The descending bass line that drives Birthday Boy’s “Fool’s Paradise” is what pushes it out of post-hardcore into something more introspective and ultimately more expressive. The effervescent and melodic guitar riffs flow forth not with force so much as an impressionistic fountain of sparks with the guitars playing off each other in complimentary rhythms. The way the vocals emote place it well within the realm of post-hardcore except that the more impassioned parts are coherent and evoke the desperation and pain of feeling powerless in the face of an imploded, dysfunctional relationship. Watch the video below and follow the Philadelphia-based band at the links provided.
For the interval phase of the upcoming KIN CAPA album, THE AMERICAN OPERA Act Two, Lee Capa wrote and recorded “Re-Cover-Re,” a song that sounds like a lot of pent up energy being held in check to feed back in on itself. The circular surging main riff ripples responsively to Capa’s vocals and the guitar sounds like it was recorded in a giant can with the sounds bouncing back to double the impression of feedback and, indeed, of a feedback loops. Also known as “The Scream,” this song includes a feral scream on both ends of the song as if the narrator of the larger story is burned by the feedback just a little. The title suggests the process of recovery through music with “re” being both the repetition and the second note in a major scale. Like actual recovery maybe you end up trying the same old tricks to get a fix of what gave you pleasure initially but now brings only pain, going at this music thing only to find yourself following familiar pathways rather than creative growth and being pained by how well you’ve trained yourself into musical complacency. But there is momentum behind the song in spite of its clever, recursive construction and that promises liberation from the stasis of artistic and personal stagnation and, given the name of the album, a social and even spiritual place of stale, outmoded and self-destructive patterns. Listen below on YouTube and look for the new album sometime this summer on the KIN CAPA website (link following song).
You’ll have to wait until September 6 to hear Lovers, the new album from Oakland quartet Mwahaha. But for now you can give a listen to its brooding yet progressively syncopated song “Sundown.” If Clark, Robert Alfons and LCD Soundsystem circa “Starry Eyes” wanted to make a track that would fit a science fiction noir soundtrack driven by the music itself. A story about in the classic mold of passion and betrayal, reconciliation and justice but with an ending that isn’t as neatly resolved as a cheesy mainstream movie. Something more like life where you have to continue on with the mundane tasks of life once the adventure and crisis has passed. That the record was started before former member Cyrus Tilton passed away from cancer in 2017 perhaps gives context for its heavy and somber tone. But that the band could come back to the material and imbue it with life and an inventive low end architecture is truly a tribute to the band’s lost comrade who worked on the music through his illness. Even without that context the track has enormous momentum carried across by all the performances and Ross Peacock’s relatively stripped down vocals. Very promising stuff from one of the most promising bands of recent years. Listen below and follow Mwahaha at the links provided.
White Elephant Orchestra “Tremolo” single cover, image courtesy the artist (cropped)
The distorted, cycling synth that introduces White Elephant Orchestra’s “Tremolo” sounds like the title of the song as though a streaming synth were put through a hard panning tremolo effect so that it comes out the other end almost echoing. But the song quickly sweeps up into an anthemic realization of the need to shake up outmoded patterns and habits and training picked up from others to reconnect with one’s natural way of being and the genuine core of one’s creativity and passion. Songwriter Andy Stochansky certainly spent several years as a sideman and drummer for Ani DiFranco where his chops as a musician and performer got a workout. But with White Elephant Orchestra he’s getting to more fully explore his own musical voice and “Tremolo” is sort of a signature song for that process of discovery and the sense of awakening in the song is unmistakable. Expect his new album with the project, aptly titled Debut, out soon. For now listen to “Tremolo” below.
VIETNAMINGO$ display plenty of swagger on “Khmer Krom Kowboyz” splicing cultural references with a sly disregard for time frames and geography. Bookending the track with samples from Marty Robbins’ “Prairie Fire,” the the duo names the song by transforming the spelling of “cowboys” and imbue that with the kind of rebel/outlaw attitude of the present and giving it an alliteration using the term for the part of Vietnam that was once part of the southeastern part of the Khmer empire. The lyrics are about authenticity and hustling how you must to get by when no matter where you are your cultural status might be in question even as you’re making music in a country where there isn’t nearly enough Asian public representation in the arts. You know, a country where Joel Grey played a Korean in Remo Williams: The Adventure Begins, for starters. In adopting the gangster stance VIETNAMINGO$ is calling bullshit on all of that and asserting the ability of people of Asian extraction to draw on the stories and mythology both ancestral and urban American culture to create music that is informed fully by both.
Lindsey Stirling is rightfully known for bringing violin to electronic music and mixing a classical set of chops with a popular musical form without pretension. On her new single and video “Underground” Stirling conjures a sense of the fantastical and futuristic at once and that aesthetic compliments her eclectic style. Yes, the sort of hybrid of the aforementioned classical music and hip-hop and EDM, but also an expressiveness that crosses over into an amalgam of progressive rock and pop. Her precision as a player coupled with a fluidity and creativity that allows for a wide dynamic range is what truly sets this song apart from anything that defines itself by genre considerations. If Stirling merely had chops and if it was merely a gimmick to combine a broad musical palette with violin it wouldn’t be interesting. But Stirling’s cultivated imagination has long served her well. Look for her new record out in September through BMG. Watch the video below and follow Stirling at the links provided.
“Ancestor” draws you into a deep soundscape of far horizons lightly shrouded in mist. Its streaming melodies and distant low end gives the track a sense of vastness into which the more fiery guitar line and tribal drumming can resonate out into. It works as an ambient track but has too many concrete sonic figures to fully work as background. Rather, as a soundtrack to life in the remote islands of the South Pacific rarely visited by humans, a companion soundtrack to Hans Zimmer’s score for Blue Planet II. Or of a documentary about the life cycle of the albatross with the songs elegant dynamics and a sense of comfortable solitude. The mixture of fluidity and heat in the composition is a bit like a New Age progressive rock song but way more introspective and far less busy than much of that music.
“Ignorant” is a critique of willful state of mind despite all the negative, violent stuff going on around you and in your own life from gun shots in the neighborhood, vulture developers, lack of self-accountability to making excuses for self-destructive and generally destructive behavior. It calls for an awareness and a conscious reaction to these things so the real conversations to address the roots of social and psychological issues rather than a passive acceptance of things as they are. Too often in America we accept not a status quo but a stasis that keeps us from challenging power whether from a corrupt presidential administration, a power tripping supervisor, our own position of power over others or others over us used to coerce and manipulate or a “system” that benefits the very few at the expense of the many based on lines of ethnicity, race, gender, sexuality or legal or economic status. “Ignorant” by hip-hop artist Lil Primo reminds us that to keep ignoring those pressures on an everyday basis means we will probably ignore it on the macro scale that more than a few people worldwide have been feeling so poignantly. The beat is haunting yet urgent and the emotional tenor of Lil Primo’s vocals compassionately concerned. Follow Lil Primo at the links below.
Mystery Friends, Past & Future Self album cover (cropped)
The jaunty pace of “See Right Through,” the lead track from Mystery Friends’ debut album Past & Future Self, lends the song a freshness and charm that made all those C86-era and Sarah Records songs endlessly listenable. Combining a breeziness of tone with introspective and confessional lyrics, “See Right Through” reveals a vulnerability and personal resilience that is always a winning alchemy in pop music because everyone feels sensitive about so much in life and we get hurt or feel exposed and yet we have to find our peace with it and, if the situation calls for it, the strength to work through our insecurities and failings. Less synth-driven than some of the other songs on the record, this composition is given some of its dynamic buoyancy by Robbie Lee’s treble-y and melodic bass line that is the ideal counterpoint to Abby Sevcik’s luminous vocals. Listen to the single below and follow the DC band at the links provided.
With a relentless flow of references and imagery, “Drip Too Hard (CCG Mix)” by Hunnid draws for us in rich detail life coming up on the Chicago’s Southside. The gangs, the grind, the struggles, striving for self-improvement and ultimately keeping your head above water and the poetry that comes out of those experiences. The video for the song features Hunnid rapping with a brisk cadence and packing so much content into each line with an impressive economy. The insistent, dreamlike beat, a sample of warping guitar, shuffled claps and clicks like drum sticks on a wooden block, accents Hunnid’s storytelling perfectly. Throughout the song there isn’t some kind of tough pose, rather an attempt at preserving sensitivity and not being inured to hardship by becoming hard oneself. The music video is vibrant, urban scenery, graffiti and all, with Hunnid and his colleagues representing the kinds of people you might see every day in the Windy City. And of course a crane or two in the backdrop just like every rapidly gentrifying city of size in recent years. See the video below and check out Hunnid’s other musical adventures at the links following.
Queen City Sounds and Art 
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