Retracing the footsteps of beloved Scottish nature writer Nan Shepherd, Alice Boyd and eight other women set out into the Cairngorm mountains in 2023, spending four days immersed in nature with Shepherd’s writing and spirit as a guide. Boyd’s new EP Cloud Walking is a journal of this experience, combing folk harmonies and chamber pop instrumentation with field recordings gathered in situ to reflect upon the challenges and joys of facing the elements. A response to the song ‘Heart’ by Jacob Norris’, who Boyd collaborated with for previous release The Favourite, single ‘Heart ii’ embodies the the EP’s philosophy—championing the benefits of slowing down and connecting to your surroundings amid a busy, panicked world.

Stay calm in the torrent
Stay slow in the chase
And hasten to help out
And hurry to make

Brent Amaker and the Rodeo – You’re No Good

“A Southerner in Seattle who channels the classic country spirit while at the same time subverting its tropes, owing as much to the persona-led art rock of Bowie and co. as the macho (so-called) authenticity of the genre’s heavy hitters.” That’s how we described Brent Amaker and the Rodeo earlier this year, won over both by their single ‘Take Me By The Horns‘ and cover of Devo’s ‘Gut Punch‘. Having travelled to Mexico City with Mariachis, Amaker is now teasing new album Vaquero, pencilled for release sometime in 2025, and single ‘You’re No Good’ introduces what to expect from the record. The buoyant spirit of the Salón Tenampa at Plaza Garibaldi committed to song, with Amaker’s distinctive, almost Cash-esque cowboy vocals hinting at the dark underside of such a good time. Watch the video directed and edited by Jasmina Hirschl below:

‘You’re No Good’ is out now. Vaquero will be released some time in 2025.

Celeste Madden – Fever Dream

“A lesson in unguarded feelings which isn’t afraid to risk overstatement in trying to explain the sensation of the moment.” So we wrote back in the summer of Celeste Madden‘s ‘Joan of Arc’, a single released via Sad Club Records which represented the first release from the UK songwriter in two years. This sincere style continues through into latest track ‘Fever Dream’ too. Pairing acute longing with an ethereal air, the song charts those heady days of romance where pleasure and frustration accentuate one another and everything feels so close yet so far away. A state almost unreal in its experience. “Life with someone becomes a distorted daydream,” as Madden explains. “Thrilling but unnatural.”

‘Fever Dream’ is out now on streaming services.

Denison Witmer – Focus Ring (feat. Sufjan Stevens)

Next February, Philadelphia singer-songwriter Denison Witmer will release new full-length, Anything At All, an album made in collaboration with Sufjan Stevens, who produced, recorded and performed on the songs. With a balance found between Witmer’s characteristically straightforward, earnest folk and Stevens’s ornate arrangements, the album probes into great existential themes with a careful hand, delving into ordinary domestic scenes to locate the joy to be found there. “Anything At All is about doubling down on family life and doing everything I can to slow the pace of my life as things around me feel busier than ever before,” Witmer explains. “It’s about putting systems in place and committing to the changes needed to make it work.” New single and opener ‘Focus Ring’ introduces the style perfectly, its warm sound full of heart and fondness. Watch the video directed and animated by Stephen Halker below:

Anything At All is out on the 14th February via Asthmatic Kitty Records.

Frog – Did Santa Come

Having returned from hiatus in 2023 with the excellent full-length Grog, New York cult heroes Frog are already preparing to drop another album on us. And though we have to wait until March for the intriguingly titled 1000 Variations on the Same Song, the duo have been kind enough to share an appropriately seasonal taster to tide us over into the new year. ‘Did Santa Come’ “is about my son when he was two years old at Christmas time,” Daniel Bateman explains. “Every morning for 2-3 weeks after, he would wake up and ask, “Did Santa Come?” Seeing the world through the eyes of your children makes it all very beautiful.” In true Frog style, this is delivered with full sincerity yet with no trace of the Hallmark sweetness the description might suggest, committing instead to the idiosyncratic energy which has won the project so many fans.

‘Did Santa Come’ is available now from the Frog Bandcamp page. 1000 Variations on the Same Song will be released in March.

Golden Tiles – Doesn’t Take Long to Find

Last month Portland, Oregon outfit Golden Tiles released The First EP, their appropriately titled debut via Antiquated Future Records. Consisting of Oliver Stafford (vocals, guitar), Justin Hocking (drums) and Joshua James Amberson (bass), the band create a bright, laidback brand of basement rock which combines playful melodies, fuzzy textures and reflective vocals. Fans of Guided By Voices will find much to admire in tracks like ‘Tale We Told’ and ‘100%’ , while latest single ‘Doesn’t Take Long to Find’ edges towards Yo La Tengo territory with its assured, nostalgic tones. A trio to watch for sure.

Kramies – That’s A Midwest Christmas

Following on from single ‘Social Light‘, which enlisted the help of Allison Lorenzen to bring to life “another dreamy, melancholic fairy tale which blurs the line between eeriness and empathy to form something ultimately affirming,” songwriter Kramies is capping off 2024 with a Christmas song of his own. ‘That’s A Midwest Christmas’ is everything you’d expect from a festive tune. Warm fondness and nostalgic reflection edged with something more melancholic, the acoustic arrangement creating an intimate, authentic sound able to chart the bittersweet quality of the season. Another year has past, the weight of days gone grows heavier, but everyone is home once again.

‘That’s A Midwest Christmas’ is out now.

The Men – Pony

With their fifteenth album Buyer Beware coming next February via Fuzz Club, prolific New York punks The Men have unveiled new single ‘Pony’ to defiantly evidence their refusal to slow down. In someone else’s hands, a song which asks “when you gonna stop running?” in the opening line might opt for a slower, more reflective sound, but The Men answer the questioning with a blistering momentum, teeing up another record which examines the turbulent present with all the snarl and bite it deserves. Recording engineer Travis Harrison (Guided by Voices, Built to Spill) helps the band achieve their live performance on tape, and the raw immediacy is apparent from the first second to the last.

The world is ending
grab a seat
enjoy the ride

Watch the video by Preston Spurlock below:

Buyer Beware will be released on the 28th February 28th via Fuzz Club.

Will Stratton – I Found You

“When the forest burns, what ghosts rise as steam from the boiling soil?” So asks Points of Origin, the new full-length from Will Stratton, forthcoming via Bella Union and Ruination Record Co. next March. Described as a novelistic album “as dense as a Pynchon picaresque,” by Ben Seretan in the album notes, the collection sees Stratton grapple with the grim realities of the Anthropocene across an almost geologic span of time, centring on California as a kind of a ground zero for both the causes and effects of humanity’s connection to nature. Lead single and opener ‘I Found You’ pitches the listener straight in with a rich, character-led narrative, Stratton’s vocals prominent within the careful, tender arrangement. “I met a mechanic up near the state line / he knew I knew motors and paid me just fine,” as one verse sets out. “I couriered engines all over the state / and settles by Shasta surrounded by lakes / the beds have gone dry but I do what I can / to keep away fire from my plot of land.”

it rips through the Coulter and Tamarack pines
and it thickens the air ’til you’d think you’d gone blind
saying, oh where are you, oh where are you, when it has reddened the sky
oh where are you, oh where are you, when heaven abandoned the sky

The post Weekly Listening: December 2024 #2 appeared first on Various Small Flames.

Here are some great songs from the tumultuous year that was 2003.

1) The Thermals – No Culture Icons
2) The Wrens – Ex-Girl Collection
3) Wintersleep – Orca
4) Yeah Yeah Yeahs – Maps
5) Sun Kil Moon – Carry Me Ohio
6) Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy – Hard Life
7) Califone – Million Dollar Funeral
8) Okkervil River – The War Criminal Rises and Speaks
9) Sufjan Stevens – Romulus
10) Hymie’s Basement – Lightning Bolts and Man Hands
11) The National – Lucky You
12) Malcolm Middleton – Cold Winter
13) Damien Jurado – Amateur Night
14) Cursive – Sierra
15) The Constantines – Shine a Light
16) Casiotone for the Painfully Alone – Jeanne, If You’re Ever in Portland
17) The Unicorns – I Was Born a Unicorn
18) The Decemberists – Red Right Ankle
19) Songs: Ohia – Farewell Transmission

What did we miss from 2003? Let us know via Facebook or Twitter! Be sure to check out our posts on 2000, 2001 and 2002, and pop back in a month when we’ll be turning our attention to… 2004.

The post Millennium Mix: 2003 appeared first on Various Small Flames.

“No One Knows That You’re Lost is an album inspired by the Norwegian coast and a human interior, by tight itching doubts and wide open spaces. Here, fragility, strength and beauty become one and the same, parts of a landscape in constant flux yet remaining fundamentally unchanged”

Tina very kindly agreed to write a guest post for our ‘Lit Links‘ series (part of the Quiet, Constant Friends project), where artists and writers create a playlist of songs based around a book of their choice. Arm yourself with headphones and have a read below.

Chad Harbach’s The Art of Fielding
by Tina Refsnes

I’ve never felt comfortable with answering questions that ask for «the best» or «your all time favourite» as I just feel there’s too much good and different material in the world to hold them up against each other like that. So, I’ll say that one of my favourite books that I enjoyed immensely reading is one called The Art of Fielding by Chad Harbach. It’s set in an American College and with baseball as the back-drop, and it’s one of those slow books with great meaning but without the drama. It deals with the big hopes that young people usually have to life, with self doubt in performance, and with the social difficulties or shyness that young people sometimes struggle with. But, in a very down to earth way since, at least the main character, is so un-academic. I also imagined this suburban North-American setting for it: Long, wide streets with tall leaf trees on both sides of it. Really big and old campus buildings, and maybe since the characters were so alone in their minds I kept picturing everything as with never that many people around.

Tracklisting:

1. Jenny Come Home- Andy Shauf
   2. Gather, Form and Fly – Megafaun
   3. Own Side – Caitlin Rose
   4. Casimir Pulaski Day – Sufjan Stevens
   5. Easy – Laura Marling
   6. Blue Train – Emmy Lou Harris, Linds Ronstadt and Dolly Parton
   7. Out of the Woodwork – Courtney Barnett
   8. Big Black Road – Thousands
   9. That Knot Unties? – David Karsten Daniels
   10. Mr. Rodriguez – Rayland Baxter
   11. We Are Fine – Sharon Van Etten
   12. Horizons – The Staves
   13. Archie, Marry Me – Alvvays
   14. Friends – 22-20s
   15. Poison Oak – Bright Eyes

The post Lit Links: Tina Refsnes appeared first on Various Small Flames.

Jon: Hi Austin, thanks for speaking with us! How are things with you? And how are preparations for the new album?

Austin: Thanks for getting in touch! I’m doing well. Seattle is a beautiful place in the summer so I’ve been trying to spend a lot of time outside in parks and in the mountains. Things are coming along nicely with preparations for the release. This is the first time I’ve released new music through a label, so it’s been fun to learn about everything it takes to release a record at this scale, and to be intentional about setting things up well. The band in Seattle has been playing together a lot recently. I’m excited to play some more shows and share the songs with people.

How would you describe the themes of When I Was A Child? What did you set out to achieve with it (if anything)? The press release says it “contemplate[s] life, love, and death, faith and doubt, time and space”. Would you agree with that?

The majority of these songs were written during a 3-year season of my life when I wasn’t really playing shows out at all. Most were written without the idea of any upcoming release in mind. During much of this time I was living in Kentucky and teaching, taking classes, and working on my master’s thesis for 12+ hours a day. Songwriting has always been a way for me to engage with the sort of themes mentioned in your question, but I think especially in that season of intense grad studies, these songs became a way for me to maintain a dialog with where I had been and where I was going. It was only during the process of compiling songs for recording that I noticed how they were cohesive, or at least complementary, thematically. Since these songs come from a time of life that saw a lot of change for me personally, I guess they are a testament to that change, growth, and movement.

The lyrics on the album are packed with doubt and questions, yet there seems to be an overarching clarity, as if you now have answers or else have accepted the answers aren’t coming. It got me thinking of a Checkov quote, something along the lines of “art can’t answer questions, but it can help us formulate them correctly”. Does creating your own music help focus serious personal stuff in ways you didn’t expect when starting out?

I like that conception of art by Checkov very much. I studied Russian language and literature for my undergrad, and I think I resonated with the overarching approach of authors like Dostoevsky, Gogol, and Tolstoy to the human condition – precisely because they honestly engaged how fragile our minds are, how limited our understanding can be, and how mysterious it is to be alive and in community with others, let alone a deity. Personally, I’ve always been drawn to songs that contain an element of mystery or open-endedness, songs that invite your mind to inhabit them with your own reality and questions. Songwriting, for me, can be an exercise in engaging difficult questions – whether those are questions of faith and doubt, or questions of what it means to move away from home, or even to share your life with someone else. The songs on When I Was A Child do at times wrestle with what can and can’t be known, and try to make peace with that. But the value of music and art for me is to creatively engage that process, not necessarily to arrive at or broadcast the conclusions.

Kind of related to the above question, but do you think of others when writing? Like, do you have a perceived audience, or do you do what works for you and hope that it resonates? And do you ever think about how your music can help other people with these big questions too?

While I don’t feel like I write songs with any particular audience in mind, and I would probably have written these exact songs even if they didn’t have an anticipated audience at all, I do think the audience is immensely important to the process of revision and performance. I’ve always had an impulse to share a song soon after it’s written with a bandmate or friend, or sometimes even to try it out at a show. I feel like having someone else present and gauging their reaction helps me figure out where I’m at with it personally. But perhaps most importantly, it gives me a sense of whether or not the song feels honest to play in front of others. If it feels honest when I share it, that’s the most meaningful thing for me.

I do hope others find meaning in the songs as well. It’s always really special to know that someone else has connected with a song I’ve written – but exactly how that happens is totally out of my control. Aside from overtly religious or political kinds of writing (such as hymns or protest songs), I’ve never liked the idea that songs are 100 percent “about” x, y, or z. People sometimes ask me what certain songs are about and I never know how to answer that question, it kind-of makes me uncomfortable. Obviously there is the static artifact of a recorded song, and of course songs are written in particular moments with unique intentions and thought processes – but I see songs as living entities that we engage with differently over time, whether we are playing them or listening to them. So the twelve songs on When I Was A Child came from specific moments and events in my life, but how they remain meaningful for me is always changing. That’s the only way I can keep playing them into 2016 and beyond and not feel like a fraud. Insofar as people listen to the lyrics, I hope they will find meaning in them over time in their own ways. If the songs are helpful with sorting through big existential questions, that’s great. Or sometimes just listening to music as a background to driving or walking through a park is nice too.Where do you get the inspiration for your music? Lots of coverage focuses on your upbringing and religion, but what else inspires you? Do you draw upon the work of other musicians? Or perhaps works of literature?

Well my music is certainly inspired by where I’m from. I think that my upbringing in the US South in a fairly conservative religious community is one reason I’ve taken a lot from writings by the likes of Flannery O’Conner, William Faulkner, and Walker Percy, or from 19^th and 20^th century Russian literature. Generally speaking, one of the most fascinating things to me about music and literature is how people’s sense of place comes to bear on their work. It seems to me that people usually have fairly complicated or conflicting relationships with their homes and upbringings – it’s rarely simple. For me and for many friends that I grew up with, our coming into knowledge of the world and our place in it was infused with religious belief and practice, as interpreted by our families, communities, and churches. There was a lot of beauty and love in that upbringing, and I’m thankful for it, but there are also aspects of evangelicalism that I now find fairly troubling, personally and politically. Songwriting has been one way to work through that, but I wouldn’t say it’s the focus or key inspiration for my music any more than present realities of my life are.

In general, I spend a lot of time listening to records and going to shows in Seattle these days. When I hear or see something great, it always makes me want to be a better writer and performer. I’m inspired by songwriters like Will Oldham, Bill Callahan, Damien Jurado, Chan Marshall, Phil Elverum, and Dan Bejar, to name a few, who have made diverse and compelling songwriting records over the last two decades and are still going. Jason Molina’s songs have been a source of inspiration to me since I first heard Didn’t It Rain at age 17. I never met him personally, but his records are such a gift. It’s been hard to come to terms with his passing.

Do you feel more distant from some of the songs because they were written a few years ago? Or do you feel that they have finally been given the treatment they deserve?

This record has been over two years in the making, between sessions at Archer Avenue Studios with Kenny McWilliams in Columbia, South Carolina and at the Unknown with Trevor Spencer in Anacortes, Washington. Good friends contributed to the recordings in each location (Amy Godwin and Nathan Poole in both). So I feel proud of what the record represents as a whole – in a big way because it is representative of my communities of friends and musicians on both ends of the country. I’m glad that it will be coming out on vinyl. Thanks to everyone involved, I ultimately feel like it developed into an appropriate treatment of these songs that I’m excited to put into the world.

Does this feel like the start of a new chapter, and can we expect more Valley Maker material in the future?

I think moving to Seattle in late-2013 was the start of a new chapter for the project. Upon moving here I started to play a lot more shows and I’ve gotten to know some amazing musicians and people in this city and wider region. Amy Godwin, who sang on both Valley Maker records, is living here now and I’m so honored to be able to play with her on a regular basis, along with Drew Fitchette (bass, guitar) and Wendelin Wohlgemuth (drums, percussion). I’m always writing new songs, and I’ll be excited for the time to come to start compiling material for the next record, but now seems like the proper season to inhabit the songs on When I Was A Child. Some of these have indeed been around for a while, but I don’t feel particularly distant from them. What the songs mean to me is always developing, and part of my vision for this project is to interpret the songs differently with the band in various live settings – that helps keep things fresh as well.

I saw that you recently uploaded your self-titled debut album to Bandcamp. Why did you decide to make it available after all this time? And do you still feel proud of those songs, which were written a part of your senior thesis project in 2010?

That record is a strange beast for me. I do feel proud of it as a collection of songs, and I see it as a foundational moment for this songwriting project. It was the first time Amy and I worked together; it was the first time I wrote mostly on the nylon guitar with alternate tunings; and it was the first time I really tried to give the songs I recorded space to breathe – to only bring to the recording what the songs needed. I had the first record online to download for free for about two years, and it was fascinating to me how people around the world found it and connected with it, with hardly any promotional efforts on my part. The internet has interconnected our lives in strange ways, but I guess that’s not always a bad thing.

As you wrote in your question, that record was written in 2010 for my undergraduate senior thesis project at the University of South Carolina, and it focused thematically on narratives from the Biblical Book of Genesis. So songwriting-wise, it was a momentary, structured focus on stories of beginnings that I had grown up being taught were foundationally true. For me it was both an academic and personal project to look at them in a new light by focusing on their humanity and mystery. But as years went past, and particularly as I moved to Seattle and actually started to play music regularly again, it felt increasingly strange for these to be the only songs people could access from the project. I didn’t want Valley Maker to be pigeonholed as a sort-of “Bible songs” conceptual project, because for me it had already evolved far beyond the thesis record into a general songwriting project. All that being said, I am still happy for people to be able to access that record. It just seemed appropriate to bring it back in concert with plans for new material to be released. That way 22 and 27 year-old me are both represented.Finally could you name 4 or 5 bands/artists that you’ve been enjoying lately? They can be brand new or from a hundred years ago, whatever you like.

I saw Tinariwen play in Seattle a few weeks ago and it was mind-blowingly good. I’ve been trying to learn as much as I can about guitar-based music from Africa over the last few years, and it was really incredible to be in the presence of that style of playing. I’m really moved right now by the work of Sidi Toure and Boubacar Traore, who are both guitarists and singers from Mali. I’ve been a big fan since Michigan, but Sufjan Steven’s latest record was nearly the only thing I listened to for several months – just incredible songwriting. My most listened to record of the last two years is probably Joanna Newsom’s Ys; it’s a gift that keeps giving. I’ve also been really enjoying Chad Vangaalen’s last two records. Finally, my friend Chris Staples in Seattle is a wonderful songwriter; we’ve played some fun shows together recently and I love his latest record. Sorry, that’s more than five.

When I Was A Child will be released on the 25th September. You can (and definitely should!) pre-order it now via Brick Lane Records. We’ll get a full review up nearer to release. You can read our review here.

The post Interview: Valley Maker appeared first on Various Small Flames.

Illustrated by Joe Sumner, the book charts Wyld’s life, from hearing Aussie fishermen stories aged six to her grown adult self. From the moment her brother is brought the jaws of a bronze whaler by Father Christmas, Wyld becomes preoccupied with sharks. The captivation is not helped when she discovers a book on shark attacks and falls in love with Rodney Fox‘s “salty eyes” and look which said “the whole thing was just fine”.

Back in London Wyld finds obsession continuing, scouring the Sydenham library for shark books while plagued by a fear which makes baths difficult and forces her to sit with all appendages safely on-board the sofa. An ill-advised viewing of Jaws cements her mindset before the family return to Australia and encounter more sharks in a variety of situations (imaginary and otherwise).

What this simplification of the plot leaves out are the small details of familial life squeezed into both the writing and illustration, the astute observations and interactions from Wyld’s juvenile viewpoint which reveal what the book is really about. Wyld’s father, the pale Englishman, often cuts a lone figure, isolated in London by work and wine and in Australia by layers of clothing and high-factor sun-cream, while her mother floats with Wyld in the pool at night because “she is awake anyway”. When Wyld’s older brother begins “linger[ing] in doorways with a blank look on his face”, and returning home cut and bruised, the home is loaded with tension yet remains cryptic to Wyld, and by extension, us. Be they adolescent anxieties, genuine enduring depressions or just good old fashioned existential ennui, the emotions of the adults remain alien, unknowable and for the most part hidden, present only as dark, lingering shapes and ominous choppy wake.

Indeed, this sharks-as-emotions allegory can be extended further than sadness. From her father’s well-meaning day trip to ‘Vic Hislop’s Killer Shark Show’, to her encounter with an uncomfortably comic doctor, pretty much all of Wyld’s interactions are surrounded by the unseen forces of love and loss. Sumner’s artwork highlights this paradoxically by adding photo-realistic sharks and wounds to his otherwise simple drawings, beasts which often stalk Wyld when, consciously or otherwise, she is considering losing a loved one. Although she doesn’t quite understand it yet, she is thinking about love through its most illuminating prism – the loss of it. She is thinking about death.

While this morbid idea is true and central to the plot, it would be naive and unfair to dwell on it without noticing that, amongst it all, life not only goes on but flourishes. Wyld is never caught by the shark, nor is her brother or mother or father. She might have felt ill examining the colossal White Pointer at Vic Hislop’s museum but the next day she was braver in the sea. Our relationship with sharks is changing, with The Discovery Channel and National Geographic and the seemingly monthly event of ‘Shark Week’ beaming out pro-shark propaganda in which deep-tanned marine biologists preach education and understanding and love. Similarly, the message from Wyld seems not so much ‘LOOK OUT LIFE WANTS TO EAT YOU!’ but rather ‘life could eat you, sure, but such occurrences are exceedingly rare and even then you can poke it in the eye and escape to the hands of kind strangers who prod your guts back into your body’. In other words, learning to accept the atavistic, bone-level violence and pain as something natural, unaware and worthy of careful respect. Its strikes are few and far between, and even then, it’s nothing personal.

Everything Is Teeth is out now on Jonathan Cape/Random House.

As per usual, we’ve made you a playlist of songs that are related to the book. Nothing too subtle this time, I’m afraid, just plenty of teeth and blood sprinkled with Australians and capped off with the definitive garage-rock  anthem for sharks.

Tracklisting:

1. The Race – Oh Pep
2. Teeth – Bowerbirds
3. Drawn to the Blood – Sufjan Stevens
4. Swim – Surfer Blood
5. I Want Blood – Water Liars
6. Ocean’s Nerves – Songs:Ohia
7. Jaws of Life – Wintersleep
8. Find Me In The Ocean – Will Samson
9. Blood Song – Stupid Loser
10. Everywhere I Go Smells Like Fish – Donovan Woods
11. King Fish – Sun Kil Moon
12. Lurk Underneath – Trouble Books
13. Blood – The Middle East
14. Shark? – Shark?

The post Everything Is Teeth – Evie Wyld & Joe Sumner appeared first on Various Small Flames.

Yowler

“Water permeates the record in all of its guises, in rain and in blood and in sinks, in rivers and seas and oceans, in sheet ice and snow melt and the film over an eye” – The Offer by Yowler gives Maryn Jones a chance to create something intensely personal.

Samantha Crain

“Music has the power to change minds and to nudge humanity down a different path but for the most part I feel like most music just wants to follow the mass around asking what they like and what they want from them. There are bigger things going on, music and art needs to direct attention towards those injustices.” – We chatted to Samantha Crain her forthcoming album Under Branch & Thorn & Tree.

Late Night Music in the Museum

“The evenings showed that museums can be innovative, adaptable and welcoming to all, centres of the community rather than simple tourist novelties…What better way to ensure the survival of an institute than to make it central to the lives and well-being of the people it serves?” – We were left feeling inspired by recent events at the National Museum in Cardiff.

Fevered Press, Fevered Certainty

Cool people cover cool songs by cool bands for a cool zine. What’s not to like? The Epoch Fanzine from Fevered Press, Fevered Certainty.

Right Away, Great Captain

“The journey is an epic one, written in novelistic detail that surpasses the overwhelming majority of albums – tracing the sailor’s time at sea…and his return to land” – Andy Hull’s Right Away, Great Captain release entire catalogue in one anthology.

Harley Alexander

“Just the right blend of luminous and languorous to occupy your headphones during the summer (or dreams thereof)” – Glorious summer vibes from Harley Alexander on Gold Shirt.

Fazed On a Pony

Fox Food Records continue their hot streak with this slice of “raucously rad” indie rock from Fazed On a Pony.

Star Horse

“Keepin’ it dreamy with yearning vocals and a resounding crystalline shimmer” – A few words about ‘Slower Now’ by Star Horse, which premièred on No Fear of Pop earlier this week.

May Roundup mixtape

If you missed the chance to read everything we posted during May, do yourself a favour and catch up with all the cool bands via this handy mixtape.

Introverted Stars

“When I hear Alessia [Cara] valorize her love of staying at home, it feels like an affirmation that my preternatural quietness is a bearable tic rather than a curse. She wants to be alone in her room, and she has the courage to tell it to the whole world” – Molly Long wrote a fantastic piece for The Fader about being introverted and shy… while also being a pop star.

Mark Kozelek Being Offensive Pt. XXVI

“He can use sexually violent language to reduce female critics to the status of groupies, knowing that while male musicians’ misogynist acts are examined for nuance and defended as traits of “difficult” artists, women and those who call them out are treated as hysterics who don’t understand art” – Laura Snapes wrote about her recent run-in with Mark Kozelek for The Guardian…

“Maybe a feminist reimagining of popular music doesn’t just involve putting more women onstage. Maybe it includes creating spaces without stages: where power is fluid, where no one can play god, where art can be shared without elevating artists three feet above their audiences” – …and Sasha Geffen wrote a great piece for Consequence of Sound about Kozelek’s recent behaviour and how he is far from the only example.

Sufjan or ETs?

If you’re like me then you quite like Sufjan Stevens, and you ABSOLUTELY LOVE UFOs and all that weird stuff. Test your knowledge (of either category) with this fun list from Mandala Laura over at McSweeney’s.

Jenny Hval

You can stream the new Jenny Hval album over at the New York Times:

Titus Andronicus

And Titus Andronicus unveiled another track from their forthcoming album ‘The Most Lamentable Tragedy‘:

And Finally… the 8tracks Playlist of the Week

This week’s winner is this gem from Badical Turbo Radness.

The post Week in Review: #4 (1st-5th June) appeared first on Various Small Flames.

Young Jesus

“I think you can confront darkness with sincerity and that the best stuff acknowledges the light that is in the dark and vice versa” – an interview with Young Jesus, chatting about concept albums, life-changing novels & the balance between darkness and light.

Sharon Van Etten

“Heartfelt, brave and benevolent, not exactly an answer but a reassuring hand to hold while you’re working on the question” – You should be excited about the new EP from Sharon Van Etten.

Elvis Depressedly

“Elvis Depressedly will not mend broken bones or cast out demons or have you walking across hot coals. Instead they… offer an achievable version of optimism, one which does not require manic enthusiasm or God-like goodwill but instead a pinch of determination and a firm belief in love” – we get to grips with the new Elvis Depressedly record New Alhambra.

Bells Atlas

“Blending the visceral emotions of R&B and soul with an off-the-wall, avant-garde vibe akin to Dirty Projectors and tUnE-yArDs” – ‘Bling’ welcomes you to the eclectic world of Bells Atlas.

Gay Angel

“The sound of one creative mind expressing itself in the most maximalist way imaginable” – The second floret of Gay Angel’s 100-song bonquet is .

Zee Town and the Dog Boys

“Think Beach House in their sad teenage bedroom years” – the self-titled album from Zee Town and the Dog Boys combines shoegazy fuzz with intimate bedroom pop.

Aisha Badru

“The confessional, angry-but-still-in-love style of all the best break-up songs” – an introduction to the organic folk of Aisha Badru.

Noah Gundersen

“A rousing, textured love song that would be a radio hit in any just world” – we get the first taste of the new Noah Gundersen album with ‘Slow Dancer’.

Ruth & Trudy

“An unorthodox brand of lo-fi pop that blends a laidback hipness with heartfelt naivete” – Still Pond Songs, an album from Ruth & Trudy, out on Slovakian label Z Tapes.

Alynda Segarra

“Blues women foreshadowed a movement of feminists of color that is vibrantly alive today… leaving behind the embarrassing and soul crushing caricatures of women of color that I was fed my whole life” – Hurray for Riff Raff leading lady Alynda Segarra (who we have had the pleasure of talking to) has written a great piece on the feminist legacy blues women for American Songwriter.

The Weather Station

“Country songs are always about driving, journeys, and these sorts of things. I found that these songs were about journeys but not” – Exclaim talk to Tamara Lindeman about Loyalty, the excellent new album from The Weather Station.

Bedroom Pop

“The qualities they share are somewhat intangible, more emotional than sonic, and can be more easily felt than described” – Jacob W. Moore wrote a primer on bedroom pop for the uninitiated, citing bands such as R.L. Kelly, Ricky Eat Acid, Alex G and Foxes in Fiction, as well as the overwhelming influence of the folks at Orchid Tapes. Head to Flavorwire to check it out and then browse our ‘bedroom pop’ tag as further reading.

Sufjan Stevens

“The striking sense of solemnity hangs like a noose around its neck, rugged and impossible to ignore, from the first moment to the last” – A little late to this one, but GoldFlakePaint’s review of Sufjan’s new album is really lovely (and mentions Cormac McCarthy, which is never a bad thing).

King of Cats

DIY Magazine are streaming the new King of Cats album, which will be released on Art Reeks, a joint label that combined Art is Hard and Reeks of Effort…

Barna Howard

…and you can stream the new Barna Howard album at Line of Best Fit.

Bellows

Bellows did a Tiny Desk Concert at NPR!

And Finally… the 8tracks Playlist of the Week

The inaugural winner of this coveted accolade is Ratfriend, with this round-up of the best music so far in 2015:

Be sure to follow us on Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr and 8tracks to keep up to date with the best new music.

The post Week in Review: #1 (11-15th May 2015) appeared first on Various Small Flames.

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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If you are new around here, then we also have round-up mixes from January, February and March.

April Mix from Wake The Deaf on 8tracks Radio.

The post April 2014 Roundup – A Mixtape appeared first on Various Small Flames.

The result was very effective and achieved something which I always find very interesting – the collection of songs seem to have different intentions or goals depending on how closely you listened. On the surface, ‘The Wild Planet’ and ‘Girgore Lese’ are laidback songs to play on a summer’s day, ‘Children of the Future’ a restrained folk song. However, if you delve deeper into the lyrics and the explanation of the album on Bandcamp, you realise that there is further meaning here. Earth Person has a message for us, a hopful message, one which serves as a refreshing antidote to the usual doom and gloom of conservation issues. He suggests a radical change, conventional opinions are to be tossed out for something that is kinder to both nature and humans. His music is a celebration of the world, a celebration which includes human beings just as it includes any other part of the system. It warns that we cannot exploit the planet, but also refuses to delve into cheap finger-pointing and high-horsery.

The next release, Winter Demo, continued the experimentation with electronic and folk sounds to continue this kind ideology. I think it’s fair to say that the folk element is stronger here, with ‘Cold Moon’ sounding like a remixed Fleet Foxes track (I mean that in a good way) and ‘A World You Can Buy’ that comes off somewhere between The Beatles and Of Montreal, a ode to the colourful but restrained sounds of the 60s/ early 70s.

To complete the round-up, Earth Person’s latest release, Spring Demo, is a further evolution of the folk/electronic experiment. ‘When Spring Arrives the Earth Exhales’ is more in the electronic camp, sounding like something Sun Airway might put out. Either side of this are tracks which hark back to an older time, some relaxed, quasi-psychedelic age where no one has to worry about anything.

While the whole of Earth Person’s catalog is probably most suited to the summer, Spring Demo, recorded over a spring break, (unsurprisingly) has definite spring vibes. The opening track gently opens up to quiet vocals reminiscent of Sufjan Stevens, evoking the stereotypical ‘spring’ images of growth and a vulnerable beauty. It is all rather lovely stuff.

The three releases are available on Bandcamp on a pay-what-you-can basis. Each one is an interesting listen that should hopefully make you think a little, even if you don’t quite subscribe to the new-age ideas. All of the wonderful artwork is courtesy of Kenny Cole.

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