Adeline Hotel

“Exists within that small and fleeting pocket in time and space that opens just before you take off from a familiar location” – we premièred the first song from an upcoming Adeline Hotel EP

Morning River Band

“Songs about those men down on their luck but too stubborn to change… doomed to making the same old mistakes and who continue chasing the same misguided remedies” – we wrote about Abyssal Chanelling, the latest album from Morning River Band

On The Water

“A strange stop-motion collage that sits perfectly with the lyrical themes of death, decay and, naturally, life” – we premièred a video by Nnamdi Ogbonnaya for ‘Born in Reverse’, the opening track from On The Water’s Cordelia.

Bells Atlas

“Using precise imagery to trace imprecise, unknowable things, the words coalescing with the music to create something unclear but imbued with meaning, as if reaching somewhere deeper within your brain or soul than you can consciously go” – the vibrant and mystical Hyperlust EP from Bells Atlas

Frog

“Queens is the most diverse county in America, and maybe the world. Kind of Blah is about living here, in this city, which is sometimes incredibly wonderful and other times feels a lot like prison and most times probably both at once” – we spoke with Frog about listening to Jagged Little Pill with your mom, the brilliance of Lightning Bolt and some terrible advice from David BermanFuneral Sounds

“Casa Ruby strives to enable people to be treated as people” – a benefit compilation from Funeral Sounds in support of multicultural LGBTQ organisation Casa Ruby

Girlpool

“In a weird way, Girlpool have grown up – becoming confident enough to share their dreams and vulnerabilities and in turn galvanise a lonely generation too afraid of ridicule to live the lives they desire” – Girlpool’s new album Before The World Was Big sees the band offer a sustainable and productive antidote to the pressures of growing up

Advance Base

“Sweetly sad stories about lonely Midwesterners trying to make sense of their troubled pasts” – mark your calendars, August will see a new album from Owen Ashworth’s Advance Base

Two White Cranes

“A clear advancement from anything on Two White Cranes, fleshed out with electric guitar and drums and focussed in its writing” – we previewed Radisson Blue, the forthcoming album from Two White Cranes

Evening Hymns

“I could go on about how [Evening Hymns are] brave and heartbreaking and intensely personal, or how [they] made me feel okay and less alone” – Evening Hymns has us very excited for their new album Quiet Energies

Mitski

“I’m not the white boy. I’m not in a position to be heard whatever I make” – Mitski spoke with Caralyn Green for Pittsburgh City Paper about being an introverted person of colour in music. [See our review of Bury Me at Makeout Creek]

Katie Dey

“I remembered that I had earphones in my coat pocket. I plugged them into my phone and listened to asdfasdf and rested my head on the train window. Closing my eyes, what was initially a gloomy train ride turned into something more cathartic” – Gold Flake Paint talked about Katie Dey’s asdfasdf and the restorative power of music

Ornette Coleman

“A giant of 20th century music, pushing jazz into new harmonic territory and reconceiving the way in which musicians improvised” – Stewart Smith wrote about the career and legacy of Ornette Coleman for The Quietus

Long Neck

“An album with no season, or maybe it’s every season, or maybe it’s just the season when you feel most alone” – Stereogum are streaming Heights by Lily Mastrodimos’s Long Neck

Mitski (again)

Out of Town Films shot Mitski playing ‘I Will’ in the middle of nowhere

Swell Tone’s Summertime Sanity

“Getting lost in the heat and the sense of freedom inherent in the forthcoming season is tempting, to say the least” – Shana over at Swell Tone has put together a selection of summer songs, including Yowler, Girlpool, Hot Palms and The Washboard Abs. Any playlist that opens with ‘Skin of Your Yellow Country Teeth’ gets a thumbs up from us.

Kathryn Joseph

We liked Kathryn Joseph’s Bones You Have Thrown Me Blood I’ve Spilled an awful lot. Last week she played some songs for the Roddy Hart Show on BBC Scotland and it sounded great. Check it out on the BBC iPlayer.

And Finally… the 8tracks Playlist(s) of the Week

This week’s winner is mix-master Adam, AKA Songsfortheday, and his summer soundtracks. There are separate day and night editions, so he has you covered for all your musical needs.

The post Week in Review: #5 (8th – 13th June) appeared first on Various Small Flames.

Girlpool is Cleo Tucker and Harmony Tividad. The pair met at high school and developed their musical aspirations in LA at The Smell, an all ages, drug/alcohol free underground club that has played a part in the career of a number of noise bands (see The Mae Shi, No Age, Abe Vigoda). Unlike the aforementioned bands, Girlpool make relatively simple indie rock music sans drums, relying on their distinctive vocals and cutting lyrics to make the impact. The result is a slightly skewed guitar-driven EP that feels continuously on the verge of spilling over, restrained but for how long?

You can probably guess the main target of this barely restrained fervour from what I’ve already said about the band’s name. Tasked with listening to the “faceless voices of scientists on dictaphone records,” the women of the Vonnegut’s Girl Pool leave their “cloister of cement” only once a year to go “a-carolling” and get chocolate bars at Christmas time. The song ‘Blah Blah Blah’ captures the ridiculousness of the fact that these women (read: any women) are controlled by “anybody with a dictaphone,” i.e. even the most uninspiring, unoriginal, banal men:

“You leave me crying in the fucking rain
I want you
You’re too busy watching other girls
In the little skirts, with their pretty curls
Why don’t you
Hot one you know you want it
Then when you find you got it
You call me

I hear you talking like
BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH
BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH
BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH”

Next song ‘Paint Me Colours’ looks at privilege through the prism of teenage heartbreak: “I’ll never understand what it means to be a man who is white ‘cos he never has to fight.” This grounding of big ideas (racial/gender discrimination) in ‘normal’ things (teen angst) works really well, although of course the big ideas are intrinsically linked with and impact upon normality. ‘Slutmouth,’ opening with the line “sometimes I want to be a boy,” challenges just what ‘normal’ is in our society, dealing with the belittling ‘norms’ such as street harassment (I don’t wanna get fucked / by a fucked society / cos everywhere I look / someone’s blaming me / I don’t really care about the clothes I wear”) and social expectation (“I go to school every day / just to be made a housewife one day”).

The single ‘Jane’ gets back to more hopeful messages. Detailing how the titular character punches a boy called Tommy in the mouth (bear with me). The song implores people in similar situations to heed their advice, a call to arms to all facing inequality, a conviction that things can and will be better:

“Girls and boys if you are listening
Don’t ever feel imprisoned
Feeling like your mouth is glued tight shut.

You were born for a reason
Share all of your feelings
If you are a Jane put your fists up too.”

While I’ve never seen the cloister of cement, or handed out sweets to it’s inhabitants during the holidays, I’m sure the music world has long had it’s own version of the Girl Pool. Picking up where Bikini Kill et al. left off, Girlpool’s music seems like a reaction against this. But it is to their credit that the album isn’t a scream-filled futile rage but instead an assured confidence, a determination to say things as they are. Coupling lyrics of everyday feelings with high-pitched screams of frustration, they come across not as hyperrealistic freedom fighters, but as real people with a just cause, people growing bolder with every small success, people ready to stand up for what is right. Things have changed for the better but the playing field still isn’t level, and the unerring confidence of Tucker and Tividad plays like the hammer blows against any remaining walls of the cloister of cement.

The EP is out now on Wichita Recordings and you can buy it here.

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