Tracklisting:

1. Hold That Thought – Joyride!
2. Betsy’s Back – Bloody Death Skull
3. Cold Spell – Lunar Quiet
4. Go To Sleep – Skinny Blonde
5. Limbaud – American Enthusiasm
6. Saurkraut – Your Dog
7. Ache – Dæva
8. Bound By Blood – Hollow Twin
9. Florida’s Warm – Day Joy
10. The Dark Side of the Holy Ghost – Young Elk
11. The Park Behind Walmart  – Boy Scouts
12. Fear & Force – Vagabon
13. Stanton Park – Luke De-Sciscio
14. uuu – Field Medic
15. Meeting Points at 2AM – dné
16. The Rain Thief – Honey Stretton
17. The Stranger – Tyler Butler
18. Nervousness Fangs – Will Johnson
19. Constellation – Leanne Betasamosake Simpson
20. The Dark Streets of Newark – Monarch Mtn
21. Violet – Roddy Hart & the Lonesome Fire
22. Work – naps
23. Passage of Old – Seabuckthorn
24. We’re Stuck With The Beauty – Winter Villains
25. Why They Call You Blue – Jordan Buchell

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

‘Wandering Man’ is a lonely travelling song in the tradition of the greats, Butler’s signature delicate vocals delivering lines that tell of a world-weary nomad. The verses switch perspective between the wanderer, who traverses the Rockies and the great northern pines, and his darling left behind.

“How many roads have you gone down?
How many times have you come through this town?
I will not grow lonely and old by myself
I will not be the woman of a wandering man”

‘The Stranger’ is another sparse folk song, the guitar so gentle it sounds almost a capella in parts. The narrator tells the story of his beloved Nancy, and his dreams of a stranger “with the devil in his eyes”. Its safe to say the story isn’t a happy one, thick with the same cruel morality of Southern Gothic literature.

‘North Country Girl’ is another song about a traveller and a lover up North, before closer ‘Hunting Dog Night’ sounds like the soundtrack to a hard and lonely existence in the vein of McCarthy’s Suttree.

“Well you don’t meet kindly women
when you’re living in the bars
sleeping through the morning
in the front seat of your car
woke up from my slumber,
found her knocking on my door
I was half asleep again”

You can get Four Dreams Demos for a single Canadian dollar (or more) from the Tyler Butler Bandcamp page.

The post Tyler Butler – Four Dreams Demos appeared first on Various Small Flames.

But somehow, amidst the drugs and fighting and perversion, Pollock managed to create characters interesting beyond black curiosity, taking up the mantle of Southern greats such as William Gay and Flannery O’Connor in his ability to induce sympathy or at least complicate the antipathy his characters will garner. This style was developed (and potentially mastered) with Devil All The Time, his debut novel which cast the reader into world in which the membrane between reality and nightmare is leaky at best, with blood sacrifice and serial killer couples complicating an already bleak coming-of-age tale.

While Donald Ray Pollock’s latest novel, The Heavenly Table, takes us back to the 1917, it’s still rooted in the area of America he is making his own. The narrative is snappy and unsettled, the short chapters jumping between various locations and points of view, slowly drawing inwards in an inescapable ring which corrals the characters into the inevitable finale at the town of Meade. We have Ellsworth Fiddler, a swindled farmer trying to save face, Jasper Cone, a painfully afflicted sanitation inspector, Lieutenant Bovard, a jilted husband turned homoerotic (would be) war hero, and finally the luckless Jewett brothers, Cane, Cob and Chimney, who grow tired of the poor life and turn to robbing banks as a path to salvation.

With the graphic violence, crude sex and odd scatological humour, this appears to be more or less Pollock’s odd twist on the standard Western fare. Where things get interesting is that the Jewetts are inspired by a cheap dime novel, The Life and Times of Bloody Bill Bucket. Every cliche can therefore be read as a secondhand gesture, the Jewetts wearing Bloody Bill’s persona like a tacky fancy dress costume, hoping some of his magic (ie. his fictional bravado, success, imperiousness to pain/failure/death) might rub off on them. Furthermore, as their ‘spree’ gains traction so does the media’s reaction, with stories of ‘Jewett’ crimes emanating from newspapers in other areas and states, despite the brothers never having been there.

So not only are the boys distorting fiction into reality, but their reality is distorting into fiction, leaving them having to live up to the magnificent/terrifying tales on both ends. And while it’s apparent the trio are not well-equipped for such pressures, they sure give it their (quite literal) best shot, working on the logic of faking it ’til you make it:

‘Leaning over the horn of his saddle, Chimney spat and then said, “Well, I don’t know who those ol’ boys are back there, but I don’t figure they can shoot any better than we can.”

“Maybe, but there must be fifteen of them in that pack.”

“So?” Chimney said. “That many don’t even amount to one box of shells.”‘

Here are some dust-strewn, blood-spattered songs to listen to as you read.

Tracklisting:

1) Devil Town – Bright Eyes
2) Blood Red Sentimental Blues – Cotton Jones
3) Bury Me in the Garden – Tyler Butler and his Handsome Friends
4) Tom Justice, The Choir Boy Robber, Apprehended at Ace Hardware in Libertyville, IL – Casiotone For The Painfully Alone
5) Murderous Joy – Carter Tanton
6) Christ Jesus – Deer Tick
7) You Should’ve Seen the Other Guy – Nathaniel Rateliff
8) Buriedfed – Miles Benjamin Anthony Robinson
9) Fire & Fast Bullets – Blitzen Trapper
10) Brother’s Blood – Kevin Devine
11) I Dreamt of My Brother Dying – Oscar Lush
12) Drunk and On a Star – Kevin Morby
13) Weather of a Killing Kind – The Tallest Man on Earth
14) Whore – Low
15) Liars – Gregory Alan Isakov and the Colorado Symphony
16) Closer to Heaven – Pink Mountaintops
17) Killer – Samantha Crain

The Heavenly Table is out now via Harvill Secker and Doubleday. You can read about Donald Ray Pollock’s other works on the Knopf Doubleday website.

The post Lit Links: Donald Ray Pollock – The Heavenly Table appeared first on Various Small Flames.

Tracklisting:

1. I Don’t Know – Tina Refnes (+ Lit Links)
2. If I Were a Portal – Evening Hymns
3. Cradle Robber – Tyler Butler and His Handsome Friends
4. Calvander – Mount Moriah
5. The Way It Is, The Way It Could Be – The Weather Station
6. Porch – Long Beard
7. Small Wind Power – Fraternal Twin
8. Mourning Dove – Danielle Fricke
9. 3 – Cat Be Damned
10. Cold Apartment Floors – Vagabon
11. I Used To Be A Bird – Fairweather Currents
12. Drive-Thru – Honeyuck
13. Ghosts – The Washboard Abs
14. Litany – Tyler Key
15. Aviator Shades – Quiet Hollers
16. Book of Right On (Joanna Newsom cover) – Foxtails Brigade (Lit Links)
17. Judy Blume – Mal Devisa
18. So Long – Dot & Logic
19. A Swift Thing – EP
20. Stuck w/ Me – Home Lives
21. Close Call (Adderall Anxiety) – Shaky Shrines
22. Boys – Dicktations
23. Nothing – Strange Friends
24. Careful Creators – Summering
25. Blinding White – Vapour Night
26. Pull – Slow Dancing Society (Hidden Shoal compilation)
27. Calmest – Naps
28. As He Walked Into the Field – Robert Stillman
29. Church Bells – Tommy Perman, Simon Kirby & Rob St. John
30. Seven – Oh, Rose
    31. No Hell – Cloud Cult

The post November Roundup – A Mixtape appeared first on Various Small Flames.

“I certainly value simplicity in my stories, the straight-forward expression of desire and love, a direct relationship between work and fulfillment… My stories often reverse the ‘classic’ love story – my male characters are very vulnerable, their emotions and desires are on display, as prominent as their strength. And my female characters can be strong and demanding.

[The album Violence] is a critique of western masculinity. I live in a place where masculinity often means taking up the most space, being the loudest, having the biggest truck. I think the working characters on this album, and the shift in the sound toward country music provide a critique of this masculinity, showcase a lifestyle in which work is constructive, not violent.”

The self-titled EP from Butler’s latest project, Tyler Butler and his Handsome Friends, is the Tyler Butler we know and love but with some welcome additions. The Handsome Friends bring electric guitar, bass, percussion, keys and fiddle, fleshing out Butler’s folk sound into something richer but not necessarily more complicated. Take opening track ‘Bury Me in the Garden’ as an example – a chirpy country foot-tapper which follows the same ideals as all of his music, the added instrumentation managing to add depth without put-on complexity. The song could be said to be beautiful, sad or disturbing, depending on your point of view, and as it’s about life and love, the truth is probably somewhere in between (or maybe all three simultaneously). Here the sweet declarations of love traditional to country music (“I knew nothing until you held me in your arms”) are peppered amongst the dark and strangely comforting truth about our place in the environment, charting the same sort of territory as the Young Jesus album we loved, albeit in a very different way:

When I’m gone, my darling, she’s going to bury me in the garden
lay my weary head under the soil.
My body has been borrowed from the earthworm and the sparrow
I am everything that cycles and returns

‘Cradle Robber’ follows a similar path, the meandering romance of previous Tyler Butler releases coloured with crunchy folk rock instrumentation. This proves a perfect accompaniment to the surprisingly stark narrative, the gentle love story brought into relief by some rather high stakes, giving the whole thing a serious, severe edge. The natural world has often featured in Butler’s work (check out the track-listing for Winter King), and here it rises to prominence again, every inch of grace matched by a helpless and inadvertent cruelty, where everyone is hurting and each of their actions has a consequence beyond their control:

“I want to steal you from your man
he lays to sleep against your back
my child swells against your stomach
a raven tangle of wind.
So hide the things we do alone
I press my lips on your skin
and sing a song of the forest
I am the egg-thief, the cradle robber”

Like all good murder ballads, ‘The Stranger (A Death Foretold)’ has love and anguish and the swagger of a life well lived. It tells the tale of a travelling/sleeping narrator, the sort of quiet and determined hero William Gay wrote so well, living life with gentle simplicity and moral rules which push toward his darling and spiral toward tragedy (at least in his dream world). Closer ‘Wandering Man’ continues the Western theme, sung from two perspectives: That of the titular character and of his lover left at home. The song also comes with a three-part short film from one of the Handsome Friends Dylan Rhys Howard (whose beautiful work you can find at Truthful Work Films), which does a far better job of expanding upon the mood and themes than I ever could, so have a look at Pts. 1 & 2 below:

You can buy Tyler Butler and his Handsome Friends now via Bandcamp, and also grab a rather lovely t-shirt.

The post Tyler Butler and his Handsome Friends – S/T appeared first on Various Small Flames.

“In the Dark on 99 is in many ways the realist representation of winter, the real-life counterpart to the romantic crunch of snow and hot cocoa. That said, it deals with this in a much more interesting way than merely saying ‘actually, winter is cold and dark and the snow turns to muddy slush…’ The album probes what winter means, what it does to us, how it becomes less a season than some existential force.”

The Black Pits, Cuming’s latest EP, looks to build on the album and explore themes of travel and isolation in a land where the elements hold a significant curiosity. Again, his lyrics are cryptic and poetic and delivered in that Bill Callahan sort of style which made In The Dark… so evocative, drawing the listener through the tracks like the faceless narrator of a dream. Opener ‘Keep Trying’ is the perfect example, the strange vocals backed by an incisive and vaguely menacing instrumentation reminiscent of Old Earth:

The wind will turn/ Against your back/ Your back will talk/ To/ the window’s crack/ As time cloves two/ On a strong boat on the moor/ You’ve heard this before/ It’s sparser than ever/ So keep on trying/ Keep trying

Each track enlists a different producer, with fellow musicians like Garrett Johnson, Layne L’Heureux and Tyler Butler taking over the duties, so it is Cuming’s distinctive vocals which provide the cohesion across the six songs. ‘Long Life’ slows slightly, the track brooding and rhetorical (“What do you know?/ Are you strong?/ Do you travel?/ Does the wind even make you cold?”), while ‘Lost in Time’ relaxes further, the vocals becoming smooth and fluid, like some quasi-doo-wop act in a smoke-filled club too late at night. The lyrics become odder on the restrained ‘Quiet Dream’, fragmented but compelling, grasping at a logic just out of sight.

“I’ve heard a hundred sorry midnight’s score/ That electric hum, the loner’s lullaby/ To kiss another gunshy infant morn/ To drink another bloodshot evening dry”

In comparison, ‘Stay Inside’ is heavy, a track smothered by mean reverb that is ominous both in terms of sound and lyrics. “When you wake up in the morning,” Cuming sings, “don’t open up your eyes. As you’re walking out the door, stay inside”. However, the title track closes the release on a more upbeat note, with the hostile drone replaced by brighter, shimmering guitars.

Heaven/ I would remember/ A fleeting sheet in time/ A symbol of a sign/ At home/ And darkness breeds alone/ It trembles with desire/ But in the blackest pit, there was a shovel for me/ Hold tight

The Black Pits EP is out now on Bart Records, and you can buy it from the Jom Comyn Bandcamp page.

The post Jom Comyn – The Black Pits EP appeared first on Various Small Flames.

Mira Stolpe – K

First we have Mira Stolpe, a San Francisco-based songwriter, originally from Stockholm. The short bio on the email she sent us said that she is passionate about melodies and melancholy, and listening to her latest track, ‘K’, I’d say that sounds about right. The track is a lesson in focus and minimalism. Sometimes less really can be more. The second part of her bio said that she wants to sound “like a tropical bird in a Swedish forest”, and that’s a very nice analogy too. You can listen to ‘K’ in the player now, and check out Stolpe’s Soundcloud page to hear more.

Ancient Youth – Deer & the Moon

I don’t know much about Ancient Youth other than they are from somewhere in the USA and that they make lovely bedroom-folk music. They released Deer & the Moon a few weeks ago on their Bandcamp page. The EP contains five gentle and pretty folk songs. I promise by the end you’ll feel like the sleepy deer on the record’s cover.

Thom Byles – Lighthouse

Next up is Thom Byles, an English/Mexican artist based in Greenwich. He has recently released a brand new single entitled ‘Lighthouse’. The track is a sedate acoustic number, backed with Byles’s falsetto vocals. There are obvious influences (one most of all, which I won’t do Byles the disservice of name-dropping), but this is quality music in its own right. He also released a three-song EP, Things You’ve Done, back in January, and that’s definitely worth your time too. You can get both releases on a pay-what-you-want basis over on Byles’s Bandcamp page.

Side Saddle – The Postcard EP

Now to perk things up a little. Side Saddle (the recording moniker of New York’s Ian McGuiness) makes poppy alt-folk in the vein of artists such as Cataldo. He has recently released his debut EP, The Postcard EP and I like it very much. It’s catchy and warm and perfect for springtime.

Luke Elliot – Provisions EP

Provisions,the upcoming EP from New York-based musician Luke Elliot, combines strong song writing with gravelly vocals and an unhinged energy that has led to comparisons with Bob Dylan, Jerry Lee Lewis, Nick Cave et al. His sound provides the perfect backdrop for stories of love and loss in a dusty America, proving that the romantic ideas of Americana survive into the Information Age.

Opening track, ‘Benny’s a Bum’, was the title song for Dan and Paul Cantagallo’s film “Benny the Bum,” winner of the Best Local Film at the 2012 award at the Philadelphia Independent Film Festival. Check out the trailer here.

Khingfisher – Khingfisher

Last but by no means least, we have Vancouver artist Khingfisher. We cottoned on to this solo project from Craig Alan Mechler after a tip from our friend Tyler Butler, and boy are we pleased we did. Mechler, also part of the band Hallow Moon, crafts a delicate brand of folk music which has all that you could want from such a deal. Finger-picked guitars and simple, earnest vocals lead to a stirring and intimate record. There’s even a lovely take on ‘Georgia On My Mind’ included too.

If you missed it, this month also saw the release of a bumper edition of this series’ pretty older sister, Head in the Clouds.

The post Feet On The Ground: Vol. 7 appeared first on Various Small Flames.

We had originally planned for 15 songs each but found it was too difficult to fit in all the artists we felt needed to be included and decided to go with 20 each. Luckily, HI54LOFI included some of our favourites and I think we had some of his on ours, so we helped each other out a bit.

Granted, there are far more than 40 noteworthy Canadian artists out there and there were some hard decisions. Any disappointed acts crying into their maple syrup or taking out frustrations on their teamates on the ice, please don’t despair, there is always next year.

We hope you enjoy listening to it as much as we enjoyed making them. These songs certainly haven’t helped banish our romantic view of Canada.

Wake The Deaf side:

1.Docking Guard – Northern Primitive
2. Drop It – NEEDLES//PINS
3. Flyingshot Lake – The Flaming Moes
4. Ask Me Something – Wind & the Wild
5. Left and Leaving – The Weakerthans
6. Snow Ghosts – Paul Stewart
7. Voyageur – Doug MacNearney
8. The Future Of Tradition – Frederick Squire
9. Bruises – Dusted
10. Ben – Tyler Butler
11. Warning – Postdata
12. Margaret Downe – Aidan Knight
13. Coming Back Home – Zachary Lucky
14. Sask – Donovan Woods
15. Young Glass – Hey Rosetta!
16. Lightshow – Plants & Animals
17. And I Thank You – Pink Mountaintops
18. Cloud Of Evil – Blackout Beach
19. Sing! Captain – Handsome Furs
20. Continuous Thunder – Japandroids

HI54LOFI side:

1. Welcome To The Heart – Eamon McGrath
2. Broken Knees. – Different Skeletons
3. Sunset – Two Bicycles
4. Brook and Branch – The Weather Station (featuring Baby Eagle)
5. Skinny Ghost – HAPPY TRENDY
6. Deny, Deny, Deny – Joel Plaskett
7. You’re Cool – The Joe
8. Oh My God (It Still Means A Lot To Me) – The Wooden Sky
9. Necromancy – Jessica Jalbert
10. Scared – The Tragically Hip
11. Family Tree – Evening Hymns
12. Wind Driving Dogs – Chad VanGaalen
13. Were You In Love With Me – Andy Shauf
14. Big Bird In A Small Cage – Patrick Watson
15. I Need You Closer – LadyFace
16. Where are you? – nick everett
17. The Very Best – Mike Tod
18. Vapours – Islands
19. Sugar Mama – The Deep Dark Woods
20. Road Regrets – Dan Mangan

You can find both mixes here as a collection.

EH? – A Canadian Mixtape (Wake The Deaf Side) from Wake The Deaf on 8tracks Radio.

EH? – A Canadian Mix Tape (HI54LOFI Side) from HI54LOFI on 8tracks Radio.

If anyone can think of any more Canada-themed cliches or stereotypes then please don’t hesitate to let us know for next year’s mix. Going by this collection of songs, being insanely talented might just be one more.

The post EH? – A Canadian Mixtape Complied By Wake The Deaf & HI54LOFI appeared first on Various Small Flames.

Nick Everett & Everybody is a three-animal totem pole of folk-turned-fuck it, a ceaselessly adroit rock tapestry read aloud in what must be the land of giants.

Everett has always been one to experiment and I have seen his music referred to as “noise folk” more than once. And so Elsethings is not a folk record quite as you know it. The band are not afraid to distort things a little, to take what could be an entirely respectable (but conventional) folk song and turn it on its head, to make it sound raw and brash and exciting. The first ten seconds of the album set the tone of things to come in this respect. Any expectations of a delicate and pretty folk record are smashed away with a chorus of yelps and the clatter of a drum kit (as an aside, Travis’ brilliant Cabin Songs bio makes a comparison between Adam White’s drumming and Steven Spielberg’s Jurassic Park – do yourself a favour and read it).

The album continues in this idiosyncratic vein, expanding on its nucleus of orthodox folk music and travelling down some previously untrodden paths. Everett’s vocals are probably the most delicate thing on offer and provide the perfect counterbalance to the record’s noisier elements. Hold On is perhaps the most accessible track on the album, with its almost pop-influenced chorus of “Sometimes its easier to wake up in the morning, drink my coffee and head right back to bed”. Although even this is accompained by the smash of percussion second time around.

You can download the album for however much you like on the band’s Bandcamp page, where you can also buy it on tape for a measly $8 CAD (about £5.15 in the UK). There is a neat little video of the making of the tape cases here. I would also strongly recommend his previous releases; old adventure/love songs (which is a far more conventional acoustic EP – one which Everett himself refers to as “Nick crying in his bedroom”) and rocky top.

N.B. There’s a really good interview with Nick Everett and Tyler Butler from a radio show called Northern Air on CJSR, a campus-based radio station that broadcasts out of Edmonton, Alberta. Listen to the show’s audio here for the interview. I’d also recommend checking out Northern Air on a regular basis, as it plays some really good acts that receive very little attention (at least here in the UK). If anyone knows Kristi then give her a trans-Atlantic pat on the back from us.

The post Nick Everett & Everybody – Elsethings appeared first on Various Small Flames.

The album’s other strength is in the vocals and songwriting. I believe that he is a UK native who has since relocated to California, and this is apparent in his vocals. The songs are poetic and wistful and deceptively simple, with the yearning and honesty you would expect from any songwriter worth his salt. Here I should say that the lyrics have produced another hypothesis on the album title (revealing my inner biologist), one that probably disproves my first idea. Tropism is the response of an organism to a specific stimulus, for example heliotropic plants position themselves toward/away from the sun to maximize/minimize light on their leaves. There are a few rather clear references to an anthropomorphic version this sort of idea across the album, not least on the title track where Pick sings ’She grows towards the sun’. The idea can be applied to other, less direct lyrics too, with themes of leaving/staying and so on. It’s an interesting concept and I wonder how far he intended the reference to go through the record.

Whatever was intended, the album is a superb example of how simple but carefully crafted music and strong songwriting can produce some of the most exciting and emotional music that begs to be played again. If you consider yourself a fan of any of the other Yer Bird artists (e.g. Tyler Butler, John Statz, Greater Pacific) then I’d highly recommend checking this out. I’ve embedded one of my current favourites below, so have a listen and then buy the album via Yer Bird Records.

<a href=“http://yerbirdrecords.bandcamp.com/track/lee-of-the-mountain” data-mce-href=“http://yerbirdrecords.bandcamp.com/track/lee-of-the-mountain”>Lee of the Mountain by Pickering Pick</a>

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