If you are acquainted with the band already (we liked their album very tiny songs a lot), you’ll know that the single, ‘best thought, has all the hallmarks of a Honeyuck song. It’s a sweet indie pop song about having a crush and trying to summon the courage to act on it.

“And there’s something I want to ask you
but I don’t know how to
would it be weird if I gave you a kiss?
there is something telling me that it is
your hand I should be holding so
would it be weird if
I kissed you for the hell of it?”

The B-side is a cover of Jesus and Mary Chain’s ‘Just Like Honey’, a quiet rendition with simple synths and tambourine percussion, swapping the melodrama of the original for a gentle sadness, sounding like a murmured sing-along in a still room. Like all of Honeyuck’s music, it’s simply really nice.

You can get the ‘best thought’ on a name-your-price basis via the Lavender Sounds Bandcamp page.

The post Honeyuck – best thought appeared first on Various Small Flames.

The A-side of the release belongs to Naps’ The Most Beautiful Place in the World, an EP which continues the evolution of the band that we’ve been following for a while. Utilising drum machines and electronics, the band now create a sound that’s equal parts charming bedroom pop and misanthropic indie rock that fans of acts such as Gorgeous Bully will love. The lo-fi pop of ‘bad vibrations’ get things off to a great start, fuzzed out and warm and wistful, eventually descending into a storm of screechy guitars. Ryan Stanley handles the vocals on this one, delivering lines about not fitting with societal norms.

“Can’t stand up to the world’s expectations
I’m living on a bad bad vibration”

‘the most beautiful place on earth is the moon’ is fronted by Katryn Macko, another exemplary lo-fi pop song which has perhaps the sharpest emotional edge on the EP, while single ‘Social Skills’ sounds as warm and fuzzy as a broken VHS. Here, Stanley delivers lines that deal with the issues that many young people face today, a generation “propped up on pills” who “don’t know how to feel”. The Naps side ends with a cover of ‘Aquarius’ by Danny L Harle, an auto-tuned indie pop track that opens with an audio clip of weird ruminations on heaven and hell.

Yikes then take over for the B-side, the four-piece’s raw, guitar-driven indie rock sounding all the more loose-limbed and raucous following the electronic-leaning Naps side. Comercial Music kicks off with ‘twinklejam’, a dynamic and slightly mathy indie rock track, before the slacker vibes of ‘Thought You’d Say’, with its heavy guitars and crashing percussion juxtaposed against the flat, disaffected vocals.

“she’d given it all away
but that’s what I thought
you’d
say”

As we said in our preview, ‘Double Bacon Cheeseburger’ is a slow-burning slacker rock track which starts out almost tender but accelerates into something riotous and loud, the strange lyrics delivered in a drawl, “I saw an angel eating a speciality pile of salted meat / the grease ran down her body to make the circle complete”. The split is finished with a cover of Pavement’s ‘in the mouth a desert’, a track which proves the perfect material for Yikes’ lazy lo-fi rock aesthetic.

All in all, The Most Beautiful Place on Earth / Commercial Music represents a great introduction to two of Florida’s best bands and is an album you’d be foolish to miss. You can grab it now on cassette via It Takes Time Records and Viridian Sounds. Also, there’s still time to catch Naps on their US tour too, check out the remaining dates below:

05/24 Brooklyn, NY @ Palisades w/ Boosegumps, Normal Person, Rita Fishbone
05/29 Montclair, NJ @ The Spot w/ Coping Skills, Archie Alone, Circadian Clock, Clam Jam 06/02 Savannah, GA @ The Bomb Shelter w/ Coping Skills, Buddy Chapman Jr., Vinay Arora 06/04 Tallahassee, FL @ The Sweat Lodge w/ Yikes, Coping Skills

The post Naps/Yikes – The Most Beautiful Place on Earth / Commercial Music appeared first on Various Small Flames.

Last week saw the unveiling of the first single from Yikes’ side of the deal, Commercial Music. ‘Double Bacon Cheese’ is a slow-burning slacker rock track which starts out almost tender but accelerates into something riotous and loud. The vocals are similarly split, the strange, inhuman imagery delivered in delicate, human tones. We’re sharing the lyrics in their entirety because… I mean, look at them.

“I saw an angel
eating a speciality pile
of salted meat
the grease ran down her body
to make the circle complete
it was everything
that I was told that I wanted
but the meat machine
to me always seemed haunted
when its everything that you want
but you don’t want it
you had Sega Genesis
but you come home
and your dad had pawned it
oh don’t you want it?
oh don’t you want it?
I want it bad”

You can buy the cassette now from It Takes Time Records or Viridian Sounds, or grab the singles from the digital imprint, Lavender Sounds.

The post Yikes unveil ‘Double Bacon Cheese’ from spilt with Naps appeared first on Various Small Flames.

So when we heard they we putting out The Most Beautiful Place on Earth / Commercial Music, a split release with fellow Floridians Yikes on their own label Viridian Sounds and the excellent It Takes Time Records (who put out this from Boosegumps), we were excited. So excited in fact we decided to ask them some questions about it.

So, Naps/Yikes…Why did you decide to put out a split release with Yikes/Naps?

Ryan: There are a ton of great bands from Tallahassee that we could’ve done a split with, but I think at least for me Yikes was an obvious choice — we have a lot of love for their musical endeavors, both in and out of Yikes, they’re great people, and they had a lot of great songs that I was really interested in producing.
Katryn: We want their coolness to rub off on us, that’s the true end goal here.
Laura: They’re the bee’s knees.
Jeremy: We’ve played so many shows with them and their songs are so good it feels like a privilege to release ours alongside theirs. They’re the goodest boys.
Yikes: Because they’re our talented Tallahassee homies! Also we love Naps because they helped yikes get a lot of shows when we were just starting out and our sounds mesh well together.

The first single, ‘Social Skills’, is something of a departure from the sound on You Will Live in a Cool Box, is this a sign of things to come on the record?

Ryan: This new EP is a different type of record than our first one was for sure — a little less representative of our live show but maybe a little more realized in terms of where we could take things. But I would say it reflects a different side of the band rather than an intentional departure from where we were at when we recorded Cool Box. We just got into the studio to start working on our full-length and I don’t know that either EP is more indicative of how that’ll end up sounding than the other.
Jeremy: Yeah, in terms of production it’s definitely a huge difference—the first EP was very lo-fi and was recorded full-band. Our side of this split is more assembled of individually or separately recorded tracks—I don’t think all four of us actually play on any one of the songs.
Laura: I think the split is just one version of the way we want to hear our songs, a version that wouldn’t lend itself well in our live setup.

What are the prevalent themes on The Most Beautiful Place on Earth / Commercial Music?

Ryan: I didn’t think of You Will Live In A Cool Box as a break-up record when we were making it, but it centered a lot on the experience of falling out of love and feeling kind of out of step with the world as a consequence of that experience. I think The Most Beautiful Place on Earth to me is partially about having that out of step feeling even when the variable of love loss is removed.
Yikes: The most frequent theme on the split is probably insecurity, social anxiety and getting used to adult relationships.
Katryn: The song I wrote on the split is actually the first song I had ever written, and it’s also about falling out of love and how much it sucks to be stuck in close proximity to someone who has hurt you, which is definitely a very prevalent theme in a lot of what I’ve written for Naps thus far. Stanley and I recorded it two and a half years ago, before Naps even existed, and it was our first time really hanging out and also how we became friends! We went to a party later that night and made a bloodless blood pact to be friends forever. Sorry this isn’t super related to the question but it’s a cute story so YOU’RE WELCOME.
Laura: Why wasn’t I a part of this bloodless blood pact?
Katryn: Because you are the queen of my life and I am the Vice President of the Laura fan club so I think it goes without saying that we are never going to not be friends, you fool!

The release is being put out by It Takes Time Records, as well as Naps’ own Viridian Sounds. Would you like to explain how the partnership with It Takes Time came about?

Ryan: Jordan from It Takes Time actually got in contact with us way back in 2015 about putting out Cool Box, but we weren’t able to go through with it in the end because of scheduling reasons — we ended up just doing it ourselves so that we’d have tapes to sell on tour, and that’s how Viridian ended up getting started. We still really wanted to work with ITT, plus they put out a bunch of great stuff in the time between our two releases, so we hit Jordan up when we were working on the new stuff.
Yikes: Stanley said he had the plug and he delivered.

The single is also being released on a new digital single imprint of Viridian Sounds called Lavender Sounds. What can people expect of this new venture?

Ryan: Lavender Sounds is an idea that came out of my love for single-oriented music, especially older twee imprints from the 80’s and 90’s that put out an enormous amount of great pop music on 7” and flexidisc singles. It’s still in the early stages of being a thing, but ultimately we’d like to be able to use it to foster an artistic community that can interact by contributing to this ongoing collection of music.

Could you describe Naps in three words?
http://tinyurl.com/ztux95q

What is Naps’ spirit animal? Why do you say so?

Orca Whale because of their humble power and compassion.

If you could arrange to put Naps on a split release with any other band (alive or dead) then who would it be?

Beat Happening mainly because I know Ryan loves them and they are definitely a noticeable influence on naps

In your humble opinion, who is the best band ever to arise from Tallahassee?

T-Pain

Finally, could you name five acts that we’d be fools not to listen to?

-Poster (Tampa)
-Swept (Tampa)
-Woolbright (Davie)
–Honeyuck (Tallahasse)
-Annacrusis (Tallahassee)
-Souljaboytellem.com

Could you describe Yikes in three words?

Ryan: Tite spicy memes
Laura: what I want
Jeremy: Double Bacon Cheese
Katryn: Stephen Joseph Malkmus

What is Yikes’ spirit animal? Why do you say so?

Ryan: Yikes’ spirit animal is an exeggutor coz they have many faces. And they love plants.
Laura: A porcupine – yikes! look out for those spikes
Jeremy: A Dry Bones from the Super Mario series— dry, skeletal, and almost obliviously cool
Katryn: Stephen Joseph Malkmus

If you could arrange to put Yikes on a split release with any other band (alive or dead) then who would it be?

Ryan: The Brian Jonestown Massacre
Laura: Why?
Jeremy: Deerhunter
Katryn: Stephen Joseph Malkmus

In your humble opinion, who is the best band ever to arise from Tallahassee?

Ryan: Hmm, there’s a few directions you could go with this. I feel like the obvious lol answer is Creed, and the obvious legit answer is T-Pain… that being said almost anyone who is involved in the scene here will tell you that Ex-Breathers is the greatest Tallahassee band, which is pretty much objectively the right answer.
Laura: I’m a huge fan of Lauren Morgan’s voice, who used to be in USA-Holes from Tally before she started up SALES in Orlando. Also Cleats <3
Katryn: Ex-Breathers are the most talented sweethearts, and there are a lot of other great Tallahassee bands worth mentioning too, like Night Witch, Nostradogmus, and Blemish!
Jeremy: Yeah Ex-Breathers is literally the best band in the entire world. Shouts out also to Echo Base, Lingua Franca, orangesoda, Capital 6, Silt, Surface to Air Missive, Melt Channel, too many to list honestly, and Katryn covered my other favorites already.

Finally, could you name five acts that we’d be fools not to listen to?
Ryan: Future, Young Thug, Teen Suicide,
Laura: GRIMES!!
Jeremy: To pick just five right now…….. Carly Rae Jepsen, BOOSEGUMPS, JANK, Long Neck, Kississippi.
Katryn: NEW FLORIST NEW PORCHES NEW JAWBREAKER REUNION NEW TALL FRIEND <3

You can pre-order The Most Beautiful Place on Earth / Commercial Music via It Takes Time Records or Viridian Sounds.

The post Interview: Naps & Yikes appeared first on Various Small Flames.

The EP opens with ‘Jeans Skirt Mystique’, which, as I said last August, is “like all the best bedroom pop, full of Millennial angst, a sense of resignation and apathy”. The track starts relatively gently, but continues to escalate, eventually slipping into a second gear of ramshackle lo-fi indie rock. Next up is ‘Floral Mattress’ which sees Katryn Macko take over songwriting and singing duties, producing a great indie rock track that has just the right ratio of rocknroll fun and inexpressible sadness.

Then we get the first new track, ‘Ellen Degenerate’, which is probably as raucous and noisy as anything the band have done until now. It’s again angsty and despondent, an ode to the vacuum that exists inside the youth of the twenty first century. Lines such as “I’ve got a black hole where my head should be / can’t pay attention to anything” and “I’ve got a black hole where my heart should be / can’t feel you hanging on to me” communicate the gist of the song pretty clearly, before the song closes with a sharp rejoinder to the commercial, hyper-modern, post-MTV generation of today:

I would hire you to come and run me over with a truck
I would pay my friends to reassure me that they give a fuck

The opening of ‘Sandspurs’ sees the tempo reduced. Part sweet bedroom pop, part lo-fi rock, the song tells the tale of seeing a former beau with someone else, reminiscing and quizzing the ex-partner in a love-you, hate-you kind of way and spiking with self-assured feeling at all the right moments.

“I remember when you were sweet
pulled the sandspurs out of my feet
now you’re kissing her on my loveseat
so I’ll get drunk and admit defeat”

The final track, ‘You’re Not the Only Monster From Hell’, is an R.L. Kelly cover, seeing the tempo dropped in favour of the careful monotone of those well-practised in pretending to be unsurprised. This feeds back nicely into the earlier tracks, placing Naps square in the middle of the generation they are singing about, a group caught between an embarrassed aversion to sincerity and the exhausting, empty game of ironic detachment.

You can buy You Will Live in a Cool Box now via the Naps Bandcamp page.

The post Naps – You Will Live in a Cool Box appeared first on Various Small Flames.

We featured the debut track from Tallahassee’s Naps back in August. ‘Jeans Skirt Mystique’ was a great little slice of bedroom indie rock, and it’s only fault was that it was just one track. Luckily, the band are back with a new single, ‘Floral Mattress’. Whereas ‘Jeans Skirt Mystique’ was fronted by Ryan Stanley, this time Katryn Macko takes over writing and singing duties, delivering a wonderful little lo-fi rock song which is shot through with sadness, think a noisier take on the formula used by Yours Are The Only Years.

The B-side is a cover of Tiger Trap’s ‘For Sure’ which was recorded during a live session for v89, a Florida radio station. Naps’ take on the track is pretty faithful to the original, but then, why would anyone want to alter the classic bold and brassy brand of indie pop?

You can get the single as a free download via the Naps Bandcamp page. I don’t think you’ll regret it.

The post Naps – Floral Mattress appeared first on Various Small Flames.

‘Jean Skirt Mystique’ is a nice little bedroom pop track which opens with a gentle, almost twee, account of a stale relationship. The lyrics, like all the best “bedroom-pop,” are full of Millennial angst, a sense of resignation and apathy, not only concerning the aforementioned relationship, but also pretty much everything else. Stanley sings:

“there’s nothing between us
there’s nothing anymore
there’s no god between us
there’s no god between us
there’s no god anymore”

The song shifts during the second half, where things are kicked into a second gear of ramshackle lo-fi indie rock. The whole thing clocks in at under three minutes, and certainly left me wanting more. I suppose I’ll just have to be patient.

Download the track for the princely sum of zero pounds/dollars over at the Naps Bandcamp page.

The post Naps – Jean Skirt Mystique appeared first on Various Small Flames.