Many of these tracks were born of anxiety—from my turning to a guitar to externalize (and organize) a sense of chaos that otherwise felt trapped inside me. We recorded the bulk of it with a live band as a means to maintain the raw energy at the center of the record. What results is a time capsule for a year of intense personal expansion in my life—and the layers of warmth, wonder, sensitivity, and sharpness that come with growing.

With the album set for release this April on Audio Antihero, Avery Friedman has unveiled lead single ‘Flowers Fell’ to introduce the style. With a melancholic yet rising sound, the track seems to sit in the interstitial space between trauma and growth. That lull between the ceasing of decline and visible signs of recovery, where improvement exists only as a nascent understanding of the possibilities which lay ahead in time.

The idea behind the song originated during a night-time walk down Greene Avenue in Brooklyn. “I had noticed that the flowers that once lined the branches had been replaced by leaves—seemingly in the blink of an eye,” Friedman says. “I was briefly disappointed until I considered that the petals had made way for something more sustainable—and equally full of life. The song became a meditation on the concept of place—how things of our surroundings like ‘sidewalks,’ and ‘balconies’ and ‘trees,’ can act as fixed backdrops upon which we measure our personal evolutions (and the evolutions of our relationships) across the span of many seasons.”

The flowers fell off when I was asleep
But it’s okay, ‘cause now it’s all green

Design by Alexa Terfloth, photography by Mamie Heldman

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Here is a list of songs from 2020 that we liked but didn’t get around to writing about.

If you find something you like, follow the link in the embed to support the artists and labels on Bandcamp. And of course, there is a whole year’s worth of pieces on releases we did manage to write about, so have an explore through our reviews, previews and interviews from 2020.

The post Music We Missed in 2020 appeared first on Various Small Flames.

Opener ‘Dark Light’ feels enclosed and claustrophobic, Sprague singing about the aftermath of an accident she suffered a few years ago, a theme which reoccurs throughout the record. ‘I Was’ follows, a sad-sounding song that is actually suffused with hope, a song about finding your place in the world and overcoming the past. When Sprague sings “i’ve found a body, soul and mind that i can keep and now i’m not afraid i’ve learned to love it and to keep it all the same,” you get the feeling she really means it. ‘Rings Grow’ starts sparse but comes crunching into some kind of life, before ‘A Hospital + Crucifix Made Of Plastic’, which is little more than vocals and background percussion and Sprague’s vocals delivering neatly poetic lines which hold a deceptive ominous edge:

“i’m in a sunny park
lying face down on my back on a crucifix
that’s made of plastic
and it’s painful
but i don’t feel pain at all”

‘Thank You’ is a spoken word ode to the rise and set of the sun, set over high-pitched keys like static from space, and later an account of the moments before the traffic accident that caused Sprague so much woe. Perhaps for this reason, ‘The Birds Outside Sang’ feels like a dawning day and ends with a mantra-like section that feels somehow monumental, like the start of something more than just another day. “Does the night sky terrify you?” She asks. “And does the day sky mesmerize you and make you dream things better than the day? do you and your friends wanna come into the field and watch the fireworks shoot up into the air?” ‘White Light Doorway’ is the first of two songs that you may recognise from a prior Florist may5to12 release, although it’s been given a new coat of paint since then, and ‘Cold Lakes/Quiet Dreams’ is about as straight “indie pop” as The Birds Outside Sang gets. ‘1914’ is the second of the may5to12 songs, but has a complete makeover as Sprague is joined on vocal duties by the rest of the band, morphing it into a slow and sweet singalong, the perfect illustration of the strength-in-numbers message that pins the album together. It’s also just really nicely written:

“grab me by my shoulder blades
and hang me out to dry
i’m a mess
and i need someone to help me out with that
eyes just like a skyline even when they’re wet
and the window is foggy
and the window has a tint”

‘Dust Inside the Light’ is hushed and insular, a throwback to Sprague’s solo material, and then we come to the final track, which is also my favourite. ‘Only a Prayer, Nothing More’ feels like a distillation of all those things that Sprague says she intended the album to represent. It’s little more than acoustic guitar and Sprague’s vocals and some very minimal percussion and is a great example of how sometimes simplicity is best, how simple songs can hold a power that far exceeds the sum of their musical parts.

“thunderstorms, a friendly thing that remind me i could be dead
it’s 2 am i’m lying in my cotton bed
i wish that i could rip the roof to see the stars
but the off-white light on the ceiling will be fine tonight”

The song, and the album as a whole, is quintessentially a product of The Epoch, wrapped up in the same part-wistful, part-hopeful vibe as Small Wonder’s Wendy and Bellows’ Blue Breath and Told Slant’s Still Water. It’s a conscious reaction against sneering irony and the apparent cynical disaffection of youth, an album which lays bare its author’s thoughts and worries and feelings in the hope of making some small difference. In the hope of helping us too.

You can get The Birds Outside Sang now on vinyl or CD via Double Double Whammy or as a download via the Florist Bandcamp page.

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Today is the turn of Lanny Lieu, the person behind the new(ish) Portland-based PR entity Chill Chill Publicity (who brought Foxall and Mrs. Hopewell to our attention). PR companies are a divisive part of the music industry, at best clogging up our inboxes and at worst governing who and what gets heard in a way major labels can only dream of these days. People like Lanny are important because they show that PR can independent and tailored too, giving voice to artists who otherwise might not get heard without throwing money around or sending a zillion emails. Basically, PR can be done by people in it for the music.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, PR is only one of the musical pies in which Lanny has her fingers. She is also the current Music Director at KPSU (where she hosts her own radio show), and writes for UK blog Drunken Werewolf.

Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s Love in the Time of Cholera
by Lanny Lieu

I first stumbled upon Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s Love in the Time of Cholera in English class when I was 17. It’s probably the only assigned reading I’ve truly enjoyed. Despite it being one of my favorite books, I’ve only read it once (if only you could see my room of untouched books I’ve accumulated over the years…). I, however, still remember the magic that came along with it. I was blown away by Marquez’s vivid imagery, remarkable storytelling skills, and his ability to get inside his characters’ heads and realistically describe their motives and intentions.

I’ve always found Love in the Time of Cholera to be especially intriguing by the way it depicts all sorts of relationships ranging from a halfhearted marriage to lust-filled hookups and everything in between – some darker and more disturbing than others. The playlist I’ve provided as a part of the Quiet, Constant Friends project includes everything from a 1996 Backstreet Boys single to my favorite 2014 lo-fi gems to convey the different aspects of love and heartbreak in this beautifully written novel.

Tracklisting:

You can find Chill Chill Publicity on Twitter and Facebook. The Quiet, Constant Friends compilation is for sale on the Wake The Deaf Bandcamp page.

Cover art by Pamela Guest

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“Eskimeaux is basically me: it’s an empowered persona that has brought me warmth and fulfilment in times of isolation and confusion about my origins”

And with this knowledge of the origins of the name comes a glimpse into what has shaped Smith’s sound. This is not a beginning. Smith has more or less grown up with Eskimeaux, grown into Eskimeaux. New album O.K. feels like the product of that development, borne out of a sense of purpose and artistic confidence that comes with long hard years of trial and error.

That said, while Eskimeaux is Smith, it would be a misnomer to label the project a solo venture. Quinn Moreland‘s pretty extensive history of Smith’s music career to-date for Impose hints at the influence other musicians have had on Smith, tracing the evolution of Eskimeaux from inception to present, which sees Smith at the centre of a talented group of people in Brooklyn (partly as The Epoch collective) who work together on their various musical projects. When you thank the likes of Told Slant, Bellows, Yours Are The Only Ears, Florist, Small Wonder, Sharpless and Mitski for helping create your record, you know you are in good hands. As our preview of the album stated back in March:

“While the proof will be in the pudding, it seems O.K. is a testament to the power of gathering good friends and kind strangers who are all pulling in the same direction, a reminder that good, carefully put together art has infinitely more value than whatever the PR men and women try to push at you”

O.K. feels like an epiphany, where Smith has found the required confidence (almost certainly with the help of her friends) to speak openly without distortion or the safety-net of irony. The biggest temptation when feeling isolated and alone is to accentuate the feeling of dissociation, to lie to yourself or others by claiming that being understood (ie. less alone) is not needed. This could be through angry, primal art which strives to remind everyone that they are merely phony, bullshit-ridden animals who will grow old and die, or by creating art so abstract and inhuman that no-one can recognise it, retreating into the false security of faux-mysticism which aims to transcend the need for human connection. While Eskimeaux was never near the extreme ends of these avenues, Smith’s early work did see her feelings/message buried beneath a haze of ambient noise. O.K. sees this stripped back in favour of candid pop songs which fit very nicely into The Epoch back catalogue.

The album confronts loneliness head-on, outlining the strange but undeniable fact that each of us are distinct creatures cut off from the thoughts of anyone else, even those who mean the world to us. In lieu of telepathy, we are forced to communicate in crude alternatives, arranging words and gestures haphazardly in the hope of them saying what we really mean. ‘I Admit I’m Scared’, a song which worries about the effects you have one your loved ones, puts this quite beautifully:

“And everything I said
spewed like sparklers from my mouth
they looked pretty as they flew
but now they’re useless and burnt out”

While all the songs are linked by sincerity, there is a variation of sounds and styles across the album. Opener ‘Folly’ is a folk song bathed in reverb and guitars, the narrator casting a significant other as something magnificent and unknowable. ‘Pocket Full of Posies’ is a creepy, gritty track of vulnerability, while ‘Broken Necks’ is a bona fide pop song, a heartbreaking collapse of a relationship rendered danceable with synths and clap-along percussion and a catchy chorus. Current favourite ‘The Thunder Answered Back’ is more fierce, bubbling with certainty before exploding in the cathartic refrain of “You coward, you hummingbird”. The track continues with a dramatic closing, euphoric and elemental: 

“I screamed out how’d it get this bad? And the thunder answered back
if you know not what you lack then you must unturn your back
Your inside is overcast you are tethered to your past
and it must feel like fucking hell to be a patchwork of yourself,
a bunch of scraps thrown and sewn around your bones
and though you’re alone it’s holding you too tightly.
But who are you?
From where do you come?
What do you believe in?
Whom do you love?”

The sense of loneliness never leaves, but it’s joined by the acceptance of the weird paradoxical truth that you can never be OK without first recognizing the fact that you won’t always be OK. And, perhaps more importantly, the understanding that everyone is in the same boat. Obviously, for this to be a comfort then people need to make it known, so it’s lucky indeed that ‘Alone at the Party’ is the anthem of this realisation, finding solace and community in the fact that we are all at some level lonely. This is what Eskimeaux does best, she says things that might not be cool or pretty or ‘normal’ in order to help. In this way O.K. is like an unveiling, an opening of the chest, with Smith delving into herself to show us every gruesome detail that we too possess. We see her heart and lungs and rounded ribs, the fragile threads of nerves and blood vessels which twitch and tremble in the spotlight, we see a space lined with thorns or glass or thick black bile in which sits something hard and smooth and bright, something that we recognise despite it having no shape or weight or name. Closer ‘That’s OK’ concludes the viewing, cleansing the cavity with peace and sewing herself back up safe in the knowledge that communication has finally been achieved:

“Frankie is face down in our bed,
you are downstairs
and all I want is to hear you say
is ‘we’re not the same but that’s ok’.”

O.K. is about reality, the moment we live in and the people we share it with. It’s about the things we want and the things we wish for and the things we can’t control. It’s about doing the best you can and hoping it’s enough, about accepting and learning and growing so that whatever hand you’re dealt, you carve out some semblance of meaning and happiness to make everything worthwhile.

You can buy the album digitally from Eskimeaux’s Bandcamp, on CD/vinyl from Double Double Whammy or on beautiful cassettes from Mt. Home Arts (see below).

Embroidery artwork by Susannah Lee Cutler

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Fevered Press, Fevered Certainty is an independent press run by two non-binary radicals in Michigan. Their aim is to highlight voices on the margins, and they do so by publishing really cool zines and books. They have recently published the first volume of The Epoch Fanzine, which “includes photos, interviews with collective members, essays, dance, and song covers by the qt n friendly community surrounding the collective”. The blurb gives you good reason to grab a copy right away:

“read to feel posi, read to feel closer to yr fav bands n artists”

Perhaps the best bit about the zine are the covers of songs by Epoch faves Told Slant, Small Wonder and Eskimeaux by some really cool and talented people. They serve as 1) cool new takes on tracks I really like and 2) introductions to artists I’m not at all familiar with. What’s not to like?

First up is Leor Miller (of Cipinko), who transforms Told Slant’s ‘Lack’ with fuzzy lo-fi guitars and deadpan vocals, cultivating a sort of Bret Easton Ellis-style so-cool-he’s-numb kinda vibe. Then Detroit’s Chill Corea brings a lo-fi synth pop rendition of Eskimeaux’s ‘Alone At the Party’, think Casiotone for the Painfully Alone meets Free Cake For Every Creature.

The second Told Slant cover comes courtesy of Pitsburgh’s Unraveler, who chooses ‘Ohio Snow Falls’ and provides a version which manages to capture the awkward twitchy passion that makes Told Slant so good. Michigan-based Anywaves also cover Told Slant, with a guitar-less take on ‘Parking Lots’, complete with that slightly desperate warbling crack to the vocals, before alone@home wrap things up with ‘Pocket Full of Posies’, a track which the band describe as “characteristic Eskimeaux, with prettiness and sadness in every line”.

You can get the fanzine via the Fevered Press website, and download the songs on a name-your-price basis over at their Bandcamp page. Now excuse me while I go listen to all these artists’ back catalogues.

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They have recently released a brand new single, ‘vow’, which is due to appear on their forthcoming debut album. The track is a lovely little indie pop number, all languid guitars and Morgan’s sweet vocals. As with the band’s previous singles, ‘vow’ comes complete with some very nice collage-style artwork courtesy of Alana Questell.

You can buy the single right now via the band’s Bandcamp page. I highly suggest you check out their other tracks too.

SALES are also embarking on a tour of the East Coast. Check the nifty poster below for dates, venues and some pretty excellent companions (including acts such as Small Wonder, Alex G, Told Slant and Hundred Waters).

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Musically, the album is a patchwork of influences. The uplifting refrains of Modest Mouse, the energy of Dinosaur Jr., the strangeness of Flaming Lips, autotune, a rap verse (!)… all of these bind together to form an album that is experimental yet undeniably pop music. This is a dynamic album that refuses to settle into one box, accelerating and decelerating at will, changing from boisterous (‘The Hardest Question’, ‘Gemini’ etc.) to poignant (‘Mom and Dad’, ‘Greater Then’, etc) with little warning, and it’s all the better for it. It kind of brings to mind experimental legends The Mae Shi, or rather, The Mae Shi covering Arcade Fire and Cursive and Weezer and Miley Cyrus (trust me) and God knows who else. It is every bit as good as this sounds.

Greenleaf is a close friend of Henry Crawford, AKA Small Wonder (who we featured here), and Crawford appears on the album. In fact, you could say he does more than that: “Jack Greenleaf and Henry Crawford have been writing songs together for as long as anyone can remember,” says The Epoch page, “if you are listening to a Small Wonder song, you are also listening to Sharpless whispering along behind the singing. When you listen to Sharpless, Small Wonder sits nearby, playing along on the floor.“ In a world of blog-driven buzz bands and label-pushed clones, it’s good to know that communities like this still exist. The pair have even put out a small release together, which you can hear here.

You can buy The One I Wanted To Be via Bandcamp, where there are plenty of past releases to explore too. Be sure to keep up with The Epoch, they are involved in some great stuff at the moment.

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