Song Post – Page 65 – Queen City Sounds and Art

Hearts On Speed Airs the Frustrations and Confusions in a Fraught Relationship on “So Serious”

Hearts On Speed is a band comprised of remote collaborators in New York City, Atlanta and Seattle. David Yeend and Mark Galis Hall took on a challenge to record an album’s worth of songs in less than a month and continued on writing more material with David’s brother Mark Yeend. The trio’s single “So Serious” has that sort of blue eyed soul vocal style paired with a dynamic, simple guitar progression that is like its own call and response riff accented perfectly by the percussion as it goes into distorted solos that embody the frustration expressed in the lyrics. The latter seems to be coming from the perspective of the kind of man who thinks his innate charm and force of will can overcome any emotional rough patch and when it doesn’t he responds with anger, a willingness to be a clown and in more honest moments confusion. These strategies that worked for him before fail him in this moment and he struggles with trying to understand what’s wrong when part of the issue is assuming it’s a problem to solve, a situation to fix while starting to comprehend that maybe listening more rather than imposing a ready made solution is the way to go. You hear that dawning in the breakdown section in the last half of the song where the direct energy of the first half loses some of its momentum and wends in more nuanced directions and here is a distinct change of mood. It’s a subtle move but one that turns the song from a simple “Girl why do you have to break my heart” sentiment to one where our narrator starts to consider that his whole approach is flawed and yet it’s hard to give up old habits for growth. Fans of Spoon will appreciate the dynamic flair of the song and its pairing of power pop hooks with elegantly rendered dynamic shifts in mood and emotional coloring. Listen to “So Serious” on Spotify and follow Hearts On Speed on Instagram.

Maccogallo Examines the Perils and Benefits of Having an Open Heart on “Parafin”

Maccogallo weave layers of introspective sounds on the pastoral “Parafin.” The gentle guitar work and vocal harmonies floating on unexpectedly moody and wistfully uplifting horns sound like something from a dream, a distant and faded but cherished memory of a time. But the song is about the struggle with being open and sensitive when certain people around you are cruel and manipulative when they detect vulnerability as an excuse to exercise their low rent power out of their own insecurities until people draw that line and harden to them. But the song is about more than that kind of psychodrama. It’s also about not succumbing to the effects of those petty mind games and not losing one’s capacity to be vulnerable and being willing to risk getting hurt because the benefits of being more open are worth more than the fears of the actions of bad faith actors who can be identified as such and paid no more mind than is necessary. Musically Maccogallo here and on the rest of its 2022 album Monuni bring together elements of indie folk in the elegant compositions, classic indiepop of the 90s variety and shoegaze-tinged psychedelia for a sound that is deeply introspective yet passionately rendered. Listen to “Parafin” on YouTube and follow the Indianapolis-based band at the links below.

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“Space Operator” is Dan Wilson’s Cosmic Motorik Techno Track for an Interstellar Disco

Dan Wilson’s single “Space Operator” makes great use of seemingly random tones in a steady beet to give a sense of being an entity monitoring interstellar communication networks and making sure the pathways of technology and infrastructure as yet unimagined up to the task of facilitating are functioning as designed and troubleshooting any anomalies. A disembodied female voice comments on the quantum phenomena occurring in this environment and otherwise the track proceeds at a great yet measured clip. Music it’s reminiscent of the Wire song “Ahead” but stripped of the formal rhythms and dynamics with other sounds more techno-flavored swapped in for the guitar, bass and the kinds of synths Wire would have used. It has that mysteriousness and momentum and a sense of moving forward boldly into the unknown. Think of it a bit like cosmic motorik disco. Listen to “Space Operator” on Spotify and follow Dan Wilson at the links below.

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“Meditation III: Philodendron” by Past Palms Gives Voice to the Spirit of Ease and Comfort of One of the Most Common of Houseplants

Ambient Music For Watering Plants is the latest EP from Past Palms. A clear nod to Brian Eno’s landmark 1978 album Ambient 1: Music for Airports and possibly to Stevie Wonder’s 1979 soundtrack album Stevie Wonder’s Journey Through “The Secret Life of Plants” for the documentary directed by Walon Green (and based on the book The Secret Life of Plants by Peter Tompkins and Christopher Bird), Past Palms utilizes textures and processed atmospheric elements with field recordings to produce a musical analog to replicate the emotions and outer life of fairly common household plants. The track “Meditation III: Philodendron” celebrates the qualities of one of the most popular and durable potted plants one finds in most homes that host such relatively domesticated flora. Its vaguely heart shaped, shiny leaves with gentle wrinkles from extending out from a central stem often found hanging over the edge of the pot in one version of the plant, a fern-like structure with distinct branches off the central stem in another. All lushly green without being overwhelming. Past Palms evokes how these plants bring a freshness to a room without being obtrusive with bright flowing tones and tactile arrangements that suggest ease and comfort. Listen to “Meditation III: Philodendron” and the rest of Ambient Music For Watering Plants on Spotify and follow Past Palms at the links provided.

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Leland And The Silver Wells Await a Spiritual Reckoning on the Moody and Mysterious “What Comes Around”

The processional pace of “What Comes Around,” the title track from Leland And The Silver Wells’ forthcoming album (out June 3 via Rubia Records) is represented well in the music video directed by Larissa Jaks. The song is driven by a brooding piano line, finely accented percussion and Leland Ettinger’s bright, forceful vocals that shift effortlessly from powerful and direct to introspective and back. The theme of the song seems obscured except that Ettinger’s lyrics hint at past transgressions and guilt followed by an impending reckoning cast in religious terms with references to the sacrament, the devil’s screams haunting the narrator and the sounds of angels gathering for a crisis of the soul and answering for a mysterious sin. Watch the video for “What Comes Around” on YouTube and follow Leland And The Silver Wells at the links below.

Ferguson’s Daughter’s “Panic Attacks In Love” Embodies the Amplified Emotions at Crucial Turning Points in a Relationship

Ferguson’s Daughter, photo by Lindsey Plotner

“Panic Attacks In Love” by Ferguson’s Daughter is not a conventional song in form, in composition, in length. In the background one hears a raw and aching conversation between, presumably, two people in a relationship who are discussing one person’s insecurities coming to the fore at what could be a crossroads in that relationship where they’re making big decisions that could change everything about the bond like moving in together as a big step and the possibility of starting a family but not wanting to be a bad parent because one person doesn’t know if she’s up to being a parent before figuring herself out some more. After all parenting while offering the potential for other kinds of growth, puts a lot of personal growth on pause for years even if you’re engaged and don’t do the obvious things wrong. In the foreground throughout is a spacious and lonely piano line that evolves and breaks from expected progressions and melodies to reflect the mood of the piece with peaks of tonal activity and lingering chord progressions like your mood when you’re going through a messy spell in your brain. It’s nearly uncomfortably vulnerable in expression but in the end cathartic for anyone who has hit that time in their lives when your sense of self isn’t as strong as maybe it was or that you’d like it to be but you’re faced with important decisions you can’t put off and heavy conversations need to be had to try to get to a place where it doesn’t all feel like loose and frayed ends. Thus the title of the track is perfect because in the throes of a panic attack everything feels like its crashing in on you and that you could die any moment for a sustained period that amplifies every feeling to the point of being acutely overwhelming. The song is from Ferguson’s Daughter’s April 2022 EP Blissed Out Blues which isn’t short on songs that pair dynamic and evocative piano composition with highly emotional lyrics and vocal delivery although the other tracks aren’t so overtly experimental as this piece. Listen to “Panic Attacks In Love” on Spotify where you can also listen to the rest of Blissed Out Blues and follow Ferguson’s Daughter on Soundcloud.

An-Ten-Nae’s Genre Bending “Raindrops On Roses (The Biggie Edition)” Brings the Legendary Rap Star Back for a Psychedelic Hip-Hop Track

An-Ten-Nae, west coast bass music producer, does something really unusual for “Raindrops On Roses (The Biggie Edition)” by doing a mashup of seemingly disparate elements that make sense in the logic of lateral thinking. He mixes together samples of childhood nursery rhyme songs, children singing Beatles’ “Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds,” playful synth arpeggios and Biggie Smalls speaking words assembled together in the beat so that it sounds like he’s deftly referencing raindrops and mixing it in with mention of microdots. It’s a free association recontextualization of bits of music and ideas not unlike something you’d hear from Girl Talk or DJ Shadow but here more overtly psychedelic with Biggie living on not as a hologram but as the inevitable sample for the quality of his voice that brought to his own music a gritty authenticity. Sitting in the track as his voice does here it expands narrow notions of musical genre and really is this a hip-hop or EDM track? Too weird for either alone but something you could definitely hear in someone’s set when they’re chilling out for a moment before going hard again or whatever it is people say they do now. Listen to “Raindrops On Roses (The Biggie Edition)” on Soundcloud and follow An-Ten-Nae at the links below.

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“Dijomen Resurrects the Youthful Excitement for a New Day on “43”

“43” rewards your patience as Dijomen builds the track from a melodic haze and fingers of tones flaring forth, voices heard in the middle distance and touches of sonic texture. It has a dynamic like slowly waking up in the early morning and a time lapse as full daylight is hitting and the outside world and the dream world overlap in your brain so that what could be the sound of a nearby playground and memories thereof triggered by those sounds blend together as a unified experience and a deep memory of being up in the morning excited for the day which too often isn’t the case in everyday adult life even though you wish it could be. But this song gives that experience back to you with its expansive energy. Listen to “43” on Spotify and follow Dijomen at the links below.

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Colatura Asks If We’re Comfortable With Being Rendered Into Monetizable Data on “R U Content”

Colatura’s single “R U Content” mixes the gritty and granular sound texture with ethereal and introspective tones in an expansive dynamic that the trio augments with bends and accents. The result is a song that has a simple appeal but a great deal of variation that suits well the subject of the song which is the commodification of our lives in a very mediated age when most people with a modern phone or computer is on social media with the lure of instant, low rent gratification of engagement from friends, acquaintances and strangers. It’s not really living but the illusion, the projection of life. And that projection, the superficial data of our lives that we share knowingly or otherwise, is monetized and becomes part of a mass feedback loop and in another era would have been described in a way parallel to that of a psyop. The chorus of “Are you content, or are you just content, there’s no way of knowing, what are we doing?” speaks so well to a fairly sophisticated assessment to where so much of the culture is now in trusting large tech companies with the building blocks of our identity and allowing ourselves to be manipulated in ways we don’t full understand. The proof is in how conspiracy theories have spread in social media and how the algorithm can be set to prioritize content that is the opposite of what you might actually believe or need to see. And that question I the chorus of are we content as in satisfied with the situation as it is and can we consent for our lives to be content without compensation? Would we want it to be a product even if we could be compensated? Maybe if you’re an influencer you say yes but it has to be a bummer for anyone at some point. Colatura’s music is appealing in a broad sense of it being somewhere in the realm of shoegaze but with this song it’s like an experimental pop song in aim and execution. Watch the video for “R U Content” on YouTube and connect with Colatura at the links below.

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Little Destroyer Offers a Story of a Phone Order Service to Manage Creeps on “hitman”

Little Destroyer, photo by Heather Saitz

Little Destroyer seems to invoke the loose structure and tonal strategy of “Kool Thing” by Sonic Youth on its song “hitman” with an undeniable groove with grit and a sense of menace flowing through it. In Connor McGuire’s video treatment for the song we see that rarest of devices in many cities now: the pay phone. But the song is told from the perspective of a woman who got beyond fed up with all the sexual harassment thrown her way through various means from verbal and not so verbal street assault and unwelcome DMs and attention from creeps who won’t take no for an answer. So what is a woman to do? Why be a hitman, of course, and that word specifically because she would invert the usual meaning a little and offer her services to take out the usual perpetrators of unwanted sexual contact or intent thereof. So people use the pay phone at Kingsgate Mall (in Vancouver, BC, presumably) to get in touch with the “hitman” who will take care of business because, the vocalist of Little Destroyer, Allie Sheldan, sings, “Everybody swears I’m the villain but everybody wants to hire a hitman.” While there is surely more than a tiny bit of irony in the story as a story but when clowns are out acting the fool someone should probably set that boundary in no uncertain terms sometime because, a wise, or at least hard boiled, man named Harry Callahan once said, “A man’s got to know his limitations.” This song is punk in the way maybe an early riot grrrl band would be but more like something you’d hear out of L7 like “Shitlist” or “Fast and Frightening.” All in all ferociously elegant. Watch the video for “hitman” on YouTube and follow Little Destroyer on Spotify linked below.