Song Post – Page 10 – Queen City Sounds and Art

Vases Helps Us to Live With the Managed Expectations When Facing the Symptoms of Modern Life on Dream Pop Single “The Softest Sigh”

Vases has experimented with style and production on every single and “The Softest Sigh” demonstrates Ty Baron’s command of lush and clear melodies with strong rhythmic lines layered together. The sparkling guitar riff is at times reminiscent of New Order’s “Age of Consent” but the song swings into deeply introspective passages that take the certainty and direct energy of that aspect of the song and transitions it into ethereal, introspective passages in the choruses. It seems to embody the subjects of the song that seem to be able the uncertainty that pervades most of human existence and so many relationships in this moment that Baron attributes to “symptoms of modern life” and when he sings that line it rings incredibly true. Rarely has existential angst and frustration sounded so gorgeously hopeful if melancholic. The summation at the end of the song “I tried to be the perfect me, I guess I’ll be alright” is a poignant statement of how many of us are expected to meet some arbitrary standard that we may never attain but settle for being satisfied with giving it an effort even if it’s not quite enough and is it worth giving your all for everything the way you’ve been told your whole life if you’re an American? Not really. And Baron expresses in this song in his way how managing your expectations and preserving your sanity is often the best that can realistically be expected of anyone. Listen to “The Softest Sigh” on Spotify and follow Vases on Instagram.

Osopho Creates a Deep Sense of Mystery and Tranquility in the Synthetic Birds and Forests of a Far Future on “Winged”

Prepare for a journey into a world of synthetic birds in an alien landscape featuring noises of mysterious sources on Osopho’s environmental composition “Winged.” Luminous arpeggios, scritchy noise glitches, electronic titters and trills as those birds sound off into the perpetual not-day-not-night of a shadowy forest. Ghostly tonal percussion and chromatic, ethereal winds flow and all the while there is a soothing quality to the entire piece that sets your mind at ease and in acceptance of the enigmatic sounds and an uncertain environment like a place in a far future where you might explore or wander in such a space with no threat to your well-being with an awareness of that new reality and a deep sense of calm one might experience. It is the direct opposite of the world we live in now and though clearly a creative work and artificial it shines a light on the possibilities of a time and place where there is no need for all experiences and relationships to be transactional in some capacity and where there are places and situations where it is enough to merely experience a sense of wonder and appreciation of something that doesn’t exist in a commercial context. Listen to “Winged” on Spotify.

Slutavverkning’s Bluntly Aggressive Noise Rock Blast “Grisar” is a Stark Statement of Human Solidarity at Our Basest Level

Slutavverkning, photo courtesy the artists

Slutavverkning bring a blunt menace and aggression tempered by an elegant artfulness to the songs from its new album Levande Charader. Perhaps most exemplary of the harrowing and mind-altering listening journey you’ll undertake can be experienced in the music video by Richard Lukacs for the song “Grisar,” which is Swedish for “Pigs.” We see various sorts of pigs looking like they’re the subjects of a menacing horror movie even when nothing explicitly horrific happens during the course of the video. The guitar riff is cutting and clipped like something you might hear off a Shellac album that compliments perfectly the distorted, shouting vocals. But underneath is a haunted drone and toward the end of the song is a maddened free jazz saxophone section that heightens the sense of urgency and disgust that runs through the song. But that disgust isn’t the predictable, judgmental sort one might expect from some sort of nihilistic, misanthropic noise rock band that many of us know and love. No, the lyrics delivered in savage chunks in Swedish are about how there are many pigs around us including ourselves and the ways in which we can be encouraged to abuse each other and declare others an undesirable but in the end we’re all animals who are equal on a ground level no matter how many airs we might choose to put on in a pantomime of some elevated existential status. The song is so stark it really does suit the subject matter and fans of This Heat and modern noise rock/post-punk bands like Meat Wave and Sex Swing will appreciate Slutavverkning’s wild energy and uncompromising intensity. Watch the surreal and colorful video for “Grisar” on YouTube. Levande Charader is now available on digital and vinyl.

Slutavverkning on Bandcamp

Slutavverkning on Instagram

Slutavverkning on Apple Music

Teenage Halloween’s Triumphant and Vulnerable Pop Punk and Emo Singles “Supertrans/Takeaway” Are Irresistible Anthems of Personal Transcendence

Teenage Halloween, photo by Okie Dokie Studio

The music video for Teenage Halloween’s combined singles “Supertrans/Takeaway” directed by Jordan Serrano shows vocalist Luk Henderiks living out the the frustrations and reconciliations in the songs themselves that seem to be perfect companions in expressing the struggles many people go through in life whether its the social pressure of gender conformity or generational trauma or genetic health issues making living itself complicated. But the exuberance of the songs in that triumphant yet self-aware and vulnerable modern pop punk and emo style with Henderik’s impassioned and commanding vocals makes these songs irresistible anthems of resistance and personal dignity that ring true whatever your struggles and challenges might be because we’ve all got them and Teenage Halloween is definitely tapped into a collective zeitgeist of this moment. Watch the video for “Supertrans/Takeaway” on YouTube and follow the group from Asbury Park, New Jersey at the links below. Its new album Till You Return drops October 20, 2023 on digital and vinyl via Don Giovanni Records. And catch Teenage Halloween on tour October through December in support of the new record. Dates on the Bandcamp page.

Teenage Halloween on TikTok

Teenage Halloween on Facebook

Teenage Halloween on Instagram

Teenage Halloween on Bandcamp

Chris Portka’s Gloriously Wild and Raw Noise Pop Song “your music is trash” is the Deconstructed Rock and Roll We Need Now

Chris Portka’s “your music is trash” sounds like something Ween and the Flaming Lips secretly did together in the early 90s before a larger public got hip to their deal. It’s a gloriously noisy, brashly lo-fi psychedelic anti-rock, splintered and deconstructed melody with vocals that are blown out with much of the rest of the sounds beyond explicable recognition other than keeping a strange consistency and a tripped out sweetness in the song. Had this been the 2000s you’d assume this was a new band on the Siltbreeze label or a cousin band to Times New Viking. That vibe that isn’t for everyone but true connoisseurs of untamed and rebellious weird music. And Portka released an entire album of this sort of thing with various incarnations and sounds like a dissected and reassembled No Age with a cool bit of freak folk dropped in called what else but Trash Music which released on August 1, 2023 and available now on streaming, digital download and very limited edition vinyl. Listen to “your music is trash” on Spotify and connect with Portka at the links below.

Chris Portka on TikTok

Chris Portka on Facebook

Chris Portka on Twitter

Chris Portka on YouTube

Chris Portka on Bandcamp

Chris Portka on Instagram

Charm School Casts Off Fake Generational Cultural Inheritance on Noisy Post-Punk Single “Simulacra”

Charm School, photo by Destiny Robb @allfunk

Charm School seems to have tapped into a well of influence on the angular and splayed dynamics of “Simulacra” that includes both The Fall and Pere Ubu and more modern No Wave-esque post-punkers Lithics and Protomartyr. The steady bass line carries the lifeblood pulse of the song on a slow arc of tonality. Guitar spikes and quick echo fades off like the musical equivalent of splashes of garish color on a white background. At other times the guitar provides a haunted melody before transforming back into a more mechanistic sound. The drums frame it all with rapid fills and moments of sustained texture. All as enhancements of a song that seems like pointed commentary no the youth culture of today and the context in which it emerged in a fractured and dissolving political monolith like “the skittish empire of the ‘United’ States/trying to make haste to eliminate each other.” The lyrics mention the counterfeit endless copies of everything being peddled as something to be excited about and the counterfeit personal gestures and aspirations that serve as a psychological and civilizational feedback loop to nowhere. But the closing line of these litanies “But I’m not listening” suggests the option of rejecting the foundations of these ersatz choices which was as Greil Marcus said over the course of his classic 1989 book Lipstrick Traces: A Secret History of the 20th Century one of the great contributions of punk as passed down from the Situationists and their spiritual and philosophical ancestors. But here it sounds like a knowing way to call all the hullabaloo about nothing real a load of nonsense no one needs to take seriously. Listen to “Simulacra” on Spotify and follow Charm School from Louisville, Kentucky at the links below. The band’s EP Finite Jest, which as a title speaks much and more succinctly clever than it has a right to be, released on July 21, 2023.

Charm School on Bandcamp

Charm School on Instagram

Anton Barbeau’s Psychedelic Power Pop Single “Waiting On The Radio” is a Soothing Dose of Sanity in Less Than Sanguine Times

Anton Barbeau is one of those musicians still very active and prolific whose roots stretch back to American and international underground music with great creative distinction if not household fame. He has worked with the great neo-psychedelic band The Bevis Frond, he has collaborated with the late, great Scott Miller of The Loud Family and Game Theory fame, and for the new album his guest performers include Colin Moulding (XTC), Andy Metcalfe (Soft Boys/Robyn Hitchcock’s The Egyptians) and Chris Stamey (dB’s). That new album being Morganmusik/Nachtschlager which released on September 22, 2023. The lead single “Waiting On The Radio” features Barbeau on a trip on a bus across the country bemoaning the tire on the bus being busted yet taking solace in the promise of hearing “something golden” on the radio. In the story we get updates about how the driver should have retired years ago but in this America needed the money to get by and how everyone on the bus including himself is losing patience. But Barbeau and the band take us into gloriously beautiful psychedelic passages of expansive melody. It’s the kind of power pop song that made the first wave of “college rock” in the 80s so rewarding with tight yet imaginative songcraft that could resonate with frustrations of everyday life yet provide the kind of emotional release that was both soothing and captivating. Yet the song doesn’t feel like a throwback. Rather, it highlights how everyone has static in their lives that they have to get through and it needn’t feel like some end of the world inconvenience. It’s a very sane song in less than sanguine times. Watch the video for “Waiting On The Radio” on YouTube and follow Anton Barbeau at the links below.

Anton Barbeau on Instagram

Anton Barbeau on Bandcamp

Abadongo Abaganda’s “Okukomawe” Brings a Sustained Burst of Passionate Fiddle Music From Kampala, Uganda Circa 1948

“Okukomawe” or “The Return Of The King Mutesa” is a song by Abadongo Abaganda recorded in 1948 in Kampala, Uganda. It is part of an LP that released on September 15, 2023 called The Secret Museum of Mankind: Atlast of Instruments – Fiddles Vol. 1 available now on digital and vinyl as well as a special limited edition with a lithograph through Jalopy Records. The song has a sound that seems like it had to have been accomplished through electronic means today but the rapid solo on the endingidi (tube fiddle) was done with analog instruments played with an energy and mastery of the fiddle that allows for a resonance that goes beyond everyday experience with a hearty vocal delivery in the local language of the time of the recording that too transcends time and specific cultural context. The white noise from imperfections of transference to now just adds to the authenticity and charm of the music as something a modern producer might introduce digitally whereas here it’s unclear when or where this track might be from and yet it keeps you listening in to its passionate performance for the nearly three minute duration. Listen to “Okukomawe” on YouTube and for more information on the album and to order please visit the links below.

The Secret Museum of Mankind: Atlast of Instruments – Fiddles Vol. 1 on Bandcamp

jalopyrecords.org

Alex McArtor Looks Back in Love and Nuanced Regret on Moody and Upbeat “Oxygen Thief”

Alex McArtor returns with a new single called “Oxygen Thief.” The guitar sound sits in the background like droplets of water on the ocean and the bass sound and percussion setting a steady pace as McArtor relates a story of love and conflicted feelings about its dissolution. Clearly the song is written from the perspective of having moved on but looking back with some yearning for what that bond brought into their shared life and the sense of romance and sweet feelings and how in some ways it felt like a relationship defined by a kind of unspoken dependence and McArtor sings about how she felt addicted to the love of her beloved like oxygen and that she was the oxygen thief. It’s a clever and revealing twist in the song that lends some weight and depth to a song that has such an upbeat mood underneath the touch of melancholic mood and ethereal atmospheres and a creative flourish that McArtor has brought to her body of work thus far. Watch the lyric video for “Oxygen Thief” on YouTube and follow McArtor at the links provided.

Alex McArtor on Facebook

Alex McArtor on TikTok

Alex McArtor on Intagram

alexmcartormusic.com

The Seshen Help Us to Gentle Embrace Impermanence and Uncertainty in a Time of Turmoil With Dreamy Are Pop Single “Lost at Night”

Bay Area art rock/post-punk luminaries The Seshen is releasing its new album Nowhere on October 6, 2023. The album traces the group’s development and struggles as people and as a band with the marriage and divorce of Lalin St. Juste and Aki Ehara as part of the backdrop and emotional resonance of the songwriting. The single “Lost at Night” evokes a deep sense of personal disconnect and wistfulness for a time and place when things felt “normal” or at least like one was on some kind of footing even if that could feel tenuous at times. But everyone in the past few years has probably had their foundations shaken a little personally and in life in general. This song and its hazy production and echoing melodies with spectral tones and warping, bending guitar sounds in the mist of synths with St. Juste’s soulful vocals and the propulsive percussion anchoring the song and keeping those disconsolate moods from carrying us off to places even more removed from our center. It’s a song that feels gentle and compassionate in its ability to transport us from a place of utterly mystified reverie to one of acceptance of the inherent impermanence of almost all things in our lives and to find hope in how things can resolve when we make the effort or have the privilege of indulging patience in allowing events and hearts to reach their eventual places when they are beyond our ability to influence them. Listen to “Lost at Night” on Spotify and follow The Seshen on Instagram.