Hannah Read mostly writes from the small Texas town she calls her home, but her songs have a universality to them that makes them seem larger-than-life. Her lyrics read like nervous incantations — “It’s not like I want to keep you out or keep it in, just keep it up/ Isn’t that hard enough?” goes one of my favorites — but they’re buoyed by a lilting self-assuredness that feels invigorating and timeless. Thx, her latest album as Lomelda, is a showstopper, the sort of album that will soundtrack many a long drive or transcendent night out among the stars. We’ve heard a few songs from it so far — “Interstate Vision,” “Out There,” and “From Here,”Band To Watch profile on the project.
Lomelda is the pseudonym of the songwriter Hannah Read, based out of Silsbee in Texas. This week as well as sharing tour dates with Pinegrove and Florist, Lomelda has detailed the release of her upcoming album, Thx, as well as sharing the first single from it, Interstate Vision.
Backed by prominent tumbling bass lines and bright, easy guitar strums, Hannah’s voice is left to carry much of the melodic lifting, a trick she achieves with an effortless aplomb. Lyrically, it seems to touch on one of those relationships, be it love or otherwise, where you keep stumbling back despite knowing it’s doing you nothing but harm, as she sings, “we were young, oh I was so young, still I sit with you in parking lots, acting like I’m not falling for it”. Lomelda’s music is a place of juxtapositions; sparse yet powerful, beautiful yet bruising, timeless but none the less very 2017 – her upcoming record could be very special indeed.
“Music connects me with people who I wouldn’t have an easy way to talk to otherwise,” Read says. Her hometown of Silsbee — the small Texas town where she grew up and currently resides with her family — but Read likes the open road. You sort of have to when you’re from a place where long drives are usually the only way to get around, especially if you’re interested in pursuing music as passionately as Read is. There were a few other bands around growing up — “Everybody needs some rock ‘n’ roll in their lives, even small town Texas folks,” she jokes — but the four-hour trek to Austin has become a regular facet in Read’s life,
“Interstate Vision” by Lomelda off the LP/CD/Cassette/Digital album ‘Thx’ out on Double Double Whammy Records September 8th, 2017.
Felix Walworth, singer and drummer of Told Slant, is a three time veteran of the Tiny Desk after performing with the bands Bellows, Eskimeaux and Florist, Told Slant is part of The Epoch, a collective of unlike-minded best friends. Told Slant makes dark, delicate indie rock in the same vein. Felix wrote the music for “Low Hymnal” as just a tune that remained unfinished with for about a year before the lyrics arrived quickly following a series of personal crises. “Did I invite disillusionment and self-hatred into my life when I started writing about them?” Felix says. “Probably.” Told Slant is the project of drummer/singer FelixWalworth. What I love about his drumming is that it’s a thunderous propellant, an essential element to the song without being up front and in the way of the voice and guitars. Felix stands behind a very large bass drum on a makeshift stand and plays organic rhythms on mostly bottom heavy drums with arms flailing in ways I didn’t know was really possible. All the while his voice conjures up the hiccup of Sparks and deep power of Bryan Ferry or Lou Reed, but more fun.
Eskimeaux :: Year of the Rabbit EP
Out April 15th, 2015 on Double Double Whammy Records
Eskimeaux shared the new mini album,Year Of The Rabbit their highly anticipated new mini-album. Year of the Rabbit finds the band replacing the highly produced and overdubbed sound of 2015’s critically acclaimed O.K. with a more immediate, naturally produced sound, showcasing the sound of Eskimeaux’s live band. MTV, who premiered the album are calling it “near-perfect pop” and saying “Year Of The Rabbit balances isolation and connection, love and loss, light and dark – and the beauty of finding everything that lies in between.”
There is something about Emily Sprague’s voice that both transcends twee indie-pop clichés even as it revels in them. The songs she writes for Florist — an Upstate New York quartet which recently decamped for the bright lights of Brooklyn, and is part of The Epoch collective alongside artists such as Eskimeaux – communicate the youthful discovery of self, sans filters. Or at least that’s what Sprague’s intimate-beyond-comfort, speak-singing voices makes it all sound like. It features something like a mix of Kim Gordon’s fierce detachment, Peggy Lee’s light-headed self-destruction, and the whimsy of all the narrators in Belle & Sebastian songs.
In Florist, Emily Sprague and her Catskills friends sing quiet, delicate songs filled with vivid memories. “Vacation” is about growing up and learning about love.
“Like when I used to ride roller coasters with my dad
When a swimming pool in a hotel
Was a gift from God
Like, love, we’re like a family
I don’t know how to be”
“Cool And Refreshing” finds Sprague singing about the childhood memories that we lose one by one.
“Think of me by the creek in cutoff jeans holding onto
Something that has meaning to me
I don’t really think my life will ever make me
As happy as Kaaterskill Creek”
These two songs are from Florist’s 2015 EP, Holdly, while the band closes its Tiny Desk concert with “1914,” a track from its new debut full-length, The Birds Outside Sang. On drums, you’ll find a Tiny Desk alum in FelixWalworth, who was first here with Bellows, then Eskimeaux; all of these musicians are connected in some way to the Epoch, a collective from New York City. It’s a creative friendship with stories to share, and its members’ songs feel best in intimate settings, like a desk surrounded by old and new friends. The Birds Outside Sang is available now: Set List:
“Vacation”
“Cool And Refreshing”
“1914”
Courtesy of the artist One verse of the barely two-minutes-long “White Light Doorway,” a great tune from the group’s upcoming full-length debut, The Birds Sang Outside, includes lines that seem simply ridiculous, the actions of a semi-competent mumblecore actress going for grand allegory and failing. Yet next to lyrics that touch upon a diary-like exploration of spiritual yearning, and sung over a lonely, fuzzed-out electric guitar and a kick-drum, it’s not silly at all. Forget poetry or narrative, this is confession as a mix of children’s therapy and religion, one that comes outlined in Crayola colors. That the song ends so quickly makes it feel even more honest and gratifying, speeding you back to press “Rewind” or to see what other unlikely thing might happen.
The Birds Sang Outside is out on Jan. 29 on Double Double Whammy
Brooklyn art collective The Epoch already has three great releases to its name this year — Florist’s The BirdsOutside Sang, Eskimeaux’s Year Of The Rabbit mini-album and, just last week, Told Slant’s Going By — and it’s about to add a fourth in the form of Bellows’ Fist & Palm. Bellows is the recording project of Oliver Kalb, who also plays in Eskimeaux and Told Slant, and Fist & Palm is the follow-up to 2014’s fantastic BlueBreath, and it also marks something of a stylistic departure. While Kalb flirted with more synthetic elements on his earlier work (or was at least focused on making the organic sound synthetic) — most memorably on tracks like “Blue Breath, Rosy Death” and “White Sheet” — nothing approached the bombast or immediacy of “Thick Skin,” Fist & Palm’s lead single.
“Thick Skin” is imbued with wonder from the jump: “Staring out your car window, I feel my size,” Kalb sings, his voice glossy and buoyant. “Hudson Palms, the Catskills Gulf Stream — the world’s alive!” It’s about wanting to open yourself up to the vastness of the world, knowing that the great big unknown can be harsh and terrifying and deciding to embrace it anyway. At one point, the whole band chimes in: “Don’t wanna leave the earth, even for a moment!” That radiating optimism reminds me a lot of fellow positivity purveyors Terror Pigeon; coupled with Kalb’s penchant for Sufjan Stevens-style dramatics, “Thick Skin” feels pretty invincible track.
This Sunday is Valentine’s Day which makes Eskimeaux’s new single sound extremely appropriate in a deeply fucked way. “Power” explores the inevitable power play that surfaces when you realize that you’re deeply bonded to someone. That struggle materializes now and then between both friends and lovers, but I’m more inclined to consider the song through the lens of the latter and here’s why: no one will make you want to commit murder more than the people you have inexplicably intense feelings for. Gabrielle Smith opens the song with a line about macabre insect mating rituals (“Wish I could love you less like a praying mantis/ Rip your head off every time this starts to feel right”) and she ends it with a reminder that people, like places, can make you claustrophobic. “Oh! What power can be drawn/ From just a day of being alone.” It’s an essential reminder, because this I know to be true: it is far easier to tear someone down and make them feel small than it is to acknowledge and honor the vulnerability you feel in their presence. “Power” was recorded by Emily Sprague (of Florist) and is the debut single off of Eskimeaux’s forthcoming six-song mini album Year Of The Rabbit, which is out in April and follows last year’sO.K.
Eskimeaux :: Year of the Rabbit EP
Out April 15th, 2015 on Double Double Whammy Records
Florist – Emily Sprague’s appropriately-bucolic quartet florist popped up on our radar earlier this fall with “Holdly”, a compact ep crammed with sharp songwriting and memorable melodies that thankfully serves as a placeholder for the birds outside sang, a full-length coming January 29th via double double whammy.
“The Birds Outside Sang” is an album about the speed at which rain falls, life goes on, and people grow. It’s one part a personal, autobiographical, and almost completely chronological telling of a time in my life full of confusion, physical + emotional pain, loneliness, and hope. It is another part a rebirth of a musical friendship between my best friends in the whole world, and an attempt to highlight the importance of love and the things in life that give you something special to hold on to, to find a calm that can carry you through being alive and being scared.
Thank you for listening. My one and only goal is that someone can listen to this album and feel/see something, and take it with them as a thought. Emily of Florist
released January 29, 2016 Florist is Emily Sprague, Rick Spataro, Jonnie Baker, and Felix Walworth
Maryn Jones leads All Dogs, a band that channels some of her ferocious musings into catchy, honest punk songs. But when all of that snarling frustration has been unburdened, what’s left over and where does it go? Yowler is Jones’ solo project, and her debut release The Offer is a beautiful and hushed, almost intimidatingly personal collection of songs that feel like they’ve trickled down from a wellspring of emotion to make a home in the heart of anyone who bothers to listen, Yowler, a solo project by Maryn Jones.
Sometimes when I listen to The Offer, I feel like I’m wandering through a landscape dotted with bare trees. Sometimes I feel like I’m returning to a river in the middle of nowhere to release a memory into the dark. I always feel like I’m creeping along the edge of a mystery.
As Yowler, Maryn Jones explores minimalism and symbolism, a stark contrast to the music she’s made with All Dogs. When I listen to All Dogs, I blast it and scream along to every song while zooming down the highway or dancing around my bedroom. When I listen to Yowler, I need stillness. Maryn opens with an image of water and she invokes various forms of water again and again throughout the tape. On “Holidays” she sings, “Someday the river will find me; solid walls of water / And I’ll gestate in white under layers of ice.” She paints water as a simultaneously destructive and creative force that sweeps you through hell and brings you back brand new. I wonder if that’s the heart of The Offer––introspection and personal mythology.
Listen to the album over and over, think about the essence of water as an element, how it’s about emotion and intuition. And how it can be scary to delve into the world of your feelings. On “The Offer,” Maryn sings, “So the offer I make / Is a promise to stay here / May they leave me out of their wandering / And be still.” I almost feel like I’m eavesdropping on this radical idea of retreat, which Maryn reinforces on the mantra of her eponymous track, “You can lead me to the water but you cannot make me drink.” Settling into solitude, allowing memories and people to pass like shadows, tuning into your own voice and recognizing its importance––perhaps Maryn is musing on self-care as a ritual, even a spiritual practice. I feel like I could read the lyrics of all eight songs on The Offer like I’d read poems in school and pick apart the images, but I prefer settling into the aura. I like the reflection. There’s something wonderful about creating a personal mythology from your experiences and sharing it with others and seeing how it resonates. I’ll be pondering the world of The Offer for a while. It’s beautiful album.
“At least I know that my house won’t burn down to the ground… or maybe it will,” Emily Sprague sings in one of many direct moments on “Holdly”, her five-song debut collection of intimately sprawling folk songs. “If I’ve been in love before, and I’m pretty sure I have/ I’m pretty sure that my house can burn down, down to the ground tomorrow.”
Florist’s Holdly EP — the one that led us to name them A band To Watch . The EP was actually recorded after their upcoming debut, as a stop-gap due to vinyl production delays. That makes The Birds Outside Sang their first full-length statement as a group, and they rise to expectation on its title track, which is more expansive and developed than anything on their previous releases. Everything is still tethered to Emily Sprague’s lithe vocals and weighty lyrics, but the song takes flight around her, each note exhaling with a Porches sense of longing. “Wasn’t the joke on me when I started to bleed?” she asks, building to a calming dissonance before dropping out with an invitation: “Do you and your friends want to come come into the field and watch the fireworks shoot up into the air?” Florist create some fireworks of their own here, but that’s ripped away as all of the oxygen is sucked out of the track at the very end
That interplay between certainty and uncertainty is what makes Florist so heartwarming and wrenching, and it’s something to look forward to on the band’s forthcoming debut, The Birds Outside Sang.
The Fat Angel Sings 