As we wrote in our previous review, Mal Devisa’s music defies any one genre, instead favouring an organic oscillation between folk, pop, soul and hip-hop, and Kiid is a case in point. ‘Fire’ opens with gentle strummed guitar, Devisa’s vocals carrying things along with thoughts on anxieties and hopes for relief. As the track progresses the vocals grow in fervour, the instrumentation creaking at the seams before unravelling into noise.

“Fire in my brain
will you make it okay?

Does it kill you to know that we’re all dying?
It kills me to know”.

In an album that switches between genre so readily, it is Carr’s lyrics which act as the binding force. ‘In My Neighbourhood’ sees the first hip-hop crossed with pop to create something like tUnE-yArdS, ‘Everyone Knows’ is a near-jazzy number where Carr’s voice takes centre stage, and ‘Live Again’ is an indie folk croon akin to the older Cold Specks releases, though all are linked by the sincere, probing writing and startling vocal range. ‘FAT’ opens with heavy bass and descends into urgent, frenzied verses, only to segue into the sombre, soulful ‘Sea of Limbs’ tracks. Both the intro and the main track see Devisa stretch her vocals to their limits, flickering from breathy whispers to wide, top-of-the-lungs gospel songs that would fill any room. The open heart is matched in the lyrics too, with the main message stated with stirring forthrightness.

“You were solid,
you’re everything they told you could not be and more.
You were solid”

‘Daisy’ is a short, evocative pop song that smoulders along with a solid beat (“Oh Daisy, Daisy, I have seen too much of you / You’re driving me crazy with that bad attitude”), while ‘Forget That I’ is a slow piano ballad which ebbs and flows, falling somewhere between Sharon van Etten and Nina Simone. Closer ‘Dominatrix’ switches the mood again, a frenetic hip-hop song like performance poetry where the mood has been condensed into loops and played behind. The track finds Devisa at her most angry and assured, confident in the truth behind her attack on the white, patriarchal grip on culture.

“Messing around I wrote a masterpiece
enough apologies I got caught up in my dreams.
Now I go by Mal Devisa,
avid rapper she’s a preacher
a non-conformist, non-believer”

Kiid is a personal record and plays like condensed version of life, reaching high and falling low, crackling and bursting and simmering under the surface, at times exploding in urgent streams of consciousness as if the words and thoughts can no longer be held in. This is an album that refuses to be reduced to something easily describable, persevering in it’s complexity against the binarizing forces of anxiety or genre or gender or race. Kiid isn’t a self-doubt record or political record, nor a sad record or a happy record. It’s not jazz or gospel or indie rock. Kiid is everything. Kiid is whatever it wants to be.

You can buy Kiid now from the Mal Devisa Bandcamp page, and Mal Devisa compilation cassette from the DZ Tapes Bandcamp page.

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The album opens with ‘All I Want’, a lush blend of folk and indie rock, the stark guitar warmed by Cantor’s full-bodied vocals which rise and fall from composure to vehemence and back again, creating something lonely yet fierce. A whisper, a shout. ‘Futon’ sees the guitar and bass gather momentum, providing the barroom swagger to match the drunken brashness of the lyrics, in which the narrator calls things as he sees them. Whether this is borne of clarity or anger is unclear, and indeed the momentum wanes by the final lines, as if his conviction drips away or else he begins to feel sorry for its target.

“Washed out of your clothes
Toothpaste and filtered smoke
You walk back into the cold
Howling and alone”

‘Catch and Release Pt. I’ is a mellow love song which segues into ‘Pt. II’, where the electric pulse of bass hints at an eventual climax, growing into a storm of percussion and Cantor’s howled vocals. ‘Call Out’ has a real Magnolia Electric Co. feel, isolation and sadness and fear wrapped within smart writing and swirls of instrumentation, fuelled by the insistent dread of self-doubt and bad feeling to produce something keenly honest and cathartic, yet always coloured with wry self-referential lines about that very process.

“Freakin’ out and I’d like to incinerate my dread
But I’ll fashion a metaphor instead
Like fastening a bomb to our bed
And grieving long before we’re even dead
I should reiterate this is all in my head

I leap from where I stand
I’m falling in, I’m falling in”

‘Bare Light’ is short and succinct, a rapid clatter of percussion and cryptic lyrics, while ‘Wild’ emerges wistful and wishful, the memories of a caged animal ghosting across some half-forgotten landscape. ‘I Could Fall In Love With Silence’ has a sad swagger, Cantor channelling the heart-broke strut of Otis Redding in a song which ebbs and flows from melancholy to affirmation to faraway dreams and round again. The album closes with the title track, which returns to (and expands upon) the opening song in what could either been seen as an epilogue or a direct link back to the beginning, enabling the record to be played in a continuous cycle. Either way, the track continues Cantor’s careful use of strong imagery and metaphor, invoking importance and meaning from words and phrases which might seem overwrought in other hands, and sees what is possibly my favourite writing on the album:

“Time pulls the tide with the moon for hands
While whispers incite my love again
Cacophony glides on ships to the sand
While whispers incite my love again

The dog howls ignite to the sky from the land
While whispers incite my love again
A pinhole of light is all god can command
While whispers incite my love again”

You can buy A Whisper, A Shout now from the Minor Moon Bandcamp page.

The post Minor Moon – A Whisper, A Shout appeared first on Various Small Flames.

RIYL: Fiona Apple, Cold Specks, genre-bending folk

Favourite Tracks:

You can buy 4U right now from Mal Devisa’s Bandcamp page, along with a few other bits and pieces.

P.S. Devisa also records as MAL, which is another direction entirely. Listen below:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TV6GWUHEBSY

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You have probably heard that Rateliff is back, not least because of his rather explosive performance of Jimmy Fallon’s Tonight Show, and this time he has company. It’s fair to say that Nathaniel Rateliff & The Night Sweats are not finger-picking folkers, but the raw energy of his solo work remains, as highlighted by album opener ‘I Need Never Get Old’. A good indicator of the shambling, soulful rock that The Night Sweats have brought to the table, the track is still recognisably Rateliff but with a showy, jubilant flourish. The track also serves as an introduction to the main theme of the record, a marriage of celebration and introspection, needles of regret poking through the haze of adrenaline and alcohol.

“I know that some will say it matters but little babe
Come on and mean it to me I need it so bad
Mean it to me I need it so bad.

I needed to try
Needed to fall
I needed your love I’m burning away
I need never get old”

‘Howling At Nothing’ sees the dial swing further toward soul, an impassioned, swaying tune for good times amongst bad days, where sincere, starlit promises spark into brilliant existence before fading with the dawn. As with much of the record the sense of embracing the moment is palpable, as if everyone involved understands that despite what might happen later, while sober and tired and desperate, every word he sings is heartfelt and genuine:

“Some were playing in a round
Some were dipping so low
It never seemed to matter as the night slipped away
Cause there was soul in the air”

That’s not to say, however, a party can drown out all of the darker thoughts. ‘Trying So Hard Not To Know’ speaks of the struggle to sell the idea of goodtimes-as-an-answer, Rateliff labouring to convince himself let alone anyone else (“You never stand up long enough to pull it together/ Well who gives a damn and very few can / When they’re trying so hard not to know”). ‘I’ve Been Failing’, with it’s finger-clicking and tinkling piano, sounds like the midnight confessions of a liquor-loosened tongue. “I’ve been failing you”, wails Rateliff, “but I can’t stop trying”, and you get the impression the trying and failing will continue for a good while yet.

With its blend of self-deprecation, defiance and cathartic yelling, ‘S.O.B’ is central to the album, the creed to the Night Sweats faith. Rising out of handclaps and wordless hums, the song finds Rateliff possessed with zeal, a pacing preacher electrified by the communal energy of his congregation:

“I’m gonna need someone to help me
I’m gonna need somebody’s hand
I’m gonna need someone to hold me down
I’m gonna need someone to care
I’m gonna writhe and shake my body
I’ll start pulling out my hair
I’m going to cover myself with the ashes of you and nobody’s gonna give a damn”

It’s as if his life depends on getting these words out, be it as a warning for others, a last plea for help or just a clearing of his head and mouth before the next big drink. Here Rateliff is caught between the very human (male?) solipsism, the star-of-a-movie-called-Me attitude of grand statements and gestures and (imaginary?) heroines waiting for rescue, and the depressive notion that the buck stops with him, that no-one else cares all that much, probably because they are all too busy in a spotlight of their own imagining. What’s more, Rateliff seems to understand his position without fully submitting to either side. Instead, he whips himself into a frenzy, rebuking himself while all the while hoping for an epiphany. Every so often he is tipped over the threshold, though whether into ecstasy or anguish it’s never quite clear.

“Son of a bitch
Give me a drink
Won’t more night
This can’t be me
Son of a bitch
If I can’t get clean
I’m gonna drink my life away”

A return to the regret-filled confessional style, ‘Wasting Time’ finds Rateliff musing on all the hours he has wasted “falling down” and “hiding under”, as well as the time lost “in constant reflection”. ‘Thank You’ is an apology to his loved one for this outlook (“Spend your years / Spend your time / With all these tears”), while ‘Look it Here’ is an attempted explanation, a cathartic admission of guilt which builds into frustrated yelling of simple truths: “I got a love so hard I can’t stand it / And with a heart so weak and abandoned”.

If this seems like the turning point before a Happy-Ever-After then don’t be fooled. ‘Shake’ is hot and humid, snaking like a low mist, the fever-dreams of a man pinning hope of reprieve on some erotic encounter, while ‘I’ll Be Waiting’ is based in reality, Rateliff alone and weary and still gripped by the need for love (“I’m tired and worn / But I’m still standing / I’ll be waiting ah baby just to dance with you”). Closing track ‘Mellow Out’ finds him pocketing advice you feel he could never follow, and, be it his honesty or bravado or both, you can’t help but not hold it against him.

“Someone came in rushing dragging feet and nails and I could pretend
Wanting more of nothing, feel it wearing on me
Just keep it hid

Mellow out, and find a better way you’re feeling it shut down
Take it easy baby, maybe find some time to just calm down
Keep on telling me”

Nathaniel Rateliff & The Night Sweats could be your favourite anti-heroes of the sixties, the forgotten friend of Otis Redding and Sam & Dave, or maybe from even further back, a band of villains rolling into nameless pre-war towns to cause shitstorms in cowboy brawl-bars and put smiles faces for one night only. That there is a serious side is less a surprise than a foregone conclusion, because no man has conjured this kind of bone-level fervour out of a pleasant existence. No, here are people staring down the barrel, people stranded in a sea of beer, locked inside some breakneck motion in which a grin and a grimace are practically indistinguishable. Whether this is a defiant two fingers or last hurrah seems unclear even to Rateliff, himself too caught up in a compulsion to dance and scream and shout. Whatever you take from this record, one thing is clear: They can’t put you in the ground if you’re still moving. 

Nathaniel Rateliff & The Night Sweats is out on the 21st of August via Stax / Caroline, and you can buy it here.

The post Nathaniel Rateliff & The Night Sweats – S/T appeared first on Various Small Flames.

Old Earth

“Has this trance-like quality that is almost impossible to describe…It’s music that isn’t satisfied with making pretty sounds in the background, that gets right to the root of things” – New EP …until they’re called sees Old Earth in typically scintillating form.

The Washboard Abs

“Sad but in a cosy, reassuring way…like being alone in an empty room on a rainy afternoon, when the not-quite-twilight has that blue-grey quality and the only sounds are raindrops on the glass and the shooooshing of passing cars” – WHATEVERLAND by The Washboard Abs is the second great Z Tapes release in a week.

The Tarantula Waltz

“Reminds us that no matter how hard, life holds pockets of goodness and wonder, providing moments of fierce, bright joy which light up the dark” – Lynx EP by Swedish folkster The Tarantula Waltz

Molly Drag

“Sad and remorseful in a child-like sort of way, the existential anxiety of adults not yet formed so that his grief can occupy a pure, selfless sort of level” – ‘Open Casket Hidden Meaning’, the brand new track by Molly Drag.

Furnsss

“A return of the gloriously sloppy rock that Furnsss purvey” – Burlington lo-fi rock act announce new EP via our good pals at 80N7.

Nathaniel Rateliff & the Night Sweats

“Continues with the jaunty, boisterous vibes that set apart Nathaniel Rateliff & The Night Sweats from his solo work, sounding like mid-barroom, drunk-but-honest proclamations” – Nathaniel Rateliff gathers his band in anticipation of their debut EP.

Aidan Knight

“Starts off as a smooth and kinda groovy soft rock track which threatens several crescendos before the horned-filled celebratory climax around the halfway mark” – Aidan Knight has put out a new song in preparation for his third album, coming this autumn on Outside Music.

Small Houses

“So here’s the deal. You pledge on small amount of money in return for a digital download pre-order, and Quentin gets to make a new record and eat something other than craisens” – Small Houses needs your help on GoFundMe to make his new album.

Eskimeaux

“It’s about finally feeling okay with not feeling okay” – Impose has a substantial piece on Eskimeaux’s new album, O.K.

The Epoch

“A sweet, introspective sort of songwriting is the tendency, though hardly the rule. As an inspiring support system and model for artistic collaboration, their cult following is quickly growing” – The Epoch Collective find themselves in good company in Brooklyn Magazine’s round-up of the twenty people defining Brooklyn music in 2015.

Matheny / Molina

“Molina always seemed to know exactly which cards not to show, and with his deep body of work created music that is somehow both haunting and comforting in equal measure” – William Matheny of Southeast Engine shares his memories of Jason Molina and serves up a great cover of ‘Just Be Simple’, all over at Common Folk Music.

Best of 2015

A week late on this but the ever-reliable Gimme Tinnitus has put together a list of the best music of 2015 thus far. Well worth digging through to uncover a few unheard gems.

Nick Cave / DrFasutusAU

A few weeks late on this but it’s worth sharing: Artist DrFaustusAU has drawn a Dr Seuss-style cartoon version of Nick Cave’s ‘Red Right Hand’. You can read more about it on Faster Louder or click the image below to see the whole storybook.

Protest Music

“A reminder that soulful dissent can be both entertaining and politically efficacious. Soulful protest is the work of skillful musicians using their gifts and raising their voices to recreate the world so that everyone has an opportunity to fully participate and no one else’s voice ever again has to remain suppressed or unheard” – Jason King over on at NPR Music has put together 100 hours of protest music, using R&B and the genres which came before that helped form the genre.

Frog

“An attempt to engage modern musical ideas from a 1950s style of arrangement… [it] was a complete failure in that respect but a success in most others” – The Line of Best Fit are streaming Kind Of Blah, the new album from Frog that could well be the soundtrack of your summer.

Summer Camp

“Inspired by 90s Point Horror and Fear Street books and teen horror films, and the idea that a bad relationship can be just as terrifying as a serial killer” – Noisey are streaming Summer Camp’s Bad Love before it’s release next week on Moshi Moshi.

Shamir

And finally, Shamir walked around Brooklyn and played some songs for La Blogotheque:

The post Week in Review: #2 (18th-22nd May) appeared first on Various Small Flames.

‘Bling’ is the latest single from Hyperlust, a jagged pop hit which manages to not only bathe the listener in a glowing summer chill but also challenge the concept of capital-T Truth in reality and the mind, answering its own mystical questions with the only fair motto of our times. I don’t know.

“What do you mean?

I don’t know

Just a sign of science

Just a sign of science

What did you see?

Eyes to the floor

And if I do not understand it, was it real?

What do you mean?

I don’t know”

Hyperlust will be released on the 31st May and you can pre-order it now from Bandcamp. If, like me, you are new to the band, be sure to go back and explore their previous releases.

The post Bells Atlas – Bling appeared first on Various Small Flames.

Miracle Temple illustrates a band that is growing and maturing, and as a result the new record sounds more deliberate, more accomplished. It seems that the experience of writing, recording and touring the debut has allowed the band to make a more considered and exploratory record, one that can deal with more complex issues. This fact is best illustrated with Heather McEntire, Mount Moriah’s lead singer and chief songwriter; On Miracle Temple she performs with a confidence that, although not lacking on the debut, was certainly less apparent. This is true in both a technical sense and also in a deeply personal sense. Much of the writing in her earlier songs (particularly Reckoning – which you can hear here on a brilliant session from the folks at HearYa) dealt with her sexuality and her experience of coming out to her Southern Baptist family. You get the feeling that the empowerment that she has gained from the experience of sharing those songs has allowed her to expand her songwriting range, to be able to write songs that are not just personal in a confessional sense, but also draw on past vulnerability to speak out to others. If Mount Moriah was cathartic self-help, then Miracle Temple is for the listeners. 

McEntire’s voice is one which would sound good if she simply sang numbers from a telephone directory. A throwback to the classic country singers, she could stand proud among the big names (namely a young Dolly Parton, which gets mentioned in pretty much every review I’ve read). However Mount Moriah do not live upon her vocal strengths alone – the writing is equally developed. The lyrics have a literary quality which are rooted in McEntire’s passion for creative writing, indeed Mount Moriah’s first album originated as a way for McEntire to utilise her collection of excess poetry and prose pieces. It’s therefore no surprise that the quality of writing here is very high. The over-arching atmosphere is one of nostalgia, and there are still plenty of references to the feelings of loss and isolation that abound in small-town America. Despite this, I think it would be wrong to describe Miracle Temple as a downbeat record. Its evocation of difficulty and pain is restrained and understated and lends the album a warm sincerity which is very rare in songwriting.

Notice that I have so far managed to avoid trying to describe the music. It’s always very difficult to tag bands with genres and it always feels a little unfair to pigeon-hole them with cliched terms that don’t seem to mean all that much to begin with. That said, it’s also very difficult to describe music in words without  touching on such terms. For that reason I will try to keep it brief. There is a big country influence here (hence the Dolly Parton comparisons), and there are also elements that could be described as indie-rock (which is to be expected considering McEntire fronted punk rock band Bellafea and guitarist and songwriter Jenks Miller played in psych-metal outfit Horseback before forming Mount Moriah). It is very difficult to come up with similar bands (presumably due to the fusion of styles), although one record which I was reminded of was last year’s Field Report album, which had similar literary stylings and country influences.

Miracle Temple is out now on Merge Records. You can buy it here on any format you desire. I highly recommend you check it out. Also have a look at the video for Bright Light below:

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