New Music – Page 138 – Queen City Sounds and Art

Queen City Sounds Podcast Ep. 45: Polly Urethane

Polly Urethane is the performance moniker of Amber Benton. She started performing under that name in 2021 and garnered some attention in certain Denver underground music circles for her performance art style shows in which she breaks the stage and audience barrier pretty much every show at this point. Her music combines classical music in her piano work and operatic vocals, electronic composition, musique concrète and industrial soundscaping. In 2021 Polly Urethane released her collaborative album Altruism with Rusty Steve who some may know from his work in futuristic hip-hop glam project N3PTUNE. It showcased a shared knack for pop songcraft that fused darkwave, hyperpop, industrial and R&B. Though Polly Urethane’s presentation can be confrontational the intention is to shake up expectations and arbitrary norms of the performer and audience relationship and is informed by a spirit of humor and the absurd in the intensity and mysterious aesthetic of the performance.

Listen to our interview with Polly Urethane on Bandcamp linked below and go see the band at Down in Denver Fest on Friday, 8/19/22 at 9:45 pm. For more information on the festival and on Polly Urethane visit one of the links beneath the interview.

www.downindenver.com

Polly Urethane on Instagram

Polly Urethane on YouTube

Queen City Sounds Podcast Ep. 44: Pleasure Prince

Pleasure Prince is a soulful synth pop duo from Denver comprised of Lilly Scott and Will Duncan. The latter had been part of the Americana scene from Denver performing in Oblio Duo and other projects. Scott as a teen had spent time going to shows at DIY spaces and house shows seeing noise, other experimental music and the wide array of bands that performed at such places. In 2010 she auditioned for and appeared in the ninth season of American Idol and lived in Los Angeles for eight months before returning to Denver and forming Varlet, a jazz and Americana inflected indie rock band in which Duncan played drums. But that group parted ways around a decade ago and Scott and Duncan moved to New York City where they played clubs and other show opportunities throughout the city before deciding they wanted to be back in Colorado, returning at the end of 2019 just in time to discover how much the city had changed both culturally and in other ways that impacted being a musician in the Mile High City. Then the pandemic hit and Pleasure Prince had some time to incubate its creative impulses. While in NYC the band had acquired a number of synthesizers that shaped its current songwriting and while the duo’s gorgeously lush and evocative current music is a bit of a departure from Varlet and previous musical endeavors it reflects the core of strong songwriting Scott and Duncan have cultivated across several years as evidenced by a recent performance in which the songs had to be translated to a more or less non-electronic form. In 2022 Pleasure Prince released its new album Numbers.

Listen to our interview with Pleasure Prince on Bandcamp linked below and go see the band at Down in Denver Fest on Sunday, 8/21/22 at 8:30 pm on the Further Stage. For more information on the festival and on Pleasure Prince visit one of the links beneath the interview.

pleasureprince.com

Buick Audra’s “Afraid of Flying” is an Emotionally Complex Song of Self-Acceptance and an Embrace of Life’s Ambiguities

“Afraid of Flying” is the kind of reflective song that could feel more melancholy or resigned. And there is a note of resignation in Buick Audra’s lyrics but her tone is more about self-acceptance and owning up to her development and shortcomings as a human who is struggling with her own insecurities and flaws to live with dignity and integrity and trying to learn about how she relates to herself and other people and not get lost in someone else while still somewhat lost in oneself from time to time. The expressiveness of Audra’s vocals is perhaps the most impressive aspect of the song and paired with imaginative rhythm guitar that lends the track a free flowing warmth its pretty irresistible as a pop song with some emotional complexity and depth to it that stays with you not as a weight but as an uplifting energy that comes of hearing someone express ideas and feelings that don’t fit into the positive or negative paradigm of how we’re supposed to feel about life and relationships. In the music video Audra changes outfits and in a way that makes sense for the song and its message sheds outmoded ways of being and puts on those that better suit an evolved mindset that is more sustainable in life lived as a real human being. Watch the video for “Afraid Of Flying” (maybe, maybe not a nod to Erica Jong’s 1973 novel Fear of Flying) on YouTube, connect with Buick Audra (also of Friendship Commanders) at the links below and look out for her new album Conversations with My Other Voice out September 23, 2022 with a memoir to follow.

Buick Audra at Facebook

Buick Audra on Twitter

Buick Audra on Instagram

Queen City Sounds Podcast Ep. 43: Moon Pussy

Moon Pussy is a noise rock band from Denver. The trio met in and around the DIY/house show scene in Denton, Texas around a decade ago. Drummer Corey Hager had been in various bands including the Unwound-esque Last Men (a play on the title of the classic graphic novel series Y: The Last Man). Vocalist/bassist Cristina Cuellar lived in a house that threw shows but wasn’t an active musician until picking up bass to play with Moon Pussy. Ethan Hahn is from Denver and had played in various noise rock/art rock bands over several years before the personal and creative chemistry came together with Hager and Cuellar. After moving to Denver around a decade ago, the band didn’t fully get off the ground until a few years back when Moon Pussy made a strong impression among connoisseurs of music that might be challenging to people who would probably hate Big Black and The Jesus Lizard too. Cuellar’s eruptive vocals and the more intuitive rhythms and sonic textures that flow freely between band members and into the music sounds and feels like a catharsis of the anxiety, frustration and outrages that have become an ambient aspect of life in the modern world.

Listen to our interview with Moon Pussy on Bandcamp linked below and go see the band at Down in Denver Fest on Sunday, 8/21/22 at 2 pm on the Howl Stage. For more information on the festival and on Moon Pussy, visit one of the links beneath the link for the interview.

downindenver.com

moonpussy.band

The North Country Amplify an Instinct Toward Insightful Self-Examination on Orchestral Indiepop Track “Inside Outside”

The North Country, photo courtesy the artists

A sense of what might be called restrained calm pervades The North Country’s “Inside Outside.” Acoustic instruments weave through contemplative and soaring vocals. A processional pace in the rhythms magnifies the self-examination in the song’s lyrics as often we need to take the time and the attention to recognize the granular details of our lives in order to attain consciousness of the assumptions and privileges under which we are operating so that actual person growth can begin rather than simply living life as though our reality is “normal.” The opening lyrics “I’m awash in a sea of my own dull comfort/While outside the fire burns/It turns four hundred thousand throats to choking ashes/I’m inside baking bread.” So yes, the album from which the song hails, Born at the Right Time (Exquisite Corpse) out July 15, 2022, was written during the deep time of quarantine with band members contributing to the composition of all the songs but out of this collective work there was an acute awareness of the limitations and challenges of people outside the band’s immediate social circle. And this level of self-awareness permeates the album with a self-critical sensibility minus self-flagellation that is always refreshing to see and hear. The orchestral arrangements of “Inside Outside” adds to intimate feel of the song by amplifying the experiental element of the songwriting and how these feelings impact you rather than an externalization and abstraction of those emotions. Listen to “Inside Outside” on YouTube and follow The North Country at the links below. The limited edition vinyl of the stylistically eclectic and beautifully crafted Born at the Right Time (Exquisite Corpse) releases around September 14, 2022.

The North Country on Facebook

The North Country on Instagram

Queen City Sounds Podcast Ep. 42: Rowboat

Rowboat at Mutiny Information Cafe September 2019, photo by Tom Murphy

The roots of Rowboat are in Sam McNitt’s solo work as a songwriter from his early days writing music in a more folk style. But in the mid-2000s he started the band Small Objects with his friend Jeff Shapiro before that more indie rock band split with most of its members starting shoegaze greats Blue Million Miles. The latter garnered local attention for its raw sonic power and McNitt’s thoughtful yet emotionally charged lyrics. When Blue Million itself parted ways around 2012, McNitt moved into doing Rowboat as his musical focus. The literary and powerful lyrics delved deep into dark psychological places that we often try to shy away from in not wanting to confront the foundations of our insecurities, examine deep seated emotional wounds and and the components of our desires and aspirations. McNitt does so with a poetry and sensitivity that gives his song writing a nearly palpable depth. Inspired by visual art McNitt’s music conveys imagery that embodies the moods and places he and his bandmates go in the songs. The gentle catharsis of the live show always seems unexpected and welcome. The most recent Rowboat album Forests Burn released on February 25, 2022.

Listen to our interview with McNitt on Bandcamp linked below and go see Rowboat at Down in Denver Fest on Saturday, 8/20/22 at 9:30 pm on the Further Stage. For more information on the festival and on Rowboat, visit one of the links beneath the link for the interview.

downindenver.com

Rowboat on Instagram

Panda Riot Breaks the Clichés of the Adult Breakup Song With the Expansive Melancholy and Grit of “Ultramarine”

“Ultramarine” sounds like the end scene or a movie but it sits in the middle of Panda Riot’s new album Extra Cosmic. The guitar melodies seem to be flowing forth in a slow moving geyser of uplifting moods and intermingling with effervescent keyboard sparkles in a sustained state of bliss. The distorted edges of the rapid flow of atmospheric haze convey a sense of crystalline structure paradoxically coursing and evolving as though change its lattice composition every moment as the turns of emotion hit. For a song that seems to be one of acceptance of complex emotional dynamics and the mixed feelings that can make things messy unless you find a way in your heart to not be too attached to the way you think things need to be instead of how they are but without being doormat. It evades the clichés of songwriting by taking a different perspective than the agonized sense of betrayal and loss and by turning a melancholic chord progression into something expansive and wistfully hopeful. Even the title of the song suggests blue moods and the green of new growth in a single word and that’s more poetic and clever than you often get in rock music. Listen to “Ultramarine” on Soundcloud and follow Chicago’s long-respected shoegaze band Panda Riot at the links provided.

Panda Riot on Instagram

Queen City Sounds Podcast Ep. 41: Ray Diess

Ray Diess makes experimental electronic dance music and has been playing live under that project name for a few years minus the time of the pandemic when no one much was having shows. His 2022 album It’ll Always Ache released in July 2022 and its blend of synth pop, hyper pop and darkwave has a surprising depth of emotional expression. If you have been out at select shows you may have caught Diess live and his dramatic performances or just run into him making the shows work at places like Jester’s Palace or maybe even seeing him play keys in With Special Guest. He has collaborated on music with confrontational EBM/darkwave artist Hex Cassette and he otherwise seems as involved in his creative community as making the music that is a part of it. We recently caught up with Diess and discussed his background growing up in rural Elizabeth, Colorado and getting into theater and metal and ultimately to where he is now with music that has a similar intensity but a different sound.

Listen to our interview with Ray Diess on Bandcamp linked below and check out It’ll Always Ache on Spotify.

Queen City Sounds Podcast Ep. 40: Alpha Cat

Alpha Cat is the musical project of Elizabeth McCullough that came together when she started writing songs some of which would become the 1999 EP Real Boy. The latter began as demos produced by McCullough’s friend, Television bassist Fred Smith and it enjoyed attention in the national charts for six weeks. The follow-up release Pearl Harbor had some unfortunate timing with the image of a bomb on the cover when it landed in October 2001 yet did well on college radio early the following year. But then, as happens with many people, McCullough went through and ended an unfortunate relationship and in April 2006 she started working on 15 instrumental tracks for what was to be her next album Venus Smile. With seven vocal tracks complete by summer McCullough lost her voice and fell into a dark place emotionally and psychologically and wouldn’t return to that music for over a decade. After hospitalization and various treatments McCullough in recent years engaged in a form of therapy to get to the root cause of the trauma that had run throughout her life. Starting in 2019 she has also revisited the finished recordings for Venus Smile and is now releasing the material in segments that make sense and work as a piece including the 2019 album Thatched Roof Glass House and the newly issued Venus Smile EP out now on Aquamarine Records. In this interview McCullough and I discuss her life and career thus far and the path through the sometimes unpredictable perils of mental health struggle and a culture that helps to exacerbate and perpetuate them.

Listen to the interview on Bandcamp linked below and connect with McCullough at the links provided where you can purchase the music as well.

Alpha Cat website

Aquamarine Records website

La Vie Sauvage and Pet Snake Embody the Dark Inner Impulses of Anxiety Through the Catharsis of Darkwave Industrial Track “Angst”

La Vie Sauvage, photo courtesy the artist

The keening tone and textural drone that opens “Angst” by La Vie Sauvage is unsettling enough. But when Pet Snake’s vocals come in like a demon whispering from the darkness of one’s own inner depths the song takes on a quality like experiencing a possession firsthand. The sound of metal on metal setting the pace, the chittering drone that runs throughout in swells and valleys, the squelched siren tone all conspire to make for a track that is a supernatural horror movie experience in the first person experienced through your ears and while that may not sound like a fun experience it is certainly interesting and different and more original than a conventional piece of music and a different take on the realm of darkwave and industrial especially given some of the synthwave compositions that La Vie Sauvage has put into the world. Listen to “Angst” and its catharsis of anxiety through the embodiment of that pervading sense of menace on Spotify and follow La Vie Sauvage at the links below.

La Vie Sauvage on TikTok

La Vie Sauvage on Instagram