A Million Easy Payments by Little Kid is out now! Posted 22 Feb 2024

A Million Easy Payments, the new album by Little Kid, is out now! Find it on your preferred streaming services HERE.

From Rosy Overdrive's review of the album:

"Little Kid are a Toronto folk band led by singer, lyricist, and multi-instrumentalist Kenny Boothby and also featuring drummer/guitarist Brodie Germain, bassist Paul Vroom, and drummer Liam Cole. A Million Easy Payments is the group’s debut for Orindal Records, and Boothby’s delicate but weighty writing is such a natural fit for the label that I was surprised to learn that they’d been releasing music independently since the early 2010s and weren’t just scooped up by the home of Dan Wriggins and Owen Ashworth and Ruth Garbus the minute they formed. Then again, A Million Easy Payments does feel like the work of a band that’s been at it for a while, both in its glove-like renditions of Boothby’s writing and in its impressively-amassed list of guest contributors (Aaron Powell of Fog Lake on vocals, Seth Engel of Options on percussion, Peter Gill of 2nd Grade on pedal steel, Eliza Niemi’s cello). The record’s eight songs range from swirling, multi-layered orchestral folk rock to breezy alt-country to quiet near-slowcore, with contributor Megan Dunn’s banjo, Niemi’s cello, and Boothby’s voice holding it together at the seams."

Watch the video for album track "Somewhere in Between," directed & animated by Aly Levy:

Some words from Little Kid's Kenny Boothby:

A Million Easy Payments is Little Kid’s seventh album, and it’s the one that took us the longest to finish. Our previous three albums were each written and recorded over the span of about a year, and when we started recording this one in 2019, we had plans to keep up that pace.

Of course, the pandemic came along a few months later and led to a lot of changes in our lives: financially, geographically, philosophically… Out of necessity, the album ended up being recorded and written in short bursts, often several months apart, for the next three-and-a-half years. The resulting album is one of our most eclectic, with songs that take influence from more far-reaching sources, recorded in varying styles, circumstances, and fidelities.

Yet, the album feels unified. The title A Million Easy Payments isn’t directly related to any particular song but it feels connected to all of them. The repetition in a lot of these song structures might resemble the mundanity and helplessness of seemingly infinite, regular payments. There’s a certain exhausted despair, mixed with a bit of humour. Some of these songs get more personal than ever, while some of them contain the most ridiculous jokes I’ve managed to work into my writing. The best ones have a bit of both.

Maybe it’s because it took so long to finish, or maybe it’s because it’s our best work yet, but I feel especially excited to finally share this album with you now. Thank you for listening.

Order your copy of A Million Easy Payments on vinyl, cassette or digital formats HERE.

Little Kid will play two A Million Easy Payments album release shows in March. Tickets are moving fast, so get yours now!
March 22, 2024- Toronto, ON @ Tranzac (w/ Advance Base & Eliza Niemi)
March 23, 2024- Montréal, QC @ Casa Del Popolo (w/ Advance Base & Laughing)

Listen to Little Kid's new single "Somewhere in Between" ahead of their February 23 album release Posted 13 Feb 2024

(Photo by Pat McKenna)

Toronto, ON indie rock band Little Kid have released "Somewhere in Between," the third & final advance single from their forthcoming album A Million Easy Payments (out February 23 on Orindal in the US & Gold Day in the UK). A fan favorite from the band's recent live sets, “Somewhere in Between” is as driving & catchy as any song you could hope to discover on alternative radio, showcasing the sunnier side of Little Kid. The single features sterling performances by Little Kid’s core band members Brodie Germain (drums & percussion), Paul Vroom (bass & percussion) and lyricist Kenny Boothby (vocals, guitar, piano & Casio SK-1).

From Little Kid's Kenny Boothby:

“Somewhere In Between” was the last song I wrote for A Million Easy Payments, and one of the
last ones we recorded. We had been struggling to make a coherent tracklist from the songs we had finished, and “Somewhere” kind of cracked it open for us. I think we needed a song with a bit more energy to lift the second side a bit.

The lyrics for this one came together quickly once I stumbled on the “somewhere in between” line to end the choruses. A lot of the songs on the album deal in extremes: “What Qualifies as Silence,” “Nothing at All,” “Bad Energy.” It felt important to have a song about the space between those types of binaries. The lyrics depict a person leaving an unsatisfying relationship. It’s not autobiographical, but I pulled a lot of images from my life and from my own (very satisfying) relationship with my partner.

The demo was about a minute longer, with two more choruses at the end, but my friend Keira correctly suggested cutting it down a little and leaning into the “radio-friendliness.” By Little Kid standards, this is a very short and snappy pop song. But when it came time to lay out the lyrics for the album insert, I realized it still has quite a lot of words because every chorus is different. I wrote this one pretty soon after “Bad Energy,” and I was clearly still on my work-in-as-many-internal-rhymes-as-possible kick. The rhythm of the melody really lent itself to that approach, and it’s a very satisfying song to sing.

This is the only song on the album that I did with only Brodie and Paul, who have made up the core of the Little Kid lineup for the better part of the last decade. We had a lot of fun recording it, and I think that comes through. We’ve played it at every show since we recorded it, and it’s always the one people ask about afterward. I am excited to finally share it ahead of the album release next Friday.

A Million Easy Payments “Brick” color vinyl LPs, classic black vinyl LPs & cassettes are shipping now! Order your copy HERE.

Dear Nora 2024 Solo tour Posted 08 Feb 2024

Dear Nora's Katy Davidson is hitting the road in April, playing solo shows all across the USA, including a few NE shows w/ Ruth Garbus Trio. Tickets are available HERE.

Listen to "Bad Energy" by Little Kid Posted 23 Jan 2024

Photo by Aisha Ghali

Toronto, ON indie rock band Little Kid have released "Bad Energy," the epic second single from their forthcoming album A Million Easy Payments (out February 23 on Orindal in the US & Gold Day in the UK). “Bad Energy” features performances by core band members Brodie Germain (drums, guitar), Paul Vroom (bass), Liam Cole (drums, percussion), and lyricist Kenny Boothby (vocals, guitar, piano, keyboards) as well as guest performances from Eliza Niemi (cello samples) and Aaron Powell of Fog Lake (backing vocals).

In Various Small Flames’ premiere of “Bad Energy,” writer Jon Doyle describes the single as "a song that follows Dylan’s ‘epic song’ tradition. And not only that. It also holds a similar gravitational body at its centre. However, as the title suggests, the uniting force here is not a specific event but instead pervasive mood. The evil seam which has always run through the centre of the American or Western project... Boothby lays down the wide-ranging subject matter with a careful hand, drawing on universal themes via a personal perspective to deepen every topic beyond its simple surface... This ability to vary the focal length of its perspective so gracefully is a signature of A Million Easy Payments."

From Little Kid's Kenny Boothby:

“Bad Energy” is a song with many verses. Each verse talks about the concept of “bad energy” from a different angle. My overall goal with this song was to implicate Christianity - or, at least, the twisted, Americanized version of it that I grew up with - in a lot of the evil going on in our world: war, genocide, rape culture, capitalist greed, resource exploitation, climate change… There is some personal stuff in there, and some pretty universal stuff.

I was pretty preoccupied with form when I wrote this one (and the other long ones on the record), and I think I was pulling a lot from Bob Dylan’s approach to his longest, most repetitive songs. David Byrne summed it up well: Dylan lifted the style of his “epic songs… from old folk ballads with their many many verses, but then he added a genetic mutation to the form — surreal imagery and metaphors rather than the traditional narratives of the old ballads” (from this Stereogum feature on Bob’s 80th birthday). I think Gillian Welch’s “I Dream A Highway” (my favourite song) might do this even better than Dylan’s best ones did.

Dylan paints some incredible pictures in those long folk songs, but I often find his rhymes unsatisfying. Or maybe too satisfying. I don’t like perfect rhymes. I spent a lot of time working as many imperfect internal rhymes as possible into each line of this song. It was a rewarding process, but it may have ruined songwriting for me because I no longer feel content rhyming only the last word of each line. Finishing songs has become much harder since I wrote “Bad Energy”... But I’m proud of what I was able to do with this one, and it’s generally the first song people talk about when they hear the new album.

Pre-order A Million Easy Payments on "brick" colored vinyl, classic black vinyl, cassette or digital formats HERE.

Vinyl & cassette orders begin shipping first week of February.

Little Kid will play two A Million Easy Payments album release shows in March:
March 22, 2024- Toronto, ON @ Tranzac (w/ Advance Base & Eliza Niemi)
March 23, 2024- Montréal, QC @ Casa Del Popolo (w/ Advance Base & Laughing)

Advance Base & Young Moon Midwest & Eastern U.S. Tour 2024 Posted 09 Jan 2024

In March, Orindal labelmates & twin-brained solo singer/songmakers Advance Base (USA) & Young Moon (NZ) are co-headlining a U.S. tour, bringing their drum machines, reverb pedals & charmingly melancholic poetry to cozy venues across the Midwest & Eastern states. Young Moon will be making their live debut in many of these cities & the tour will be joined by some truly delightful local support acts along the way. Tickets are on sale Friday!

ADVANCE BASE & YOUNG MOON
March 02, 2024- Chicago, IL @ Color Club (w/ Field Sleeper)
March 03, 2024- Columbus, OH @ Cafe Bourbon St (w/ Blithe Field)
March 04, 2024- Pittsburgh, PA @ Government Center (w/ From Red Sun)
March 05, 2024- Norfolk, VA @ Vessel Craft Coffee (w/ Seamonster)
March 06, 2024- Washington, DC @ Rhizome
March 07, 2024- Philadelphia, PA @ World Cafe Live (w/ Kristin Daelyn)
March 08, 2024- Brooklyn, NY @ Alphaville (w/ Matt Bachmann)
March 09, 2024- Boston, MA @ O'Brien's (w/ Emily Reo)
March 10, 2024- Portland, ME @ SPACE (w/ Greg Jamie)
March 11, 2024- Brattleboro, VT @ Epsilon Spires (w/ Bobbie)
March 12, 2024- Syracuse, NY @ The Song & Dance (w/ Jessie Elizabeth)
March 13, 2024- Buffalo, NY @ Mohawk Place
March 14, 2024- Toledo, OH @ Culture Clash Records (w/ Dani Cotter)
March 15, 2024- Ypsilanti, MI @ Ziggy's (w/ Great Arm & Adam Snyder)
March 16, 2024- Bloomington, IN @ Blockhouse (w/ Mike Adams at His Honest Weight)

After the U.S. tour with Young Moon, Advance Base will be playing a handful of Canadian dates, including a few shows with Orindal labelmates Little Kid. Here are those dates:

ADVANCE BASE IN CANADA
March 21, 2024- Windsor, ON @ Meteor (w/ Bitters)
March 22, 2024- Toronto, ON @ Tranzac (w/ Little Kid & Eliza Niemi)
March 23, 2024- Montréal, QC @ Casa Del Popolo (w/ Little Kid & Laughing)
March 24, 2024- Ottawa, ON @ The Rainbow Bistro

Listen to "Something to Say" by Little Kid Posted 28 Nov 2023

“Sad and beautiful music that lingers like a dream, like a memory, like time passing in a blur, on and on and on.” – GoldFlakePaint

Little Kid, the Toronto-based collaborative indie rock & alt-country project comprised of Brodie Germain (drums, guitar), Paul Vroom (bass), Megan Lunn (vocals, banjo, keyboard), Liam Cole (drums, percussion), and Kenny Boothby (vocals, guitar, piano, keyboards), are back with a mesmerizing new single, “Something to Say.” Check out the premiere over at Flood Magazine.


"Something to Say" is our first preview of Little Kid's upcoming album, A Million Easy Payments, out February 23, 2024 on Orindal (US) & Gold Day (UK). Through Kenny Boothby’s warm, conversational lyrics, “Something to Say” explores paranoia, gossip & casual drug use over a loose, folksy arrangement lead by Megan Lunn’s banjo.

Kenny Boothby founded the Little Kid project in 2009, self-releasing soft-spoken, homespun solo recordings that slowly attracted a passionately devoted fanbase as the project evolved into a propulsive & dynamic live band & recording collective.

Kenny Boothby on “Something to Say”:
“When we got together to record, it came together quickly: the version on the album is our very first take. We added a few overdubs but the vocals and the primary instruments were from that first run-through. It felt fitting to start the album with the first song we played together during the recording process.”

From A Million Easy Payments' album bio, written by Dan Wriggins:
“On Little Kid’s new album, A Million Easy Payments, the urgency in Kenny Boothby’s voice matches the stakes of his lyrics, epic ballads and reveries that come at life from all angles and exposures, driving at and a little over the limits of self-reflection. The band’s lilting folk rock arrangements carry Boothby’s stories, occasionally lifting them skyward with flurries of cello samples, pedal steel, flute, and electric piano. It’s a record of depression and frustration that doesn’t stew in piety or aestheticize pain, that also explodes with life. Fragile and abundant. It’s a record with blood in its veins.”

A Million Easy Payments is available for pre-order on “Brick” color vinyl, classic black vinyl cassette & digital formats. US customers can grab there copies HERE.

Customers outside of the US should pre-order their copies of A Million Easy Payments HERE.

In March, Little Kid will play two A Million Easy Payments album release shows with Orindal labelmate Advance Base & special guests Eliza Niemi (Toronto) & Laughing (Montreal). Tickets are on sale now!

March 22, 2024- Toronto, ON @ Tranzac (w/ Advance Base & Eliza Niemi)
March 23, 2024- Montréal, QC @ Casa Del Popolo (w/ Advance Base & Laughing)

Advance Base Christmas Tour Posted 17 Nov 2023

Christmas songs have appeared throughout Owen Ashworth’s recorded output for the better part of two decades, from Casiotone for the Painfully Alone’s 2016 fan favorite “Cold White Christmas,” a song about a young college graduate too stubborn to go home for Christmas, to Advance Base’s latest Christmas single, “Christmas Steve,” about a suburban acid casualty who lives every day as though it's Christmas Eve. There have been enough Advance Base & Casiotone for the Painfully Alone Christmas songs to necessitate a Christmas Mixtape (available as a free download from Advance Base’s Bandcamp). The album’s worth of songs that make up Christmas Mixtape don’t celebrate Christmas, but merely acknowledge the emotional weight of the holiday season & its sometimes dreary realities. Over sparkling electric piano & warm electronic drones, Ashworth sings of lonely Midwesterners negotiating complicated family dynamics while trudging past storefront Christmas displays on their way to dead-end jobs. The songs are funny as often as they’re sad, but always full of the rich humanity that fans have come to expect from Ashworth’s bruised balladry.

Every December, Owen Ashworth tours the Advance Base & Casiotone for the Painfully Alone Christmas Mixtape songs through different corners of the US & Canada, performing his melancholic acknowledgements of Christmas to holiday lovers & haters alike. Tickets for all dates on the Advance Base Christmas Tour arSe on sale now!

ADVANCE BASE CHRISTMAS TOUR 2023
Dec 06, 2023- Minneapolis, MN @ The Icehouse (w/ Walker Rider & J.E. Sunde)
Dec 07, 2023- Eau Claire, WI @ Stones Throw (w/ The Nunnery with Dosh)
Dec 08, 2023- Fargo, ND @ The Aquarium (w/ Waldemar, Ornamental Horticulture & Hope Chest)
Dec 09, 2023- CANCELED DUE TO ROAD CLOSURES
Dec 11, 2023- Lincoln, NE @ Duffy's Tavern (w/ Safe Space & dream journal)
Dec 12, 2023- Des Moines, IA @ Lefty's (w/ Pleasants & De Vant)
Dec 13, 2023- Milwaukee, WI @ Cactus Club (w/ Maximiano & Jacob Slade)
Dec 16, 2023- Oakland, CA @ Stork Club (w/ Dog Eyes & Claire Cronin)
Dec 17, 2023- Los Angeles, CA @ Resident (w/ Claire Cronin & Duffy x Uhlmann)
Dec 22, 2023- Chicago, IL @ Hungry Brain (w/ Boduf Songs)

“As both Advance Base and Casiotone for the Painfully Alone, Ashworth has traversed America, carefully detailing the coldest Christmases imaginable... It's all strangely comforting." - Alex Robert Ross, Vice

"Listeners won’t find reindeer, glad tidings, or piping cups of hot cocoa in Ashworth’s lyrics. Rather, his songs follow aimless twentysomethings, lonely housewives, and troubled siblings as they trudge through the slush, undone by the weight of expectation and the hope for a better year ahead. Anchoring it all is Ashworth’s instrument of choice: a Rhodes electric piano that often rings with the cold, clanging sound of church bells on Christmas eve, a sound that, like the holiday itself, carries certain connotations." - Randall Colburn, AV Club

Powerful Forces Beyond Our Understanding: Orindal Records Sampler Vol. 4 Posted 03 Nov 2023

Powerful Forces Beyond Our Understanding, Orindal Records' fourth label sampler, is out today! The compilation features tracks from the label's 2021, 2022 & 2023 releases, totaling over an hour of the best music Orindal Records has to offer.

Powerful Forces Beyond Our Understanding is available on CD & as a pay-what-you-want digital download. Purchase or download your copy HERE or find it on your favorite streamer HERE.

Tracklisting:
1. Ruth Garbus - Mono No Aware
2. Matt Bachmann - Apple Pie
3. Duffy x Uhlmann - Etch
4. Dear Nora - sinaloan restaurant
5. Jill Whit - Internet Cowboy
6. Nicholas Krgovich - Cup Full
7. Wednesday (ft. Zach Romeo) - I Am the Cosmos (Chris Bell cover)
8. Advance Base - Mr. Chill (Dan Wriggins cover)
9. Young Moon - Deep Ecology
10. Macie Stewart - Maya, Please
11. Lisa/Liza - Held Together
12. Dan Wriggins - Going Away (Utah Phillips cover)
13. Claire Cronin - Feel This
14. Karima Walker - how it falls apart
15. Robert Stillman - No Good Old Days
16. Annie Hart - The Earth Loves You Back
17. Tara Jane O'Neil - A Sunday 2020

Cover art by Claire Cronin
Compilation by Owen Ashworth

𝘿𝙤𝙪𝙗𝙡𝙚𝙨 by Duffy x Uhlmann is out now! Posted 22 Sep 2023

Doubles, the debut album from Los Angeles-based instrumental duo Duffy x Uhlmann, is out now!

A testament to the wordlessness of their musical intimacy, Meg Duffy and Gregory Uhlmann (Hand Habits, Perfume Genius) take up their guitars in order to make an imprint of the slowness and presence of their improvisational practice. They weave together a sonic meditation, embracing intuition and relying on trust.

Find Doubles on your favorite streaming service HERE.

Purchase Doubles on black & white marble vinyl, classic black vinyl, smoky shell cassette & digital formats HERE.

Cyrena Touros of NPR Music recommended Doubles on the latest episode of the All Songs Considered podcast:

"They're both guitarist & they work off of each other in this really beautiful way. They use repetition as this framework of the first half of the album & slowly expand it outward as they become more playful & warm. I think it really rewards attentive listening by design."

More praise for Duffy x Uhlmann:

"The two guitarists play off one another with a tempered rhythm, showcasing the skill of seasoned veterans." - Pitchfork

"Pensive and hypnotic" - Stereogum

Watch Duffy x Uhlmann rehearse Doubles album track "Etch":

Robert Stillman- 𝙍𝙖𝙞𝙣𝙗𝙤𝙬 (2023 𝙀𝙙𝙞𝙩𝙞𝙤𝙣) 160 gram vinyl shipping now Posted 13 Sep 2023

Rainbow, Robert Stillman's beloved 2016 Orindal debut, is finally back in print on 160 gram classic black vinyl! Pressed by our friends at Smashed Plastic right here in Chicago, this new & improved edition was manufactured from brand new lacquers cut by original mastering engineer Matthew Barnhart at Chicago Mastering Service. Rainbow has never sounded so good!

While supplies last, vinyl orders of Rainbow (2023 Edition) will ship with 11 x 17 posters from the album's original 2016 release. Order your copy HERE.

What Stillman does so well, is to create a fragile dreamworld within his music where darkness meets light and vice-versa. His complex arrangements bely an honesty that is rarely heard these days, poetic in its beauty. Bringing together ideas and building stylistic melodies upon one another, he uses piano, keyboards, drums and tenor saxophone, to highlight just a few instruments, creating thought-provoking pieces of music. Subtle and beautifully crafted, each moment is a work of art unto itself. — Mike Gates, UK Vibe

Rainbow does feature moments of swooning melancholy — see the haunting opening ballad, "Ruthie In May” — but its most common mood is one of uplift, heard on the hymnal “As he walked into the field,” and the looping, playful “Warren is a great car.” Even when the album doesn’t directly reference the spiritual jazz movement, as it does on the closing song, “Epilogue,” Stillman sounds as if he’s drawing on a deep reserve of sacred conviction. — Jason Woodbury, Aquarium Drunkard

Listen to "In the Spirit of Fair Play" by Duffy x Uhlmann Posted 06 Sep 2023

“In the Spirit of Fair Play,” the second & final advance single from Duffy x Uhlmann's debut album Doubles, is now streaming everywhere.

Post- Trash premiered the single with a hypnotic animated visualizer by Christina Huang. Post-Trash's Jack Solomon writes:

“In the Spirit of Fair Play” is characteristically sparse, but it’s one of the album’s quickest moments, both in tempo and length. The two musicians lock into each other with country-ish chicken-picked arpeggios, establishing a rolling groove. The piece doesn’t have (or need) much in the way of sections, as the guitarists take one idea and let it develop. The music peters out about as naturally as it rises, and even with such a brief run time, it says all it needs to say.

Speaking about the song, the duo shared:

“Conceived initially as a 15 minute long acoustic improvisation in a cold garage in Northern California and manipulated down into a dancey after thought, the closer track from 𝘿𝙤𝙪𝙗𝙡𝙚𝙨 is into a testament to processing. ‘In the Spirit of Fair Play’ speaks to seeing things from all sides, and challenges our biases about what something can become, the ever unavoidable unknown.”

Doubles vinyl & tapes are currently in stock & ready to ship, so pre-order your copy now to receive it before the September 22 release date!

Or, if you'll be in Los Angeles this Sunday (September 10th), you can also purchase your copy of Doubles direct from Duffy x Uhlmann when they make their live debut at 2220 Arts + Archives! Orindal Records labelmates Dear Nora & Ruth Garbus will round out this amazing bill. Get your tickets HERE.

𝘼𝙡𝙞𝙫𝙚 𝙋𝙚𝙤𝙥𝙡𝙚 by Ruth Garbus is out now! Posted 25 Aug 2023

Alive People, the wondrous new album by Ruth Garbus, is out now! Find it on your preferred streaming service HERE.

From Rosy Overdrive's review:
"Brattleboro, Vermont’s Ruth Garbus has released a half-dozen or so albums and EPs since their 2006 debut album, Ruthie’s Requests. Their newest record, Alive People, is their first since 2019’s Kleinmeister, and (reflectent of its title) was record live last year at 10 Forward in Greenfield, Massachusetts. With help from bassist/synth player elie mcafee-hahn, guitarist Julie Bodian, and vocalist Julia Tadlock, Garbus performs a set of slow-moving, synth-and-guitar-led songs containing elements of folk and pop but without cleanly falling into either category. Interspersed between nine “proper” songs, improvisational pieces of music and a brief spoken word piece from Tadlock round out Alive People by particularly capturing the live and public nature of its initial recording."

From Pitchfork's preview:
"The experimental folk songwriter Ruth Garbus announced her new album, Alive People, with two singles, “Mono No Aware” and “Healthy Gamer.” The latter is a meditation on gaming culture, searching for meaning in the “digital thunderdome,” a pursuit with which Garbus sympathizes over penetrating keyboard pulses and a metronomic drum machine. (Garbus herself has “only played Ocarina of Time,” she conceded in a press release, but found it a “wonderful experience.”) The rest of the Kleinmeister follow-up combines wry ballads and self-help pearls over playful guitar and synth."

Order your copy of Alive People on cotton candy pink vinyl LP, classic black vinyl LP, compact disc or digital formats HERE.

Finally, Ruth Garbus is playing three album release shows in California, including a September 10 Orindal Records showcase in Los Angeles with Dear Nora & Duffy x Uhlmann (the new instrumental project by Meg Duffy & Gregory Uhlmann of Hand Habits). Don't miss Ruth!

RUTH GARBUS LIVE & IN PERSON
Sept 02, 2023- Oakland, CA @ Martial Arts (w/ Stephen Steinbrink's Disappearing Coin Band)
Sept 03, 2023- Santa Cruz, CA @ 823 Hanover St (2PM-5PM garden show w/ Garden of Spaces & Leshy)
Sept 10, 2023- Los Angeles, CA @ 2220 Arts & Archives (w/ Dear Nora & Duffy x Uhlmann)