Tracklist:

Act Of – I am Fungus
Static Animal – See You Around
Skirts – Brite Boy (Alex G cover)
Space Mountain – Cloud
Alexander – Going To Sleep
German Error Message – Murmuring
Thelma – Take Me To Orlando
Jeffrey Silverstein – Make Yr Peace (And Have It Too)
camp counselor – museum of broken relationships
Spartan Jet-Plex – Stop
Lala Lala & Why? – Siren 042
Shrimpwitch – Leerers
Sir Babygirl – Flirting With Her
Spielbergs – Five On It
Stella Donnelly – Lunch
Mentalease – Avert a Gaze
Priests – The Seduction of Kansas
Mike Pace and The Child Actors – Hazy, Hot & Humid
Swim Camp – Circle K
BURLY – Kent Lame
Miserable chillers – Cider Palace
Imp of Perverse – Tripping Thru a Hallway On Fire
Go Fever – Olivia
Polyan – Dan Song
Morning River Band – Bury Me
Nigel Wright – Overcast
Denmark – I Know
Sister Wanzala – I Went Whaling in My Gap Year
Body Meat – Nairobi Flex
Derek Piotr – Repeating Bloom (Simon Whetham Remix)
Michael Chinworth – Good As It Gets
Mesa Luna – Dispel
yot club – jaded

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

Stella Donnelly – Boys Will Be Boys

After the success of debut EP Thrush Metal, Australian songwriter Stella Donnelly is preparing to release her debut full-length album, Beware of the Dog, this spring on Secretly Canadian. The record looks set to continue the defiant tone that made her previous release so striking, confronting personal and social issues by looking them right in the eye, and refusing to move until they flinch.

That this is achieved through delicate folk rock is a testament to Donnelly’s writing abilities, and single ‘Boys Will Be Boys’ is a case in point. The track laps in gentle rhythm no matter how dark and violent the lyrics, Donnelly’s tone somewhere between earnest, wistful and searingly sardonic. A nightmare in lullaby clothing, that just so happens to be waking reality.

Go Fever – Olivia

The recording project of Australia born, Texas-based songwriter Acey Monaro, Go Fever look to explore themes such as love, sex, outsiderness and mental health through a feminist lens, using a New Wave-inflected indie rock as the vehicle. Following up 2017’s self-titled album, Go Fever are back this winter with a brand new EP, Daydream Hawker, and single ‘Olivia’ gives a hint as to what we should expect from the album.

Part dreamy, part surfy, and with more than a hint of 70s sensibility, the track is a vivid take on a friendship turned sour. “You don’t have to pretend anymore,” Monaro sings, hinting at the anger stitched into the warm textures of the song. “I’m tired of the sight of you.” Understandably, the song is far from a happy one, though the buoyant sound of the instrumentation lifts the tone from self-pity into grim celebration.

Nigel Wright – Overcast

Raised in Georgia but now working out of Bandon, Oregon, Nigel Wright is a songwriter, composer, artist and former carpenter’s assistant who put out his first record in 2010. After the experience of a European tour, Wright worked on his second album in 2014, and has since been storing up his songs for a new full-length, Kyht, that will see the light of day at the end of February.

‘Overcast’ serves as a strong introduction to the record, the instrumentation imbued with a sense of lightness and motion, Wright’s distinctive vocals like weather-worn rocks within the flow. Thematically, the track is clearly that of an artist, the push and pull of obsession and obscurity, where a keen vision burns brightly, but always just out of frame. Wright’s role it seems, is to get as close to that clarity as possible, and hope that it brings focus for others too.

“You said so long to my meaning
back to as you were
no it aint your assignment to measure your worth
you just gotta do the work”

Priests – The Seduction of Kansas

When Washington D.C.’s Priests put out Nothing Feels Natural back in 2017, the band cemented their position as one of the most interesting bands around, their fierce, freewheeling sound pitched somewhere between furious and funny. The band are back with a brand new record, The Seduction of Kansas, and the title track suggests a slightly different direction for Priests, swapping out the raw punk sound in favour of sinuous art rock. Still, the writing and delivery is as cutting and arresting as ever, the band taking on ideas of national identity and Americanness with acerbic wryness, referencing everything from the Koch Brothers to Castle Pizza.

The track comes complete with a video by singer Katie Alice Greer, and the film belongs to the valuable bracket of music videos that actually seem to add to the meaning and impact of the song. Check it out below:

The Seduction of Kansas will be released on the 5th April via Sister Polygon Records and you can pre-order it from the Priests Bandcamp page.

Polyan – Dan Song

Polyan are a psych-folk band for the post 9/11 age, their old timey twang having one foot in dusty campfire tunes and another in the twenty-first century. ‘Dan Song’ shows this off, the hypnotic flow of the instrumentation and the lazy slur of the vocals lendimg a dangerous, temperamental dimension, threatening to spill over into something altogether more unhinged. Eventually, the song follows through on this dark promise, the vocals rising into a deafening screech that blows through the mics and stings your soul.

Sir Babygirl – Flirting With Her

Sir Babygirl was born when new Hampshire’s Kelsie Hogue had an Ebeneezer Scrooge-style experience, the ghosts of pop past and present (the holy trinity of Britney Spears, Christina Aguilera, Whitney Houston) visiting her in a dream and convincing her that there is no higher form of art or self-expression. The epiphany saw ambitions in Chiacago’s DIY and comedy scenes dropped, Hogue now devoted to creating a pop persona worthy of her heroes.

Taken from debut album Crush On Me, single ‘Flirting With Her’ provides a tour through the gaudy pop world that has been crafted in response, the flashy plastic decorations and glitterball diva energy making what the press release calls “unabashedly bubblegum, unashamedly queer pop for a future free of genre boundary and the gender binary.”

Mesa Luna – Dispel

The recording project of Vancouver multi-instrumentalist Justice McLellan, Mesa Luna melds dream pop and shoegaze to form shimmering soundscapes, the rich textures tied together by resolute rhythms that pull you through the spacey haze. Taken from the debut Mesa Luna album that’s due out early this spring, ‘Dispel’ shows off McLellan’s balance between energy and space, where the fuzzy tones are guided by a lucid conviction, leading to a sound translucent yet crystalline.

Body Meat – Nairobi Flex

Philadelphia’s Body Meat is primarily a duo of Chris Taylor and Matthew Anderegg (of Mothers and Infinity Dance Complex). They create contemporary pop/R&B that’s made weird by skewed time signatures and superimposed polyrhythms. There newest song, ‘Nairobi Flex’, is a great example. At once jittery and smooth, the song combines collaged staccato samples and smooth pop vibes, creating something that’s as infectious as it is adventurous.

The song comes complete with a video by Daniel Patrick Brennan, which you can check out below:

Head to the Body Meat Bandcamp page for previous releases.

yot club – jaded

Not much information exists about yot club, the recording project of someone named Ryan that pitches a glimmering blend of dream pop and chillwave. This month saw the release of aquarium, the debut yot club release, a deliciously lo-fi synth pop album that combines sadness and bounce to create its infectious sounds. Bringing to mind the likes of Pizzagirl, lead single ‘jaded’ puts bummed out disaffection next to tropical pop, like watching a day end from the bottom of a chlorinated pool.

Lala Lala & Why? – Siren 042

Yoni Wolf and Lillie West of Chicago’s Lala Lala have known each other since the “golden, olden days when Lillie used to sneak backstage at Why? shows,” and have now come together to make a collaborative single. ‘Siren 042’ sees West take the lead, infusing the track with a sense of melancholic self-confrontation, while Wolf and some beautifully dreamy guitar brighten the palette. The accompanying video, directed by Scott Fredette, sees the pair running through a variety of landscapes, constant backward glances suggesting they’re desperate to flee rather than get somewhere new.

“and i’m sorry i was evil
i don’t do that anymore
i just copy other people
try to forget what was before”

Imp of Perverse – Tripping Thru a Hallway On Fire

In addition to drumming for Austin band Sherry, and his membership of now-defunct favourites π and The Halfways, Sean Lochridge also records solo as Imp of Perverse, where he gets to show off his skills as a multi-instrumentalist. As the title might suggest, new album Imp In Reverse collects four of Lochridge’s previous releases and presents them in reverse chronological order, creating what the label describes as “one gigantic, shifting, psychedelic auditory flashback totaling in 22 songs and nearly an hour and a half in runtime.”

Such a project might sound impenetrable, so why not cut your teeth on opening (and potentially most accessible) track ‘Tripping Thru a Hallway On Fire’? In opposition to the titular immediacy, the song is a detached dream-float prone to eddies and swirls in its tempo. For their part, Lochridge’s vocals remain even and barely audible. It’s is something of a trap door through which you fall into the truly weird recesses of the album, though it is certainly worth trusting Imp of Perverse to be as delightfully odd as possible.

Swim Camp – Circle K

Swim Camp is the bedroom pop project of Philadelphia’s Tom Morris. His latest single ‘Circle K’ is a soft and mumbled song that combines the intimacy of a home-recording with a touch of lush studio production. Guitar sits at the forefront, slowly unfurling as percussion ambles along in the background, creating something akin to slo-mo indie rock. Morris’s vocals only adds to the atmosphere, sounding weary and sober as he delivers minimal lines that nevertheless have distinct emotional resonance.

“to tell the truth
i forget what i want
so ill keep on asking
and praying to god”

Thelma – Take Me To Orlando

Natasha Jean Jacobs established herself as Thelma with a self-titled record back in 2017, exploring the pure/impure dichotomy with a tone at once delicate and caustic, proving a valuable meditation of self-worth. Much has transpired in the meantime, but this February sees Jacobs back with a brand new Thelma record, The Only Thing.

Lead single ‘Take Me To Orlando’ employs a similar ambiguity, drawing on the nirvana of simulacra that is Disney World to dig into ideas of performance, fantasy and longing. “I love how you play with illusion,” she sings to someone/thing she’d decided to call Orlando, “cause you know how badly we need them / to live our silly lives.” Check out the video directed by Stephanie Gould below:

The Only Thing is out on the 22nd February and you can pre-order it now.

German Error Message – Murmuring

We’ve covered German Error Message numerous times in the past, from the beautiful album Haunts and a spilt with Lung Cycles to standalone single ‘2017‘, the latter of which we describes as “quietly devastating […] late-night solitude made strange by stark, staccato forces emerging from the sky or within the skull.”

The good news is that German Error message is putting out a brand new record, Mend, in 2019, and we’ve been given ‘Murmuring’ to set the scene. As ever, the song is one of great atmosphere and feeling—joy and dread creeping side by side, twin forces of transcendence that promise to lift us from the contemporary loneliness.

The post Bright Sparks: Vol. 20 appeared first on Various Small Flames.

Hi Taylor, thanks for chatting with us! How is life now that your debut album, Homeroom Breakfast is out in the world?

Hello! Yes, having that out in the world has been real nice. It’s always a good feeling to finish a project, ya know, and this is my first time having physical copies of my music so I’m super stoked about that aspect! An amazing artist/pal named Nora Einbender-Luks did the art and it’s so cool to have kind of created something with someone else.

Your Bandcamp page says the album was written and recorded in both Brooklyn and San Francisco. Was there a reason for this split? And what’s your recording process like?

My last semester of college was in Brooklyn and that was the same time I started working on this album – so the first few tracks I wrote and recorded were done in my apartment there, and the rest were recorded in my apartment in San Francisco once I moved back after school.
I kind of write or at least add to songs as I’m recording, so the recording process for me is a lot of trial and error and is so much fun. I often have just the basic structure of a song when I go to record because I mostly hear new parts as I’m listening back to it rather than while I’m playing or writing it.. I use garageband, a borrowed mic + interface from my friend Rose or my iphone built in mic, and whatever instruments I can get my hands on. Luckily I have lived with/know a lot of musicians so I’ve been able to use a lot of other peoples stuff and it’s been great!

Who/what would you cite as your main influences?

Woah! I love thinking about this. My brother Travis Vick and my friend Rose Droll are for sure my main influences. They both are incredible musicians, performers, people. Also my brother got me into really good music at a young age so I’m really grateful for that. I’ve always had a strong connection to Rose’s music and now we’re friends and are each other’s #1 fans so it’s really rad and powerful – both Travis and Rose inspire the heck out of me!

I feel like a lot of people immediately put artists in your genre into a sad/lonely box without much thought, so I’m going to ask you outright – Do you consider your songs sad and lonely?

I don’t think so. I think because I’m not sad or lonely, I can’t consider them as that even though others might (which is fine). My songs might have glimpses of sadness or whatever, which is because the best outlet for me if I’m sad is to write a song or a lyric or something. So I understand why people might think that. But yeah, I think other feelings than sadness can be felt when listening to a song that might be deemed as sad so I try not to write off an artist as being sad/lonely because sometimes connecting over something sad can feel really good… if that makes sense.

The album has been released on cassette with Mt. Home Arts. How do you feel about releasing it with them and how did the relationship come about?

Mt. Home Arts is so awesome and great! Releasing an album with them has been so cool, I feel very lucky and happy to have had the opportunity. I emailed for a long time with Tim Woulfe, one of the founders of Apollonian Sound (who has since merged with Mt. Home Arts!) about releasing my music with them, we ended up doing a few shows together on the east coast last month and I got to release my album on their label. It all feels very good. They are great people.

Your debut release was self-produced and released. Do you have any advice or sage wisdom for other people young or old who are thinking about grabbing a guitar and recording something at home?

Oh man! Some of the best advice I’ve heard and think I also read once on an Alex G AMA was to make music that you want to hear. I would also say to not think that you’re limited because you’re recording at home or by yourself. I still don’t know much at all about recording or mixing, but that’s what makes experimenting so fun. You can do whatever you want and can create this audible, invisible thing, it’s so awesome. Experiment and share what you’re excited about with someone, or everyone. Do what feels good.

Finally, what 4 or 5 bands/artists have you been listening to recently? They can be brand new or a hundred years old, whatever you’re into.

I’m recently very into Andy Shauf’s albums The Party and The Bearer of Bad News. Also Diners’ album Three. WHY? is probably my favorite band ever so I’m still always listening to them and also to Elliott Smith for forever.

Homeroom Breakfast is out now on a beautifully packaged cassette via Mt. Home Arts and is available to download via the Boy Scouts Bandcamp page.

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The resulting album, Testarossa, “captures the emotional turbulence that Maddy & Davy endure as their relationship and lives slowly decay”, which apparently includes a pregnancy, a proposal, a wedding, music touring, touring failure, musical failure, musical perseverance and adultery (in that order). As the press release puts it:

“The sentiment distils the slow decay of the album.  It’s a high-concept examination of lives crumbling.  The despair of a lovable underdog who chased his dreams so relentlessly that he lost those he loved the most. He misses his kids, but still lives a debauched life away.”

You can have a listen to the track ‘Madeline’ below to get an idea of what broken dreams and crumbling lives sound like

Testarossa is set for release on the 6th May via Joyful Noise Recordings, and you can pre-order it now on black or bone vinyl.

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“[David] descends the spirals of grief after losing his wife… With death and decay quite literally pervading his house and life, David finds himself both terrified by his situation yet drawn towards some obscure peace with it, as if giving in to a dark and fungal siren”

Amelia Gray is back with her third collection of short stories, Gutshot. As the title suggests, this is an uncomfortable book. Like, being-shot-square-in-the-guts level uncomfortable. There’s a man who vomits every time he speaks (and carries an empty pop bottle for convenience), mutual genital mutilation between a couple struggling to conceive a child, a family who carve up an over-sized heart with kitchen knives. There are giant snakes and desecrated graveyards and twins within twins. And yes, there is blood and shit and mucus in large quantities. 

As in Threats, many of the characters in Gutshot seem aware of their situation but unable to change, as if passengers on a train called Life or Destiny which they understand will arrive at its destination regardless of anything they might do. These are people caught in a strange stases, pervaded by vague sensations they can see and feel but not avoid, sensations which eat away at their insides until they are hulled and hollow. Opener ‘In The Moment’ is a good example, a story where a couple eradicate all references of the past or future from their apartment, removing all context from their existence and thus making life at once fascinating and impossible. See also ‘Away From’, the tale of a kidnapped woman who freezes at the top of the stairs when trying to escape. Reading these stories is like watching a fungus bloom across a wall, like watching a slow-motion video of yourself going up in flames.

This feeling hangs over the majority of the stories, even those in which the characters are decisive. Even ‘The Labyrinth’, which sees a not-so-brave man decide to be brave teeters toward a cryptic ending, or rather ends cryptically before any real conclusion. This is typical Gray, never quite giving the reader that satisfying click of recognition, the realisation of where a story is going or what it means. Good people aren’t rewarded and bad people aren’t punished and even passages that first appear clear allegories or fables skew into confusion. In ‘The Labyrinth’, the narrator, Jim, is forced to carry an (heavy) enigmatic disk through the maze:

“I don’t know about this,” I said.

“It’s the Phiastos Disk,” Dale said. “I paid a pretty penny so mind where you set it.”

It did seem to be imbued with some significance.

And so Jim takes the disk into the labyrinth without ever understanding why. Gray’s grotesque imagery is much the same. It remains important, vital, to her work without serving any clear function (ie. any ham-fisted metaphorical purpose), as if its meaning is so large it’s impossible to focus on. ‘Year of the Snake’ is set up like a strange and ambiguous fairy tale that never narrows down to some moral principle, while ‘The Swan as Metaphor for Love’ begins like an amusing love-is-actually-terrible gag before subverting the subversion, delving so far into horrible, biological truths that you’re left with an existential consideration so primal it registers as a taste in the mouth.

I could go on: ‘Device,’ ‘These Are Fables’ and the title story all seem to tee up some valuable punchline without following through, highlighting something that makes Gray’s writing so special. By not giving answers, or sending explicit messages, she manages to create characters and situations which feel real despite their surreality. Whether they have a device which can predict the future, an unending compulsion to say thank you or a prostitute locked in the heating ducts of their home, each and every character is vividly, fatally, human.

To review the collection as a whole is a difficult job. The book reads like a carefully constructed chaos too nuanced to be unified into a clear theme. Occasionally an image or theme is amplified by what seems like inadvertent recurrence, while other times they clash messily leaving once-clear messages and morals adrift in ambiguity. This gives Gray’s design an decidedly organic feel, each piece, ignorant of the rest, fulfils its own role as if it is the most important thing in the world, creating a system of blind parts working furiously toward some obscure goal, and giving Fernando Vicente‘s artwork a whole new meaning.

Gutshot is out now, published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

Seeing as we are primarily a music website, we thought we’d included a playlist of songs to accompany each book review. The tracks aren’t necessarily directly related to the anything in the stories, but rather get close to the same sorts of imagery and moods. Enjoy.

The post Amelia Gray – Gutshot appeared first on Various Small Flames.

Radcliffe gets the A-side of the album, opening with the rather ominous line of, “Oh my God I’ve really done it this time” which rather nicely sets the tone (read: young, confused and lonely). It both sounds and feels like the outpouring of someone who has locked themselves in their room (and that isn’t a criticism). It’s raw and pure and honest, full of sincere yearning and wry self-deprecation.

But this isn’t simply the sound of some young guy moping over his acoustic guitar. Radcliffe’s music is nothing if not unpredictable, jam-packed with idiosyncratic elements; xylophone and flute recorder and periods of near-silence, schoolyard chant backing vocals, intimate wordless murmurs and weird unintelligble vocal recordings like answerphone confessions from another dimension. All this is wrapped up in a warm and cozy fuzz, giving the sense that not only are you sitting in Radcliffe’s bedroom with him, but you are sat on his bed wrapped up in a duvet.

The third track, ‘My Song’, is a little different, with an almost hip-hop spoken word delivery which brings to mind Why?. It also possesses Yoni Wolf’s millennial deadpan irony with lines like, “On the phone asking room service where the party’s at.”

‘Brown Horse’, the final of Radcliffe’s tracks, is probably the most upbeat. The lyrics are like a postmodern poetic summary of Cormac McCarthy’s All the Pretty Horses:

“I wanna ride a brown horse somewhere where a horse hasn’t ridden it’s course before
Other horses running around taking in the air feeling hooves on the wet ground
Waiting for the sun to go down
All the horses run towards the big field in the sky”

R.L. Kelly’s side is perhaps more accessible, refreshingly simple after Radcliffe’s experimentation. The highlight is Rachel Levy’s characteristic sweet and bright vocal work. It’s intimate and introspective but not overly morose. In fact there are some pretty positive messages peppered throughout, not least on ‘Wake Up’, which is the sonic equivalent of spelling out ‘KEEP GOING’ in multi-coloured magnetic alphabet letters on the door of your fridge:

“They want to hurt you because they’re hurting too
Don’t let them inside your head they’ll take control”

The final track offers another comforting philosophy, a little pick-me-up for your soul, a reminder that your really little and insignificant and this is far from being a bad thing because it means that all your worries and fears are even smaller and things will carry on as normal and you can too. Or, as Levy puts it in a repeated pseudo-chorus:

“And the great big great big world keeps spinning”

So if you like your music DIY and lo-fi and you find comfort in solidarity with people you’ll never meet, Brown Horse is the album for you.

The cassette release has sold out, but you can still download the album on a name-your-price basis via the Orchid Tapes Bandcamp page.

The post Spencer Radcliffe & R.L. Kelly – Brown Horse appeared first on Various Small Flames.

As with the majority of Orchid Tapes releases, expect lots of pitch-perfect lo-fi pop, undercut with a decidedly gloomy, lonely atmosphere. As with Coma Cinema before him, Alex G has a downbeat feel with an almost monotone delivery that kind of embodies the detachment of many young people today. Some tracks do buck this trend slightly, while keeping with the general distaste of arriving into adulthood at present. For example ‘Harvey’ has a Why? vibe, with lyrics and vocals that possess that heart-on-your-sleeve sincerity with a slightly weird/self-deprecating underbelly that is so familiar to Yoni Wolf’s writing.

I don’t want this to descend into a typical blogger over-analysis – where something that is good/true because it is simple/real is intellectualised to become less simple/real, and therefore less good/true – but I do feel this whole idea is an important one. It is the success in capturing this detachment in music that makes Alex G (and other acts in this crowd, Ricky Eat Acid, Matt Cothran’s Coma Cinema/Elvis Depressedly, etc.) such important songwriters. They are amongst the few people who are tackling the current feeling of young people (or Millenials, but that seems to be a frowned-upon buzz word used by authors of think pieces).

The bottom line is that most music (and indeed art) ditches any attempt at tackling this in favour of some form of escapism (be it nostalgia, melodrama, adrenaline, etc.). Those that do try usually use irony to ridicule the situation – the Youtube ‘star’ Sam Hyde and his MillionDollarExtreme videos are a good current example, and there have been many books that aim for the same thing (Bright Lights, Big City by Jay McInerney etc. etc.). The problem with mocking vapidity is that after a while it becomes just as shallow and empty as problem in the first place.

Alex G and his colleagues seem to be doing a bit more. There seems to be an element of positivity, even if that positivity is nothing more than a connection, an appreciation that we are not alone. Even bringing up the emptiness faced by young people risks appearing naive or falling victim to the everything-is-lame ironists (I can imagine this post being made fun of as I’m writing it), so laying things out in a way that is open and halfway-constructive is as admirable as it is important. It’s sort of like saying that yes, sometimes thing are shit, and no, we don’t have any real answers and no one would listen if we did, but we are here feeling the exact same thing as you and that has got to count for something, right?

So, umm… this wasn’t really much of a review, but DSU is a special album and you should buy it. Maybe I’ve got the wrong end of the stick, but if the album speaks to you as strongly as it does to me then it has done it’s job, and the rest is a matter of interpretation.

You can get it on vinyl from Orchid Tapes (currently on its third pressing, after proving hugely popular via pre-order. I can attest that the folks at Orchid Tapes are really nice and throw in goodies like stickers and sweets and teabags), and on a pay-what-you-can basis from Bandcamp. and be sure to check out Alex G’s back catalogue on his Bandcamp page.

The post Alex G – DSU appeared first on Various Small Flames.

15. Isaac Delusion – Early Morning EP

(Cracki)

14. Shipwrecks – Whatever

(Self Released)

13. The Long Haul – Debtors

(Tangled Talk)

12. Daniel Rossen – Silent Hour/Golden Mile

(Warp)

11. Snow Mantled Love – Romance 126

(Self Released)

10. Wake Owl – Wild Country

(Vagrant)

9. Groundislava – TV Dream

(Friends of Friends)

8. Why? – Sod In The Seed

(Anticon / City Slang)

7. The Wandering Lake – Ashame

(Self Released)

6. Memotone – Hands

(A Future Without)

5. Throwing Snow – Clamor

(Snowfall)

4. The Antlers – Undersea

(Transgressive)

3. Shlohmo – Vacation

(Friends of Friends)

2. Tyler Butler – Violence

(Self Released)

1. TNGHT – TNGHT

(Warp / Lucky Me)

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Yoni Wolf has to go down as one of the best lyricists in recent years (or all-time) and this EP is no different. The Lynchian mix of the bizarre and the mundane returns, with everyday activities (purchasing eggs in Safeway etc.) interspersed with the horrible (shitting black blood and pulling feathers from a newborn robin), the sad (the ‘first world curse’ of steady hurt) and the downright weird (building a fence with bird bones [from the aforementioned robins] and amethysts). I don’t think they have released a bad piece to date, a record that is well and truly intact with Sod In The Seed.

The new album Mumps, etc is due out on October 8th so the wait for yet more new material from Yoni and Co. is a short one.

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It sort of sounds like as if Owen Ashworth and Yoni Wolf sat down with some indie rock bands (for some reason Arms kept coming to mind as I listen to this album, I think due to the vocals on Catfish, the 9+ minute closer), decided to make an album of ragged campfire songs and then hired a group of carefree teenagers to sing along (I mean this in an entirely positive way). In this mish mash of sounds and influences lies most of Sailor’s appeal. It’s eclectic and it’s fun and it’s catchy, but it also isn’t afraid to experiment. The collision of genres could easily grate, but this doesn’t. It remains fresh and endearing after repeated listens and still sounds as good today (maybe due to the fact the sun is finally shining here in the UK) as it did when I first listened almost a month ago. The best news of all is that the album is completely free from the band’s Bandcamp page.

NOTE – Kissed Her Little Sister’s first album is also available for free from Bandcamp. I’d thoroughly recommend you check that out while you’re downloading Sailor. It even features a sneaky sample of the Inspector Gadget theme tune.

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