Tracklisting:

1) Lost (Season One) – Camp Cope
2) Johnny – Basement Revolver
3) Can U Hear Me Now? – Porridge Radio
4) All 4s – ARMS
5) If You’re on the Water – The Saxophones
6) In Ribbons – Psychic Shakes
7) a good pet – Real Swell
8) Breadcrumbs – The Perennials
9) Father is a Craftsman – Modern Studies
10) Aligning With the Sun – Dear Tracks
11) Cake Bath – Cloud Cover
12) Postdoc Blues – John K. Samson
13) Room For Love – Wooden Dinosaur
14) Crab Line – Trust Fund
15) 1 – Young Jesus
16) Life’s Rough – Serial Chiller
17) Never Lonely – Space Mountain
18) I Wish I Was Plural – Free Space
19) More Than Science – Sunshine Faces
20) Maya – Competition
21) Fireball – Albosel
22) It Hurts- A Day Without Love
23) That Went Well- Guppy
24) Kids Playing Outside – Almanac Mountain
25) Patience To Undo the Patience – Psalmships

You can check out the previous monthly roundups here, and our various other playlists and mixtapes here. Be sure to pop back throughout September and beyond to see what autumn brings!

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

“Me and my baby, that’s all we want
All we want is to not exist”

These lyrics appear in ‘Crab Line’, a track we described as “a beam of triumphant energy… Jones’s vocals driving it into a catchy melody [and] producing a joyous pop song”. The band have just released a new video for the track, directed by fellow Bristolian Bert Clark (of Black Terror). The footage is taken from the band’s recent tour to Norway, cutting between scenic shots of Scandinavian fjords and a mini-Wrestlemania taking place within the hostel-cum-school gym in which they were staying. The juxtaposition between amazing beauty and some trees and stuff works really well, we’re sure you’ll agree. Watch below (via NPR):

You can get We have always lived in The Harolds from the Trust Fund Bandcamp page, or on cassette from It Takes Time Records.

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Tracklisting:

1. Staying in Line – Un Blonde
2. Skinned Knees – Soccer Mommy
3. Dream Wave – Tiny Ruins
4. No Sadness/Furrowed Brow – Good Good Blood
5. Pain – LVL UP
6. Theory Wars – Pop Weirdos
7. Crab Line – Trust Fund
8. Heaven’s Gate – Ghost Camp
9. Holy Ghost – Deer Scout
10. Desert Blues – Nassau
11. Okkervil River R.I.P. – Okkervil River
12. Housemouse – Wyndwood
13. Smash – Varsity
14. Raised By Wolves – Eternals
15. Starting Again – Lisa Prank
16. Feel You – Pat Moon
17. Nothing – Naps
18. Everywhere A Man Can Be (Teaser) – Zachary Lucky
19. Mailbox – Alexandra Gordon
20. Ditmars – Rainwater
21. You Are on the Water – Ben Seretan
22. Pinesol – Fern Mayo

You can check out the previous monthly roundups here, and our various other playlists and mixtapes here. Thanks as always for getting us through another month. Here’s to a good August!

The post July 2016 Roundup: A Mixtape appeared first on Various Small Flames.

We have always lived in The Harolds is quieter than you may expect if you’ve checked out Trust Fund previously. The DIY recording process creating something more personal and less brashly confident than the full-band indie pop of the last release (it’s certainly closer in style to No one’s coming for us than Seems Unfair). The album opens with ‘wwsd’, which glides into being with the spooky sound of a far-off car alarm, before crunching into life with guitar and shambling drums and Jones’s signature vocal delivery. The song segues into ‘Would that be an adventure?’, with its subtly auto-tuned vocals and strange dream-like intermissions of nostalgic pop, just one of the album’s many eccentric touches. ‘melody gloucester pegasus’ is tense and taut, while ‘Together’ is as bright and sunny a pop song about wanting to die every weekday could hope to be. At least we have the weekends for “special time together”, right? As if sensing our need for a pick-me-up, the next track, ‘Crab line’, sends a beam of triumphant energy. The instrumentation initially sounds jittery and high-strung, but Jones’s vocals drive it into a catchy melody, producing a joyous pop song.

“when the winter gets cold enough
it makes you feel so thin
when the wind blows bold enough
you feel like this like you’re made of nothing
me and my baby that’s all we want
me and my baby want only this
me and my baby that’s all we want
all we want is to not exist”

‘¬¬¬creepin’ is subdued and echoey and the Frogger-referencing ‘Like a frog’ is a soft and down-tempo indie pop song that has it’s own understated lo-fi bedroom-recorded lushness. ‘Leaving you behind’ takes a little while before blooming into catchy indie rock, before ‘whalith’ closes proceedings, a soft and directly lovesick track which sees Jones declare his love for a significant other.

“what were we searching for
a life without metaphor
i’m ready to find
you sweeping all doubts aside”

We have always lived in The Harolds is an album that rather nicely illustrates what Trust Fund are all about. Free from the input of a label, and mostly completed by Jones alone, the album feels like a true representation of the project. It straddles the line between lo-fi and polished, weird and catchily infectious, all the while maintaining a silvery core of introspection and melancholy.

You can get the album from the Trust Fund Bandcamp page. You Americans be sure to grab a tape from It Takes Time Records.

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The compilation is out now and you can grab a copy via the No Dice Tapes Bandcamp page, or get a download on a pay-what-you-can basis (but it’s for a good cause, remember?).

Artwork by Annabel Amin

The post No Dice Tapes – 2016: the year all bad things went away and everything turned out to be fine appeared first on Various Small Flames.

“It Must Be Grubs is meant to be fun and colourful and playful and enjoyable even though some of the lyrics and songs are a bit sad. We are very happy with it.”

And happy they should be, the album is an eighteen minute rush of jolly good fun. The band meld good things from all of the member’s other projects creating an infectious, if rather messy, brand of indie pop. Opener ‘What Cost’ sees Brennan take the lead and sounds very much like a lo-fi pop version of Two White Cranes, but with added shouty screechy vocals and group wooooahhs. Yes it’s as good as it sounds. ‘Nuffin’ is actually a pretty tight lo-fi pop song, with a beguiling sense of offhand good-times, while Brennan and Williams provide deadpan vocal harmonies on ‘Dec 15th’. The track’s lively drums give things an infectious energy, culminating in shout-along ending. It’s so fun and energetic you can’t help but imagine the band at the end all flushed and blushed, slightly sweaty and embarrassed like toddlers coming down from a Smartie-induced mania. ‘Work in Progress’ is about battling innate self-deprecation and trying to ignore those seemingly perfect people and, ultimately, taking tentative steps into self-care. Brennan repeats the chorus with increasing fervour, creating a strangely defiant and positive song about looking after yourself:

“I focus on myself
swimming everyday
so good for my health”

‘There’s Something About Grubs’ has male and female vocals seemingly singing two different songs, while ‘Garnish’ is about just that, that green thing in the side of your plate that you don’t want to eat, as well as more serious things that crop up on the side of things, from mystery scratches to thoughts inside your head (“On the side of my head there’s a memory / I don’t know what from / we can talk it through endlessly”). ‘Gym Shame’ is another short burst of lo-fi rock which pairs squally guitars and pounded drums with sweet, innocent vocals, and ‘Windwaker’ is an endearingly twee track about playing the Gamecube (“Tuesday I get upset, playing Windwaker / I fall and fall again, I keep hitting the water”). It’s not an explicitly sad song but its chirpy happiness seems to exist in spite of something, something which suggests that making these little pop songs isn’t just a joke between friends.

‘Skinner’ weaves increasingly agitated male and female vocals, which proceed to merge for the chorus, and ‘Tendons’ is another song about self-improvement and the pains of exercise (“if I run five miles today all joints ache”). ‘Good Timez’ signs off with one final rush of catchy lo-fi pop, complete with a brilliant shout-a-long chorus of “I WILL FOLLOW YOU!” If it sounds like three friends messing around and having fun then that’s because it is! But what else do you want from your lo-fi rock & roll?

You can get It Must Be Grubs as a digital download via the Grubs bandcamp page. Or if you’d like something a little more substantial then why not order the album on vinyl, also on Bandcamp, through Reeks of Effort and Tuff Enuff Records.

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