a train” – a few words about ‘Pylon Pile-on’, the first song from Guppy, the upcoming album from Benjamin Shaw.

Long Neck

“Captures that feeling of creeping slowly over that threshold into adulthood and the revelation that it turns out not to be the whole new room you always thought” – Heights by Long Neck offers candid and reassuringly familiar thoughts on the plight of post-collegiate life.

Cyberbully Mom Club

“Music that feels like the words of an old friend, the sort of person who requires no formalities or effort and is happy to just sit and shoot the breeze” – a few thoughts on ‘For Luck’, the first song from a forthcoming EP by Cyberbully Mom Club.

Estan

“Raging against the pompous nature of professionals and academics…how ridiculous we are to think we can assign logic to a universe of chaos far too big for our tiny heads” – Our review of The Vanity of Reason by Estan.

Trenton Point

“Imagine John Maus teaming up with Small Black and The Cure to soundtrack a melodramatic 80s teen movie where the misunderstood hero finds herself walking home alone from the disco time and time again” – The three-song EP by Brooklyn’s Trenton Point, out on Vacant Magic.

The Wandering Lake

“Part indie rock and part psychedelic folk, all weaved together with Kupillas’ distinctive vocals, which are not quite a warble and not quite a croon and sometimes drawn out landscape-scale without a hint of breaking.” – we reviewed A Wend to Why, the new album from The Wandering Lake.

Ylayali / Lung Cycles

“enclosed in a sense of everyday melancholy…that feeling of long afternoons in gloomy rooms, when the rest of the human population seem faraway and indistinct, like figures from barely remembered dreams.” – Another great split cassette release from Lily Tapes & Discs.

Damien Jurado

“Jurado writes songs that reflect what it is like to be alive in the years either side of the millennium, songs for a landscape both cruel and kind, everyday and surreal, songs that can be sad and exciting and slightly scary and sometimes weird as hell” – We selected our very favourite Damien Jurado songs for our latest Through the Archives feature.

Mike Comite / Hop Along

“When I think about new rock idols, I don’t envision sold out arenas. I don’t hear Top 40 singles or perfect pitch, and I don’t think about stage personas and attitude. What I do think of is transparency, and a struggle” – Not quite last week, but Mike Comite of Old Best Friend wrote a fantastic piece about Hop Along for Property of Zack.

Coke Machine Glow / Jenny Hval

“Have you had breakfast? I was just about to make some eggs and huma—forgive me, I meant to say ham. Wink wink” – Coke Machine Glow presented a conversation about Jenny Hval’s Apocalypse, Girl between Hannibal‘s Hannibal Lecter and Will Graham, suggesting that I’m not the only person in the world who finds the show a little… overblown. All we need now are some meaningless close-ups of food and we’ll have an ‘intellectual’ TV hit.

Grantland / Jason Isbell

“It’s hard to keep up a James Dean type of facade if you’re thanking somebody for your salvation. But when you’re writing the kinds of songs that I do, I think your job is to try to be as honest as you possibly can and write about those things that make you uncomfortable sometimes.” – Stephen Hyden of Grantland talks through a list of Jason Isbell’s most gut-wrenching songs with the man himself.

Aero Flynn

We liked Aero Flynn’s self-titled album an awful lot. That’s why it’s so cool to see the band perform this live session for Audiotree.

Distant Records

“An hour of radical ladies influenced by that vintage surf rock reverb because, you know, it must be summer or something.” – Joanna, the face behind Distant Records, has a show on KPSU called The Muse in Music. This week’s show, ‘Must Be Summer or Something’, is all about… you guessed it, summer! Stream below or download this and previous shows over on the KPSU website.

Nice Legs

Seoul-based band and all round good eggs Nice Legs put together a video diary of a recent tour, featuring some lovely shots of the pair doing pretty much everything besides playing music. Check out their Youtube channel for other visual goodies.

And Finally… the 8tracks Playlist of the Week:

Heartbreaking Bravery‘s roundup of the best 2015 has had to offer so far is pretty comprehensive.

2015: Halfway Home from heartbreakingbravery on 8tracks Radio.

The post Week in Review: #7 (22nd – 26th June) appeared first on Various Small Flames.

Before I get to the songs, you may need a little background info. Damien Jurado’s solo career stretches back to the mid 90’s, his début album, Waters Ave. S, being released on local big-indie label Sub Pop in January 1997. The album was all angsty indie rock and so it wasn’t until the release of the folk-tinged follow-up, Rehearsals For Departure, in 1999 that people began to see that this wasn’t just another momentary indie rocker but a man with considerable inspiration and talent. Since then Jurado has released eleven albums plus several EPs and singles, none of which sound exactly alike. He has this uncanny ability to hop between genres (both between and within albums), giving him a chameleonic image that is hard to isolate and define. To me it is this fluctuating image which makes Jurado such an important figure. He isn’t a rock star content to look cool in plaid and make people nod their heads, nor is he a simple folk troubadour who sings heartsick romantic songs about lost loves. Jurado writes songs that reflect what it is like to be alive in the years either side of the millennium, songs for a landscape both cruel and kind, everyday and surreal, songs that can be sad and exciting and slightly scary and sometimes weird as hell. And, despite the sonic reconstructions that he introduces on each album, the man himself is always present at the centre of each song, telling us stories, the beating heart which highlights humanity in all of its guises.

Jurado’s writing/narrative style is immediately distinctive. In many ways he is more like a fiction writer than a traditional songwriter, as he doesn’t write explicitly personal songs about his own life but instead channels his feelings through the stories of others, often people who don’t even exist (this fact is highlighted in a a great Q&A with a high school class for the excellent Room 125 series). This means that the “I” in his songs rarely refers to Jurado himself, but is simply a first-person literary device. His songs seem built from fleeting images, snatches of dreams and imaginings, stories and scenes which are not the products of his own mind at all but seem to land there and take root. His genius is the ability to first flesh out these images into complex, emotionally involved stories, and then to pare everything down into his spare, lyrical form without losing any of the nuance. The result is something tangible, a sense of nostalgia for things that never happened, at least not to you, at least not in this life.

Ohio

The stand-out track from Rehearsals For Departure, ‘Ohio’ quickly became a fans favourite, to the point where Jurado would not play it live because of the constant badgering. Like many of the best Jurado songs, ‘Ohio’ manages to paint a story far larger than the track itself, detailing the situation of a girl who has decided to return home after being kidnapped by her father. The tale is told from the perspective of a nameless character who sees the girl trying to get a taxi back to her mother in Ohio. The song occurs in one flat moment, beyond the trauma but before the reunion, suspended in instant in which anything can still happen.

“Out from my window ‘How far is Ohio?’
She laughed and pointed out east
She said, ‘I grew up there with my dear mother
And I haven’t seen her since thirteen.

You see, I was taken while she lay sleeping
By my father’s hired man
We moved to city so far from my family
I haven’t been back there since.
It’s been a long time, a real long time.'”

Not content with this simple angle, Jurado weaves the narrator’s loneliness into the song too. Having grown attached to the girl, the character rues her passing but doesn’t act on his feelings, in some ways becoming the reassuringly good-natured antithesis of the father.

“Out from my window please hear me Ohio
Your daughter wants to come home
She longs to be with you to hug you to kiss you
To never leave her alone

And I’ve gotten know her to live with to love her
It’s hard to see her leave
She belongs to her mother and the state of Ohio
I wish she belonged to me

See you sometime, see you sometime”

Medication

“It just so happens I have many concerns”, so begins ‘Medication’ (from Ghost of David), a track on which Jurado truly flexes his storytelling muscles detailing the narrator’s twin concerns of his suicidal, paranoia-ridden brother and the wife of a local policeman with whom he is having an affair. The song is crushingly sad and dark, but also full of love – quite how Jurado conjures this much empathy in just four and a half minutes is just amazing. The writing describing the deterioration of the brother’s mental health is incredible:

“Brother called this morning in a terrible panic,
spies in the closet, bugs in the attic,
he screams bloody murder saying, we’re all gonna die.
And death is upon me I know cos he showed me
pictures of graveyards and us underneath.
I’m losing my hearing from my brother’s screaming
they’re coming to get me and someone call the police”

The brother’s suicide attempt leads to a trip to an institution for electro-convulsive therapy, accompanied by our luckless narrator. It is in the twilit waiting room that the story comes to its sad and desperate end:

“The TV is blaring with some preacher saying
that God is among us
and he hears our cries.
And Lord do me a favour,
its wrong but I ask you,
take my brothers life.
Cos he’s sick of the suffering
the pills he’s inhaling
the cross he is bearing
that is his troubled mind”

Amateur Night

“I am not an evil man.
I just have a habit I can’t quit”

From 2003’s Where Shall You Take Me?, ‘Amateur Night’ sees Jurado at arguably his most intense. The track is close and claustrophobic like the violent internal seethings of a man unhinged. It’s dark and unsettling and strangely magnetic, a murder ballad for the age of grainy VHS tapes.

Go First

Written in close proximity to a divorce, it is difficult not to look into the songs from 2008’s Caught in the Trees as personal artefacts from Jurado’s life. The album deals with the main characters relationship with a woman and her partner, but is more complex than a rom-com style rejection/pining scenario. The figure is hooked on suffering, and his refusal to let go of the woman reads like a dangerous form of self-harm, one designed to feed his addiction. It’s clear the character is tied to his demons, but whether it is he or they who hold the chains is up for debate. ‘Go First’ says this most clearly:

“Are you all right?
You’re making me nervous with how much you leave me here.
Is it a sign?
I don’t feel like ever getting well”

The album is also dotted with ‘meta’ flourishes, Jurado acknowledging the frustrations of being a musician and grappling with the nagging sensation that all of his songs are the same. ‘Predictive Living’ is full of such nods: “Chords just re-arrange” he sings. “Just another jealous husband to kill”.

Make it Back Islands

As if to address such concerns, the period saw Jurado begin another recording project which allowed him to explore themes and structures that might not be suitable for Caught in the Trees. The songs became Hoquiam, a band consisting of Damien Jurado and his brother Drake, which allowed a degree of creative freedom which had been lost with his conventional albums. As he told Secretly Canadian: “[Forming Hoquiam] with my brother seemed like the perfect idea on so many levels. For one, Drake was not a musician. I wanted there to be an innocence and excitement like I had not experienced since I first started music. No expectations. No set of rules. Just a chance to sing songs with my brother and chance to make art. That was it”.

The album is beautiful and strange, the songs heavily influenced by the coast of Washington state where Hoquiam (the birthplace of Drake) sits. The characters here are tied to the ocean and surrounding landscape, kicking through tangles of driftwood and pebbled glass and the castings of marine worms, their faces corroded by salt and blowing sand. If this sounds macabre then it’s with good reason – these songs, apparently inspired by Drake’s love of horror movies, are dark and twisted, the ghost stories of people not yet dead.

“I’ve become so good at choosing sides
so Joanne make sure that I die in time.
And I want to be buried in my bedsheets
and push my body in the Puget Sound.

‘Cos if you don’t ever make it make it back…

And I want Mt. Rainier to be my headstone
compass throwing stones mark where I tried
and the coastline called me then it spit me out
well the shoes must fit well too late for that now

‘Cos if you don’t ever make it back…”

Johnny Go Riding

A brief detour back to Ghost of David, although this one is nowhere near as dark as ‘Medication’. ‘Johnny Go Riding’ is a nostalgic, sepiatone folk song, just vocals and guitar and some shuffle and stomp percussion towards the end. It’s set in the non-immediate aftermath of a failed relationship and told in a wistful, hopeful way. The narrator is urging the titular Johnny to get himself back out into the world, something which Johnny appears reluctant to do:

“Judy, she’s out catching
Rides in passing cars
The memories of me and her
Have burned out like the stars

But me, I’m not disappointed
In knowing that she’s free
Someday down the line
I knew she’d one day up and leave”

But the song ends with a beam of hope, a suggestion that good things are on the way:

“What’s gone is gone, what’s here is now
She standing by a fence
She’s wearing a beautiful party dress
And wanting you to dance”

I’m not sure quite what it is but there’s something irresistibly stark and evocative about the song, you can almost see the prairie grass bending in the breeze, hear the beginnings of the evening chorus, feel the golden shafts of motey sunset at the edge of town.

Beacon Hill

‘Beacon Hill’ is from Saint Bartlett, but shares a lot in common with songs such as ‘Medication’. It’s full of beautiful writing which deals with mental illness in a grounded, understated way. I could paste any of the four verses (and am fighting the urge to just include them all), such is their quality, but you’ll have to make do with my favourite:

“Was I the ghost or one of your voices
You hear in your head when you’re out killing horses?
Who’s taking my place, who’s taking you home?
I don’t think it’s safe to turn out the nightlight”

Like much of Jurado’s music it seems to describe people living on the edge of things, be it a town or their own sanity, people struggling to keep a grip of each other and themselves.

https://open.spotify.com/track/6sq4TaSR25jVNc72iwBcJz

Ghost of David (The Return)

This song is quite unlike anything else in Jurado’s catalogue, a song that burns long and slow like embers in the fragrant desert night, occasionally cracking and spitting white hot sparks, bursts of ferocious energy. It has the sensation of being the climax of something, as if we’ve been thrown into a story right at its end. The lyrics read like the soliloquy of a man losing his mind in a barren wilderness, snatches of a narrative that don’t quite illuminate the bigger picture. The result of all this is a psychotropic vibe, images of memories projected above buttes and scuttling scorpions, plastered across the heavens like a new form of personal lightning. The trick is to sit back and let the atmosphere take you, his cries becoming those of the coyotes on the distant plain.

Working Titles

One of many stand-out tracks from 2012’s Maraqopa, the second album borne from Jurado’s relationship with Richard Swift (but the first where it really alters his sound), ‘Working Titles’ is typically beguiling and heartfelt. As with all of Swift’s work, this is a song that sways with an almost tropical lilt, part melodic folk song, part slow and sad take on doo wop. It’s a love song, although one not without its idiosyncrasies, which I suppose is wholly fitting of its creator. Again there is a ‘meta’ element here, with Jurado taking aim at songwriters with less noble intentions.

“Many nights you would hide from the audience
When they were not in tune with your progress
In the end you’re a fool like the journalist
Who turns what you see into business

You could use to be more like a hero
A darker shade of damage distortion
Wearing death like a cape or a costume
Cut your ties and leave town when you want to”

Silver Joy

Jurado’s latest album, Brothers and Sisters of the Eternal Son, continues the partnership with Swift and sees his sound fully embrace the psychedelic rock theme, creating a strange world full of new sights to witness and deities to worship. But, amongst all that, Jurado finds the space for one last sparse folk song. Rather than feeling out of place, ‘Silver Joy’ acts as a break from the psychedelica, a warm, sunny track which conjures an imagined heaven:

“Let me sleep
in the slumber of tomorrow.
There’s nowhere we need to be
that will not be there after.

Keep me with you on the ground
all of my worries behind me now.
And be sure to wake me when
eternity begins”

You really should think about delving into Damien Jurado’s back catalogue. You can get his albums from Secretly Canadian and Sub Pop, and the Hoquiam album from St. Ives.

Cover photo by Steve Gullick

The post I Don’t Feel Like Ever Getting Well: Damien Jurado appeared first on Various Small Flames.

So my plan is to write about some of my favourite of Molina’s songs in the hope of inspiring you to delve deeper into his back-catalogue yourself.

Firstly, a quick bit of background info. If you’re not already familiar with his work, you should know that Molina recorded under various guises, leading bands under the names Songs: Ohia and Magnolia Electric Co., and also recording solo records under his own name. He also released a really good album with Will Johnson (of Centro-matic) and also released a one off record under the moniker Amalgamated Sons of Rest with Will Oldham and Alasdair Roberts. The vast majority of his records were released by Secretly Canadian.

Unsurprisingly for a career which spanned over 15 years, Molina’s music morphed and modified, filling a variety of niches and casting the man himself in a variety of guises. There is the stark and haunting folk music of his earliest Songs: Ohia releases, the blood-and-thunder indie rock of later ones and even country-inflected classic rock on the later Magnolia Electric Co. albums. But every album also has something in common, something unique to the man himself. Much of his music deals with life as an outsider, the constant struggle with feelings of inadequacy and isolation. But there is also something else, a sliver of beautiful glittering hope in the darkness. This is illustrated by Molina’s refusal to simply give in, his determination to persevere, his emphasis on how important it is to “try”.

I’ve chosen a collection of my very favourite Jason Molina tracks. It is in no way intended to be definitive, and a second person could easily choose an entirely different set of songs. For example, ‘Hold on, Magnolia’, ‘Just Be Simple’ and ‘Don’t it Look Like Rain’ have not made it on the list, despite being songs that I love more than most. Anyways, here we go…

Honey, Watch Your Ass

My first choice is taken from Pyramid Electric Co., a solo album released in 2004. To me it displays some of the finest lyricism, not just in Molina’s vast discography, but in music in general. See for example:

“She nearly burned the town again
With the look that she gave him
She covers her heart
With her hands and says a little useless praying
Never hurt anything”

And, in what I think must be one of my favourite lines of all time:

“That must be her up there
Perfume and cigarette smoke in her wild hair
She smells a little like a train
Hauling lilacs through the rain”

Darling…

‘Darling…’ appeared on Hecla & Griper, an EP released by Songs: Ohia way back in 1997. It’s not actually a Molina song, rather a cover of country artist Conrad Twitty. The beauty for me is that there is not a shred of irony in this cover. It’s a raw and lonely-sounding break-up song, a desperate plea for reconciliation from a lost love:

“Hello darling, it’s nice to see you
It’s been a long time
How’s your new love are you happy
Hope you’re doing alright
Just to know this means so much to me
What’s that darling, how am I doing
Guess I’m doing alright except I can’t sleep
And I cry all night till dawn
What I’m trying to say is that I love you and
I miss you and I’m sorry that I done you wrong”

Hecla & Griper was reissued on its 15^th anniversary (plus bonus tracks). Get it via Secretly Canadian.

Didn’t It Rain

Another Songs: Ohia track next, this time from the 2002 album of the same name (which has also recently been reissued as a deluxe package). ‘Didn’t It Rain’ is a heartfelt ode to both the hope and the hopelessness of existence. It opens with a consolation:

“No matter how dark the storm gets overhead
They say someone’s watching from the calm at the edge”

And continues as a kind of empathetic pep-talk.

“If they think you got it they’re going to beat it out of you
With work and debt whatever all else there is
You got to watch your own back
Try to see the light of goodness burning down the track
Through the blinding rain through the swaying wires”

This is Molina addressing things head-on, saying to his listeners, “yeah things are tough but here’s what we can do about it”. Emphasis on the “we”. There is solidarity here, a we’re-all-in-this-together call to arms to just keep going.

Whip-poor-will

This track didn’t appear on a proper album until a re-worked version was included on Magnolia Electric Co.’s 2009 album Josephine. But the version I am including on my list is a demo played by a lone Molina on his guitar (which you can hear on the bonus disc of the 10^th anniversary edition of Magnolia Electric Co.). ‘Whip-poor-will’ is wonderfully simple and full of a certain sense of resolute melancholy. With lines such as:

“So all of you folks in heaven not too busy ringing the bell
Some of us down here ain’t doing very well”

And:

“Still waiting
For you to sing that song again
The one you were singing at the very fall of man
It ain’t hallelujah but it might as well have been”

O! Grace

‘O! Grace’, from Josephine, is the latest of my choices and is included mainly to illustrate the deviance in sound from the earlier Songs: Ohia albums. What we get here is almost a traditional country song, complete with a pseudo-sing-along chorus of:

“Oh Grace, if you stop believing
That don’t mean that it just goes away
It’s a long way between horizons
And it gets farther every day”

Farewell Transmission

This is the opening track on Magnolia Electric Co., the album which many regard as Molina’s magnum opus. ‘Farewell Transmission’ is a rock song of epic scope, in which Molina threw together all of his friends and creative energies in seven and a half minutes of pure searing force. It begins with a swagger, and immediately sounds bigger than anything Molina had made before. The real highlight is the lyrics, which are jam-packed with stark, forlorn imagery of dying moons and strange shamanistic rituals. With passages such as:

“After tonight if you don’t want us to be a secret out of the past
I will resurrect it, I’ll have a good go at it
I’ll streak his blood across my beak and dust my feathers with his ashes
I can feel his ghost breathing down my back”

And:

“Mama here comes midnight, with the dead moon in its jaws
Must be the big star about to fall”

The song also contains some lines which relate back to Molina’s favourite lyrical themes, and turns out to be one place where he expresses himself particularly eloquently:

“The real truth about it is no one gets it right
The real truth about it is we’re all supposed to try”

It is lines like this which created the adoring fandom, which turned people from casual listeners to zealous followers (including Strand of Oaks’s Timothy Showalter). And the reason? Because they offer comfort. Here is a man who spent his artistic career documenting his life’s struggles, beaming out his thoughts to thousands of lonely people around the country. And his message (in these two short lines at least) was a powerful one. He’s saying that we should all just keep going, that we are all doing okay.

Long Desert Train

To conclude I have chosen what is perhaps my favourite Jason Molina song of all. ‘Long Desert Train’ is another solo track, the shattering terminus of Pyramid Electric Co.. This is a very, very sad song, even for a man who made a living writing sad songs. It looks the sensation of inadequacy and a complete lack of self-worth straight in the eye. It feels like an outpouring of vulnerability, a rare faultering in the noble intentions of resilience and perseverance. It is a sad song with sadder end, and one which has added poignancy after Molina’s premature demise:

“Said you’d never be old enough
Or young enough
Tall enough
Or thin enough
Or smart enough
Or brave enough
Rich enough
Pretty enough
Strong enough
Good enough
Well you were to us

You wanted silence by itself
Just the word
You wanted peace by itself
Just to learn
There were things you couldn’t change
You got the dull pounding rain
You got the last car in the long desert train

You almost made it”

You can buy the vast majority of Jason Molina’s music via Secretly Canadian.

P.S. The last year or so has seen various Jason Molina tribute albums, including Farwell Transmission: A Tribute To Jason Molina from Rock The Cause and a collection of tributes and compilations from The Wave Pictures.

The post No Matter How Dark: Jason Molina appeared first on Various Small Flames.

The post Advent Calendar [6th]: Damien Jurado – Silver Timothy appeared first on Various Small Flames.

15. Damien Jurado – Maraqopa

(Secretly Canadian)

14. Sand Circles – Motor City

(Not Not Fun)

13. Converge – All We Love We Leave Behind

(Epitaph)

12. Advance Base – A Shut-In’s Prayer

(Orindal)

11. Strand of Oaks – Dark Shores

(Self Released)

10. Actress – R.I.P

(Honest Jon’s Records)

9. Christian Löffler – A Forest

(Ki Records)

8. Tim Hecker & Daniel Lopatin – Instrumental Tourist

(Software)

7. Holy Other – Held

(Tri Angle)

6. Dirty Projectors – Swing Lo Magellan

(Domino)

5. Field Report – Field Report

(Partisan)

4. The XX – Coexist

(Young Turks)

3. Japandroids – Celebration Rock

(Polyvinyl)

2. Evening Hymns – Spectral Dusk

(Shuffling Feet / Strange Ways)

1. Godspeed You! Black Emperor – Allelujah! Don’t Bend! Ascend!

(Constellation)

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Damien Jurado’s new album Maraqopa is available to pre-order now.

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