New Music – Page 32 – Queen City Sounds and Art

Cat Ridgeway’s Exuberant Yet Gutting “Sprinter” is a Song About Depression and the Loss of a Friend

The title track to Cat Ridgeway’s new album Sprinter expertly uses low and quiet dynamics to reflect how many things in your life can come at you in overwhelming blasts. If you’re mentally healthy you can weather that experience with some degree of success. But if you’re not doing so well you can ignore all the warning signs piling up under the belief you can outrun the momentum of accumulating stressors that aren’t going to go away if you don’t attend to them. The song is about a friend Ridgeway lost to despair and the line about “Still got that damn check engine light” as a metaphor for red flags in your mental health is memorable and poignant. The distorted guitar in that 90s alternative rock vein adds a dramatic flair to the song but Ridgeway’s songwriting isn’t a throwback and when the song hits the tender and tranquil outro the note struck is one of a deep sadness and sense of loss. For all the song’s early exuberance reflecting the sort of best face forward pantomime of confidence makes the ending all the more impactful. Ridgeway’s words of reaching self-awareness after the terrible fact and experiencing a gutting guilt too late to do anything other than compound the hurting linger with you long after the song is over. Watch the video for “Sprinter” on YouTube and follow Cat Ridgeway at the links below.

catridgeway.com

Cat Ridgeway on Twitter

Cat Ridgeway on Facebook

Cat Ridgeway on Instagram

Queen City Sounds Podcast S5E02: Michigan Rattlers

Michigan Rattlers, photo courtesy the artists

Michigan Rattlers is a band of lifelong friends who have been in bands together since they were in their early teens and started recording their songs in 2016 under their current name. The band’s first two albums offered beautifully pastoral Americana about everyday life, articulating the aspirations of yearnings that would be recognizable instantly to anyone that has spent more than a few months contemplating what it is you really want and what you have and what you value. The 2024 album Waving From A Sea is a creative leap forward for the band with more atmospheric elements and a songwriting style more in line with the kind of power pop one heard in the late 70s or in a more modern era with the likes of The War on Drugs. The songs tie the feelings to a strong sense of place both physically and psychologically at a time when you’re re-orienting your life and finding the anchors in your psyche that remind you of the contexts that have helped shape you and the boundaries you have moved beyond.

Listen to our interview with singer Graham Young on Bandcamp and follow Michigan Rattlers at the links below. Michigan Rattlers are currently on tour with a stop at Meow Wolf in Denver on Thursday, February 20, 2025 with Elias Hix, doors 7pm.

michiganrattlers.com

Michigan Rattlers on Facebook

Michigan Rattlers on Apple Music

Michigan Rattlers on Bands In Town

Queen City Sounds Podcast S5E01: The Velveteers

The Velveteers, photo by Jason Thomas Geering

The Velveteers are a rock trio from Boulder, Colorado that has blossomed from humble origins playing house shows and DIY venues in the mid-2010s after forming in 2014 to touring internationally with the likes of Great Van Fleet and Black Keys. Dan Auerbach of the latter took a liking to the band and produced and released the 2021 debut full-length Nightmare Daydream on his Easy Eye Sound imprint. That record demonstrated that the group had moved beyond some of its more blues rock/garage rock early days into something with more musical depth and with something to say regarding the vagaries of society, identity, self-image and sexism. A little over three years later The Velveteers are releasing their second album A Million Knives which reveals the band’s further explorations into integrating an electronic music aesthetic and songwriting into its core sound of vulnerable pop songs charged with raw emotional power. The themes of the record involve the complexities of navigating relationships and one’s aspirations. Underlying it all are elements of heartbreak of all varieties—the interpersonal, the kind when one’s expectations and dreams find reality lacking from the world and from oneself and the sort stemming from disappointment. But as the album makes it obvious, finding the will and energy to pull yourself back from that brink. Following an album release show on February 14, 2025, expect to find The Velveteers undertaking a tour throughout the American West, Texas and states connected to Colorado.

Listen to our interview with Demi Demitro of The Velveteers on Bandcamp and follow the band at the links below. Catch The Velveteers live for the album release show at the Hi-Dive on Friday, February 14, 2025 with Cherry Spit and Diva Cup. Doors 7pm, show 8pm.

thevelveteers.com

The Velveteers on Instagram

Pink Must’s “Morphe Sun” is a Psychedelic IDM Pop Song That Beckons You Along With Its Otherworldly and Organic Flow

Pink Must is set to release its self-titled debut album on February 28, 2025 via the Dutch label 15 love. The single “Morphe Sun” reflects the process in which More Eaze and Lynne Avery engaged in part of the songwriting with Avery sending a recording to Eaze and the latter cutting the track up and reassembling it and sending it back before writing the next section of the song. It has jangly, melty guitar sounds and a processed sound like a 90s IDM track done on 4-track but with modern production techniques. Think like a turn of the century Boards of Canada track or early Black Moth Superrainbow through the lens of lo-fi pop. It has an otherworldly feel but imbued with an intimate emotional resonance. Perhaps a bit of the cut-up technique as applied to music as a sort of remix of a song whose previous form doesn’t exist. The touch of vocal processing just adds to the sense of the strange and left field in a way that is inviting in line with the song’s organic flow of rhythm and texture directed by an idiosyncratic sensibility that doesn’t demand being taken on its own terms as already establishing that connection with you immediately if you’re open to sounds that aren’t standard pop fare. Listen to “Morphe Sun” on Spotify and follow Brooklyn’s Pink Must on Instagram.

Queen City Sounds Podcast S4E50: Captain’s Audio Project

Captain’s Audio Project, photo by Faerin Millington

Captain’s Audio Project is the solo project of Portland, Oregon band Trashcan Joe’s James Cook. The songwriter and mult-instrumentalist is releasing his debut album Waiting For The Moon under that new moniker on February 28, 2025 on vinyl LP, CD, digital download and via streaming services. Whereas Trashcan Joe is a full band known for including instruments made from found objects as part of its sound hearkening to early jazz, Captain’s Audio Project was built on a foundation of Cook’s vocals and a 1931 National Tenor Resonator Guitar with other instruments and guest musicians overdubbed to fill out the sound when it felt appropriate. But the core appeal of the new record is how it feels like a fusion of indie pop and chamber folk performed with an intimate feel like something sung around a campfire after dinner with friends sharing stories.

Listen to our interview with James Cook on Bandcamp and follow Captain’s Audio Project at the links below.

Captain’s Audio Project on Facebook

O Slow’s “Every Time You Come Back, You Come Colder” is a Downtempo Dream Pop Song About the Gradual Dissolution of a Friendship

You can hear an ache and a melancholic yearning in O Slow’s “Every Time You Come Back, You Come Colder.” The echoing tones, the delicate guitar work and the ethereal vocals are reminiscent of Björk’s more dream pop leanings with a similar intensity of feeling that can seem less committed unless you actually pay attention to what is being sung. The song is about a once close friendship that seems to be turning increasingly distant with no explanation and how that can feel like a strange betrayal in which one might rightfully seek a reason behind this change in the nature of the relationship. Perhaps one could interpret in the lyrics something more than feelings of friendship but in the modern era people can come to see a friendship as something casual when in reality friendships can often outlast romantic associations and prove more durable. One picks up on a well of sadness from the song’s gorgeous soundscaping and fans of The Knife will appreciate its rich sonic details in tone and rhythm and the dynamic structure of the song that keeps expansive yet introspective. Listen to “Every Time You Come Back, You Come Colder” on Spotify and follow O Slow on Instagram.

Envyes’ Video for Lushly Nostalgic Dream Pop Single “Blessings” Emphasizes Life’s Quiet Treasures

Envyes pairs its nostalgic and lo-fi hazy dream pop single “Blessings” with Hi-8 footage of the Baltimore Zoo and a cemetery in Hunt Valley, Maryland for an entrancing audio-visual experience. The aesthetics together reinforce the song’s themes of appreciating the things and experiences of your everyday that you take for granted. The presentation of the song demonstrates a connection with life’s liminal moments in contrast to the more overtly exciting and stimulating situations that we’re socially conditioned to value most. But it is the connective tissues of your life that are just as important in creating meaning, context and significance and often it is the things that don’t push themselves into your consciousness with what might be described as an existential aggression that linger in the mind, offering a sense of belonging and comfort. The drifting melodies of the song with guitar, piano and gentle vocals embody these elements of one’s life so the song while not bombastic has an overall effect of feeling like something one can live within and with without it needing to command one’s constant focus yet rewarding connecting with it. Watch the video for “Blessings” on YouTube and follow Envyes at the links provided.

Envyes on TikTok

Envyes on Bandcamp

Envyes linktr.ee

KAPUT Claws Back the Peace of Personal Time on Exhilarating Post-Punk Single “Sucker”

The wiry momentum of “Sucker,” the latest single from Chicago art punks KAPUT is seething with distortion and a kind of desperate exhaustion. That lends the song an edge that lends its pointed commentary about the seemingly constant static coming your way just getting through modern life and the demands and expectations for you constantly in terms of perceived duties, obligations and attention. Amid the claustrophobic, urgent cacophony and persistent rhythm Nadia Garofalo’s vocals provide a human clarity that becomes so poignant in the final chorus of “Hey give me a minute/Well what about me” as it speaks directly to how everything is demanded of you in late capitalism down to the any spare seconds and if you don’t at least try to claim that back without having to justify your own needs to not have every moment of life spoken for by someone or something else you’ll never get it. Anyone that has worked a regular job in modern America or anywhere else where the technocrats are selling their tools of holding everyone accountable for every minute through workplace surveillance systems of some kind and how that “striving” culture bleeds into everything will recognize the spirit of this song immediately. Whatever happened to just living and having time to have your mind wander where it will and simply enjoying your time not dedicated to commerce? Can’t have that in oligarch-dominated human society, sucker. Resisting this extraction of the vitality of life can and should be one of the lines of resistance to commodifying everything to the nth degree. KAPUT makes that act seem exciting. Listen to the song “Sucker” on Spotify and follow KAPUT at the links below.

KAPUT on Instagram

KAPUT on Bandcamp

KAPUT on YouTube

Heavy Feelings Conjures the Essence of Feelings of Not Belonging on No Wave Gothic Rock Single “Breather”

Heavy Feelings, photo courtesy the artists

Heavy Feelings puts into words a difficult feeling to convey with accuracy on the “Breather” single. The title suggests multiple meanings including merely being a person who breathes like all humans must but also a need to get a break from feeling the pressure to conform instead of just be allowed to be different. To feel like you have to explain something about the way you are when you shouldn’t have to. And that sense of being stifled for nothing. The line “Someday I’ll run out of ways to explain there’s nothing to fix, it’s always this way, can’t find the right things to say” perfectly sums up the existential exhaustion you can reach when it feels like you’re being interrogated and picked apart by normies that feel like they have to figure out you can’t be just like them even if you’re not demanding they be like you. The urgent melodies and echoing vocals in the chorus express perfectly a discordant mood that is getting a bit of catharsis in the song’s asymmetrical structure and willingness to sprawl past the edges of conventional songwriting methods. It as its own kind of hooks and like the lyrics illustrate perfectly it demands acceptance on its own terms. If you like your post-punk a little more unconventional this song and the Anatomy EP (released December 20, 2024) are what you should make the effort to take in. Listen to “Breather” on Spotify and follow Heavy Feelings at the links below.

https://open.spotify.com/track/4Aq2gwL6I1VfUKCmfWYEIe

Heavy Feelings on Amazing Radio

Heavy Feelings on Instagram

Bending Grid and Jolie Grieco Team Up For a Tale of Love in a Hurry on Synthwave Single “Neon Heat”

The saturated synths and percussive electronic bass lines in Bending Grid’s “Neon Heat” catches you up in the song’s upbeat momentum from the start. When Jolie Grieco’s vocals come in they’re like something you’d expect to hear on the soundtrack to a better yet still bombastic 80s action movie or a 2020’s tapping into that vibe with the clarity of modern production. Fans of synthwave will appreciate the way the heady rhythms and rich tone pair well with melancholic melodies and the expertly placed transitions into spacious introspection before the song gets back into high gear before transitioning into a satisfying ending. The song’s arc reflects the thrilling melodrama of a story of lust, seduction and love in a hurry but without the desperation one might expect. Listen to “Neon Heat” on Spotify and follow Bending Grid at the links provided.