Queen City Sounds Podcast – Page 7 – Queen City Sounds and Art

Queen City Sounds Podcast S4E29: Late Slip

Late Slip released its debut full-length record I Love You on June 7, 2024 via Party Mermaid Records on 12” LP vinyl, CD, digital download and on streaming platforms. Lead by singer, songwriter and guitarist Chelsea Nenni the retro-pop group offers tightly crafted songs reminiscent of 60s girl groups, 70s period Dolly Parton and Josie Cotton. Nenni was East Coast born but grew up in California a fan of Elvis Presley and Tom Petty and studied opera in college. But it was Gwen Stefani that inspired Nenni to finally try to start a band. She moved to NYC in her mid-20s in pursuit of that goal and during a particularly bleak winter taught herself guitar and wrote the musical foundations of the earliest Late Slip songs. Before fully developing the project Nenni moved to Los Angeles and almost immediately found herself working at the legendary Amoeba Music record store where she made friends and connections that helped her more fully achieve her creative goals. The group recorded its first EP Other Men (2016) at Barefoot Studios with Cian Riordan (who has worked with Sleater-Kinney, St. Vincent and others) and through Amoeba Nenni met with store regular Bobb Burno of Best Coast fame (and Polar Goldie Cats renown to those more underground and experimentally-minded). Bruno connected Nenni with Lewis Pesacov who produced the new record. Although the sounds and visual aesthetic of yesteryear inform the music of Late Slip there is a warm spiritedness to the performances that anchor it very much in the vital present.

Listen to our interview with Chelsea Nenni on Bandcamp and follow Late Slip at the links below.

lateslipmusic.com

Late Slip on Facebook

Late Slip on Instagram

Late Slip on Twitter

Late Slip on Bandcamp

partymermaidrecords.com

Queen City Sounds Podcast S4E28: Steve Dawson

Singer / Songwriter Steve Dawson, photo by Matthew Gilson

Steve Dawson is a Chicago-based songwriter who released his most recent, and sixth, solo album Ghosts on June 7 via Pravda Records on CD, LP vinyl, digital download and streaming. Though perhaps best known for his membership in alt-country band Dolly Varden, Dawson’s solo work on the new record infuses his songwriting with power pop sensibilities, fitting for ten songs that explore ideas of how the past weighs on the present and influences how we live life and understand the world around us as well as the people we’ve lost along the way whose presence lingers in our hearts whether they have passed on to the great beyond out simply out of our lives. Dawson also examines times in his life that he remembers vividly that impacted the course of his own path as a human as an artist. For instance “Leadville” which so accurately captures life in various small towns in America that it could be about some place you’ve lived and not the songwriter’s hometown in Idaho. Dawson doesn’t romanticize that time in his life even as the country rock song has a touch of nostalgia to its sound. Each song is a poignant portrait of a space and time and the people that make up where we come from, where we’ve been and to some extent guide where we’re going.

Listen to our interview with Dawson on Bandcamp and follow the songwriter and musician at the links below.

stevedawsonmusic.com

Steve Dawson on Instagram

Steve Dawson on YouTube

Steve Dawson on Facebook

Steve Dawson on Twitter

Queen City Sounds Podcast S4E27: The Ocean

The Ocean is an experimental metal band from Berlin formed in 2000. Primary songwriter and guitarist Robin Staps has a constant presence in the group which often operates as a collective with an evolving group of contributors and regular musicians. Its albums are often loose concept albums named after eras of the earth’s geologic history. Though the songs aren’t short on guitar driven heaviness but often employed to create dense and dynamic soundscapes. The most recent album, 2023’s Holocene, saw The Ocean more fully integrating synths and the aesthetics of electronic music into its ambitious compositions with songs that depict scenes from a dystopian near future and with lyrics that demonstrate the impact of the ideas behind The Situationist International and its prescient critique of consumer culture and the deleterious effect of late capitalism on human society and civilization.

Listen to our interview with Robin Staps on Bandcamp and follow The Ocean at the links below.

theoceancollective.com

The Ocean on Instagram

The Ocean on Pelagic Records

Queen City Sounds Podcast S4E26: Ian Haug of The Church

The Church formed in Sydney, Australia in 1980 as a post-punk band with psychedelic rock leanings that over the course of its long career has evolved in consistently fascinating directions. Its early records proved to be the sound of a band slightly ahead of its time and embodying the sound of what came to be known as dream pop with moody guitar and synth and literary lyrics that told stories and commented on human experiences in a way that wasn’t standard faire for a rock band. The group had breakthrough international success with the release of its 1988 album Starfish and hit single “Under the Milky Way” which had an echo impact in 2001 when it featured prominently in the psychological thriller Donnie Darko. 26 albums and numerous other releases along the way The Church firmly established itself as a band with creative ambition and emotionally refined sensibilities paired with a powerful live performance that it maintains to this day. Its later albums are among the best of the band’s career including its two most recent, The Hypnogogue (2023) and Eros Zeta and the Perfumed Guitars (2024), companion albums telling the story of a future in which humanity struggles to hold onto its identity and reinvent itself for survival in even more uncertain times. The Church is still very much a guitar rock band but one that hasn’t failed to pay keen attention to where music has gone or keep track of its own vision and direction as a creative collective.

Listen to our interview with guitarist Ian Haug on Bandcamp and follow The Church at the links below. The group is currently on tour in the US with The Afghan Whigs and Ed Harcourt including a stop at Denver’s Ogden Theatre on Tuesday, July 2, 2024.

thechurchband.com

The Church on Instagram

The Church on Facebook

The Church on YouTube

Queen City Sounds Podcast S4E25: Steven Lee Lawson

Steven Lee Lawson, photo courtesy the artist

Steven Lee Lawson is a singer-songwriter from Denver whose musical exploits date back to the late 90s and early 2000s when as a fledgling musician he was involved in a variety of styles of music including the experimental/krautrock of Zubabi before finding his lane at the edges of Denver’s indie rock scene in the mid-2000s with the more classic pop and Americana-inflected projects like Oblio Duo and its multiple incarnations with then songwriting partner Will Duncan (now of Pleasure Prince). Lawson’s poetic lyrics shed a light on his attempts to come to terms with life challenges and struggles with a society and culture seemingly stuck on boosting dull and crass commercialism and anti-human systems of politics and economy. Lawson also spent some time as a sideman in bands like Ross Etherton and the Chariots of Judah before dropping out of actively being involved in music for a handful of years and then getting back into the joy of creating music again in recent years. Obvious touchstones like Harry Nilsson, Townes Van Zandt, Sparklehorse and Neil Young can be heard in Lawson’s musical DNA but his songs have always seemed deeply personal and idiosyncratic including his new EP Help Is On the Way due out June 27, 2024 and available as a limited edition 7″ through Snappy Little Numbers.

Listen to our interview with Steven Lee Lawson on Bandcamp and follow the songwriter at the links below. There will also be an EP release show with Blacktop Musical at The Broadway Roxy in the downstairs speakeasy on June 27, 2024 at 7pm.

Stream Steven Lee Lawson here

Steven Lee Lawson on Instagram

Queen City Sounds Podcast S4E24: Stephen Bluhm

Stephen Bluhm is a songwriter based out of Hudson, New York who released his latest album Out of the Nowhere. Into the Here on April 19, 2024. It is the second full-length from Bluhm and one whose sophisticated, orchestral arrangements lend the songs a cinematic and storybook quality with exquisite details and attentiveness to aspects of production and composition that reminiscent of a The Magnetic Fields or Belle & Sebastian record or the level of richness of aesthetics one associates with a Wes Anderson film. It sounds like something from another era with deeply personal and idiosyncratic yet instantly relatable lyrics. The songs are literate art pop gems with an autumnal flavor that hits as old timey in its sensibilities but not in the folk Americana tradition so much as more in the vein of Rodgers & Hammerstein on the chamber pop and indie folk scale.

Listen to our interview with Stephen Bluhm on Bandcamp and follow the songwriter at the links below. Out of the Nowhere. Into the Here is now available for streaming, digital download and on vinyl.

Stream Stephen Bluhm’s music here.

Stephen Bluhm on Instagram

stephenbluhm.fun

Queen City Sounds Podcast S4E22: Becky Otárola of bellhoss

bellhoss, photo courtesy the artists and taken at JCPenney

Bellhoss is an indie rock band from Denver, Colorado that began in 2017 as the solo act of Becky Otárola that grew to a full band within a couple of years. The songwriter came up in Southern California immersed in folk and bluegrass and underground music of the 90s and 2000s. Otárola moved to Denver in the first half of the 2010s and in the early days of the project she played open mics at Syntax Physic Opera and as perhaps a natural progression from there fell in with the local indie scene and as the band developed so did the songwriting and by the time of the release of the 2019 EP Geraniums bellhoss its sound had taken on aspects of slowcore with delicately rendered melodies and a warmth of expression reminiscent of Waxahatchee and Jay Som. With the release of the 2024 EP A Rose, a Thorn, bellhoss revealed a knack for blending vulnerable and thoughtfully observant songwriting with luminous dream pop and a bit of musical edge. 2024 also sees Otárola organizing the inaugural SarahFest, an all ages music festival designed to give a platform to female and female-fronted bands along Colorado’s Front Range taking place at The Mercury Cafe on Saturday, June 15.

Listen to our interview with Otárola on Bandcamp and follow bellhoss at the links below. Also linked is the ticket link for SarahFest.

SarahFest featuring Bellhoss, The Milk Blossoms, Luna Nuñez, Dream of Time, Gartener, Summer Bedhead, Tammy Shine, Nina De Freitas and Demigod (DJ set) at Mercury Cafe, June 15, 2024, all ages $20
6PM.

bellhoss.com

bellhoss on Facebook

bellhoss on Instagram

bellhoss on Twitter

bellhoss on YouTube

Queen City Sounds Podcast S4E21: Gene Hoglan of Death to All

Death to All, photo courtesy the artists

Death was one of the foundational bands in the metal subgenre sharing its own moniker. Along with Possessed and Necrophagia, all of which started in 1983, Death created an extreme form of guitar-driven music that combined speed with a heaviness and aggression that served well its often horrific subject matter. Its debut full-length Scream Bloody Gore (1987) set a high bar for the genre with convoluted guitar work courtesy the band’s de facto leader and sole consistent member until his 2001 untimely passing Chuck Schuldiner. Its horror cinema themes and intensity wasn’t for every metal fan of the time but the influence of the record on what would come in its wake in extreme metal and the genre of death metal itself is undeniable. Subsequent albums built upon the technical aspects of the music and its lyrics moved on from horror themes and by the time of 1990’s Spiritual Healing the lyrics engaged in social commentary and horrors of the real world and its own breed of monstrous human behavior. Across its subsequent albums the songwriting blossomed in technical complexity and focus in lyrical themes in expressing poetic personal perspectives. Tragically Schuldiner passed in 2001 of a brain tumor but the legacy of Death lives on in its obvious and deep influence on modern heavy metal. Drummer Gene Hoglan was a contributor to the albums Individual Thought Patterns (1993) and Symbolic (1995) and one of the driving forces behind Death To All, a project paying tribute to the creative achievements of the band and its primary songwriter, Chuck Schuldiner.

Death To All performs tonight June 9, 2024 for its second night of its Denver residency at The Oriental Theater where it will perform the 1998 album The Sound of Perseverance in its entirety along with cuts from Individual Thought Patterns (1993) and Symbolic (1995). Cryptopsy will open the show at 6:30.

Death To All on Reversed Records

Death To All on Instagram

Death To All on Facebook

deathtoallband.com

Queen City Sounds Podcast S4E20: Caterwaul Festival

Caterwaul is a music festival that showcases of paragons of the weird, loosely defined, in underground music. The organizers of the event have been steeped in left field music going back decades as musicians, bookers, record label employees, running labels and otherwise active participants throughout the ecology of the subculture. Since 2022 Caterwaul has hosted a finely curated and small scale event across two venues so that attendees can realistically catch every act if they so choose. This has meant lineups featuring the likes of Chat Pile, Multicult, Kal Marks, Big Business, Tunic, The Grasshopper Lies Heavy, Moon Pussy, Animal Bite, A Deer A Horse, Big’n, Heet Deth and Cherubs. All of which represent not just representative of a spectrum of the best of underground weird music but also active participants in their local, national and international communities in keeping non-mainstream music not just a vital, viable but rewarding milieu in which to operate. Organizers Conan Neutron (Conan Neutron & the Secret Friends), Rainer Fronz (Learning Curve Records) and Melanie Thomas have all helped to establish and maintain the connections that make the festival possible but going through to its third year in 2024 when the event runs Friday, May 24 through Monday, May 27 at Mortimer’s and Palmer’s in Minneapolis, Minnesota. This year’s festival will include performances by Brainiac, Oxbow, Flooding, Whores., Part Chimp, J. Robbins Band, Couch Slut, Gaswar, Thrones, Ganser, Almanac Man, Quits, CNTS and powertakeOFF. For more information, the full schedule and to buy tickets please visit caterwaul.org.

Listen to our interview with Conan Neutron and Rainer Fronz on Bandcamp.

Queen City Sounds Podcast S4E19: Young Rising Sons

Young Rising Sons are an alternative pop band that formed in Brooklyn in 2010. Bassist Julian Dimagiba and drummer Steve Patrick grew up in Red Bank, New Jersey playing music and caught singer Andy Tongren performing an acoustic set at a New York Cit bar and struck by his skills talked with him later about joining their fledgling band. The new group spent a few years with different names while writing songs and settling on the name Young Rising Sons. In 2013 the group signed with Dirty Canvas Music and their 2014 debut single “High” became a bit of a global viral hit leading to the band signing with Interscope that same year. For the following two years the quartet toured opening for the likes of Halsey, Weezer, The 1975 and The Neighbourhood. Although Young Rising Sons delivered three EPs with Interscope as with many other worthy artists that didn’t translate to the commercial performance expected by a major label. In 2017 the band parted ways with Interscope and a year later announced a hiatus that lasted a couple of years. Since reconvening the outfit has been regularly releasing singles and in 2022 it dropped its debut full length Still Point In a Turning World. Tongren’s soulful and passionate vocals and the tight pop songcraft of the band has remained intact. Its body of work including its new single “(Un)Happy Hour” reveals a sensitivity to the complexity and fragility of human life and the importance of accepting the high points and the low to experience to make it through an oftentimes challenging existence with dignity and a sense of fulfillment.

Listen to our interview with Andy Tongren of Young Rising Sons on Bandcamp and follow the band at the links below. Young Rising Sons performs at The Bluebird Theater on Sunday, May 5, 2024 with Diva Bleach (doors 6:30pm).

youngrisingsons.net

Young Rising Sons on Instagram