If It's Too Loud...

Photo by Tonje Thilesen The latest song from Squirrel Flower starts off with a killer, menacing grunge era guitar riff. It's going to make you expect a Mudhoney or Soundgarden song. Instead, the song morphs into a gorgeous, chilled out Squirrel Flower song. That riff does linger underneath the song never quite letting it settle into folk or dream pop. "Flames and Flat Tires" keeps its very own sound that way. It's an intense and beautiful song, despite the underlying menace. Ella Williams (aka Squirrel Flower) explains the new song: “I wrote ‘Flames and Flat Tires’ on my second day of quarantine in Bristol, England ahead of recording. It was late August, hot, I was staying in a place that opened onto a party street, and every night I stayed up listening to the sounds of the revelers and the birds squawking and screaming until 6am, then all day watched people hanging laundry in their backyards through my kitchen window. This was one of those tunes that just falls out....

Photo courtesy of the artist The latest from Squirrel Flower defines everything we love about the musical moniker of Ella Williams. "I'll Go Running" may be a bit more straightforward of a folk adjacent indie rock track than we normally get from Squirrel Flower, but it's not lacking in the intensity. It's another slow builder, starting a bit more quiet and then ever so slowly building in volume and power. It's like Williams has taken the classic loud/quiet/loud indie rock template and just slowed it down. The way that "I'll Go Running" builds makes the song feel even more intense and vital.  In a press release, Ella Williams talks about the new song: "’I’ll Go Running’ is about the darker side of being an artist - the pressure to make things brand new, shocking, to give everything away and open yourself completely without always getting intentional listening and consumption in return. To be vulnerable to a knife. To be fresh, new, to give it...

Photo by Tonje Thilesen We've been huge fans of Squirrel Flower (aka Ella Williams) since she started releasing songs off her 2020 album I Was Born Swimming. That was my number six album of 2020, and even though it's been out for a little over a year, she's been steadily releasing singles and covers since then. Somehow Williams has found time to make another album during everything else. "Hurt a Fly" is the first single off that album, and it's surprisingly upbeat sounding despite being recorded during 2020. As with songs off her previous album, "Hurt a Fly" skirts the genres of alt-pop and indie rock. If anything, the new song is a little more rock than most of her previous releases. It falls in line with a lot of mid 90's indie rockers like Liz Phair and Juliana Hatfield, but with a little more of a 2021 indie pop sheen applied. Ella Williams says of the new song: “‘Hurt A Fly’ is me embodying a persona of gaslighting, narcissistic soft-boy typ...