Ruth Garbus – Strash
Mauno – Vampire
Outer Spaces – Gazing Globe
Benjamin Shaw – Long Ago and Oh So Far Away
Erin Durant – Islands
Daughter of Swords – Dawnbreaker
Melissa Mary Ahern – Maria, Maria
Oscar Lush – Kind Living
Midwife – Angel
Young Elk – False Paradise
Wilder Maker – Love So Well
Big Joanie – Way Out
Secrecies – Life We Live
Beat Radio – Everyone I Know, Just Holding On
American Poetry Club – pro pic?
So Totally – sike
halfsour – Paper Window
Joyer – Here
Marbling – Wisdom Teeth
High Sunn – Grateful
Slow Pulp – New Media
Molly Drag – Out Like a Light
Van Houten – Moon
Birdspotter – Riverbed
Tender Perennial – Delivered
JR Samuels – In Brend 2
Elly Swope – Habits
Derek Piotr – The Sign
Fighting Kites – Kita Senju
Nathalie Joachim – Papa Loko (Interlude: September 24, 1918)
Kali Malone – Sacrificial Code
Kate Tempest – Holy Elixir
Little Musket – Fever Blister
Gold Baby – 500/1
Tennis Club – Stay
Young Mammals – Lost in Lima
Abe Hollow – Paradise
bdrmm – Question Mark
Briston Maroney – Fool’s Gold

Check out our previous Monthly Roundup playlists, and be sure to read or Reviews and Previews throughout the month.

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

The four-piece, aka Roya Weidman (guitar / vocals), Matt Arbiz (guitar / vocals), Joe McLaughlin (drums) and Ryan Wildsmith (bass), make indiosyncratic indie rock songs that refuse to be put into neatly labeled boxes. There are hints of spacious shoegaze and fuzzy indie pop and something darker and heavier at the heart of each song, blissful, reverb-soaked melodies jackknifing into walls of pure noise.

“love and pain are friends forever,” begins opening track ‘Sike’, which throws us straight into the unpredictable and slightly surreal world So Totally create on in the shape of…. There are knotty tangles of guitar and heart-quickening ’90s throwback sections and wide-open lulls that gather at the edges and go barreling into another assault of guitar and percussion.

‘Attention’ has a weird woozy vibe, Weidman’s vocals stretched and distorted as she mumbles about fire and love and slow creeping feelings, opaque words that seem to conjure something tangible when searing guitar sets the whole thing alight in the final minute.

An indie pop song about astrological forces, ‘Pluto’ sees the band strip back some of the fuzz and reverb, at least initially, while ‘Mama’ tethers floaty vocals to shoegaze guitars and the romantic but doomed sensation of getting lost in the corridors of your mind. “Don’t talk me out of it,” Weidman sings near the end, “living in a world I’m dreaming,” in a line that illustrates perfectly the strange and beguiling world So Totally conjure.

in the shape of… is out now and you can get it from the So Totally Bandcamp page and on cassette from Citrus City Records.

The post So Totally – in the shape of… appeared first on Various Small Flames.