Back in February we described how the music of self-described “depression pop band” bathtub cig lives up to the image of their name. “A project which looks to evoke those private moments of contemplation and small comforts,” as we put it, “be they born of wallowing or self-care.” With EP Good Mourning, I love you out now, bathtub cig are back with new single ‘Marry Me’, a perfect example of an album about loving in a time of loss. “Meet me at your mom’s, boyfriend’s old farm house,” as the song opens. “I’ll be in the field with crickets singing and the frogs.” And it is a testament to the writing that the song fits a number of relationships, doubling as both an ode to platonic friendship or bi love.

Caroline Strickland – Loving You Right

Writing last year, we described how the work of  New York-based songwriter Caroline Strickland combined abrasive energy and intimate tenderness to explore a gamut of conflicting emotions, and her latest single ‘Loving You Right’ builds upon the style expertly. The first taste of EP Martha’s Calling, which is forthcoming on Good Eye Records, the song looks to work through a period of uncertainty and distance through sheer momentum. “The thesis of the song is this,” as Strickland explains. “Mannequin Void. I felt like a hollow, plastic body, a frame, a pencil sketch. I said, ‘I wonder if someday I should take the time to break the MANNEQUIN VOID and give it one last try. Have I been loving you right?'” The mission to break this feeling is applied almost literally, the song gathering a head of steam as though Strickland plans to thrust herself into something hard at high speed in the hope of shattering that which imprisons her.

Martha’s Calling is coming soon via Good Eye Records.

Circus Trees – Trap Door

“Circus Trees makes music that doesn’t fit with their age, their gender, their living conditions;” explains the bio of the Marlborough, Massachusetts band. “They are young, they are sisters, they spend their lives in the wastelands of suburbia.” The sibling trio make a raucous, evocative brand of indie rock capable of evoking the sadness and frustration of suburban living. Coming later this month via Five By Two Records, new full-length This makes me sad, and I miss you shows how cathartic this style can be. Offering a hefty, emotionally charged sound, Circus Trees mine their own personal struggles for the universal experiences of pain, and in doing so invite the listener to burn off their own difficulties through the power of energy and sound.

This makes me sad, and I miss you is out on the 20th September via Five By Two Records and you can pre-order it now.

Dummy – Blue Dada

Last week saw the release of Free Energy, the new album from LA’s Dummy, on Trouble in Mind. The record is a wildly ambitious one, even for a band who have made a name for their creative spirit and left-field choices, taking the basic formula of 2021’s Mandatory Enjoyment and making everything bigger, better, weirder. Think shapeshifting psychedelia, insistent motorik rhythms, jangly guitar rock experimentation and looped vocals and catchy choruses straight out of smash hit electro pop. It’s an album impossible to capture in one song, but perhaps the best introduction is final single ‘Blue Dada’, which takes all of the above and wraps them in a coat of 90s throwback atmospherics. “This was one of the first songs that really came together for Free Energy,” Dummy describe, “with the idea of cross-wiring genres, between ambient dance music, á la Seefeel, and revved-up drone-pop, á la Dunedin sound. ”

Field Report – Trust In Movements Made

Back in 2023, LOTUS Legal Clinic—an organisation in Milwaukee which helps survivors of human trafficking and sexual violence by blending comprehensive civil legal services, victims’ rights representation and therapeutic arts programming—reached out to Field Report‘s Christopher Porterfield about being an artist-in-residence. The following period saw Porterfield work with five writers to create original music inspired by poetry they had written during the program’s creative writing workshops. The resulting five songs are being released as Trust In Movements Made, an EP released under the Field Report name but truly collaborative in practice. “I consider myself co-writer of these songs, along with the original authors,” as Porterfield explains. All proceeds from the release will be donated back to ensure LOTUS can continue their vital work.

Kid Tigrrr – Therapy

Singer-songwriter and visual artist Jenna Fournier made her name as the lead of Cleveland shoegaze outfit Niights, though after a couple of studio recorded albums and international tours, found herself wanting to explore a different kind of music, both in terms of process and style. Hence Fournier split from her record label and started out solo under the moniker Kid Tigrrr. She turned to home recording and production as an antidote to her previous studio experience, and uses the project as a vehicle to explore intensely personal themes and challenge stigmas around mental health, addiction and abuse. Debut album Stoned + Animald therefore represents a fresh start for an artist pining to work with a new level of intimacy, and latest single and album opener ‘Therapy’ is the ideal introduction.

Leif Vollebekk – Peace of Mind (Evening)

“As confident as it is poignant, furthering Vollebekk’s investigations into the deepest of themes. [Namely] the phenomenon of love as it stretches over time. Longing as some echo through the years.” That’s how we described ‘Southern Star’, the recent single from Leif Vollebekk‘s upcoming LP Revelation on Secret City Records. With the release fast approaching, Vollebekk is now back with new track, ‘Peace of Mind (Evening)’, an alternate version of a song on the record which lives up to its title with its golden crepuscular shine. ““This is the evening version of ‘Peace of Mind’,” Vollebekk explains. “This version isn’t even on the record. It just wanted to be its own thing…The melody came along fully formed right after I’d spent a few weeks’ vacation with my family. I rediscovered my solitude for the first time in a while. And, in the stillness, I sang about them. I dreamt a child placed a dandelion on my grave. For some reason, I awoke incredibly peaceful. What does that mean?”

Revelation is out on the 27th September via Secret City Records.

Leila Dandan – my room’s a mess

Hailing from Huntington Beach, California and currently based in Dallas, Texas, Leila Dandan is a songwriter who takes various vulnerabilities and stitches them into a blanket—something capable of offering comfort and protection if you are brave enough to wear it proudly. New single ‘my room’s a mess’ typifies the kind of song Dandan has made their own, embracing their own insecurities in an effort to overcome them. “I wrote this song amid a panic attack,” Dandan explains. “I was at a point where I felt like I couldn’t really tell anyone because I was afraid of being so vulnerable. I didn’t want people to see the mess because it felt embarrassing, but in reality, things wouldn’t have been so messy if I had let myself rely on others for a little help.”

‘my room’s a mess’ is out now and available from the usual places.

Meagre Martin – Never Thought

With Gut Punch, released last year via  Mansions and Millions, Berlin’s Meagre Martin showed off their evocative, politically aware style, from existential ‘The Big Death‘ to the nostalgic ‘Malcolm‘. With a string of appearances at the Reeperbahn Festival, Pop Montreal and Pitchfork London approaching in recent weeks, the band have put out a brand new single, ‘Never Thought’. An example of Meagre Martin’s more relaxed side, the song draws on elements of folk and blues to inform its languid indie rock style, though its seemingly easy-going vibe belies the doubt and desperation running through the lyrics. “‘Never Thought’ questions how well we know the people in our lives, and how our security in them can still be shaken even after years of knowing them,” the band explain. “The chords and melodies encircle and repeat, much like the rumination of thoughts in our heads.”

Moira Smiley x tUnE-yArDs – Go Dig My Grave

Though made popular as the lead single and opener of Lankum‘s most recent album, the song ‘Go Dig My Grave’ has a far longer history, with versions (often titled ‘The Butcher Boy’) stretching back to the 1920s and verses being taken from songs older still. Part of new album The Rhizome Project, Moira Smiley’s take on the track traces its roots back to the haunting Appalachian spirit of Jean Ritchie. Merrill Garbus (AKA tUnE-yArDs) helps craft the stark arrangement, where ominous strings simmer behind the vocals, charging the delivery with the desperation and fury of the song’s forsaken lead, what Smiley describes as “this beautiful, dissonant cry against a loss of bodily autonomy in 2022.”

The Rhizome Project is out now and available from the usual places.

Video Age – Record Shop

Last month we wrote about the release of a new version of Video Age‘s single ‘Out In The Country’ featuring Esther Rose, a reworking of a track which first appeared on the 2023 LP Away From the Castle. Now the New Orleans duo are back with ‘Record Shop’, the A-side of a 7″ single featuring ‘Out In The Country’ released as part of an expanded edition of Away From The Castle on Winspear. Described as “a theme song for record shop employees,” the track charts the days of a humble store clerk with all the lonely nobility of a modern cowboy. “I got my job at the record shop, I play the songs that I like a lot,” as the chorus goes, “My two girlfriends are a broom and mop / And they dance with me when the needle drops.”

The post Weekly Listening: September 2024 #2 appeared first on Various Small Flames.

The mononymous creative moniker of songwriter, multi-instrumentalist and producer Allie Cuva, allie has served as a vehicle through which to explore personal relationships, from the study of a break-up on debut album Maybe Next Time to the perspicuous details of connection seen on 2022 single cast iron // infinite jesters. With new album Every Dog coming this September via Snack Shack Tracks and Anxiety Blanket Records, allie has shared new single ‘Radio Shower’. With its compassionate vocals and ache of longing, the track is every bit as heartfelt as anything allie has so far released, with Cuva matching a romantic present against the sense of loss always looming, as though to love is to anticipate the absence of love, and loneliness is always approaching from some distance to reclaim you under its grip.

Arbes – Impasse

Anne Carson once wrote that “perfect desire is perfect impasse,” an idea Naarm/Melbourne indie pop outfit Arbes explore on ‘Impasse’, the lead single from the debut full-length Counterways, coming later this year on Third Eye Stimuli Records and Earth Libraries. “I picture this unruly character, going back and forth on an ultimatum,” lead Jess Zanoni explains of the single, “trying to toy with the emotional limits of a situation—weighing up permanence vs non-existence.” This indecisive spirit is brought to life with a sound caught between angular post-punk twitch and smooth pop grooves, and Zanoni’s vocals evoke a personality full of contradiction too. Where a certain arrogance sits alongside vulnerability, the sense of a person in competition with themselves, their two halves struggling for dominance.

Haley Heynderickx – Seed of a Seed

Her first new music since 2018’s debut album I Need to Start a Garden, ‘Seed of a Seed’ is the new single from Portland singer-songwriter Haley Heynderickx. Again released via the good folk as Mama Bird Recording Co., it’s a direct and sincere folk song that strips back  contemporary life’s complications to get at the heart of what really matters. With a wisdom that may be intentional or incidental, what this entails to Heynderickx is not lofty or grandiose, but small and mundane. “It’s so simple, but I didn’t realize how much angst I’d woven into it,” she describes of the song. “A desire for simplicity, and how far away that felt.” What’s remarkable is how, from a few spare lines on modest hopes and dreams, emerges something of a self-portrait. As Heynderickx concludes: “It seems I accidentally pressed my story—the last four years of my life—into a tiny little tune.”

Macro/micro – Balaclava

Having worked as an audio engineer for Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross for soundtracks such as Watchmen, Mank and Waves, as well as Nine Inch Nails’ Ghosts V & IV, Tommy Simpson cut his teeth among some of the best. Now recording his own music as Macro/micro, Simpson works across various fields with his dark electronic soundscapes, the latest of which being the soundtrack for Streets Loud With Echoes, a documentary by Katerina Suvorova. Made on the ground with activists amid unrest in Kazakhstan, the film follows the fallout after the murder of Olympic figure skater Denis Ten and a population’s attempt to instigate political change. Macro/micro’s score is every bit as shadowy and charged as you might expect, with single ‘Balaclava’ introducing the use of field recordings and building rhythm to bring to life the paranoia of the moment.

The Streets Loud With Echoes OST will be released later this year.

Maripool – Twist

“The ostensibly frolicsome nature of the song is undermined by a shadowy edge. Something sinister lurking just beneath the surface.” So we wrote of ‘This Time Again’ by Lisbon-born, London-based artist Natasha Simões, AKA Maripool back in 2022. Now Simões is back with a day that feels like nothing, a brand new EP which builds upon this ambiguous style. The Maripool sound blends bedroom pop emotion with a punk personality to fall between the sincerity of Frankie Cosmos and the deadpan charm of the likes of Patio. Single ‘Twist’ is a great place to dive in, its lo-fi textures ebbing and flowing as the vocals switch between yearning and embittered defiance.

Tape/Off – Paris, Texas, Queensland

With an album slated for release early in 2025, Australian rockers Tape/Off have shared brand new single ‘Paris, Texas, Queensland’ via Coolin’ By Sound. Half love letter, half furious screed, the track does for the band’s home of Meeanjin/Brisbane what Last Quokka’s Red Dirt did for Kimberley, caught between the nostalgic fondness for the familiar and a simmering anger at its many downfalls. Hence sunnies, ciggies, singlets and footy shorts worn by Alfie Langer are matched with images of gentrification and colonisation. More proof the current crop of Aussie punk rock is ahead of other countries in its willingness to confront the imperialistic violence which underpins contemporary society.

I had this dream, you see?
I was holding a lump of coal in my hand
And it exploded in a spray of dead Coral
That covered all of Queensland

Watch the video filmed by Luke Henery and edited by Branko Cosic below:

‘Paris, Texas, Queensland’ is out now via Coolin’ By Sound and available from the Tape/Off Bandcamp page.

Trace Mountains – In A Dream

“You’re in a dream,” sings Dave Benton on ‘In a Dream’, the first single from the latest Trace Mountains full-length, Into The Burning Blue, coming next month via Lame-O Records. “You’re in a dream you feel the world busting at its seams you’re coming clean but you don’t know what the fuck it means.” In an album which sees Trace Mountains explore the whole range of the colour blue, the single and opener finds Benton very much at the darker end of the spectrum. A dispatch from whatever stage of capitalism we’re calling contemporary America as delivered from a breathless nighttime bike ride. The effect is passing through a dark passage full of eerie shadow without quite knowing if there’s an exit at the other end.

Into The Burning Blue is out on the 27th September via Lame-O Records and you can pre-order it now.

Video Age x Esther Rose – Out In The Country

A reworking of the title track from their 2023 LP Away From the Castle, ‘Out In The Country’ is the new single from New Orleans duo Video Age. Except, for this song at least, Video Age are no longer a duo. Ross Farbe and Ray Micarelli are joined by alt-country singer-songwriter Esther Rose, who brings her signature vocals to a stripped-back take on the track that dials back the technicolor psych of the original in favour of something soft and swaying. The collaboration was inspired by a live performance of the song Farbe and Rose played in Nashville, a moment captured on video and shared as an added bonus with the proper studio-recorded version. Check out both below:

‘Out In The Country’ is out now via Winspear and available from the Video Age Bandcamp page.

Vince Nudo – Everyone Here Reminds Me of You

Having started out as a drummer, founding Priestess and touring and recording as part of Kurt Vile’s backing band The Violators, Vince Nudo has since turned his attention to composing, with films he’s scored having premiered at Cannes and the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF). His latest score is for Mary Heilmann: Waves, Roads & Hallucinations, Matt Creed’s intimate chronicle of the New York artist renowned for her abstract geometric forms and use of colour. Nudo’s ambient soundtrack is suitably lush and fluid, drawing on Heilmann’s minimalist sensibilities and overarching playfulness to create something which matches her daydream ethos of creativity.

The post Weekly Listening: August 2024 #1 appeared first on Various Small Flames.

I’m so glad I met you
Our love was a dream come true
It’s not gonna fade away
Just lives in a different place
Our hearts aren’t broken
No, they’re growing

I’ve been trying hard to try harder
I stretch and drink my eight cups of water
I put down my phone, made me smarter
I’ve been trying hard to try harder

Shadow On My Light will be released via Gar Hole Records on 16^th August. Pre-order a copy now from the Maddy Kirgo Bandcamp page.

Album art by Emma Ledgerwood, Feed My Ego

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