You might know Jude Lilley as part of London-based psych-pop outfit Moreish Idols, but after a strange experience during the pandemic lockdown, he is now setting out solo for brand new project Crook Decker. Debut full-length Graffiti Lagoon will be released later this month via Seb Wildblood’s acclaimed label all my thoughts, and Lilley has put out single ‘Beacon’ to give a taste of the unexpectedly humid, tropical tones of a release which reimagines Bermondsey as a bayou. “It was during an insanely hot, pandemic summer in 2020 that my astro-turfed terrace became an oasis,” as Lilley explains. “The world was getting sick, Peckham was a desert, and London was a swamp, but somehow, up there, I was protected from it all. I began to write through the eyes of Crook Decker, a lonesome swamp dweller who swears by the superficial mantra ‘ignorance is bliss’ as he trots through his environment, refusing to take in the real world around him.”

Graffiti Lagoon will be released on the 12th November via all my thoughts and you can pre-order it now.

G1rldad – Biter

“kissing on the bruise / that reminds me of you / and where you left your love,” sings G1rldad on new single ‘Biter’. Based in San Luis Obispo, California, the project makes an emotive style of indie rock in the vein of Sadurn, and the new track is the ideal introduction to their work. A song delivered with a certain level of restraint, built from a tender hush that is never quite punctured, but not lacking any force of feeling as a result. Because within the intimate style the vocals emerge with a confessional conviction, speaking to the private intimacies of queer love as though to reinforce their joy and meaning.

Honey I’m Home – Insecure

“Operating at the intersection of shoegaze, indie rock and post-punk” was how we described the work of Dutch band Honey I’m Home back in March, with single ‘Wishful Thinking‘ using shadowy textures and visceral energy to tap “into ethereal moods without sacrificing a certain emotional immediacy to achieve a cathartic sound.” Described by the band as a song “about the notion that carefree innocence doesn’t exist,” new single ‘Insecure’ dials up this cathartic element even further. A song which rallies against the patriarchal structures of society with both fury and something more hopeful, its soaring crescendos playing like a wish for a better version of the present, where everyone is free to live and move the world without fear.

‘Insecure’ is out now and available from the usual places.

Joyer – Favorite

Joyer‘s new album On the Other End of the Line… was created in novel conditions for the duo, siblings Nick and Shane Sullivan working through separation, loneliness, post-tour blues and the perpetual uncertainty around the purpose of making music. Previous singles like ‘Glare of the Beer Can‘ and ‘At the Movies‘ suggested potential escapes from this slow crush of life, but with the album now out via Julia’s War Recordings, the Sullivans have returned with new single ‘Favorite’ which takes a slightly different approach. Because instead of distracting themselves or dreaming of different worlds, the song sees the pair confront the frustrations of making art in a world of short attention spans and a thousand new acts a minute, emerging not with dismay but instead a regained conviction. Because, as the title suggests, making music is their favourite thing to do despite all the associated baggage, and On the Other End of the Line… is a testament to that undying passion.

Watch the visualizer by Nara Avakian below:

On the Other End of the Line… is out on the 24th October via Julia’s War Recordings and you can pre-order it now from the Joyer Bandcamp page.

Lia Kohl – Voting Line, Downtown Chicago

Back in October we introduced Various Small Whistles and a Song, the new album from Chicago-based composer Lia Kohl which takes inspiration from the Ed Ruscha work of a similar name to use a series of ostensibly humble tracks to evoke larger social situations and spaces. “The result is an attempt to convey the subtle textures of life in a way that feels at once incidental and carefully curated,” we wrote, “and one that ultimately adds up to something far greater than the sum of its parts.” With the record coming in a couple of weeks via Dauw, Kohl has shared new track ‘Voting Line, Downtown Chicago’, which, as the title suggests, was recorded while waiting to vote in 2024. “The person in front of me began whistling, and the sound carried through the marble lobby, adding levity to our collective anxious solemnity.” A track only a minute long but loaded with all the context of society and history, the sonic equivalent of Frederick Wiseman’s Cinéma vérité.

Lydia Luce – Belly

We’ve covered a couple of singles from Lydia Luce‘s new album Mammoth in recent months, establishing both the style and thematic concerns of a record all about pain and recovery. First ‘Quiet‘, a song, as we wrote, “all about the slow process of learning to not only tolerate silence but embrace its power within a noisy world.” Then ‘Ephemeral‘, a duet with Luke Sital-Singh which used strings, winds, piano, viola and cello to create a sound which rises towards almost classical peaks. With the album out now, Luce has shared a new single ‘Belly’. The first song written for the album, it is a fitting choice to celebrate the release. A track which originated in the depths of a period of suffering yet nevertheless asserted the potential of recovery, as though in some way instigating not only the rest of the record but also the path back to health Luce’s life would take. “This song is about being more than the state of my physical body,” she explains, as well as “being patient with ourselves as we heal.” Watch the video by by Jason Lee Denton and Aliegh Shields below:

Mammoth is out now and available from the usual places.

paer – Power Lines

LA duo paer have introduced themselves this year with a couple of singles, showing off a style which utilises layered vocals and shimmering guitars to evoke nostalgic soundscapes full of texture and light. To close out their debut year, paer have released ‘Power Lines’, the second track on a double single which does far more than establish the project’s tone. Delve into the hazy richness of the sound and you’ll find there’s an entire world beneath the surface, exploring ideas of grief and mourning with real nuance. The aftermath of loss, the song suggests, is a delicate balance. A push and pull between the past and the future where the seeming opposite desires to commemorate and move on must be handled with care. But far from championing one over the other, or indeed suggesting any sense of competition, paer instead paint a picture where apparent contradictions can coexist. “To be everything at once, to be nothing, in the same light.”

Rainwater – Bluebelly

Yesturday & Tamarlow, the new record from Rainwater sits at a crossroads between terror and wonder. Written following the birth of lead Blake Luley’s first daughter, the record explores both the anxieties and joys of parenthood, particularly its bewildering early days. All this is delivered in a style Luley sums up as “Arthur Russell fronting a 2000s era indie rock band,” proving the perfect vehicle as it slides from gently dreamy indie pop to taut indie rockers like single ‘Shadow’ which, as we described in a preview “sees the project lean further towards post-punk than ever before.” Today we’re focusing on ‘Bluebelly’, a lush and romantic look at the “devoured days” of a new baby which captures the record’s ethos perfectly. As Glen Boudin’s perceptive liner notes put it: “Becoming a parent is scary, a radical recontextualization of your entire life, but it’s also a beautiful, mysterious encounter with infinite love.”

Snocaps – Heathcliff

It can be easy to forget Katie and Allison Crutchfield started out their careers in collaboration, the Alabama twins winning acclaim in the beloved yet short-lived P.S. Eliot before going onto bigger things with Waxahatchee and Swearin’ respectively. So it is extra satisfying to see things come full circle with the surprise announcement of new project Snocaps. Comprised of the Crutchfields plus MJ Lenderman and Brad Cook, the project offers a new vehicle for them to explore the overlaps and divergences of their different solo paths. Their self-titled album shadow dropped via ANTI- on Halloween so there’s plenty to dig into, but where better to start than a track named after everyone’s favourite orange cat?

Tim Heidecker – Alone Until I’m Home

Last month we introduced Passages: Artists in Solidarity with Immigrants, Refugees, and Asylum Seekers, coming this December via Western Vinyl in support of Texas-based organisations, American Gateways and Casa Marianella. Produced and organised by Emilie Rex and Rick Alverson in response to the precarity and cruelty of the present moment,” we wrote, “Passages is a new project which asked artists to write and record a song in a place that feels like home.” A huge range of artists are involved, with the offerings from Alan Sparhawk and Benjamin Booker released as early singles to hint at the compassion and solidarity of the release. Now Western Vinyl have unveiled Tim Heidecker‘s similarly heartfelt ‘Alone Until I’m Home’. The compilation’s closing track and in many ways an embodiment of its message, the song is a lucid, sincere ballad for all those travelling or displaced, be they hoping to return home or else find a new place which might, in time, come to feel like one.

Van Chamberlain – Miracle Drug

Over the coming months, Brooklyn‘s Van Chamberlain will be sharing their second album As Far As the Eye Can See, a planned ‘waterfall release’ where a new single is shared month by month until the entire thing is released. Oh and five two-song cassettes will drop in-sync with the singles and videos too. For now, we have our first taste of the record with ‘Miracle Drug’, a lush track pitched somewhere between the dreamy haze of dream pop and something more jangly and bright. The result is decidedly bittersweet in nature, a nascent crush brought to life in all of its longing and shimmering potential. Where the line between melancholy and possibility is porous and the world itself feels new.

Watch the video below, conceived, directed and edited by Ricky Lewis with cinematography and color by Tony Carter and production support by David Olmsted:

‘Miracle Drug’ is out now and available from Bandcamp. As Far As the Eye Can See is coming soon.

The post Weekly Listening: November 2025 #1 appeared first on Various Small Flames.

2nd Grade – Favorite Song
Adeline Hotel – Lightning
Adrianne Lenker – Cradle
Allison’s Gate – Traces
Anna McClellan – Heart of Hearts
Advance Base – Christmas in Nightmare City
Badlands – Slow it Down
Bambara – José Tries to Leave
The Beths – Whatever
Bodega – Jack in Titanic
boygenius – Me & My Dog
Camp Cope – UFO Lighter
Campdogzzz – Sorceress
Cave People – I Shall Believe
Damien Jurado – Percy Faith
Dead Painters – Fool on Fire
Dear Nora – Simulation Feels
Dehd – Dying For
Devon Welsh – Vampires
Diva Sweetly – Detox Island
Doe – Heated
Dusted – Outline of a Wolf
Field Report – Every Time
Frankie Valet – Something to do with a mouth
Gia Margaret – Birthday
Goodbye Max – Old Photos
Good Good Blood – Cannot Be Yours Forever
Gorgeous Bully – Patience
Great Health – Lazarus
Hop Along – How Simple
Hour – At the bar where you literally saved me from fatal heartbreak 
Houses – Fast Talk
Hovvdy – Brave
Hypoluxo – Kentucky Smooth
IAN SWEET – Hiding
Kal Marks – Today I Walked Down To The Tree, Read A Book, And When I Was Done, I Went Back Inside
Katy Kirby – Juniper
Kevin Morby & Waxahatchee – Dark Don’t Hide It
Kississippi – Easier to Love
Kraków Loves Adana – The Day the Internet Died
Lala Lala – Destroyer
Lisa/Liza – Tea Kettle
lowly loverboi – Graveyards in Space
Lucy Dacus – Yours & Mine
Mike Pace & the Child Actors – Escape the Noise
Miranda Winters – The Futuristic District
Mitski – Nobody
Moonface – Minotaur Forgiving Pasiphae
Moon Racer – Friendly Ghost
Nap Eyes – Every Time the Feeling
Nice Try – Micah
Nicole Dollanganger – Uncle
No Age – Drippy
Oceanator – Mistakes
Of The Valley – Ride Alone
Pale Kids – St. Theresa
Pat Moon – I Belong
Pema – Depend
Petal – I’m Sorry
Pink Navel – born-100.dev
Pizza Girl – Body Part
Protomartyr – Wheel of Fortune
Remember Sports – Dripping
Restorations – Nonbeliever
Rivulets – Everything Goes
Ryan Von Gonten – Fabrique
Sabriel’s Orb – Holding
Saccharine – Pumpkin Guts
Sam Moss – Snap
Sara Renberg – Take the Summer Off
Sobs – Sundae
Spartan Jet-Plex – Sweet
Strange Ranger – The Wires
Sun June – Slow Rise II
Swearin’ – Dogpile
Talk, Tired Thanatoid – Everything’s Cool
Tomberlin – Any Other Way
Trace Mountains – Salty Sweet
Trust Fall – Wild Fire/Flowers
TVU – All For Nothing
Weakened Friends – Blue Again
Whitney Baleen – Rainer
Why Bonnie – Stereo
Wild Pink – The Seance on St. Augustine Street
wished bone – reasons
Yellowfront – Cool Breeze
Young Jesus – For Nana
Young Statues – Somebody Else
Yowler – Where Is My Light?

If you missed it, we have also posted our favourite albums list, so check that out too.

The post Favourite Songs of 2018 appeared first on Various Small Flames.

Thanks for being with us.

Advance Base – Animal Companionship

Run For Cover Records

““The songs are intended to be a comfort for folks going through their own tough times,” Ashworth explained in an essay for Talkhouse. “Commiseration has always been a guiding principle of my songwriting.” Love need not be hugs and hearts and kisses, and loyalty does not necessarily mean hanging in a relationship beyond all reason. But love is loyalty, and Owen Ashworth has been, and seemingly always will be, loyal to those who need it most.”

REVIEW / BUY

Basement Revolver – Heavy Eyes

Sonic Unyon / Fear of Missing Out Records

“An expansive and spacious sound that’s lit up with a slow-burning emotional resonance, centring around Hurn’s impassioned vocal delivery. Their music combines the magnitude and granular glitter of shoegaze, the personal songwriting of bedroom pop and the cathartic noise of 90s indie rock. [Basement Revolver] play a double game of big and small, switching from quiet personal sentiment to big bombastic broadcast, often within the same song.”

REVIEW / BUY

Benjamin Shaw – Megadead

Audio Antihero

“For all the frustration and (self-)loathing in show, there’s also something else. Perhaps the defining characteristics of Shaw’s music is its ability to transcend its own themes. He may be singing about hating his job, about going nowhere fast, but in doing so colours these things with meaning. To create art is to communicate, and as such the songs represent the antithesis to their own concerns, the simulated happiness and artificial connection punctured through their ironic presence.”

REVIEW / BUY

Campdogzz – In Rounds

15 Passenger

“[Closer ‘Sorceress’] at first might seem a slightly strange segue for a final track soon straightens out into an intuitive sense of logic and belonging, as though the album-long teeter on the edge of some epiphanic transformation has finally fallen headlong at the last moment.”

REVIEW / BUY

Damien Jurado – The Horizon Just Laughed

Secretly Canadian

“While it might be tempting to view [Jurado’s] 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 [Joseph Billie] 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.”

REVIEW / BUY

Dear Nora – Skulls Example

Orindal Records

“You can be anyone, we are told, do anything, though only superficially, a multitude of simulations all working toward to same goal, the means to the end of shifting units and making money. Dear Nora’s music attempts to undermine this by playing the same game, crafting an unreal reality of their own to overlay the other. And, by neutering the money-making end, they in effect invert capitalism’s technique, reestablishing the means (ie. living) as the purpose. Yes, Skulls Example might be a simulation, but it is one of the most meaningful and rewarding you could hope to find.”

REVIEW / BUY

Field Report – Summertime Songs

Verve Forecast

“The summertime theme might conjure ideas of cloudless, uptempo good times, but to limit Field Report’s use of the season to a more poppy sound is to miss the deeper point […] We cannot rely on grand promises or paradigm shifts. Rather, we must commit to the slow, considered process of letting go and working through, of deciding who we were and who we want to be. In these times, we’d be foolish to trust that will be enough, but belief in small moments of agency and human connection is more productive than misplaced prayers for epiphany.”

REVIEW / BUY

Free Cake For Every Creature – The Bluest Star

Double Double Whammy

“free cake for every creature don’t make sad songs exactly, usually tending toward a kind and hopeful feel. Yet there is something intangible about them, a strange sensation that weaves its way into quiet moments, like a kind of everyday poetry or nostalgia that we all recognise but don’t have a name for. The case in point is the penultimate song, ‘be home soon’, which somehow portrays a subway ride home as something beautiful and magical.”

REVIEW / BUY

Frog – Whatever We Probably Already Had It

Audio Antihero

“Contains lines of total sincerity that feel disarming in the face of what has come before, as though the truth of things slips out in quiet whispers to oneself, the party over and room emptied out. The truth being the soul-shearing reality of the American Dream, the tragicomedy of understanding your dreams and desires to be complete fictions while leaning on them with all of your weight.”

REVIEW / BUY

Gia Margaret – There’s Always Glimmer

Orindal Records

“The palette of Gia Margaret is built from shades of sadness—loss, regret, wistful longing, the arresting trap of nostalgia and plain old hurt—though again and again Margaret provides a counter-shade, as though the darkness’ true purpose is merely to highlight the warm, weak glow within. Because, while people up and leave, and time is certainly no kinder, Gia Margaret is here to prove that value is inherent in life itself, meaning and fulfilment not in spite of troubles, but within them. No matter how dark, there is always glimmer.”

REVIEW / BUY

Haley Heynderickx – I Need to Start a Garden

Mama Bird Recording Co.

“I Need To Start a Garden is the perfect album for the onset of spring. It’s all about growth and the hope of new beginnings, but also doesn’t shy away from the necessary hard work that makes such growth possible. It’s a reminder that plants are not the only things that need to be tended and cared for, but also that they’re not the only things that can flourish and bloom either.”

REVIEW / BUY

Lisa/Liza – Momentary Glance

Orindal Records

“The context [of bereavement] is important not because we wish to suggest some ‘romantic’ mythology behind the record (indeed, the songs were written before the tragedy occurred), or that there is magical healing power in the making/consumption of art. Rather, Momentary Glance is a symbol of the power of community, generosity in the face of grief, and the album’s use of placidity over bombastic melodrama is indicative of such an authentic spirit.”

REVIEW / BUY

Long Neck – Will This Do?

Tiny Engines

“Despite the difficult circumstances, there is also a sense that things will be okay, that our narrator has gained the sense of strength and self-reliance necessary to move on. Or rather, is working toward being strong enough and self-reliant enough, with this album being the furthest possible reach forward toward that place. Of course, it’s likely full strength and self-reliance will never be achieved, but it’s the strive toward those ideas that is the most important. Of course this will do.”

REVIEW / BUY

Lung Cycles – S/T

Lily Tapes & Discs

“The placid natural flow continues whether we voice our concerns or not, and nothing in this external sphere is working to exacerbate our feelings. In this way, Lung Cycles reveals anxiety and melancholy to be no more than parasites of the human psyche, forces all too willing to consume us should we centre our existence within our own heads, but soon found dead in the vacuum of natural quiet.”

REVIEW / BUY

Monarch Mtn – days of sleepwater

Self-released

“Darkness breeds darkness, and allowed to fester can become a self-perpetuating thing that metastazises unto ubiquity. Here, Monarch Mtn do not pretend that suffering is abating, or can be dispelled by a mere shift in perspective, but rather choose to fight the phenomenon. days of sleepwater exists to fight the creeping dark, and not embrace it.”

REVIEW / BUY

Naps Eyes – I’m Bad Now

Paradise of Bachelors

“Behind the heavy-lidded blasé exterior lies a rich and tangled inner life, an invitation to fall into the folds of Chapman’s brain and watch his thoughts pass by […] Those with enough curiosity or desire can try to arrange the Nap Eyes lines into a magical formation, wrestling with the existential questions in the hope that they will be the first to figure it all out. The rest can take a back seat and let the Big Stuff drift around them, finding comfort in the fact that there are things bigger than us, and beauty in the understanding that they are beyond our grasp.”

REVIEW / BUY

Remember Sports – Slow Buzz

Father/Daughter Records

“Sincerity could be said to represent Slow Buzz as a whole, though sincerity not as some sentimental force rather a commitment to what feels true, no matter how messy and conflicting. There’s something in the Remember Sports story at the heart of this earnestness, the possibility of progressing without sacrificing an entire ideal, of reincarnation where one returns not as some different creature entirely, but a new version of oneself. A truer version, at least for now.”

REVIEW / BUY

Sun June – Years

Keeled Scales

“Years is a record shaped and propelled by the gentle forces of the world, currents in the substrates of the earth and life itself, invisible yet profound, capable of changes both minor and major […] a number of the tracks returning to a repeated phrase, cyclical patterns that rise in intensity like incantations, or else echo out into the fabric of the sound.”

REVIEW / BUY

Swearin’ – Fall Into the Sun

Merge Records

“We live in a time obsessed with the past. Our dreams now look backwards instead of forward, our deepest wish not for some utopian future but rather a return to an unreal past, one sanded of all trials and troubles by nostalgia and the constant passing of time. With Fall Into the Sun, Swearin’ rebel against such a mindset, redirecting our hopes toward the future once more, and compelling us to pay attention to the present while we still can.”

BUY

Talons’ – After Talons

Self-released

“Talons’ capture the futility and hopelessness of a content life in a creaking hyper-capitalist society, an existence often devoid of meaning and full of shame at the hypocrisy in caring about the world but doing little to change it. But it’s also kind-hearted too, its glowing core of humanity somehow comforting despite the heavy subject matter. In other words, there’s no optimism here, but there is hope.”

REVIEW / BUY

Valley Maker – Rhododendron

Frenchkiss Records

“Built upon a thematic bedrock of faith and religion, but anyone who baulks at the R-word need not worry, [Valley Maker] is uninterested in creeds and doctrine, instead exploring metaphysical mysteries that we can all wonder about […] Crane is not foolish enough to offer answers, though his words and voice work as a reassuring balm, even while acknowledging the ambiguity and turmoil that surely awaits. ”

REVIEW / BUY

The Washboard Abs – Lowlight Visions

Antiquated Future

“Clarke Sondermann’s music has always been intimate, but this album treads deeper into this ideal than any of his previous work. In the circumstances, it would be relatively easy to make an album of sad songs, but it’s a brave artist who takes the very personal worry and suffering and uses it to build something that’s this complex and multifaceted, vulnerable but not hopeless, forgoing nihilistic dejection in favour of a strange kind of love, an appreciation of what stands to be lost.”

REVIEW / BUY

The World Without Parking Lots – Seventh Song Counts the Engines

Self-released

“Seemingly simple but rendered dense and cryptic with the addition of Parcell’s poetry […] Seventh Song Counts the Engines is a beautiful collection of songs, one which somehow makes a bold statement in a circuitous whisper, deceptively complex instrumentation and ambiguous lyrics capturing decidedly unambiguous emotion.”

REVIEW / BUY

Young Jesus – The Whole Thing is Just There

Saddle Creek

“How do you adopt a more sincere, hopeful position without becoming a flat Sincere, Hopeful Person, and everything that image entails? Young Jesus have put their hope in a spontaneous, endlessly recursive form of questioning, where every hard fought answer only exists to be questioned further. The endeavour might well take a life time, but the prospect of circling closer to the truth is something of a solution in its own right. So, while it’s tempting to think that the true message or meaning of the songs on The Whole Thing Is Just There is always just out of frame, the reality is in fact the other way around. The message of the songs is that meaning is always just out of frame, and that there is no more valuable an enterprise than the constant search outside and beyond.”

REVIEW / BUY

Yowler – Black Dog in My Path

Double Double Whammy

“The writing is vague and affecting, words imbued with an esoteric power that fuses intimate internal thoughts from the corporeal world with something altogether more supernatural. “I bear the mark, I am sigil,” Jones sings, “to the spirits and the sprites, but I promised not to listen and stay in my life.” The natural and supernatural converge on Black Dog In My Path, and Jones has re-purposed Yowler as the conduit between these two dimensions.”

REVIEW / BUY

We’re be sharing our favourite songs, books and Bandcamp name-your-price releases in good time, so keep an eye on the ‘Lists‘ category for those.

The post Favourite Albums of 2018 appeared first on Various Small Flames.

Various Swell Sounds is a collaborative playlist series from Shana Hartzel of Swell Tone, Jon Chin of Cereal and Sounds, and myself. Instead of constantly exchanging tracks amongst each other, we have decided to work together to bring them to more ears. Every month, we will match a selection of our old and brand new favourites to a specific theme, as decided on a revolving basis month by month.

2018 Warped: the final Various Swell Sounds offering of the year, and perhaps of all time. Here, all constraints go out of the window, and instead we present a collection of songs from all styles, sounds and eras that have been with us this year.

If you enjoy 2018 Warped, be sure to check out the other instalments of Various Swell Sounds. You can find those we hosted here, and the others on Swell Tone and Cereal + Sounds.

The post Various Swell Sounds #11: 2018 Warped appeared first on Various Small Flames.

What this translates as is a really nice collection of lo-fi DIY pop songs. Stand-outs include Libbie 2000’s ‘sister saint’ cover, which introduces some crunchy guitar to smooth bedroom pop, and ‘be good’ by thanks for coming, which brings to mind Long Neck.

There are also appearances from WTD fav Tall Friend, who covers Waxahatchee’s ‘Brother Bryan’, bedbug, who provide a take on ‘Troubled Medium’ by P.S. Eliot, and Deer Scout who covers ‘clumsy’ in her usual delicate style.

All 22 tracks are great, so why not make a small donation and check them all out? You’ll probably find your new favourite band in the process. Proceeds of the project will be split between between two great causes: the Standing Rock Sioux of North and South Dakota to help with their protest against the Dakota access pipeline, and the council of American-Islamic relations’ New York chapter, which has a particularly important role given recent political developments.

You can get Long Island Ladies #1 as a name-your-price download from their Bandcamp page. Remember all donations go to great causes! They have also teamed up with our prolific pals at Z Tapes to give the compilation a physical release. Head to the Z Tapes Bandcamp page to order one!

P.S. For more politically motivated music, check out our post to support the Women’s March, and last week’s generous donation from Bandcamp and a whole host of kind artists (many of whom’s individual donations are still ongoing).

The post Long Island Ladies #1 appeared first on Various Small Flames.

The album is a singular vision, a product of Cantor’s hard work during a year spent boarded up in a makeshift studio. The sound is difficult to define, sitting at a crossroads between introspective, lo-fi bedroom pop and catchy energetic power pop. We get the usual guitars and drums, but we also get samples and synths and orchestral strings, all melded together with the hiss and feedback of cassette tapes. This makes for a pretty eclectic record, no two songs quite alike.

This is nicely illustrated on the first two tracks. Opener ‘Heavenly Blues’ is slow and reserved and thick with background ambience, while the second track, ‘Crossed Out’ immediately clears the air, bursting onto the scene with a clean guitar line and heralding the record’s first does of indie rock. This eclecticism continues throughout the album. ‘I’m Not Going to Your Heaven’ is a lo-fi rock song with a slight psych swagger – something along the lines of the less raucous tracks on Titus Andronicus’s debut, ‘Bells Underwater’ is a short and sweet acoustic track and ‘Personal Heaven’ is all jaunty indie pop (akin to something by Telekinesis!).

My current favourite song on Silver Blues is ‘Louder Than Summer, which builds from sad and ghostly beginnings, adding thumping drums and building real emotional intensity. Check it out below:

<a href=“http://thegoodbyeparty.bandcamp.com/album/silver-blues” data-mce-href=“http://thegoodbyeparty.bandcamp.com/album/silver-blues”>Silver Blues by The Goodbye Party</a>

From that slow-build we get another complete change of direction with the chugging guitars and catchy power pop of ‘Disrepair’. Other standouts include ‘Funeral Season’, a super-melancholic dirge, with lyrics like, “I remember you in dreams / you and your twin were still alive / your voice still ringing out on the machine / remnants of a disconnected life”, and the stark and mournful closer ‘White on White’.

Despite the variation from start to finish, Silver Blues is a coherent, complete album that is very much worth your time. You can pre-order the LP nowvia Salinas Records or download it on a pay-what-you-want basis from Bandcamp.

The post The Goodbye Party – Silver Blues appeared first on Various Small Flames.

Radiator Hospital is Sam Cook-Parrott and friends (friends with indie rock pedigree – including members of Waxahatchee, All Dogs and Swearin’), who join together to form a pretty formidable lo-fi rock band.

There are fifteen songs on this album, with not one deserving to have been left out, and the band smash through them in under 35 minutes. Opener ‘Leather and Lace’ sets the tone, with a hectic beginning sweeping you off your feet before you know what has hit you, and this continues through to ‘Blue Gown’, with the space for breath between songs small but welcome.

But this isn’t one of those quick albums that attempts to make you dizzy and smash your eardrums and little else. By ‘Cut Your Bangs’ you realise that there is something sad and sincere in the lyrics, forcing you back to the start to reconsider the opening pair. Once this moment of realisation has occurred, Torch Song spreads its wings into its true form, a mishmash of pop and punk and poetry. Sincerity and honesty set this aside from the usual ‘Let’s Fuck Shit Up’ garage rock bands, and allows Radiator Hospital to achieve something with much greater nuance and depth (while still having fun).

The lyrics are displayed as prose on the Bandcamp page and reading them really helps the narrative of Torch Song to stand out. A tale of love punctuated with joy and regret and depression, the story is highly detailed yet curiously vague, with names and genders left unclear, leaving a You and a Me and the feelings that You and Me always seem to share. The result is something which feels highly personal but could be applied to anyone. It’s highly personal for everybody.

“We walked further than I thought we would. You looked at me like I was your way out, I looked at you, thought I’d never stop lookin’.”

The Torch Song LP is out now on Salinas Records. Order it here!

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