As well as being a part of Friendship and 2nd Grade, JR Samuels has a made a name with his experimental, improvised releases, as captured by 2019’s In Brend on Dear Life Records. “An eight-song album of improvised guitar that exists for no purpose beyond enjoyment and intuition,” as we put it. “Ambitions are dropped, artistic ideals and intent left behind, the songs allowed to flow.” Out next month on Lily Tapes & Discs, Spasm sees Samuels push further into this intuitive space, delving deep within himself and presenting whatever he finds, unfiltered and in real-time. What emerges is an at times dense, undeniably strange record, though one somehow more human for its refusal to shape itself for mass consumption. Listen to the short single, ‘Wearing a Groove’, below.

KT Laine – Again

Drawing inspiration from contemporaries like Big Thief and classics such as Judee Sill, KT Laine is a songwriter from Victoria, BC who is soon to release her debut full-length Knock Knee on Victory Pool. New single ‘Again’ is the perfect introduction to the nuance of her work, its warm fondness complicated by uncertainty, lending the track an inscrutable air which never quite reveals its hand. ‘Again’ centres on a relationship in some kind of turmoil, its pieces pushing apart, though it is never quite clear if the longing at the track’s heart wants to reconnect these parts or sever the ties for good.

‘Again’ is out now and available from Bandcamp.

Langkamer – Total Motion

We last featured Bristol‘s Langkamer back in May, when we wrote about their single ‘Soul Bucket’, what we described as “a bit of folk, a bit of indie rock, a ton of playful personality.” Now Langkamer have announced a brand new EP on Breakfast Records. Titled Red Thread Route, the record promises to expand on the band’s signature combination of slacker era indie rock and easy country-influenced melodies, albeit with a few surprises up its sleeve. Lead single ‘Total Motion’ is a great introduction, its twisty, loud-quiet dynamic giving way to an anthemic singalong chorus. Willie J Healey provides guest vocals, one of several guests of the EP seemingly cherrypicked from Bristol’s music scene. Check out the video by JJ Jarman and Jimmy Taylor below:

Red Thread Route comes out on 30th November via Breakfast Records. Pre-order it now from Bandcamp.

Leggy – Lipstick on the Mic

We first covered Cincinnati‘s Leggy back in 2019, describing how the innate tension of single ‘Taffy‘ offered “a tautness that always appears on the verge of snapping.” While the rambunctious punk rock style of that track has been swapped out in favour of something more languid on new single, ‘Lipstick on the Mic’, the sense of building pressure remains. This time a sensuous combination of desire and frustration, the song sitting on the knife edge of pleasure and pain yet wrapped within a hazy shawl. A sense of remove which allows a view into the paradox of the situation even as it plays out. “I love to be alone,” as the chorus puts it, “why do I live to be in love?” Check out the suitably sultry and surreal video by Twenty Twenty Productions below:

‘Lipstick on the Mic’ is out now and available from the Leggy Bandcamp page.

Levi Thomas – Shasta

The title track of the third album from Oakland‘s Levi Thomas, ‘Shasta’ is a song seized by the sublime scale of the American West. “The neons fade / To the pink cascade / And right now I can’t feel a thing,” Thomas sings. “The sun don’t rise / Under wild skies / All the shit just starts to shine.” The revelatory experience is captured with a decidedly seventies style, equal parts classic country and cosmic psych which invites the listener into the moment, never losing control of its relaxed rhythms despite everything.

My mind left my body north on the five
And I feel like the last man alive

Macie Stewart – Defeat

Released on Orindal back in 2021, Macie Stewart‘s Mouth Full of Glass was a journey in solo creation after a career of collaboration. The sound of “an artist surveying their own inner workings through considered and open-ended exploration,” as we put it. “Leaning into solitude as a medium of discovery and learning from all that has occurred before without ever becoming beholden to the past.” The album is getting a new release next month via Full Time Hobby, and has been expanded to include two new singles. One of the tracks, ‘Defeat’, is a direct confrontation of the stresses of working with others, warning of the dangers of overcommitting and how it can end up withering the very creativity is should foster. Stewart takes on all the instrumentation on the song, with the exception of flutes from V.V. Lightbody, and sings with the calm of a lesson learnt. “Composing a word to take back the meaning,” she sings, “I promised my best and that’s not what I’m giving.” Watch the video directed and edited by Sid Branca below:

‘Defeat’ is out now and available from Bandcamp., and the expanded edition of Mouth Full of Glass is available from Full Time Hobby.

Michael Cormier O’Leary – Heard From The Next Room

To describe the work of Michael Cormier O’Leary takes some time. From the playful warmth of last year’s solo album More Light!! to the almost fragile intricacy of Hour, not to mention his work in Friendship, Cormier O’Leary spans the full spectrum between free and controlled. Out next month of Lily Tapes & Discs, new solo release Heard From The Next Room moves completely toward the former, an exploratory, spontaneous collection of improvised piano compositions recorded on a single day earlier this year. The resulting two pieces live up to the release’s title in their unguarded charm, following the haphazard rhythms of the moment without any sense of outside audience, and thereby capturing an easy comfort only possible at home. Hear an excerpt from the first below:

Volunteer Department – Swell

Back in September we wrote about ‘Make It Easy‘ by Nashville‘s Volunteer Department, the first track from a forthcoming release on Like You Mean It Records. A scathing track with vocals “barely more than a whisper,” we wrote, “almost unpalatably bitter in [its] acerbic tone.” Latest single ‘Swell’ might possess a brighter rhythm, but thanks to the wry and fatalistic songwriting, the sour tone remains. “I’ll cut my fingers off and mail them to France,” sings Oliver Hopkins, “at least then some small part of me won’t be stuck here arguing the ins and outs of something which has no shape.”

Wayne Graham – How Was Your Night?

With new album ISH on the horizon via K&F Records, Wayne Graham have shared one last single as a final taster of what to expect before release. Primarily the project of brothers Kenny and Hayden Miles, the Whitesburg, Kentucky outfit wrote a new album in the years since previous record 1% Fruit, though decided to change course for what would eventually become ISH. What emerged was something more intimate and ambitious, drawing on science, fiction and scripture to search for meaning in this strange world. ‘How Was Your Night?’ not only opens the album but poses the question which hangs over everything which follows.

Don’t you know I’m not alright?
Can’t you taste my mind?
Just trying to make it through the night,
no reason and no rhyme

ISH is out on the 11th November via K&F Records.

The post Weekly Listening: October 2022 #4 appeared first on Various Small Flames.

Based in Omaha, Nebraska, 37735i6 works in the lineage of ambient folk practised by artists like Midwife and Grouper. Conjuring intangible soundscapes that nevertheless possess a palpable weight, and utilising this contradiction to evoke intricacies of mood and experience that might otherwise be difficult to describe. Taken from 2020’s stay forever EP, single ‘prairie madness revival’ uses layers of reverb and delay effects to encapsulate this style, inviting listeners into a liminal space between presence and absence, darkness and light.

Ailsa Tully – Salt Glaze

Ahead of a spring tour and slot at the upcoming Green Man festival, Welsh songwriter Ailsa Tully has returned with ‘Salt Glaze’, a brand new single on Dalliance Recordings. The song follows on from Holy Isle, an EP which developed on the classic singer-songwriter style with an array of additional instruments, and channels this invention into conjuring the warm stillness of a familiar home. A sensation Tully experienced when staying in the house of her late grandmother during a period of lockdown. “My Grandma passed away a few years ago and the house remained unchanged, it was like a museum of salt glaze ceramics and abstract art pieces which began to absorb into my creativity,” Tully explains. ‘Salt Glaze’ uses the image to explores ideas of preservation and acceptance in the face of change. Check out the video directed and edited by Finlay O’Hara:

‘Salt Glaze’ is out now via Dalliance Recordings and you can get it from the Ailsa Tully Bandcamp page.

Amelia Jackie – All Around Town

For most of her life, Amelia Jackie has moved from place to place. Raised as one of four sisters by a single mother, hers was a childhood of motion and flux. Now based in New York, Amelia Jackie is preparing the release of her debut album, You Can’t Fuck the Internet, a record that promises to “beckon us into the sensual environments that spawned her, where the smell of sweet peaches meets the fumes of burnt diesel.”

In preparation, Jackie has unveiled the lead single, ‘All Around Town’, which offers a glimpse at her uniquely humid, country-tinged sound (what Colin Atrophy Hagendorf described for She Shreds as “Southern Gothic, Bastard Out of Carolina, lesbian Americana”). It’s a song about a passionate devotion, the object of which takes on near-supernatural power as they blaze a trail through towns and hearts.

you were born in the middle of a hot night in july
and your momma couldn’t tell if you were laughing or crying
a storm blew in right off the gulf
so you never did learn when enough was enough

Bri Barte – High Noon

Hex Signs, the new record from Ann Arbor-based songwriter Bri Barte, is an album about loss. Saturated with physical imagery and sensations, the songs shift from sluggish crawls to racing energy with little warning, capturing both the sharp sting and diffuse drudgery of life in the aftermath. Take ‘High Noon’, its picture of ruin heightened by odours, textures, heat and light. Barte wanders amid dead squirrels and flies and beating sun, pining for relief.

I always liked a punishing summer
The kind that makes you pray for rain
But these days I’d rather have you
I get so lonely out here at high noon

Without you

Catcher – Fallen Stones

Hailing from Brooklyn, Catcher are the latest post-punk brooders to capture widespread attention. Taking the shadowy volatility of Bambara and adding a cathartic forward motion, the six-piece walk the fine line between violence and beauty, and the delivery of vocalist Austin Eichler is suitably unpredictable amid the noise. Single ‘Fallen Stones’ captures the mood perfectly, Eichler emerging from the dense foreboding soundscape with the conviction of some half-drunk preacher.

ce qui nous traverse – Point sur la carte

Montreal-based ensemble ce qui nous traverse seek “to capture the intensive vibrations that compose the surrounding ambiances,” something their most recent record Le sacre de Sainte-Barbe tackles with both ambition and invention. Released on Cuchabata Records, the album is something of a study on a specific place, the outfit utilising their collective experimentation to examine the influence of sound on an old house in a North American village. Single ‘Point sur la carte’ is both an introduction to this strange, nocturnal world and proof that ce qui nous traverse beyond the slow haunting tones you might expect. Check out the video by Guillaume Vallée and Larissa Corriveau below:

Le sacre de Sainte-Barbe is out via Cuchabata Records and available via Bandcamp.

Cola – So Excited

Rising from the ashes of Ought, Cola is the new project of Tim Darcy and Ben Stidworthy, along with The Weather Station drummer Evan Cartwright. Ahead of their debut album Deep in View, coming this May on Fire Talk Records, they have unveiled new single, ‘So Excited’. Powered by a sleek, taut groove, the track plays like Ought stripped of its excesses, polished down to something tactile and gleaming yet capable of a kind of perpetual motion.

And if you are so excited
Then you are so invited
To take this stone and right it
If you are so excited

Have a gander at the video by Camille Anais Semprez, Cedar Teionietathe Jocks and Jacob Summers below:

Deep in View is out on the 20th May via Fire Talk Records and you can pre-order it now.

FES – Clarinet

Peterborough/Leeds-based trio FES work at the intersection of a variety of genres, drawing on pop punk, math rock and alternative styles to conjure a sound full of invention and weight. Ahead of debut record With Regards From Home, out via Small Pond this spring, they have unveiled new single ‘Clarinet’ to whet your appetite. Check out the video by Sam J. Lance below:

With Regards From Home is out on the 29th April via Small Pond and you can pre-order it now.

Nuevos Mundos – Mis Plantas

Nuevos Mundos are am indie rock band from Madrid, consisting of John Galilea (guitar, keyboard and vocals), Diego Cendra (guitar and vocals), Jaeson Peña (bass) and Miguel A. Sánchez (drums). They have just released their debut EP, Mis Plantas, a collection of three songs that display their talents. From energetic opener ‘Domingos en Casa’, a roaring throwback to the mid 00s indie rock golden age, to a hazily reflective title track that feels smothered with regret, there really is something for everyone.

Ocie Elliott – With the Lights Down

Victoria, B.C. duo Ocie Elliott caught our attention with their stripped back covers of songs from the likes of John Prine, Big Thief and Gillian Welch, and latest single ‘With the Lights Down’ shows their original material possesses all the same tender and intimate tones. Written after a summer solstice birthday party on the beach, the song evokes a sense of quiet gladness. A moment to remember the things you appreciate while they are still close at hand.

Find out more on the Ocie Elliott website, and check out the covers on their Youtube page.

Wildlife Freeway – Flea

“Let this one thing be known,” says Sunny Atema, AKA Wildlife Freeway. “I don’t play music. I use music.” Debut album Sunny, out via Alex Ebert’s Community Music, was created under this sentiment. An album recorded in the aftermath of the loss of her beloved dog when the world felt distant and sad. A tool to reconnect with life. “A wildlife freeway is a bridge for animals to safely cross over busy roads” Atema says of the project and album. “The name also speaks of wildness and life on the road. The actual road, putting in the miles, brings us eye to eye, connecting without a screen between.” Check out lead single ‘Flea’ below:

The post Weekly Listening: Feb 2022 #4 appeared first on Various Small Flames.

The Mazzy Star influence is immediately apparent, as on the velvet curtain sway of opener ‘Sleeping’. David Parry adds bass and slide guitar which, along with Keenan Mittag-Degala percussion and subtle synths from Reggie Bast, carry Cogan’s vocals like an updraft. The track comes complete with a video, directed by Natasha Lavdovsky, which doubles down on the surreal atmosphere and proves to be the perfect companion.

It finds the masked figure from the album’s cover floating in the ocean alone, a stark vision of otherness that alternates between floating languorously, struggling to climb onto a small rock and standing indifferent as the tide ebbs and flows around it. This oddness is contrasted with cuts to spangles of sunlight dancing across the water’s surface in a fitting visual allusion to the transient beauty across the album.

and all through the ruins
the bells are ringing out

Bells in the Ruins is never content to settle into a groove, morphing and reshaping across its nine tracks. The jittery, off-kilter ‘Kills’ feels almost manic next to the lush and lazy ‘Tell’, while ‘Skull’ lands somewhere between the two, a persistent drum beat doing its best to stop Cogan’s ethereal vocals from drifting off into the ether. ‘Fixe’ represents both one of the record’s strangest moments and the clearest representation of its spirit, the guitar sneaking and slinking over ticking percussion and a swirling background ambience as Cogan delivers vocals in a breathy rush, each line spilling from the end of the last.

Bells in the Ruins is out now on Prism Tongue Records and you can get it from the Ora Cogan Bandcamp page.

Photo by Zoe Alma

The post Ora Cogan – Bells in the Ruins appeared first on Various Small Flames.

With her debut solo release Everybody’s Getting Married coming soon, JAYA has released a few singles to whet our appetites. Arriving back in June, ‘Maybe’ displayed a slow-burning emotion underpinned by an insistent drum beat and explosive guitar, Bremer’s vocals gliding above the clamour with a delicate croon.

Latest single ‘Learn to Swim’ sees some of the edges polished down, the more dynamic aspects reined in to allow the track a softer, languid air. This is apparent from the warm washes of the opening, the vocals emerging with a relaxed air that belies the lyrical themes. “[The song] is bitter-sweet in the realization that something has to change in a relationship while simultaneously celebrating coming to terms with your limits and recognizing you can’t keep carrying the weight alone,” Bremer explains. “It’s an attempt to forgive someone that pulled you into their own mess, and forgiving yourself for getting involved and thinking you could fix things.”

“I can’t save a ship from sinking
I wasn’t made to float.
And I can’t save the wreckage of your life,
collecting pieces on the shore.

You’ve got to learn to swim”

‘Learn to Swim’ is out now and you can get it from the JAYA Bandcamp page, and keep your eyes peeled for more news on Everybody’s Getting Married.

The post JAYA – Learn To Swim appeared first on Various Small Flames.

the odyssey is not a Hollywood movie with heroic deeds and happy endings. Instead it’s littered with confusion and menace, ominous imagery invoking random violence of nature and other forces, clear narrative replaced by the intuitive jumble of a dream.

Janzen has recently released a video for the song ‘October Mirage’. Filmed and directed by himself, it consists of home-movie style VHS footage which cycles through scenes of varying ordinariness. There are pumpkin carvers, band members and light shows, smiles and frowns and empty rooms. The shots sometimes blur or distort or rewind, making it clear you are watching a recording and wrapping the whole thing in a distant anguish, like looking back at places from which you are now locked out, times to which you can never return.

You can buy the album now from Legwarmer Records, on cassette via the Island Eyes Bandcamp page.

The post Island Eyes – October Mirage appeared first on Various Small Flames.

Doomking is a new synth-based project about “about being trapped by ones surroundings and spending too many late nights stuck in the internet”, which I’m sure is all too relevant for many of us. The sense of being stuck, both physically and mentally, runs through the record, clear thoughts and actions enveloped by a vague inertia and confusion. The general atmosphere is summed up by a quote on the Bandcamp page:

“I was out walking on the first hot night of the year. I was heading in the general direction of my old friends’ house, who I hadn’t seen in a while. My friend moved away last year. Realizing this I start to head back home. It’s 2 am, my friend would have been sleeping anyway.”

In a way similar to the Island Eyes record, A Mark of Something No Longer In Existence paints the familiar in a grand mythic way, late-night fever-thoughts turned fractured poetry. The desperation here is underlying yet abundantly clear, as if pushed backwards by the superficial stimulation of technology and the dull passing of time, long days turned short by the contemporary narcotic routine of information consumption.

Opener ‘Fernwood Detachment’ serves as a perfect example, the odd imagery and ambiguous visions swathed in expansive synths. The narrator is cast as alone, separated from the other character (a nameless ‘you’) by time and space. “I want to see the ocean,” he sings, lonely. “Without feeling like I don’t / Have anyone around”. ‘Ruin’ is similarly solitary, playing like the soundtrack to a walk through an abandoned town.

“Oh man, I don’t know
What to make of these dreams
I thought I saw
Something come to light
As though transfixed by these projections
And the path was open wide”

‘The Infinite Eye of Mount Douglas, I See My Love’ brings to mind Concatentating Fields by Trouble Books, its simmering synths feeling simple yet strangely organic, like some prehistoric sea. Dreamier still is ‘Home of the Ray Lake Dancers’, Soles’s vocals weaving in and out of finger-clicking percussion and synths which ebb and flow like a tide:

“Reading old emails
To get through the winter
Dragging my body
Behind you, behind you
I will stay inside
This empty room
I know it well
I saw a dancer
Waiting for summer
I saw a dancer
Waiting for summer”

‘Old House’ swells gently like a sunrise, like a city at night, before the vocals enter quiet yet prominent. “This, this is the house,” Soles sings, “where I plan to die”. The words are sung without fear, as if voiced from the clutches of an ever-deepening dormancy that numbs both mind and body. The end of the track sounds like a surrendering to this sensation, and album closer ‘Mark of Something’ is a 13-minute continuation, a float through a foreign landscape gently warped and obscured, the first footsteps into the final dream.

With its mixture of impassioned sentiments and general despondency shrouded in a haze of confusion, this is a release very much of and for our times: Where technological connectivity is driving, paradoxically, isolation and detachment, where words and videos from faraway places are piped into our silent twilit bedrooms like prescribed dreams.

You can buy A Mark of Something No Longer In Existence now from the Doomking Bandcamp page, including the novel and rather lovely picture frame/digital download format.

The post Doomking – A Mark of Something No Longer In Existence appeared first on Various Small Flames.

This self-titled release is Island Eyes’ first album, and fans of Janzen’s previous work will be pleased to find that he is still crafting exciting, experimental pop/rock music that incorporates a range of instruments and electronics. An obvious comparison is Spencer Krug’s Moonface output, especially earlier releases like Organ Music and Heartbreaking Bravery, although both acts are distinctive and unusual and probably share less in common than the majority of conventional bands.

The artwork goes some way to describing the themes and atmosphere on offer on Island Eyes, a mystical blend of nature and obscure, mythological imagery packed onto an island surrounded by sea. The narrative across the album has the feel of a classic quest – a pursuit of love, noble or otherwise, which begins on the very opening track:

“There’s a wind in my heart
There’s a sword in the air, on the ocean
I lay down, waiting for someone to love”

The entire album could be interpreted from this perspective, an epic captured in the protagonist’s poetic words or thoughts as he’s propelled across land and life by the voice and hands of his love (“As the morning sun wakes the sleeping wolves / I’ll be in your room; I’ll be in your home” continues ‘Pale Moon’). However, the odyssey is not a Hollywood movie with heroic deeds and happy endings. Instead it’s littered with confusion and menace, ominous imagery invoking random violence of nature and other forces, clear narrative replaced by the intuitive jumble of a dream. ‘Every House Is On Fire’ opens with a drum machine reminiscent of Handsome Furs and dives straight into the aforementioned unsettling imagery:

“I heard your voice inside the room
As all your storming clouds came in for you
I called your name, I called on high
But everybody’s houses are on fire

I won’t run, I won’t hide
In the dark of the night
Now I know, you were right
I’ll remain in the light of the sun”

If the first half of the album channelled a weird fantasy world then the second becomes dreamier still, as titles such as ‘You Had a Dream About Love’ and ‘October Mirage’ suggest. The latter again returns to the imagery of islands and swords, all shrouded in an oneiric fog like some fever dream of a would-be hero:

“To dream of the sea
Where I’m washed to the shore
With the clouds coming in
Like the waters before
I lift up my voice
To the ruinous waves
For the lights that once shone
Are beginning to fade”

The strange thing is that as things get weirder, you get the impression that the album is not really an epic at all. Or rather, it is an epic metaphor, an extended attempt to convey the modern-day feelings of the narrator through grand, legendary means. And the narrator could very well be Janzen himself – maybe the island in question Vancouver Island, the sea the Pacific ocean or the Strait of Georgia? What once seemed an interesting and magical tale becomes something more meaningful and unsettling: ‘Throw My Ashes Off the Pier’ deals with the admittedly morbid yet very real/common musings on how you want your loved ones to continue after your death (“O will you wait for me after I disappear? Or will you throw, will you throw all my ashes off of this pier, O my dear?”), while ‘Over Waves’ ends the release on an uncomfortable but cathartic note. “O I’m afraid of this heart,” Janzen sings, the track relatively bare in comparison to the electronic layers of the others, “I’m afraid of your ghost, I’m afraid of your love”. Here he confronts the uncertainty of every life, admitting his fear about pretty much every possible scenario while finding solace in the fact that this uncertainty binds us all.

Whether you want to listen to a fantasy, or a reality that can only be conveyed through the fantastic, this album will not disappoint. Island Eyes is out now via Legwarmer Records. You can grab a rather fetching cassette (see below) from the Island Eyes Bandcamp page.

The post Island Eyes – S/T appeared first on Various Small Flames.

We first came across ACAB Rocky through their split with Kneedlez (a release we featured on our Favourite Free Music of 2014 list), and now the Victoria trio are back with a release on Michigan’s Hacktivism Records.

Truce sounds like a real progression from their previous releases, with a lush mix of lo-fi shoegaze, indie pop and 90s emo creating tracks filled with riffs and vocal hooks. Opener ‘Matches’ plays like The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart fed through a math-y filter, with the refrain “I don’t know what you’re up to or up against” proving maddeningly catchy. ‘Nursery’ slows things down, opening with some admirable guitar work and developing into a laid-back song that dips a toe into psychedelic waters, before ‘Stella’, my current favourite, returns to the pop/shoegaze sound of ‘Matches’. ‘Stella’ typifies everything that makes Truce a success, a summer evening of a track, relaxed and slow and gilded with fading light, sad in a nostalgic sort of way.

This trend is continued across ‘Jane’, fuzzed-out synths providing a more immediate atmosphere, and ‘Backwoods’, where the drums become a little more ramshackle and free, straying toward garage rock territory. This all changes for closing track ‘Don’, the most minimalist on the EP, the focus on guitar and vocals bringing to mind the title tracks from last year’s album Sara.

Truce sounds like the sort of EP you will want to play as darkness falls in the warmer months, just sad enough to satisfy that weird sort of comfortable melancholy that descends with the summer sun. You can grab it now via the Hacktivism Bandcamp page, including on a rather lovely purple cassette.

The post ACAB Rocky – Truce appeared first on Various Small Flames.

Walha is what Wolf Parade would sound like if they traded in their punk influences and played around campfires. There is the rhythmic drumming and the ominous dual vocals and ‘ohhs’ and ‘laas’ of Krug et al., but there is also guitar strumming and piano tinkling and all sorts of clicks and rattles that invoke thoughts of wild spirits wandering ancient spaces.

The experimental flavour isn’t just restricted to the sounds, with the lyrics exploring some pretty weird themes. Soles says the songs are about ‘beach spirits, lakes, the ocean, water and stuff, lethargy, aching bodies, memory, myths, real lives, war, visions, and delusions.’ The lyrics, which are available to read in full on Bandcamp (something i always like), are poetic and dark and encourage not only repeated listens but further reading. Do you know who Bucephalus was? Or what Atrophos is? Neither did I.

You can buy Walha on Bandcamp now on a limited edition CD.

The post Butterbones – Walha appeared first on Various Small Flames.

The compliation is pleasingly varied, offering a wide range of styles, all linked by the (admittedly subjective) ‘weird’ tag. Some of the songs, such as Goose Lake’s ‘Roses Hallowed’ and Bong Sample’s ‘Wintertime, and the Living is Breezay’, are just plain creepy, but there are other ways in which the collection maintains a sense of foreboding. Camembert’s lo-fi garage rock is immediately followed by Forrest McGregor’s vocal driven folk, the succession from scuzzy guitars to gentle acoustic strumming serving to heighten the sense of strangeness. Similarly Taiwan’s lovely summer jam is followed by the perfectly titled ‘Insane’ by Planet Space; You get that bizarre feeling of reluctance or fear upon seeing or hearing something normal out of place. The non-weird tracks become weird as part of the collective whole, that horror movie effect of placing brightness or happiness completely out of context, the way a stalker wearing a grinning clown mask is weird or the way Clockwork Orange’s ‘Singing in the Rain’ scene is weird. This set of songs is “Lynchian”, they get under your skin, sometimes for inexplicable reasons, and you sense that even when being familiar or ‘normal’ they are probably just pretending.

If sinister or unsettling music isn’t your thing, don’t be put off. After all  this is a compilation from 17 artists and each deserves to be taken on their own merit. Yes, the order creates a sense of strangeness but the Taiwan song really is a great chilled out jam and Wand’s ‘Mt. St. Helens’ is a fast-paced, upbeat folk song. You can take away two things from this release: a damn fine album and a whole host of new bands to explore further.

Weird Pop (?) from the Peace Country is available for free at the Peace Country Diaspora Bandcamp page, and be sure to keep an eye on future releases/shows by PCD on their website.

The post Peace Country Diaspora – Weird Pop From The Peace Country appeared first on Various Small Flames.