simianthinker

Moodlighting’s Effervescent Single “Guardrail” is a Dream Pop Song About the Foibles of the Tourist Mindset

Moodlighting, photo courtesy the artists

Moodlighting has been talented at crafting simple and uplifting melodies with guitar and vocals from its early days when the duo was performing in Denver before relocating to California. Its new single “Guardrail” is paired with “Rude sometimes” and the song showcases layers of delicate guitar with crystalline tone and expertly accented, chiming jangle riffs that complement perfectly almost ethereal vocals like a latter day Slumberland Records. The song sparkles and sounds like it’s dancing about with how the rhythms are arranged. And yet the song appears to be about being annoyed with tourists in Australia, you know the kind, that treat places they visit like an exotic and disposable commodity instead of a place with a true sense of place and organic community that has to contend with how attractive it is to people who don’t feel like they need to respect the complexity and dignity of a place and people that aren’t just there to cater to your implicitly consumerist mindset. But the song on its own feels like a soothing and unexpected breeze in the summer and an evolution into an expanded songwriting style for the band whose new album party school! drops in early August. Listen to “Guardrail” on Spotify and follow moodlighting at the links below.

moodlighting on Instagram

moodlighting on Bandcamp

Battery Operated Orchestra’s “Alligator” is a Triumphant Synth Pop Song About Exiting an Oppressive, Toxic Relationship

Battery Operated Orchestra, photo courtesy the artists

Battery Operated Orchestra’s video for “Alligator” is reminiscent of the visual style of Damian McCarthy and Phil Tippett with an unusual underground chamber in which the narrator frolics and acts out the claustrophobic mood of the song. It’s all very surreal and borderline elevated horror especially with the decayed structures of the environment and washes of color until our protagonist escapes into sunlit fields. It suits a song seemingly about someone who has felt under the spell of someone whose ways of being and talking initially charmed but the habits are revealed as methods of keeping someone trapped in a relationship and not acts of genuine love. The saturated synth and soothing moods build up to an urgent pace as escape from a stifling relationship and the path out becomes clear against the odds and it has a triumphant tone, a sound of yearned for liberation. Musically it’s reminiscent of both the Cardigans and Japanese Breakfast and fans of either will find much to like in the way BOO crafts its creative and textural beats and layers of complimentary melodies to great emotional impact. Watch the video for “Alligator” on YouTube and follow BOO at the links provided. The band’s new album Sea Views Soft Rains is out August 4, 2026.

booelectric.com

Battery Operated Orchestra on Twitter

Battery Operated Orchestra on Facebook

Battery Operated Orchestra on Instagram

Battery Operated Orchestra on Bandcamp

Daniele Sciolla’s Sprightly and Percussive Electronic Piece “Ultra Brave” is Like Music For an Exploratory Video Game

Daniele Sciolla, photo courtesy the artist

Daniele Sciolla offers only bright, percussive tones on “Ultra Brave.” The song’s infectiously upbeat pace is at turns minimal and maximalist but using a simple sound palette to craft a full musical experience. Like the soundtrack to an update to a 1980s video game, the type based more on exploring a world and gathering items of knowledge and building rather than consuming or destroying. Think more like music for Marble Madness or Qix but with a whole world built around them inviting curiosity. There is something refreshing to the mind with the song and even as it outros on a more chill note it feels just right for all the activity of the first part of the song. Listen to “Ultra Brave” on Spotify and follow Italian composer Daniele Sciolla at the links below.

danielesciolla.com

Daniele Sciolla on Facebook

Daniele Sciolla on TikTok

Daniele Sciolla on Instagram

Daniele Sciolla on YouTube

Rehya Stevens’ Melodiously Brooding “Comedown” is a Song About How Life Can’t be Peak Moments All the Time

Rehya Srevens, photo courtesy the artist

Rehya Stevens’ melodious voice and style on “Comedown” suggests a song about love in an earnest way but the song has some moody and brooding elements in the background that immediately let you know this is going to be a different kind of song. Stevens offers images of walking through a beautiful day giving clarity to her view of someone, perhaps even herself, who feels like they’re riding high on their self esteem and recent experiences that affirm their self-conception and ego. But Stevens sings about the inevitable comedown from that high and how one has to reconcile living with realistic ups and downs of life and with the reality that life won’t and can’t always be comprised of those peak moments. Stevens makes this perspective relatable in the vocabulary of a pop song and that’s why it hits a little deeper. The finely syncopated rhythms and the expert turns of phrase in Stevens delivery lends the song emotional complexity that its separate, relatively minimal elements along don’t make obvious until the end of the song. In the broad realm of music the beautiful synth work in the song is reminiscent of the likes of darkwave and adjacent acts like Nuovo Testamento and Dark Chisme and how both bridge creative and emotionally rich production with dance pop. One can easily hear Stevens’ sensibility working well in those contexts. Listen to “Comedown” on YouTube and follow Rehya Stevens at the links below.

Rehya Stevens on Facebook

Rehya Stevens on Instagram

Subaqua’s Urgent Post-Punk Single “What a Bliss” Imagines a Future When the Psychic Weight of Patriarchal Culture is Gone

Subaqua imbues “What a Bliss” with a great sense of urgency and exhausted frustration at the inequality of society as we know it. The title refers to how it must be wonderful to not have to walk at night and having to be extra cautious, to be out in public in general and not draw unwanted attention immediately just for being female. And to have one’s natural personality and authentic self being picked apart for its arbitrary value in a patriarchal cultural conception of gender and the “proper” role of anyone and everyone. After decades of so-called progress it’s an ambient weight on the psyche for women and female-presenting people even today and with the upswing of the normalization of misogyny operating completely in the open of recent years it certainly has to be something that anyone with a sense of humanity hopes we can outgrow sooner than later. Musically the guitar and tenor of the vocals are reminiscent of Sonic Youth’s embrace of melody and discordant sounds equally and of Versus whose gift for the left field change-up in pace and tone can be heard here as well. Listen to “What a Bliss” on Spotify and follow Subaqua at the links below.

Subaqua on Facebook

Subaqua on Instagram

Queen City Sounds Podcast S6E03: The Builders and the Butchers

The Builders and the Butchers, photo by Tari Gunstone

The Builders and the Butchers is a folk rock/punk band from Portland, Oregon that formed in 2005 among friends and musicians who found themselves coming to the Rose City separately from Anchorage, Alaska. The group in its early days performed street shows completely unplugged. But eventually the group plugged in but not before establishing itself as a lively group of performers whose songs began as lyrics written by guitarist and singer Ryan Sollee. The group built a regional and then national and international following in underground music for its commanding live show and lyrics that always delved into subjects of the current human condition combining personal issues with social commentary. Now with its new full-length, its seventh, No Tomorrow (out April 2, 2026 on vinyl, digital download and streaming via Bandman Recording Co.) The Builders and the Butchers offer both a critique of the prevailing socio-economic order and a message of hope in basic human connections and our capacity to experience joy and to create in spite of failing systems and political leaders, in spite of the machinations of the powerful and the wealthy whose influence really only exists with our collective consent. The band’s storytelling with music has always been vivid and meaningful but with the new record it is reaching a new peak in its songwriting.

Listen to our interview with Ryan Sollee on Bandcamp and follow The Builders and the Butchers at the links below.

badmanrecordingco.com

thebuildersandthebutchers.com

The Builders and the Butchers on Facebook

The Builders and the Butchers on Instagram

The Builders and the Butchers on YouTube

Sunken Cages’ Electro-Acoustic Single “Drum and Flowers” is Like an Industrial Song Rooted in the Sounds and Sensibilities of the Global South

Sunken Cages, photo by Ed Marshall Photography

For “Drum and Flowers” Sunken Cages seems to have employed a hybrid production style to match the synthesis of musical ideas and styles. At first and throughout it sounds like something recorded to a cassette but put through modern production software. It brings together organic drums, synth sequences employed with the sensibility of organic percussion and lo-fi distortion to give the whole song a gritty and textural quality that contrasts well with the beatmaking. It’s like an industrial song if that music emerged from the global south rather than the UK, Europe and North America. The almost orchestral arrangement of drums truly sets it apart from possible obvious influences and in utilizing ancient sound sources with current technology and methodology in recording and production it hits the ears as deeply familiar yet fresh, new and celebratory. Listen to “Drum and Flowers” on YouTube and follow Sunken Cages aka Ravish Momin at the links below. The new album
Neram Pularumbol (As the Dawn Breaks) is out on Mhorka Records on August 7, 2026.

ravishmomin.com

Sunken Cages on Instagram

Sunken Cages on Bandcamp

Bajune Tobeta and Christian Fennesz Open a Passage to More Meditative Emotional Spaces With Tranquil Ambient Modern Classical Piece “After the Silence”

Bajune Tobeta, photo courtesy the artist

“After the Silence” eases into your consciousness with a gentle background drone and delicate motes of town seeming to drift by like snowflakes. Bajune Tobeta’s nearly abstract piano carries elements of melody while low end strings resonate somewhere in the sonic depth of field. Amid these layers of sound are contributions from Christian Fennesz but who can fully say where one musicians offerings and layers are fully distinct from the other without knowing exactly who played what. It doesn’t matter. The net effect is one of expert layering of sounds to create greater collective harmonies with a textural element that enhances the tranquil energy of the piece. Both artists worked with Ryuichi Sakamoto with sensibilities that blend those of electronic music, contemporary classical and ambient and this track from Tobeta’s forthcoming EP Anechoic (out August 14, 2026) promises a longer work with cinematic resonances that tap into the human mind’s capacity for transcending the noise and activity of the present moment into a spaces of meditative peace even if only for fleeting moments but enough to gain perspective on what can often overwhelm a person in the usual state of mind. Listen to “After the Silence” on YouTube and follow Bajune Tobeta at the links provided.

bajune.com

Bajune Tobeta on Facebook

Bajune Tobeta on Instagram

Queen City Sounds Podcast S6E02: Anne Richmond Boston

Anne Richmond Boston, photo by Jason Thrasher

Anne Richmond Boston was an early and current member of Atlanta-based New Wave/jangle pop band The Swimming Pool Q’s. As a vocalist and keyboard player, Boston was in the group in time for playing opening slots for Devo and Police in the late 70s. The Q’s were a staple in the college rock world of the 80s with Boston highlighted as a powerhouse singer with the band. She left the group in 1987, 5 years before its 1992 split (reuniting in 1998), and in 1990 released his first solo album The Big House of Time. The follow up I Should Be Happy was recorded with contributions from musical luminaries like Terry Adams (NRBQ), Marti Jones, Syd Straw, David Barbe (Sugar, Mercyland), Billy Conway (Morphone), Bob Elsey (The Swimming Pool Q’s), Michael Lorant (Indigo Girls) among others. But the record was shelved for reasons not even clear to Boston either. Thanks to friend Clay Harper over thirty years later Boston remixed eight of the 12 original songs recorded and added seven for a 2025 release on vinyl, CD and digital. The album sounds perfectly in line with the current era with the kind of songwriting that recalls classic pop, Laurel Canyon folk rock and the kind of art folk pop one might associate with Joni Mitchell. Boston sounds confident and soulful singing songs that seem to be about existential crises before that became a term used to describe a state of mind in which one grapples with life pressures and a sociopolitical climate that doesn’t support anyone’s best life. When writing the songs Boston likely had no idea it would be a perfect record for the 2020s while simultaneously capturing the mood of the early 90s as well.

Listen to our interview with Anne Richmond Boston on Bandcamp and follow the singer/songwriter/graphic designer/visual artist at the links below.

annerichmondboston.com

Hissuae’s Warmly Cinematic “Mayfly/Something Divin” is a Song About Transcendent Love and Desire

Hissuae, photo by Stephen Trutwin/Strut Photography

Hissuae brings an orchestral, stage musical sensibility to “Mayfly/Something Divine.” The songs flow into each other. Both are grounded in cinematic piano work and the artist’s warmly ethereal vocals with which she imbues songs about love and desire with a transcendent quality. Musically it sounds like something written for stage drama but deemed too strong and independent a work for such a context. The bursts of keyboard work and the extended structures in the song are reminiscent of something from the first couple of Tori Amos records in which that songwriter sounds like someone really working something out in her mind but finding the vehicle for that emotional work in the physicality of playing piano and its potential for elegant expression and a broad and nuanced tonal range which also highlights Hissuae’s own versatility as a singer able for which wide musical spaces and dynamic sweeps are required. Listen to “Mayfly/Something Divine” on Spotify or one of the other streaming/purchase links on Hissuae’s DistroKid account.

Hissuae on DistroKid