With the album just over a month away, Winter has released brand new single, ‘Misery’. With Boston favourites Horse Jumper of Love lending their talents, the song is a perfect example of the way the record combines acoustic and dream pop sensibilities. Because while the verses offer a relatively restrained, downbeat tone, the song channels its energy towards its lush, hazy choruses. As though each verse is a daydream longing to be lifted towards existence, and each chorus reaching towards granting the wish.

Tell me all your secrets
All the things that pull you down
Tell me all your secrets
Are you dreaming of her now?

Watch the video by Ben Turok below:

Adult Romantix will be released on the 22nd August via Winspear and you can pre-order it now.

Photo by Sophie Hur

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Folks songs which “explore ideas of home, family and memory within the context of the queer experience” was how we described the work of Bad Posture Club back in 2022 when writing about single ‘My Good My Sweet My Bright‘. Consisting of duo Maren Day and Morgan Kavanagh, the project uses a timeless, sincere folk style to bring such themes to life, and new album Affinity, coming this summer on Ghost Mountain Records, looks to develop this further. The lead single and title track offers the first glimpse into the release. A considered, spare song which nevertheless glows with a modest yet persistent warmth. “No such thing as an excess of gentleness,” goes the instructive opening line, “at least not for me.”

Bonniesongs – Olive Oil

“Olive oil is good for me / Nourishing deep within my skin / Fills me up with vitamins / Makes me feel so comforted.” So sings Irish-born, Australian-based multi-instrumentalist and songwriter Bonnie Stewart, AKA Bonniesongs, on new single ‘Olive Oil’. The latest single from Strangest Feeling, the new Bonniesongs LP forthcoming this summer on Impressed Recordings, the song introduces the record’s sense of nuance. It blends warm dream pop with something weightier and strange, all delivered with a playful spirit. “I wrote ‘Olive Oil’ while visiting Wellington, New Zealand. I had recently started a game with friends where we list our top five favourite things,” Stewart explains. “Olive oil, ocean, sunshine are some things that bring me joy. I wanted a happy, light-hearted song.” And while light-hearted the song might be, it is anything but twee, the Bonniesongs sound far more ambitious and conflicting to fall into such a trap.

Watch the video directed by Shadow Cut Films and Stewart herself below:

Strangest Feeling will be released on the 25th July via Impressed Recordings.

Chrome Harvest – Hex Whoever

Originating as project between Chris Jerwin (guitar, piano, vocals) and Ben Wellman (banjo, guitar, vocals) and later expanding into more of a collective, Chrome Harvest is a Lethbridge, Alberta-based band which sits at the experimental end of indie rock. After winning praise with 2023 debut Sun-Circuit, Chrome Harvest have recently released a self-titled follow-up, Evan Brownlee (drums, percussion), Keilan Hakstol (drums, percussion), Connor McGinnis (bass), Ray Wong (saxophone) and Cori Campbell (saxophone) joining the fold to push the project further. Standout ‘Hex Whoever’ hints at both the richness of the resulting sound and its emotional resonance, unfurling as a raggedy, quivering folk song before blooming into something lush and affirming and packed with raw energy.

Far Caspian – An Outstretched Hand / Rain From Here To Kerry

The recording project of Irish songwriter, multi-instrumentalist and producer Joel Johnston, Far Caspian has established itself through a number of releases since its inception in 2020. Namely debut full-length Ways To Get Out and follow-up The Last Remaining Light, which employed everything from indie folk to late 90s/early 00s alt sensibilities to offer a distinctively personal sound, full of unguarded sincerity and searching emotion. Set for release via Johnston’s own Tiny Library Records this July, new album Autofiction is both a continuation of this process and something of a soft reset. An opportunity to return the Far Caspian project back to the simple joy of making music after years of challenges both artistic and personal. Latest single ‘An Outstretched Hand / Rain From Here To Kerry’ is an indication the record lives up to its title, finding Johnston as his most diaristic as he details an experience driving all night across Ireland after a failed attempt to climb Carrauntoohil in 2014.

Watch the video directed by Johnston himself below:

Autofiction is out on the 25th July via Tiny Library Records and you can pre-order it now.

kissing other ppl – Where’d All The Time Go

Something of a folk supergroup, kissing other ppl sees indie folk duo Viv & Riley join forces with songwriter Rachel Baiman, and the project’s self-titled debut introduces what to expect. Released via Peacedale Records, the album is a collection of covers taken from across a wide spectrum of acts—Lennon Stella, Songs: Ohia, Wilco and Joan Armatrading to name a few. “It just kind of happened that we were talking about the same music. It felt like fun coincidences, these artists across a lot of different realms and times,” Riley explains. “So it just then seemed like we could make a record with these great songs, us reinterpreting them, have them all feel of a piece, even though the songs are from different eras and the original recordings are very different.” Listen to single ‘Where’d All The Time Go’ now, with kissing other ppl taking Dr Dog’s original and adding a timeless folk style.

Merzbow – Sedonis A

Renowned avant garde sound artist Masami Akita has been recording under the moniker Merzbow for going on half a century. The Tokyo-based musician has built a vast, varied oeuvre which reimagines the possibilities of noise. But while Akita’s back catalogue is already far deeper than most artists could even dream, he continues to create and release new music, and new album Sedonis shows there is no let up in his ambition. Merzbow’s debut with Chicago imprint Signal Noise, the record uses a computer, modular electronics and homemade instruments to create a sound inspired by the kaiju Barunga from sixties TV series Ultra Q. Single ‘Sedonis A’ is suggestive of the scale of the release, a cut as harsh and sublime as any giant creature hell-bent on making Tokyo its own.

Rebecca Schiffman – Little Mr. Civility

“Is pure feeling possible? Can we ever extricate ourselves from culture or do we need it to even think, let alone communicate with others?” So asks the album notes of Rebecca Schiffman‘s fourth full-length Before the Future, coming this summer via Lost Sound Tapes. The record sees the LA-based songwriter grapple with what it means to live a moral life within a society that can appear hellbent on compromising our personal values. Everything from grief, family vacations and the ethics of the pet-owner relationship are explored, but lead single ‘Little Mr. Civility’ turns its attention to the experience of raising a young child. Namely the inevitable influence a parent has in shaping their nascent understanding of the world and its expectations. “The song expresses misgivings about the large responsibility one bears bringing someone into the world,” as Schiffman explains, “and resignation at having to try to shape them so they exist in society.”

Watch the video directed by Faryl Amadeus below:

Before the Future will be released on the 25th July, including a cassette via Lost Sound Tapes, and you can pre-order it now.

Tuxis Giant – Last Laugh

We’ve followed Tuxis Giant for a number of years now, most recently in 2023 with the release of full-length The Old House. “The songs find Tuxis Giant offering a sonic representation of solitude in all of its nuance,” as we wrote. “The inherent safety in being removed from the wider world is challenged by an inevitable anxiety and loneliness, [resulting in] a strangely nostalgic alienation.” Now Matt O’Connor and co. are back with You Won’t Remember This, a brand new LP released via their own label Worry Bead Records (who recently curated True Names, a great compilation for the Trans Youth Emergency Project). Lead single ‘Last Laugh’ provides the first look inside, a short yet no less evocative song about the dangerous allure of self-medication, delivered with Tuxis Giant’s trademark mix of intimacy and heft.

Winter – Just Like A Flower

Recording under the moniker Winter, Brazil-born, New York-based Samira Winter combines gauzy shoegaze and summery pop sensibilities to weave a sound as lush as it is energetic. Following the success of 2022 debut Some Kind Of Blue, Winter returns this summer with new album Adult Romantix on Winspear, and lead single ‘Just Like A Flower’ introduces both the style and theme of the record. The song’s reflective, often melancholic tone is buoyed by an insistent momentum, with Winter contemplating a move from LA to NYC amid the wider progression of young adult life. There are loves and inevitable losses along the way, but the forward motion can never quite be halted.

Watch the video directed by Sammy Lamb and Samira Winter below:

Adult Romantix will be released on the 22nd August via Winspear and you can pre-order it now.

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Upset – S/T

The current project of former Best Coast and Vivian Girls drummer Ali Koehler, along with Patty Schemel, Nicole Snyder and Lauren Freeman, Upset formed in 2013 and released their debut record She’s Gone on Don Giovanni that same year. In 2015 the band put out a 10″ via Lauren Records and now are back with a self-titled album on the same label. The album continues to perfect the band’s pop-punk flecked crunchy indie rock, with songs like ‘Lucky Strikes Out’ exploring relationship woes with blazing energy. There’s even a Hollywood-style happy ending, so what’s not to like?

The Great Yawn – California

Based in Pretoria, South Africa, The Great Yawn are a country folk band led by singer-songwriter Danielle Bakkes. Following on from this year’s full-length album, Botanica, the band are back with a brand new single ‘California’. Offering a sultry yet tongue-in-cheek take on the the West Coast culture, the song scores its syrupy, dreamy style with a cutting satirical edge, evoking chlorined pools and toned bodies and those superficial fantasies we know to be false yet secretly pine for all the same.

The track comes complete with a video to further these ideas, directed by Susan van Tonder with cinematography by Heleen van Tonder, and you can watch it below:

Botanica is out now and you can find The Great Yawn on Spotify and Apple Music.

Point No Point – Don’t Cancel Your Plans

Point No Point is the recording project of multi-instrumentalist Jana Sotzko, a renowned figure in the Berlin music scene known for the likes of Soft Grid, Dropout Patrol and many more. The new Point No Point album, Drift, marks a return to the early experimentation of Sotzko’s career, moving away from the rigid planning and attention to detail that represented the Soft Grid style in favour of something more impulsive and impromptu. The result is a release that lives up to its name, a drifting collection of songs, unguided by anything beyond the mysterious natural rhythm of things.

‘Don’t Cancel Your Plans’ encapsulates this new mindset. With its spacious, patient sound, the track is sparse yet undeniably warm in its own peculiar way, and Sotzko’s distinctive vocals are equally captivating, sitting next to the likes of Dear Nora in their confident, idiosyncratic flow.

K. Campbell – Chords Come Easy / Static Threads

We wrote about K. Campbell back in April when he released his album Heads Up on Poison Moon Records. “Taking the DIY aesthetic of punk and hardcore and filtering it through the more refined lens of power pop,” we wrote, “Campbell […] retains the immediacy and personality of the former while gaining the polish of the latter, allowing for songs that are as affective as they are precise.”

November saw the release of a new double single, Chords Come Easy / Static Threads, which develops this aesthetic further. Belonging to the same family as the work of Beat Radio, ‘Chords Come Easy’ is a nostalgic slice of lo-fi rock that celebrates the power of creating art, while ‘Static Threads’ adds a jangling warmth to the mix, maintaining a wistful air but not dwelling on the past.

no reason to look back if you accept the fact
that our days will end with simple math
and static threads

nutrients – always in bloom

Toronto quintet Nutrients specialise in sweet and snappy songs, borrowing from slacker rock and dream pop and some psychedelic tones too to create tracks both bright and soft. After a series of self-released tapes, last month saw the band release their self-titled debut on Earth Libraries—a record that embraces the warm, relaxed style that Nutrients have made their own.

This is made clear on single ‘Always in Bloom’, a sub-two-minute track that punches above its short run-time. Because, in contrast to its succinctness, the song is mellow and loose, not rushing toward a conclusion but ambling slowly, taking in the hazy atmosphere through which it moves.

tumble, tumble on down
down where those prickly plants
and the evergreens are always in bloom
seeing double
see twice or vice versa
exercise all the second thoughts you can’t bare to lose

Nutrients is out now on Earth Libraries and available from Bandcamp.

Winter – Nothing More

Hailing from Curitiba in Brazil, Samira Winter moved to Boston at eighteen and started recording under the moniker Winter. The project combines the gauzy dream pop of the Cocteau Twins with something a little more psychedelic, resulting in a sound that is at once immersive and surreal.

After a series of successful bilingual releases, Winter are now teaming up with Bar None Records for a brand new EP, Hazy. Taking the band in newly lo-fi direction, the EP draws influences from the bedroom aesthetic to strip back the layers of previous material, allowing for a more intimate, direct sound. Lead single ‘Nothing More’ is a good example, showing off the conversational tone of the release, and it’s nuanced take on what it means to be in love.

Cayley Thomas – Midnight Hours

Based in Edmonton, singer, guitarist and songwriter Cayley Thomas is set to release her debut record, How Else Can I Tell You?. An album that “reflect[s] upon a period of subconscious overwhelm and the subsequent shift into conscious thought and awareness,” the songs blur the line between studio richness and home charm, managing to achieve a vivid pop sound without sacrificing any of the personal wrinkles that give them their charm.

Lead single ‘Midnight Hours’ is a great example of this. A pop song with an eccentric edge, the track proves accessible but also disarmingly weird, as though below the polished surface lies a whole world, strange and deep. The video, which Thomas co-directed with Sam at Bootjack Video, furthers this sensation, leading the viewer through all of the window dressing in order to get closer to the essence of one’s thoughts.

Keep an eye on the Cayley Thomas website for more information on How Else Can I Tell You? 

Teen Idle – Dreaming

The recording project of New Jersey-based songwriter Sara Barry, Teen Idle fuses the heartsick melodrama of 60s love ballads with the downbeat and languorous tones of 90s slowcore. The result is a melancholic sound clouded by love, so richly textured that you feel you could lean back into it and never quite fall through. New single ‘Dreaming’ is the perfect example, emerging from a slow and wistful opening that sets the tone from the off, the track possessing a smooth, elegiac tone that threatens to rise into some great crescendo but instead meanders on in its restraint.

I know you want to leave these familiar streets
The city weeps
When the moon fades
There will be no light
If you’d be mine

Leggy – Not What You Need

Back in March, Cincinnati trio Leggy released their latest album, Let Me Know Your Moon, on Sheer Luck Records and cemented their place among the most exciting and interesting indie rock bands plying their trade today. “[Leggy’s] punk rock possesses an inner tension,” we wrote in a preview piece. “Both the sound and Allaer’s lyrics having a tautness that always appears on the verge of snapping, lending an atmosphere that is both engaging and slightly volatile, a provocative spirit that threatens to unravel at any moment.”

With the album receiving praise and the year seeing Leggy tour with the likes of The Ophelias, Summer Cannibals, Pile, The Spook School and Personal Best, the band are closing out 2019 with a brand new video for ‘Not What You Need’. Directed by Jo Shaffer, the film is a celebration of what Leggy does best, blending dreamy shimmers and nostalgic longing with something far more confrontational, all topped off with a playful air that adds further layers to the tone. Check it out below:

Let Me Know Your Moon is out now via Sheer Luck Records and available via the Leggy Bandcamp page.

So with Vol. 31, that’s Bright Sparks done for another year. Be sure to check out the Reviews and Previews sections for more in-depth writing, and keep you eyes peeled for our end of year lists in the coming weeks.

The post Bright Sparks: Vol. 31 appeared first on Various Small Flames.

Jom Comyn has upset this habit. In the Dark on 99 is in many ways the realist representation of winter, the real-life counterpart to the romantic crunch of snow and hot cocoa. That said, it deals with this in a much more interesting way than merely saying ‘actually, winter is cold and dark and the snow turns to muddy slush…’ The album probes what winter means, what it does to us, how it becomes less a season than some existential force.

The album is available on Bandcamp in digital or vinyl format.

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Check back each day in December to find a song we think you will enjoy.

1st – Ages and Ages
2nd – Ricky Eat Acid
3rd – Nate Connelly
4th – Jess Williamson
5th – River Tiber
6th – Damien Jurado
7th – Palehound
8th – Whirr
9th – Glass Vaults
10th – House By The Lake
11th – Lyndsie Alguire
12th – Fyfe
13th – Princess Reason
14th – Water Liars
15th – Frog Eyes
16th – Sirs
17th – The Pollyanna Band
18th – Kalle Mattson
19th – Netherfriends
20th – Wake Owl
21st – Beat Radio
22nd – Emily Reo
23rd – Donovan Woods
Christmas Eve – Polyvinyl Compilation

Merry Christmas!

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Buy it on Bandcamp.

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“Race down the sidewalk like kids on a rink,
Cold fingers flying, we’ll warm them,
When we go inside, sit for a while,
Laugh at the smiles we can’t keep to ourselves,
I catch your eyes watching mine,
All our words lost somewhere,
Between our hearts and our heads.”

And that is what I enjoy most about the album. Rather than, as many records do, capturing an overarching feeling and creating ten or so songs around it, February captures the whole spectrum of feelings one would experience across a period of time – from gloomy despair to an uncontrollable hopefulness. Not pessimistic or optimistic but rather a realistic blend of the two. The cyclical and ever-changing nature of human emotion is woven through February, perfectly summed up by the closing track (aptly named ‘March’):

“The ice is melting and the sun’s come out,
Amen, amen,
The ice is melting and the sun’s come out,
Amen, amen.”

Head over to Bandcamp to stream/purchase February or you can go to CDbabyto grab yourself a physical copy.

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