{"title":"Squirrel Flower","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eSquirrel Flower is an American indie rock\/folk rock project and alias of singer\/songwriter Ella Williams. Based in Boston, Massachusetts, Ella grew up in Arlington. With a unique blend of indie and folk influences, Squirrel Flower's music captivates listeners with its heartfelt lyrics and melodic sound.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHaving gained recognition for her introspective songwriting and soulful vocals, Squirrel Flower has become a prominent figure in the indie music scene. Her captivating performances and raw emotion resonate with audiences, making her a must-listen artist for fans of alternative music.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWhether she's performing solo or collaborating with other talented musicians, Squirrel Flower continues to push boundaries and create music that speaks to the depths of the human experience. With each release, she solidifies her place as one of the most exciting voices in contemporary indie rock\/folk rock.\u003c\/p\u003e","products":[{"product_id":"tomorrows-fire","title":"Tomorrow's Fire","description":"\u003cp\u003eAn hour south of Chicago, along the shores of Lake Michigan, sits the Indiana Dunes, a protected expanse of shoreline recently designated a National Park. When Ella Williams first visited the Dunes, she was awed by the juxtaposition of its natural splendor within the surrounding industrial corridor of Northwest Indiana. “Every time I go there, it changes my life,” she says, without a hint of hyperbole. “You stand in the marshlands and to your left is a steel factory belching fire and to your right is a nuclear power plant.” Across the water, Chicago waits, its glistening towers made possible by the same steel forged here. For as long as she’s been making music, Ella Williams’ songs have been products of the environments they’re written in, born out of the same world they so vividly hold a mirror to. This environment is where her magnetic new album, \u003ci\u003eTomorrow’s Fire\u003c\/i\u003e, lives. \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe music Williams makes as Squirrel Flower has always communicated a strong sense of place. Herself-released debut EP, 2015’s early winter songs from middle america, was written during her first year living in Iowa, where the winter months make those of her hometown, Boston, seem quaint by comparison. Since that first offering, Squirrel Flower amassed a fanbase beyond the Boston DIY scene with several releases. The most recent, Planet (i), was informed by climate anxiety, while the subsequent Planet EP marked an important turning point in Williams’ prolific career; the collection of demos was the first self-produced material she’d released in some time. With a renewed confidence as a producer, she helmed \u003ci\u003eTomorrow’s Fire \u003c\/i\u003eat Drop of Sun Studios in Asheville alongside storied engineer Alex Farrar (Wednesday, Indigo de Souza, Snail Mail). Working tirelessly through long studio sessions with no days off, Williams and Farrar tracked many of the instruments, building the songs together during the first week, and then assembled a studio band that included Matt McCaughan (Bon Iver), Seth Kauffman (Angel Olsen band), Jake Lenderman (aka MJ Lenderman),and Dave Hartley (The War on Drugs) lending their contributions. \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eWhile her early work is often hushed and minimal, there has always been a barely contained storm in Williams’ music. \u003ci\u003eTomorrow’s Fire\u003c\/i\u003e is that storm breaking open, a rock record, made to be played loud. As if to signal this shift, the album opens with the soaring “i don’t use a trash can,” a re-imagining of the first ever Squirrel Flower song. Here, she nods to those early shows, when her voice, looped and minimalistic,had the power to silence a room. Lead singles “Full Time Job” and “When a Plant is Dying,” narrate the universal desperation that comes with living as an artist and pushing up against a world where that’s a challenging thing to be. The frustration in Williams’ lyrics is echoed by the music’s uninhibited, ferocious production. “There must be more to life\/ Than being on time,” she sings on the latter’s towering chorus. Lyrics like that one are fated to become anthemic, and Tomorrow’s Fire overflows with them. “Doing my best is a full time job\/ But it doesn’t pay the rent” Williams sings on “Full Time Job” over careening feedback, her steady delivery imposing order over a song that is, at its heart, about a loss of control. \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe album glides effortlessly over emotional states of being, lightness and heaviness. “Intheskatepark,”written in the summer of 2019, four years later sounds like a dispatch from a bygone world. The scuzzypop production nods to Guided By Voices, as Williams sings about crushing under summer sunshine. “I had a light,” Williams repeats mournfully on “Stick,” her voice at once aching and powerful, a sense of rage fermenting as the song goes on, until it explodes in the second half. “This song is about not wanting to compromise, just being at the end of your rope,” Williams says. “Stick” harnesses that exasperation and turns it into a battle cry for anyone who is exhausted but feels like they’re not working hard enough,who had to get a job they hate to make rent, who lost their light and can’t seem to find it again. Finding that light is important. “I feel like I lost myself for a bit”, Williams says, “trying hard to be what I thought people wanted me to be, suffocated by the pressure of being perceived. Now, I want to be unapologetic, uncompromising.’ Role models like Kim Gordon, Patti Smith, and PJ Harvey, alongside inspiration from contemporaries and friends led Williams to the most uncompromising version of her music. \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eWilliams also cites artists like Jason Molina, Tom Waits, and Springsteen as fonts of inspiration for \u003ci\u003eTomorrow’s Fire,\u003c\/i\u003e musicians who knew how to write into the mind of a stranger, who could tell you the story of a life in under four minutes. “The songs I write are not always autobiographical, but they’re always true,” Williams says. Nowhere is Springsteen heard more clearly than on “Alley Light,” an electrifying song narrated from the perspective of a down-on-his-luck guy whose car is fated to die anyday now and whose girl just wants to escape. There’s a vintage sheen to it, but “Alley Light” captures the very familiar feelings of loss that come with living in a 21st century city, where you blink and the store fronts change. Williams notes, ‘It’s about a man in me, or a man who I love, or even a man who is a stranger to me.’ \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eSpringsteen also leads back to one the strongest recurring themes for Williams both on this album and throughout her career, family. With her musical family members often playing on previous records,‘Canyon’ tells the story of Williams’ mother. As a teen, sneaking out to go to a Springsteen concert with her boyfriend. “She was a rebel,” Williams says, “I always learn more about myself through stories of her life and I wanted to honor that”. The biggest her sound has ever been, ‘Canyon’ echoes like rocks fallingfrom cliffs, breaking apart. The vast natural landscape meeting industrialism–field recordings of metal grinding taken by her sibling at their job as a steelworker layered with the wall of guitar. \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003eTomorrow’s Fire\u003c\/i\u003e might sound like the title of an apocalypse album, but it’s not. It references the title of a novel Williams’ great-grandfather Jay wrote about a troubadour, named for a line by the Medieval Frenchpoet Rutebeuf, a troubadour himself: “Tomorrow’s hopes provide my dinner \/ Tomorrow’s fire must warm tonight.” Centuries on, the quote spoke to Williams, who describes the fire as a tool to wield in the face of nihilism. Tomorrow’s Fire is what we take solace in, what we know will make us feel okay in the morning, how we light the path we’re walking on.“We may have to try a little harder every year to be playful, to shove away the bitterness” Williams says of the lessons learned from her ancestor, “but it’s always worth it to remain playful and hopeful, even if the stakes are really fucking high”. \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eClosing track ‘Finally Rain’ speaks to the ambiguity of being a young person staring down climate catastrophe. The last verse is an homage to her relationship with her loved ones - ‘We won’t grow up.’ A stark realization, but also a manifesto. To be resolutely committed to a life of not ‘growing up,’ not losing our wonder while we’re still here. \u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Full Time Hobby","offers":[{"title":"Orange LP","offer_id":50389409333579,"sku":"2047466","price":29.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"CD","offer_id":50389408809291,"sku":"2047464","price":10.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"LP","offer_id":50389408973131,"sku":"2047465","price":22.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0867\/1120\/6219\/files\/Squirrel_Flower_-_Tomorrows_Fire_CoverArt_f74fbc4a_thumbnail_4096.jpg?v=1726359808"},{"product_id":"planet-i","title":"Planet (i)","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003ePlanet (i)\u003c\/i\u003e is the follow-up to 2020’s I Was Born Swimming, for which MOJO described her as \"one of 2020’s most engaging new artists\" and she was made a 'One To Watch' by The Observer. \u003ci\u003ePlanet (i)\u003c\/i\u003e is a world entirely of Williams’ making. The title came first to her as a joke: it’s her made-up name for the new planet people will inevitably settle and destroy after leaving Earth, as well as the universe imagined within her music. The record is a love letter to disaster in every form imaginable - these songs fully embrace a planet in ruin. Buoyed by her steadfast vision and propelled by her burning comet of a voice, \u003ci\u003ePlanet (i)\u003c\/i\u003e is at once a refuge, an act of self-healing, and a musical reflection of Squirrel Flower’s inner and outer worlds. \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eWilliams wrote most of the songs on Planet (i) before the COVID-19 pandemic, but disaster looms large in its DNA. Susceptible to head injuries having played a lot of sports in her youth, Williams received three concussions from 2019-2020. Amidst the chaos of touring internationally during her own healing process, she began weaving threads between her physical and personal sense of ruin and her lifelong fear of the elements: of being swept up by storms, floods, and the deep ocean. \"To overcome my fear of disasters\", Williams says, \"I had to embody them, to stare them down\". This journey of decay and healing is the lifeblood of \u003ci\u003ePlanet (i)\u003c\/i\u003e. Once quarantine set in, Williams began to produce demos in her room, amassing a collection of more than 30 recordings. Feeling a sense of artistic synchronicity over international phone calls with producer Ali Chant (PJ Harvey, Perfume Genius), and with newfound covid antibodies, Williams flew to Bristol, UK in the fall of 2020 to record \u003ci\u003ePlanet (i)\u003c\/i\u003e at Chant’s studio, The Playpen. \"We had this shared creative language\", she recalls, \"and the recording process was, like my demo process, very sculptural. Instead of recording live with a full band, we built this record layer by layer, experimenting, taking risks\". \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eWhile Williams and Chant played most of the instruments on the record, Bristol drummer Matt Brown and Portishead’s Adrian Utley also joined their sessions. When Chant suggested the idea of backup vocals, Williams, whose voice had until now stood alone in her songs, enthusiastically enlisted friends and family to join her remotely with their voices and instruments; Tenci’s Jess Shoman, Tomberlin, Katy J. Pearson, Jemima Coulter, Brooke Bentham, and her brothers Nate and Jameson Williams, as well as her father Jesse. The songs on \u003ci\u003ePlanet (i)\u003c\/i\u003e are Squirrel Flower’s instruments for connection: with the people in her life, her collaborators, audiences, and ancestors; a lineage of artists whose spirits continue to inform her art. At the heart of this record is an insistence on connection and healing in the face of catastrophe. On \u003ci\u003ePlanet (i)\u003c\/i\u003e, Squirrel Flower reveals a bright and uncompromising vision, confident in her powers of self-healing and growth. No matter what the disaster ahead of or within her looks like, and no matter how she shape-shifts to meet it, Squirrel Flower will always be a world of her own, a space-rock flying down the road in flames and flat tires.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eLP++ and Book - 42-page, full-colour, perfect bound book chronicling the photos, handwritten notes and drafts of lyrics which emerged during the creation of Squirrel Flower's sophomore album \u003ci\u003ePlanet (i)\u003c\/i\u003e. All the notes and photos are taken from Ella's notebooks or private collection of photographs, providing an intimate and honest insight into Ella's creative process. Limited to a print-run of 300.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Full Time Hobby","offers":[{"title":"Orange | LP","offer_id":50457648103755,"sku":"1118095","price":35.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"1118096-GB","offer_id":50457650626891,"sku":"1118096","price":8.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"Blue | LP","offer_id":50457654165835,"sku":"1118044","price":17.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"CD","offer_id":50457645089099,"sku":"1118041","price":14.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0867\/1120\/6219\/files\/dfbccfd9-7995-4082-94c9-fbd374bfed0b_thumbnail_4096.jpg?v=1727207181"},{"product_id":"i-was-born-swimming","title":"I Was Born Swimming","description":"\u003cp\u003eSquirrel Flower - the moniker of Ella O’Connor Williams - releases \u003ci\u003eI Was Born Swimming\u003c\/i\u003e, her debut album, on Full Time Hobby. The album’s title was inspired by Williams’ birth on August 11th 1996 - the hottest day of the year - born still inside a translucent caul sac membrane, surrounded by amniotic fluid. Throughout the 12 songs, landscapes change and relationships shift. The album’s lyrics feel like effortless expressions of exactly the way it feels to change — abstract, sad and hopeful.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eSquirrel Flower’s music is ethereal and warm, gushing with emotional depth that the listener can step into like a warm bath. The band on\u003ci\u003e I Was Born Swimming\u003c\/i\u003e plays with delicate intention, keeping the arrangements natural and light. The album was tracked live, with few overdubs, at The Rare Book Room Studio in New York City with producer Gabe Wax (Adrienne Lenker, Palehound, Cass McCombs). The musicians were selected by Wax and folded themselves into the songs effortlessly. At the heart of the album lives Williams’ massive, haunted vibrating voice and melancholic, soulful guitar.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe sounds expand and contract over diverse moods, cutting loose on the heavier riffs of \u003ci\u003eRed Shoulder. \"Red Shoulder\u003c\/i\u003e is a song about destabilization and dissociation,” explains Williams. “Something soft and tender becomes warped and sinister, turning into sensory overload and confusion. How can something so lovely turn painful and claustrophobic? The song ends with a heavy and visceral guitar solo, attempting to reground what went awry.\"\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eWilliams comes from a deep-rooted musical family tree. Her grandparents were classical musicians who lived in the Gate Hill Co-op, an artistic cooperative from upstate New York that grew out of Black Mountain College. Ella’s father, Jesse Williams, spent most of his life as a touring jazz and blues performer and educator, and lends his bass playing to the album (listen for his smooth solo on \u003ci\u003eHeadlights\u003c\/i\u003e). Growing up in a family of hard working musicians fostered a love of music and started Williams down her own musical path. As a child, Williams adopted the alter ego of Squirrel Flower. A couple years later, she began singing with the Boston Children’s Chorus while studying music theory and teaching herself to play the guitar. As a teen, she discovered the Boston DIY and folk music scenes and began writing, recording, and performing her own songs, now returning to the name Squirrel Flower as her chosen moniker. By the time Williams had begun performing live, recording and touring, she was already well on her way to the signature artful songcraft heard on\u003ci\u003e I Was Born Swimming\u003c\/i\u003e.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Full Time Hobby","offers":[{"title":"Blue | LP","offer_id":50482355241291,"sku":"1087351","price":22.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"Black LP","offer_id":50482353930571,"sku":"1079123","price":17.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0867\/1120\/6219\/files\/4c64df97-e19a-4c37-8ebf-7b3f896b60d6_thumbnail_4096.jpg?v=1727551332"},{"product_id":"contact-sports-and-bonus-tracks","title":"Contact Sports and Bonus Tracks","description":"\u003cp\u003eUK Exclusive. \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eFor fans of Big Thief, Mitski and Sharon Van Etten. Squirrel Flower is the alias 21-year-old Ella Williams adopted for herself when writing and performing songs as a child. Since those early days her movement through music has progressed at a staggering pace and now a reissue of her second EP \u003ci\u003eContact Sports\u003c\/i\u003e, available on vinyl for the first time. \u003ci\u003eContact Sports\u003c\/i\u003e is a perfectly formed collection of songs about relationships; intimacy, dependency, betrayal and place set to the unique backdrop of the American Midwest. The first three songs represent the push and pull of love and intimacy while the last three are more meditative, more place-based. From the fulsome guitar and visceral, cathartic breakdowns of lead single \u003ci\u003eConditions\u003c\/i\u003e to the carefully layered beauty of \u003ci\u003eHands Melt\u003c\/i\u003e, this varied collection frequently impresses with its maturity and craftsmanship. Lyrically too, tracks like the fuzzy, dimly-lit euphoria of \u003ci\u003eDaylight Savings\u003c\/i\u003e are spellbinding in their turn of phrase as Williams sings “I know we’ve gained an hour, but I feel like we’ve lost two”.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003ehttps:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/Fg7UPNf6MTU\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"2,000 Pigs","offers":[{"title":"LP","offer_id":50490005291339,"sku":"1035730","price":11.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0867\/1120\/6219\/files\/a85a50f0-2183-4ee9-b8f7-86646f2d49b2_thumbnail_4096.png?v=1727648824"},{"product_id":"say-a-prayer-to-the-gods-of-getting-going","title":"Say a Prayer to the Gods of Getting Going","description":"\u003cp\u003eOn Squirrel Flower’s new album, \u003cem\u003eSay a Prayer to the Gods of Getting Going\u003c\/em\u003e, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist, Ella Williams, delivers her most transcendent and instantly classic record to date. It’s an album full of hope and beauty, with themes of staying in constant motion, electric love, and knowing when to leave, but also when to stick around. \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAfter touring in support of 2023’s Tomorrow’s Fire, Williams remained on the road, following instinct over itinerary.  Each stop became a site of creative renewal. She ended up recording the album at two locations: a makeshift studio in rural Wisconsin, and at Drop of Sun in Asheville, NC, featuring friends and collaborators such as Dimitri Giannpolous (Horse Jumper of Love), Sofia Jensen (Free Range), Clay Frankel (Twin Peaks, Hazel City), and many others along the way.  \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eStandouts like “Reelin” and “Highway Woman” showcase the push and pull of life as a musician; the constant need for embarking on a hero's journey in search of reflection and freedom. Others like “Not Me” and “Cleveland” are classic Squirrel Flower, but with a sharper and more concentrated writing style paired with some of Williams’ strongest vocal delivery of her career.  \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eMixed and co-produced by Alex Farrar (MJ Lenderman, Wednesday), \u003cem\u003eSay a Prayer to the Gods of Getting Going \u003c\/em\u003eis the sound of cosmic rebirth, looking behind to illuminate what’s ahead. “Pack your life and your guitar,” Williams sings on “Highway Woman.” “You can change it as you go. 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