Brian Krumm is the frontman of Chicago-based Americana/alt-country band The Great Crusades and like most musicians at the beginning of the pandemic lock downs he found himself with ample time to think, consider and stew about the state of things and contemplate about the future of his chosen path in life. So in an effort to stay sane he drank a shot of whiskey every evening at 5 p.m. and tried to write a song. 25 days later he had 25 songs and over the course of the next two to three years he identified 11 that he could shape into an album and develop the material with band mates and other musical colleagues. The result is Just Fade Away, released as Brian Krumm and his Barfly Friends, out now on Pravda on digital, 12” vinyl LP and CD as well as streaming platforms. The record is a deeply introspective and poetically observed set of songs that get into an assessment of one’s life and one’s shortcomings, triumphs and the moments of joy that illuminate existence. Fans of Tom Waits will appreciate Krumm’s vulnerable rasp and the frank and witty storytelling is reminiscent of the likes of Robyn Hitchcock and Warren Zevon.
Listen to our interview with Brian Krumm on Bandcamp and connect with the artist at the links below.
Wild Carnation circa 1996, photo courtesy the artists
Wild Carnation formed in 1992 with Richard Barnes, Chrstopher O’Donovan and Brenda Sauter. Though all members of the band had been in Speed the Plough, the latter, lead vocalist and bass player, had performed with The Feelies and The Trypes (as well as others) and the new band would have some roots in the intricate guitar melodies and layered rhythms of the better bands out of the indie underground of Haledon and Hoboken, New Jersey. In 2023 the trio’s 1994 debut full length Tricycle was released on digital, CD and vinyl via Delmore Recording Society, the renamed Delmore Recordings label that issued the album initially. The energetic jangle pop of the songs and Sauter’s beautifully expressive vocals recall a sound of that era of which one hears echoes in Flying Nun bands, Elephant 6 and of course Yo La Tengo with the mix of tenderness and intensity, of irresistible melodies and emotional nuance that a certain vintage of indiepop embodied perfectly and which seems somehow even more relevant for the current era when that level of elegant songwriting and attention to sonic detail seems like something the world has finally caught up to more so than in years past.
Listen to our interview with Brenda Sauter on Bandcamp and to listen to Tricycle and keep up with all things Wild Carnation follow the links below.
David Heatley is a cartoonist, illustrator, graphic designer and musician whose comic work has appeared in or on The New Yorker, The New York Times, Mome, Kramers Ergot and McSweeney’s. His high school band Velvet Cactus Society had a couple of records out on Shimmy Disc in the 90s and for his 2008 graphic novel My Brain is Hanging Upside Down he recorded a soundtrack under his own name including a cover of The Ramones song from which he borrowed the title. He has also been a member of the band The Bischoffs. In 2021 he launched his animation production company Dream Puppy, Inc. and a television show based on his 2019 graphic memoir Qualification is currently under production by Gaspin Media. In March 2023 Heatley released his latest album If…, a collection of songs that seem to explore the concept of love, requited, not so requited, potential, as manifest in one’s life and the implications of that feeling in one’s life and how it affects how you live it. Its baroque pop and bossa nova sounds sounds like something from an earlier era but its sensibility and treatment of the subject matter is very modern and tinged with the kind of self-awareness and at times a touch of irony but never about love itself. In this interview we discuss his music and his life as an artist and his influences including his connections with the legendary Providence, Rhode Island DIY space Fort Thunder.
Listen to our interview with David Heatley on Bandcamp and follow the songwriter/artist’s doings on his website linked below where you can listen to the new album in its entirety.
MIIRORS has its roots in a happenstance meeting between Brian McSweeney and Shawn Rios in 2001 on an airplane that sparked a long friendship around music that lead to the formation of a band. The group started with the aim of creating an album rather than working toward a debut live performance giving it the ability to develop and grow organically from a recording project duo into a full five member bend that it is today with the inclusion of Dmitri Rakhuba, Andre Miller and Patrick Riley. During the early pandemic the band had no pressure to be a live act and made it even more practical to germinate the material so that the debut album Motion and Picture (released March 24, 2023) emerged as a fully realized work of ambitious songwriting that reflected influences of sonically detailed shoegaze bands like My Bloody Valentine and Slowdive and experimental art rock/pop outfits like Broken Social Scene and Lake Trout. Cinematic in the scope of its soundscapes Motion and Picture explores the full range of amplified emotions we’ve all experienced the past several years and is now available on digital and vinyl. And in the wake of the release of the album the group has been playing live shows throughout the Midwest.
Listen to our interview with McSweeney and Rios on Bandcamp and follow MIIRRORS at the links below. Also included below are the band’s music videos released as another dimension of the expression of the music.
Ghost Canyon Fest organizers (L-R: Brian Dooley, Cory Hager, Jeremy Brashaw and Sean Dove), photo by Tom Murphy
Ghost Canyon Fest is “A Boundary-Pushing DIY Music Festival” that runs August 11-13 across three venues. The event germinated as an idea among friends in the bands New Standards Men, Moon Pussy and Almanac Man who attended and/or performed at events like PRF BBQ, Caterwaul and No Coast and felt there was enough interest and enough mutual connections among bands well outside of Denver to hold a viable, like-minded festival in the Mile High City. In year’s past Denver hosted multiple festivals of strongly focused curation like Goldrush Festival, Transistor Festival, Denver Noise Fest, DAD Fest , Ultra Metal and in Boulder Communikey among others but left field sounds are largely not included in most other festivals in Denver. Ghost Canyon Fest in its inaugural year of 2023 goes to some length to shine a light on those sounds in a more high profile way including a mention in a recent issue of The Wire as a festival of note. If you go, expect to see stars of local and non-local noise rock, post-metal, noise and experimental dance and drone including BIG|BRAVE, Quits, Masma Dream World, Big’N, Church Fire, Pleasure Venom and of course the projects of the event organizers. For a full list and a schedule of events please and to purchase passes for the weekend or single nights visit the Ghost Canyon Fest website. At the site you can link to curated playlists created by various artists performing that weekend. This interview includes a conversation with Jeremy Brashaw (New Standards Men), Cory Hager (Moon Pussy), Sean Dove (Almanac Man) and Brian Dooley (Almanac Man).
Listen to our interview with the organizers on Bandcamp and look for our interviews with various artists performing at Ghost Canyon Fest in the coming weeks.
Charming Disaster is a “goth-folk duo” comprised of Ellia Bisker and Jeff Morris based out of Brooklyn, NY that has since 2012 written high concept songs that explore themes of human exploration of the natural world and the ways our attempts at explaining the world and our lives weave their way into culture in fascinating ways that are often hidden from contemporary society. In its songwriting Charming Disaster uncover these secret and often merely neglected connections and turn those paths of curiosity into fascinating narratives for its body of work. The project’s latest album is Super Natural History, a musical cabinet of curiosities in which each song is a curio and oddity of our collective mythological heritage in the form of stories of witchcraft, monsters and the underworld and where our ideas of magic and science intersect in alchemical fashion. The music is rooted in a sense of wonder and strong songcraft that renders the sometimes unusual subject matter accessible and immediately relatable.
Listen to our interview with Charming Disaster on Bandcamp, listen to Super Natural History below where you can also purchase the album digitally, on CD or vinyl on the group’s own Bandcamp site and follow the adventures and exploits of Charming Disaster at charmingdisaster.com.
Isadora Eden started as a solo project in a more indie singer-songwriter vein but even the early releases were imbued with an imaginative flair and an ear for deeper emotional coloring. As Eden brought on board collaborators to help flesh out the sound in the newer songs she was writing the music evolved into a darker, more sonically rich sound that was a bit more like something one might expect to hear from a songwriter like PJ Harvey or Mary Timony but more darkwave, more flourishes of atmospheric sounds both guitar-rooted and electronic akin to the stranger end of shoegaze. This creative period has resulted in one of the more fascinating records of 2023 in forget what makes it glow, the debut full-length for the project. Eden’s deeply evocative voice guides you through an introspective set of songs that are melancholic, reflective and in the end cathartic. Like the kind of dream pop record with some grit and edge, willing to wax noisy in moments as if to embody the way life and our subsconscious experiences are analog and meaningful, intimate, in a way pristine digital and curated experiences rarely are. The album will be available on vinyl and digital and for more information on finding group’s releases, social media and upcoming shows please visit the band’s website.
Listen to our interview with Isadora Eden and main songwriting partner and drummer Sumner Erhard on Bandcamp and catch one of the album release live shows listed below.
The Royal Arctic Institute, photo by Charlotte Hysen
The Royal Arctic Institute calls itself “an instrumental, post-punk, cinematic jazz quintet” and is currently based out of New York City. Its compositions strike one as soundtrack music for coastal noir with the hard to define sense that part of its sonic DNA is nearby large bodies of water and the ways sunrise and sunset ripple across the ocean. There is the mood of day into night as though the music was conceived and written for a time between an active workday and night time plans. The elegant melodies and percussion rise and resolve with an intuitive grace and evoke emotional states like the musicians have in mind creating imagery with luminous layers of tone and sonic shading. In 2022 the group released the From Catnip to Coma EP and in 2023 a companion EP From Coma To Catharsis perhaps charting and processing the long stretch of the early pandemic and its effects on life and the psyche. Both records were recorded and produced by James McNew of Yo La Tengo fame in the historic Neumann Leather Factory in Hoboken, New Jersey. The band consists of veteran musicians drummer Lyle Hysen (Das Damen, Arthur Lee), guitarists John Leon (Roky Erickson, Summer Wardrobe, Abra Moore) and Lynn Wright (And The Wiremen, Bee And Flower, Shilpa Ray), bassist David Motamed (Das Damen, Two Dollar Guitar, Arthur Lee, Townes Van Zandt) and keyboardist Carl Baggaley (Headbrain, Gramercy Arms) whose musical chemistry is obvious across the project’s recorded output. On August 4, 2023 Already Dead Records and Tapes will release a full length album on 12” LP vinyl of the two EPs combined as Catnip to Coma to Catharsis.
Listen to our interview with Carl Baggaley on Bandcamp and follow The Royal Arctic Institute at the links below.
REZN is a heavy psych band from Chicago whose forays into evocative and haunting music incorporate the aesthetics of doom, shoegaze and cinematic ambient to create dynamic soundscapes that capture a sense of the cosmic and of the deep mystery of nature. The group recently released its new album Solace. The record’s cover looks like something one might have expected on an old Rainbow or Hawkwind record of windswept mountains and the sunlight breaking through a raging storm. The music within is not unlike that expectation set of epic journeys and existential catharsis through finely sculpted and orchestrated volume and majestically accented rhythms. If Lovecraft and Michael Moorcock had somehow collaborated on a dark science fantasy trilogy in the modern era this is the music for that story—menace, spiritual contemplation and transcendence.
Listen to our interview with bassist Phil Cangelosi on Bandcamp and catch REZN on tour now (dates, streaming music and more information available at rezn.band) including a stop at the Hi-Dive in Denver with local doom legends Oryx on Friday, July 7, 2023.
Stinking Lizaveta is a trio from Philadelphia that formed in 1994 creating instrumental rock with roots in prog, jazz and cinematic music. The style the group has developed from the beginning has been summed up with the descriptor “doom jazz” because its sound has often combined heaviness with a musical complexity and elegance. Stinking Lizaveta establishes a mood early in its songs and its compositions vividly express ideas and emotional nuance that engages the listener’s imagination. The band’s sound has evolved and explored ideas and concepts across nine albums including its new record, 2023’s Anthems and Phantoms which features some of Stinking Lizaveta’s most unvarnished compositions and some of its most fully realized. Fans of bands like Earth and Hermanos Gutiérrez will find much to appreciate about the Stinking Lizaveta catalog and in particular the left field paths it takes on the new record into deeply evocative soundscapes. We were able to pose some questions to guitarist Yanni Papadopoulos about the his band’s history and the new album. Currrently Stinking Lizaveta is on tour with a stop in Denver at Hi-Dive on July 6, 2023 with Telekinetic Yeti, Somnuri and Hashtronaut.
Stinking Lizaveta at Bender’s Tavern in Denver, March 30, 2007, photo by Tom Murphy
Tom Murphy: When you formed this band it was the beginning of the end of alternative music as a force in mainstream music. How did you come upon the idea to do an instrumental band with some heavy sounds and jazz in the mix at that time? What kinds of sounds inspired you? I think back and my brain lands on stuff like what the late Peter Brötzmann was doing with Last Exit, or Naked City, Don Caballero and the like being in the vein of what you have done. Maybe later on stuff like Zs.
Yanni Papadopoulos: Initially we were inspired by Black Flag’s Family Man album. One side was instrumental rock, and the other was Henry reciting poetry. Greg Ginn also had an instrumental band called Gone. I never saw them or even heard their music, but I ran into a couple of guys that loved their show. They said something like, “ Man, those guys just came out and ripped it up!” Another friend of mine named Frank said he saw Gone play on the street in Philly, and it was intense! It was a tradition for bands to have an instrumental track on their albums. So we decided to just make that the whole thing. We were also into progressive rock, out jazz and soundtrack music, all of which gave us the idea that people will like what we do.
How did the band go over early on and where did you find a niche either in clubs or DIY type spaces? Were there other bands that you connected with in the early years of your own group?
Initially we connected with Pittsburgh PA, where Don Caballero was laying the groundwork for underground rock, and we made a deep connection in Richmond VA, where “mathrock” in the form of King Sour and Breadwinner was turning people on. In Philly we made friends with Dysrhythmia Flay, and Ninefinger (Mike Dean of COC’s band). There was also a great connection with an instrumental band in New Orleans called Spikle, and we even played with Clearlight at Check Point Charlie’s. In DC we made friends with Spirit Caravan, and years later Wino took us to Europe with his band The Hidden Hand. Our identity really started to form within the Emissions from the Monolith Festival in Youngstown OH. We played with tons of great bands there like Keelhaul and Mastodon.
What do you feel that instrumental music allows you to express or in general to communicate that might be more challenging if you had to include vocals with lyrics?
Vocals and lyrics tether the music to an image, make it more terrestrial. Instrumental music can occupy a deeper space in your imagination. If I want to write a song, I’ll start with a lyric. If I write a riff, does it need a lyric? I don’t have time for that kind of homework.
The new record, Anthems and Phantoms, continues with the kind of surprisingly clear and energetic lines of music that was there even on …Hopelessness and Shame. But it’s even more sonically spare yet intricate than say the psychedelic sound of Sacrifice and Bliss. Was there anything that helped to inform the different sonic direction of this new collection of songs?
During the Sac and Bliss period I was using a wah pedal, a delay and a tremolo, and I really got into that vocabulary. You can also hear it on 7th Direction, and Journey to the Underworld. On Anthems I put the effects away and just plugged into the amp. That’s how I’m playing live now, and will be for the whole tour. I don’t want any pedals now, not even a tuner, just chord into the same Mesa Boogie amp I bought by accident and have been using for 30 years.
It seems that there are implied themes in song titles that you explore without defining that for your potential listeners throughout your career. Titles like “The Man Needs Your Pain” is so on point and evocative and cultural references like “Zeitgeist, The Movie” and “A Day Without A Murder” from Sacrifice and Bliss seem to point to larger themes of human society and civilization. What sorts of themes do you think run through Anthems and Phantoms?
Anthems feels like an emergence from the dark, a movement into light from uncertainty. There are more major chords. Tunes like Let Live and Serpent Underfoot want to be uplifting without taking too much of your time. It wouldn’t be a Stinking Lizaveta album if we didn’t get down with tunes like “Blue Skunk” and “The Heart.” “Heart” has a little bit of a Manchester vibe for me, and “Skunk” is cracked blues, we go there.
The cover art for the new album is striking and mythological in a way that resonates with your previous record Journey to the Underworld. Who did the visuals and how do you feel it reflects the mood and themes of the album with the squid-legged Medusa type creature with crab arms holding the boat, floating over the world?
The art is done by Alexi’s son, Mike, with no direction at all from us. He just graduated from art school and banged out a good one. We have indeed become such a mythical beast as a band.
There’s a great deal of diversity in the sound palette on all of your records so the descriptor of Stinking Lizaveta as doom jazz while good as shorthand for what to expect seems to be something you’ve outgrown. What new areas of musical expression do you feel like maybe came more to the foreground on the new record?
I’m always trying to answer the question of what is missing from the music that hits me. We see so many bands every year, and when I pick up my guitar I try to be the one that joyfully participates in rock music, but also redeems it from its shortcomings. Not everyone will get us, it takes me years to even listen to my own music, but I’m usually pleasantly surprised once I get some distance from it. Keep finding new things to practice and get out of your comfort zone. Stinking Lizaveta is our life’s work, that’s how we approach it.
Queen City Sounds and Art 
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