Doom Flamingo do a lot of stylistic time traveling on its single “303 Love.” Ross Bogan’s pulsing, ascending, distorted synth is like something out of a Daft Punk song and the commanding, sultry vocals of Kanika Moore are reminiscent of the R&B/soul of Sheila E. circa The Glamorous Life. The rhythm is all swinging, powerfully accented funk but the sound might be in the realm of synthwave especially with Thomas Kenney’s bombastic, processed guitar like the tasty licks from a 1980s pop song. It could all border on cheese with some of the throwback sensibilities because the musical alchemy works perfectly and the song feels like something very much in the moment and made for the modern dance floor. Listen to “303 Love,” might we assume it’s more a reference to a Roland bass synthesizer rather than the Colorado area code though that works too, on YouTube and follow Doom Flamingo which includes Ryan Stasik of Umphrey’s McGee fame at the links below.
Pink Lady Monster is a Denver-based band that began as a vehicle for singer/guitarist/keyboardist/synth player Simone’s songwriting but began to take on its current form once Savanna joined the group on bass and synth and Gabe settled in long term on drums. Its early music might be loosely be described as in the realm of psychedelic rock or dream pop but since it began actively performing live in early 2022, Pink Lady Monster has branched out and incorporated more ambient soundscapes into its aesthetic and now the project is seeking to leave behind its softer more mellow sounds in favor of musical ideas that eschew conventional structure and favor songwriting that while perhaps still accessible veers off standard genre styles. Those that have seen its entrancing shows of 2022 may be in for a bit of a sonic departure in 2023 going forward. What music from the band exists online are often more like Simone’s early sketches of songs and as interesting as they are the live band that emerged out of those recordings is more of a force with an undeniable mystique and creatively vibrant. One might compare the music of 2022 to the likes of Blonde Redhead in its moodier moments and like Broadcast once the synth became involved in mix but you’ll have to see for yourself what Pink Lady Monster has been crafting until it releases the album reflecting its current state of development.
Blacklist was a flagship band of Pieter Schoolwerth’s Wierd Records label, the imprint that perhaps best known for 2000s and early 2010s post-punk, shoegaze, industrial and noise. The group in its initial run from 2005-2011 released one full-length album Midnight Of The Century (2009) but even then was establishing itself as distinctly different from other bands lumped into the then emerging modern coldwave and post-punk scene that would lead to the current version of that movement. Blacklist incorporated elements of metal and clear, melodic vocals with crisp production. It’s astutely observed, politically aware lyrics one might even compare, given the music especially, to late 80s Queensryche or Vision Thing-period Sisters of Mercy. At that time a new uptick of fascism beyond the prevailing authoritarian swing of world politics was making itself known, blossoming toward the middle of the 2010s onward. After an extended hiatus Blacklist returned with Afterworld (Profound Lore Records, October 28, 2022). The new record builds upon while more or less reinventing its earlier sound somehow evoking shades of Comsat Angels, Fields of the Nephilim and the aforementioned with emotionally charged commentary on the world in this moment and the larger challenges human society faces with the environment, persistent social ills and political turmoil and inequality (all of which are deeply intermingled) but with a personal touch. The music doesn’t shy away from artful melodrama and in not adhering to trendy post-punk or metal aesthetics. The production on the album is multi-resonant and feels like a time-bridging sound of 80s rock and its emotionally earnest quality with a more contemporary ear for nuanced depth of mood. It sounds unmoored from and unbeholden to a particular cultural timeframe or context and a more enriching listen because of it.
Listen to our interview with vocalist and multi-instrumentalist Joshua Strachan of Blacklist on Bandcamp and follow the group’s exploits at the links below.
The Holy Fawn remix of Heron’s 2019 song “Moon Data” takes the smooth, unearthly ethereal track and adds some haze and grit. It also turns an organic post-rock style song into something with a more electronic aesthetic, enhancing the synths and adding in a melodic arpeggio all to put some momentum behind the inherently majestic beauty of the original. Holy Fawn colored in some of the spaces without losing a sense of expansive wonder and mystery that Heron crafted. And in the last half Holy Fawn injects a distorted intensity that amplifies the dramatic aspects of the songs beyond the red, feral vocals burning through and buoyed by the pulsing synth before burning out into motes of tone and warping melodies echoing into the cold darkness before fading into abstract sounds. It’s the kind of remix that more or less transforms the work into something with a new resonance rather than enhance and augment what was already in place and in doing so imbues it with a musical life of its own. Listen to the Holy Fawn remix of Heron’s “Moon Data” on YouTube and follow Heron at the links below.
Dephree employs an eclectic and evocative beat for “Start Again.” Moody and chilly synths in the proper moments, hard hitting percussion and in the beginning a touch of guitar to provide a bit of both texture and rhythm. It’s a song about hoping he hasn’t gone too far down a path of self-destruction that has impacts for the people around him to make the proper amends by first breaking out of a vicious cycle of substance abuse and the unfortunate behaviors and activities that almost always support being caught up in that habit. Whether being in that moment of life came out of not having the proper coping mechanisms to deal with emotional trauma, in the song we hear a desire to make a break with it and to not keep on making apologies no one wants and to take the pain and self-hatred and not so self-hatred to overcome the personal demons that keep one unable to be consistent in living a proper and healthy life. The production on the song is clearly out of a more old school hip-hop approach and the alternative end of that and one hears what might be shades of an homage to influences here and there throughout the track but in embracing an aesthetic out of step with many tropes of the genre now prevalent it makes the point in not only word but sound and sure it’s a bit of a gimmick but wait until the end of the song for a nice symbolic exclamation point of intent. Listen to “Start Again” on YouTube and follow Dephree at the links provided.
What make’s GLOSSER’s single “The Artist” particularly effective and standout is how its musical elements establish undeniable melodic hooks but with the emphasis in the rhythm. A clipped bass line in sync with the spare percussion accompany vocals with the most light of effects to give it some glow is the foundation but then the song drops off into spaces of warmly ethereal synths as though free falling slowly before the rhythm picks back up and a simple keyboard melody eases the song back into its verses. Keynotes of background tonal harmonies and the most minimal of drones add a moody detail the lends the track a complexity of soundscaping that is subtle and tasteful and again enhances the main feature of the vocals lyrics about the struggle to balance one’s humanity and genuine emotional life and that of engaging in creative work that will meet an inevitable public. But in order to make resonant work the sensitivity and vulnerability that can’t be faked, that must come from a core, genuine place in order to really reach anyone or be a an expression worth putting into a coherent form which can be more raw for some people to really appreciate and too real and that risks a rejection or critique that doesn’t match that sensitivity and emotional nuance. The song’s lyrics vividly depict that internal process in a way relatable whether or not you’re an artist because just to get through life we often have to present a mediated version of ourselves which can create a tension inside our minds that can feel like a perpetual attempt to appeal to people or a situation that is more demanding than nurturing. GLOSSER was just able to distill the ordeal and reconciliation into a soulful, unconventional earworm of a pop song. Listen to “The Artist” on YouTube and follow GLOSSER at the links below. Look out for the full album DOWNER out January 27, 2023.
A “hoon” is a person that drives a vehicle in a reckless and dangerous manner or simply a hooligan in general. Not necessarily a bogan but the identities aren’t mutually exclusive. So a band adopting the name HOON might embrace the terms the way punks did and to that effect the Australian band ahead of the release of its debut studio album Australian Dream has released the video for its song “ACAB.” It starts off with some choice graffiti imagery and gives way to a relentless and pointed fusion of punk and noise rock with the joy and menace intermingled. Bursts of distorted guitar splay and gouges of rhythm over the course of little more than two minutes like a deconstructed Dead Kennedys come up through the grunge era is the perfect setting for a song about what the title suggests. There are marginalized groups (ethnic minorities, the indigenous etc.) in most societies that garner attention from police forces by their very existence and anyone who has ever run afoul of the law often ends up in the system and it can be challenging at best to get out despite your best efforts otherwise and to avoid attention and abuse by the agents of enforcement. Channeling that frustration and anger into a song is a classic worldwide and Hoon’s song is an especially potent, cathartic and to the point example of that spirit. Watch the video for “ACAB” on YouTube and follow the band from Wollongong, Australia at the links below.
The intricate guitar work of Paul Spring’s “Beetle on a Blade” fits well with the delicate flute work and the brisk pace of the track. The simple rhythm and percussion feels like the kind of pace one might count out for a campfire song if that campfire crowd included Emerson, Lake and Palmer. The song also has a quality that sounds like something one might expect to hear on a soundtrack to a movie about a medieval minstrel or troubadour. The lyrics seem to be a meditation on the nature of life cycles and cosmological time and how they intersect and influence each other as well as the precious fragility of existence as made poetically real to one by little details that strike one in moments when you have the time to consider deeper meanings beyond surface level experiences. As acoustic and organic as the music sounds its interesting to note that the pulsing beat is likely generated by an 808 rather than a traditional drum suggesting that the mathematical backdrop to the structure of the universe as we experience it interconnects the rhythms of music and the frequency of existence itself. Listen to “Beetle on a Blade” on YouTube and connect with Spring, collaborator with Mary Lattimore, Blackthought, Sasami and Robin Pecknold of Fleet Foxes as well as serving as lead singer of Holy Hive, at the links below. Spring’s album Thunderhead of which “Beetle on a Blade” released on December 16, 2022.
The Psychotic Monks sound like they’re using the sounds of industrial civilization colliding and collapsing to craft the main riffs of “All That Fall.” You can hear bass but it’s so blunt in its pulse it’s like a machine sound too as are the accenting drums. It’s fitting given that the song sounds like it’s about the collapse of the the world we know. The stretching sounds and the vocals bordering on the chanting and ritualistic in the din of unfolding events as the whole big mess winds down into the first third of the song. But the song is nine minutes fifty-three seconds long and if this can be considered something like a post-punk noise rock song for those who want familiar frames of musical and aesthetic reference, something of that sprawl in length and structure is more in the art realm of that music. The middle of the song is quiet with widely splaying percussion and a sound like a huge metal can being struck periodically. As touchstones one recalls perhaps This Heat or Liars in its few concessions to conventional musical style and arrangement in favor of the more conceptual in its emotional expression of mood. This middle part of what might be considered a triptych gives way to a furious, industrious clash and wild distortions that endlessly escalate until hitting a plateau that fractures and not giving one much of a stable musical footing but all the more thrilling in its projection of unease and frustration and anxiety given a direct and dramatic sonic release like something one might more expect from a The Jesus Lizard record. Listen to “All That Fall” on Spotify and follow The Psychotic Monks at the links provided. The group’s new record Pink Colour Surgery drops on February 3, 2023 via Vicious Circle/FatCat Records.
It’s really astonishing how Bad Flamingo delivers such stylistic diversity across its prolific songwriting career. Always inventive, always incisive and creative lyrics. And “Fiddle” is no exception. Employing a simple acoustic guitar riff and narrowly executed vocals like a Laurel Canyon era song but written by Gordon Lightfoot it’s a song about opening oneself up to someone who isn’t so good for your life but who has an appeal that gets past your defenses and for a time you indulge their trespasses because there’s something about their energy you find enjoyable for the moment. The chorus lines with “right now just play me like a fiddle” suggest there is a complicity in and awareness of the manipulation to which one is allowing into your sphere but no guilt because “I wanna pin your clothes on the line, I want to pin your body under mine.” Our narrator of this story song is getting something she wants out of the situation and is willing to put up with nonsense until she’s through with it. We find out in lyric “giving you my hands, finger the middle,” surely a deft and creative turn of phrase, that even in the acceptance is a willingness to drop a fool when the time to move on arrives. Listen to “Fiddle” on Spotify and follow the talented duo of Bad Flamingo at the links provided.
Queen City Sounds and Art 
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