Seen as a spiritual successor to Swell Tone’s Summer of Sad comp on Z Tapes, the release features takes on tracks by everyone from Bruce Springsteen and Neil Young to Björk, Mazzy Star and even Mr Rogers. Better yet, all proceeds are going to Homeward Bound Animal Rescue, which gives dogs a second chance at life. So when not support the release and relax in the knowledge that you are helping a good cause too?

The release is ostensibly one of love songs, but such a description belies the depth and ambiguity of emotions on offer. Opening the album, Basement Revolver gloss a layer of melancholy sweetness over Springsteen’s ‘I’m On Fire’, subtle percussion and winding guitar allowing Chrisy Hurn’s vocals to come to the fore. Changing tack completely, Anna McClellan takes on ‘Dear Someone’ by Gillian Welch, transforming the original into a romantic piano song that sounds haunted by a sense of long-lost nostalgia, as if it’s floating across a quiet room from a war-time gramophone.

This diversity continues across the rest of the compilation. Yes these are all love songs, but stylistically no two sound quite alike. From Lucy Stone’s heartfelt guitar ballad (a contemporary update of Bonnie Raitt’s ‘I Can’t Make You Love Me’) to the gentle droning pulse and ghostly vocals of Ora Cogan’s Björk cover, the album twists and turns through styles and emotions, from naked declarations to heart-broken longing to that lingering wistful feeling that’s woven into the fabric of things. There’s no sugary Hollywood sentiment here, rather love in its true, maddening form, so closely related to pain and sadness as to make the distinction obsolete.

The mood is perhaps best captured in Rosie Tucker‘s singular take on Connie Converse’s ‘How Sad, How Lovely’, a track which manages to hold tender beauty and creeping loss in the same hand. “How sad, how lovely,” go Converse’s lyrics. “How short, how sweet / to see the sunset / at the end of a street.” To take notice of the small wonders of the world is to notice their slow dissolution, but to take no notice at all is to already have died.

Sixteen Jackies lift the mood with a bouncy rendition of Pete Townsend’s ‘Let My Love Open The Door’, before Honey Moon arrived with their sultry take on ‘Lovefool’ by The Cardigans. Both tracks come with a technicolour finish, their sounds so lush and textured that you can wrap yourself within them, which juxtaposes well with Porridge Radio‘s stripped back version of Neil Young’s ‘Only Love Can Take Your Heart’. However, despite the track’s stark simplicity, the earnest tone and authentic delivery forms an enveloping texture of its own, radiating warmth and a kind of nostalgic grace.

The collection ends with a a hushed and intimate cover of Mr Rogers song ‘It’s You I Like’ by Ings, Inge Chiles delivering Rogers’s trademark earnestness and sentimentality in a near-whisper. The gently plucked guitar keeps its voice down too, leading to a finale as quiet and peaceful as it is suffused with feeling.

Summer of Love is out now digitally and on cassette, and you can get it from Bandcamp.

The post Summer of Love: A Compilation appeared first on Various Small Flames.

And, of course, being comprehensive is impossible these days, so let us know if we missed your favourite and maybe we’ll add it to the collection.

Peach Club – The Bitch Diaries
(RIYL: punk, rock, lo-fi)

Pet Cemtery & Henoheno & Brittle Brian & Francie Cool – Split
(RIYL: bedroom pop, sad music, lo-fi)

Porridge Radio – Rice, Pasta and Other Fillers
(RIYL: lo-fi, bedroom pop, carbohydrates)

Post-Trash – Volume Two
(RIYL: compilations, bedroom pop, indie rock)

Psychic Shakes – Psychic EP
(RIYL: lo-fi pop, chilled out vibes, down-tempo beats)

Ratbath – Dead Skin Cells
(RIYL: bedroom pop, folk, sad)

Ravetank – Wasting Your Life From 9-5
(RIYL: alternative, pop, lo-fi)

Real Swell – everything else is terrible!
(RIYL: lo-fi, experimental, lo-fi pop)

Rhucle – Rustic Lullaby
(RIYL: ambient, mindfulness, field recordings)

Ryan Tanner – Promised Land
(RIYL: folk, Americana, country)

Ryder Eaton – Peach Pit
(RIYL: folk, lo-fi, experimental)

Saint Clementine – If We Are Falling / I Wish I Knew What You Did Last Summer
(RIYL: indie rock, lo-fi, pop punk)

The Saxophones – If You’re on the Water
(RIYL: ambient folk, dream pop, alternative)

Sea Offs – Sea the Blind
(RIYL: ambient, folk, dream pop)

See You At Home – The Future’s Here and It’s Terrible
(RIYL: indie, emo, dream pop)

Shalash (or, ШАΛАШ) – X
(RIYL: ambient, drone, compilations)

Skittish Arm – The Dog EP
(RIYL: ambient, drone, experimental)

Soccer Mommy – For Young Hearts
(RIYL: bedroom pop, lo-fi, indie)

Svelte – svelte EP
(RIYL: post-rock, noise, shoegaze)

Swell Tone & Z Tapes – Summer of Sad
(RIYL: bedroom pop, sad songs, compilations)

Be sure to check out the previous sections of our favourite free music list here.

The post Favourite Free Music of 2016: P – S appeared first on Various Small Flames.

If any of the above points make you feel a little down, here’s a playlist of every band we featured during September to cheer you up. As always, click the artist name in the tracklisting to be whisked away to the specific post.

Tracklisting:

1. Hidden Driver – LVL UP
2. Death – CHUCK
3. Seskinore – Hiva Oa
4. Shut Out the Light – Tiny Dinosaurs
5. Foothills – Simon Balto
6. Lie 2 Me – Shana Falana
7. annie – moving in
8. A Lonely Road – Jordan O’Jordan
9. Augustine – The Chairman Dances
10. Golden – Mt. Wolf (feat. St. South)
11. I – Slenko & McKeys
12. zszs – rgz
13. Meditations – Tall Ships
14. Tossing & Turning – Saint Clementine
15. Century Woods – Lisa/Liza
16. Clear Section – Spartan Jet-Plex
17. Trancendless Summer – Peter Silberman
18. Where We Began – Tilman Robinson
19. will you?/you will – Fossil Jane
20. Ya w/Me? – Lomelda (from Swell Tone’s Summer of Sad)
21. Soon Soon – Praything
22. Drive – Mere Women
23. See Through – Suzy Callahan
24. Untitled (Slow) – Jana Irmert
25. Beyond the Stars – The Edge Of The Light
26. Northern Arm – Evening Hymns
27. It’s Not Real – Hazel English

You can check out the previous monthly roundups here, and our various other playlists and mixtapes here.

The post September 2016 Roundup appeared first on Various Small Flames.

The week saw the second such collaboration, this time with Philadelphia blog sensation Swell Tone. Curated by Shana Hartzel, Summer of Sad is a ten-song release featuring a range of styles and genres linked by the common themes of being 1) summery, 2) sad, 3) great. Or, as Shana puts it:

“Summer of Sad is about the quiet moments of the hottest season. It’s the warm breeze on a moonlit night and the mellow release of melancholia as you float down the river on an inner-tube in the hot, hot sun. A collaboration between Philly music blog Swell Tone and Slovakian tape label Z Tapes, the compilation combines 10 songs from female artists and female-fronted bands to create a dual atmosphere of summer’s brightness and the depths of longing. As if time were being kept by the creak of an old, back porch swing, the songs sway with an effortless sincerity.”

‘Icebergs’ by Bevelers opens, playing like some mountain hymn for the twenty-first century, while ‘Bad Way’ by Pop & Obachan is a slow, dreamy rock jam that seems caught between light and dark. “You arrived a surprise in the strangest way,” sings Emma Tringali, “what started as hate ended as a beautiful thing”. Lomelda’s glitchy folk rock follows, ‘Ya w/Me?’ insular and downbeat yet also somehow warm in its incredibly human heartbreak:

“So you don’t wanna be a family
You told me
Sitting at the table that my grandparents left for me
I just poured you another glass
Did ya notice
The silence that passed is all that lasts?
Where did ya go?”

Summer Flake’s ‘Shoot and Score’ is a slightly off-kilter rock tune, the vocals sliding over the music in monotone sheets, always threatening to deepen into something more dark or dangerous but never quite following through. ‘bat’ by CBMC’s ÓOR is a submerged bedroom number, the instrumentation rippling like the surface of a pond, while Queen of Jeans’ cover of Roy Orbison’s ‘In Dreams’ is seized by a timeless, romantic melancholy, the dramatic drums and crooned vocals conjuring that perfect tortured state unique to country singers and Hollywood actors.

The second cover, Candace’s rendition of Buffalo Springfield’s ‘Way Home’, is similarly arresting, snaking between fond sadness in the verses and the carefree forgiveness (or at least forget) in the chorus. Mia Loucks follows this with ‘summer’, a song both muffled and bright, as though sung the bottom of a swimming pool, lit electric blue during a sweaty August night. Sarah M.’s ‘t-shirt’ worms its way gradually out from beneath heavy bass, the energy rising across its run-time, before Deer Scout closes the release with ‘Haus’. Half-paced and soft, this is a song for those late summer nights where autumn comes knocking, darkness arriving a little too early, cool damp creeping into the fabric of things. Luckily, Dena Miller’s vocals are the perfect antidote, weaving a blanket in which to wrap yourself, through the night and winter both.

Working as a stellar release in its own right, as well as an introduction to ten acts that will soon be amongst your favourites, Summer of Sad is pretty much the perfect compilation, and a great example of the special things that can happen when enthusiastic people team up and combine their energies.

Summer of Sad is out now and you can get it now from the Z Tapes Bandcamp page, including a rather lovely cassette edition. All digital sales will be donated to Slovakian charity, Esther, who help people live again after domestic abuse.

Cover art drawn by Victoria Engle, colored Caitlin McCann

The post Summer of Sad – Swell Tone & Z Tapes appeared first on Various Small Flames.

This week we welcome Shana Hartzel from the wonderful Swell Tone, who is also the assistant director of Philadelphia’s Y-Not Radio, and hosts the show ‘Aussie Unlocked’ (2nd Fridays, 9-10pm).

Into the Pines

by Shana Hartzel

Follow the playlist below into a path through the woods that you’ll never return from. Like any good hike, it starts off sunny and confident. But, panics as the trail and that sunlight disappear.

Song that reminds you of being somewhere special

The Jungle Giants – Mr. Polite

When I worked my first ever music festival, I was living in Brisbane, Australia. I only knew about three of the acts on the festival bill of 100. Hungry Kids of Hungary was a recommendation I had gotten but their tiny showcase maxed out before I could get there. I wandered blindly into the next silliest named band I saw: The Jungle Giants. As I stepped into the wooden sweatbox of The Zoo, they jumped right into this song. It was arguably the band’s first hit track and immediately swept the whole vacuum-packed crowd into a sequence of pleasurable, almost involuntary jumping. This song marked the first moment I felt fully immersed in a musical experience and became the go-to soundtrack of my happiest memories of Brisbane.

Song with a food in the title

Smokes – Lemonlime

This song riiiiips from beginning to end. It matches its name in acidity and really sinks its teeth into those guitar lines. The Oh Hi Collective just put out the track a bit ago on their second compilation that’s brimming with artists that deserve to be heard.

Song that reminds you of your favourite film

John Gold – Vampire’s Kiss

I don’t have a favorite anything really so that applies to films as well. But, I do love a good straight-from-the-barrel, stereotypical teen flick. So, I’m subverting the system and going with a song that reminds me of a genre. (Sorry, Jon and Liam ¯\_(ツ)_/¯) I think we can all agree that teen movies (and teen TV) are a great place to discover new music as the audience is a cross between receptive to new things and constantly consuming. Somehow, this song also fits all of the teen movie stereotypes as well. In Gold’s smooth hum, it’s suffers through passion howling words you are right for thinking you can’t understand. “Siri Guru Devay Nameh” is a healing mantra used during yoga that loosely translates to “I bow to the great, unseen wisdom.” It’s a saccharine love song complete with crickets and and I still love it.

https://soundcloud.com/vagrantrecords/john-gold-vampires-kiss

Song that sounds like the prehistoric world

Young Men Dead – Courageous

My first thought on this was something tropical with a lot of drums and then I knew exactly which track I had in mind. This band doesn’t exist anymore. In fact, I think they only existed for quite a short time and called it quits just as they started to pick up steam. But this song has a clear heartbeat and drive that for some reason reminds me of the land before time.

Song that makes you want to smash things up

Violent Soho – Covered in Chrome

Wow. If this doesn’t make you wanna smash things or at least violently thrash about, I honestly don’t know what will. The verses give you a breather so you can regain your sanity.

Song with an animal in the title

Shannen Moser – dog

It’s short and not too sweet but those colliding guitar lines and sing-a-long chorus make it the perfect tune for a night drive through the city.

The Kossoy Sisters – In The Pines

Courtney Barnett put this song on a playlist she made for a radio interview I did with her back in 2014. It sent me down the rabbit hole of the song’s undetermined origins. This 1956 version featuring guitar work from Erik Darling is one of the first recordings of the tune. Nirvana also sang a version of the same song on their 1993 MTV Unplugged special. Something about this haunting melody in close, exact harmony just makes it dig in further to the creepy crevices of the brain.

For those of you that favour a bit of continuity in life, here’s the whole thing as one neat playlist – Shana’s Mystery Mini EP.

Head on over to Swell Tone for more from Shana, and be sure to pop in again next Wednesday for the next instalment of Mystery Mini Mix.

The post Mystery Mini Mix: Shana Hartzel appeared first on Various Small Flames.

Hip Hatchet

“Speak[s] of that vulnerable core at the heart of every man, and the desperate, ridiculous attempts to suffocate it with cigarette smoke or drown it in whiskey or cover it over with scars”- Philippe Bronchtein weaves timeless folk tales about the vanity and pride of tough guys who have been on the road too long.

Frog

“The U S of A in eleven songs – quirky, joyous, breathless, exhausting, addictive, heartbreaking and downright weird, accelerating towards a distant horizon while keeping its eyes firmly on a halcyon past that sure seems like it should have been more fun.” – some words about Kind of Blah, the excellent, endlessly quotable album from Frog out now on Audio Antihero.

The Modern Folk

“Folk songs don’t require banjos and fiddles, it’s something a little deeper than that” – some bona fide folk music from The Modern Folk.

Kathryn Joseph

“A simple album about things so complicated that it’s almost impossible to put them into words” – we used Marilynne Robinson to describe what makes Kathryn Joseph’s Bones You Have Thrown Me and Blood I’ve Spilled so special.

Island Eyes

“Confronts the uncertainty of every life, admitting his fear about pretty much every possible scenario while finding solace in the fact that this uncertainty binds us all” – The self-titled album from Derek Janzen’s Island Eyes is an epic metaphor for your everyday quests.

Adam Stafford

“Could quite easily make solid, radio-friendly, painted-by-numbers pop music that would be lapped up by the undiscerning masses, but instead endeavours to make innovative, progressive music” – Adam Stafford’s new single ‘Atheist Money’ bodes well for his forthcoming album on Song, By Toad.

Bobby’s Oar

“If you placed Nana Grizol, The Front Bottoms and The Hotelier in a blender and seasoned them with acoustic guitars, throaty emo vocals and the odd mathy flourish…” – The Weeds in Your Garden by Bobby’s Oar is a passionate, defiant slice of pop-punk-folk.

Debris Slide

“Lo-fi rock music that sits at a crossroads between shimmery shoegaze, oddball experimentalism and early nineties noise pop” – some noisy, deranged pop songs from Nottingham’s Debris Slide.

Women in Music Journalism

‘“What’s the big deal? You’re a groupie.” She replied, “I’m a woman who writes about rock and roll.” His answer: “Same difference.” Groupies have proved an enduring stereotype of women’s participation in rock: worshipful, gorgeous, and despised.‘ – Anwen Crawford explains why the world needs female rock critics in The New Yorker.

Spotify: a Good Thing?

“As both an independent musician and a music fan, I’m here to give you a new headline: I believe Spotify is saving the industry” – David McMillin of Fort Francis writes for PopMatters on how Spotify might not be as bad as some would have you believe. We don’t know what to think anymore…

The State of the Music Industry (or, Goodbye Thrash Hits)

“It still pains us to see other, larger organisations dumping content online with little thought to the medium they’re working in or the audience they’re speaking to” – Thrash Hits went on an indefinite hiatus with this closing piece on the state of music industry and journalism in 2015.

Henry Demos / Lewtrakimou / Nice Legs

“I could be wrong here but I have a theory that people want to make loud music everywhere in the world” – START-TRACK spoke to Henry Demos & Lewtrakimou about Nice Legs, solo work and the South Korean music scene.

Fields / Molina

Another week, another great Jason Molina tribute article over at Common Folk Music, this time courtesy of Jeffrey Fields of The Morning River Band. Be sure not to miss the cover of ‘Whip-Poor-Will’ while you’re there.

Casiotone For The Painfully Alone

“I was pretty much always nervous in those days. The memories of my awkward, fidgety & depressed early 20’s have come rushing back to me, leaving me feeling awkward, fidgety & depressed all over again” – Owen Ashworth, now of Advance Base, came across an old CD of a radio session he did as Casiotone For the Painfully Alone back in 2001. Check it out on Bandcamp.

HI54LOFI’s Mix Tape Radio

Jeremy over at HI54LOFI posted episode 55 of his Mix Tape Radio series and it’s brilliant as usual.

Swell Tone’s MEGA SUMMER BABES

The cool people over at Swell Tone have put together a great summer playlist which should see you set for the coming months.

And Finally… the 8tracks Playlist of the Week

It’s this one by Annievain. I stumbled across it and it’s really dreamy and cool.

we’re changing from annievain on 8tracks Radio.

The post Week in Review: #3 (25-29th May) appeared first on Various Small Flames.