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CATBEAR’s Lush and Romantic “Higher” is a Synthpop Song About the Virtues of Undistracted Conversation

CATBEAR’s “Higher” is inspired by a time before video calls when people only heard a voice on the other end of a phone and you only had words and your imagination in connecting with people. A time when maybe you would actually talk with friends and lovers for long periods of time late into the night discussing whatever came to mind without the distraction of visuals or the pressure to share anything. Your focus could and would be just on that moment and the undeniable emotional bond of it almost as pure as that could be. The music has a retro synthpop feel with the hazy synths and infinite horizons that matches well with the romance inherent to the song’s lyrics and concept with soulful and soothing vocals that are lush and introspective that lead you through a journey into a moment of emotional intimacy and deep affection, something that seemed more attainable decades ago and could be again if everyone involved were committed to not being on call or on demand to the social and economic forces of our current era even if only for a night or a day. CATBEAR makes that seem not only possible but inherently desirable with this song. Listen to “Higher” on Spotify and follow London synthpop duo CATBEAR at the links provided.

Bad Veins Imbues Synthpop Single “Wendy” With a Powerful Sense of Regret, Heatache and Hope

After eight years of no obvious new music issued into the world Cincinnati, Ohio-based indie-pop band Bad Veins gives us “Wendy” from its new album Imposter (released on December 1, 2023 via Dynamite Music). The visual concept of the video (as directed by Cat Rider) for song seems to be one of a man watching old VHS camcorder footage of the titular character to whom the yearning and melancholic lyrics are directed. He stands against the screen singing as the images wash over him as the memories swirl in his mind and break his heart. It sounds like the relationship was one currently on a break because our narrator had a bit of an emotional disruption. The lines “One thing I know/If I hang around/The undertow will take me down/Wendy I grow more afraid of drifting further everyday/I never meant to come undone/I never thought I’d miss someone like I miss you, Wendy” pack a lot of meaning into such a small space. The song has that kind of energy like John Waite had on his 1982 hit “Change” but the sounds are the more hazy synthpop of that era and it perfectly suits the mood of regret and hope that songwriter Benjamin Davis captures so poignantly in this song. Has the narrator ruined things in that bond forever with his mental health issues or is there a more positive resolution? Who can say but the heartache is palpable and immediate and that’s what makes the song so compelling because so many of us have been there at some point in our lives. Watch the video for “Wendy” on YouTube and follow Bad Veins at the links below.

Bad Veins on TikTok

Bad Veins on Facebook

Bad Veins on Twitter

Bad Veins on Instagram

Bad Veins on Threads

A Door Tears Into the Hypnotic Death Spiral of Algorithmic Derangement with Buzzsaw Shoegaze Song “Do You Want Me To Come In Your Feed?”

Former The Manhattan Love Suicides drummer Rachel Barker returns with a new project A Door and debut single “Do You Want Me To Come In Your Feed?” During the peak early pandemic Barker started making visual art the likes of which can be seen in the cover art for the single. Barker has a hole in her spinal cord which affects her ability to play guitar and the automatic expressionist figure work of her visual art she believes is her body’s attempt to correct her proprioception and spinal alignment. The artwork is a bit reminiscent of the work of Edvard Munch, Picasso and Chagall but very much her own style. The song is a noisy, chaotic affair with flairs of distorted atmospheres and hovering guitar shimmer like a menacing shoegaze-y post-punk song akin to the likes of her old band but not pop and much more pointed. Its lyrics are a critical and incisive examination of what might be described as a mechanization of culture and the monetization of curiosity and serendipity through the harnessing of algorithms on the internet and especially in social media to connect your supposed interests with how they can be marketed to in an overall attempt to manipulate behavior for an insidiously automated revenue stream for corporations that have no interest in or insight into what might actually peak your curiosity or spark your imagination. The refrain of “get out of my head” speaks to the uncanny yet gross and predictable “recommendations” that stem from clicking on anything or following a thread or a stream of content or doing a simple internet search using Google or other essentially data mining tools that also serve as a method of routing your path to sponsored websites. In the 80s and even early 90s the dystopian future looked maybe even a little bit desirable and in the Terminator films Skynet was a conglomeration that could be defeated. But when the dystopian future involves feedback loops that give you a massive dopamine hit for only giving attention to what you already know and already know you love or mildly like, culture can end up being one, gigantic, bland mess. And this writhing, buzzsaw melody and fracturing rhythm of the song with scathing words for the headlong slide into a bland monoculture is more of the kind of thing we should want to hear and not be so drawn to playlists that cater to background noise comfort rather than challenging or at least idiosyncratically human expressions that aren’t so easily slotted into a marketing campaign. Fans of A Place to Bury Strangers and Firefriend will find a good deal to like here. Listen to “Do You Want Me To Come In Your Feed?” on Soundcloud and connect with A Door at the links below. Maybe the band will “raid” your Twitch channel while you’re streaming Diablo IV, Black Desert Online or Baldur’s Gate 3 but probably not. They, and you, have better stuff to do.

Rachel Barker website

A Door on Instagram

Tashi Delay’s “Blue” is an Operatic Post-punk Examination of Processing Trauma

The music box sound introduction to Tashi Delay’s “Blue” is a recurring device like a companion to the main rhythm line running through the song and one that introduces a whimsical element in a song about how one processes trauma. Sometimes the event hits you and you spend some moments trying to figure out how it could happen. Those music box tones are like those moments. The rest of the song has some crunch to it and a loping, menacing yet sinuous bass line and in the music video Emily Seabroke looks slightly shell shocked with a blue light partially washing out her image as her vocals follow the melodic line up and down her wide register. The image then fragments into crystalline chunks that fall way as all the sounds converge and a bluesy and noisy guitar solo burns through and fades giving way to an introspective outro that suggests that even if you overcome this immediate trauma response the mind has a way of submerging that pain only to return at a later date when you may or may not be ready to take it on from some emotional distance. Watch the video for “Blue” on YouTube and follow Tashi Delay at the links provided. Tashi Delay’s self-titled debut album became available on November 10, 2023 on Spotify.

Tashi Delay on TikTok

Tashi Delay on Facebook

Tashi Delay on Instagram

Beige Banquet’s Angular and Urgent Post-punk Single “Animals” is Comment on How We’re All the Same While Distressed

Beige Banquet, photo courtesy the artists

London-based post-punk band Beige Banquet is set to release its debut album in 2024 as a full band and its first recorded in a studio to capture its full live forcefulness and sonics beyond the limitations of the bedroom recordings of its earlier releases. The first single of the album is the frenetic and headlong “Animals.” The song creates a powerful emotional resonance with its propulsive bass line and urgent, noisy, searing guitar shimmer, splayed and finely accented drums with Tom Brierley’s vocal lines as descriptive statements about how at our base all humans are animals that respond to environmental pressures and stimuli in a similar fashion especially under pressure and in a state of stress and discomfort. Fans of the more discordant end of shame and the angular side of JOHN (TIMES TWO) will likely find some musical spiritual kindred here. Listen to “Animals” on Spotify and follow Beige Banquet at the links below.

Beige Banquet on Bandcamp

Beige Banquet on Instagram

Queen City Sounds Podcast S3E42: Brian M. Clark

Brian M. Clark is a writer, avocational musician and a curator of music and culture whose record label Discriminate Audio has released a handful of records from his own projects and cult artists over the past couple of decades including career-spanning compilations of and tribute albums to outsider rock and roll legend Ralph Gean and legendary punk and avant-garde pop artist Little Fyodor. Clark grew up in the Bay Area of California and as a youth played in bands and went to shows at 924 Gilman Street and went to school in the University of Oregon in Eugene and studied journalism and art before dropping and and going to school back in the Bay Area and completing a degree in art and Spanish. Around 2003 Clark ended up moving to Denver because of a book project he was undertaking and happened to find a posting for a place to live at a DIY space called Monkey Mania, the renowned venue that was at the time located in the middle and northern end of downtown Denver. Living there for a year before feeling the need for a different living situation, Clark came into contact with the wide array of the underground Denver music world and would go on to more musical projects of his own. In 2011 Clark released an album under his own name Songs From The Empty Places Where People Killed Themselves that is part punk, part noise rock, part noise and a bleakly humorous examination of situations and themes. And in 2023 under the name Unborn Ghost, Clark release the project’s debut album Airs of Contempt and Derision on LP, CD and cassette as well as digital download. The album includes contributions from Ralph Gean, Little Fyodor and others. Per Clark’s unorthodox musical proclivities the album is an eclectic blend of post-punk, psychedelic noise rock and experimental electronic soundscapes that capture some of the current American zeitgeist.

Listen to our interview with Brian M. Clark on Bandcamp and connect with Clark at the links below.

discriminateaudio.com

brianmclark.com

Queen City Sounds Podcast S3E41: Comateens

Comateens were a pioneering synth-punk band in NYC when it formed in 1978 when guitarist Ramona Jan and drummer Nicholas “Nic North” Dembling brought together the latter’s more straight ahead rock and pop musicianship and the former’s self-taught, experimental instincts. The group didn’t fit in so much with the other punk bands of the day because it was so different and it traveled in a bit different social circles so its sound wasn’t truly impacted by other groups. Jan was working at the Mediasound studio as an audio engineer as one of a very few women engineers in the world. The job would lead her to a lifetime career in audio engineering and production and working with the likes of Brian Eno, Talking Heads, Ramones (“Ramona” was written about her) and countless others. Jan left rhe band in 1980 and it continued through the mid-80s leaving behind three full-length albums. 2023 sees the release of a limited 12-inch (90 copies on orange vinyl and 200 on black on Left For Dead Records) of early single “Danger Zone” and the unreleased track “Elizabeth’s Lover” both of which feature the early lineup. The music in retrospect sounds like a more forward thinking example of early New Wave with synth used in a way in the songwriting that wasn’t as common until the 1980s placing Comateens ahead of its time. In this interview Jan and Dembling discuss the origins of the band and how it was a happy accident of not knowing or being told the proper way to make the band work as well as some of Jan’s time working with Eno.

Listen to our interview with Ramona Jan and Nicholas “Nic North” Dembling on Bandcamp and connect with Comateens at the links below where you can also find where to order the vinyl and/or digital download.

leftfordeadrecords.com

Left For Dead Records on Instagram

Left For Dead Records on Facebook

comat e ens.com

Comateens on Wikipedia

“Recent Mineral” by Church Chords is an Enchanting and Mysterious Blend of Krautrock, Bossa Nova and Noise

Church Chords’ forthcoming album elvis, he was Schlager (out February 26, 2024 on Otherly Love Records) sounds like an ambitious, experimental post-punk album years in the making with numerous collaborators that songwriter and producer Stephen Buono brought together after the manner of a hip-hop producer. And you get a taste of what’s in store with the single “Recent Mineral” with the quietly sultry vocals of Genevieve Artadi who sings in Portuguese. What are the lyrics about? Might have to ask someone that understands the language or wait for the full release of the record. But you don’t need to know in order to really be taken in by the finely accented percussion and hypnotic arrangements of texture tones, slashes of echoing, stretching, warping guitar altogether reminiscent of Young Marble Giants, Faust and an abstract Bossa Nova band mixing it up to make a song that is entrancing and mysterious and you wouldn’t think overmuch about if it was in a movie like something Jim Jarmusch or Sofia Coppola would produce.

Church Chords on YouTube

Church Chords on Instagram

Unverkalt Conjures a Haunted Sense of Menace on the Gritty and Darkly Atmospheric “Mr. Monster”

In the writing of its new album A Lump of Death: A Chaos of Dead Lovers, Greek experimental metal band Unverkalt took its cues from events of the 1970s involving cults, criminal acts and serial killers that seemed to be in the news on the regular in that decade. The songs have a darkly haunted quality and its atmospheric parts have a distorted and gritty quality that lends a menacing air of the macabre to every track with vocals that are part epic and melodic and at times reminiscent of Cranes. It’s truly a different kind of record in the world of heavy music and doesn’t fit in the usual subgenres. The single “Mr. Monster” begins with a buzzing, hovering sound that might be a synth or a looped guitar part. But then hanging guitar chords come in with softly pounding drums and vocals delivering a story that seems to be that of a person who feels conflicted and yet eerily accepting of someone who commits unspeakable acts against others and feels compelled against their will to engage in lethal behavior. The pulsing synth sound in the song hits like a flickering light in a dark room illuminating the activities with the starkness of a strobe imposing a visual sense of slow motion. And the song does sit suspended like that for moments before it floods with all the guitars, vocals, drums and electronic sounds in a dramatic denouement. Fans of SubRosa/The Keening/The Otolith, Faetooth and Windhand will greatly appreciate Unverkalt’s unorthodox and creative approach to crafting evocative heavy music. Listen to “Mr. Monster” on Spotify and follow Unverkalt at the links below. A Lump of Death: A Chaos of Dead Lovers was released on October 20, 2023 via Argonautica Records on digtal download, streaming, vinyl and CD.

Unverkalt on Facebook

Unverkalt on Twitter

Unverkalt on YouTube

Unverkalt on Instagram

“Plastic Lungs” is Rew’s Gentle Lo-Fi Indiepop Shoegaze Song About a Mind on the Verge of Unraveling

“Plastic Lungs” is a song that sounds like its falling apart as it goes forward. It has a loose clockwork beat and its layers of atmospheric discordant guitar work really fit the mood of a song that seems to be about someone who is coming apart more than a little himself. Lines like “I know that memories and nightmares sometimes feel the same” and “I don’t think my dreams are as kind as they used to be,” “I know you’re wondering what’s wrong” and “I think it’s happening again but when” resonate with the feeling of someone who has experienced a mental breakdown in the past and/or witnessed it in someone close to them. In the music video the wintry kaleidoscopic colors and the doubled imagery and a face obscured by colored television snow and other imagery and it pairs well with the song and its themes of being on the verge of being overwhelmed by one’s own personal demons yet resisting that pull with creative work and expressing the possibility with emotional honesty rather than trying to hide from one’s own psyche. Imagine a lo-fi Mercury Rev gone lo-fi shoegaze indiepop and you have a good idea of the rich tonal moods of Rew’s song “Plastic Lungs.” Watch the video on YouTube and follow Rew at the links provided.

Rew on Instagram

Rew LinkTree