New Music – Page 151 – Queen City Sounds and Art

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

Wild Arrows Eases Wounded Emotional Confusion to Warm, Celebratory Acceptance in the Hazy Ambient Pop of “Here’s the Ghost”

Wild Arrows is a band headed by Mike Law of posthardcore bands EUCLID and New Idea Society but don’t expect that style of music on its new album Loving the Void. The single “Here’s the Ghost” exemplifies the fusion of musical ideas and palette of sounds. It begins as an almost ambient, synth pop meditation on being stuck in a feeling and the repetition of the line “So what if I still love you” the way you can get trapped in your head and the recursive loop of an internal narrative that probably serves to salve your wounded feelings but can be counterproductive in re-establishing psychological health. But halfway through the song the energy shifts and the words to “I only wanted to be with you in a way that you were all your own so here’s the ghost.” It’s a flipping of perspective from an aggrieved self-focus born of hurt to one of coming to terms with the break-up and maybe beginning to see a way clear of the unhealthy aspects of the relationship. The sudden yet somehow subtle shift of pace and tone around the 3:20 mark is an interesting way to show how your psychological orientation toward anything can change without having to lose anything. The uplifting sweep of the song out of a dreamlike melancholia is a dramatic evolution worthy of Mercury Rev. The whole album feels like a tapping into the emotional territory of Law’s other projects but through the lens of early OMD and that unlikely alchemy makes for a collection of fascinating and emotionally vibrant music. Listen to “Here’s the Ghost” on YouTube and follow Wild Arrows at the links below.

Queen City Sounds Podcast Ep. 39: doubleVee

Treat Her Strangely is the new album by Norman, Oklahoma-based art pop band doubleVee. The project formed in 2012 with Allan Vest and Barb Hendrickson whose creative backgrounds in music and art complemented each other well. The duo married in 2015 and released their debut album in 2017, The Moonlit Fables of Jack the Rider. Allan had been the lead singer and guitarist of indiepop band The Starlight Mints from 1998-2009. The group’s orchestral pop songs were some of the more creatively ambitious works in the realm of what was coming to be called indie rock and The Starlight Mints garnered attention and placement in film and television for its colorfully baroque compositions. Barb spent sixteen years in public radio and she wrote, hosted and produced Filmscapes, a nationally syndicated film music program that afforded her the opportunity to interview the likes of Danny Elfman and Philip Glass whose own music have long graced film scores. Barb’s and Allan’s experiences jibe well together in the songwriting for doubleVee with a body of work that reveals a talent for pairing mythical storytelling with establishing a deep mood and dynamic orchestration of musical elements so that the songs are like vignettes in the story arc of each album even when the albums are not necessarily conceived as having a unified concept or aesthetic. The albums draw you in like the theme music for a great radio drama from another era. In the interview we discuss the roots of doubleVee’s artistry, their mutual appreciation for a good Caesar salad, the possibilities for presenting this music of cinematic scope live among other refinements.

Listen to the interview at Bandcamp linked below and follow the adventures and goings on of doubleVee at the links provided.

doublevee.net

doubleVee on Twitter

doubleVee on Facebook

doubleVee on Instagram

doubleVee on YouTube