Song Post – Page 5 – Queen City Sounds and Art

War Violet Mourns the Losses of the Natural World and the Compromised Potential of the Human Race on Orchestral Pop Song “Different Formations”

War Violet’s use of strings and piano arrangements in “Different Formations” lend a classical sensibility to a song about the ways humans live on earth like we’re eager to escape it. Like it’s something to escape and that as a result its in some ways disposable. But Jummy Aremu’s vocals seem to mourn this unfortunate state of affairs as a tragic reality that never needed to come to pass. In the music video we see Aremu sharing a cab with a cast of characters at night like they’re celebrating like it’s their last day on earth. It really makes the song hit a little harder in spite the elegance of its composition and the orchestral beauty of its detailed melodies. With poetic pronouncements, Aremu points out the lost potential and the inevitable tragedy of loss of a world that seems inevitable simply because humans couldn’t believe in their own value and thus the world around them because of a lifetime of indoctrination to belief systems that atomizes everyone and renders all things with a utilitarian value rather than one more inherent and tied to a place in a an economic, social and/or religious hierarchy. In Aremu’s voice we hear a love of the world and a spirit deep melancholia at how it feels like our species has simply given up on itself and everything else in the world has to pay that price as well. A song can’t save the world but “Different Formations” offers a unique take on what we’ve lost and what we can lose and challenges the listener to think in lateral and powerful ways that can transform our approach to how we conduct ourselves on the planet. Fans of Kate Bush and Angel Olsen will appreciate Aremu’s union of classic and classical sensibilities with an employment of those sounds and structures in ways that subvert the usual methods and expressions. Watch the video for “Different Formations” on YouTube out now on Kill Rock Stars and listen to more War Violet on Spotify.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T47B3KY3Zi8

“Last Day of Summer” is Wild Arrows’ Melancholic, Feel Good, Existential Heartbreak Synthpop Song of the Season

“Last Day of Summer” finds Wild Arrows in an especially melancholic mood. The image of what is presumably singer Mike Law’s face rippling at the bottom of a pool is a great visual for the lyric video. It casts the singer in a mood of deep repose and flooded with feeling. The song is like dream pop steeped in the emotional colorings of one of those great songs from the earlier John Hughes movies or more recent teen comedies with the more hip soundtracks with a particularly poignant song in a key moment of the film. Its drifting glittery guitar riffs and shifting synth washes and steady beat hit immediately with the sound of a classic. But this is no song about the heartbreak of youthful romance or that of an older person looking back farming nostalgia for inspiration. The lyrics to this song is certainly about heartbreak but one more existential and the kind that strikes you so deep when hard realizations crash into your brain and sink your heart in a way that simple breakup can accomplish. It’s the kind of song that sounds like it came about after a major and acute existential crisis struck and this warm and bright song was the way to dilute that pain in something poetic meaningful after sitting with it for several moments. An adult with the capacity to still feel knows these moments where something will stagger you, a soul deep disappointment that can be triggered by a specific event or unexpected conflict with a loved one but often experiences that point to you knowing deep down that things can never be the same again and that the circumstances that you had perhaps been counting on and even depending on for years have dissolved or are rapidly doing so. And when that happens at a point in life that feels like a time of natural transitions in the past it can sink your spirits. But in writing this song in this tone of resigned and melancholic acceptance Wild Arrows it seems as though the band is showing how you can get through those rough emotional patches if you just feel it and live in and pick yourself up again and try to reinvent aspects of your life once again. Watch the video for “Last Day of Summer” on YouTube and follow Wild Arrows at the links below. The band’s new EP Rejection Bloom EP dropped on October 20, 2023.

Wild Arrows on Facebook

Wild Arrows on Bandcamp

Wild Arrows on Instagram

Bad Flamingo Explores the Allure of Revisiting the Romance of One’s Youth on the Dark Folk Ballad “White T Shirt”

Bad Flamingo, photo courtesy the artists

Bad Flamingo seems to have an endless well of takes on star crossed love and bittersweet nostalgia and “White T Shirt” finds the enigmatic duo tapping into a different palette of sounds in crafting a typically engaging song. Sounding like some kind of outlaw country folk pop song with a tone of youthful indiscretion shared between two young lovers rekindled when they reconnect after years apart though what brings them together in this moment is memories of past passion and bonding over the simple pleasures available to teenagers in a rural town. The fretting on the acoustic guitar is left in as a tactile detail as much as the line about “hands got rough but your lips are still soft” to anchor the song in physical reality. The chorus of “white t shirts falling to the floor, we’ve been here before, whiskey and cola from the corner store, drunk as before” really captures a ritual that might have been one of the few moments of actual joy and passion in an otherwise mundane existence. But then there’s the bit about “old habits dying so damn hard” as a recognition that while that earlier past time could get stale and seem like a dead end and thus our plucky narrator moved on to broader pastures even though she has taken a trip back home and encountered a past that still holds an allure the way the things from our youth often do even when we’ve moved on as adults. Bad Flamingo excels at taking earnest musicianship and performances atmospheric and imbued with a darkly romantic edge and turning the simple story into something approaching the epic and “White T Shirt” is no exception minus how the song demonstrates that the band is also able to consistently switch up its songwriting approach to lend its storytelling a unique dimension each time. Listen to “White T Shirt” on Spotify and follow Bad Flamingo at the links below.

Bad Flamingo on Facebook

Bad Flamingo on YouTube

Bad Flamingo on Instagram

badflamingomusic.com

Chief Broom’s Jazzy Noise Punk Song “hidden in plain sight (walked away)” is the Sound of a Valiant Attempt to Escape the Clutches of Desperation and Despair

“hidden in plain sight (walked away)” is the title track to the debut album hidden in plain sight by Boise, Idaho-based guitar rock band Chief Broom. The album represents well the legacy of the late Tanner “TJ” Tuck, the group’s gifted and imaginative drummer who tragically passed away due to a fentanyl overdose on June 11, 2021 at age 22. This song showcases the broad sweep of Chief Broom’s sound from angular post-punk and post-hardcore to jazz flourishes with a through line of a chiming and deeply melancholic melody around which the song fragments and distorts in a swell of emotion with lyrics that seem to be about struggles with substance abuse and the betrayals that can happen in a social circle that help to keep people strung along and the conflict that often results when people are tangling with these issues especially when someone wants to get away from it all. The song has a sonic complexity that hits with a desperate energy and crushing simplicity and intensity of expression that is reminiscent of early post-rock bands like Slint and later hardcore inflected post-punk artists like Pink Reason. It has that level of deeply imagined and felt songwriting that sticks with you and is impossible to pigeonhole because in the making the music the musicians aren’t limiting themselves to genre tropes. The album was many years in the making due to personal issues dating to before the death of TJ Tuck and exacerbated with his passing and perhaps finding the very idea of mixing and mastering the music and giving it concrete form for the world to hear a painful endeavor but fortunately the legacy of the drummer and his bandmates was honored with the release of the album on September 28, 2023, what would have been TJ Tuck’s twenty-fifth birthday. Listen to “hidden in plain sight (walked away)” on Spotify and follow Chief Broom at the links below. The record is available on digital, cassette and limited vinyl editions via Mishap and Earth Libraries.

Chief Broom on Facebook

Chief Broom on Instagram

Chief Broom on Mishap Records

SHIRAN Brings the Sound of the Cross-Cultural Dance Party of the Future with “La La – لا لا”

Ahead of the September 21, 2023 release of her new EP Electro Hafla (Hafla being the Arabic word for party), SHIRAN released a single from her 2022 record Fadaytak in “La La – لا لا.” It’s an especially representative example of the artist’s facility with bringing together traditional Arabic musical styles, tonalities and rhythms with modern electronic pop and dance music production in collaboration with her producer husband Ron Bakal. The song begins with the sound of a wind flute that expands into one more electronic before SHIRAN’s commanding vocals take center stage and then in a perfect interplay with the lively melodies. In the last third of the song the mood shifts to one more introspective and ethereal for lingering moments before we’re engaged again with the song’s strong rhythms and vibrant, percussive tones with elegantly placed string arrangements floating around SHIRAN’s voice and sitting a distance back in the mix like a memory haunting the present. It’s a futuristic sound that unites a classic sound palette with modern sensibilities and methods of composition with an emotional resonance and musical appeal that transcends any language or cultural barrier. Listen to “La La – لا لا” on Spotify where you can also find strikingly evocative dance pop of Electro Hafla. Connect with SHIRAN on Instagram.

Joy Guidry’s Ambient Jazz Composition “Almost There” Channels Negative Energy From the Self Int the Great Beyond

“Almost There” finds Joy Guidry in an ambient mode with warmly resonant bell tones floating over an unseen rippling stream. Ethereal bassoon drifts in among the distant sound of birds like a figure in an abstract, mystical jazz piece. The song exudes a sense of place in both physical reality and in the mind. The song begins as it ends as a passage in an ongoing journey but conveys a restful and healing energy in making no demands as a listener but providing a conduit for the sublimating of nervous, negative energy into an infinite beyond. Listen to “Almost There” on Spotify and follow Joy Guidry at the links below.

Joy Guidry on Bandcamp

guidrybassoon.com

Diane Arkenstone Takes Us to a Place of Teeming Life and Calming Spirits in the Video For New Age Ambient Single “Echoes of the Past Float Away”

Diane Arkenstone, photo courtesy the artist

Diane Arkenstone gives us a glimpse of her new album Aquaria II: Ascension out in early 2024 with the gorgeous video for “Echoes of the Past Float Away.” Arkenstone’s particular manifestation of ambient music for this single includes what sounds like electronic harp arpeggios, wordless vocals and processed sequenced tones that conjure in the mind a feeling of a faraway place of great peace and calm but imbued with a dynamic energy. In the video we see a part of the world surrounded by tranquil ocean, sea birds flying leisurely, turtles and fish swimmming by a coral reef, sea lions, dolphins and whales frolicking, beautiful waterside caverns carved by centuries of erosion, turquoise shores, distant coasts covered in clouds, verdant islands and in the end a lighthouse rendered ancient by weathering—all of it proof of life living in a harmony of equilibrium. The iridescent tones of the song and its gentle flow quickly make you forget your place in the world for moments at a time which everyone could benefit from experiencing. Watch the video for “Echoes of the Past Float Away” on YouTube and follow Diane Arkenstone at the links below.

Diane Arkenstone on TikTok

Diane Arkenstone on Facebook

Diane Arkenstone on Twitter

Diane Arkenstone on Bandcamp

Diane Arkenstone on Instagram

dianearkenstone.com

Mr. Limbis Upends the Grifter Influencer Game on Psychedelic Post-punk Song “Level Up”

Mr. Limbis’ psychedelic rock song “Level Up” is reminiscent of a time in music when there was a little less pressure to adhere to some trendy genre tropes. With colorful guitar work and driving rhythms the song brings in some exploratory saxophone work and the kind of vocals with a touch of grit you’d expect more out of a punk band. The song’s lyrics are an interesting commentary on the clout culture of the current era and how often people treat it like some game you can beat if you are enough of a sociopath to treat the lives of others and life itself as some challenge to overcome in your quest for power and influence and over what? Mr. Limbis doesn’t offer an answer to that question because that’s as varied as there are people who take that path like many politicians and grifter influencers but his depiction of that way of thinking and living is certainly on point. At times the song hits like a weird combination of The Psychedelic Furs and Hawkwind which is the kind of genre bending that doesn’t happen but listening to this song and watching its colorful music video one hopes it does more often. See for yourself and watch the video for “Level Up” on YouTube and follow Mr. Limbis at the links below.

Mr. Limbis on Instagram

Crewless’ Soulfully Downtempo Track “Elevator (going down)” is Like an Entrancing Mantra Against Emotional Exhaustion

Crewless experimented with the format of its song “Elevator” with one version, the“(going up)” iteration, being more upbeat, brash and dramatic. But it is the lush and downtempo “(going down)” incarnation of the song that will appeal to anyone looking for something more moody and atmospheric. The song appears to be about getting to your own truth relative to the emotional turmoil of someone for whom you care deeply and taking the time out to sort through one’s own level of comfort with the device of an elevator being an adjustable setting of emotional states but desiring to keep things at level that can work for everyone so as to not dip into burnout. The vocals are ethereal yet soulful and reminiscent of Martina Topley-Bird’s on those classic 90s Tricky records. The effect is one of a calming mantra and though melancholic resonant with a spirit of acceptance. Listen to “Elevator (going down)” on Spotify and connect with Crewless at the links provided.

Crewless on Instagram

crewlessmusic.com

“No Grand Gesture” is the Cinematic and Tranquil Ambient Conclusion to Guava’s Album Out of Nowhere

“No Grand Gesture,” the concluding track to Guava’s 2023 dream pop album Out of Nowhere, is like the peaceful exit out of an album that was like a journey through emotional exploration of relationships and aspirations. Rather than the more pop mixed with deep house format of the songwriting of the rest of the album, this song utilizes the softly incandescent tonality of the record to craft an ambient cloak of soothing drones that blend and roil together and fade into abstract environmental sounds like a long drive through some light fog at the end of night of new experiences and adventure to the tranquility of a home outside the active energy of a city center. It’s an appropriately meditative end to an uncommonly thoughtful album and a track that though instrumental and ultra chill lingers with you. Listen to “No Grand Gesture” on Spotify and follow Guava at the links below.

Guava on Facebook

Guava on Instagram