With a soft and cautious style, the [release] tiptoes forward with something between bummed out slacker stillness and a kind of weighted trepidation, as sad and scared and bored as any spirit unable to pass on. But the ghost here is still very much living, the life slipping past before his eyes very much his own. The goal is not the bright afterlife but a far duller paradise—a sense of contentment, comfort in one’s own skin. The feeling that, yes, you really are living, right here and right now.

Last month saw Ghost Fan Club return with brand new single that continues these ideas. As the title suggests, ‘Crutch’ deals with the limbo of coping mechanisms, the thoughts and actions imposed to get one through the day that might also prove a hindrance in conquering the real problem. Costolo captures this with a slow and reluctant style, following the likes of Told Slant in the way the delivery feels at once rhetorical and not. “Why am I like this?” the lyrics asks, not expecting an answer but hoping for one all the same.

Everything is scary
I don’t want to move on
What does the end mean
Am I too far gone

Why am I like this
Inside these walls
I’ll stay safe
The crutch that holds me up

The post Ghost Fan Club – Crutch appeared first on Various Small Flames.

Though Costolo is pushing the Two Meters sound increasingly into metal territory, he wanted to preserve a space to continue a more restrained, emo-inflected bedroom style. Hence Ghost Fan Club, a brand new project that will serve as an outlet for the softer side of things.

If you were wondering about the choice of name, then introductory single ‘Passing Through’ gives a good indication. With a soft and cautious style, the track tiptoes forward with something between bummed out slacker stillness and a kind of weighted trepidation, as sad and scared and bored as any spirit unable to pass on. But the ghost here is still very much living, the life slipping past before his eyes very much his own. The goal is not the bright afterlife but a far duller paradise—a sense of contentment, comfort in one’s own skin. The feeling that, yes, you really are living, right here and right now.

Another morning
6 am just falling asleep
Birds outside remind me
Of what I’ve always known
I’m not living I’m just passing through

Losing days faster now
Will time ever slow down

The post Ghost Fan Club – Passing Through appeared first on Various Small Flames.

Black Sea Dahu – Thaw
Will Henriksen – Nothing Left Behind
Dehd – Letter
Hovvdy – Ruin (my ride)
Maya Lucia – preteen
They Are Gutting A Body of Water – french
Jason Calhoun – moving
Dilary Huff – Overused Sayings
Two Meters – The Nightmare
Dead Painters – Marigold
The Deer – Confetti To The Hurricane
Pastel – Moon Landing
Hit Like A Girl – No More Dysphoria
Basement Revolver – Master’s Degree
Bodies on the Beach – Ghost
Highnoon – Lens
Distant Reader – Marie
Drakes Island – 4 Days
Wet Dream – Worried
Best Mann – Must Be Wrong
The Funs – Trains Across The Sea
Ganser – Buio
Nothings – Favorite Shirt
Corinne Sharlet – Hail Mary
ahem – Halloween
Max and the Martians – Please Hold On
A.S. Wilson – Taken Apart
Béret – Book of Hera
Joel Jerome – There’s Nothing Here To Bother You Anymore
Carpet City – Little Longer
Hannah Cranton – Kite
Zachary Lucky – Didn’t Know That You’d Come Along
Wintersleep – Fading Out
Coral – find me wrong
Boo Baby – “Jazz?”
Margaux – Palm

Check out our previous Monthly Roundup playlists, and be sure to read our Reviews and Previews throughout the month.

The post October 2019 Roundup appeared first on Various Small Flames.

Next came the Blue Jay EP, which “further blur[red] the dividing lines between pop, post-rock and ambient, conjuring a sound that manage[d] to make personal experiences appear vast and weighed with meaning.” The release felt like the Two Meters aesthetic being honed, another step toward realising Costolo’s singular vision that built upon the intimate and emotional style of his debut.

Continuing this development, Two Meters is back with a brand new A/B single, The Nightmare // Bike Ride, again released with Very Jazzed. Produced by Paul Kintzing of German Error Message, the songs find Costolo pushing into dark and foreboding territories. ‘The Nightmare’ opens with a palpable sense of trepidation that calls to mind Jason Molina‘s starkest work. “Alone gasping for air,” Costolo murmurs, “against the weight of the world,” and this weight is soon given tangible form in the shape of thundering guitars.

Indeed, the entirety of the lyrics could be taken as a verbalised summation of what is the heaviest and bleakest Two Meters song to date.

Crushing down as shadows move
Faceless but with form
A mouth unable to cry out
As the darkness comes
Just as fast life snaps back
The figure gone
The room is back in view
What was real is never clear

The heaviest and bleakest, that is, until ‘Bike Ride’ swings into view. Forming out of the static aftermath of the previous track, the song finds a callous rhythm amid the reverb, dragging its great heft forward with a terrible inevitability. “There’s a nail in my wheel,” Costolo wails, his voice half-crazed through the noise. “My pedals are broken / Left to grind / Into my heel.”

In some ways the track serves as an interesting counterpoint to another bicycle-themed track from this year. Pedro The Lion‘s ‘Yellow Bike’ is similarly nostalgic, looking back at what once was, but while Bazan finds something like fondness, gazing at past concerns in the knowledge that he outlasted their threat, Costolo’s discovery is far less comforting. Here the retrospection is far more immediate, the danger still present and waiting. If the closing moments of the track see the nightmare break, then there is still no promise that it cannot return. Maybe the next night, or the night after that, or every night of your life, picking at the wounds it inflicts so that they may never quite heal.

My helmets collecting dust
The brakes are out
I am
Crossing the street

I make it to the other side
But look back and wonder
What could have been

The Nightmare // Bike Ride is out now via Very Jazzed and you can get it from the Two Meters Bandcamp page.

The post Two Meters – The Nightmare / Bike Ride appeared first on Various Small Flames.

Adrianne Lenker – cradle
German Error Message – Hopelessness
Jo Schornikow – Incomplete
Grizzly Coast – Half-Light Boy
Taylor Hamilton – Might Say
Porridge Radio – Give / Take
Patio – Scum
Ruthie – Spirit Now Moves
Esther Rose – Don’t Blame It On the Moon
Blood Cultures – Flowers For All Occasions
Puddle-Cuddle – Compost
Mess – Dead Space
Cry Babe – Soft Honk
The Painters – Pieces of Life
Two Meters – Ground
Erin Durant – Take a Load Off
Michelle Blades – Ring
Eric & Magill – Thanks to Sciences
Foundlings – Caught Up on You
Craig Finn – Something To Hope For
JW Ridley – Homesick (Out The Blue)
Pieket – Eternal Recurrence
The Curfews – Rose
Emily Fairlight – Body Below
Raggedy – Brainwash
Barrie – Saturated
Blush – Forever Is a Long Time
Shane Leonard – Empire Builder
Con Davison – Sofa Bed
Gold Light + Snakemusk – The Heart Is A Lonely Hunter
The Chats – Pub Feed
Shutups – Yellowjacket
Izzy Heltai – Stuck In Stone
Adam Ostrar – Take It Back
The Death Of Pop – Last
Toledo – Some Samurai
Yot Club – Japan
Evan Thomas Way & The Phasers – Long Distance
K. Campbell – Heads Up
The Duke of Norfolk – As the Heralds Revere You
Leaky Engine-John Birch Society Blues
naps – treading
Vieo Abiungo – What the Rain Restores
Old Earth – The Friends ∴ The Gods
Good Good Blood & Astral Social Club – Heathen Astronaut

Like what you hear? Catch up with the rest of our Monthly Mixes!

The post April 2019 Roundup Mix appeared first on Various Small Flames.

Today we’re delighted to be able to share the lead single from a brand new Two Meters release, The Blue Jay EP, coming this May on Very Jazzed. Developing the vulnerability and tenderness of EP1, ‘Ground’ sees Costolo further blur the dividing lines between pop, post-rock and ambient, conjuring a sound that manages to make personal experiences appear vast and weighed with meaning.

The opening build has elements of early-career Wintersleep, an ominous creep that threatens to explode into violent crescendo, though in fact the opposite occurs, the track dialling down to a small point. However, the vocals are inversely-related to the instrumentation, progressing from Costolo’s detached mumble into something altogether more impassioned and desperate, his voice joined by another that stretches and strains under the forces of emotion.

The Blue Jay EP will be released via Very Jazzed on the 17th May and you can pre-order it from Bandcamp.

The post Two Meters – Ground appeared first on Various Small Flames.

Tracklisting:

Dear Nora – White Fur
Lawn – 2000 Boy
Pearl Crush – True Blue
Dead Painters – Fool On Fire
Slowcoaches – Found Down
Two Meters – Left Behind
Kerem Atalay – Winter 2
Pat Moon – I Belong
Blood Hype – Not Too Good
Talons’ – Driving Home From Shows
The Nova Darlings – I Like Crashing My Car (Into Yours)
Dead Sullivan – Swallow
Onlyness – Comfortable
Of the Valley – Italy
Nice Knees – Backout
Suburban Pets – Candy
Minor Moon – It’s Okay
Caroline Lazar – Georgia
Heatwarmer – American Dog
Jacob Furr – Life Comes At You Fast
Deux Trois – Dave
Grace Turner – Dead or Alive
Britton Patrick Morgan – Southern Drawl

The post June 2018 Roundup appeared first on Various Small Flames.

However, while Pastel opted for a sprawling ambient sound, Two Meters has at least one foot in the bedroom pop camp. Though with the help of Brenner’s production, Costolo maintains a rich and fierce instrumental edge too. As such, Two Meters achieves what at first appears a paradoxical hybrid, blending the sincere intimacy of bedroom pop with the urgent weight of ambient into what are either condensed epics or impossibly rich snapshots. Dimestore Saints, who premiered the first single, put it nicely, describing how Costolo manages to “hon[e] sentiments of loss and sorrow into a precise vessel,” vacuum-packing too-large emotions into a single EP.

As the title suggests, ‘Left Behind’ opens with a headlong charge into the themes of the record,  charting the aftermath of a bereavement. The track is sedate for the first half, though a lingering hum suggests some residual energy, the air still vibrating from the recent violence. This sparks back into full-bodied emotion by the midway point, and in doing so conjures the cycle of the grieving process, anaesthetised stretches interspersed with sudden drops, where everything becomes too vivid and fast-moving.

‘Captive Audience’ is less abrupt, building slowly with simmering tension before the monolithic white noise garble of ‘Current Sequel’ tries to swamp Costolo’s words. From here, ‘Trapped Inside’ clears the air, though in a fashion strangely ethereal, as though peace can only come in dreams, before ‘Web’ follows with warm yet morose pleading. The track could be seen as the first waking moments after the lightness of ‘Trapped Inside’, a desperate desire to go back into the dream or time itself, or else just share words once more with a person who needs to hear them.

We’re delighted to be able to share a full stream of the EP a few days early, especially as the album is one that deserves to be listened to as a complete whole.

Artwork by Maya Tripathi

The post Album Premiere: Two Meters – S/T EP appeared first on Various Small Flames.