The single was a fitting introduction to a decidedly existential record. Rudick uses the songs to dig into every facet of his identity in search of answers to life’s needling questions. Everything from the relationship between children and parents to the complications of maintaining a marriage, not to mention the spectres of violence and substance abuse (‘Fist Fight’), and the not insignificant effort of persisting in a band at a time when creativity is so often disregarded or disabused (‘Buyer’s Market’).

Those familiar with Young Elk’s previous work will recognise the atmosphere which emerges from such themes. Calm Down exists beneath the shadow of some great weight, representing the accumulated baggage of life that haunts every minute of our days whether we are aware of it or not. “I was also figuring out how to process the toxicity of my family after realizing their implications in childhood trauma and abuse,” as Rudick explains. The album does not offer an escape from this history, it doesn’t even try. Instead it acknowledges exactly what it is which sits above our heads in the hope that honesty and openness might go some way to lightening the load.

Living up to its title, ‘Little String’ explores these ideas further by positioning the American ideal of the family as a kind of tenuous binding, something which is supposed to hold a life (and society) together yet too often sees individuals lashed to people and places which drag them into darkness. “Give your fingertips some time / to unwind that tiny little string / that you used to bind your inner life / to someone’s complicated feelings,” Rudick sings in the opening verse, his voice as ever charged with equal parts compassion and fury, fighting to hold onto restraint amid the gravity of the realisations bestowed upon him. But, of course, it is not as simple as untying a knot. The past returns no matter what we do to release ourselves from its bindings. As demonstrated in the closer ‘Palmer ’68’, a song every bit as stark and tragic as anything else on the record, yet lit from within by something like love in spite of everything, even if it feels pitiful to admit.

palmer, alaska ’68
you were missing mother in a terrible way
you wrote her the same letter everyday
saying ‘baby, i still love you. are you ok?”

are you ok?

Calm Down is out now via Rue Defense and available from Bandcamp.

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Comprising of  Olivia Eguia (vocals), Charlie Eguia (guitar), Jaden Gabriel (writing, production), Khadija Aslam (bass) and Liz Musinsky (drums), April Fools is a new Brooklyn-based outfit who introduced themselves last year with debut EP Knock Knock, though they have wasted no time in following up the release. Out via Happen Twice in the next few weeks, the second April Fools project Who’s There? finds the band freshly confident and ready to hone their sound, further developing their indie folk style to capture a wide range of emotions. Equal parts playful, heartfelt, infectious and melancholic, single ‘Say Nothing’ typfies the tone of the release, presenting a warm glimmer over nostalgic longing as it processes the experience on moving on from someone once cared about.

Banti Buli – When Birds Write Poems

Stroll Down Pearl, The Night is Young, the upcoming new full-length from Boston-based project Banti Buli, is dedicated to the musical communities of lead Banti Gheneti. So it is fitting that album closer and latest single ‘When Birds Write Poems’ serves as a love letter to all those people who go about creating and maintaining artistic spaces. “I think about all birds that grace the streets of Cambridgeport and greater Boston,” Gheneti explains, “building nests, putting on shows, making meaning out of life. Without community, there is no artist, and it means nothing.” A fittingly collaborative endeavour, the song sees Rachel Eber from Ragu joining on vocals and was recorded with help from June Isenhart from Miss Bones. The result possesses all the fondness and heart its mission statement suggests, with a number of Easter eggs scattered through the lyrics that fans of the local scene will appreciate.

Watch the video animated by Luca Depardon below:

Stroll Down Pearl, The Night is Young will be released on the 7th November and you can pre-order it now.

bugcatcher – Hurry

Back in 2023 we wrote about Bugcatcher, the recording project of Rochester‘s Jake Denning and a rotating cast of collaborators and friends, describing how album Go! offered “a combination of sincerity and whimsy delivered with an understated tone yet marked by a pervading sense of mystery, as though below the mundane surface of things exists an untold manner of possibility, a source of both wonder and unease.” Now Denning and co. are back with new single ‘Hurry’ ahead of a forthcoming full-length on Raincoated Records. The track concerns the white lies and wistful longing inherent within major change and suggests the new material has built upon the foundations of previous releases to achieve a sound more earnest and emotive than ever.

Devin Shaffer – I Guess I’m Crawling

“Interrogates just what it requires to achieve lasting peace. That is, to reject the idea of a neat arc entirely, resist the temptation to believe one achievement or epiphany will solve your life for good.” So we wrote of Devin Shaffer‘s new album Patience, forthcoming next month on American Dreams, with lead single ‘All My Dreams Are Coming True’ displaying the clarity and nuance of the release. Now Shaffer has returned with ‘I Guess I’m Crawling’, the record’s penultimate track and perhaps its most illustrative one, its gentle pace and soft tone confronting all of life’s doubts and injustices with a steady patience. “In a way “I Guess I’m Crawling” is the ethos of the record,” Shaffer explains. “It is a surrender to the pace at which things move, a surrender to all the setbacks and limitations and diversions that have led me to where I am now.”

Watch the video shot by Jordan Reyes below:

Patience will be released via American Dreams on 7th November. Pre-order it now from the Devin Shaffer Bandcamp page.

The Hello Crows – Let ‘Em Go Home

Consisting of Dylan Ward, Judie Acquin, Emilio Quinn Bonnell and Mattie Comeau—four Indigenous songwriters all hailing from different areas of Wabanaki territory in Canada—The Hello Crows is an indie rock project born of the traditional practice of storytelling and driven to explore the themes and problems facing their home within the present moment. Their self-titled debut album, out via Forward Music Group, touches on everything from personal love and loss to wider traumas like the violent legacy of the Canadian residential school system, and provides all the heart and painful catharsis you might expect. Latest single ‘Let ‘Em Go Home’ is an ideal entry point, the band’s tribute to the survivors of cultural genocide which is at once warmly compassionate and loaded with stark weight.

Lazy Trail – Post Tour

The second Happen Twice act to make this week’s list, Lazy Trail is the recording project of songwriter Emma Willer, who you might know from her time with bands like Slumbers and Boyscott. Under the Lazy Trail moniker, Willer makes music fitting for the name. Songs often short and usually sweet which play like small adventures or little daydreams, taking the listener to another place for just a moment. New album The Sound is a great place to dive in, with singles like ‘Post Tour’ possessing all of the brightness and yearning ever-present across the release. A song which owes as much to the natural world as anything else, playing like a brief hike down a particular path of Willer’s memories, stopping to catch glimpses of all the things which used to mean so much along the way.

Lydia Luce x Luke Sital-Singh – Ephemeral

Back in August we introduced Mammoth, the upcoming new album from Lydia Luce which leads “out of suffering,” as we put it, “charting the path of recovery from chronic pain and the hard-won bonds which came with it.” After single ‘Quiet’, “a song all about the slow process of learning to not only tolerate silence but embrace its power within a noisy world,” Luce has now returned with ‘Ephemeral’, inviting British singer-songwriter Luke Sital-Singh into the fold for a moving duet. With another careful, evocative arrangement featuring strings, winds, piano, viola and cello, the song deepens with a sense of grace, the chemistry between the vocals seeming to lift the instrumentation and culminating in almost classical peaks.

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

The Noisy – Nightshade

“Draws on literary and cinematic influences (especially Spaghetti Westerns and Body Horror) and ideas from the drag and queer community to create its vivid, larger-than-life sound.” That’s how we described The Secret Ingredient Is Even More Meat, a deluxe edition of The Noisy‘s debut album The Secret Ingredient is More Meat, coming soon via Audio Antihero. After singles ‘Twos‘ and ‘Grenadine‘, Sara Mae and co. are back with new unreleased song ‘Nightshade’ to further expand the record’s universe. A kind of sister track to ‘Twos’ which again explores the aftermath of difficult relationships but flips its attention from the other to the self. An examination of the attempt, and possible failure, of trying to build intimate, trusting connections with others without twisting the ideas of these bonds in your head.

Pansy – Mercy, Kill Me

You might know Vivian McCall as part of Chicago rock outfit Jungle Green, but upon starting the transitioning process several years ago, the singer/songwriter and multi-instrumentalist realised she needed a new project to chart the emotion and complexity of the experience properly. Pansy is that very project, an outlet which sees McCall plunder the gamut of indie rock in an attempt to capture the wild range of emotions of the transitioning process. Described by label Earth Libraries as “a noisy power pop anthem about a catastrophic breakup that demanded reinvention,” new single ‘Mercy, Kill Me’ is on the jangly and hooky end of the spectrum, documenting a difficult, life-changing breakup with a breezy energy.

runo plum – Halfway Up The Lawn

We’ve featured a couple of singles from runo plum in recent weeks, with new album patching coming soon via Winspear. After the “inherently bittersweet” ‘Lemon Garland‘, ‘Sickness‘ showed the newly powerful sound of the record. “Plum has lost none of the tenderness which so marked earlier releases,” as we put it, “but is now even better equipped to elucidate the highs and lows of life.” Latest track ‘Halfway Up The Lawn’ is no less striking, pairing a rich arrangement and heartfelt vocals and charging everything with an insistent energy to evoke the desperation of an unravelling relationship. A track existing at the intersection of yearning and frustration, a state of mind which so often comprises the end of things. “Will you turn the lamp back on / or leave it to your mom,” as plum sings, “to be the one to reach out to me / I don’t wanna make a scene.”

Watch the video directed by David Milan Kelly below:

patching will be released on the 14th November via Winspear and you can pre-order it from the runo plum Bandcamp page.

Young Elk – Silver Bullet

“You started lying when you learned to speak / Your mother gave you the throne / Gave you a silver bullet enemy / Sang you a sorrowful song.” So sings Ezekiel J. Rudick on ‘Silver Bullet’, the latest single from Young Elk. Released ahead of a new full-length coming soon via Rue Defense, the track is the epitome of the Young Elk sound. One loaded with both foreboding atmosphere and pressing weight, Rudick’s charged vocals falling somewhere between empathy and accusation. A mood fitting for a song which looks to mine the mother/son relationship for all of its complexity, emerging with a picture undeniably dark yet never without sympathy, as though one’s ability to cause pain is not derived from simple cruelty but rather a tangled web of suffering and the hope for reprieve.

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Having won acclaim as part of noise pop outfit The Beatings, Cameron Keiber went on to start the project Eldridge Rodriguez, releasing albums like Slightest of Treason and Atrophy which explored a plethora of contemporary issues with equal parts passion and disillusionment. Now recording under his own name, Keiber is returning next spring with new full-length Nurser, a record which continues this examination of the current state of things with a newly immediate, personal edge. The addition of loops and beats offers a new dimension too, though as single and opener ‘Habsburg Jaw’ shows, it is Keiber’s distinctive vocals and lyricism which represents the sound’s core. A track about depression and the insidious impact of those who belittle its dimensions, Keiber’s delivery slightly weary and a little bit wry as it challenges those who believe all it takes is a bit of bootstrap pulling and positive thinking. But above all else it’s empathetic in its picture of someone straining within such a hostile world.

Nurser will be released on the 14th March via Midriff Records.

Camille Schmidt – Stanley

“Each of the six songs on the album deal with the different masks we might hide behind, [but] the very nature of its creation see the true [artist] reaching out from behind the disguise.” That’s how we described Camille Schmidt‘s Good Person back in June, a release which explored ideas of authenticity and the lack thereof with a sense of cathartic release. With the Brooklyn artist’s debut full-length Nude #9 coming early next year, Schmidt has returned with equally affirming new single, ‘Stanley’. A song which displays the richer sound of a growing supporting band without sacrificing any of Good Person‘s raw immediacy, pairing a gathering momentum with a sense of aimlessness to bring to life a playful, idiosyncratic vibe. Watch the video directed by Henry Nelson and produced by Brooke Goldman below:

Nude #9 is out on the 10th January and you can find more on the Camille Schmidt website.

Chris Chism – Drive My Car

“Focusing on the working class experience and following a lineage through Dylan and van Zandt, Richmond, Indiana’s Chris Chism delves into the personal to emerge with a more universal picture of life’s joys and struggles.” So we wrote back in 2023 when covering the North Carolina-based songwriter’s EP Things Has Changed. Now Chism is back with ‘Drive My Car’, a song which taps into melancholic peace of a night alone on the road. “I like to drive my car at night / get lost in the dark / everything gets left behind,” Chism sings in the opening lines, finding some sense of direction within the dark isolation. “The road goes on and on / the headlights show my way.”

‘Drive My Car’ is out now and available from the usual places.

Cici Arthur – All So Incredible

Cici Arthur is a new collaboration between Toronto artists Joseph Shabason, Chris A. Cummings and Thom Gill. Cummings previously recorded under the name Mantler, releasing jazz, lounge and R&B-inflected pop via Tomlab, and Cici Arthur sees Shabason and Gill bend their sound towards such styles to give Cummings’ writing and vocals the grand, vivid backdrop they deserve. A stellar cast of guests like Owen Pallet, Nicholas Krgovich, Phil Melanson and Dorothea Paas lend their talents too, and the result is a lesson in both cinematic scale and artistic control. Lead single ‘All So Incredible’ shows off the aesthetic in all its technicolour glory:

Watch the video edited and directed by Nicholas Krgovich below:

Way Through is out on the 21st February via Western Vinyl and you can pre-order it now.

CULTBABY – mr. pouch

Moniker of LA-based multidisciplinary artist Richard Benjamin Greer, CULTBABY is less a name and more the key to the project’s themes and style. Born into a small Christian Metaphysical organization in Berkeley, CA, Greer’s origin story is far from typical, and though he left the group with his mother at a young age, his links to the group—be they literal or psychological—persisted for far longer. Forthcoming via Anxiety Blanket Records, new CULTBABY release cut the arm, preserve the body is a compilation of recordings which explores this experience, pairing a detailed picture of collapsed relationships while preserving fondness for those involved. The album is both stylistically and narratively ambitious, but single ‘mr. pouch’ gives an idea of what to expect. Watch the video directed by The Fanza below:

cut the arm, preserve the body is out on the 21st February via Anxiety Blanket Records.

Goon – Death Spells

Having just signed with Born Losers Records for an upcoming full-length, LA’s Goon have shared standalone new single ‘Death Spells’ as something of a reintroduction. The track emerged from a difficult period in the life of lead Kenny Becker, and its plaintive opening plays as something of a dirge. “Death spells are coming down / don’t go outside,” as the opening lines go. “Helpless for higher ground / helpless to hide.” But slowly it blossoms with the addition of xylophone and vocal harmonies as well as various chirps and chimes, and by the close begins to sound less like some lament as a talisman offered in protection against such loss. The entire Goon band joined for the recording, including founding guitarist Drew Eccleston on backing vocals, and the result takes on a communal power. “I wanted everyone to play on this one,” Becker explains. “It feels really special, and comforting. The way your friends gather around you in tough times, when you’re hurting, to make music together.”

‘Death Spells’ is out now via Born Losers Records and available from Bandcamp.

Luah – Small Time

Writing back in 2023, we wrote about the work of Luah—the Florida-born, Baltimore-raised and Kingston, New York-based songwriter Brendan Paul Sullivan—through single ‘To Relate’. “A slow unfurling of a song,” as we put it, “as though in committing to the flow, Sullivan not only accepts the changeable currents but finds beauty in every small eddy and pull.” Now preparing to release a new album, Luah is back with ‘Small Time’, another downbeat, assured track full of swampy twang and lo-fi textures. With the languid, slightly woozy flow comes a certain sense of reflection, as though the echoed backing vocals chasing Sullivan’s lyrics are emerging from some other time or plane.

‘Small Time’ is out now via streaming services.

Mol Sullivan – On the Balcony

Cincinnati songwriter Mol Sullivan kicked off 2024 with GOOSE, an album “set deep in those early days of a new beginning,” as we put it, “where everything feels possible yet tenuous and a little too vivid to bear,” and has released a series of videos in support of the record through the months (we recommend the title track and ‘Cautiously‘ in particular), though is closing out the year by reaching back into the past to polish an old gem. First recorded in 2013 in her aunt and uncle’s basement, ‘On the Balcony’ offers a glimpse of a more lo-fi version of the Mol Sullivan sound, albeit here remastered for the re-release. But although it might differ stylistically to the polished sound of GOOSE, the track still evidently possesses the same DNA, its hushed intimacy full of the compassion and confessional honesty that has come to mark Sullivan’s work.

‘On the Balcony’ is out now and available from the usual places.

Oldest Sea – All Shall Love Me And Despair

Originating as the solo project of Sam Marandola but now expanded to become a full band, Oldest Sea is a vessel built to navigate the heaviest seas of experimental folk, pushing into dark, tempestuous waters in order to most fully explore soundscapes at once elemental and otherworldly. Latest release Judith Slaying Holofernes serves as the ideal introduction for the uninitiated, a two-song collaboration with masters of the genre Have a Nice Life. Opening track ‘All Shall Love Me And Despair’ embodies the release’s weight, rising from hushed beginnings with a stark insistence towards its transcendently dark climax, possessing all the Old Testament drama of the double single’s apocryphal title.

othermusic – pretty please

A new project between Portland, OR’s Ezekiel J. Rudick (Young Elk, goodgrief etc.), Kathrin Skiff and Tony Reyes, othermusic combines richly fuzzed synths with dramatic drums and guitars to create a shoegaze sound able to straddle both delicate emotion and crushing heft. Single ‘pretty please’ serves as the perfect introduction, its tender, almost music box opening soon ceding way to a thunderous march, the track thereafter cycling with a quiet-loud dynamic able to evoke both closeness and distance. “Can you / please find / a way / to be kinder / to me / so I / can fall / asleep,” the lyrics ask, situating the audience in the heart of a troubled relationship. “Come on / pretty please?”

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This month sees Rudick return with ‘This One’s About You’, his debut single under the name goodgrief ahead of an EP to be released via Houston label Rue Defense later this year. And, on first listen, the track indicates something of a change of direction. For though it still possesses palpable weight, some of the density of previous releases has been lifted, the track shaking itself free from melancholic haze with an almost poppy rhythm.

However, the leaden skies of the Pacific Northwest still loom above this newfound motion, and upon closer inspection the lyrics see this grey wall close further and further in. A tale of a person coming to terms with past actions as illness descends upon an ex, and finding themselves exploring the meaning and implication of post-break-up anger. Shaded by sadness, regret and a certain cruelty too, the sound’s momentum takes on a new flavour. A sense of volatility which might snuff out or explode in your hands.

The song then becomes a balance. A matter of perspective hinging on the headspace with which you approach it. A strangely triumphant refusal to be pulled down by life’s turmoil, or else a fatalistic rush to the bottom. “I was in sad bands,” and Rudick puts it, “now I’m trying to make happy-sounding sad music.” It’s up to you to decide which of those feelings wins out in the end.

‘This One’s About You’ is out now via Rue Defense.

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Listeners familiar with the pair’s other work will appreciate the style. Part of dream pop duo Starover Blue, Sallay-Milotz has made her name weaving rich soundscapes, while the sombre tone is present across the oeuvre of Rudick’s Young Elk. We have previously described the Young Elk sound as “unapologetically bleak,” but where some acts wear their misery as a kind of costume, Rudick has always emerged convincing and compelling, his straightforward delivery and nuanced writing lending an authenticity to the mood that makes it all the more moving. Darkness not as some performative fancy but rather a deeper engagement with all that’s unsettling and sad.

Latest single ‘Elora’ highlights how The Slow Sound is not only a marriage of these sensibilities, but something a little more too. The track emerged from a strange experience while rewatching Willow as an adult, the premise of the film suddenly terrifying and odd. Sluggish synths punch through an ethereal haze, a sound which reproduces the television’s trick of conjuring distance and intimacy simultaneously.

Lift your eyes to the sky
don’t let this infant die
does someone out here know where evil hides?

The song comes complete with a suitably eerie video directed and edited by the band themselves. Taking inspiration from eighties horror VHS tapes, the footage captures something of the track’s hypnotic lo-fi textures, the spectral light of the screen casting everything a little peculiar and removed.

The post The Slow Sound – Elora appeared first on Various Small Flames.

Ruth Garbus – Strash
Mauno – Vampire
Outer Spaces – Gazing Globe
Benjamin Shaw – Long Ago and Oh So Far Away
Erin Durant – Islands
Daughter of Swords – Dawnbreaker
Melissa Mary Ahern – Maria, Maria
Oscar Lush – Kind Living
Midwife – Angel
Young Elk – False Paradise
Wilder Maker – Love So Well
Big Joanie – Way Out
Secrecies – Life We Live
Beat Radio – Everyone I Know, Just Holding On
American Poetry Club – pro pic?
So Totally – sike
halfsour – Paper Window
Joyer – Here
Marbling – Wisdom Teeth
High Sunn – Grateful
Slow Pulp – New Media
Molly Drag – Out Like a Light
Van Houten – Moon
Birdspotter – Riverbed
Tender Perennial – Delivered
JR Samuels – In Brend 2
Elly Swope – Habits
Derek Piotr – The Sign
Fighting Kites – Kita Senju
Nathalie Joachim – Papa Loko (Interlude: September 24, 1918)
Kali Malone – Sacrificial Code
Kate Tempest – Holy Elixir
Little Musket – Fever Blister
Gold Baby – 500/1
Tennis Club – Stay
Young Mammals – Lost in Lima
Abe Hollow – Paradise
bdrmm – Question Mark
Briston Maroney – Fool’s Gold

Check out our previous Monthly Roundup playlists, and be sure to read or Reviews and Previews throughout the month.

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

Their latest album, appropriately titled False Paradise, goes further still, mining into the darkest recesses of Rudick’s experiences to produce something unapologetically bleak. The result is not a pleasant record, but then it was never intended as such—any discomfort in listening dwarfed by that involved in the creative process. As Rudick explains:

False Paradise was exceptionally intense to write and record. At first, I wasn’t sure if I wanted to make this song a part of the record, but as the concepts of the tunes developed it not only made perfect sense to include this on the record, but that this would be what the entire album is centered on — this horrifying true story of my childhood where I was sexually abused as a five year old and how no one believed me when I tried to articulate what happened to me.

The misgivings are understandable, and the effort of writing about and sharing such experiences could only be understood by those who have experienced similar violence. What the story does make clear is the position from which Rudick is writing. False Paradise is not the product of some juvenile flirtation with performed nihilism but a considered attempt to chart a storm from within, to pin down every crumb of guilt and disgust, every long night and hollowed morning. Because, when the world is revealed to be a lie, a false paradise, perhaps the only course of action is to strive for some shred of truth.

“This record is really a study of what happens trauma goes undealt with,” Rudick continues. “Abuse begets abuse.” The sentiment brings to mind ‘Dark Meadow’, a story by the American author Adam Johnson. With his talent for turning the dial past the ordinary, Johnson is more on the nose about the cyclical nature of abuse, but the effect is similarly striking. Living in the aftermath of childhood abuse, the narrator fights his own urges to harm children, and the story’s disturbingly human voice refuses to give an inch. As with False Paradise, Johnson’s story is dark not because he wants it to be, but because it is, and to readjust the tone would be to lie, to betray oneself.

‘Scenes from the End’ makes this clear from the off, Young Elk acknowledging the weight of the album as if in warning. “Oh, god damn,” Rudick sings, “didn’t mean to write another song / about this grievin’ / and all the shit that had gone wrong / But here I go again.” There’s something of Pedro the Lion in the its willingness to reference itself and retain its serious tone, the desolate space whipping up around itself in the closing moments, a small peak of anger that gathers and disperses upon a flat and distant plain.

Broken promises are at the forefront of ‘Gossip Magazines’, a single which acts as a neatly devastating summation of the record’s themes. “The American Dream has been found out as no more than a compelling sales scam,” we wrote in a preview. “Ruddick’s protagonists occupy a world where the foretold joys of love, intimacy, prosperity and religious salvation never come to pass, every inhabitant haunted by the lives they could have led, holding their stillborn dreams and refusing to let go.”

The title track confronts Ruddick’s abuse head on, plain language stripping everything but the heinous truth of the moment, a mundane moment turned hellish, with no path back. It is this inability to overcome the event or turn back the clock that marks the rest of the record, every comfort found insultingly trivial or maliciously empty. This might register as a grand tangle of anger and accusation (as on ‘Every Little Bet’), or a slow slide into alienation (‘Hanging Paper’), but the whole spectrum of emotions is united by the exclusivity of the suffering.

Because abuse begets abuse, even if only in retaliation against the unjust singularity of pain. No-one can reach you at the point of your distress, no-one can make it go away. To believe that they can is to not only underestimate the trauma but to fuel it, regurgitating the guilt and horror. To believe that is to create a false paradise, where salvation is found by merely asking hard enough.

At the end of ‘Dark Meadow’, the narrator is given a chance to reveal the identities of child abusers. The police urge him to do so, asking him to consider the kids. “What Officer Hernandez doesn’t get is that once something bad happens,” Johnson’s narrator thinks, “it happens every minute of your life, and it can’t be undone, not by a rescue or raid or a rope or a hundred and forty thousand dollars. The time to act isn’t after, it’s before, it’s now.”

False Paradise is out via Holiday Breath Records and you can get it from the Young Elk Bandcamp page.

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Real Life Buildings – Racing the Sun
Nice Apple – Are You Still There?
V.V. Lightbody – Babe, Honestly
Nico Hedley – Late Bloomer
Gracie Gray – Morphine
Spencer Radcliffe & Everyone Else – Bloodletting
Pleasure Systems – Heirloom
Ana Roxanne – Slowness
Kin Hana – Fog
Rainwater – Pink Flowers
Christelle Bofale – U Ouchea
Prudence – Smile & Nod
Operators – Faithless
Belaver – Driver
Mr Husband – Friends
Rose Hotel – Running Behind
Jeremy Squires – Somersault
Bad Books – Lake House
Yammerer – Poisonous Reptilian Colleague’s & Co
Britt – Trial Period
Wild Yawp – Femme Girl
Forest Management – Blue Leaves
Robert Stillman – Ritual
Everyone is Dirty – Hit-Girl
Merin – Coral Island
Lavender Bones – Over Again
Luke De-Sciscio – R.O.B.Y.N.
Anna Wiebe – Fortune
Young Elk – Gossip Magazines
Emma Frank – I Thought
Eamon McGrath – GUTS
Jacob Faurholt – The Dark Isn’t Right

Like what you hear? Catch up with the rest of our Monthly Mixes.

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As the title suggests, this is a record concerned with the empty promises of the contemporary existence, where the American Dream has been found out as no more than a compelling sales scam. Ruddick’s protagonists occupy a world where the foretold joys of love, intimacy, prosperity and religious salvation never come to pass, every inhabitant haunted by the lives they could have led, holding their stillborn dreams and refusing to let go.

Today we have the pleasure of unveiling the first single from the album. With a bleak yet textured tone, ‘Gossip Magazines’ is suitably morose, the reverb-heavy guitars and spacey synths strung along by the insistent percussion. There’s a sense of inevitability to the track’s motion that lends an existential edge, because for all of the haze and float of instrumentation the drums drag the song forward toward its fatal conclusion, and no amount of invention or protest can halt the slide.

Cos she read gossip magazines
and she ran barefoot in the street
with the Bible in one open hand
and a holy burning

So why are you sorry?

False Paradise will be released on June 15th on Holiday Breath Records.

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There is a new Young Elk record coming later this year, an album that promises to build on the bitter dejection of The Dark Side of the Holy Ghost, but in the meantime Rudick has been exploring different directions away from the band. As such, we’re pleased to introduce you to Leaky Engine, a brand new solo project from Rudick that maintains the dispirited worldview through a different musical lens. Described as an “experiment in slowness,” the project strips down the sound, leaving the vocals front and centre, allowing an unhurried immersion in the grim sadness and simmering anger of Rudick’s voice.

Today we’re sharing the project’s first single. As the title suggests, ‘John Birch Society Blues’ charts the distinct sorrow and anxiety that stems from an upbringing on the ideological fringe, where religious fundamentalism colours all thought and existence becomes and extended eschatological battle. The result of such beliefs is not so much conviction but the very opposite, a generalised paranoia where religious and political fears merge and the Rapture lies around every corner. A life governed by disaster and dread.

“bought me a gun when I was 12
with a banana clip that held
about 30 shells

i was so scared
of the government
thought i should be prepared
for the apocalypse”

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