Fire Talk 2022 Year In Review
Here’s a look back at all of our 2022 releases !
Bnny, led by Jess Viscius alongside her twin sister Alexa Viscius shared two new songs this year “I’m Just Fine” and “Breaking Up”. The tracks follow debut album ‘Everything’, which Pitchfork calls “a beautiful record from wall to wall… worth every year that went into it,” as well as garnering critical acclaim from the likes of AV Club, Bandcamp, NYLON, DIY Magazine, Line of Best Fit and more, and her sparse, wrenching Americana has earned her cosigns from musical peers like Kate Bush and Molly Burch. "I’m Just Fine is about the sensation of time moving slowly when you are missing someone. It’s about attempting to deny that you are heartbroken in order to protect yourself." “I’m Just Fine” continues on the moonlit, dream-like quality that imbues much of Viscius’ work, while her knack for storytelling shines through, making the most casual encounters pack a hard emotional punch. Ethereal acoustic guitar carries the wistfulness of Viscius’ vocals, threading together a narrative that cuts deep and lingers far past the song’s three minute mark. “Breaking Up” Viscius jokes, is "Yet another breakup song,” “A reflection of my past and present.”
'Constant Connection' is the new album from Perth-based duo Erasers. Forming as a home recording project over a decade ago, they documented their early sound in a steady flow of CD-Rs, tapes and 7" releases before signing to U.S. label Fire Talk for their subsequent releases, including 2019’s Pulse Points, which Bandcamp called 2019’s Pulse Points “their best album yet”, “recalling the bombed-out electronic textures of Low’s recent work.” Having shared the stage with artists such as The Soft Moon, Grouper and Prince Rama, their live show is a trance masterclass weaving organ drones and snaking guitar-and-synth interplay with Rebecca Orchard's towering incantations. Inspired by their discontent with current world affairs as well as a fascination with 1970s National Geographic, the dreamy, synth-driven soundscapes of new album Constant Connection (via Fire Talk & Night School in the UK) continue the pair’s gift for melding ambient beats and drone-y vocals into a hypnotizing format, offering an eye into the interiors of a world that’s mesmerizing in its soft-focused lens. Staying true to the psychedelic minimalism and definitive pop-structures that remain key components of the band’s signature sound, the new record refines their journey deeper into dreamy territory that feels comforting in all its subdued form.
Drifter, the first album in a decade from San Francisco shoegazers Young Prisms is a record that finds steadiness in the embrace of uncertainty. Forming in 2009, with release of a self-titled EP on esteemed indie tastemaker Mexican Summer followed by two full lengths (2011’s Friends For Now and 2012’s In Between) on Kanine Records. Coming of age during a time where the band’s blend of introspective shoegaze and gauze-laden guitar earned them tours with bands like the Radio Dept, Dum Dum Girls, A Place to Bury Strangers and Moon Duo, Young Prisms never quite reached the same heights of commercial success afforded to some of their peers. At its core, Drifter is about the human experience and finding a balance between the thrills and intensity of wanting - another person, a better life - and the quiet rewards of finding peace in domesticity, whatever shape that may take. As the band explains, the central chorus of the lead single “I believe in you, honeydew” changes meaning as you realize that you can’t fix things, but you can figure out how to believe in yourself.” In many ways, Drifter feels like a homecoming - throughout the flux of growing older and not necessarily growing up in the ways you expected, the band has found their footing with the time afforded when you finally take the pressure off. It’s a record that could have only been made with real passage of time, through the world-weary vantage point of a group of friends that can’t stop coming back to each other. "Drifter gave my inner demons permission to surface and form into something less despondent. I tend to draw inspiration from my more crippling moments, but as we’ve matured I've found happiness in practicality and maybe there’s a source in that, too." Recorded from June 2020 through February 2021 and produced by Shaun Durkan (Weekend, Soft Kill), Drifter, mastered by Heba Kadry (Slowdive, Bjork, Japanese Breakfast).
Deep in View is the debut album from former Ought members Tim Darcy (vocals, guitar) and Ben Stidworthy (bass) alongside Evan Cartwright (drums). Titled after philosopher Alan Watts’ anthology of the same name, the record is built on a foundation of elegant guitar grooves and knotty rhythms, offering commentary on modern life and technology through curious lyrical vignettes, where quotidian objects and scenes are never just as they seem. Deep In View is equally a product of introspective songwriting as it is a consideration of the abstract landmarks of an increasingly media-mediated society. It also presents the most concise and melodic songs Darcy and Stidworthy have written to date.. The album sounds streamlined and intentional, as the rhythms of the punchy and exuberant guitar parts, urgent basslines, and unexpected drum patterns all tangle with each other in an elegant dance. At the center of all these elements is Darcy, whose characteristically wry voice shifts from detached to decisive to distressed, throughout the album’s course. Both enigmatically dense in meaning but precisely intricate in sound, Deep in View is an album that sparks novel interpretations with every listen, like an art object that takes on new shape with each angle from which you hold it.
This year we reissued 3 of Tonstartssbandht’s early records. A snapshot from the earliest days of the brother's vast catalog, the record provides a distinct starting point from which the band has journeyed. Through years of constant touring, the duo’s songs have both taken shape and changed shape, yet maintained their long, languid tendencies, full of open musical questions and temporary answers. Far from what FADER calls “psychedelia’s most intriguing upstarts,” the band’s “time-warped explosion of folksy jams designed to transport you out of this world” (Pitchfork) have become their own distinct object. Each reissue provides a photograph that perfectly encapsulates Tonstartssbandht at a single moment in their evolution. Now critically-acclaimed statesmen who staked out previously unseen territory in experimental indie music of the early oughts, the reissued recordings feel both transcendent and intimate, a portal into lineage of music that feels laden with possibility and exploratory wonder. “We self-released these three albums in the early days of Tonstartssbandht, our cherished ‘Montreal era,’” the band explains. “Now, over a decade later, we are very happy to bring them back into print. For two of these albums (Dick Nights and Hymn) it is their first time on vinyl. They were made in the late aughts and early '10s, over a period of time when we first started to feel like a real band. Working at times both separately and together, we began to feed all of our energy into this new project, witnessing our own style begin to evolve, and putting our faith in each other that this is what we want to do."
‘Fairy Rust’, the new album from Wombo contemplates the spaces in-between, a meeting of the physicality of the land with the fluidity of the imagination, to uncanny effect. Across twelve tracks, sharpened guitar work, distorted freakouts and downtempo musings weave together a tapestry of sound that’s both intoxicating and effortless, where one minute it’s all deadpan post-punk energy, and the next Stereolab on a mountain top. The music functions as their own localized language that feels uniquely out-of-body. Conceived over the course of the last two years, the record is steeped in its own time warp of escapism, and influenced by fairy tales like the Brothers Grimm and Hans Christian Anderson that blend surreal situations with the mundane. Flirting with prog, pop and effervescent post-punk, Wombo’s forward-thinking approach set them apart as one of the most exciting up-and-coming bands right now. MIxed by Dave Vettraino (Dehd, Deeper, Lala Lala) & Mastered by Jonathan Schenke (Parquet Courts, Snail Mail, Pottery).
WOAH is the new EP by PACKS, available digitally on Fire Talk. The Toronto-based band’s “scruffy and bright lo-fi indie rock that sounds just as joyously off-the-cuff” (Nylon) also garnered praise from the likes of NME, Stereogum, FADER, Line of Best Fit and more, with Bandcamp calling debut record ‘Take the Cake’ “the sound of classic indie rock, as delivered by a promising new voice.” Fresh off supporting Good Morning on their full US tour, ‘WOAH’ sees Madeline Link refine her voice in this solo project that features some of her most inventive songwriting to date. Strategically sparse, these eight new songs accommodate another side of Link’s prolific creativity, with nuanced acoustic guitar and lyrics that puncture in their stark realism.
Pocket Fantasy, the sophomore album from Mamalarky is an instant-classic sunny-day record, imaginative and introspective, an enveloping listen of skyhigh hooks and keyboards that soar with joyful abandon. Its twelve kaleidoscopic tracks shapeshift aesthetically and thematically, through ideas about death and impermanence; love and gratitude; nature and technology; humor and hope. Heralded by Billboard, Nylon, The Fader and more, the new album expands on the unique sound of their self-titled debut which Pitchfork called “tenderly tangled indie rock”. On Pocket Fantasy some of the band’s purest pop tendencies collide with more warped and weird strains of quirky psych. It’s a treasure trove of playful grooves and zigzag riffs, a phenomenal album from a young group poised to carve their own place in the bins of your favorite record store.
Throughout the last decade, Strange Ranger have been crafting seamless indie music that feels both already classic and precisely of its time. From ‘Daymoon's strains of the Microphones by way of the Pacific Northwest-era indie scene to the dark elation and Cure-reminiscent stylings of ‘Remembering the Rockets’ they’ve become one of the rare standouts of a crop of bands that have managed to grow up with us. More than just a stopgap along that progression, the new mixtape entitled No Light In Heaven holds some of the band’s most experimental and ambitious work yet. Stitched together through a series of sessions at both a house in rural NY and Strange Ranger’s home studios in both Philadelphia and NYC (where Eiger and Woodman moved in 2021], the mixtape possesses something both abstract and astute; the product of a band in transition and a group of people making something effortlessly transcendental out of their new surroundings. With prior accolades from Pitchfork, the FADER, NPR, Uproxx, & more, Vice has heralded their music as “unpredictable and expansive, a thrilling document of a band with an ever-changing muse,” with “songs that are packed with hooks and an abundance of feeling” (Stereogum). This outpouring of evocative emotion makes the band’s more traditional song structures read like a new breed of pop music in its purest form. From “Needing You”’s effervescent euphoria to string-laden album closer “It’s You,” the record seamlessly fuses together a multitude of genres, where the industrial punch of “In Hell” sits alongside the chopped up vocals and melodic keys of “Get Right Up to the Mic.” The tracklist itself continues in this shapeshifting vein, with the addition of melancholic, drum machine-indebted bonus single “Raver Explanation" in the reissue. It’s another touchstone that adds further dimension to what already sounds like a fully-formulated framework of personal notes and embellishments. It’s also the beginning of a new chapter for Strange Ranger and a snapshot that pushes the boundaries of what rock music can sound like, a continued evolution that has made them one of the most exciting new bands of the late 2010s.
It's been nearly three years since Weeping Icon's thrilling self-titled debut was released on Fire Talk in 2019. A band who had long been bubbling under in the Brooklyn scene, their album was met with an immediate wave of excitement, with Bandcamp dubbing the record "rock music at it's most vital" and Pitchfork hailing it as "a complete vision", praising the collection of "noisy punk thrashers that are clever, incisive, and frequently very funny." Recorded and mixed by Ben Greenberg at Strange Weather before being mastered by Sarah Register (Pom Pom Squad, US Girls, Julien Baker), the new EP sees the band fine-tune their acerbic songwriting and propulsive rhythm section while also galvanizing into shoegazey noise to captivating effect. Lead single “Pigs, Shit, & Trash” accelerates Weeping Icon’s doomscape tendencies into heady rhythmic territory, with reverb-heavy vocals providing a new dimension to one of the more ferocious tracks in the band's catalog to date.
Open Tab 2022 Releases! Last year we launched Open Tab a new digital singles imprint. Highlighting one previously unreleased track from an artist monthly, each Open Tab release will also encapsulate a short Q&A profile and mix created by the artist. With an emphasis on new music, the imprint will further lend itself as a discovery tool for listeners worldwide as well as an opportunity to give a platform to artists whose work Fire Talk is enthusiastic about.
