Song Review – Queen City Sounds and Art

The Hazy Melody Lines of Luke MacRoberts’ “Don Juan” Drift and Ripple With the Force of Yearning For a Better Reality

Luke MacRoberts, photo by Ramiro Montes de Oca

Luke MacRoberts gives us a warped daydream of a pop song with “Don Juan.” The single from his recently released album Escapism (out November 7, 2025) begins with shifting melodies like a soap opera end credit sequence taped onto a VHS cassette that has already been taped on multiple times. Tonal lines drift, bell tones trace the edges of the song and when MacRoberts’ vocals come in they sound processed so they have an aspect of a recording slowed down. It suits musings on being in an existential crossroads with love and identity. The song hits like a super left field hip-hop and R&B song, think like something Yoni Wolf would have been involved in making. For all its bizarre sonics there is a delicacy of feeling here that ramps up in just over the last third in an impassioned pleading for something better than the diminished expectations and further the reality we’re supposed to accept as how things are. Listen to “Don Juan” on YouTube and follow Luke MacRoberts at the links provided below.

Luke MacRoberts on Facebook

Luke MacRoberts on Instagram

Baby Grendel Hurls Through Despair and Existential Anxiety on Indie-Art-Pop Single “Beaten Bloody”

Baby Grendel, photo courtesy the artists

“Beaten Bloody” sounds initially like a quirky indie rock song but as the song progresses and as you take the lyrics in it’s obvious the song by Baby Grendel is weirder and darker than it is in the beginning. Near the minute twenty mark the upbeat pace feels mired in a wonderfully murky melancholia and the self-deprecation of the lyrics in the first half of the song wax into tragedy and a sense of isolation with the music brooding and noisy. But in the outro the pace picks up as though a last hurrah of pulling out of despair and clutching to a desperate hope. It is a refreshingly unpredictable song that has an element of humor but not one that downplays the whirlpool of emotions that seem to have inspired the words. It’s more or less an indiepop song in the classic vein in style but the sounds and structure more than hint at artier influences. Listen to “Beaten Bloody” on Spotify and follow Portland, Oregon’s Baby Grendel at the links below. The group’s new EP Everybody Hates Me in the House released October 10, 2025.

babygrendel.com

Baby Grendel on Instagram

Baby Grendel on Bandcamp

Buckaroo Banzaï’s Post-Punk Single “Lost” Urges the Listener to Escape Self-Imposed Isolation and Finding Meaning in Community

Buckaroo Banzaï, photo courtesy the artists

French post-punk band Buckaroo Banzaï released its new EP Big Trouble in Little China on October 15, 2025 thus referencing two of the great B-movies of the 1980s. The single “Lost” is infused with fuzz tone in the urgent intro that gives way to more clean tones in the middle, more introspective section as the vocals further contemplate feeling lost in isolation. The video is like a first person game going through a tunnel of images including those of records and going through the center, into eyes, into the mouth of an orangutan, images of a cathedral, an old camera, bridges and myriad of other impossible to travel through landscapes in real life but not unreachable through art and the imagination. The song seems to also contemplate finding meaning in community even though recent years have meant people have become more atomized in their everyday lives by the pandemic era and demands of economy and the ways we’ve been encouraged to relate to one another virtually. The song concludes with a spirited bit that resists the inertia of disconnection from one’s fellow humans. Musically its reminiscent of both early deathrock and International Noise Conspiracy. Watch the video for “Lost” on YouTube and follow Buckaroo Banzaï at the links below.

Buckaroo Banzaï on Facebook

Buckaroo Banzaï on Instagram

Buckaroo Banzaï on Bandcamp

Bung’s Impressionistic Indie Folk Song “What I’ve Found” Sketches the Edges of Psychological and Social Ambiguity

Guitars sketch in almost impressionistic fashion the textural tones at the beginning of “What I’ve Found” by Bung. The guitars fade out and re-enter as minimal figures once the vocals begin with a strong and intimate presence. Bung’s voice sounds channeled with a directness as background drones swell and cast a lingering warmth drifts and winds with the trailing guitar lines. The enigmatic lyrics about being confronted by your own limitations and your willingness to adapt to those of others feel like statements as much as observations and embody the ambiguity of the lived experience of navigating an uncertain psycho-social landscape. Fans of Julia Holter’s pop experimentalism and Joanna Newsom’s willingness to go off any folk convention may appreciate this song and the rest of Bung’s new EP Here too, where to (out November 27, 2025). Listen to “What I’ve Found” on Bandcamp and follow Bung on Instagram.

Mark Weatherley Layers Downtempo Moods and Breakbeat Rhythms in “Yearn” to Convey Emotional Urgency of Feeling Like a Relationship at a Crossroads

Mark Weatherley, photo courtesy the artist

“Yearn” begins with great momentum and the vocals Mark Weatherley puts into the track while highly processed convey the aching emotions expressed. “I don’t want want to miss you like this” in the chorus sums up the mood of the song. It expresses the feeling like you do miss someone but when you feel like the relationship has ended or in significant flux leaving one or both people feeling confused and lost when that bond may be in peril. Desperate might be too strong a word but it approaches the exact energy of those moments of poignant uncertainty. The switch-up in percussion styles throughout the track is reminiscent of a mashup of early early 2000s breakbeat but the way the song is arranged it has great atmospheric resonance like a downtempo song but infused with a sense of emotional urgency. Listen to “Yearn” on Spotify and follow Mark Weatherley at the links below.

Mark Weatherley on Facebook

Mark Weatherley on Instagram

Tiberius Comforts Those Struggling With Profound Life Changes on Pastoral Emo Single “Sitting”

The most recent Tiberius album Troubadour was released through Audio Antihero on November 14, 2025. The record represents a benchmark in the development of Brendan Wright (they/them) as an artist and a full expression of the project as a full band. The song “Sitting” in particular showcases a sound on the album that one might describe as a kind of pastoral emo, a countrified shoegaze. The lyrics that truly sketch existential pain and an aching honesty with one’s grappling with the essential meanings and identities in life that once anchored you but which lose coherence when life seems to take you beyond what used to define you and you’re becoming comfortable with the changes even if it can seem scary at first. The guitar slides and impressionistic melodies paired with Wright’s thoughtful and passionate vocals strike the kind of mood that makes it feel okay not to have it all figured out and to have a sense of openness to what’s ahead. Listen to “Sitting” on Bandcamp and follow Tiberius at the links provided.

tiberiusiskindofaband.com

Tiberius on Facebook

Tiberius on Instagram

Tiberius on YouTube

S.C.A.B. Waxes Nostalgic in the Swirl of Jangle Shoegaze Psychedelia on “LOVE”

S.C.A.B. brings a new dimension of guitar composition to its song “LOVE.” The group had already mastered a creative jangle guitar sound but in that song and its whimsical yet melancholic and nostalgic tone the swirling melody that seems to eddy around the vocals is accomplished with splashes of sound and circular riffs that feel hypnotically transporting and bring the listener into an embrace of the music’s sense of introspective self-awareness looking back on the various kinds of love that exist in our loves in all their idealistic and not so flattering glory. The music video directed by Sampson Dahl shows the band seeming to stroll through childhood memories and young adulthood living spaces decorated with an affection for kitsch and all with an aesthetic like something from another decade and processed so that it looks like something shot on VHS down to the color line glitches and the wobbly outro credits sequence. In moments the way the song hits the psyche its reminiscent of something by James or Beach Fossils. Its a song that really does get stuck somewhere in your psyche and a testament to the quality of the band’s new record Somebody In New York Loves You which became available November 21, 2025 via Grind Select.

S.C.A.B. on Twitter

S.C.A.B. on Facebook

S.C.A.B. on Instagram

S.C.A.B. on Bandcamp

The Video for Anthony Ruptak’s “PHANTASMAGORIA” is a Humorously Doomerist Reflection of the Current Dark Age

Anthony Ruptak, photo courtesy the artist

The video Anthony Ruptak and Cole Naylor made for the song “PHANTASMAGORIA” is a perfect companion to the song and Ruptak’s fantastic 2025 album Tourist. It intersperses vivid scenes from a nightmare with the nightmare of everyday life in the present tense. The song has a distorted quality reflecting its raw and ragged emotions bursting from the confusion and despair of a world that seems to require resisting the status quo in which everything is, as the song’s lyrics state, a mess of our own collective making. We get through wading through a “phantasmagorical haze” while Ruptak hangs on to the old school where maybe things were rough but made more sense and maybe you could eke out a living without seeming every moment of your life taking something from you and costing you more than it ever has. The end of the video has Ruptak being buried with his hand around his mobile phone out of the grave and then bursting out with a last hurrah type of resistance to the endless wave of static and challenges only to witness the mushroom cloud that ends human life as we know it because as a species we’ve definitely let things go down the wrong path. And yet it’s a song with spirit and ultimately uplifting because that’s the tone to strike when things seem the bleakest they’ve been in our lifetimes in the modern era even for people who are already under incredibly challenging and lethal circumstances. The song challenges us to dream and do better. Watch the video for “PHANTASMAGORIA” on YouTube and follow Anthony Ruptak at the links provided.

anthonyruptak.com

Anthony Ruptak at Instagram

Dennis Hauck’s Impassioned Folk Americana Single “Natural Heart” is a Literary Examination of a Life Lived Guided by One’s Passions

Dennis Hauck’s new single “Natural Heart” is steeped in a classic folk Americana sound with expert and even spirited musical performances. But what truly makes the song stand out is Hauck’s vocal delivery of lyrics that explore the complexity of the human heart and how our natures can drive us to behave in ways that can feel unpredictable but really it reflects how we’ve been affected by our lives and what we believe about ourselves and how we understand our natures to be. And when you’re just living life with sensitivity and not a deep sense of self-awareness maybe you can only live your authentic life and seem unmindful of how you affect others. The song suggests more sense of self than the story conveys because as impassioned as the song is delivered it is with a sense of wry humor under the surface that points to having lived through some tumultuous patches across a lifetime that leave you with an sense of one’s limitations akin to hard earned wisdom. Listen to “Natural Heart” on YouTube and follow Dennis Hauck at the links below.

Dennis Hauck

Listen to Erik Hall’s Bold and Lively Interpretation of Steve Reich’s “Music For a Large Ensemble”

Erik Hall will release his new album Solo Three on January 23, 2026 via Western Vinyl. The composer and multi-instrumentalist interpreted pieces by Glenn Branca, Charlemagne Palestine, Laurie Spiegel and perhaps most ambitious of the group, “Music For a Large Ensemble” by Steve Reich. The composition originally written in 1978 for at least 23 performers finds its bright, lively spirit in dazzling sonic detail with its component parts supporting, augmenting and complementing each other in short and then longer lines back to those shorter and alterations in accent and volume to bring to the experience of listening an organic feel and one that stimulates the mind with the simple joy of its arrangements. Hall uses a divergent sound palette with synths, organs, pianos, guitar, bass (all performed, recorded and mixed by himself—impressive on its own) to lend a modern almost electronic music aesthetic to one of Reich’s classics. Listen to “Music For a Large Ensemble” on YouTube and follow Erik Hall at the links below.