Song Post – Page 2 – Queen City Sounds and Art

“Recent Mineral” by Church Chords is an Enchanting and Mysterious Blend of Krautrock, Bossa Nova and Noise

Church Chords’ forthcoming album elvis, he was Schlager (out February 26, 2024 on Otherly Love Records) sounds like an ambitious, experimental post-punk album years in the making with numerous collaborators that songwriter and producer Stephen Buono brought together after the manner of a hip-hop producer. And you get a taste of what’s in store with the single “Recent Mineral” with the quietly sultry vocals of Genevieve Artadi who sings in Portuguese. What are the lyrics about? Might have to ask someone that understands the language or wait for the full release of the record. But you don’t need to know in order to really be taken in by the finely accented percussion and hypnotic arrangements of texture tones, slashes of echoing, stretching, warping guitar altogether reminiscent of Young Marble Giants, Faust and an abstract Bossa Nova band mixing it up to make a song that is entrancing and mysterious and you wouldn’t think overmuch about if it was in a movie like something Jim Jarmusch or Sofia Coppola would produce.

Church Chords on YouTube

Church Chords on Instagram

“Plastic Lungs” is Rew’s Gentle Lo-Fi Indiepop Shoegaze Song About a Mind on the Verge of Unraveling

“Plastic Lungs” is a song that sounds like its falling apart as it goes forward. It has a loose clockwork beat and its layers of atmospheric discordant guitar work really fit the mood of a song that seems to be about someone who is coming apart more than a little himself. Lines like “I know that memories and nightmares sometimes feel the same” and “I don’t think my dreams are as kind as they used to be,” “I know you’re wondering what’s wrong” and “I think it’s happening again but when” resonate with the feeling of someone who has experienced a mental breakdown in the past and/or witnessed it in someone close to them. In the music video the wintry kaleidoscopic colors and the doubled imagery and a face obscured by colored television snow and other imagery and it pairs well with the song and its themes of being on the verge of being overwhelmed by one’s own personal demons yet resisting that pull with creative work and expressing the possibility with emotional honesty rather than trying to hide from one’s own psyche. Imagine a lo-fi Mercury Rev gone lo-fi shoegaze indiepop and you have a good idea of the rich tonal moods of Rew’s song “Plastic Lungs.” Watch the video on YouTube and follow Rew at the links provided.

Rew on Instagram

Rew LinkTree

Daniel Trakell’s “Waves” is a Moody and Melancholic Folk Song About the Pains of Loving Someone With Inveterate Wanderlust

Daniel Trakell, photo courtesy the artist

Daniel Trakell imbues “Waves” with a spirit of deep introspection and gentle rhythms and textures. His breathy vocals and the shimmery lap steel draw you in to a story about two people who were once close and parted ways because one person is still struggling with their inner demons years later and yet the metaphor of an ocean that washes random and not so random things on shore and provides a global path taken by a wide variety of travelers who may not even mean to return to their old hangouts. We hear a pained acceptance in Trakell’s voice as he creates the portrait of a person who seems to always be on the run in a futile attempt to escape their troubles embedded deep in their psyche rather than face them and reconnect with those that love them in an authentic and enduring way. But for some people this doesn’t happen and they come in and out of your life whether physically and/or emotionally and you try to value your time with them even when their going away always seems to elicit a wave of sadness. It’s a folk song with immersive moods and its haunted melodies linger with you long after the song has ended. Listen to “:Waves” on Spotify and follow Daniel Trakell at the links below. His new album Into the Blue arrived on November 24, 2023.

Daniel Trakell on Facebook

Daniel Trakell on Instagram

danieltrakell.com

SANDS Brings Elegant, Nostalgic Glimmer to the Bittersweet Farewell of Shoegaze Pop Song “Horizon”

On “Horizon,” the concluding track of SANDS’ debut full-length The World’s So Cruel (released October 13, 2023), Andrew Sands brings together the rich array of sounds that he brought to the rest of the album. The guitar has a bit of pop jangle, the melodic bass line buoys the ethereal tones, multiple strands of synth course through the track and bring a nostalgic glimmer that uplifts the melancholic tones ever so slightly. It’s clearly a bittersweet farewell song and one where the emotions are mixed but the decision to part ways for the betterment of both parties is there. The final lines “Reality’s not what you expect/Don’t want to spoil your dreams.” Heavy but elegant. The style of the song recalls but the moods of chillwave but the songwriting and the way Sands has arranged how the emotional beats hit is like shoegaze after the impact of Britpop. Listen to “Horizon” on Spotify and follow SANDS at the links below.

“Mind the Gap” by Band Lolita Terrorist Sounds is a Thrilling Journey From Daily Banality to Creative Transcendence

Lolita Terrorist Sounds, photo by marilebones

“Mind the Gap” is a single by Berlin-based Lolita Terrorist Sounds from its harrowingly fascinating album St. Lola (released October 20, 2023). Apparently it’s a musical journey that connects London and Berlin and its music video show on 8mm is reminiscent of the kind of visuals one saw in Einstürzende Neubauten’s video for “Sabrina” – dark, lurid, spooky but in the end deeply compelling. We see a gender fluid protagonist taking a train as mentioned in the lyrics of the song through what looks like Europe of the 1970s or 1980s. The song is driven by a simple piano figure propelled by urgent percussion, some vital and haunting lap-steel presumably provided by longtime Swans member Kristof Hahn who contributed to the album. Band leader Maurizio Vitale’s vocals are somehow both intense and inviting and the song encourages the listener to do something inspiring with their lives rather than count down the days remaining to you in purely mundane pursuits. The song is in the vein of industrial post-punk as the aforementioned foundational industrial band and the likes of Crime and the City Solution and of course Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds. The album was recorded and produced in a studio in East Berlin in a building formerly used by presumably the Stasi during the era of the Berlin Wall. The setting and the limited use of old microphones and analog equipment gives all the songs a certain quality of spontaneity and hauntedness that suits well its themes of marginalized people and the undeniable appeal of the freedom of gritty, urban avant-garde modes of expression. The album also includes the late, great, experimental multi-media artist Rob Rutman (Steel Cello Ensemble) on bow chimes for opening track “Shaved Girl.”

Lolita Terrorist Sounds on TikTok

Lolita Terrorist Sounds on Facebook

Lolita Terrorist Sounds on Twitter

Lolita Terrorist Sounds on Instagram

Frij Captures the Sense of Wonder at Deep Space Images on the Playful Ambient Song “magenta”

As “magenta” unfolds in its flow of soft and bright tones, the song by Frij sounds like the manifestation of a time lapse view of a cloudy nebula viewed through a powerful telescope. Tones wink and resonate, linger, an arpeggio of tones like small star systems floating in view overlapping hazy fields of light as per the song title, shining through the melodic drones that flow through the song in its short course. There is a playfulness and sense of wonder conveyed in the song from the beginning to when the song slowly fades to a minimal sequence. It’s like listening to what it’s like for the mind to get stimulated and fascinated by the sights of deep space and its eternal dynamism and inspired to capture that energy for a time beyond that moment. Fans of the Hearts of Space program will appreciate Frij’s elegance of composition. Listen to “magenta” on Spotify and folow Frij at the links below.

Frij on Bandcamp

Frij on Instagram

Mary Middlefield’s Indie Orchestral Single “Sexless” Spells Out a Situation Everyone Gets Into When They Have Standards

Mary Middlefield, photo courtesy the artist

Mary Middlefield articulates in “Sexless” a certain kind of desperation and frustration that many people can relate to at some point in their lives or for entirely too long a stretches of time. The song’s orchestral sounds and upbeat energy are a wonderful contrast to lyrics that in another context might be considered pathetic. But in Middlefield’s words we hear about how she’s not without options just none that seem appealing and she expresses how she finds even self-pleasure unsatisfying. She sings about how when she was a little younger she had that network of friends that meant she could find someone to pair off with for fun and companionship but that maybe her temperament as an artist or as a human being with regular human needs that some might see as a burden has ensured her lonely status. And she wonders how this all happened leaving her thinking, “I’m sexless and I’m not loved.” Maybe a lot of people can’t relate to it and when you watch the music video directed by Imogen Harrison you may think oh right, how is Mary Middlefield suffering from this state of things. But it happens when you have standards and you’re not someone who can feel attracted that way to just anyone for whom you feel like you’re settling. Stranger things have happened and one can only hope this plight in the life of Middleton has resolved itself or will soon and for you as well if you also find yourself “Sexless.” Watch the music video on YouTube and follow indie singer-songwriter Mary Middlefield at the links below.

Mary Middlefield on TikTok

Mary Middlefield on Instagram

L Twills’ Soulful and Menacing “Illusion II” is a Fusion of Dark R&B, Industrial and Art Techno

“Illusion II” is the second single from L Twills’ forthcoming new multimedia album [After her Destruction] (due out February 16, 2024). The album is a cybernetic sci-fi opera in which its protagonist Girl journeys through her own mind to find out whether it has mutated. In ten video chapters of the album Girl meets various characters and creatures and undergoes epiphanies that transform her and opens her to new vistas of creative imagination. “Illusion II” brings us in with a rippling low end sound like a deeply processed piano abstracted and echoing, metallic sounds counting time and creating an evolving texture while L Twills sings soulfully about a figure that seems to hold a strange and irresistible allure while she is under the spell of a mysterious affliction. Even though it’s obvious you’re hearing a portion of a larger narrative the song stands on its own. It sounds like an unlikely pairing of Fiona Apple, Malaria! and Chris & Cosey and hints at a fascinating album ahead. Listen to “Illusion II” on Soundcloud and follow L Twills at the links provided.

Kaeto’s Sultry and Urgent Synth Pop Single “No Body” is an Entrancing Mantra of Personal Liberation

Paula Romy’s video treatment for Kaeto’s sultry and urgent synth pop track “No Body” gives it a feel like if Flashdance took place in some grimy, underground Berlin industrial music venue that took over an abandoned parking structure. That this place likely doesn’t exist in reality gives the video a sense of being futuristic with the aesthetics of cyberpunk without the glitz. The fantastically driving and pulsing yet fluid bass line alongside Kaeto’s introspective and exploratory vocals in a song that seems to have something to say about the nature of personal liberation creates an immediately compelling dynamic and finely paired with the choreographed moves and dancers frolicking amid hazy lights and the shadows of a place that in addition to the aforementioned is reminiscent of a techno club that could be in Germany, London or Detroit. It lends a widely accessible spirit to the song. Fans of The Knife will appreciate the sense of mystery Kaeto establishes with the moods and rhythms that interlock and release throughout. Watch the video for “No Body” on YouTube and follow Kaeto on Instagram.

Dax’s Vulnerable and Reflective “Life” is an Embrace of Living in the Moment and Savoring the Limited Time We All Have on Earth

For his single “Life” Dax brings together a simple guitar melody played over a spare beat and lets his typically fluid and commanding vocal cadence carry the momentum of the song. For this song there’s an accompanying video, Dax’s signature and consistently creative and compelling presentation of his songs, that shows ups, downs and everyday struggles of life. We see Dax serving as a janitor in a music venue symbolizing paying his dues and how it must have felt after he’d established himself somewhat as an artist. We see Dax sitting in a classroom being open to learning and setting aside ego to learn from sources beyond his immediate faculties. In the song he refers to his faith and his battles with that and keeping it even though he finds solace and a source of strength and perseverance in it. But even if you don’t share his particular belief system the song has plenty to say about the impermanence of life and how it’s best to make the most of the time we have in this life because it’s all we know. Even if you believe in an afterlife the only life you know is this one and it’s too easy to waste that time and not make the best of our lives even with the challenges that may be in front of us. It’s a compassionate song about living life and the spirit of vulnerability that Dax expresses throughout is a welcome change from the hollow bravado positivity and toughness of entirely too much popular music in all styles. Watch the video for “Life” on YouTube and follow Dax at the links below.