Based in South London, Alice Boyd is a singer-songwriter and sound artist who looks to address our increasingly disconnected position within the wider ecological system. This might be through residences and performances in botanical gardens, travelling to collect field recordings or even making music with plants themselves. As the title suggests, new single ‘Life in Cities’ finds Boyd mourning this separation from nature and pining for a more interconnected way of living. A hushed, reflective folk song which gazes out at its surroundings with a heavy heart. “Life in cities now / sleep no more,” as the opening lines go, “stare out my window / ’til the break of dawn.” Melancholy not as a form of pessimism, but rather a feeling born of knowing what nature could offer us should we let it in. Watch the video by Edith Morris below:

‘Life in Cities’ is out now and available from the Alice Boyd website.

BYLAND – Postcard

BYLAND, the recording project of Albuquerque-born, Seattle-based artist Alie Renee Byland, will next year release a new full-length album Heavy For A While. Latest single ‘Postcard’ gives an insight into what to expect from the release. Mournful but never without hope, the song explores the concept of searching for a place to call home within a world in which things too often fall away. Meagan Grandall of Lemolo sings the last verse before joining Byland for the final chorus, something which elevates the song both stylistically and thematically. “Meagan is someone whose friendship fostered so much of my own growth, and whose music and voice warms and inspires me,” Byland explains. “In the final chorus, we both sing the main melody, doubling each other, which feels almost like a sister comforting another sister in this life of too often ‘goodbyes’.”

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

Jackie West – Tiny Flowers ii

Back in 2022 we wrote about ‘Amelia‘, a single from New York-based songwriter Jackie West which offered a picture of close friendship in all of its persistence and comfort. But working within this warm sound was something more mysterious, dipping beneath the surface fondness to evoke the intangible connections we might share with other people. Released via Ruination Record Co., new single ‘Tiny Flowers ii’ builds upon these foundations, drawing the audience in with tenderness yet remaining distinctively ambiguous in its overall tone. The opening verse’s wistful fondness is undercut by the refrain: “I don’t fall in love like that anymore.” The line complicates the second listen and every one thereafter, its gravity subverting the track’s structure and perspective from what the sound might originally suggest.

‘Tiny Flowers ii’ is out now via the Jackie West Bandcamp page.

Jacob Faurholt – Words Whispered From the Sand

We’ve long admired the work of Jacob Faurholt, most recently with album When the Spiders Crawl and single ‘Madness on the Rise‘. The latter was a song “exploring mental struggles with Faurholt’s characteristically empathetic and understanding style,” as we wrote, [but carrying] a certain starkness too as the electric guitar rumbles with palpable weight, a formidable force bubbling up around fragile vulnerability.” With new album Burn Burn Here out now, Faurholt has shared single ‘Words Whispered From the Sand’, which embodies the record’s foreboding yet tender tone. Faurholt recorded the album at his home studio beneath his children’s bedroom, its hushed quiet as much a practical necessity as anything else. The result feels like being invited into an artist’s home to listen to what comes out in the still hours of the night.

Burn Burn Here is out now and available via the Jacob Faurholt Bandcamp page.

Luke De-Sciscio – Clever Ghost

Heaven, the latest full-length album from songwriter Luke De-Sciscio, felt like the work of an artist finding their true voice. “As though,” as we put it in our review, “having built up momentum across the years, De-Sciscio was able to record an album free of overthinking and overworking, instead tapping into an intuitive flow which charges the songs with a sense of poetic authenticity.” Not one to squander this headspace, De-Sciscio has returned with ‘Clever Ghost’. The stripped-back folk sound splits the difference between warm intimacy and tortured loneliness, playing like the patient confession of a man caught between memories and dreams.

‘Clever Ghost’ is available now on a variety of streaming platforms.

Oh, Rose – Back 2 U

We’ve followed Olympia’s Oh, Rose since the release of their exceptional SEVEN, so it was with great excitement that we saw Olivia Rose and co. have returned with brand new single, ‘Back 2 U’. Their first release since 2019’s While My Father Sleeps, the song shows a newly pop/dance dimension to the Oh, Rose sound. But however changed the style might be, it is the sense of returning which stands out most clearly. “I remember when I wrote this I wondered who/what I was going back to. Songs have a funny way of revealing themselves and we took our time with this one,” Rose explained in an Instagram post. “Right now I’m gonna leave it at back to music, back to friendship, back to y’all in a way that feels lighter than before… I hope this song can be a roadmap to LOVE.”

ask me where I am
the maps they all trace back
back to you

Speedrun – Hysteria

‘Hysteria’ is the new single from Speedrun, the “indie chic” project of New York’s Nina Lüders. Named after the psychological condition that was originally considered unique to women (the word originates from “hystera”, the Greek word for uterus), the song explores what Lüders describes as “the false equivalency of female rage as psychosis, independence as irritability, autonomy as threat.” Beneath the angular guitars and propulsive percussion and indignant backing vocal (“do what the fuck I want!”) lies an uplifting message of female solidarity and empowerment. “This song is for the mothers and sisters in my life who raised me,” Lüders describes, “and taught me to turn my rage into light, compassion, and forgiveness.” Watch the lyrics video by John Filmanowicz below:

‘Hysteria’ is out now via streaming services.

talker – Drag Your Feet

“I’ve said that the songs on my new record are my most honest songs ever,” says Celeste Tauchar of talker of her forthcoming debut album, “but that doesn’t always just mean being honest with others. Sometimes, it means accepting a hard truth for yourself.” This is particularly true of latest single ‘Drag Your Feet’, a song written after the long decline of a five-year relationship. It’s a hooky indie rock song that marbles sadness over the end with a sense of relief in finally admitting the truth, a big messy catharsis that burns a new hopeful path into the future.

‘Drag Your Feet’ is out now via streaming services.

WILDES – heartbreak is silent

Following the release of debut album Other Words Fail Me back in January, Ella Walker’s WILDES is readying a new EP for release next Spring. Titled Subsidence, the record promises to see the Anglo-Irish songwriter and producer return to her roots, recorded at home with the help of long-time collaborator Matt Wiggins. Walker says the EP “centres around the abrupt end of a loving relationship that left me quite devastated and shocked,” and lead single ‘heartbreak is silent’ tackles this theme head on. It’s a pulsing synth pop song with a calm, clear-eyed centre, capturing the strange mixture of strength and vulnerability that follow in the aftermath of heartbreak.

‘heartbreak is silent’ is out now via the WILDES Bandcamp page.

The post Weekly Listening: December 2023 #3 appeared first on Various Small Flames.

San Francisco band Cindy specialise in a dreamy, slo-mo brand of pop music, centred on lead Karina Gill’s distinctive vocals and poetic vision. At the beginning of April, Cindy will release a brand new record Why Not Now? via Tough Love and have unveiled lead single ‘A Trumpet on the Hillside’ by way of introduction. Landing somewhere between Galaxie 500 style slowcore and a half-speed Au Revoir Simone track, the song is a quietly transcendent hymn to the wonder that’s threaded into even the most mundane experiences. “It’s about being in a room with people, the closeness and distance involved in that,” Gill describes. “And it’s about the vividness and grandness (sometimes) of the most ordinary experience.”

En Attendant Ana – Wonder

Back in January we wrote a little about ‘Same Old Story’ by Paris indie pop band En Attendant Ana, taken from their new LP Principia. We described it as “a blend of playful indie pop rhythms and post-punk angles… [that] pitch[es] the listener into a funhouse room of mirrors with only the smooth clarity of Margaux Bouchaudon’s vocals as a guide.” The album is out now on Trouble In Mind and the band have released an animated music video for single ‘Wonder’ to celebrate. A song that explores conflicting emotions of legitimacy, opening gentle and pensive before a motorik beat drops with a clockwork energy, building towards a cathartic close, embodying that weird blend of strength and doubt of trying to do your best but always second guessing yourself. Watch the video by Jérôme Papaphotiou below:

Principia is out now via Trouble in Mind and available from the En Attendant Ana Bandcamp page.

Eric Angelo Bessel – Secret Lake

We’ve written about Laura Mariposa Williams and Eric Angelo Bessel’s Lore City several times in the recent years, with 2021 LP Participation Mystique and last year’s Under Way highlighting the band’s evocative, esoteric style and the manner in which it blurs the physical and metaphysical so seamlessly. The pair set up Lore City Music to facilitate the release of their work, and April sees the imprint release Bessel’s debut solo album, Visitations. Single ‘Secret Lake’ invites us into the world of the record, its slack drift like some sitting bogland but soon deepening into something more. A depth alluring in its own way, beautiful and strange in the manner unique to hidden spaces, allowing the listener to descend through its column while refusing to give anything away freely.

Visitation comes out on 21st April and you can pre-order it from the Lore City Music Bandcamp page.

Foyer Red – Plumbers Unite!

Yarn The Hours Away, the debut full-length from Brooklyn‘s Foyer Red coming this spring on Carpark Records, is described as a collection of short stories—where each track aims to build a fully rendered sense of character and place. Previous single ‘Etc‘ hinted at the depth of such an intention (“exploring,” as we put it, “a mismatched relationship of indistinct philosophical musings and robotic computations.”), and new single ‘Plumbers Unite!’ is no less ambitious. A song which not only uses the relentless trials of a side-scrolling videogame as a metaphor for life’s daily grind, but then imagines the sentience of the console once the power has been cut. “When I was little I was obsessed with my Gamecube, but after entering cheat codes on my Harvest Moon game, I felt sooooooo guilty,” explains Elana Riorda. “I impulsively deleted my game data and later had recurring nightmares about my Gamecube’s anger towards me, something I knew was unrealistic but felt so creepy and real.” Watch the video filmed, edited and directed by Leif Morton below:

Yarn The Hours Away is out on the 19th May via Carpark Records.

Nicolas Krgovich – Front Stoop #2

“For years and years I guess I was lonely / but refused to call it so.” So opens ‘Front Stoop #2’, the first single from Nicolas Krgovich’s Ducks, out next month on Orindal Records. The realisation is prompted by a direct question on the titular front stoop, one the narrator answers simply. Yes, he is lonely. “
To answer a plain question with a plain reply / Feels new to me and good.” What follows is so rooted in specific details it almost feels, paradoxically, like a dream. That weird summer, the smoke, the deserted beach. Tossed pebbles and sand and shells and “things that don’t matter and things to forget.” With Ducks, Krgovich promises to explore how moments are catalogued and remembered via minutiae, and the manner in which complexity of any present is not so much reduced to images but coded in them. “I let them whirl, a little cyclone,” as he concludes at the end of the song. “Living in a world of love.”

Seminar Shadow – Luring (Excerpt)

Seminar Shadow, AKA duo Lucie Vítková and Teerapat Parnmongkol, are preparing to unveil their new release HEATWAVE via Dear Life Records. Recorded on a pair of baby grand pianos during the August 2022 heatwave and comprising of two improvised side-length tracks, the release probes the present for the full weight of the past, exploring how any apparently ‘live’ moment rests upon an unseen foundation of everything which preceded it. “Liveness as in a self-organization in action can’t detach or distinguish from skeleton of memory,” as they explain. “A wave of heat is rinsing out inseparably within this heat, where the liveliness is revealing itself as a part of motion and movement that lives through this instinctual response to the environment around it.” You can hear an excerpt of the opening track ‘Luring’ now:

Shit Present – Voice in Your Head

“It really did come as breaking news to me in 2016 that I am not my thoughts and I might learn to have some agency over them,” explains Shit Present’s vocalist and guitarist Iona Cairns of new single ‘Voice in Your Head’. What they describe as a ‘textbook’ I’ve-been-to-therapy song which serves as the perfect introduction for those unfamiliar with the Bristol outfit’s blend of emo and power pop. Committed to offering honest dispatches from the trials of mental health, wide open in their vulnerability but armed with the power of noisy catharsis. ‘Voice in Your Head’ is sincere in its message, wry in its tone, and ultimately empowered by the realisation that you can learn to live with your thoughts. “I could fucking destroy you or be your best friend,” sings the titular being in the chorus. “I’m here ’til you’re dead.”

talker – Don’t Want You To Love Me (Oceanator Remix)

“Indie rock with glitter all over it,” that’s how Celeste Tauchar describes the talker sound. Last year’s In Awe of Insignificance showed off the style in all its vivid glory, working to elevate Tauchar’s moody, emotionally-driven vocals. Following on from the success of the release, talker is putting out a brand new EP of remixes, with offerings from the likes of Overcoats and FRENSHIP. Latest single sees VSF fav Oceanator reimagine ‘Don’t Want You To Love Me’, adding gauzy textures over the clarity of the original without losing any of the sound’s urgent motion.

Zoon – Manitou

‘Manitou’ is the second single from Bekka Ma’iingan, the forthcoming sophomore record by Daniel Monkman’s Zoon on Paper Bag Records. Regular readers will by now be familiar with Monkman’s work, an ever-evolving sound rooted in shoegaze that explores themes of activism and Indigenous experience. The new song continues this trajectory, a lush orchestral piece that strips any notion of shoegaze back to its bare bones, emotional swells rising up amidst the atmosphere of lingering melancholy. “‘Manitou’ is about the group of friends I had growing up in Selkirk Manitoba,” Monkman explains. “We’d run a cross the red bridge and have fires and drink. Our little piece of heaven.” But far from a simple rose-tinted exercise in nostalgia, ‘Manitou’ reflects on the difficulties of that time too, acknowledging struggles and vowing never forget friends lost before their time.

And live out your youth
And all the stars shine fine
And keep this close to me
And live out your youth

Bekka Ma’iingan will be released by Paper Bag Records on 28th April and you can pre-order it now from the Zoon Bandcamp page.

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