Being Dead is a project built on friendship and trust. A space for Texas-based multi-instrumentalists Falcon Bitch and Gumball to be themselves, however that might manifest in any given moment. New album When Horses Would Run, coming this summer via Bayonet Records, shows how varied and fruitful such a set-up can be, the sound ranging from lo-fi pop and country-inflected rock to something closer to experimental or jazz. Lead single ‘Muriel’s Big Day Off’ captures the duo’s effervescent energy, not to mention the off-the-wall spirit which is always playful but never insincere.

When Horses Would Run is out on the 14th July via Bayonet Records and you can pre-order it now.

Brittain Ashford – Hold On Tight

Trotter, the forthcoming album by Brittain Ashford on Misra Records, is a record about “finality and making regrettable decisions.” A collection of songs crafted in the aftermath of a grief so profound it seemed to seep into anything and everything which comes in close proximity. After the passing of her father, whose surname forms the title of the record, Ashford stayed on a contracted tour, only to run into the full weight of the loss months down the line, a chaotic period which resulted in a cancelled engagement among other things. Single ‘Hold On Tight’ kicks through the ashes with a tangible regret, delivered from the perspective of a newfound distance, allowing a more reflective processing on a fundamentally personal experience.

Hold on tight
I know loving me wasn’t always easy
My entire life, tried to do it right
But I fucked it up completely

Chat Pile – King

After the dazzling, doom-laden intensity of 2022 full-length God’s Country, Oklahoma‘s Chat Pile have returned with Brother’s In Christ, a split with Kansas outfit Nerver on Reptilian Records and The Ghost Is Clear Records. If the previous album railed against capitalism’s pitiless desecration of earth, then the new EP confronts the razed landscape with a kind of fatalistic knowing and utter incomprehension. Because if you pay attention to this world, the misery might not be surprising, but expecting something rarely lessens the impact once it truly arrives. “It’s probably what you’re thinking honestly,” sings leads Raygun Busch. “But I’ve never been to / A place like this / Not even in my dreams.”

Crooks & Nannies – 3AM

“A song which gives in to the rollercoaster ride of intense emotion, no matter how high the peaks or deep the troughs.” That’s how we described ‘Sorry‘, the previous single from Crooks & Nannies‘ LP No Fun, out now via Grand Jury Music. The track was preceded on the release by ‘3AM’, something of a sister song which dials into the same whirlwind of feelings, with everything from volatile sax and “Final Fantasy synths” capturing that disoriented struggle to ground oneself in a world of such hostility. But bursting through this tumult is a big disco beat that closes things out, lending a sense of momentum that might not exactly be triumphant, but it’s momentum all the same.

No Fun is out now via Grand Jury Music and you can get it from Bandcamp.

Laura Wolf – Paper and Plastic

“If reality and fiction are braided into history, then Laura Wolf wants to unpick the threads.” That’s how we concluded our preview of Shelf Life, Wolf’s upcoming album on Whatever’s Clever. Lead single ‘Calligraphy and Calculations’ represented “a sonic of equivalent of family history, where original truths are cherished and embellished into folklore, and stories take on as much importance as the fact of any event.” Latest single ‘Paper and Plastic’ again explores the line between memories and myths, inviting the listener into an ethereal, orchestral soundscape which evokes the foggy allure of retrospection. Watch the video from Dan Criblez below:

Shelf Life is out on the 2nd June via Whatever’s Clever and you can pre-order it now.

Melanie MacLaren – Tourist

Writing of the music of Nashville-based songwriter Melanie MacLaren in the past, we described it as, “indebted to the past and the present without being beholden to either, managing to possess the timeless country spirit without sacrificing any sense of immediacy.” New EP Tourist continues this style, taking well-worn themes of family and loss and addressing them with a tangible immediacy. The title track captures this in all of its poignance, moving through the lows of grief without losing sight of hope. “I wrote ‘Tourist’ for my nieces and nephews during a time when we were all grieving an unimaginable loss in our family,” MacLaren told The Bluegrass Situation. “Overall the song is here to say that most everything is temporary, but that there are some things out there that we don’t understand that are true and eternal.”

Quinn Devlin – Lillian

Pennsylvania-born multi-instrumentalist Quinn Devlin has played with a whole range of acts both on stage and in recording, with Aisha Badru, Alex Lleo, JW Francis and vern matz just a few of the talents he has helped support. Devlin’s new single ‘Lillian’ sees this relationship inverted, with a series of collaborators turning out to bring his own earnest folk style to life. From co-producer Sahil Ansari to contributions from James Woodall (pedal steel and lap steel), Jack Broza (electric guitar), Jordan Wolff (drums), Andy Shimm and Dylan DeFeo (both piano), the range of guests take a laid back indie folk number and lift it into something larger. The result is solo intimacy blown up into something communal, the sound’s careful richness developing into an affirming final chorus.

Quinn Tsan – Roses

The work of Chicago-based songwriter Quinn Tsan has often combined heartfelt emotion with something bolder. Releases like 2014’s Good Winter and more recent single ‘She’s No Better’ blurred the line between folk and rock to conjure a smoking, swaggering barroom sound. New single ‘Roses’ swaps the bravado for something altogether more tender, the stripped back style and pensive croon sounding more like a dispatch from a lamp-lit bedroom at the dead of one bad night too many. But within what appears to be a state of vulnerability, Tsan’s words suggest a sense of agency fully intact, taking control of the situation, no matter of painful it might be.

Don’t buy me roses
Take your clothes from the floor
Leave your silence
Nancy, we don’t belong

Xena Glas – Let Go

Last year, Texas-born, Brooklyn-based visual artist, poet and musician Xena Glas released Movements, an EP which blended classical, ambient, folk and electronic styles to explore their move from southern suburbs to an urban space. A kind of psychogeography of a new environment, as well as a survey of the internal changes that accompany such a culture shock. Latest single ‘Let Go’ is no less inventive or striking, a song built around Glas’s vocals which shimmers with what could be tranquil calm or some slow-gathering energy, ebbing and flowing with a tidal rhythm as intricate details gather and dissipate with a natural ease.

The post Weekly Listening: April 2023 #4 appeared first on Various Small Flames.

The period also saw Laura Wolf housebound after emergency surgery, and forced to reimagine her identity as a musician. With her parents’ attic as an improvised recording studio, Wolf threw herself into Ableton and the intricacies of electronic production, committing to the tedious trial and error of a cliff-face learning curve. Her own form of calligraphy and calculations which would ultimately lead to the composite style built from orchestral, pop and found sound elements.

What emerges is a sound positioned at the intersection of primary and manipulated sources. A sonic of equivalent of family history, where original truths are cherished and embellished into folklore, and stories take on as much importance as the fact of any event. But moreover one playful enough to confront such complicated matters. If reality and fiction are braided into history, then Laura Wolf wants to unpick the threads.

Shelf Life is out on the 2nd June via Whatever’s Clever and you can pre-order it now.

Artwork edited by Dan Criblez, Ambient Pasta Productions

The post Laura Wolf – Calligraphy and Calculations appeared first on Various Small Flames.

Next month, the second volume in the series will be released, Sprigs & Sprays, Vol. II: A Benefit Compilation for Environmental Justice. This time, all proceeds will go to The Indigenous Environmental Network, an incredible organization which describes itself as “an alliance of grassroots indigenous peoples whose mission is to protect the sacredness of Mother Earth from contamination and exploitation by strengthening maintaining and respecting the traditional teachings and the natural laws.”

The compilation will feature sixteen artists in total, including some we are already familiar with (such as Vireo, Bea Troxel and Strawberry Runners) and some who are completely new to us. Only three are available to listen to so far, but offer more than enough to suggest that every entry will be a small gem in its own right. Such as ‘Eternity’ by Brooklyn’s Nadoyel, a slice of mournful slo-mo dream pop that crests in swathes of emotive strings and whale song-like wails.

The project of Louisville, Kentucky’s Daniel Lobb, So It Was shares an overtly political track that somehow manages to embody a much needed oasis of calm in the current climate of greed and bigotry. “You are welcome in this world,” Lobb sings in a gentle yet steadfast rebuttal to prejudice and injustice, “no matter your points in the game.”

Lastly is ‘Fisher Cat’ by Lindsay Skedgell’s Mother Juniper, a project we have grown to love over the last couple of years. As we described previously, Mother Juniper make music “full of small textures and tactile moods which sits within a lineage of such lo-fi recordings, from Connie Converse to Michael Hurley and beyond,” combining earthy folk with dreamlike ambience to evoke both the natural world and some other plane beyond our limited senses. This song is no different, rich with a sense of place and rooted in ecosystems that continue to cradle us even us we dig them up, chop them down, cover them in steel and glass and concrete.

Sprigs & Sprays, Vol. II releases on 7th April. Pre-order it now from the Whatever’s Clever Records Bandcamp page. There is also an option to buy a limited edition postcard (see example below) by Benedict Kupstas of Field Guides.

Cover art by Tyler Rai and Benedict Kupstas

The post Whatever’s Clever Records – Sprigs & Sprays, Vol. II appeared first on Various Small Flames.

Out this April via Whatever’s Clever Records, Taste Like Labor functions in a similar manner. An album aiming to describe sentiments as they are lived and felt, but not beholden to the moment. As though at some degree of detail, a studied feeling comes to exist on its own terms, lifted free from the context in which it was experienced. Dave Scanlon mines such a phenomenon for all of its disembodied strangeness, be it to confront voyeuristic tendencies or the chemical realties underpinning the emotional world. But moreover, he does so to undo the preconceptions bound up in every signifier. To take the familiar and show it back to us different, and thus allow some deeper essence to drift in free from the the black matter baggage of words.

Today sees the release of the album’s second single, ‘Crystals’, which serves as the ideal introduction to Scanlon’s intentions. With a patient sound warmed through with fondness, the track digs into our worries and fears to reveal the hopes which underpin them. A mindful experience where everything is held at arm’s length, losing none of the intimacy but providing just enough distance to gain a sense of perspective. So when Scanlon sings “Crystals, fractions of prayer, and my emotions cresting,” it is the final word which is key. “The cresting provides the reassurance,” as he puts it, “that this too shall pass.”

The moment marks a change in the track, with piano from Shannon Fields (of Stars Like Fleas, Leverage Models and Helado Negro, and who also produced the record) further leavening the sound as it moves towards a humble epiphany. “When an abundance of prey crashes the Snowy Owl flies south,” Scanlon sings, “that’s beautiful / I love you for being beautiful.” Lines delivered with tender assurance, as though after a period of blinkered living, he is snapping to the majesty of things as though waking from a dream.

We have the pleasure of sharing a video for the track. Co-directed by Ro(b)//ert Lundberg and  Dave Scanlon himself, with text and post-production from Benedict Kupstas, the film blurs the line between still life and stop motion, leaving you guessing whether it is the motion or lack thereof in the composition which proves the most striking.

Taste Like Labor is out on the 14th April via Whatever’s Clever and you can pre-order it now.

Photo by Robert Lundberg

The post Dave Scanlon – Crystals appeared first on Various Small Flames.

If one takes the time to notice and appreciate what is around them, Kupstas shows us, to document its details and textures, there’s great joy and beauty to be found. And moreover, there is possibility. Even in the end of things. Field Guides might not know how to save the world or salvage the things within it, but it allows us to see the situation anew. And if hopelessness derives not from terminal pessimism but a failure of the imagination, then surely this is what we must do? Hope is the most important thing, after all. We should never be without hope.

Centring on a critical juncture of a relationship and again stacked with imagery of flora and fauna, the latest Field Guides single ‘Esopus’ continues the themes of Ginkgo, even if its sound is something of a departure. Described as “too buoyant and direct” to find a home on the record, the track teases out a thread which occasionally runs beneath the surface of Kupstas’s work, as though finding a door in the background of the previous tracks and deciding to step through. Because with a retro jangle adjacent to the eighties C86 or Flying Nun releases, ‘Esopus’ charts a soundscape both dynamic and shimmering, the immediacy of the rhythm interacting with the nostalgic atmosphere to evoke the full complexity of any weighted moment. What results is a vignette charged with energy. A view of the present excited or agitated by the friction between the past and the future as they clash out of view.

At the botanical garden,
I was telling you
all the names that I knew

and you were looking for a turn.
Tell me the Latin name
of the magnolia

‘Esopus’ is out now via Whatever’s Clever and available from the Field Guides Bandcamp page.

The post Field Guides – Esopus appeared first on Various Small Flames.

Enter Ginkgo, the third full-length from Benedict Kupstas’s Field Guides. Released via Whatever’s Clever, the record does not overtly address our collapsing climate or failing culture or any of the other threats before us, but instead faces up to this wider question of hope with the eponymous, extinction-surviving tree at its center. If what we have and have had can no longer be guaranteed, if the futures we imagined can be imagined no longer, then how do we work to adapt? How do we hold on to hope?

Lead single ‘Salmon Skin’ “draw[s] lines between seemingly unconnected things to trace the edges of feelings which might otherwise be too large or unwieldy to properly convey,” we wrote in a preview. The song is indicative of a record built from disparate details, like the chapter of a field guide for Kupstas’s universe, notes on its flora and fauna, its poetry and people, collected not as some lesson in preservation but rather possibility. This was my life then, Ginkgo says, just like Boo, Forever and This is Just a Place before it. What I’ve lost, what I have to lose.

To create such a thing is to position oneself in the strange, human moment that sits between the past and the future. To understand the present as the machinery which processes what was into what will be. We may not have total control over this machine, but there is at least some semblance of agency in understanding its function. To appreciate something’s impermanence is to see it as sacred. To be humble before it, suddenly willing to act and to move. “All that I have is yours for the taking,” Kupstas sings on ‘Margaret’, ostensibly singing to the titular character but just as likely singing to the future itself. “And all that we have is yours for the breaking.” Though the final repetition switches that last line to something more communal, suggesting some latent potentiality for those actively engaged.

And all that I have is yours for the taking
And all that we have is ours for the taking

There’s an inherently personal thread running through the album which illuminates these ideas. On its surface, Ginkgo is a break-up record, with references to Rumours or Shoot Out the Lights adding a degree of context. ‘Agios Sillas’ describes the futility of clinging to past versions of love and lovers, as though they were ghosts already gone. “Should I put some more wood on the fire,” Kupstas asks in the track’s refrain, “or should I snuff it out?” To live with hope is not to conquer the very possibility of something ending, but to live in a manner which allows such questions to be asked. To allow oneself to imagine a future in which the fire continues and another where it is quashed, then to live towards whichever feels most right.

Community is central to this. Field Guides has long been a solo project on paper but not nature, and Ginkgo is no different. The list of collaborators is too long to list, featuring the likes of Nico Hedley, Dan Knishkowy, Dave Scanlon and Cf Watkins among many others. In our increasingly atomised society, cooperation is so often a strictly work-based experience. Further to any final product or artistic intention, projects such as Field Guides feel like a reengagement with the power and utility of working together. Rediscovering hope not via emotion or intellectual reasoning, but through direct practice. You don’t need convincing in this model, the action is proof enough. Because what seemed impossible alone is suddenly impossible no longer. Get a group of people together and look what they might achieve.

Which is why, for me at least, Ginkgo is a hopeful record. Even if it details the end of something. Even if it means acknowledging how nothing can ever last. If one takes the time to notice and appreciate what is around them, Kupstas shows us, to document its details and textures, there’s great joy and beauty to be found. And moreover, there is possibility. Even in the end of things. Field Guides might not know how to save the world or salvage the things within it, but it allows us to see the situation anew. And if hopelessness derives not from terminal pessimism but a failure of the imagination, then surely this is what we must do? Hope is the most important thing, after all. We should never be without hope.

We took the opportunity to speak with Kupstas about the new record to dig deeper into the ideas and intentions behind it, as well as the Field Guides project as a whole:

Hi Benedict, thanks so much for taking the time to chat, and congratulations on the new album. Does the experience of putting out records change with each one?

Thank you Jon and Liam! I appreciate what y’all do so much! There are definitely lots of facets that remain consistent from album to album: the same vacillations between mustering the necessary confidence to believe we’ve made something worth sharing and then losing all perspective and being unable to listen to this thing we’ve spent years living inside…that seems to recur every time. But this one feels different in a few ways. First off, I’ve been more involved than ever helping other folks release music via our collectively-run label, Whatever’s Clever, which has been a really valuable learning experience. And this album contains so many friends, more than twenty in all, so it feels even more like a sprawling family affair than the previous FG records. Shannon Fields and Nico Hedley helped me co-produce this one, which was huge. They’re both brilliant and I wouldn’t have been able to make this without them. I’m really grateful to feel less personal ownership of this music, to share parentage with all the folks involved.

I suppose we should start with the title. Was the album always going to be called Ginkgo? What’s the significance?

The first two Field Guides album’s had titles that were references to beloved poets (Boo, Forever was borrowed from Richard Brautigan and This Is Just A Place is from a poem by A. R. Ammons). And originally I wanted to keep that streak going, so I spent a lot of time pouring through poetry to find a title that fit this collection of songs. Nico and I spent one memorable afternoon drinking whiskey and spreading volumes of Emily Dickinson and Anne Carson and so many other poets across his kitchen table, trading lines back and forth. 

I noticed early in the process of assembling these songs that there had been an unconscious shift in my writing from fauna to flora, and that trees made several appearances. As we were coming up short looking for the perfect poetic reference, my impulse shifted toward a blunt, single-word noun, a categorical label. I recalled an article about the hibakujumoku or “survivor trees” in Hiroshima, the trees (many of them ginkgo) that had somehow survived the atomic bomb in 1945. They’ve become symbols of resilience and endurance in the face of our most destructive tendencies. I got a bit obsessed with ginkgos after that. I read about how they had already survived a huge mass extinction during the Pleistocene and are considered a “living fossil,” a relic of a distant evolutionary moment. In New York, they’re largely known for an unpleasant odor when the female trees fruit in the spring, but I’ve always loved their scraggly branches and the way they carpet the sidewalks in unique, bright yellow leaves in the fall. The use of ginkgo biloba extract as a memory aid also felt apt given the album’s themes.

More and more, that seed of symbolism took root—I kept discovering new synchronicities—and at some point there was no longer any question that this thing would be called Ginkgo.

The very first words of the new record refer to the previous Field Guides release. “This is just a place / and you are just a song.” Could you talk a little on how you position this album in relation to This is Just a Place? Do you see it as a direct continuation? More of an evolution? A confrontation?

I’ve always loved art of any medium that develops its own self-reflexive, cross-referential, subtextual mythology. The way writers like David Mitchell or Anne Carson weave threads or revisit characters across different books, or the way songwriters like Dan Bejar or Phil Elverum return again and again to certain themes or motifs. I’m generally just a sucker for interpolation and quotation and love leaving breadcrumbs that someone might follow beyond a song’s lyrics. So, yeah, it was a very deliberate choice to begin this album with the title of the previous one, implying an ellipsis, picking up where we left off. (I enjoy the idea that, should a listener want to engage with the album more inquisitively, there are some fun little Easter eggs hidden about.) But I also love your idea of it being a confrontation with the prior work. This album was conceived and recorded during so much upheaval and loss, so it does feel like a break—naming a thing so that we can move on from it. “That was just a place, and now we find ourselves elsewhere.”

One of the most distinct layers is highly personal. There’s a sense of tension coursing beneath the record, a personal turmoil which surfaces from time to time (e.g. the line “Should I put some more wood on the fire / or should I snuff it out?”).  If it’s something you’re comfortable discussing, I’d be interested in hearing if this was in any way intentional. If we’re witnessing the breakdown of something, did you set out to map this process? Or did it unravel coincidentally and happen to change the direction of the record?

Oh, so you caught that. Yeah, lots of the songs were written during a protracted breakup (and breakdown), very much in dialogue with a romantic and creative partner during the dissolution of that relationship, which in retrospect was potentially a bit masochistic and unkind. I wasn’t consciously using the songs as a place to have those conversations, but it does feel that way a bit now. The idea of “mapping” feels especially apt because the songs do indeed chart a tumultuous personal trajectory that also happened to correspond with geographic dislocation. The final chapter of that relationship played out while traveling overseas, literally mapping the disintegration of that relationship to specific places. I think art is often a futile attempt to capture with some permanence certain ephemeral, fleeting feelings that we’re unable to process, that seem too big to grasp. But hopefully there’s something beautiful even within that futility or failure.

The idea of working to save something vs. recognising an end feels very much relevant in a wider context too. Running parallel to the personal threads of the album is something more universal. Your work often references the natural world for example, and therefore calls in all the wonder and dread associated with that as we fall further into the breakdown of our climate. Some degree of this is just a product of living in the world we do (all fiction is climate fiction, as Nishant Batsha argued in a recent essay), but I’m curious how conscious or intentional you are in addressing such themes.

Thank you for sharing that essay! I just read it and it’s terrifyingly on-point but also shows how art can—and, in my opinion, has a responsibility to—illuminate a path through all the appropriate anxieties of the Anthropocene. This is definitely what I spend a huge chunk of my time thinking about: how art and activism fit together and how we construct communities that are braced against climate (and cultural) collapse while leaving lots of room for joy and beauty. I again want to quote part of your question back to you: the blurry, liminal space between “working to save something” vs. “recognising an end” seems to be where we’re all spending more and more of our time, doesn’t it? Letting go of a failed relationship—or a stable, hospitable climate—without abandoning hope or conflating change with finality, without succumbing to fatalism, can be really tough. We tend to either cling or run. The writers Robert Macfarlane and Richard Powers have both talked about the way geology and trees can give us a glimpse of “deep time” and expand our ethics. If I can share a quote from Macfarlane’s book Underland:

For to think in deep time can be a means not of escaping our troubled present, but rather of re-imagining it; countermanding its quick greeds and furies with older, slower stories of making and unmaking. At its best, a deep time awareness might help us see ourselves as part of a web of gift, inheritance and legacy stretching over millions of years past and millions to come, bringing us to consider what we are leaving behind for the epochs and beings that will follow us. When viewed in deep time, things come alive that seemed inert.

Could we talk about hope directly? Hopelessness is so often treated as a flaw specific to unserious doomers or dangerous nihilists, but ‘hope’ as it is thrown around in the contemporary discourse can feel so wispy. A Donald Barthelme quote pops up at the end of the press release: “mixing bits of this and that from various areas of life to make something that did not exist before is an oddly hopeful endeavour.” Is the work of Field Guides hopeful? And what does such a thing mean to you?

Ha, I wrote the above before reading this question, but it’s very clear our thoughts are traveling the same road here! I loathe nihilism. I think it’s among the worst of our human tendencies. Hope is often seen as a lofty or, as you say, “wispy” orientation in the face of all we’re up against. But I’ve heard folks distinguish between hope and optimism. Optimism can be a passive stance, and at this point it feels pretty naïve. But hope should demand engagement; it comes along with the imperative to close the gap between the current reality and some hoped-for future. And I think this version of hope also requires humility, a shattering of solipsism and atomization. I certainly hope that my songs are hopeful. I hope they reach beyond any layers of self-indulgence and offer something comforting but new.

Finally, I’m interested in how you see Field Guides, now and moving forwards. On the one hand it feels a highly personal thing, but there’s always a wide array of guests who contribute too. Like a solo project which couldn’t exist without collaboration. Does it feel like a solo project, or something you now share with a wider community of artists?

I’m never quite sure what this project is: whether it’s a band or an amorphous solo thing… On this album, more than ever, it doesn’t really feel like either. I realize that I could feel more comfortable owning the voice at the center of this music, but I also love and feel immensely grateful that I get to share this thing with so many new and old friends who made it with me. It does feel like a community, like a big messy family. My buddy Ben Seretan had a great analogy for this record, describing it like “raising a barn together.” I wouldn’t ever want to try to raise a barn by myself.

Ginkgo is out now via Whatever’s Clever and you can get it now from the Field Guides Bandcamp page.

Photos by Dave Scanlon

The post Field Guides – Ginkgo appeared first on Various Small Flames.

Following on from singles ‘Sun Self‘ and ‘Kristofferson/StarStuffs‘, DoomFolk StarterKit (the recording project of Portland’s David Swick) is back with a brand new song. Existing within a conflicted state familiar in our contemporary moment, ‘2Hands’ finds a narrator caught between a need to retreat and rest and the seemingly endless task of working in order to stay afloat. A challenge faced with Swick’s trademark brand of introspective sincerity.

Field Guides – Margaret

“Attempting to not just represent the world, but show it to us anew.” That’s how we described Ginkgo, the forthcoming album from Field Guides on Whatever’s Clever in our preview of lead single, ‘Salmon Skin‘. Latest track ‘Margaret’ takes its inspiration from the nineteenth century author and women’s rights activist Margaret Fuller, her transcendentalist belief in the possibility of change lingering over an otherwise melancholic scene of domestic conflict. “And all that we have is ours for the taking” goes the final line, amended slightly from those which come before it, shimmering if not with hope then some mysterious precursor. Check out the video by Caleb Bryant Miller, Rebecca El-Saleh and Kupstas himself below:

Ginkgo is out via Whatever’s Clever on the 26th June and you can pre-order it now.

Fronjentress – Moon

Consisting of a rotating band of musicians based in Portland, Fronjentress unites artists who share an interest in the styles and themes of country music. “Classic country for contemporary times” is how the project describes its output, utilising traditional instruments and tropes to create something rooted within the present moment. Out this week on Perpetual Doom, latest album Baby Got Problems displays not only the aching melancholy of classic country music but also its wit and wry humour, as demonstrated on lead single, ‘Moon’. “If they told us that the moon / could be our new home pretty soon,” it begins:

Well, I’d pack a single bag
and go drifting
because this world has gotten strange
I surely won’t miss the rain
from my lonely paradise up in space

Baby’s Got Problems will be released on 14th May via Perpetual Doom. Order it now via Bandcamp.

Old Moon – Eastern Skies

Old Moon is the project of Tom Weir from Lyme, New Hampshire, who next month is releasing a brand new album titled Cities of the Plain via à La Carte Records and Love Chain Tapes. New single ‘Eastern Skies’ introduces Old Moon’s style, opening as an electrified folk song stark and expansive enough to live up to the McCarthy reference of the album’s title, but soon evolves into gothic shoegaze clamour. Weir’s vocals emerge from this with a brooding intensity, as though suspended within the sound, or else conjuring the heavy, sparkling tone itself.

Otracami – Pipe Scream

The project of Brooklyn-based songwriter Camila Ortiz, Otracami pitches itself between open coastal landscapes and gloomy bedrooms, working to unveil the mystery within both worlds. Latest single ‘Pipe Scream’ evokes the building pressure of an interrupted flow, its spacious, dreamy sound belying the desperation beneath the surface. There might not be a crashing crescendo within the track itself, but the promise of release is ever-present, even if the dam holds for now.

pipe scream
until it’s not
water pools behind my eyes
until i let it fall

Photokem – Future Minister

Consisting of Nana Acheampong (vocals), Leah Blom (violin), Nico Fennell (instrumentals/production), Jack Kelly (instrumentals) and Evan Ryckebusch (cello/bass), Photokem is an Austin-based outfit formed in 2021 after the group read Acheampong’s writing in the University of Texas’ BlackPrint publication. None of them had recorded music before, and Acheampong had never sang in public, which makes the richness and detail of debut EP Luffon Bright all the more impressive. ‘Future Minister’ introduces the style, its arrangement moving from quiet folk and emo-inflected rock to vivid orchestral swells, all tied together by Acheampong’s conversational yet striking delivery.

Shrill Pill – Still Alive

Northampton, MA’s Shrill Pill introduced their new EP Sparky on Hand Over Foot Records with the plucky and raucous ‘Loud and True’, though the latest single shows a different side to the band. ‘Still Alive’ offers an altogether more restrained sound, its quiet folk sensibilities creating a space reflective and warm, but within this subdued mood the lyrics still hold a feistiness. “War stories and war trophies are not the same at all,” goes one verse. “One you win and one you tell your friend you love but never call / Memory is better than an elegy / Keep me in your thoughts but please don’t talk to me.”

Troy Everett – ripples / outcast

The music of Maryland-born, D.C.-based artist Troy Everett encompasses a whole range of genres. From orchestral strings and electronic beats to more metal-adjacent screaming, his work lifts elements from across the stylistic gamut to bring to life his reflective and vulnerable themes. New double single ripples / outcast is the perfect example of this range, the first a mournful classical composition, the latter a stark and confessional pop song which slots alongside the work of artists like G. Brenner. “I feel like an outcast in my own mind,” Everett sings as the song builds around him, frenzied beats and lush classical arrangements coalescing into something urgent and poignant.

The post Weekly Listening: May 2022 #2 appeared first on Various Small Flames.

The result is a collection of songs which rewards close and repeated listens, born in one man’s vision and realised within a community of collaboration. A record of turmoil, fear and unease that seeks wonder not via some great transcendence but rather what already lies near. The people and places, the environments right there beneath our feet. Kupstas identifies as “the feeling of being unmoored from the familiar” as one central to Ginkgo, but this does not indicate a remove or escape from the everyday. Rather, it takes inspiration from Barthelme in its commitment to the ordinary. A refusal to accept ordinary as ordinary at all. Attempting to not just represent the world, but show it to us anew.

Lead single ‘Salmon Skin’ serves as an entry point for this endeavour. A song full of the layered allusions and synchronicities which mark the record, drawing lines between seemingly unconnected things to trace the edges of feelings which might otherwise be too large or unwieldy to properly convey. “‘[The track] was mostly written while I was in Lebanon a few years ago, volunteering with an NGO in the Bekaa Valley,” Kupstas explains:

It was an intense time. I was corresponding with Alena Spanger (longtime collaborator), who was in California at the time, getting lost in coves. I was spending my breaks sitting in a sort of grotto on the grounds of a very old monastery, where a mangey feral cat would sit on my lap. The geographical and psychic displacements felt a bit surreal. And I found some sort of parallel correspondence between salmon and spiders. I had been in the process of moving to Switzerland, but feeling extremely conflicted about the prospect, and lots of things were unraveling, dizzying forks in the road. That’s what that song grew out of.

‘Salmon Skin’ also comes with a video directed by Tyler Rai and Kupstas himself, filmed by Sarah Lass and edited by Nina Vroemen. Check it out below:

Gingko is out on the 24th June via Whatever’s Clever and you can pre-order it now from Bandcamp.

Photo by Dave Scanlon

The post Field Guides – Salmon Skin appeared first on Various Small Flames.

This ambience is apparent on latest single ‘Chirin’s Bell’, but the song also shows the work of Ethan Woods to be far more than a study of place. The track is partly inspired by Masami Hata’s 1979 animation Ringing Bell, where a curious little lamb gets separated from his herd and stumbles upon a wolf. Despite a taste for sheep, the wolf takes Chirin under its wing, training him in the ways of a predator, and over several years transforms the lamb from a helpless youngster into something strong and ruthless. When Chirin eventually returns to his flock, it is as a hunter alongside his adopted parent, his identity now in complete opposition to that with with he left.

Ethan Woods repurposes such a transformation into an Appalachian cowboy ballad, charting a loss of innocence as hooves become claws, pining for the truth even while life forces teeth to be bared. “For me, this song is about the struggles to remain true to yourself, your art, and your community when faced with the transformative power of the desires to earn clout, wealth, and notoriety,” Woods explains. “I think of it as a shout-out to all the artists out there who struggle with marketing themselves, who try to keep their soul from being crushed, who know the paradoxes of trying to market one’s self authentically.”

The post Ethan Woods – Chirin’s Bell appeared first on Various Small Flames.

The duo have unveiled the title track in anticipation of the release, immediately pitching the listener into the uncanny balance between stillness and movement that defines their sound. Opening with little beyond simple keyboard notes and Stancato’s vocals, the track conjures what proves to be a falsely grounded quality for dream pop. But soon Taube’s vocals join in as arpeggiated synths and lazy saxophone announce themselves, and the track shifts with sly subtlety so that suddenly you are out of your body and far from the ground.

The post Marjorie – Doesn’t Exist appeared first on Various Small Flames.