If It's Too Loud...

Photo by Alexa Viscius Lately Squirrel Flower has been delving into a more rock based sound, and Ella Williams' latest single fits that sound perfectly. "Intheskatepark" could have been your standard folk-adjacent indie rock song, especially as Williams' vocals seem to be more along the lines of singer-songwriter style music than a hard rocker. But there's this fuzzed out guitar throughout the entire song that isn't quite grunge or punk, but does dance right along the line of those genres. It gives the song an indie rock and DIY feel we haven't typically heard with Squirrel Flower. Ella Williams says of her latest single: “I wrote this song in 2019 on a little toy synthesizer. To me, this song is everlasting summer — even as things change, seasons, feelings, relationships, you can still try and feel the perfect lightness of summer, of a new crush, of a pop riff. It's best listened to while biking around in the sunshine.” You can listen to "Inthesk...

Photo by Alexa Viscius Squirrel Flower (aka Chicago based artist Ella Williams) has been making indie folk for a while, but her latest singles show her moving in a more rock oriented direction. Last month's "Full Time Job" could best be described as neo-grunge. Her latest, "Alley Light," takes a step back a bit but is still a rock song. It has the anthemic feel of a Bruce Springsteen song backed by a wall of indie rock noise. It's quite removed from Williams' previous music, but it still fits right in with the albums that came before. It's a bit of an unexpected turn while still sounding like a song from Squirrel Flower. Ella Williams says of her new single: "This song is about the man in me, or a man who I love, or a man who is a stranger to me. The video references a neo-noir Chicago heist movie where they use this thermal metal contraption to cut into a safe. They run around the city making sparks fly and getting up to no good. I wanted to do...

Photo by Alexa Viscius It's pretty obvious we're enamored with the music of Squirrel Flower. Ella Williams' musical project has long been a favorite around here, and her style of indie folk meets indie rock is perfect for us. Her latest single, "Full Time Job," fits right into Squirrel Flowers' catalog, but this is decidedly a rock song. Once the guitars kick in, the song becomes much more neo-grunge than indie folk. It's an unexpected stylistic change, but one that makes perfect sense. "Full Time Job" rocks more than what we're used to from Williams while still sounding like a Squirrel Flower song. You can watch the video for "Full Time Job" below. Tomorrow's Fire is due out October 13 on Polyvinyl, and is available for pre-order here . For more on Squirrel Flower, check out the artist's website . Upcoming tour dates are below the video. Fri. July 21 - Lexington, KY @ The Burl * Wed. July 26 - St. Louis, MO @ Off Broadway *...

Photo by Alexa Viscius I've been a fan of Squirrel Flower since first hearing "Red Shoulder" back in 2019, and I've been trying to see her live since then. Obviously a global pandemic made that quite difficult for a long time, but it seems like she's played the Boston area a bunch of times, but it just has never quite worked out for me. Once she announced a solo tour with Horse Jumper of Love was coming to Providence, and it worked out for my schedule, I knew I had to make it. NOVA ONE getting added as local support ended up being a huge bonus for me. NOVA ONE opened the evening with a set consisting of mostly new songs from their upcoming album due out on March 10. Roz Raskin made a comment that they were a bit nervous since it was new songs, but there was no reason to be. Breaking the evening's theme of solo performances (Raskin was joined by a second guitarist), songs like "crying" and "dangerous" held up with more well known ones. Seein...

Photo by Alexa Viscius Formerly of Boston and now residing in Chicago, Squirrel Flower (aka Ella Williams) has reworked a song from last year's Planet EP  for a new single. "Your Love is a Disaster" was a heartwrenching, stripped down track filled with hypnotic reverb. "Your Love" is a full band rocker. There is still the same haunting quality in Williams' vocals, but the newer version is driven by drums and indie rock guitars infused with just the slightest twang. It's rare for an artist to redo a song and make it bigger, but Squirrel Flower has taken a fantastic song and given it just a little more oomph.  Ella Williams says of her new single: “This song is the big version of itself. I started playing it live with a full band last year and it was so fun I had to record it. Jake put down the incredible solo and voila the song was complete.“ You can listen to "Your Love" below. The song is available as a single via Polyvinyl. For more on Squirr...

Photo by Jesse Ward Despite releasing the excellent Planet (i) earlier this year, Squirrel Flower is set to release a new EP next month. Planet consists of self-recorded demos of songs that didn't make it to the album, songs that were recorded for the album but left off, and a Bjork cover. Upon listening to "ruby at dawn," these songs are hardly leftovers. It may be a little stripped down compared to Planet (i) , but this new song has everything we love from Squirrel Flower. It's a beautiful and haunting song with roots in indie rock, folk, and pop. It's one of Squirrel Flower's songs that puts Ella Williams' vocals out front, for good reason. Williams is particularly captivating on "ruby at dawn" with her voice just building throughout the song. You can listen to "ruby at dawn" below. Planet is due out January 28 on Polyvinyl. You can pre-order/pre-save the EP here . For more on Squirrel Flower, check out the artist's website . Upc...

Artist : Hurry Album : Fake Ideas Quick Thoughts : Hurry does a lot of great alt-rock, and has a few solid albums under their belt. Fake Ideas feels like an album from a band that has figured it out, and each song feels better than the last. It's a listen where I struggled in highlighting any specific songs, because they're all great, melodic alt-rock songs. Don't miss out. Songs of Note : "It's Dangerous," "A Fake Idea," "Slogging Through Summer" Artist : Lucy Dacus Album : Home Video Quick Thoughts : I don't think I'm speaking out of turn when I say that both Ken and I think "Night Shift" is a near-perfect song. So Lucy Dacus, with a great debut album, has a lot to live up to, and Home Video largely delivers. There are a lot of solid listens throughout, and it's thematically linked in many ways that was unexpected but welcome. This is definitely a better cohesive album than her debut, even if there is...

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...

I Was Born Swimming is a masterpiece of an album. Squirrel Flower (aka Ella Williams) hits so many of my checklists for great songs. False stops, tonal changes, slow builds from quiet, thoughtful songs into giant epics... it's all here. "I-80" starts off the album and feels like it could be multiple songs. Squirrel Flower combines modern folk and singer/songwriter elements with 90's style indie rock in ways that we've heard before from artists like Lucy Dacus, but is going off in her own direction and style with these songs. "Red Shoulder" is a great indication if you're going to love this album or not. It starts off with Williams' quiet, plaintive vocals and builds into this noisy rocker with her voice keeping the same tone throughout. And then there is "Streetlight Blues," which is my top song of 2020 according to Spotify. It crams an absolute epic, giant song into just over three minutes and thirty seconds.  Songs of note: "Red ...

Photo by Ebru Yildiz If you're as excited about this as I am, you've already pressed play on the widget below and are reading this while you listen. We've been fairly up front about our (very well deserved) gushing love for Squirrel Flower's album I Was Born Swimming, which was released earlier this year. We also obviously love Liz Phair's 1993 classic Exile In Guyville. Seeing as we love Squirrel Flower, Liz Phair, and covers, what more can we want than Squirrel Flower covering "Explain It to Me?" It's even a fantastic choice of a cover, as "Explain It to Me" is a wildly underappreciated song from a classic album. The original is a brilliantly minimal classic, made up of mostly just Phair and her guitar. Squirrel Flower somehow make the song even more minimal, with even less guitar but with Ella Williams looping vocals to self harmonize. You can listen to Squirrel Flower's take on "Explain It to Me" below. The song is available...

We've been ridiculously obsessed with Squirrel Flower's album I Was Born Swimming since it was released earlier this year. One of the few good things about 2020 is that artist's are more likely to release extra songs, particularly covers. Back in May we received an additional single from Squirrel Flower, and now we have a cover of Tom Waits's immortal "Hold On." Sure, "Hold On" is one of the few obvious Tom Waits covers, but there's a reason: It's an impossibly great song. Ella Williams brings her unique vocals to the cover, adding a nearly haunting feel to the song accentuated by the sparse music that deviates from the original completely. Instead of the harsh folk of the original, Squirrel Flower gifts us with a bizarro dream pop rendition. You can listen to Squirrel Flower's take on "Hold On" below. The song is currently available via Bandcamp. For more on Squirrel Flower, check out the artist's website . hold on (to...

Photo by Maria Gelsomini In what might be the best song to possibly cover in 2020, Squirrel Flower has released a cover of Strand of Oak's "Shut In" from 2014's HEAL. For Squirrel Flower's version, the upbeat pop anthem has been stripped way down to a more intimate, acoustic song dripping with reverb. At least partly done out of quarantine necessity, the change of style truly fits our "unprecedented times" perfectly. You can hear the feeling of going stir crazy mixed with anxiety on steroids in Ella O'Connor Williams's voice. You can listen to Squirrel Flower's version of "Shut In" below. It is included on Co-Mission: An Artist Relief Compilation, Vol. 2 from Folkadelphia. According to the post on Bandcamp, " Any and all proceeds raised from donations for Co-Mission will be used to commission and fund more home recordings from in-need musicians and artists." You can find the compilation, which also features contribut...