Song Review – Page 15 – Queen City Sounds and Art

Eric Angelo Bessel’s “Double Helix” is a Cosmic Ambient Journey Into Deep Inner Space

Eric Angelo Bessel, photo courtesy the artist

Eric Angelo Bessel will release Mirror at Night B-Sides on March 27, 2026 (7” vinyl, digital download, streaming), a companion EP to the fantastic 2025 full-length ambient record Mirror at Night. The lead single from the EP is “Double Helix.” The song shimmers and roils with bright tones suggestive of the image conjured by the title. It feels like a constantly shifting iteration of sounds like a cycle drawn from the mechanics of the life and the universe itself and expressed in sound. A deep listen reveals that Bessel has put into the track actual movements and shifts in tone that ensure it has a fresh resonance the next time the more amplified sound swirls back into the foreground. Fans of Robert Rich and Steven Roach will appreciate how Bessel imbues his tonal composition with a textural element that anchors the music in a tactile aspect of sound. Listen to “Double Helix” on YouTube and follow Eric Angelo Bessel at the links below.

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Lore City Music on Twitter

Lore City Music on Bandcamp

RO Navigates the Tricky Waters of Allowing Yourself to Hurt and to Let Go on Trip Hop Single “stranger”

RO layers mood and texture on “stranger.” The minimal, organic beat, the ever so slightly echoing guitar, the vocals shifting smoothly between a rap style and more soul voicings sound like an update of trip hop with modern sensibilities and production methods. A touch of dub in the drums and quivering harmonic backdrops like electronic strings in the middle of the song shifts up the song’s already core appeal while not breaking style. It sounds like something new but with a resonance with something familiar and classic. The songwriting thus suits a song about the complexity of feeling inherent to feeling like one took a chance with one’s heart and being vulnerable with someone who feels promising only to end up feeling like you betrayed yourself by trusting your emotions with someone who doesn’t feel the same way and certainly not with a similar level of commitment. Yet knowing it’s not a failing, just something you have to let yourself feel without shame and let go of the hurt and let go of the associations that anchor you to the memory of disappointing and even painful experiences because with any luck your life is going to go on a lot longer than a temporary relationship. Fans of P.M. Dawn and early Massive Attack will find a lot to like in the emotional and sonic chords RO strikes on this song. Listen to “stranger” on Spotify and follow RO at the links provided.

RO on Apple Music

RO on Instagram

RO on YouTube

Lindsay Kay’s “Don’t Tease Me” is a Song About Yearning For Genuine and Committed Love

Lindsay Kay’s luminously delicate “Don’t Tease Me” spent a lot of time in perhaps unintentional development before taking its current form. The song had existed in numerous nascent forms across more than a decade and now has an English and a French version both with spare and elegant guitar work from Benjamin Longman. The intimate production allows the vocals to carry the melody with its finely nuanced emotional resonances. The song aches with the yearning for a loved one whose affections feel elusive. Kay seems to sing from the perspective of someone who loves very much and capable of a great deal but who doesn’t want her own emotions to be treated as something casual. Kay’s words lend those feelings a tactile immediacy and you hope with her too to not have her heart trifled with by someone whose intentions lack seriousness. Listen to “Don’t Tease Me” on Spotify and follow Linday Kay at the links below.

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Lindsay Kay on Instagram

Lindsay Kay on Bandcamp

Lindsay Kay on YouTube

Charm School Sends Up Music Scene Gatekeeper of Privilege on Noise Punk Single “Scene Queen”

Charm School, photo courtesy the artists

Charm School seems to be accelerating the pace the entire length of its single “Scene Queen.” The relentless energy of the song suits its subject matter of the kind of person who is in most music scenes that can be a bit sanctimonious and plays like they’re poor but has a trust fund that they don’t always necessarily try to keep secret but works in restaurants yet is able to pay rent on a warehouse and then move to an expensive city or another county seemingly on a whim once they’ve long outlived their welcome and alienated so many people in the community and leaving mediocre art in their wake. It happens. If you’ve been in any creative community of size there are people that can exert an influence because they have money and thus access to spaces to dangle as important places or the funds to “make things happen” for a little while, sometimes for more than a short bit and seem important but once they’re gone it’s like their significance was way overblown. The song embodies the frustration of dealing with that dynamic with a furious run of noisy, almost abrasive, post-punk that is the band’s signature sound that fans of Drive Like Jehu, mclusky and Angel Hair will appreciate. The group’s new EP Schadenfreude Ploy released February 20, 2026 on cassette, digital download and streaming. Listen to “Scene Queen” on Spotify and follow Charm School below.

Charm School on Instagram

Charm School on Bandcamp

La Sécurité’s Art Punk Single “Bingo” Satirizes the Way Life is Presented as a Game No One Can Really Win Under Late Capitalism

La Sécurité’s new single “Bingo” sounds like it got dropped out of the early 80s No Wave scene with strong, funk-adjacent bass lines and guitar that sounds as much like a textural tone as minimal riff. Keyboards have a quality like something out music for an old video game and the lyrics are delivered in short couplets to build a surreal impressionistic narrative. The words seem to utilize the seemingly random quality of the game Bingo and the disconnected quality of modern life and how it can be like a game you’re forced to play with distinct but arbitrary rules and in which few actually get to win as if winning could possibly be everything or fully satisfying for an actual, analog human being. But in the video directed by Philippe Beauséjour there is a refreshing use of images seemingly cut out and animated like a collage that both enhances the impression of disconnection and the visual aesthetics of another era. There is something undeniably fascinating and thrilling about the mix of styles and moods that makes the song immediately relistenable. Watch the video for “Bingo” on YouTube and follow La Sécurité’ at the links below. The band’s new album Bingo! will become available on June 11, 2026 for digital download and streaming with a vinyl pre-order that ships in December.

La Sécurité on Facebook

La Sécurité on Instagram

Asian Cowboy Perfectly Balances Melody and Raw Noise on Posthardcore Single “Varmint”

Asian Cowboy’s “Varmint” doesn’t let up from the start of the song until the middle where it takes some time to wind back up into its urgent pace and reflect on how modern life and existence seems to take it out of you with constant demands on your time and attention no matter your level of fatigue. It’s no time to be a human (when has there ever been such a time in the modern era) and the arc of human civilization at the moment seems to be at a point of unsustainability in the toll on people and the planet. The song voices that desperation and existential exhaustion with the intensity it deserves. Fans of Hot Snakes will appreciate the way Asian Cowboy balances melody and raw noise to craft songs that challenge and captivate at once. Listen to “Varmint” no Spotify and follow Swedish post-hardcore/noise rock band Asian Cowboy on Instagram.

Lars Lervik’s Krautrock Pop Single “Carried By the Gate” Has the Idiosyncratic Charm of 90s Lo-Fi Indiepop

“Carried By the Gale” by Lars Lervik immediately hits the ear as like something that came out of a lot of listening to Velvet Underground, Stereolab and Pavement. The delicate performance paired with energy and a seeming disregard for conventional notions of melody and pacing is wonderfully out of step with standard pop songwriting. The spare keyboard part cuts through the all but atonal guitar riff and off center vocals for a cumulative effect like hearing a long lost lo-fi pop gem from the 1990s when indiepop artists freely experimented with method and songwriting styles on four-track studio creations that had a homespun charm because you could tell it was made because the artist had to and not imitating some other popular style. This song has that sensibility and instantly appealing in its originality because of it. Listen to “Carried By the Gale” on Spotify and follow Lars Lervik at the links below. His new EP Three Songs released on February 15, 2026.

Lars Lervik on Facebook

Lars Lervik on Instagram

Lars Lervik on Bandcamp

“Fine” is Cosmic Madness’ Psychedelic Folk Song About Letting Go of Outmoded Habits and Leaning Well Into Where You Want to Be

Cosmic Madness, photo courtesy the artist

The lyrics to “Fine” by Cosmic Madness seems to unspool a narrative of reflection as a means of looking forward, of establishing a personal framing as the foundation of what comes next in one’s life. The guitar and vocal melody interweave and shift in tone from introspective to assertive as the song progresses in a way that feels like something growing and branching out and embracing what nurtures the expansion. The minimalism in the earlier parts of the song fill in with a backdrop of luminous harmonics and guitar allowed to drift in phasing passages that curl around the percussion and rhythm guitar to convey a sense of well being that uplifts the melancholic mood of the song borne of learning to let go of the habits of mind and living that no longer serve the life you want and are already leaning into. Listen to “Fine” on YouTube and follow Cosmic Madness at the links provided.

Cosmic Madness on Apple Music

Cosmic Madness on TikTok

Erin Frisby’s Vulnerable and Impassioned Protest Folk Single “F*cking Bitch” Honors the Memory of Renee Good

No one with a shred of conscience of basic decency will forget the ICE execution of Renee Good in Minneapolis, Minnesota on January 7, 2026 or the subsequent act against Alex Pretti in the same city on January 24. Nor the demented and uncreative words of Good’s “alleged” killer, “Fuckin’ bitch” and its gross dehumanization of a person who was simply trying to leave an area where the President’s de facto private army was present in force while occupying a city on the pretext of a manufactured crisis and operating outside even the loosest interpretations of the operational mandate of ICE and CBP. Washington DC-based songwriter Erin Frisby, clearly deeply affected by the incident, wrote a song taking those words tossed at Good after her extrajudicial murder as a title. Frisby’s voice is sensitive and vulnerable yet strong in its conviction as she sings her words and reclaims the concept as a symbol of everything feared by fascists and misogynists (a lot of overlap there) who project their insecurity everywhere in acts of violence of various kinds and lately finding a state-sanctioned vehicle for that with joining ICE with little training or qualifications. Frisby’s guitar work is spare but keeps the rhythm and defiant tenor of the song going and helps render the impassioned words immediately accessible. Folk music after the 60s can often be simply a creative exercise and fine on its own, Frisby with this song imbues the style with the fiery and pointed yet emotionally nuanced power of something from back when folk music was the format of a lot of protest music. Watch the video for “F*cking Bitch” on YouTube and follow Erin Frisby at the links below.

Erin Frisby on Bandcamp

KEEP YA NOSE OUT Processes Grief With an Aching Poignancy on the Neo-Soul and Drum and Bass Flavored Single “I WILL SEE YOU CRY”

KEEP YA NOSE OUT, photo courtesy the artists

On its single “I WILL SEE YOU CRY” KEEP YA NOSE OUT combines indie-adjacent minimal guitar pop with DnB breakbeats and soulful vocals with some processing to give it a glitch edge. The dual vocal delivery and the way the song is arranged is equal parts reggaeton-flavored hip-hop and neo soul. The song expresses a reaction to emotional betrayal that is deeply vulnerable and does nothing to mask the hurt. That the song’s production leans into an atmospheric moodiness over the urgent beats adds to its impact especially when the lead vocals draw out the lyrics toward the end of the song like the meaning of the song could be either wanting to see someone cry not necessarily because of the hurt experienced but to see some kind of normal human reaction that might elicit an acknowledgment that the pain isn’t something experienced alone. Listen to “I WILL SEE YOU CRY” on Spotify and follow KEEP YA NOSE OUT at the links provided. The London, UK-based duo released its new EP I’m Still Mates With My Demons EP on February 13, 2026.