New Music – Page 45 – Queen City Sounds and Art

Paul Babe’s Slinky and Entrancing Psychedelic Pop Single “Cliff Diver” has a Video With an All Star Cast

Seth Evans of Paul Babe, photo courtesy the artist

Paul Babe’s video for “Cliff Diver” is shot in a backyard and has cameos from the likes of Nathaniel Rateliff and The Night Sweats guitarist Luke Mossman, drummer Carl Sorensen, Rhodes player/vocalist Joseph Lamar, percussionist/singer Jess Parsons, bassist Kramer Kelling and Julia LiBassi on synth and vocals. Of course on lead vocals and guitar is songwriter and band leader Seth Evans. Though Paul Babe is based in Brooklyn, New York, the line up is a handful of Denver (former or current) music luminaries as Evans once fronted the pop band Rossonian while based out of the Mile High City. The song is like a psychedelic funk song in a more mellow and soothing mode with rich vocal harmonies and multiple voices bringing a diverse sound to a song that has an immediate appeal because it’s an entrancing journey that benefits from musical chops that are all channeled into a song about recognizing one’s vulnerabilities and lingering ills and getting to a place of wellness individually and collectively. There is a lightness to the song that uplifts but anchored by coming from a place of earnest emotional expression. What is most obvious from the video that perhaps listening to the song alone is how each musician contributes greatly to the song’s interlacing layers of rhythm and tone to create the kind of song that stays with you not just because it has tasty hooks but because there’s a sense of something bigger to what the song represents beyond being a well-crafted psychedelic pop funk song. Watch the video for “Cliff Diver” on YouTube and follow Paul Babe at the links below.

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Oscar Mic’s Post-Punk Hip-Hop Single “Sun Star” is a Song About Entropy and Romance

The low end pulsing buzz that runs through Oscar Mic’s “Sun Star” is like the constant and menacing influence hinted at the in the song. The lyrics describe an impulse to destruction that seems to run through societies and manifests in individual and collective behaviors like an in practice incarnation of the second law of thermodynamics in which entropy increases until it reaches a maximum state. Vocalist Seamus Hayes seems to describe these primitive urges of human beings in terms of their cognates in cosmic and mythological forces and how interpersonal dynamics can hit your direct experiences with the weight of things much bigger in the world. The backbeat percussion and bass drone from Taan Parker and Rex Erex respectively give Hayes’ playful delivery the context for his more melodic voicings and those more in the realm of rap MC need for the song to hit with both a sweetness and menace. If Beck had been able to collaborate with The Beastie Boys it might have sounded like this. Watch the psychedelic music video directed by Dovile Meilute on YouTube and connect with East London’s Oscar Mic at the links provided. Look out for the trio’s debut album out in 2025.

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Oscar Mic on Facebook

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Photay’s Ambient Techno Single “Derecho” Pulses With a Hypnotic Inner Light

“Derecho” with its subtle use of white noise as background texture with a foreground of hazy synths and percussive sounds in non-standard rhythms finds Photay in music time traveling mode well served by the music video. We see arrows in motion in arcs and in a spiral with luminous ripples to demonstrate the percussion all in luminous colors against darker backdrops both black and deep, vibrant blue. The visuals pair the aesthetic of a 1990s VHS video art piece and the library music-esque tone of the song itself. It creates a fairly playful mood that immerses the listener in textures and organic rhythms like an update of early 2010s minimal techno and deep house. While the song is not dance music it inspires a similar emotional response. The song is from Photay’s new album Windswept out on streaming, download and vinyl September 20, 2024 via Mexican Summer. The record was inspired in part by the sound of wind and the flow of the music has that kind of familiarity and spontaneity that makes it a refreshing listen even with the beneficially weird places it goes.

CATBEAR’s Buoyant Synthpop Single “Rush” is a Song About Finding the Sustained Impetus to Living in the Moment

CATBEAR’s appropriately titled “Rush” has real momentum behind its vulnerable and irresistible melodies. It’s a song about being in the moment, in older parlance of being in the zone, when you feel engaged and filled up with the emotional energy that feels vital and infuses every moment with a sense of purpose and excitement. Many things can inspire these feelings (being in love, feeling like you’re in the right place at the right time in life, a stretch when things seem to be going just right for you) but whatever it is it uplifts one’s spirit and makes having motivation feel effortless. It is the opposite of being depressed without being in a manic mode. The band’s use of sweeps and accented tones over a propulsive yet minimal beat makes the song reminiscent of a mid-80s synth pop song except rather than an excessive guitar solo pulls an almost spoken word line to add a moment of dramatic seriousness that helps to provide contrast and makes the music on either side of it shine even brighter. Interestingly though the song is about, yes, a rush of feeling the band reigns in musical excess in favor of a focus that really gives the song its consistently impactful boost. Listen to “Rush” on Spotify and follow London’s CATBEAR at the links below.

Queen City Sounds Podcast S4E32: Karen Haglof

Karen Haglof is a veteran musician and songwriter whose fourth full-length album One Hand Up was released on June 14, 2024 on CD, digital download and via streaming services. Haglof began her career in music in the late 70s Minneapolis scene rubbing shoulders with the likes of pioneering Twin Cities punk band The Suicide Commandos which helped to launch the underground scene that produced the likes of Hüsker Dü, The Replacements and Soul Asylum. When Suicide Commandos bassist and vocalist moved to New York, Haglof followed suit in 1980 but found herself immersed more in the world of avant-garde and experimental music playing in Rhys Chatham’s ensemble and later joining Band of Susans. By the early 1990s Haglof realized she didn’t want to be working in restaurants for the rest of her life so she finished college and went to medical school and quit music for many years as being in hematology and oncology didn’t leave a lot of time to pursue music with the focus and energy she once had. Haglof has since retired from medicine in 2022 but prior to doing so she returned to making music in 2014 and ten years later she has released not only one of the most fascinating sets of music of her career thus far but one of the most innovative guitar and synth records of 2024. One Hand Up sounds like an art rock, power pop, jazz Americana record. Its rich tones and nuanced moods, it’s orchestration of detailed performances to convey a retrofuturist honky tonk post-punk aesthetic and a sense of a place in the none-too-distant future at a late night lounge catering to left field music. Parts of the album had contributions from legendary producer Mitch Easter who also performed Moog synth parts to the track “Slinky 66.” But the songwriting is rooted in Haglof’s richly creative imagination.

Listen to our interview with Haglof on Bandcamp and follow her at the links below.

Karen Haglof on Instagram

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Elly Kace’s “I Did My Best” is a Avant Jazz Inflected Art Pop Song Song About Heartbreak and Coming to Terms With One’s Limitations

Elly Kace blends impressionistic, orchestral strings with shimmery jazz-y flourishes in the percussion on “I Did My Best” for an effect like a deeply melancholic torch song. The organic flow of sounds makes for a song that provides an ever evolving textural and tonal backdrop to Kace’s mournful yet rich vocals so that the song sounds like a direct connection to its words about a relationship in shambles that was never on the right footing from the beginning and which couldn’t be salvaged with earnest effort on the part of one person to make it all happen. In moments Kace’s vocals are reminiscent of Björk at her most vulnerable but overall the song resonates strongly with the art pop of Julia Holter and its pure fusion of pop, jazz and the avant-garde in a personal creative comment on one’s own limitations and blind spots. Listen to “I Did My Best” on Spotify and follow Elly Kace at the links below.

Elly Kace on Twitter

Elly Kace on Facebook

Elly Kace on TikTok

Elly Kace on Instagram

Sthlm Blush Captures the Tranquil Complexity of an Evolving Ecological System on Textural Ambient Track “Växer”

Swedish ambient artist Sthlm Blush attempted to express the act of growth on “Växer” (Swedish for “growing”). To accomplish the sonic manifestation of what can be a nearly impossible to trace whether through direct observation or the experiencing of it as a human, Ludvig Kullberg aka Sthlm Blush, assembled bell tones, background flows of white noise, echoing, the stretching sounds like insects and birds communicating with one another, processed, abstract synth tones and an array of impressionistic layers of sound in what sounds like an open environment in which all can interact. There is a trace of a crystalline melody that enters into the field of hearing near the middle of the song like an animating energy to shift the dynamic of the system ever so slightly. It’s a bit like listening to the sounds inside a tropic cave and being able to immerse oneself in the complexity of the place as a whole experience rendering its essence more explicable than separated elements. Kullberg’s command of texture as atmosphere and tone is impressive throughout and rather than serve as background music in the ambient mode the song makes staying present easier than if you consciously focus on being so. Listen to “Växer” on Spotify and follow Sthlm Blush at the links below.

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Sthlm Blush on YouTube

Paper Citizen Celebrates the Communal Power of Music on Exuberant Indie Pop Single “American Song”

“American Song” is Paper Citizen’s tribute to singer/multi-instrumentalist Claire Gohst’s experience with live music in the USA. Gohst is originally from Singapore but moved to Boston to study recording and jazz violin at Berklee and inevitably discovered the local and underground music scene and the various opportunities to witness live original music and to write and perform music of her own. The music video, directed by Alissa Wyle, shows the band performing in a garage, truly a long-standing mainstay in music across America with friends coming over to share in that experience and being together as a community. The song is a lighthearted yet exuberant bit of indie pop with some tasty soloing by Gohst on guitar that highlights the level of musicianship in the band. But the heart of the song is an earnest and endearing portrait of how in Gohst’s mind, and likely in the minds of many listeners, how the music community can bring people of disparate backgrounds together in a mutually supportive spirit of camaraderie in a very unpretentious, grass roots way accessible to virtually everyone. Watch the video for “American Song” on YouTube and follow Paper Citizen at the links provided.

Paper Citizen on Facebook

Paper Citizen on TikTok

Paper Citizen on Instagram

Paper Citizen on Bandcamp

“Landlord Cull” is Muscle Vest’s Wild Noise Rock Call For Righteously Radical Economic Justice

The title of Muscle Vest’s “Landord Cull” is a statement in itself and in essence not a bad idea. But in the music video we get some facts about landlords and examples of their neglect in the UK with obvious cognates elsewhere that speak to the predatory practices of the landlord class writ large, particularly over the last few years like that group of people were getting revenge for pandemic era protections for renters. With the rampant expansion of private equity firms buying up huge swaths of residential property over the past couple of decades has simply amplified the effect of soaring rent prices, much less actual property ownership, so that an investor class can get in on the action and feel like it’s “just business” and not personal. But in the lived existence of people it is deeply personal and this song speaks to that rage and frustration with more than a little playful sonic mayhem The ragged and joyously delivered vocals and cutting, whorling noise rock is reminiscent of a combination of Chat Pile and The Jesus Lizard with a surreal and caustic sound. Watch the video for “Landlord Cull” on YouTube and follow Muscle Vest at the links below. The song is part of the Every Day For The Rest Of Your Life EP which came out July 26, 2024 via Muzai Records.

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Talking to Shadows’ Tragically Haunted Shoegaze Song “Valentina” is Reminiscent of 4AD Dream Pop and Ethereal 90s Space Rock

Talking to Shadows, photo courtesy the artists

Talking to Shadows worked with Francis Ford Greggola on the evocative video for “Valentina” to establish a touch of the otherworldly quality of a Hammer Horror film combined with classic early 4AD band videos aesthetic (think Dif Juz and This Mortal Coil both visually and sonically). The song is a melodiously drifty dream pop song about yearning for love and meaningful connections in a world where that can elusive. Though the song begins delicately enough, as it progresses the guitar tones become more fiery and the vocals more soaring as the lyrics rise in tone to a place of greater personal conviction before it all dissolves by song’s end. The scintillating guitar progression in the last quarter of the song feels like a triumph over uncertainty right before the acceptance of one’s inherent human vulnerability. The song recorded and mixed by the legendary J. Robbins has a strong resonance with projects recorded by Keith Cleversley like Hum and Space Team Electra but with an elegance of tone and emotional delicacy all the band’s own. Watch the video for “Valentina” on YouTube and follow Baltimore’s Talking to Shadows at the links below.