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Queen City Sounds Podcast S3E29: GUJI

GUJI’s singers, photo courtesy the artists

GUJI (咕叽) is a quartet from Shanghai comprised of three Chinese nationals Klaire (synths), Alex (bass), Stacy (drum machine) and American ex-pat Round Eye guitarist and vocalist Chacy. The group released its self-titled debut EP on August 25, 2023 via Godless American Records and is currently available on digital and in a limited edition cassette. The group’s sound may be described as charmingly lo-fi New Wave with a clear lineage to the likes of Devo and The B-52s. Keen listeners may hear the earnest and unvarnished sound of 80s indiepop in that C86 vein or like something from Flying Nun. It comes across as a mysterious musical artifact from a not clearly discernible era and that gives it all a timeless aspect that requires no specific style references to appreciate.

The EP came about during the 2020-2022 severe lockdown measures imposed on Chinese citizens in cities like Shanghai with China’s “0-Covid policy.” Klaire and Chachy shared a living space and the citizens of Shanghai were subject to daily PCR tests and groceries and other goods delivered through limited openings into everyone’s homes. With not much to do the duo wrote and recorded with equipment on hand with smart phones and even made a video for the song “Build A Friend For Me” with footage samples including bits of Alejandro Jodorowsky’s 1973 psychotronic classic The Holy Mountain. It’s a real feat of creativity in limited circumstances and resources and the kind of thing you wish you’d see more often. The EP was produced by Chachy and mixed by famed Chinese studio engineer Li Wei Yu as well as Casey Anderson. The songs are playful and upbeat and at times have some choice words critiquing the oppressive situations and policies of the home country but all in the tradition of bands like Devo, They Might Be Giants and The B-52’s making observations and statements with creativity and without aggression.

Listen to our interview with Klaire and Chachy on Bandcamp and to listen to the EP and perhaps order a tape, please visit the Godless America Records Bandcamp embedded below.

Queen City Sounds Podcast S3E28: Tony Cuchetti

Tony Cuchetti is a singer-songwriter based out of Minnesota who grew up playing in a family band that played malls, fairs, conventions and Vegas in the late 60s onward. For the last ten years of the band Cuchetti toured ten or eleven months of the year and garnered his chops as a performer and refined his ear for rhythm and melody. He recently released his latest album Freer Street named after the street where his grandfather lived in Detroit, Michigan. The cover bears a sepia-toned photograph of Cuchetti’s grandfather and the album filled with warm, country and folk songs is informed by the kind of storytelling tradition the songwriter learned from his family as having to have a form that would instantly engage listeners with an emotional immediacy and accessibility. The songs have an economy of composition but also have an orchestral approach to bringing together a rich array of elements that give the record a full sound but one that never seems cluttered. The album is now available on streaming and digital as well as limited run burnt orange vinyl.

Listen to our interview with Tony Cuchetti on Bandcamp and follow him at the links below. There’s a better than average chance you might be able to catch him live as Cuchetti has an active touring schedule worthy of his family legacy.

tonycuchetti.com

Tony Cuchetti on Facebook

Tony Cuchetti on Instagram

Tony Cuch etti on YouTube

Tony Cuchetti on Apple Music

Vases Helps Us to Live With the Managed Expectations When Facing the Symptoms of Modern Life on Dream Pop Single “The Softest Sigh”

Vases has experimented with style and production on every single and “The Softest Sigh” demonstrates Ty Baron’s command of lush and clear melodies with strong rhythmic lines layered together. The sparkling guitar riff is at times reminiscent of New Order’s “Age of Consent” but the song swings into deeply introspective passages that take the certainty and direct energy of that aspect of the song and transitions it into ethereal, introspective passages in the choruses. It seems to embody the subjects of the song that seem to be able the uncertainty that pervades most of human existence and so many relationships in this moment that Baron attributes to “symptoms of modern life” and when he sings that line it rings incredibly true. Rarely has existential angst and frustration sounded so gorgeously hopeful if melancholic. The summation at the end of the song “I tried to be the perfect me, I guess I’ll be alright” is a poignant statement of how many of us are expected to meet some arbitrary standard that we may never attain but settle for being satisfied with giving it an effort even if it’s not quite enough and is it worth giving your all for everything the way you’ve been told your whole life if you’re an American? Not really. And Baron expresses in this song in his way how managing your expectations and preserving your sanity is often the best that can realistically be expected of anyone. Listen to “The Softest Sigh” on Spotify and follow Vases on Instagram.

Osopho Creates a Deep Sense of Mystery and Tranquility in the Synthetic Birds and Forests of a Far Future on “Winged”

Prepare for a journey into a world of synthetic birds in an alien landscape featuring noises of mysterious sources on Osopho’s environmental composition “Winged.” Luminous arpeggios, scritchy noise glitches, electronic titters and trills as those birds sound off into the perpetual not-day-not-night of a shadowy forest. Ghostly tonal percussion and chromatic, ethereal winds flow and all the while there is a soothing quality to the entire piece that sets your mind at ease and in acceptance of the enigmatic sounds and an uncertain environment like a place in a far future where you might explore or wander in such a space with no threat to your well-being with an awareness of that new reality and a deep sense of calm one might experience. It is the direct opposite of the world we live in now and though clearly a creative work and artificial it shines a light on the possibilities of a time and place where there is no need for all experiences and relationships to be transactional in some capacity and where there are places and situations where it is enough to merely experience a sense of wonder and appreciation of something that doesn’t exist in a commercial context. Listen to “Winged” on Spotify.

Slutavverkning’s Bluntly Aggressive Noise Rock Blast “Grisar” is a Stark Statement of Human Solidarity at Our Basest Level

Slutavverkning, photo courtesy the artists

Slutavverkning bring a blunt menace and aggression tempered by an elegant artfulness to the songs from its new album Levande Charader. Perhaps most exemplary of the harrowing and mind-altering listening journey you’ll undertake can be experienced in the music video by Richard Lukacs for the song “Grisar,” which is Swedish for “Pigs.” We see various sorts of pigs looking like they’re the subjects of a menacing horror movie even when nothing explicitly horrific happens during the course of the video. The guitar riff is cutting and clipped like something you might hear off a Shellac album that compliments perfectly the distorted, shouting vocals. But underneath is a haunted drone and toward the end of the song is a maddened free jazz saxophone section that heightens the sense of urgency and disgust that runs through the song. But that disgust isn’t the predictable, judgmental sort one might expect from some sort of nihilistic, misanthropic noise rock band that many of us know and love. No, the lyrics delivered in savage chunks in Swedish are about how there are many pigs around us including ourselves and the ways in which we can be encouraged to abuse each other and declare others an undesirable but in the end we’re all animals who are equal on a ground level no matter how many airs we might choose to put on in a pantomime of some elevated existential status. The song is so stark it really does suit the subject matter and fans of This Heat and modern noise rock/post-punk bands like Meat Wave and Sex Swing will appreciate Slutavverkning’s wild energy and uncompromising intensity. Watch the surreal and colorful video for “Grisar” on YouTube. Levande Charader is now available on digital and vinyl.

Slutavverkning on Bandcamp

Slutavverkning on Instagram

Slutavverkning on Apple Music

Teenage Halloween’s Triumphant and Vulnerable Pop Punk and Emo Singles “Supertrans/Takeaway” Are Irresistible Anthems of Personal Transcendence

Teenage Halloween, photo by Okie Dokie Studio

The music video for Teenage Halloween’s combined singles “Supertrans/Takeaway” directed by Jordan Serrano shows vocalist Luk Henderiks living out the the frustrations and reconciliations in the songs themselves that seem to be perfect companions in expressing the struggles many people go through in life whether its the social pressure of gender conformity or generational trauma or genetic health issues making living itself complicated. But the exuberance of the songs in that triumphant yet self-aware and vulnerable modern pop punk and emo style with Henderik’s impassioned and commanding vocals makes these songs irresistible anthems of resistance and personal dignity that ring true whatever your struggles and challenges might be because we’ve all got them and Teenage Halloween is definitely tapped into a collective zeitgeist of this moment. Watch the video for “Supertrans/Takeaway” on YouTube and follow the group from Asbury Park, New Jersey at the links below. Its new album Till You Return drops October 20, 2023 on digital and vinyl via Don Giovanni Records. And catch Teenage Halloween on tour October through December in support of the new record. Dates on the Bandcamp page.

Teenage Halloween on TikTok

Teenage Halloween on Facebook

Teenage Halloween on Instagram

Teenage Halloween on Bandcamp

Chris Portka’s Gloriously Wild and Raw Noise Pop Song “your music is trash” is the Deconstructed Rock and Roll We Need Now

Chris Portka’s “your music is trash” sounds like something Ween and the Flaming Lips secretly did together in the early 90s before a larger public got hip to their deal. It’s a gloriously noisy, brashly lo-fi psychedelic anti-rock, splintered and deconstructed melody with vocals that are blown out with much of the rest of the sounds beyond explicable recognition other than keeping a strange consistency and a tripped out sweetness in the song. Had this been the 2000s you’d assume this was a new band on the Siltbreeze label or a cousin band to Times New Viking. That vibe that isn’t for everyone but true connoisseurs of untamed and rebellious weird music. And Portka released an entire album of this sort of thing with various incarnations and sounds like a dissected and reassembled No Age with a cool bit of freak folk dropped in called what else but Trash Music which released on August 1, 2023 and available now on streaming, digital download and very limited edition vinyl. Listen to “your music is trash” on Spotify and connect with Portka at the links below.

Chris Portka on TikTok

Chris Portka on Facebook

Chris Portka on Twitter

Chris Portka on YouTube

Chris Portka on Bandcamp

Chris Portka on Instagram

Charm School Casts Off Fake Generational Cultural Inheritance on Noisy Post-Punk Single “Simulacra”

Charm School, photo by Destiny Robb @allfunk

Charm School seems to have tapped into a well of influence on the angular and splayed dynamics of “Simulacra” that includes both The Fall and Pere Ubu and more modern No Wave-esque post-punkers Lithics and Protomartyr. The steady bass line carries the lifeblood pulse of the song on a slow arc of tonality. Guitar spikes and quick echo fades off like the musical equivalent of splashes of garish color on a white background. At other times the guitar provides a haunted melody before transforming back into a more mechanistic sound. The drums frame it all with rapid fills and moments of sustained texture. All as enhancements of a song that seems like pointed commentary no the youth culture of today and the context in which it emerged in a fractured and dissolving political monolith like “the skittish empire of the ‘United’ States/trying to make haste to eliminate each other.” The lyrics mention the counterfeit endless copies of everything being peddled as something to be excited about and the counterfeit personal gestures and aspirations that serve as a psychological and civilizational feedback loop to nowhere. But the closing line of these litanies “But I’m not listening” suggests the option of rejecting the foundations of these ersatz choices which was as Greil Marcus said over the course of his classic 1989 book Lipstrick Traces: A Secret History of the 20th Century one of the great contributions of punk as passed down from the Situationists and their spiritual and philosophical ancestors. But here it sounds like a knowing way to call all the hullabaloo about nothing real a load of nonsense no one needs to take seriously. Listen to “Simulacra” on Spotify and follow Charm School from Louisville, Kentucky at the links below. The band’s EP Finite Jest, which as a title speaks much and more succinctly clever than it has a right to be, released on July 21, 2023.

Charm School on Bandcamp

Charm School on Instagram

Mutiny In Heaven: The Birthday Party Charts the Dramatic Rise and Fall of the Legendary Post-Punk Band Screens in Denver Oct 10 and 13-15 at Sie Film Center

Contact sheet of Nick Cave and the Birthday Party in a disused church in Kilburn, London on 22 October 1981

Mutiny In Heaven: The Birthday Party is a 2023 documentary about Australian post-punk band The Birthday Party. Formed in 1977 in suburban Melbourne as The Boys Next Door the band quickly realized that they needed to be where most of the music that interested them was happening meaning outside their home country. The documentary tells the story of the influential group’s modest beginnings as local weirdos into art and literature that pursued music almost as an afterthought only to become a band described in its heyday as the most dangerous band in the world. Led by Nick Cave and guitarist Roland S. Howard the group also comprised of drummer Phill Calvert, bassist Tracey Pew and guitarist Mick Harvey The Birthday Party still come off like figures of rock and roll myth.

Directed by Ian White, Mutiny In Heaven: The Birthday Party utilizes extensive archival footage, photography, animated sequences and contemporaneous and more recent interviews with the band including the late Roland S. Howard who passed away in 2009. Dissatisfied with much of the music going on around them The Birthday Party first moved to London, England for a few years and quickly signed to legendary post-punk label 4AD on the strength of its harrowing and thrilling music and incendiary live shows fueled by tensions within the group and their collective disdain for an uninspiring and disappointing cultural milieu in the UK minus likeminded artists like The Fall and The Pop Group. That experience pushed four members of the quintet to move to Berlin leaving founding drummer Phill Calvert behind and to new creative heights before issues with drug addiction and unsustainable expectations caused its abrupt dissolution in 1983 leaving behind a legacy for excellence in deeply imaginative songwriting, unparalleled live performances and an aesthetic that was striking and unique even through today.

The Birthday Party set a high benchmark as a band and the little live footage one could find before now on more or less bootleg copies of the 1984 video release Pleasure Heads Must Burn gave glimpses of a group of artists that were universally respected by peers like Thurston Moore, Lydia Lunch and Henry Rollins. With Mutiny In Heaven: The Birthday Party you get to experience previously unreleased live performances, hear unreleased material and witness the rise and collapse of one of the most impactful and influential bands out of the post-punk canon whose legacy continues in the likes of IDLES, Viagra Boys, Amyl and the Sniffers and Sprain. The documentary is currently being screened throughout the USA including three times in Denver on October 10 at 7:30 pm. 13 and 14 at 9:15 pm and October 15 at 4 pm at Sie FilmCenter. For more information and to look for other screenings please visit birthdaypartymovie.com. At select screenings and from the movie website a limited edition t-shirt commemorating the release of the film will be available.

Anton Barbeau’s Psychedelic Power Pop Single “Waiting On The Radio” is a Soothing Dose of Sanity in Less Than Sanguine Times

Anton Barbeau is one of those musicians still very active and prolific whose roots stretch back to American and international underground music with great creative distinction if not household fame. He has worked with the great neo-psychedelic band The Bevis Frond, he has collaborated with the late, great Scott Miller of The Loud Family and Game Theory fame, and for the new album his guest performers include Colin Moulding (XTC), Andy Metcalfe (Soft Boys/Robyn Hitchcock’s The Egyptians) and Chris Stamey (dB’s). That new album being Morganmusik/Nachtschlager which released on September 22, 2023. The lead single “Waiting On The Radio” features Barbeau on a trip on a bus across the country bemoaning the tire on the bus being busted yet taking solace in the promise of hearing “something golden” on the radio. In the story we get updates about how the driver should have retired years ago but in this America needed the money to get by and how everyone on the bus including himself is losing patience. But Barbeau and the band take us into gloriously beautiful psychedelic passages of expansive melody. It’s the kind of power pop song that made the first wave of “college rock” in the 80s so rewarding with tight yet imaginative songcraft that could resonate with frustrations of everyday life yet provide the kind of emotional release that was both soothing and captivating. Yet the song doesn’t feel like a throwback. Rather, it highlights how everyone has static in their lives that they have to get through and it needn’t feel like some end of the world inconvenience. It’s a very sane song in less than sanguine times. Watch the video for “Waiting On The Radio” on YouTube and follow Anton Barbeau at the links below.

Anton Barbeau on Instagram

Anton Barbeau on Bandcamp