“Lover’s Eye” by moondaddy exudes a weariness with being held back by the past and memories of a time one has outgrown and from which one has already moved on in fact even if those ties linger in the heart. Its moody tones and downward progressions convey a heartsick melancholy that comes from being hit by memories that have such emotional weight you’re forced to reckon with them right there and then. Its blooms of sharp guitar and slow, swirling rhythm feels like being caught in a spiral of reverie but as the song goes on the spectral keyboard melody and shift from dark melodic rock to something that feels more electronic has the effect of leaving that time behind having reconciled with what you can’t go back to and what made aspects of it seem special and magical like the line “You were my kaleidoscope, beautifying my dreams” and its suggestions of someone who had the ability to allow you to influence your aspirations but also to follow them. Cara Potiker’s unique vocals are the perfect vehicle for this insightful and poetic set of words both self-aware and capable of uncovering old pains to move past them. Listen to “Lover’s Eye” on YouTube and follow moondaddy at the links provided.
Ahead of the January 20, 2023 release of its new album Time’s Arrow, Ladytron offers a glimpse of what we’re in for with the music video for the lead single “City of Angels.” Directed my Manuel Nogueira the video shows figures caught up in a dance in a dimly lit underground setting like a a forgotten dance club out of a dystopian science fiction film. The haze and shadow fit well with a song that while buoyant and pulsing with a subtle momentum is an orchestration of sonic opacity between vocals and layered melodic lines that are reminiscent of New Wave era synth pop so that one has a sense of navigating not just an environment the likes of which is depicted in the video but the social landscape as well with its competing demands on your attention and regularly evolving signifiers. If the song references Los Angeles it does so in capturing how a big city built on both traditional commerce and the entertainment industry is always more complex and nuanced than any romanticizing or cynicism is adequate convey with accuracy. Rather, Ladytron’s gift for crafting colorfully atmospheric rock music is akin to the way William Friedkin imbues his own films, and his own depiction of Los Angeles as a kind of character as well as setting, with grit, deep mood and an eye for fine details. Ladytron’s cinematic sensibilities have been there since its 2001 debut album 604 and it appears Time’s Arrow as hinted at by “City of Angels” will be full of the band’s signature set of observational stories set to evocative soundscapes. Watch the video for “City of Angels” on YouTube and connect with Ladytron at the links provided.
“REINCARNAGE” finds mirrored fatality utilizing layers of drone and textural rhythms in a hypnotic drift to draw you into its ultimately harrowing examination of the destructive impact of modern human civilization and our internalized attitudes of hostility and consumption toward the natural world, what we often perceive to be outside of human culture, and within ourselves. What starts as gentle and tender shifts to reflect the brutality humans have come to accept as the norm in conceptualizing the natural world and our collective existence as necessary sacrifices for the almighty “economy” as a higher nature than nature itself. The song disrupts being able to hold to that mode of thinking by subverting conventional song structure and aesthetics and inviting one to take on the song on its own terms outside of any settled genre but with a distinct identity that isn’t ossified into fixed categories. Yes, if you’re someone that appreciates noise, industrial music, glitch, grimier hyperpop and outsider punk you’ll find some touchstones of appreciation. But really its a listening experience that is about something and evokes that perfectly. Listen to “REINCARNAGE” on Bandcamp and follow mirrored fatality on Instagram.
Blue Sunshine’s “Conqueror Worm” blasts open with a cacophony of saxophones before receding to soft voices speaking in an almost conspiratorial chorus out of which emerges the parade of horns and chant-like vocals. Tortured screams join this procession of sound like the early Residents covering Magma. The song title is perhaps a reference to the 1968 folk horror film The Conqueror Worm starring Vincent Price as Matthew Hopkins who is appointed Witchfinder General by Cromwell to extract confessions from witcvhes throughout the countryside. The song has that kind of menace and intensity but cast in the form of a deconstruction of avant-garde free jazz into a conceptual, maximalist composition that is as sonically confrontational as it is challenging and fascinating. Listen to “Conqueror Worm” on Spotify and follow Blue Sunshine (a project name that is itself a reference to the 1978 psychedelic, cult science fiction horror film) at the links below. Blue Sunshine’s debut EP titled, appropriately enough, Folk Horror released on October 21, 2022 with physical editions on vinyl, cassette and CD.
Erika Wester sounds like she’s brushing the gentle guitar chords throughout “Fifteen.” It provides the fragile textures and tenderly vulnerable mood of a song that is at once nostalgic and deeply melancholic. With each line Wester offers a vivid memory of a time that could be 10 years ago, 20, 30 or today. She taps into an emotional resonance that you never really age out of unless you get to a particularly callous and hard hearted place in your life. She recalls when she felt like she was growing up too fast and spouting off the kinds of sentiments that many bravado laden youths put out into the world that do the kind of emotional harm for which an apology can never be enough. But the song takes a turn from a memory of being fifteen and riding her bike to a time when she tries to console a friend or lover even though “I can’t fix the problems in your mind, god knows I barely tackle mine.” But she offers to a very basic, very simple but meaningful gesture of contact and comfort and says, “I’ll hold your hand in the dark if you want me to.” We don’t get to know the exact sources of pain, the searing images that stick with you that are hard to talk about and which no explaining away can easily soothe. We do hear about the aftermath in the song and some of the only ways that seem to work to help in a direct way that goes beyond mere words and straight to a sensation that communicates care without drama but imbued with significance. Listen to “Fifteen” on YouTube and follow Wester at the links below.
Steve Faceman has been a prolific and active artist in the Denver rock underground since the late 2000s with his project utilizing as a moniker his adopted surname. The group, mostly a trio, has developed an eclectic musical style that often waxes between indie rock and pop and Americana with underpinnings of experimental music and jazz. The songwriting has always been finely honed with lyrics that reveal the perspective of artists with a self-awareness and sensitivity to the human condition and the ways we go through life finding meaning and experiences that open and expand our horizons and depth of feeling. What has often set Faceman apart from other bands has been a seeming instinct for creative presentation in a community oriented fashion. Some of the early shows involved elaborate costumes and set pieces seemingly crafted from basic elements and a basic level of skill but obvious imagination. Like a child’s craft project and the homespun charm that entails. At other times the band collaborated with theater production companies to create a stage setting like the paper Megalodon for a show in 2013, the massive tornado sculpture brought to the Oriental Theater for the Faceman’s 100 Year Storm festival in 2016 (which featured 100 bands across two days) and the Journey to the Sun festival in 2015 at Ophelia’s Electric Soap Box (this one had a mere 80 bands over the same timeframe). With each, Steve helped to facilitate massive community involvement to make for a memorable and unique event and experience for everyone involved. On many if not all Faceman records there are guest musicians and recorded at noteworthy recording studios with cover art by members of the local arts scene as well. All of this is to say that Faceman certainly cares about its own fine music but the band recognizes its context and feeds into that ecosystem in a very direct and grassroots way. In 2022 Faceman releases its 2016 album Wild and Hunting for the first time on vinyl as well as its 2022 album Western Jupiter, a relatively spare record by Faceman standards but also an intimate portrait of human experience and kind of an Americana science fiction anthology of songs about the travails of the past few years.
Xena Glas drifts her wordless vocals into the languid flow of tones of the beginning of “To the A” like a ghost inhabiting a public light display. The stereo effects on the track both pull us into the emotional frame of the sounds and allow us to share in the experience of engaging emotionally with a flow of sounds that is luminous and warm yet otherworldly. Rather than expressing what it might be like to jack into an AI circa early cyberpunk, it gives a sense of perhaps what it would be like to be an AI jacking into the brains of an organic being and wading through the intricate gossamer pathways constantly creating new pathways in fractal patterns of the raw stuff of memory and creativity. And yet there is a sense of a journey through this interior world that reveals in the end that maybe the sounds reflect how we navigate to utilize a large physical network like a subway system. And yet both resonances work as Xena Glas calls upon a more abstract sense of journey with her tonal arrangements so that one can hear whatever journey is most prominent in one’s mind and find in the song the frequencies to reflect our sense of passage. Listen to “To the A” on Spotify, connect with Xena Glas at the links below and listen to the rest of the evocative new EP Movement which became available on October 28, 2022.
The creepy guitar squiggle at the beginning of “I Won’t Let You Die Young” finds Bad Flamingo employing another effective method in complementing its imaginative songwriting. Throughout the song that sound like if a sleepy frog was an instrument isn’t overused, it just serves to let the ghostly other guitar work shimmer out more vividly and the melancholic vocals to glider over the song even though they sound particularly intimate with the sound of a toy xylophone struck to add a nice touch of delicacy for a song about mortality and feeling that so acutely and wishing a long life for a loved one. The way the twin vocals harmonize captures a vulnerability that’s palpable and sounds like it comes from a place of knowing too well and too often what it’s like to lose important people in your life too soon and yes entirely too young and the ache that can revisit you suddenly and put you in a place where you feel it all over again. It could be a bummer but there’s something reassuring about remembering that connection and the immediacy and unguarded moments that feel like life shared in the present tense. Listen to “I Won’t Let You Die Young” on Spotify and follow Bad Flamingo at the links below.
A title like “Stack Lyf (Inauguration of the Megaslump)” can be a lot to take in but Spirits in the Pillar infused its latest album Scaled-down Expectations (which released on October 7, 2022) with a great deal of creative ambition and deep social awareness. This song gets to the crux of the core anomie of the modern era by laying out a visceral, experiential perspective on how modern capitalism has extracted value not just from the environment but from all realms of human endeavor and existence down to how you spend your time and channeling your dreams and aspirations along specific lines to bolster the process of funneling all goods to narrower destinations at the highest places of the economic ladder. Iain Rowley gives voice to the pain and desperation and frustration of the time with a palpable intensity of feeling and the music that winds around and helps to manifest a critique of and resistance to the process is somewhere between art rock and the angular post-punk one would expect out of a band on Dischord. Think early King Crimson meets Fugazi. This aesthetic runs throughout the album and the band offer us a particularly vivid and poetic distillation of the psychological pain of an era and an analysis that points to ways of dismantling the process at least in the way one orients with the world as it is. Listen to “Stack Lyf (Inauguration of the Megaslump)” on Bandcamp where you can also listen to the rest of Scaled-down Expectations and connect with Spirits in the Pillar at the links below.
The musical creations of Darren Keen would be challenging to define by genre as it reflects his broad interests in music, its creation and its presentation. For many he first came to the attention of people in the American underground with The Show is the Rainbow which he launched in Lincoln, Nebraska around 2003 and the project became a fixture at DIY spaces and situations across the USA and in various corners of the wider world. Do a search on the internet for videos and releases and you’ll find an unusual mix of sounds and styles but always with an energetic and compelling live performance that mixed, matched and amalgamated art rock, hip-hop, electronica, punk and noise rock. Keen’s surreal sense of humor and keen insight into culture and his own psychology has led to a fascinating body of work beyond The Show is the Rainbow and into his collaborative projects and his current touring moniker of PROBLEMS which has been releasing recordings on the respected experimental electronic music imprint Orange Milk and other outlets for Keen’s prolific output. In this sprawling interview Keen discusses his roots in making music and touring as an artist whose work isn’t always easily marketable to a mainstream audience, his involvement in the broad American DIY music network, his personal struggles and reconciliations in the continuing to be a figure who is focused on pursuing his creative curiosities that have had an undeniable impact on the realms of glitch, digital hardcore, underground techno and noise.
Queen City Sounds and Art 
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