The gentle psychedelia of “Pocket Theory” by Springworks has a refreshing energy that has the quality of feeling like waking up from a good sleep. The effervescent tones like several tiny belltones twinkling in the mix and the production on the song with an ever expansive dynamic is reminiscent of Thomas Newman’s music for Real Genius and his older brother David Newman’s score for Heathers. Which is to say it’s cinematic and conveys a tangible sense of place and projects a mood that can suit whatever visual environment to which it’s put. In the case of the video for the song it’s a collage of old science videos and psychedelic images like content pulled from a box of VHS tapes found at a thrift store and repurposed to breathe new life into its potential meaning and significance when combined with “Pocket Theory” and its Madchester-esque good vibes and seemingly endless uplift until the song fades out into a tranquil drone over sampled industrial video speech. Watch the video for “Pocket Theory” on YouTube and connect with Springworks at the links below.
September Stories employ a spoken word element for the lyrics to “I’VE BEEN THINKING ABOUT DYING TOO MUCH” while the music itself is stark to match the intense and unadorned vocals. The lyrics repeat and in the second iteration the drums come crashing in and the vocals raise in an amplified sense of desperation uttering words of abject alienation and the realization of being doomed by one’s own psychology and feeling trapped by a hopelessness so deep it turns into a self-reinforcing cycle of emotional self-sabotage that feels with great certainty inescapable. Though very different sonically fans of Big Black, Slint and OXBOW will appreciate the bleak imagery and poetic evocation of confronting one’s own worst enemy within one’s own mind. Listen to “I’VE BEEN THINKING ABOUT DYING TOO MUCH” on YouTube and check out the rest of the new September Stories EP I STAND IN AWE OF THE GREAT UNKNOWN on one of the streaming services below and follow the group at the links provided.
“Eveningside Decks” opens Warning Light’s latest album Inner Spaces with a an air of mystery and trepidation. Imagine walking home alone in the twilight and you take a trip down an unfamiliar street with houses of unusual shapes with doorways opening directly onto the sidewalk and you see one open with a flickering light illuminating a darkened alcove because it’s near the end of fall. Your curiosity gets the better of you and you look inside and find an empty living room with no windows and a television screen tuned to, unusual these days, to the static of a channel off broadcast. Then a figure comes on the screen and welcomes you to sit and you do and you are invited by this stranger to help with a mission of great importance and great reward if you so choose to come on board for what promises to be the adventure of a lifetime but one that has to remain hush hush. The distorted synth drones and hovering tones set to a meditative, accented beat suggests the air of futuristic film noir with the vibe of Tangerine Dream’s 1980’s soundtracks, like music for a film inspired both by Murakami and Ridley Scott. Listen to “Eveningside Decks” on Soundcloud and give a listen to the rest of Inner Spaces on Bandcamp.
“Things Fall Apart” starts off by placing the song in a mood of mysterious nostalgia with the rising and warping tone like something from a latter day soundtracking of a silent movie. When Alyssa Midcalf’s vocals come in it’s like something from the edge of daydreams as they seem to be lit up from within amidst the luminous fog of the layers of synth melody and the wash of melodic drones. It feels very orchestrated and given the title and some of the enigmatic lyrics it has the effect of bandaging oneself from a traumatic and overwhelming experience that leaves you on or over the edge of emotional collapse without much relief so your mind creates the kind of music that feels like gauze on the psyche as a comfortable shield that allows for the processing of the pain and to heal as best you can when depending on the specific experience maybe you feel like you never can. The song sounds like it’s about the loss of an important person in one’s life and the complicated and messy feelings that can come about from something so final. Maybe you put some distance from yourself and those feelings within yourself, maybe some dissociation as a method of coping through the act of creation and to make things that remind one of better times emotionally the way sound can tap into the nostalgia centers of your mind and redirect the crushing and poignantly painful feelings that won’t go away, the memories that can haunt you for a lifetime. Midcalf seems to have used her most recent album Incubator as a vehicle for restarting her life through creativity while honoring her experiences and maybe that can be a helpful thing to hear for anyone that has been through a rough patch. “Things Fall Apart” certain exemplifies the project. Listen that song on YouTube and follow Primer at the links below where you can explore the rest of Incubator on Bandcamp.
Shady Baby turns confusion and melancholia to a joyful burst of nervous energy and despair channeled directly into catharsis on its single “Come to Life.” The music has that kind of driving, angular, urgent quality akin to some of the more upbeat tracks from The Dandy Warhols’ 2000 album Thirteen Tales from Urban Bohemia. Rosettes of guitar riff pausing before charging forward. Early in the song we hear about some of those half-measure attempts to stave off appearing human and denying one’s vulnerabilities without being aware that some of the aspects of our personalities suppressed are normal and that having normal feelings and being able to get hurt are not weaknesses unless you’re really dedicated to that premise as conditioned by society. Also to perhaps see that aspect of one’s psyche as a personal villain threatening to everything you hold dear. But the chorus of “I feel it coming, it’s the darkness I’ve been fighting come to life” points out how this nightmare of psychological reconciliation with one’s shadow side can feel like a welcoming and thrilling experience when you stop trying to resist your feelings and instincts and that welcoming them into a whole personality isn’t that scary and in fact expands how much of life you can experience and yes feel that the stoic block of conventional society, Western and non-Western, makes impossible until you ignore the repression and come into your full powers as a human. Listen to “Shady Baby” on Spotify.
ENPHIN’s new album End Cut came out on Pelagic Records in June and it is a fine representation of the Finnish band’s cinematic, psychedelic doom. The single “Communion” flows with menacing synth washes and processional percussion giving a ritualistic cast especially in the sections where a voice echoes in distorted ripples like an announcer giving direction to an assembled crowd gathering to depart the earth to mysterious destinations in other parts of the universe. Something about music taps into the same, complex emotional and sonic realms as Orbit Service or Dead Voices On Air with that dark form of deeply atmospheric psychedelia that delves deep into the lost recesses of the psyche for inspiration. Listen to “Communion” on YouTube and follow ENPHIN at the links below.
Gus Englehorn is a songwriter who now resides in Quebec City, Canada. He grew up in Alaska and Hawaii with parents whose lifestyle meant jobs in both states and as a youth got into snowboarding and turned it into a career. During that stretch of his life Englehorn became exposed to genuine underground and otherwise non-mainstream music partly through skateboarding and snowboarding videos which often showcase cutting edge artists. Though Englehorn didn’t fully grow up playing music he started picking up guitar toward the end of his tenure as a professional snowboarder and he realized at one point that he couldn’t spend the rest of his life in such a physically demanding sport and around a decade ago he started to make the transition into more creative endeavors. While many people who come to music later in life than usual often latch on to a musical style of their younger years or something more trendy at that time. Englehorn instead leaned into his creative instincts and personality and has produced a body of work striking for its uniqueness and creativity. The songwriter’s first album Death & Transfiguration released in January 2020 right before the still ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, possibly the worst time to release and promote a new album in recent memory. The record nevertheless had the hallmarks of what has made Englehorn’s music stand out. Though it could be considered a truly idiosyncratic indie pop that fans of Half Japanese and Daniel Johnston might appreciate, Englehorn is clearly tapping into some musical ideas of the 90s but stripped back the sonic excess to allow the songs to hit with a charming vulnerability in its unusual character studies and stories that should form the basis of a future, more benevolent Harmony Korine film.
With that first album and its 2022 follow up, Dungeon Master, Englehorn has performed the music with his partner in life and drummer Estée Preda who also does the artwork for both records. Her visual style akin to children’s mythical storybooks and manga both is a perfect analog of the music within. Dungeon Master finds the duo exploring the inclusion of synths and an even more surreal sensibility in the lyrics and blending of musical elements. The album sounds like a great collection of stories you’d want to see as a Jim Jarmusch anthology film. Fortunately music videos for “Exercise Your Demons” and “Tarantula” at a minimum exist and both reveal even more layers of the wonderful yet highly accessible weirdness of this album. We had a chance to speak with the charming and engaging Englehorn about his life and his art and with any luck we’ll see a more extensive set of live shows in the near future. Apologies for not getting this posted in time to let people know about Estée Preda’s art show in May 2022.
Listen to the interview below on Bandcamp and to get a copy of Dungeon Master or Death & Transfiguration digitally you can visit the artist’s own Bandcamp and for the physical media (cassette/CD/vinyl) you can visit Secret City Records.
Courtney Cotter King and band, photo courtesy the artist
Courtney Cotter King’s the simple yet evocative piano figure that runs through her song “Conversation” is like a comforting and reassuring presence. That melody along with ethereal strings and soft percussion accents set a gentle and patient air around King’s soulful, vulnerable vocals sounding like she has given up on the ego drive to power through life’s challenging situations. In the lyrics it sounds like she feels like she has made some unspoken transgressions felt deeply, the kind that are difficult to discard and purge from your psyche. And guilt from these acts, however minor yet felt in the core of her being, seems to weigh her down with a kind of numbing effect as suggested in the line wanting her hand held “’til I can feel again.” Feel as in feel normal and whole and not burdened by the weight of conscience and seeking to move beyond it. Could be King is calling upon a higher power to aid in this time when it all feels so poignant and inescapable and oftentimes this is what people need to do because their rational mind and its habit of needing linear logic to think things through isn’t always enough because we depend on our own current faculties which may be inadequate to guide us through in the conventional modes of understanding we consciously possess. King articulates this process in the language of a more traditional faith but the emotional impact of the song and the core human experiences expressed transcend specificity of culture. Listen to “Conversation” on YouTube and follow King at the links provided.
Cindy Gravity’s “48h Daydream” has a playfully surreal and eclectic aesthetic lends its psychedelic pop a decidedly different flavor from a lot of what passes for psych in the past several years. The spare guitar riff is somehow like an indie folk take on a salsa style, the bass line is subtle but also seems to provide the framework of the song as the minimal percussion is almost more textural than rhythmic and the keyboard work sounds like it came out of something Bernie Worrell might do for one of those New Wave bands with which he worked. The lyrics and the laid back vocal style are not the typical throught process for a song where someone will sing about love they have, wish they had, projected fantasy or the other usual pop and rock song tropes. There are elements of all of that but also a tacit admission of whimsy and self-awareness especially in the line “Everything lines up so well/in the little world I made up for her/She’s snooping around in my head/I may let her and just go to bed.” Maybe the song didn’t intend to shed a light on how daydreams can reinforce wishful thinking and behaviors related to such like texting someone you’re into and not hearing back within, yes, 48 hours, and thinking you did what you could to bring them into your life but there’s always consoling yourself with a daydream as an act of acceptance. The tone of the song is benevolent and self-indulgent rather than suggestive of anything nefarious and who doesn’t enjoy giving in to some harmless daydreaming know it’s just that? Listen to “48h Daydream” on YouTube and follow Berlin’s Cindy Gravity on Instagram.
Foyer Red’s “Flipper” is a song so resonant with today it takes more than one listen to take in its full impact though one listen is enough to be drawn into its bizarro pop charm. The vocals start out sing-song-y and contemplative like something you’d expect out of a good bedroom pop song but in the background the array of sounds morphs into a mutated pastiche of vacillating dynamics and rhythms and Dada-esque use of texture, drone and jazz-like folk-inflected chord progressions. It frankly shouldn’t work except it is loosely reminiscent of “My Iron Lung” by Radiohead at times before detonating that impression gently mid-song. Elana Riordan sounds paradoxically present and disengaged from the tale of tangling with hunger and turning into a “ravenous creature left to roam the earth” and later “rusted into this warzone” alone with no bones while still growing and ready to “eat your bones.” This while swirling distorted sounds carry a somehow pleasantly disorienting unconventional melody. It’s rare for a band to combine what seems like a commentary on the burgeoning spirit of widespread nihilism that is one of the only sane reactions to the state of the world where the powers that be and authority figures are detached from the lives and interests of most people, even themselves, and you’re forced to get by as best you can and sometimes that means what Prince once sang about when the hell machine of modern late stage capitalism tries to bring you down, “Go crazy” and “punch a higher floor” by feeding that angst and frustration into unexpected and creative acts of resistance including writing a strange, colorful and creative art pop song like this. Listen to “Flipper” on YouTube and follow Foyer Red on Bandcamp.
Queen City Sounds and Art 
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