Suzy Callahan imbues “Maybe” with more mystery and complex emotions and offbeat observations than entire albums by many artists. Is there a key change in the song? Yes, but the hypnotic, spare guitar riff is the perfect accompaniment to her melodiously expressive voice and her simple story of the aspirations people have when they cut away ;pretentious and unrealistic expectations and a conditioned needs rooted in the myths of romance and a life in which one needs to be super excited about everything all the time. The story comes across like a series of observations and contemplation on such while people watching. When Callahan sings “ The chances are zero that the next person by will be my hero but they might me later for a beer, though” the clever word play is a standout in the song but it also poignantly describes how you can avoid disappointment in life. And if you get more out of life count that as a great thing but if you get what you need recognize that as a positive and not a loss. Fans of Edith Frost will definitely find much to love in Callahan’s catalog of music. Watch the video for “Maybe” on YouTube, listen to the rest of the album Focused Mind on Spotify or Bandcamp and connect with Suzy Callahan at the links below.
moodring packs a lot of surprises into its song “Poison.” In the beginning it sounds like a modern version of a slackery, lo-fi indie rock song. But Charli Smith reflects on the ways in which one has conflicted feelings about the person you love. The gentle, ethereal guitar work and minimalist percussion and lingering, melodic drones coupled with Smith’s laid back delivery give the impression of someone walking leisurely through a gallery of memories, many of them painful, while trying to maintain a sense of cool, of composure, while laying out a litany of heartbreaking thoughts like a goodbye letter to a relationship that has worn to nothing. Yet sometimes even those awful relationships are hard to let go when it’s one of the only things in your life giving it steady meaning. Smith’s lyrics speak directly to those complex feelings even when you know it’s over. When she sings “You’re breaking me down, you’re drying me out” it sounds like that final realization that you have to move on if you’re to make it through even as melodramatic as that may seem to you in that moment. Brandon Brewer’s production casts it in the musical equivalent of washed out lo-fi colors but that in some ways makes the song hit harder like you’re hearing your own words through an AM radio like a ghost of your old self reminding you of where you’ve been and don’t want to go again but may follow those bad habits and instincts without having your own words as a reminder to do better for yourself. It’s like a diary entry or a letter to the offending party you never send but have to write out for yourself to see as a form of self-therapy. Listen to “Poison” on YouTube and connect with moodring at the links below.
“On My Way Up” resonates with a dreamlike tone as though its melody is coming through a light fog. It comes from a place of melancholic contemplation but one striving for the things she sees as possible in the future. It’s not the sort of song informed by a grind-y bravado. Tishmal acknowledges the uncertainty and relative lack of control in which she’s existing with patience and acceptance waiting for events and opportunities unfold as they often do. The line “I’m drifting through now, I’m on my way up, I’ll never come down” speaks directly to this state of being as is “I’m on my way to make better days.” These are words that come from a place of making your own sense of hope when there seem to be none knowing no situations are permanent. It is interestingly enough a song of faith and hope but one without a naive outlook. It hearkens back sonically to the peak of chillwave but the vocal range and nuance of emotional expression is striking and soothing in a powerful way. Rachel Brockbank took on the name Tishmal from the Luiseño word for “hummingbird” (a nickname she was given as a young girl) which is fitting for the subtle grace, energy and vulnerable power found in her songwriting and singing on this debut solo project for the artist in collaboration with producers Christian Medice and Daniel Pashman. Listen to “On My Way Up” on Soundcloud and connect with Tishmal at the links provided.
“Midnight Star” is the title track to Chrystabell’s forthcoming, fifth full length album. The singer, songwriter, model and actress came to prominence for her work with David Lynch starting in the late 90s and for her role as FBI Agent Tammy Preston in Twin Peaks: The Return. With the new record Chrystabell has set aside guitar and drums in favor of synths. Her layers of atmospheric melodies and tonal accents has resulted in music that has cinematic quality like a synth pop glam rock song. “Midnight Star” showcases the singer’s finely honed, expressive vocals and an impressive command of a broad range of singing styles. Fans of Eurhythmics will appreciate the strong, confident and controlled aspect to Chrystabell’s performance throughout “Midnight Star” and the way she sync’s perfectly with the swirling progression of sounds the way Annie Lennox did in the synth pop heyday of her own band. The mix of soulfulness, grit and ethereal dreaminess gives the song as well as the soon-to-be-released single “Suicide Moonbeams” an immediately compelling presence. Listen to “Midnight Star” on Spotify and connect with Chrystabell at the links provided.
Calling Qwiet Type’s “Uninvited” a diss track from his new EP of the same name might be a bit dramatic. But it does outline how someone went from a friend or more to someone who isn’t welcome in the songwriter’s life once it’s discovered that person only really wants him around when times are tough as an emotional crutch. And in the end it’s a song celebrating setting boundaries and sticking to them and not regretting doing something for the sake of your own sanity but yes declaring that the offending party is uninvited from when times are good. Musically it’s like an indie rock pop song in the vein of early 70s Todd Rundgren, Walter Egan and Sniff ‘n’ The Tears drawing on their sense of humor and irony as well a knack for genre-bending and in this case a nod to New Wave and disco. And in typical Qwiet Type fashion, songwriter Matt Powell turns the heartbreak and anger into something fun as a way of creatively transforming what could be hurt and negative emotions into a party. Listen to “Uninvited” on YouTube and connect with Qwuiet Type at the links below.
The title track to Easy Jane’s second album 2021’s Play has a complexity of emotional impact that might not be obvious from its gorgeously lush layers of sound and expansive dynamic. The mood is melancholic and pitched in tones that suggest resignation to the reality of one’s association with another and the need to let go. In an album that delves into the dark side of relationships and the ways in which we awaken to our involvement in them especially when it would behoove us to dissolve them or exit the situation as best we can. In “Play” the guitar traces an outward spiral of an atmospheric riff in the verses that is both bracing and sounds like the closing chapter of something with no sequel. The track is reminiscent of what Crime & the City Solution got up to circa Paradise Discotheque (1990) with its poetic lyrics and cinematic sound. Listen to “Play” on YouTube, check out the rest of Play on Bandcamp and connect with Easy Jane at the links provided below.
The Tapetown Session of Iceage displays a band in part studio environment and part live. But with this format the spontaneity and energy of the live show is preserved with the sonic fidelity that wouldn’t be possible in most concert environments. What also separates this footage from that admittedly excellent series of live sessions on KEXP is that the environment seems more gritty and like it could be in their own studio, perhaps, but is in fact the Tapetown Studio in Aarhus, Denmark. The band seems comfortable yet focused and performing a selection of seven songs from its two most recent albums Beyondless (2018) and Seek Shelter (2021). This set of songs has the Danish post-punk band in fine form performing a set of songs that showcase the breadth of its musical vision over the last few years having expanded well beyond the more angular post-punk of its early days into a fascinating amalgam of unvarnished punk waxing into forms that sprawl the sounds and the emotional expressions beyond any orthodoxy of style. This version of Iceage has as much in common with Stooges, New York Dolls and The Birthday Party as it does with hardcore and death rock mixing in elements of rockabilly, blues and country as well. Those hybrid impulses blended together could be a mess but here Iceage manages to synthesize it all with power and conviction for a music that because it can seem loose around the edges also conveys a sense of creative freedom and the ability to defy and grow beyond expectations set by its earlier music. Watch the Tapetown Sessions of Iceage on YouTube and connect with the band at the links provided.
“Suspended In Blue” evokes the image of sunlight refracting in the sky and streaming down, sparkling now and then the way it seems to on a bright, late winter morning. Eric Li Harrison as Marigold Sun arranges the peaks of tones and fades of the track so that there is a continues flow of atmospherics so that the accents and lingering drones and gentle, subtle whorls of sound in the background stand out in with layers of sonic depth as though capturing that perfect moment when an icicle will catch the sunlight against a blue sky as well as the aforementioned streams of sunshine breaking the morning haze before the sun rises to the full power of its brightness in the sky. It’s a natural beauty that is difficult to express in words, as might be too obvious here, but it does have a restful and refreshing effect psychologically and the treatment of those feelings here is immediately affecting. It is reminiscent of some of the best library music of the 80s that are largely lost to time unless you have one of those great compilations of that music or you’re actively listening to the echoes of such in the work of Boards of Canada. Listen to “Suspended In Blue” on Soundcloud and connect with Marigold Sun at the links below.
London jazz duo Binker & Moses brought in honorary third member Max Luthert to reassemble raw acoustic recordings of sax and drums in the studio. Saxophonist Binker Golding and drummer and composer Moses Boyd went in with no planned material and after Luthert’s treatments of the exercise in spontaneous composition the resulting track “Feed Infinite” (out now on Gearbox Records) comes off focused and fluid. It’s reminiscent of mid-60s post-bop, free jazz in the ways Boyd accents the beat and keeps the rhythm flowing with both contemplative minimalism and maximalist urgency later in the song. Golding brings a light touch to his tonal figures early in the piece as well before launching into elaborate and energetic modal passages with an expressive flourish to match Boyd’s pacing. It’s a beautifully synergistic piece that when assembled this way takes advantage of electronic touches and sounds that help bring out a contemplative mood that can turn quickly to a spirit of creative rebelliousness and resistance to the doldrums and resignation to mediocrity in life under late capitalism. The energy of the performance is the opposite of the malaise one might understandable feel these days. While tapping a bit into older jazz traditions the aesthetic is well placed in modern electronic music and the avant-garde with micro-dynamics that flow and evolve in a manner suggestive of free association. Listen to “Feed Infinite” on YouTube and connect with Binker & Moses at the links below.
Lustmord is perhaps best known for his extensive and varied career in crafting fascinating and evocative soundscapes and his work in and with SPK, Current 93, Jarboe, Clock DVA and Melvins. So it should come as no surprise that his collaborative album with Karin Park, vocalist and member of Swedish rock band ÅRABROT, would yield something different and a synthesis of his own creatives strengths and hers. ALTER (out now on Pelagic Records) is not simply clever wordplay suggestive of a place of spiritual practice and the act of transforming an object or identity. It would be tempting to compare this record to something you might hear from Dead Can Dance because of the emotional resonance and invoking the mystical by tapping into ancient and devotional musical ideas. But there is something deeply dark about the songs of ALTER that feel like you’re witnessing the decay and collapse of modern civilization in mythical terms, an end of the world we know and the emergence of the next as manifested in a film by John Boorman. The sound design on every song has that haze of deep mystery that hung at the edges of most of Boorman’s films with drones and processed white noise flowing in the background. Park provides the distinct emotional connection with her voice like a mournful incantation beseeching strength and wisdom from beyond time.
Lustmord has created a sense of space like a cavernous cathedral but one whose shifting sounds and textures is more like a tunnel down which Park travels on a journey in the near dark. The album would feel claustrophobic if the sounds weren’t also so expansive and suggestive of the wide open. Yet it also hints at a way of shielding oneself from a coarsened and perilous world until such a time as it might be safe to re-emerge and rebuild, to establish new myths for a better future while witnessing those that have served as the framework for the modern iteration of human culture to wither away and dissolve. Overall it’s reminiscent in a way of many of those Utopian science fiction films and works of the 1970s and 1980s like Logan’s Run, Zardoz (as hinted at earlier with the Boorman reference), J.G. Ballard’s most unusual novels and Gene Wolfe’s Urth of the New Sun series. All depict a future we never could have predicted and this album sounds like the music of the passage to that unprecedented future during a time of crises beyond the ability of our current social organizations and belief systems to weather intact. A dark, deep yet ultimately rewarding album of completely unconventional and enigmatic beauty that seeps into your consciousness and lingers long afterward. Listen to/download ALTER on Bandcamp and watch the video for “Song of Sol” on YouTube.
Queen City Sounds and Art 
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