This summer sees Nick Ferrio return with brand new record, Television of Roses, and the style is more apparent than ever. Intended as a document of fatherhood for his son, the record draws upon a whole host of experiences and relationships unique to Ferrio in order to get closer to what it means to love and be loved. “Being a parent has made my focus more intense,” he explains. “Thinking of life through the metaphor of a camera, the aperture has been adjusted and what is important is now much more clear. Music and family are the subject and everything else is just noise in the background.”

The album is also something of a who’s who of Candian indie music. Recorded at the rural Port William Sound studio of Jonas Bonnetta (Evening Hymns), Television of Roses sees Caylie Runciman (Boyhood), Evangeline Gentle, Lewis Parker (For Esmé), Nathan Truax (Said the Whale) and Tanner Paré (Heaps/The Kents) all help Ferrio craft the rich sound, with mixing from Gavin Gardiner (The Wooden Sky) and mastering by Philip Shaw Bova (Bahamas). Anyone familiar with the work of Bonnetta and Gardiner will recognise the depth underpinning the sound, and how it serves to ground the immediacy of the emotions with a semblance of distance and reflection.

Nowhere is this clearer than on lead single, ‘The Dam’. Pitched in the tension between fond nostalgia and life’s harsh truths, the track inverts the theme of parenthood to explore Ferrio’s relationship with his mother. There’s affection in the rhythm and energy, but recollections break the rose-tinted glow. “My mother wrote a letter to me a few years ago, asking me if I remember her before her struggles with addiction began,” Ferrio explains. “This song is a response to that letter. It explores those early years of my life, the poverty we experienced, but also my mother’s resilience and strength.”

The track pulls no punches, in the small memories of hurt and suffering, the brittle promises repeated unto truth. But the Nick Ferrio sound is capable of exploring such complexity without getting lost within it. Instead, it soars above with empathy and solidarity, capable of holding the most difficult relationships at arms length and recognising the human struggle within. “We were estranged from each other at times in our lives,” Ferrio continues, “and she passed away a year ago after being diagnosed with leukaemia. But, I played it for her before she passed and we made amends.”

Check out the video directed by Tanner Paré below:

Television of Roses is out on the 18th June and you can pre-order it now via the Nick Ferrio Bandcamp page.

The post Nick Ferrio – The Dam appeared first on Various Small Flames.

Various Small Flames’

Songs of 2017

Anamon – Kneel Old
Android Automatic – Dark Roads*
Angie McMahon – Slow Mover
Basement Revolver – Johnny Pt. 2
Baxter Roy Long – Paribanou
Bea Troxel – Let Them Know
Big Thief – Mary
Black Belt Eagle Scout – Soft Stud
Bully – Running
Cayetana – Mesa
Charly Bliss – Percolator
Chastity Belt – Different Now
CHUCK – Happy Birthday
The County Liners – Maria
The Courtneys – Tour
Craig Finn – God in Chicago
Crumb – Locket
Crushing – Emery Board
Cut Worms – Like Going Down Sideways
David Bazan – Care
Distant Reader – First Try
Emperor X – God Save Coastal Dorset
Fits – Ice Cream on a Nice Day
German Error Message – 2017*
Gleemer – Soothe Me
Great Grandpa – Favorite Show
Haley Heynderickx – Oom Sha Lala
Hiccup – Teasin’
Horse Culture – Texaco
Illuminati Hotties – ‘(You’re Better) Than Ever’
Japandroids – No Known Drink or Drug
Jason Isbell & the 400 Unit – If We Were Vampires
Jay Som – The Bus Song
Jeremy Squires – Night Cars
Katie Ellen – Drawing Room
Lizzie No – Monuments
Lomelda – Bam Sha Klam
Mike Pace and the Child Actors – Audits & Surveys
Meursault – The Mill
Mount Eerie – Crow
Nice Legs – Mighty Three
Oceanator – Nowhere Nothing
Ohyeahsumi – Daisy
Old Earth – Pit Dynamics
PASTEL – Stammer
Peter Silberman – New York
Phoebe Bridgers – Motion Sickness
Pope – Talk Me Out of It
Protomartyr – Windsor Hum
Rainwater – Place
Ratboys – Elvis is in the Freezer
Rick Rude – Bald & Fat in Houston, TX
Roadkill Ghost Choir – Classics (Die Young)
Rose Dorn – Dirt
See Through Dresses – Lucy’s Arm
Shannen Moser – A Funeral, A Friend, My Sanity
Sinai Vessel – Died On My Birthday
Slaughter Beach, Dog – Phoenix
SOAR – Fort Funston
Soft Fangs – Jordan // Jackson Elementary
Spartan Jet-Plex – We Believe
Strange Ranger – House Show
Strawberry Runners – Garden Hose
Timid, The Brave – Alice
Us and Only Us – Bored of Black
Vagabon – Cold Apartment
Viewfinder – Instant Moonlight
The Washboard Abs – Veil
Waxahatchee – Never Been Wrong
Wild Pink – Albert Ross
William Ryan Fritch – In Our Blood
The Wooden Sky – Swimming in Strange Waters
Ylayali – Cherry Tomatoes

*Strictly released in 2016, but barely, and we covered it in Jan. 2017.

If you missed it, you can see our Favourite Albums of 2017 list here. Also, the curious can find such lists from previous years here.

The post Favourite Songs of 2017 appeared first on Various Small Flames.

Big Thief – Capacity

Saddle Creek

“[Lenker’s vocals] unfurl like a magician’s silk scarves, a perpetual unravelling shaped by a poetic, negentropic logic. [It] is as though the meaning is summoned from the words themselves, something in the syllabic arrangement dragging stories and emotions into our world from somewhere else entirely. Lenker’s gift is her ability to recognise the strange, innate forces within language, surrender to them, and present them back to us with a crystal-clear clarity.”

REVIEW / BUY

Wild Pink – S/T

Tiny Engines

“Ross feels like a narrator dropped into an ongoing narrative, not fully aware of the beginning or end, or even any coherent context, yet haunted by profound sensations of sadness, fear and guilt—an unshakeable, existential dread that suggests we’re going to pay for how this story is panning out. Wild Pink haven’t come to us amidst this chaos with magic cures or quick-fix solutions, but they’ve come to us nonetheless. Right now, that’s probably the most valuable and noble thing any of us can do.”

REVIEW / BUY

The Wooden Sky – Swimming in Strange Waters

Chelsea Records / Nevado Music

“The Wooden Sky are making music with emotion, intelligence and integrity, songs in which you can both lose and find yourself, and perhaps even connect with the plight of others. We’re all trying to survive strange waters to some degree, and the record’s intent on illuminating this fact—both appreciating your constant kicking beneath the surface, and imploring you to help those that may be tiring, or entering even rougher seas.”

REVIEW / BUY

Vagabon – Infinite Worlds

Father/Daughter Records

“This is the sort of music that makes you feel part of a something, it does reflect a big sad and confused gang spread out all over the world, and we should be connected by shared experience and a sneaky feeling that life is worth living. However, to mark Infinite Worlds as simply sad or lonely falls into to the very trap of binarism that the album spends so much time fighting. Yes, it’s mournful but joyous too. It’s bedroom pop and indie rock and experimental ambient. It’s immensely personal and broadly relatable. It’s Vagabon, though only as it sounds right now.”

REVIEW / BUY

Protomartyr – Relatives of Descent

Domino

“Casey returns to his own struggles with the irony of being an artist in such a world, where to not speak against the absurdity of the system is to become complicit, yet knowing those very absurdities render his words meaningless. Rather than give up, or persevere nobly, Casey twists his art into the shape of this double-bind, using self-deprecation to cover any hint of naivety. “I have a backlog of so-called prophets,” a character tells a Messiah-like oracle near the beginning of the [final song]. “You are of a multitude.” The preacher insists he witnesses truth, to which the first character reacts with genuine confusion and interest. “The truth?” he asks. “What is it?””

REVIEW / BUY

Julia Lucille – Chthonic

Keeled Scales

“Part folk, part dream pop, part something else entirely, her music combines equal parts delicacy and foreboding with an impressive patience and emotional intensity […] concerned with the underworld, more specifically descending into as a mode of growth and rebirth (a la Persephone), and [showing] off the interplay between shadow and light that constitutes the record’s aesthetic.”

REVIEW / BUY

Friendship – Shock Out Of Season

Orindal Records

“In many ways, Friendship are in a Bardo of their own, caught between how life has been and could be, unsure how and when, if ever, they might pass into the next part. Shock Out of Season is concerned with finding this exit, figuring out some act or combination of words that allow passage into the next life. Or maybe it’s about making peace with the current space, acknowledging that perhaps true communication is impossible, and that trying to live with this understanding might be the most sympathetic and empathetic path available to us.”

REVIEW / BUY

Real Life Buildings – Significant Weather

Lauren Records

“Real Life Buildings capture both the quiet minutiae of day to day living—the soft feeling you get in an empty room with just a ticking clock and raindrops on the window pane for company—and the exhilarating rush of joy that is still sometimes possible. It’s music that, despite its anxiety and concern, still sees that silvery sheen of magic in the mundane, a fun indie rock record and a lesson in paying attention to what’s going on both inside and outside your head.”

REVIEW / BUY

Distant Reader – Home Power

Lily Tapes & Discs

“Distant Reader weav[es] a dense web of not just personal reflections, but reflections on the lives of those he cares about. Home Power is a deep record, one that withstands, even requires, a lot of thought and rumination, but after repeated listens the key points of empathy and kindness begin to resonate deeply. It’s a reminder that we’re all able to help ourselves and each other, and that we will be better people for both.”

REVIEW / BUY

Alex Napping – Mise En Place

Father/Daughter Records / Sports Day Records

“Less like a chronicle of a disintegrating relationship than the beginning of a process of self-examination, of moving forward, of weighing things up day-by-day and acting accordingly […] On Mise En Place, Alex Napping somehow manage to marry the immediacy of good pop songs with a slow-burning complexity, proving that meaningful songs can still be fun, and that great pop songs need not be a simple shallow sugar rush.”

REVIEW / BUY

Craig Finn – We All Want The Same Things

Partisan Records

“There’s a danger that pushing everything through the Trumpian prism collapses some of the intricacies and nuances of art. After all, The Donald is a product of the disaffection Finn is exploring here, not the cause. The problem is deeper and more complex than any government-related trouble, and Finn is too wise to offer much in the way of an answer. Instead, he suggests we shift the focus of our questions. Because We All Want the Same Things is an album about relationships, but not in the usual sense. Not the transcendental, star-aligned love of Billboard hits and Hollywood flicks but coupling based on common needs. Not life-changing answers but life-preserving strategies. Luckily, in the hands of Craig Finn, this version of ‘romance’ feels somehow more fulfilling, the opposite of cynical, for better or for worse, genuinely human. Perhaps the revolution in the conclusion isn’t some violent revolt or epiphanic break, rather a gradual yet constant commitment to challenging our own expectations. To stop wanting too much for ourselves and to start being sympathetic to others. A comeback story, of sorts.”

REVIEW / BUY

The Courtneys – II

Flying Nun Records

“There’s something joyfully nostalgic [about II]…the aural equivalent of the era it borrows from musically. It’s wrapped up in the warm fuzzy tape hiss of the late 80s / early 90s, that period of endless possibility, where everything was colourful and exciting and came with a free toy.”

REVIEW / BUY

Pleasure Systems – Antumbra Pull

Antiquated Future Records

“Essentially a collection of love songs. Each track is pure and sincere and deceptively rich, each created within its own little world, or perhaps conjuring a snapshot of a particular time/place in our own. The positive outlook never seems like some near-forgotten memory. It’s as if Sondermann is using Pleasure Systems to focus all of the hope and love into a beam which is aimed at the shadow, a beam which might not make the problem go away, but can at least be used as a formidable weapon in the forthcoming struggle.”

REVIEW / BUY

Midwife – Like Author, Like Daughter

Whited Sepulchre

“On Like Author, Like Daughter, Midwife have made an album of dualities…both powerfully elemental and somehow intangible, the unrestrained power of nature versus the invisible waves that surround us, emotionally pure messages coded in digital distortion. This duality goes for the atmosphere too. It’s impossible to pack the album away into an explicit genre or emotion, somehow conveying the whole spectrum, swelling triumph and crushing defeat, bright white hope and oil-black despair. But, ultimately, almost unbelievably, the message is positive. Even during the moments where the music sounds like the apocalypse, a tangible, sonic manifestation of loneliness and despair, Johnston provides a thread to hold on to, a reminder that the human spirit is the one thing that can, and will, endure.”

REVIEW / BUY

Black Belt Eagle Scout – Mother Of My Children

Self-released

“For all the difficulty and heartache that clearly went into it’s creation, Mother of My Children ultimately feels like Black Belt Eagle Scout making a clarion call, a proud statement that is intended to encourage other queer people of colour to use art as a source of strength, self-knowledge and empowerment. But it’s more than just an artistic statement. The album has both focus and depth, exploring themes directly with its lyrics and more indirectly with the atmosphere it conjures.”

REVIEW / BUY

CHUCK – Franenstein Songs For the Grocery Store

Audio Antihero

“Frankenstein Songs for the Grocery Store finds CHUCK doing what he does best, making songs that are catchy and funny and unashamedly “pop” and all undoubtedly good fun. But there’s always that something else to his songs too, something that’s harder to put a finger on, a nod to the vacuum at the centre of our 21st century consumerist culture.”

REVIEW / BUY

Half Gringa – Gruñona

Self-released

“Unpick[ing] the knots and tangles that have developed through[out] life, both retracing steps and forging ahead to discover something closer to [an] authentic self […] Gruñona is a journey without a clear destination, a question without an answer. An attempt to map identity not to achieve some clear-cut conclusion but rather in the hope of better understanding how history and culture and personal beliefs shape the people we are and were, the people we will be.”

REVIEW / BUY

Meursault – I Will Kill Again

Song, By Toad Records

“This is an album full of ghosts, both literal and metaphoric, from the disembodied voices that sometimes interrupt the broadcast, to Pennycook’s characters themselves, all coalescing to create a grand sense of melancholy […] but [the final song] see a sense of advancement, a suggestion that the ghosts might finally be confined to the past, where they belong.”

REVIEW / BUY

Adult Mom – Soft Spots

Tiny Engines

“Soft Spots finds Adult Mom with a new sense of self-assurance. These songs contain genuine hurt but also genuine hope, the narrator finally in possession of the bravery necessary to open up to people. It’s hard to think of a more fitting illustration of the album than the pickled pink peaches on the cover art. Yes, the fruits may get bruised if the jar is opened, but how else would anyone know how soft and sweet they are?”

REVIEW / BUY

Bea Troxel – The Way That It Feels

Self-released

“The album is an introspective one, based around big questions of where the narrator wants to be and what kind of life they want to live. In that way, it feels like a re-evaluation, the bright and hopeful result of much thought and worry […] The Way That It Feels hits a nice balance between the weighty and the not. It’s an album as poetic and pretty as it is serious and sincere, and marks Bea Troxel as a name to watch among contemporary folk musicians.”

REVIEW / BUY

The post Favourite Albums of 2017 appeared first on Various Small Flames.

Tracklisting:

Basement Revolver – Johnny Pt. 2
Ramonda Hammer – Too Much, Too Recently
Nana Grizol – Photos From When We Were Young
Blood Cultures – Detroit
Spartan Jet-Plex – All the World Pt. 2
Why Not – Ground
Horse Culture – Ruins
Devon Sproule – Trees At Your Mom’s
somesurprises – Late July
Midwife – Song for an Unborn Son
Alder & Ash – The Merciless Dusk
Matt Paxton – Baby Don’t Go
Captain – Hotel Room
Decoration Day – Palms
Magana – Inches Apart
Lizzie No – Monuments
Wilt – Pane of Glass
Blaketheman1000 – Blake
The Wooden Sky – Black Gold
Phoebe Bridgers – Motion Sickness

Be sure to check out our previous monthly roundup mixes, and stayed tuned in August for yet more of the good stuff.

The post July 2017 Roundup appeared first on Various Small Flames.

— Frank Herbert, Dune

With four previous albums of stellar indie rock, Toronto’s The Wooden Sky have spent the last ten years carving out a place amongst the best guitar bands. Their ability to weave deep, intelligent lyrics into immediate, energetic rock songs sets them apart from the hordes, as does the pervading compassion that comes through in their records. Each has imparted a sense of compulsion in one way or another, as though the music is an attempt at communicating something otherwise un-sayable. Speaking to NPR, lead Gavin Gardiner described himself as an artist who “feel[s] the weight of responsibility to act and make things better for the people to come,” so such a vibe is perhaps unsurprising, and nowhere is this motivation clearer that their newest release, Swimming in Strange Waters.

The title track kicks off the album, a seemingly freewheeling whirl of psychedelica that’s as frantic as it is unpredictable, threatening to veer off course in carefree abandon. However, beneath this is a striking exploration of sexual abuse and the implications it has moving forwards, the ripples of anger and fear through subsequent generations. Written from the perspective of the relative of a victim, and addressing the perpetrator of the abuse, the once carefree abandon is revealed as something else entirely. It’s fuelled by a sense of resentment so keen it induces an unhinged, dangerous edge, the song’s runaway energy a reaction to the powerlessness faced when a loved one is harmed.

“By the time that we got there
It was already too late
They say death had come easy
I didn’t see it that way

I guess they meant you’d stopped breathing
Left behind all that pain
But I barely remember
See my life was on stage”

‘Life is Pain, Pain is Beauty’ sees Gardiner’s vocals twirl and sway as the track gathers in intensity, eventually descending into a spiral of The National-style hammered drums and squealing strings, while ‘You’re Not Alone’ is one of the album’s more reserved tracks, the music like a sunny summer lull, vocals delivered with such a steely-eyed sense of love that when Gardiner sings “Life is long and love is strange / with any luck our luck could change,” you can’t help but believe him.

‘Deadhorse Creek’ throws some raucous and bluesy barroom country into the mix, the steady bumping drumbeat and drunken squeal of harmonica giving Gardiner an opportunity to play the snake-hipped cowboy. There’s a joy in hearing his vocals yell and strain during the wordless chorus, before culminating in a little let’s-get-this-party-started “woo!”, the sort of goodtime gaiety that teeters on the edge of violence. The song just bugs out completely with around a minute to go, displaying all the manic mayhem of a runaway train, before the band get a hold of the reins again to steer it home.

‘Born to Die’ offers a welcome breather, a tender acoustic folk song that would sit comfortably on 2009’s If I Don’t Come Home You’ll Know I’m Gone, the calm before the storm of ‘Black Gold’, a great thumping beast of a thing that ascends without let up.  Drawing inspiration from the Keystone XL pipeline protests, Gardiner again finds a duality between enthusiasm and fury, at once aghast and energised by injustice, pushed into a sort of reckless refusal to remain silent.

“Bomb the towns, burn the city
concrete gods are flashing lights
hear you’re wasted half the time
guess I wasted most of mine
seems a pity but the sun’s still shining bright
so heaven help for I feel I’m losing sight”

‘Riding on the Wind’ sees The Wooden Sky fuse their usual reflective country rock with The War On Drugs-style dreamy psych pop, exploring the plight of refugee families Gardiner met at Romero House, before ‘Matter of Time’ opens in an almost Timber Timbre-esque noirish slink. The track is elegantly smooth in a way which sounds hopelessly lovesick, and things come to a head as Gardiner descends into desperate cries and Stetson-like sax paints Lynchian shadows across the outro. Final track ‘Glory Hallelujah’ sits amidst swelling strings and an anchoring piano line, the vocals careful and delicate compared to most of the other tracks, the graceful light at the end of the tunnel, proverbial and otherwise. “Singing glory, hallelujah, it gets easier,” Gardiner sings, “Well, I knew it couldn’t be so hard all the time.”

The Wooden Sky are making music with emotion, intelligence and integrity, songs in which you can both lose and find yourself, and perhaps even connect with the plight of others. We’re all trying to survive strange waters to some degree, and the record’s intent on illuminating this fact—both appreciating your constant kicking beneath the surface, and imploring you to help those that may be tiring, or entering even rougher seas.

Swimming in Strange Waters is out via Chelsea Records and Nevado Music, and you can buy it now.

The post The Wooden Sky – Swimming in Strange Waters appeared first on Various Small Flames.

Loverboy Wanderers – Big Boy

Philadelphia’s Loverboy Wanderers put out their self-titled debut earlier this month and welcomed us to their chaotic brand of indie pop music. Opening track ‘Big Boy’ serves as the perfect introduction, starting out as a half-paced rock number, the track gradually unravels into disorder. The vocals and lyrics are the first thing to go, lead Emmett Drueding growing increasingly unhinged as the music follows suit and descends into joyous commotion, resulting in a strangely uplifting finale filled with the kind of conviction unique to those who’ve stopped caring about conventions.

You can get Loverboy Wanderers now from Bandcamp.

Julia Lucille – Eternally

‘Eternally’ is the second single and opening track from Julia Lucille’s upcoming album, Chthonic. As the title suggests, the album is concerned with the underworld, more specifically descending into as a mode of growth and rebirth (a la Persephone), and ‘Eternally’ shows off the interplay between shadow and light that constitutes the record’s aesthetic.

“Call but I don’t answer
I long to be eternally free
Not like my mother
Not like my father
But what feels good to me”

Chthonic is set for release via Keeled Scales on April 7th and you can pre-order it via Bandcamp.

The Wooden Sky – Swimming in Strange Waters

Toronto band The Wooden Sky have long been putting out exemplary indie rock albums, and this spring sees the release of their fifth and perhaps most impressive. Named after a quote from Frank Herbert’s Dune (“Survival is the ability to swim in strange water”), Swimming in Strange Waters finds the band battling their own unfamiliar currents, traversing barroom barrages, acoustic eddies and psychedelic squalls in what is their most experimental and visceral record to date. The result is cacophony in the best sense, loud and fiery, personal and political, seemingly always on the verge of veering out of control. Pretty much the perfect album for our current times.

We’ll leave it there in order to keep our powder dry for the full review, but there are two singles currently available, with the lush, wistful ‘You’re Not Alone’ premiering over on Clash and the rousing title track hinting at the true sound and fury on the record.

Swimming in Strange Waters is out on Nevado Music on the 7th April and you can pre-order it now.

Idan Altman – Expiration Date

Israel-born, Berlin-based producer and songwriter Idan Altman creates organic folk music with an electronic twist, blending traditional, technical guitar work with ambient flourishes. The opening track from a forthcoming concept album, ‘Expiration Date’ sets out Altman’s themes of impermanence and continuity, his vocals finding wonder in the ephemeral, the background instrumentation like a flowing river, constant and repetitive yet never quite the same.

You can grab the album from the fairydust Bandcamp page.

Nnamdi Ogbonnaya – dOn’t turn me Off Ft. JD AKA ThrashKitten & Mal Devisa

Aside from being associated with projects such as Monobody, Itto and Teen Cult, Nnamdi Ogbonnaya also has a burgeoning solo career. His latest album, Drool, comes out this March, and as if to start firing on all cylinders, the first single sees Ogbonnaya joined by JD/Thrash Kitten and WTD-favourite Mal Devisa for ‘dOn’t turn me Off’, a verbose experimental track that combines rapid wordplay with a big chorus to tick all boxes.

DROOL is out March 3, 2017 via Sooper Records and Father/Daughter Records.

Winter Coat – Into The Blue

Winter Coat are a four-piece from Cardiff who make “swirly sonic soundscapes…inspired by movies, Mr Whippy and their over-active imaginations”. Their latest track, ‘Into the Blue’ is a lush dream pop song in the vein of Cocteau Twins or The War on Drugs, all gauzy atmospheric guitars and epic, percussion-heavy crescendos.

Listen to the song on Soundcloud and check out the Winter Coat website for previous releases and future new material.

Lord Youth – Gray Gardens

Lord Youth is the songwriting project of Micah Blaichman from Queens, NY, who is all set to release his debut self-titled EP this spring. If lead single ‘Grey Gardens’ is anything to go by, the release will sound something like the midnight mourning of a half-drunk ghost, too caught up with cheap whiskey and past regrets to move on to the other side.

The Lord Youth EP is out on the 24th of March on 10″ vinyl via BB*Island. Pre-order it now.

Lady Pills – Old Song

Finally, Boston punk band Lady Pills went to Berklee Internet Radio Network to play a version of their (assumedly new?) ‘Old Song’. Those familiar with last year’s album Despite will recognise the attitude and energy on show, the track opening with an insistent clatter before mutating into great swells of noise which rise and recede beneath increasingly unhinged vocals.

Keep an eye on the Lady Pills Facebook page for news on shows and new material.

The post Best of the Rest: Things We Have Missed #9 appeared first on Various Small Flames.

Oh, Rose

“The vocals have the quality of an exorcism, like the unnatural utterings of a twelve year old as some jaded man of faith flicks holy water at her forehead” – “we reviewed SEVEN, the excellent and vaguely supernatural new album by Oh, Rose”

Amelia Gray

“Reading these stories is like watching a fungus bloom across a wall, like watching a slow-motion video of yourself going up in flames” – we started up a new ‘Books’ section with a review of Amelia Gray’s short story collection, Gutshot.

The Wooden Sky

“[The] distinctive vocals… [are] not pristine or manufactured but rather a product of a feeling, making the protagonists alive and nuanced enough for us to care” – we bumped our review of The Wooden Sky’s Lets Be Ready as it was released worldwide on Nevado Records.

Sean Henry

“When confronting big, complicated things like love, imperfection and death in art, surely the most fruitful method is not to sugar-coat the message in high production values and carefully constructed narratives but instead try to replicate the messy, fractured nature of our lives and consciousness?” – we got deep when previewing Sean Henry’s new album with his first single, ‘The Crow’

O-FACE

“Whirring like a well-oiled machine of cogs and gears which achieves so much more than its composite parts suggest” – a belated review of O-FACE’s EP Mint, out on Father/Daughter and Miscreant Records.

Glen Hansard

“A perfect example of a folk song made pop, a smooth and sentimental tale of goodhearted promises that are impossible to keep” – Our thoughts on ‘Winning Streak’, the first single from Glen Hansard’s new album

June Roundup

Miss anything in June? We have you covered with a playlist featuring every artist we covered during the month.

The Wailin’ Smithers

“The album is packed with smash hits from an alternate dimension, an easygoing universe in which everybody gets along just fine” – The self-titled album from Bloomington rockers The Wailin’ Smithers.

Quick Before It Melts

The music blog celebrated Canada Day by releasing a compilation of Canadian Bands covering Canadian songs.

Alanna McArdle

“Why do women have to work so much harder: why does it always feel like I’m trying to pass a test to prove that I deserve to call myself a musician?” – Alanna McArdle’s essay for The Talkhouse on the perceived role of the frontwoman and why she hates being referred to as just “the singer”.

Ezra Furman

“I’ve embraced the liminal zone that so many of my heroes occupy. I’ve declared independence from categories that don’t work for me…We exist in a multivalent world filled with ambiguities, and I aim to move through it like Lou Reed: independent, continually transforming, free.” – Ezra Furman writes for The Guardian on how he found freedom by embracing ambiguity in both his music and persona.

Noisey / Owen Pallet & Warren Hildebrand

“I found out about the Les Mouches album some time in 2006 and got it from a private torrent site or something similar. It really blew me away when I heard it…It means a lot, being able to help put together a new release for an album that’s been so important to me for so long is so crazy and cool to me.” – Noisey spoke to Owen Pallet and Orchid Tapes’ Warren Hildebrand about the latter’s label reissuing an album from the former’s project Les Mouches.

Fog Lake / START-TRACK

“I would say to keep it as true-to-heart as possible. Stop thinking about what other’s want to hear and start thinking about what you wanna hear. Don’t worry about being technical. Don’t worry what your parents think. Give it your best shot.” – Aaron Powell, aka Fog Lake, has some good advice for creative types in this interview with the cool dudes over at START-TRACK.

Advance Base / Ben Weaver

Daytrotter, the undisputed kings of the live session, served up two gems this week with sets from Advance Base (who has an album on the way dontcha know?) and Ben Weaver (whose album we liked a lot).

Titus Andronicus

Titus Andronicus released a music video / short film which features not one but six songs from their forthcoming album, The Most Lamentable Tragedy, which we will not stop plugging.

Gurr

The Le Sigh premièred a video from Berlin-based “sassy brat punk” band Gurr, featuring live recordings and vintage found footage.

And finally… the 8tracks playlist of the week:

This week’s playlist, from Music Means Family, is collection of songs from artists playing Eaux Claires music festival in Wisconsin. Features some of our favourites like Aero Flynn, S. Carey and Field Report.

The post Week in Review #8 (29th June – 3rd July) appeared first on Various Small Flames.

Until then, here’s our June Roundup, a playlist of songs rounding up everything we covered during June. Clever, huh? Click on the artist name in the tracklisting to be whisked away to the specific post.

Tracklisting:

1. Trisha Please Come Home – Advance Base
2. Slower Now – Star Horse
3. I Make Boys Cry – Adult Mom
4. Cordella – On The Water
5. Destroy – Henoheno
6. A Long Time Ago – Kalle Mattson
7. Only One Who Feels a Little Bit Bad – Fazed on a Pony
8. Ohio Snow Falls – Unraveler
9. Pylon Pile On – Benjamin Shaw
10. For Luck – Cyberbully Mom Club
11. The Offer – Yowler
12. When I Met Death – Right Away, Great Captain!
13. Patriarchaeth – Gwenno
14. Future Bones – Bells Atlas
15. Beautiful Brian – Harley Alexander and The Universal Lovers
16. Whip-Poor-Will – Morning River Band
17. I Admit I’m Scared – Eskimeaux
18. Ideal World – Girlpool
19. Observation Satellites – GRNDMS
20. Podesta – Peptalk
21. Cwm Llwm – Yucatan
22. Clouds – Estan
23. Lullaby – Long Neck
24. KiwiKisses – Trenton Point
25. My Only One – PONY
26. Return to View – The Wandering Lake
27. Clicking Clanking – Ylayali
28. Pull Me Apart – Lung Cycles
29. Red Coat – Adeline Hotel
30. Johnny Go Riding – Damien Jurado
31. When the Day is Fresh, and the Light is New – The Wooden Sky
32. The Crow – Sean Henry
33. Yolanda – O-FACE

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Talking to Indie88.com Gardiner said:

“We were trying to do something that was a little bit more indicative of our live show. We’ve been talking within the band a lot about how difficult it is to capture, because it’s not just about what you’re playing, it’s about the energy that’s in the room, and the experience, and the visual cues, and the physical feeling of sound.”

There is a definite urgency in the tracks, at least compared to the previous Wooden Sky releases. Opener ‘Saturday Night’ is a slice breezy indie rock that goes at quite a clip, a positive beginning that raises a sense of excitement and anticipation (although dig a little deeper into the lyrics and things don’t seem quite so rosy). Songs like ‘When the Day is Fresh, and the Light is New’ continue this theme, the driving guitars celebratory in their energy, a tune to be played with the windows down while driving into a new town under a wide blue sky (which is a long-winded way of saying the title is apt).

Another favourite track of mine is ‘Our Hearts Were Young’, with it’s snappy, shuffling rhythm reminiscent of something Okkervil River would have put on The Stage Names. Okkervil River are actually a pretty good reference point for this album, with the meaningful (and often dark) lyrics concealed beneath a veneer of rock & roll. Gardiner even provides some Will Sheff-esque vocal explosions, such as his yelps of “Come on, come on!” on the aforementioned song.

For all of the rock songs, it’s not just in terms of tempo that they manage to capture energy on the record. Slower songs such as the title track have an intimate feel, with Gardiner’s vocals clear over the instrumentation and laced with passion and emotion, every change in volume and break of his voice adding to the sense of immediacy. This is what he alludes to in the above comment, the ’the energy that’s in the room… the physical feeling of sound.’ It’s not necessarily raw noise or thumping drums but rather the vibration of a note, the slight echo of a voice.

Gardiner’s writing and voice have always been central to The Wooden Sky’s sound and Let’s Be Ready feels like the consolidation of everything that has made them a success. His distinctive vocals have always seemed real, not pristine or manufactured but rather a product of a feeling he shares with the characters in his songs. And of course this is only effective with strong writing capable of weaving these tales, making the protagonists alive and nuanced enough for us to care. Luckily this is something which Gardiner excels at. For example on the title track:

“Oftentimes, I wonder
What she must think of me.
I’m riding on the wind;
On the shoulders of the kin,
Like some drunken, fucked up dream.

So lover, take these arms
And build me a boat.
You know, half the time,
I think I’d rather not know.
So, Sarah, baby, let’s be ready,
‘Cause when it all comes down,
You know it’s gonna be heavy.
Oh, what Memphis has that I don’t,
I may never know.”

Lets Be Ready is another confident and accomplished release from a band of whom we’ve come to expect such things.

The album has been available for the best part of a year from Chelsea Records, but it now has a worldwide release on Nevado Music.

The post The Wooden Sky – Let’s Be Ready appeared first on Various Small Flames.

The songs on Silver Dagger oscillate between quiet, reserved folk and sultry, swaggering country. Shields shares the vocals with Bri Salmena, and together they spin classic tales of love and loss. ‘Gold & Rose’ is a great example of such storytelling, a story of surprising depth which charts the lives of two lovers, full of richly detailed lines like: “got the rose from her mother taught her never to depend on others beauty queen years ago never stopped putting on a show and got the gold from her father, gave his wedding room to his daughter, left the girls on a Thursday night, found dead in the Friday light.”

‘Lucky Day’ is a beautifully delivered folk song, with delicate acoustic guitars and emotive vocals, while ‘Fox’ is all cocksure country confidence, “I wanna fight I wanna show my teeth / I wanna shake my head I wanna stomp my feet”. Opener ‘Wagon’ is patient and starkly alluring, with a thumping dream beat and weaving guitars. To me it sounds rather like a female-fronted version of fellow Canadians The Wooden Sky (particularly their 2012 album Every Child a Daughter, Every Moon a Sun). This is also noticeable on ‘Tavern’, a slow-burning rock song about a bar-room which builds into a frenetic climax with raspy, wailing vocals about the titular silver dagger.

This is a musical equivalent of the best Southern gothic. Big, filmic scenes flooded with human characters and vivid emotions, an album of attitude and pride and gentle kindness with an undercurrent of violence.

You can buy Silver Dagger now via the Dear Sister Bandcamp page.

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