“I wanted to write a record that I needed to hear in high school.” That’s the mission statement behind Blvck Hippie‘s Basketball Camp, a new album coming in June on The Record Machine. Backed by Casey Rittinger (drums), Tyrell Williams (bass, backing vocals) and Joe Kyle (guitar, talk box), lead Josh Shaw weaves elements of indie rock, dream pop, post-punk, jazz and emo into a sound as inventive as it is immediate, reflecting on past loneliness with with equal parts sympathy and catharsis. Lead single ‘Streetlights’ introduces the style by musing on a particularly low moment some years previous. “Oh how I wish things could have been different / Why can’t I be what you need?” they sing in the closing refrain, Shaw’s delivery maintaining its sincere yearning quality as the backing vocals descend into desperate yelps.

 Glom – Below

Based in Brooklyn by way of Washington, DC, Glom have established their weighty yet accessible blend of alt and indie rock across a number of releases, managing to repurpose the dark and heavy vibes of the genre into something textured enough to wrap around yourself for comfort. Ahead of a tour later this spring, the band are back with ‘Below’, a new single which furthers this style. A meditation on getting older which takes heart in accepting there might never be a moment where you become the person you always imagined. “I was 29 and creeping up on the next decade of my life, a decade where I thought I would have it all figured out,” they explain. “A year and a half later, I don’t have it “all figured out” and probably won’t for another few years, but the cathartic release of the final chorus illustrates me being ok with the fact that my journey won’t have all the answers I’m looking for right away.”

‘Below’ is out now and available from the usual places. You can find tour dates on the Glom website.

Kyle Andrews – Old Fashioned

“Somebody told you / You were nothing / Why was it easy to believe?” So asks ‘Old Fashioned’ the new single from Wisconsin-based songwriter Kyle Andrews. Having released his first album on Badman Recording Company back in 2006, Andrews went on to set up his own label Elephant Lady Records and put out a string of releases over the years, always sticking to his DIY bedroom recorded roots while pushing the possibilities of such a set up to new heights. Subsequent singles and their accompanying videos have won accolades from the Guggenheim, triggered mass participant water fights and launched cameras hundreds of thousands of feet into the air on a weather balloon. But for all the viral success of such ideas, it is the songwriting which has been the constant, as displayed on the new single ‘Old Fashioned’. The song lands on the reflective, wistful end of Kyle Andrews’s pop-inflected folk style, though is shot through with the kind of authenticity and warmth which has come to mark his every release.

Watch the video filmed and edited by Andrews himself below:

Grab ‘Old Fashioned’ now from Bandcamp.

Membra – Always Blue

The recording project of Brooklyn-based composer, sound designer and filmmaker Ned Porter, Membra utilises the full diversity of its creator’s artistic sensibilities to create experimental pop songs at once intricate and intuitive. Described as “a musical terrarium,” the appropriately titled debut Membra album Blocks of Color Blocks of Sound welcomes the audience into a miniature world which reveals itself in increasing detail the closer you look. Take single ‘Always Blue’, which on the surface can be enjoyed as a left-field pop number, though any listener willing to peer deeper will be greeted with a teaming environment of found sounds and tape loops, elements Porter expertly tessellates into something beyond even the sum of its many parts.

Molly Drag – Dogfight

Michael Charles Hansford’s Molly Drag has been writing atmospheric, often melancholic songs for almost a decade now, first appearing on VSF back in 2015 with Deeply Flawed and more recently in 2019 with album Touchstone. The latter saw a chink of light pierce the project’s gloomy mood for the first time, something subsequent albums have built upon while maintaining the original Molly Drag spirit. Out next month on I’m Into Life Records, new full-length Mammoth represents the next step in this evolution, as highlighted by lead single ‘Dogfight’. The lyrics are full of the visceral emotion and deep yearning which has long marked Hansford’s intimate style, but are delivered here against a sound charged by bright shimmering momentum. What results is a track again centring on raw emotion and suffering, but one which refuses to be buried by the accumulated weight of life, instead reaching towards the surface in search of reprieve.

Mt Fog – Drifting

Described as “a creation of love and a response to the world’s chaos and absurdity,” Seattle‘s Mt Fog employ a combination of folk, pop and electronic styles to conjure the antithesis of such disorder, welcoming the listener into richly woven soundscapes as a kind of safe harbour. With new album ultraviolet heart machine coming soon, the band have unveiled new track ‘Drifting’ as an early taster, and the track is indicative of Mt Fog’s ability to merge the earthly and ethereal. Or rather to position the earthly as its own kind of ethereal space, offering the natural world as a place to escape into and revealing the magic and healing potential therein.

My Dear Companion – These Words

Gothenburg‘s My Dear Companion is the recording project of Lea-Marie Sittler (Lea & The Loved Ones), Agnes Åhlund (Glitterfittan) and Hannah Shermis (Eldstorm), but listen to the way the trio’s vocals coalesce on new single ‘These Words’ and you’d be forgiven for thinking they had merged into single force. A tale of love and loss timeless in its themes yet full of the immediacy of yearning, each of the trio draw from the same well of emotion so as to collapse the space between them. The result is warm and fond and loaded with nostalgia, affirming with the knowledge that such sadness is omnipresence for us all.

‘These Words’ is out now.

Sofia Bolt (ft. Stella Donnelly) – Bus Song

Next month France-born, LA-based songwriter and producer Sofia Bolt will release new album Vendredi Minuit via Born Losers Records. Building upon the nostalgic tones introduced on debut full-length Waves and subsequent EP Soft Like a Peach, the record sees Bolt employ a hazy, reflective tone to explore her relationship with time—from the small personal moments which shaped her to the wider familial and historical forces which mould us all. And if Vendredi Minuit is a tour through the decades, then latest single ‘Bus Song’ encapsulates the theme most directly, inviting the audience onto an LA bus to contemplate life as it passes by the window. Welsh-Australian favourite Stella Donnelly lends vocals too, and the result is a careful balance between tension and catharsis as the taut vocals find release in the chorus’s languid rhythms.

Watch the video by Will Evans below, including Arthur H. Virtue’s footage as part of the Al Larvick Conservation Fund:

Vendredi Minuit is out via Born Losers Records on the 10th May and you can pre-order it now.

TESHA – Come Down

TESHA has made a name crafting evocative and often strange pop sounds, with Growing Pains II channelling the likes of Fever Ray to offer something “ethereal yet rooted in personal suffering” and singles such as ‘Like a Man’ seething with anger both personal and political. Latest single ‘Come Down’ is no less striking, simmering with a latent energy which collapses the difference between sensuality and rage. The final third sees something of a pivot in tone as the momentum decelerates into a languid croon, though the mix of allure and danger at the track’s heart never quite fades away.

‘Come Down’ is out now and available from the usual places.

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Back in 2019, she released For As Briefly As I Live, a collection of quirky piano-based pop songs on Virginia mutual aid-oriented label Grimalkin Records which explored themes of love, death and commitment “from the perspective of a frequently shy, nervous, and lonely trans woman.” Next month, Dani Lee Pearce returns to Grimalkin Records to release a brand new album. Titled Spider Mountain, it looks to continue her creative evolution, from early no wave-influenced experimental compositions to what Grimalkin describe as “synth-rooted progressive pop with a distinct queer ethos.”

Today we are sharing the record’s second single, ‘Foxhood and Twink Lucifer’. Opening with lush, crystalline synths, the song soon morphs into something unabashedly dramatic and impassioned, drawing on left-field pop icons from the last half century. It’s a track that weaves its own mythology, full of strange dream-like logic and oblique imagery. Whether the events it describes are literal or allegorical seem besides the point, but regardless, this is not some timid reverie. There are serious barbs built into the sound, specifically ones pointed at the callous parts of society. “A rich man is a bitch man, this we know,” Pearce sings at the close, “a rich man is a snitch man, this we know too.”

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This summer sees the release of Cells Remain, a brand new full-length Pat Keen record. With help from Adelyn Strei, John McCowen, Shane Leonard, and Brian Joseph, Keen weaves a complex web of arrangements, but the experimentation is devoid of pomposity or pretension. Instead, the elaborate soundscapes are an attempt at something far more organic and intimate. An inner life, and the other lives which orbit around it.

Lead single ‘Cell Song’ gives an indication of what is to come. With a gentle yet intricate sound built from dappled drums and hummed harmonies, the track has a compassionate atmosphere that proves enveloping. And this is very much in keeping with the themes of the track and the album more generally. The idea of digging beyond surface appearances and emotions, of contemplating the full depth of every person and circumstance with an eye to empathy and understanding.

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The first two Field Report records might have explored a range of moods, but they certainly veered toward the colder seasons. Such categorisation is reductive, but their self-titled debut could be said to be the winter album, and follow-up Marigolden an autumnal offering. As the title suggests however, the new record has different intentions. It’s fuller, more polished, intentionally bright and uplifting with relatively simple singalong choruses. A pop album, in short. This change in direction is clear from the beginning, opener ‘Blind Spot’ coming complete with a slick chorus that seems designed to stick in heads. It’s initially a startling departure from the often chorusless verbose poetics of previous albums, but longtime Field Report fans need not worry, the band haven’t sacrificed much in terms of writing or feeling. Porterfield is still the master storyteller, able to convey so much in simple descriptive sentences. And there’s something strangely reassuring about realising that this is still the band we loved, that you don’t need to peel back many layers of shiny production to find their beating heart.

Things might be sunnier, but Porterfield explores familiar material, the only thing that’s changed his vantage point, now looking back at the tough times, and embroiled in new ones. As we explored in our review, Marigolden was a record about an attempt to break a cycle of addiction and dissatisfaction, to straighten a circular path into a direct line home. How successful the quest was open to interpretation, and the superstitious hope of closing track ‘Enchantment’ suggested that the whole thing might be more a matter of belief in any case. We drew on the writing of Denis Johnson to elucidate how the belief is change was key to the whole enterprise, its presence or absence the difference being floating and sinking.

[Like Marigolden], Angels and Jesus’ Son are populated with sad men trying to find something like this Home, then refusing to believe it or else not liking what they see when they get there. Instead they return to the old bars and the new women and the extraordinary promise of an endless search. Whether Porterfield’s character is doomed on these lines is not clear, but if he is then he hasn’t yet grown cynical with it. The closing lines are infused with belief, the marigolden hope that is woven through album.

With the narrator waking face down in the air bag of a wrecked car, some reviews have cited ‘Blind Spot’ as an immediate relapse from the promise of Marigolden, though it would be fairer to call it a continuation of the themes rather than the narrative. The present-tense promises of change still remain, though Porterfield is positioned ahead of the event, looking back rather than living through, possessing not only the same will to be well but a newfound appreciation of the difficulties of such a state.

‘If I Knew’ makes this clear, not least in the chorus of “If I knew what I know / So far yet to go.” The track does contain relapses, the starting of drinking and stopping of meds, though exactly where and when is not clear, the chronology perhaps not as simple as the order of records. Again we find Porterfield ahead of the crisis, looking back from perhaps not comfort but at least something like critical distance, though this does not influence the immediacy and vividness of his writing:

“And then a car crashed through the wall,
and there you were, in the room,
and the blood red blood bled your outline and it coloured you in.

You were close enough to cough on
and your breath smelled like creme de menthe,
headstones, dialtones,
you said ‘hey fucker, where you been?’”

Indeed, to view these songs as a singular continuation of the Marigolden narrative is to perhaps miss the point. Summertime Songs was made during the 2016 US election cycle, a period when Porterfield and his wife were also expecting their first child. There was also a lot of emotional turmoil around when the songs were conceived. “There were a lot of people in my life whose relationships were coming to an end,” Porterfield told Artist Waves, “there was a lot of mourning, reflection and hurt in the air as these songs were coming.”

One interpretation of the record is one of multiplicities, a collection of narrators linked thematically but not personally, a collective struggle against common demons stalking an entire nation. Worry and doubt are the prevailing emotions of the album, the characters that populate the songs going through all manner of difficulties which speak to the listener both on their own terms and against the country’s tumultuous political backdrop. So rather than cast a Trumpian bogeyman, Field Report explore demons older and more insidious and more personal too, conditions woven into the Western experience of which any contemporary figures are merely manifestations, like distorted reflections projected large and loud to highlight our own failings.

For example, ‘Never Look Back’ could be taken as a break-up song or a make-up song, but beyond the personal lie lines ominously pertinent to the present in light of an imperial past. “Turn the telescope back around,” Porterfield sings, “With these troubles out of view / Forgiveness does not excuse, it’s to prevent everybody from destroying you.” This is followed by ’60 Second Distance Run’, a song of searching questions in view of an approaching reckoning, while the spacious ‘Every Time’ provides the most impassioned and insistent moment on the record. If the past here haunts the narrator, then it is a spirit of poltergeistic nature, something capable of seizing and moving and throwing its weight.

“Last night I had a dream there was tartar on your teeth
And you had me gently, with a knife, loosening it free
And then spread it all around like sunscreen at the beach
And we were laying there for hours, your head resting on my knee
While the late season ice was sneering from the shade
I’m gonna keep you under glass and keep trapped in amber memory
The secret anniversary of a first date”

‘Healing Machine’ is something of a waking dream, an insomniac’s hope of redemption, while the thematic centrepiece and spiritual title track, ‘Summertime’, opens in an almost jarring manner, the vocals not quite clicking into the rhythm of the instrumentation. However, soon the floor drops away and suddenly it’s all swaying hips and swooning hearts, a smash hit Springsteen-style jam. This energy belies the anxious lyrics, the delicate existence of sobriety and parenthood colliding with a tumultuous cultural moment to produce a kind of paralysis that the music fights to escape.

And escape seems to be achieved, because ‘Tightrope’ plays as something of a continuation, as though ‘Summertime’ was the getaway car and this the heady freedom thereafter, a manic disregard of danger in the hysterical relief of a wider reprieve. ‘Occupied Mind’ sees the tempo slow, a tale of finding solace within others, while closer ‘Everything I Need’ is slower still, an emotive piano ballad, Porterfield’s vocals aching with a sense of warm and uncertain contentment and the hope of personal connection. “I don’t trust this moment,” he sings, speaking of everything outside, “but I want to believe.”

This the crux of the record. The summertime theme might conjure ideas of cloudless, uptempo good times, but to limit Field Report’s use of the season to a more poppy sound is to miss the deeper point. Although more morose, Marigolden‘s autumnal setting set up an album-wide metaphor of change, the very environment shifting in colour and shape as its inhabitants fled toward warm burrows. Summer might be stereotypically viewed as a more positive time, by Porterfield uses it as a long, well-lit stretch of looking forward and back, relatively changeless in comparison with what has been and what will come. This extends to the position of the narrators too. Vast change belongs to spring and autumn, flurries of growing and dying capable of wiping the slate clean. Summer offers no such reprieve. We cannot rely on grand promises or paradigm shifts. Rather, we must commit to the slow, considered process of letting go and working through, of deciding who we were and who we want to be. In these times, we’d be foolish to trust that will be enough, but belief in small moments of agency and human connection is more productive than misplaced prayers for epiphany.

Summertime Songs is out now on Verve Forecast and you can get it from the Field Report website.

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Simon was kind enough to answer some of our questions about the album’s conception, its themes of love and loss in the Midwest and his day job as a college professor. I think you’ll agree that his responses are excellent.

Hi Simon, thanks for speaking with us. How is life now that your new album Murmurations is out in the world?

Hi Liam. Great talking to you. Life’s great, both related to and beyond the record itself. But it does feel good to have it out in the world. It was a long time gestating, and I’m an embarrassingly and foolishly impatient person when it comes to the creative process. I was patient here, and it paid off. But I’m glad that the wait is over.

You now live in Indianapolis but returned to WI to record the album. When listening to the album I get the feeling that this was necessary, that you needed to return home to capture a certain atmosphere during the recording. Is this a romantic idea on my part, or is there an element of truth in it?

It’s actually kind of both. We started the first sessions recording the record as I was in the process of moving to Indianapolis. I still technically had an address in Wisconsin, but everything that was there was in flux and, quite literally, in boxes. I didn’t necessarily “return” to Wisconsin to record, but I did make a conscious choice to do the recording before I left.

This was both pragmatic and romantic. On the one hand, the people that I really wanted to work with on the record were mostly based in Eau Claire, WI, or could easily get there. We recorded at Shane Leonard’s (Kalispell, Field Report) home studio. Shane played percussion, additional guitars, banjo, and other instruments on the record, in addition to engineering and co-producing it. Ben Lester lives literally a couple blocks down the street from Shane, and Ben’s one of my favorite pedal steel players. His stuff with everyone from The Tallest Man on Earth to Aero Flynn to S. Carey is just such a great example of the instrument’s beauty. Steve Hobert, who played keys and accordion, lives about 90 minutes away in Minneapolis/St. Paul, and Kevin Rowe, who played bass, is in Madison, WI, which is a few hours from Eau Claire. Those were the central players on the record, so it made sense to try to do the recording in a place that they could easily access.

But my connection to Wisconsin is also very intimate and very deep. I literally have the state outline tattooed on my arm. And as I’ve gotten older, its pull on me has only gotten stronger. A lot of the songs are written with Wisconsin landscapes in mind, and I couldn’t imagine having recorded it outside of Wisconsin.

The album is a full-band effort, which is a stark departure from your debut, The Roads That Make Men Weary. How does the recording process differ when working with a band? Did you set out to make a full-band album from the start? Or did you write the songs alone and build them up from there?

In a lot of ways, the experience was totally different. I wanted to make a full band record; I knew that much right away. I also knew that I wanted to work with Shane on it – I love the work he does as a player and writer, and thought that he’d be able to build the sonic landscapes with me in ways that would enrich the sound without losing the songs’ core saliencies. I still started off the process in the same way as I did with Roads, though. Even though I wanted a full-band record, I wanted to write the guitar and lyrical frameworks for the songs on my own before bringing them to Shane and, eventually, the band.

It was a really welcome departure from Roads, honestly. I’m proud of that record, but in a lot of ways it very much reflects a writing stage that I think I’ve grown out of. The recording process for Roads was a lot of fun, with a friend of mine and I holing up in a cabin in Wisconsin for a few days and him recording me on a pretty minimalist setup. But at the end of the day, it was essentially just me that was laid out on the tracks. I really enjoyed watching the songs grow and gather legs and lungs and breathe as Shane, Steve, Ben, Kevin, Amanda, and Margaret got their hands in the dough.

The state of Wisconsin, and the Midwest in general, is a major theme on the album. What does Wisconsin mean to you? What are the main issues that people there deal with, and what do you think about when you think about home?

Oh, man. This could be a book. You’re right. It is a major theme. It might in fact be the major theme.

For me, the Midwest, and Wisconsin in particular, has a supremely calming effect. Part of that I suppose is just a matter of comfort, since I’ve lived in Wisconsin for about 90% of my life and in the Midwest for all of it. But it’s deeper than simple familiarity, I think. I come from the southwest corner of Wisconsin, which is very, very hilly and very rural. It’s gorgeous – like, stunning in its natural beauty. And the particular plot of land on which I grew up was at the dead end of a mile-long road in the bottom of a valley, where the closest neighbor was at least a fifteen-minute walk away. When I was a kid, I hated the isolation, but it had the effect of really priming me to the rhythms of the seasons, the power of nature, and the beauty of physical and auditory spaces that don’t have much of a human footprint.

So now, fast forward to me at 33, I still think in similar ways about nature, and there’s no place that puts a grip on me in this way more than the Midwest. I’ve traveled all over the U.S. and seen many beautiful natural spaces. But for me, nothing compares to that little isolated pocket of Wisconsin. We’re about to hit autumn here, and I wish you could see it. Words can’t do it justice.

Finally, I’d just say that the Midwest is important to me because of the kinship I feel with so many of the people here. A mentor and friend of mine who grew up near me, but was about twenty years older, passed away on New Years this year. But one comment he made that will stick with me: we were drinking beers at a bar in Wisconsin after a cross-country trip he’d made scouting bluegrass bands for a festival he curated. I asked how it had been, and he said that it was good, but that he preferred to be home. I asked how come. He mentioned the beauty that I talked about a minute ago. But he also said, simply, “the people here aren’t assholes.” I know there are plenty of people elsewhere in the States who aren’t assholes; I’m privileged to know a great many of them. But at least in Wisconsin, I think there are fewer of them per capita than there are elsewhere.

Another prominent image is one of the murmuration. What is it about starlings that made you want to name an album after them?

The visual effect of watching starlings in murmuration is, to me, one of the most awe-inspiring in nature. I absolutely love it and am totally confounded by it. One day I started sketching the song that became the title track (“I hope your heart breaks into starlings when it’s time for you to go”), and knew that Murmurations was going to the record title.

But perhaps the strongest thread of all is that of loss, be it in terms of the death of a loved one or a traditional way of life. Is the sense of loss in your music based on personal experience or are they works of fiction? And do you ever think about the positive effect your music could have on people going through such issues?

I get variations of the question “why are your songs so sad” a lot. Before the record came out, I jokingly told a friend of mine that she’d be pleasantly surprised because there were at least two songs on it that were not discernibly sad.

The irony is that I’m actually a really happy person for the most part, but I think loss is such a universal human experience that it’s worth spending time thinking about and writing about. I don’t generally write about my own experiences, and if I do, it’s usually in fairly opaque ways. The songs about loss that are really lyrically specific (‘Midwest Elegy’ and ‘Ohio,’ in particular) are far more observational than personal. As much as I love where I come from, it’s a place that’s seen a lot of people struggle in the post-industrial age, and I wanted to try to capture the experiences of people trying to cope with the loss of a way of life. A few others (‘Dark Burns,’ ‘Revelation Road’) have more elements of my own life in there; ‘Dark Burns’ draws some from the experience of losing my mom, while ‘Revelation Road’ comes in part from the death of a friend in a car accident two winters ago. For the most part, though, even though I’m a very specific lyricist, I try to universalize experiences rather than just talking about my own. The pool from which you can draw as a writer gets so much more expansive and interesting if you start putting yourself in other people’s shoes.

As to your final question, I’m not sure if I ever put a lot of thought into my music helping people work through things. But at least in some measure, it seems to have had that effect on some people. When I first debuted ‘Midwest Elegy’ in a live session on Wisconsin Public Radio, my email inbox got blown up by people talking about how it related to things they were dealing with. When I was out on tour playing ‘Dark Burns’ last month, a number of people came up afterward for a hug and to talk about their own experience losing a parent. Those are the experiences that really make touring worth it.

This isn’t strictly about your music, but I read online that you have a doctoral degree and teach history at a university in Indiana. Do you have a specific area of interest? And what effect do your intellectual pursuits have on your music?

Ha! A newspaper in Madison, Wisconsin previewed my show there this summer by calling me something like “a Ryan Adams-esque vocalist who also happens to be a college professor,” which made me laugh. But yes, it’s true. I generally try to keep those worlds separate; and mostly only tour in the summer as a result.

I teach history, and specialize in African American History. Honestly, the biggest way that it comes to bear on my music is that being a history professor is a job that requires you to read A LOT. And I think that the more you read, the more you refine your own skills as a wordsmith and lyricist. I know that I feel exponentially more primed to write if I’ve been reading a good book – even a good history book – before I sit down to write. And when I think about some other great lyricists of my generation – folks like Chris Porterfield of Field Report, Justin Kinkel-Schuster of Water Liars, Amanda Shires – one of the things that we have in common is a passion for books and good wordsmithing. I’m not saying I wouldn’t read as much if I didn’t teach history; but it certainly forces me to do so and pays dividends musically as a result.

Finally, could you name 4/5 artists that you’ve been listening to recently? They can be brand new or golden oldies, whatever you’re into.

Great question. My listening tastes are all over the map, but I’ll give it a crack. Probably the most-anticipated album of this year for me is Hiss Golden Messenger’s one, due out next month. Mike Taylor is hands-down one of my favorite writers, and the band he’s assembled around him is just right in my wheelhouse. There’s a rapper out of Chicago named Noname, and her new mixtape Telefone might be my favorite record of the year so far. Its closest competition is the new Mount Moriah record, which is essentially perfect. I’m also completely in love with the new record Cartoon Moon by my friends Dead Horses, who do pretty much perfect Americana. And finally, for the traditional crowd, Bruce Molsky’s new project Molsky’s Mountain Drifters is just fantastic fiddle tunes and traditional folk.

Wow. That’s six, and I didn’t even mention my Springsteen and Kendrick Lamar obsessions. I guess I’ll stop there*.

*Simon has since emailed to let us know that Bon Iver’s 22, A Million is (and I quote) “blowing my mind”.

Murmurations is out now and you can get it from the Simon Balto Bandcamp page.

The post Interview: Simon Balto appeared first on Various Small Flames.

Opener ‘Foothills’ sets the tone, an emotive and contemplative alt-folk song that sounds like a chill in the air, like the smell of wood smoke on the wind. At its heart it’s a love song, although delivered not from the blushing early stages like many romantic songs, but rather much later.

“I’ve never been a faithful man
I’ve always been too proud to pray
But won’t you come out to the foothills
And hold me together for one more day”

‘Disappearing Act’ is a well-written tale of the aforementioned love and loss, of turning to drink and wandering to overcome thoughts of someone who has “been coming back in focus lately / resurrecting bones from graveyard ash”. Whether that line is literal or metaphorical seems besides the point, the depth of feeling is considerable regardless. ‘Revelation Road’ is the perfect track for the oncoming autumn, as Balto sings “Thunder clouds are rolling through the heavens over Revelation Road / pirouette the leaves from off the branches cascading rust and gold”.

‘Midwest Elegy’ is just that, an ode to a region hung out to dry, a grandfather whose farm was run out of business by the big guys, a father made strong from 25 years on the engine block line at General Motors only to find himself out of work after the recession. It’s just one example of that confronts a major theme in Simon Balto’s music – a sense of loss, be it in terms of livelihoods or actual lives.

You may have also noticed that Simon Balto is the kind of songwriter whose lyrics you want to quote. Like on ‘True North’, a love song rich with natural imagery, where he sings “Amongst cicadas and the whispering pines / you tangled your bony fingers up in mine”, or on the sorrowful ‘Dark Burns’, where, backed with woozy harmonica he sings, “If the dark burns like cigarettes on the body / goddamn, I’m sorry for the things I couldn’t do / with every heathen’s breath buried here in my chest / I will pray my best for you to get good again”.

The title track closes the album, a song that sounds like it’s beamed from a classic folk record of a bye-gone age. The image of a great twisting cloud of starlings sits at the forefront of a track that’s suffused with a real sense of melancholy but also hope, the narrator praying that the birds guide a passing loved one to their next destination.

“And on the bright day when it comes your time to go
I hope your heart breaks into starlings that’ll carry you home
And murmur you on out to where the north wind softly blows
I hope your heart breaks into starlings when it’s time for you to go”

Even if you’re not from the Midwest, or even from the USA, it’s likely you will relate to some of the issues that Simon Balto confronts on Murmurations. The struggle to get by in small towns in an age where power and wealth is increasingly confined to big cities, where traditional, community-supporting businesses are collapsing as the world gets better connected and the banks gamble away our money. But the album doesn’t come off sounding like a protest. Balto still sees enough beauty in the everyday, in the changing of the seasons and the faces of loved ones, to deal with these struggles with stoicism and hope. The thoughts and ruminations here are rooted in the personal, in all the wishes and fears that make us uniquely human.

You can get Murmurations now from the Simon Balto Bandcamp page.

The post Simon Balto – Murmurations appeared first on Various Small Flames.

“There’s never going to be a satisfactory way to describe art so fluid and weird and instinctive… It’s operating on a deeper level, one not easily outlined, playing on some atavistic region of the subconscious that reacts to fear and beauty, that treats intense wonder and dread as the same emotion”

As with anything fluid/weird/instinctive, the only way to get a true handle on Old Earth’s music is to speak to Umhoefer himself. We first asked him some questions back in 2013, though we thought the time was right to follow up with more.

Hello Todd, thanks for speaking with us. How’s life now that Lay For June is out?

Thanks for giving me the opportunity to talk about the work! The response is the strongest and most positive I’ve ever received, so I also want to thank everyone who took the time to listen, write back, and very graciously to those who bought downloads.

It’s good to have it off my shoulders. The last EP proved to be an unexpected stumbling block- I tried recording it 3 times and really struggled with the lyrics, which slowed me down. For the sake of the larger narrative, I prefer the ladder had to come out first, though. Lay for June is deep and somewhat painful, so I was living in that darkness a little longer than I should’ve. I tend to carry art making pretty far, so I’m always surprised I’m not deranged by now.

You mentioned that the record will be “the last Old Earth record for a while”. Can you put us out of our misery and expand upon this? Are we talking a refreshing break? Indefinite hiatus? Do you have any other projects lined up?

“Indefinite hiatus” is probably the best way to describe it. This project was a vital place to work out existential concerns, but my spiritual practice has developed to a point where I don’t need to put it into music as much. Sometimes the line between solitary art making and self-absorption gets thin or moves… I just feel a call to be in more immediate service to others. I’ve been thinking that I more or less made the point I wanted to make with it, and it took me to a lot of unexpected places.

I’m still finishing the things I’ve committed to, like some local performances and a little tour in the summer. I’m not rushing out of this, as it’s my life’s work and deserves my respect.

Having proven to myself that I can write cohesive long-form pieces, I’m now excited about writing songs that stand alone, and to see how much ground I can cover in shorter running times. I have about 7 songs in varying degrees of finish, and the idea is to work on them slowly, which is a pattern of concentration I’m not used to. Also, I’m about to record a film score… When all that’s done, who knows? It’s not like I’m quitting music altogether.

Lay For June was originally scheduled for release on the 1st February, the day of Imbolc. Our review had a stab at ascertaining the relevance, but would you care to explain what the day means to you and the album?

Tying release dates with pagan holidays has been on my mind for a while, and a celebration of the simultaneous death of winter and birth of spring definitely made sense for this album. You did an exceptional job of talking about the relevance. I think you summed it up so poetically that people should refer to the review!

There’s been a growing interest in mysticism and occult knowledge for a long time, and I’m all for it. What’s wrong with viewing the planet and its inhabitants as sacred? Old Earth has always been very matriarchal, putting intuition, emotion, creativity, and a search for wisdom first. It’s about trying to ask good questions. A lot of things that took our ancient ancestors generations to discover has been destroyed, so it’s important to go back and share what’s left.

Lay For June was recorded in one take, with only the vocals overdubbed, which seems such a vital part of the sound. How much do you find things changing as you’re recording? Did the final take surprise you in any way?

Yes, single takes are definitely a vital part of the sound. I love the sense of struggle that just doesn’t show up any other way. It’s not trying to be perfect. The last song wouldn’t sound the same had I not played the entire record leading up to it, you know? It almost wouldn’t mean as much. The content on this one was especially personal and draining, and I think it would’ve been bad for me to do some of those songs over and over again.

Things don’t change much while recording because I rehearse a lot beforehand, and am focused on what I want to get done while I’m there. You won’t catch me fucking around on a phone. I’m really into how tight musicians had to be 50 or 60 years ago… There’s no faking it 20 minutes in to a 30 minute continuous take, where a single misplaced note could pull the whole thing apart. It’s a fun risk, somewhat of an ordeal, filled with moments of doubt and confidence, drifting between being lost in the music and an inner dialogue, wondering if the performance is take-worthy, should I start over, is the engineer about to punch in and say something isn’t working, what’s the next song, how far out of tune is the guitar, dare I fix it mid-take, all while trying to appreciate the moment and enjoy how special it is to be in a nice studio, recording with someone who is very good at what they do and believes in the work… I forgot a few guitar parts here and there, but also ended up making a few things up on the spot, so it all evened out. I don’t think I could’ve played it noticeably better at the time, and that’s the most I hope for.

The biggest surprise was the amp setup, which was big and loud and a real joy. It definitely affected how I was performing, because I rarely get the opportunity to play guitar at a high enough volume to feel the sound blowing through and around my body. Scott Evans at Antisleep Audio put a lot of thought into the session ahead of time, and I was happy to go with his ideas. This was the first Old Earth album I didn’t mix myself, which really speaks to my trust in Scott. He worked on it in a way that says he’s invested in the project.

I later recorded Ashley Jarrett’s vocals myself, sent the files to Scott, and then it was out of my hands! That was well outside of my comfort zone, but important… Also, it should be stated that Ashley sings like an angel and this record would’ve been lesser without her.

Even in the nebulous category of ‘experimental’ music, I consider your work unconventional. The lyrics, the structure, the sound itself, even the way you often release long songs comprising of several parts. Do you have any image of a listener in mind when recording? Or do you just work in the way which compels you?

They’re all based on intuition. The best ones develop unconsciously, indeed from feeling compelled to create. Often the challenge is to get out of the way of what the song wants to be, yet rehearsed enough so that if you’re given one of those fully-formed songs from seemingly out of nowhere, you can do it justice… A sensitivity and trust in the process develops, but it’s never dependable or predictable. I try to make up for that with a lot of time, patience, practice, and consideration. One of the experimental artists I’ve learned the most from is Tim Kinsella. He’s given some great interviews, and I’m paraphrasing here, but he basically said he creates the kind of records he’d like to see exist. That’s so simple and beautiful in intent, and it takes the power away from outside judgement or internal limiting.

Unconventional things make fair comparisons difficult, so how do you even know if you’re missing a mark? And what mark? I’m well aware that most people aren’t going to resonate with what I’m doing, so trends and a hypothetical listener/non-listenership have no impact on the music. Pandering is insulting to the listener in every way… Also, the records never turn out how I hear them in my head, which can be frustrating, but I have to remind myself that that’s just part of the deal too.Lay For June has striking art from Jamie Morgan, and Jennifer Mehigan’s painting on A Wake in the Wells was equally arresting. How do you decide on the artwork for your releases?

Visual art has been a lifelong interest, so I try to pay attention to what’s happening out there. I used to do all the art myself, but as with music, adding another voice can create counterpoint and depth. I usually play around with rough layouts while writing, and that has definitely influenced the songs, titles, and sequencing. You could also say I got a little sick of doing every single step myself, haha. I now see that it was important for me to let that go. I still do the art sometimes, the last one being …until they’re called. As for the mixtapes, I usually google the title in quotes and take an image that fits in some inexplicable way, and is obscure enough that I probably won’t get in trouble. That process is really really fun and full of surprises. It’s asking the collective consciousness for relative imagery.

Jennifer Mehigan’s work was on an art blog, and she was unbelievably giving and humble when I reached out to her… I had most of the songs done by the time I came across the image, and there are numerous reasons why it worked for me. A Wake in the Wells is somewhat centered around a house changing shape and changing hands.

I found Jamie Morgan’s work just checking out Instagram. The roadkill and flowers series is amazing, and she’s always up to something new. Also, she happens to know someone I went to school with, and he connected us. I wish I could’ve given Jennifer and Jamie a million dollars each, they’re both outstanding artists.

7) Finally, could you name four or five acts you find yourself returning to at the moment?

Shopping around Bandcamp recently, I found a wonderful record by You Are Plural called Rabbit Rabbit. I’ve been recommending it a lot lately, and it’s one of the few non-rap things I’ve been listening to.

For people who like things downtuned, plodding, yet catchy and very smart, they should hear Scott Evans’ band Kowloon Walled City. Their recent album release show performance was one of the best metal sets I’ve ever seen, and I’ve seen a good many over the last 20+ years. Very very inspiring…

I mainly download free legal mixtapes from Hip Hop TXL and dig through 40 garbage songs for the 10 good ones. I’ve been doing it for years and have refined a great collection from their series. That’s what’s always in my headphones.

Also counting down the days until Gucci gets released, anticipating a new prolific flow of his music and opportunities to see him perform again. Once I saw him on my birthday!

You can buy Lay For June now from the Old Earth Bandcamp page, along with the rest of his discography. Read our review here.

Photos by Scott Evans, apart from the silhouette image, which is by Adam Ryan Morris 

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I wrote a brief piece about Josh Scott’s Aero Flynn a few weeks back after reading some words by Field Report’s Chris Porterfield. The letter/essay (which you can read here) painted Scott as a supremely talented musician and songwriter and spoke of the self-titled Aero Flynn album as “quite seriously a life-or-death record” which should be heard as “a spit in the fucking face of the symptoms of disease, like rot and destruction and apathy and cynicism”. Given how much I respect Porterfield’s work, this sort of language got me excited.

The album begins with ‘Plates2’, a restrained track of gentle synths and countrified electric guitars, not a million miles away from Porterfield’s Field Report, while ‘Twist’, which brings to mind Radiohead, solidifies Scott’s subdued vocal delivery. ‘Dk/Pi’ opens with electronics backed by an ambient hum, the spacey bleeps and bloops of Spencer Krug’s Moonface layered on top of something older and less clear. Shambling drums kick in to create a sound akin to The War on Drugs, Scott’s dreamy vocals drifting through the nebulous arrangement with a delicacy that suggests impermanence, as if the sonic environment threatens to consume him. As the song progresses the instrumentation disintegrates, distorting into reverby fuzz and then a confused white noise before blinking out to leave a large cosmic swelling. This is an electrical anxiety, a malfunction in which communication is lost and isolation complete, Scott a lone astronaut surrounded by planetary screams and an airless dark.

The beginning of ‘Crisp’ is gentler but not without threat, an acoustic strum peppered with glitches which suggest the calm is a façade, a veil under which reside wrung hands and sharp edges. “Can I feel you?” Scott inquires over and over, one of many pleas for connection on the album, leaving the listener to wonder if he’s speaking to an individual or humankind as a whole. Or perhaps it’s just to himself in the mirror. Again the track unravels, the introduction of more prominent synths morphing in the final minutes into another hostile environment, a tumultuous sea or some geomagnetic storm that swallows Scott and drags him further from whatever he is trying to find.

Aero Flynn is at once urgent and suspended, trapped between fight and flight in anxiety’s masterful double bind. “I’m so afraid of everybody else” he sings on ‘Tree’, a stuttering electro-pop song, while even ‘Floating’, a soaring track that’s all blue skies and wide open vistas, is permeated with a sense of dislocation, as if the freedom is not his to own. ‘Maker’ sounds like a Broken Social Scene track where lonely sadness is presented as matter-of-fact, at least until the end where Scott utters a single word (a word I can’t quite make out – Home? Whole?) in a way which sounds like the genuine emotion breaking through, a yelp of helplessness or cry for mercy held back or choked out after the first syllable.

‘Brand New’ feels like a crescendo of sorts, a move away from the futuristic electronics that bring to mind space’s dark void in favour of something more organic, a swelling Precambrian atmosphere where conditions are harsh and life is scarce but maybe not for long. Closer ‘Moonbeams’, a piano led track with elements of The National’s slower work, provides no such epiphany. Slow and nervous and sorrowful, the last track again casts Scott as the outlying astronaut looking back at Earth, the final waves of instrumentation mimicking the beautiful, heart-breaking joy of realising you are but the tiniest of specks subject to the largest of forces beyond your control.

This is not an album in which the emotional arc is self-contained and easily mappable. Instead the record feels like a part of a wider narrative, Scott’s story, the illness and suffering and terror that Porterfield alludes to in his piece. The redemption does not begin with an epiphany on track seven and end with clear-eyed certainty. The redemption is the very fact that Scott is creating words and sounds, that he is letting others know where he is and how he is and why he is. The album is the flare of hope hanging in the night sky, burning bright and incandescent.

Aero Flynn is out now on Ooh La La Records (and Dine Alone Records in Canada).

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“The songs were better. The ideas were grander. The subject matter weirder. The narrators more honest and articulate. The frontman more compelling. The potential greater. Amateur Love were and remain the best band I have ever seen.”

Indeed, Justin Vernon re-released the Amateur Love record It’s All Aquatic on his label Chigliak, and in his description of the album he writes about Scott and himself occupying the Eau Claire scene and admiring one another’s music. “It was obvious to both of us, however,” he says, “who the better writer was.”

For whatever reason, Scott did not experience the same success that was bestowed on Vernon and the others. While Bon Iver, Megafaun, Peter Wolf Crier and Field Report have all achieved some degree of exposure and acclaim, things did not work out for Scott:

“Josh watched it all from Chicago and did nothing. Everyone tried to encourage him… He had opportunities for record deals. He had another supergroup of who’s-who indie rock royalty assembled for him… He got spooked again and went underground.”

You can read the rest of Porterfield’s piece here (and I suggest you do. It’s powerful, candid and sincere) but the important part is the conclusion that Scott wrote and recorded an album as Aero Flynn. While, as ever in life, things have not gone swimmingly since, Porterfield is convinced that the record is important:

“I believe that this record, this long-awaited record, is quite seriously a life-or-death record. Josh had to make it to stay alive. And it must be heard in the context of deferred health, deferred relationships, deferred dreams, deferred healing. As spit in the fucking face of the symptoms of disease, like rot and destruction and apathy and cynicism.”

This is something I feel strongly about. Many of the attempts to conquer the resulting apathy/cynicism in art come off as frilly and saccharine and vapid, avalanches of pure, distilled sincerity that are nothing more than irony in a different guise, a well cloaked nudge in the ribs (see: some of the Alt Lit guys). A “spit in the fucking face” sounds clear. If Aero Flynn sees Scott stand his ground and face things head on, this could be one special record.

The self-titled album will be released on the 10th March by Ooh La La Records. You can download ‘Dk/Pi’ now via the Aero Flynn website.

EDIT: You can now read our review of Aero Flynn here.

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Despite the changes in personnel, it seems my original praise applies more than ever. Each track provides an interesting, nuanced narrative of American life. When a band is described as ‘literary’ the first thought is some group of lit students who quote Camus or Kafka or Kerouac, but Field Report aren’t that. They are literary in the sense that their music and writing seems to be on a par with books and poems, their work possessing the relevant weight to become important and meaningful beyond the noisy escapism that typifies much music. Written down this sounds pretentious or grand but the reality is just the opposite. Like the most successful fiction, Porterfield’s writing is humble, real, able to be all shades of sad and beautiful. He leaves it to the listener to decide what they take from it, be it comfort or disturbance.

The album opens with ‘Decision Day’, a song which first appeared on Conrad Plymouth’s great record Comrade Plymouth. The fact that I have heard this song before plays as an advantage. The opening line, “Now the morning was gilded around the edges…” feels like an old friend, a cosy, familiar introduction to the album, a new dawn full of promise, and a portent of good things to come. Next is ‘Home (Leave the Lights On)’, a tale of homesickness, of being in a band and on the road and spending your time pretty much anywhere other than home (note the artwork features two tiny figures separated by a chasm). Porterfield describes the oncoming winter and the woes of a lonely Christmastime with typical eloquence:

“Cold snapped like a coiled spring
you can feel the frost is coming on
we are marigolden – dropping orange and umber,
just barely holding on
and now downtown’s dolled up with tinsel and angels
seasons sneaking up like haircuts, teased apart and tangled”

But there is hope in this song. The chorus of “but leave the lights on cause it might be nighttime when I get there, but I’m on my way home” offers relief from all that longing, or rather transforms it into something precious. Here it becomes clear that Porterfield is talking about a capital-H Home, something more than four walls and a roof, an answer, a solution, a promise that the troubles of the present can and will be solved.

The third song ‘Pale Rider,’ not-so-coincidentally one of the saddest on the record and goes some way to illuminate the other side of this coin. The chorus of “I don’t know that I can be your place to go, or what you need” could be read as either a blow off or a plea for reassurance, and speaks of the pressure of meaning so much to another person, the burden of being this mystical Home in which someone has put so much faith. But even here there is a sincerity that offers a shred of hope, a sense that we are all alone together rather than altogether alone:

“Now the next thing I know, I’m on your back
with a suitcase full of the wrong things packed
we’re out looking for your family but doubling back
to every bar we chose to pass on
now you’re cantering crooked and screaming at the wind
and shooting off flare guns in memory of the kid
his birthday was yesterday; he would have been six
oh my god, I am so sorry.”

One of the main themes of the album is Porterfield’s struggles with alcohol and his newfound sobriety. ‘Cups and Cups,’ ‘Ambrosia’ and ‘Wings’ delve into this idea, pitching alcoholism as the bad present vs. the happy future (Home), with no guarantee of a happy ending for all the struggling. “I keep spinning my wheels,” he sings on ‘Ambrosia,’ “maybe nothing’s gonna change.” Here he comes off like a character from a Denis Johnson story, lost and sad and drunk or wishing to be, crawling from bar to bar knowing that it’s probably killing him or would if given half a chance.

‘Marigolden’ sees a change in tone, a small narrative concerning a fleeing woman and a plane crash. At first this seems out of place amongst the personal nature of the rest of the album, although Porterfield (or whoever the lead male character is throughout) could easily be the “him” in the opening lines (or it could be that she is the Michelle of the next track?). Regardless, the lyrics are wonderful:

“I left Nebraska in my summer dress;
left him behind there to straighten out his head
Jane was working for the airline and she bumped me up to business
she feels the thrill of every liftoff in her heart and chest
She smelled like saffron and glowed gold and rust
years ago, I loved Jane Harmony once
but the fall fell from August and the petals all dropped off
we’re always finding old lives to run away from”

Next up is Michelle, which is a tale of an ill-informed love affair. “Uncle Sam can meet me by the treeline,” he sings. “He and I and your husband we can work it out like men but we won’t end up eye to eye.” You get the sense here that the narrator can sense Home is close or at least halfway possible and it builds up to a frenzy where every idea is a good one, where plans are desperate and exhilarating and of the essence:

“I got five thousand bucks, a full tank of gas,
and a stars and stripes beach towel with a cigarette burn
If we leave right now we’ll be there by morning
there being anywhere but here
we can make a new start; we can make up new names
I’ve already picked yours, Michelle.”

The new start is reflected in ‘Summons,’ where sobriety is a reality, albeit the shaky, edge-of-a-cliff sort of sobriety where it seems the smallest breeze would send him over the precipice and into the drink (quite literally):

“I’ve been two weeks dry, in a bar every night
I’ve been pissing coffee, quinine and lime
and the fog’s been lifting; I’m doing alright
I still can’t look nobody in the eye.”

Closing track ‘Enchantment’ takes the long journey and joins the ends, completing the circle, and making a long journey an endless one. Again opening with images of morning and life (“Easter morning in New Mexico: the Son/sun is risen on another day”), the narrator never actually reaches the Home he had been longing for. Instead the album closes on a curious balance of hope and grief. He’s been sober for a month yet still pining for Home, still on the journey and filling it with loud noises and violent actions in an attempt to make sense of it or at least feel better for a while:

“Now it’s growing wide around us, this feeling in these bones
as we shoot the wind with rifles and then bludgeon it with stones”

I find myself returning to the Denis Johnson comparison. Angels and Jesus’ Son are populated with sad men trying to find something like this Home, then refusing to believe it or else not liking what they see when they get there. Instead they return to the old bars and the new women and the extraordinary promise of an endless search. Whether Porterfield’s character is doomed on these lines is not clear, but if he is then he hasn’t yet grown cynical with it. The closing lines are infused with belief, the marigolden hope that is woven through album.

“The Lord came in the wind and the dirt–
where he sometimes can be found if you
squint; soften it to silhouettes–
His tessellated love is all around”

You can buy Marigolden now via Partisan Records. It is my favourite album of the year.

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