Song Review – Page 2 – Queen City Sounds and Art

Velatine Injects Industrial Post-Punk Grit and Darkness Into “Whisper Park” and Its Exploration of Spiraling Inner Dialogues

Melbourne’s Velatine returns with the more industrial-tinged single “Whisper Park.” In the music video the band looks like they’re hanging out in an Australian equivalent hideout that Tilda Swinton and Tom Hiddleston from Only Lovers Left Alive would have fled to for a sequel. The guitars are darkly gritty and the slight echo on the vocals lend them a haunting and haunted quality even as they bridge moods introspective and declarative in its words about being trapped by your own personal demons and inner monologue, an experience that anyone with any sensitivity and ability to reflect deeply has likely had.. It’s like the band took the industrial darkness and moody attitude of Sisters of Mercy, mixed it with a touch of the griminess of The Birthday Party and infused that into a unique flavor of modern post-punk. It’s an update of the original 2022 iteration of the song that was more darkwave to give it more presence and physicality and a truly inspired rework. Watch the video for “Whisper Park” on YouTube and follow Velatine at the links below.

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Booma Bitz’s Cinematic Ambient Single “A Pufferfish About to Pop” is a Poetic Evocation of Hospital Bed Daydreaming

Listening to “A Pufferfish About to Pop” by Booma Bitz is like taking a departure from expected musical constructions and aesthetics and allowing oneself to follow a more intuitive path where music and storytelling intermingle completely. The vivid images of the lyrics and the sounds that accompany each line are like the sound effects that perfectly fit that moment from sound design pieces to evolving melodies that don’t get stuck into a set theme or tempo. Yet it’s accessible and doesn’t immediately strike you as something trying to be experimental. It just is a unique piece that coaxes you into its particular creative universe with an appeal akin to a Dash Shaw or Miranda July film where just going along with the idiosyncratic aesthetic is part of how it works and how doing so is what makes the experience rewarding in the end. Musically one might compare it to late 90s UK electronic pop or some underground techno thing from the 2000s or soundtrack work for a truly left field indie movie but whatever resonances, the song stands on its own as a slice of life you want to lean into. It seems to be about someone giving into daydreams while hospital bed bound in that world where time seems to go on forever and every moment seems intense at the same time. Listen to “A Pufferfish About to Pop” on Spotify and follow Booma Bitz on Bandcamp.

Booma Bitz on Bandcamp

The Poor Luckies Deliver Tales of Getting Through Life’s Dull and Rough Patches on Ferocious Garage Punk Single “Time’s Not Your Friend”

The Poor Luckies have been at it since 2008 when they formed in San Francisco. After a 2012 debut EP the band was on a bit of a hiatus, though not a breakup, while frrontman Danny Cuts focused on raising his son and finally in 2025 the band recorded its debut album Wrong Way which dropped on March 20, 2026. Lead single “Time’s Not Your Friend” is just one of the ten stories on the record and one that seems to tell an overarching theme for the band’s existence and music about striving through adversity and meeting it with some attitude and maybe sometimes just through sheer inertia. The line “Just keep on living, just keep on burning the candle” might sound quaint but sometimes that’s all you can do to get through to the times in life that don’t feel completely devoid of inspiration and like too much static is coming down on you. Musically it’s reminiscent of the kind of garage punk of the 90s like maybe The Fluid, New Bomb Turks and Murder City Devils—emotionally often rough around the edges but honest and imbued with a rebellious spirit and willingness to break with narrow conventions. The record itself has plenty of ACAB rhetoric that comes out of being on the delivery end of abuse for looking and being different and, well, not presenting like some middle class or rich person. It may sound like borderline unhinged garage rock from another era but doesn’t come off like it’s worshiping at the altar of another band and that makes a big difference. Listen to “Time’s Not Your Friend” on Spotify.

Landroid’s Retro-Futurist Disco Synth Pop Single “Say My Name” is a Perfect Sound for Summer

Rather than engulf you with synth melodies at the beginning of “Say My Name,” Landroid draws you in with a steady and strong bass line. But then the vocals come in with a beckoning quality with saturated synth with a mood reminiscent of a late 70s Giorgio Moroder production or Blondie’s “Rapture.” It’s the kind of song that has an infectious and inviting rhythm that would be perfect for roller skating or a disco dance floor. It has that retro-futurist feel while benefiting from modern production methods that make for a wide tonal range that gives the whole song a little extra something that brings you back to revisit the song. Listen to “Say My Name” on YouTube and follow Landroid at the links below. The group’s sophomore album Constellation drops this summer just in time for the season fitting its moods.

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Two-Man Giant Squid’s Irreverent Post-Punk Dance Song “3 Hits” is a Sharp Commentary on the Pitfalls of Operating in Modern Music Culture

Two-Man Giant Squid’s song “3 Hits” has such a driving bass line, enveloping synth melodies and wonderfully arch vocals in the vein on The Fall or early IDLES it might be easy to miss how it’s such an incisive commentary on what it’s like being in a band in these diminished and conflicted times. In the video component for the song there is an ask of the band to open for Wheatus on a boat. Good for Wheatus for being able to keep being a band when its most well-known and only moderately noteworthy material was from a quarter of a century ago. Two-Man Giant Squid takes that as a symbol for the kinds of experiences and dystopian nature of operating in the world of music today. Regardless of one’s opinion of Wheatus the place of music in modern culture has been largely relegated to a disposable experience and increasingly difficult to make it your life unless you’re rich or have a trust fund or got lucky in a way pretty much no one does. It doesn’t matter how good your band might be (something humorously alluded to in the song) if you don’t find a way to go viral you will probably not be championed by anyone or any entity that can help boost you to people beyond your friend circle. The days of old school music journalism is 20 years dead and the music blogs of the late 2000s and 2010s are a husk with some dinosaur holdouts and their readers that care at least a little bit to find new music. These are dystopian times but the younger generation seems to be graving the analog, human experience and that is hopefully where a band with the songwriting moxy and charisma that Two-Man Giant Squid display on this humorous yet undeniably ear worm song “3 Hits” will find an audience. And hey, maybe they’ll get to open for Electric Six on their next tour. Listen to “3 Hits” on YouTube and follow Two-Man Giant Squid at the links provided.

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Eric Angelo Bessel’s Space Ambient Single “Upstate” Evokes the Mood of Seeing the Earth Revealed by Moonlight

Eric Angelo Bessel, photo courtesy the artist

With “Upstate,” Eric Angelo Bessel eases us in with a slightly distant shimmer of sound that is somehow both elusive and intimate. From this shimmer we can glean impressions of images and feelings of wondering like floating in space above Earth looking down upon the planet revealed by moonlight. The controlled and sculpted feedback Bessel uses to great effect like the musical equivalent of distorted video feed and there is something hypnotic and soothing to the song even as its tones sound like they would normally be clipping and overloading he signal. Fans of Flying Saucer Attack and Windy and Carl will definitely key into Bessel’s aesthetic. The track is the second of two from the recent release Mirror at Night B-Sides available now as a 7” vinyl and/or download and for streaming. Listen to “Upstate” on YouTube and follow Bessel at the links provided.

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The Huntress and Holder of Hands Delve Into the Conflicted Human Condition on Doom Folk Song “Promethean”

The Huntress and Holder of Hands, photo courtesy the artists

“Promethean” finds The Huntress and Holder of Hands invoking the archetypal human struggle with akin to that of the mythological figure Prometheus and the burden of having the capacity to reason and what we do with the body of knowledge we believe we possess. The song begins with minimal strings and heavy orchestral moods paired with MorganEve Swain’s weighty vocals contemplating existential issues and our place in the world and how we see ourselves in our own lives. The song progresses into a more full sound that if the instrumentation were different might well be a doom song in a more dark folk mode. Violin, cello, bass all establish a textural and deeply atmospheric sound that fans of the likes of SubRosa and Faetooth may greatly appreciate for its sheer heaviness if not firmly in rhe realm of metal. Listen to “Promethean” on YouTube and follow The Huntress and Holder of Hands at the links provided. The band’s new album Babylon is out June 5, 2026.

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Soft No’s Post-Punk Emo Single “Oxford Street” Is an Exuberant But Heartbreaking Portrait of Friendship and Loss

Soft No on “Oxford Street” sounds so exuberant and emotionally vibrant. The melancholic intro and the sweetly orchestral outro, though, frame the song about friendship and tragedy, fond memories and the preciousness of life perfectly. We hear in the song often startling frank portraits of the kinds of complicated relationships with friends that hit with an instant poignancy because friends who are genuine accept each other on their own terms and it hurts deeply when they’re gone no matter the reason. The music and vocals embody the intensity of memories and what we savor with our connection with others and it is that aspect of a song that transcends narrow genre. Listen to “Oxford Street” on YouTube and follow Philadelphia’s Soft No at the links below. The band’s new EP Super Neutral releases on vinyl, digital download and streaming on May 29, 2026 via Abandon Everything Records.

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Soft No on Bandcamp

Hissuae’s Cinematic, Intimate and Transcendent Art Pop Single “Guilty Pleasure” Mixes the Personal With the Mythical

Hissuae breathes a sense of the intimate and cinematic into “Guilty Pleasure” with her ethereal and vulnerable vocals. The song’s arrangements are orchestral and minimal in their intertwining of sweeping piano and percussion so that the song feels like an immersive, living entity in the listening. In the background the barest touch of synth lends an otherworldly quality that puts the more human elements in the foreground and catches one’s full attention. The singer-songwriter’s singing style is reminiscent of the ways Kate Bush and Loreena McKennitt could intermingle the personal with the mythical in fine nuances of vocal expression. For a song that seems to be about transcending mundane, everyday existence that is the perfect tonal mode for the song to take. Listen to “Guilty Pleasure” on Spotify and connect with Hissuae on Bandcamp.

Genre Is Death Savage Inauthentic Aspirations on No Wave Punk Single “Attractive People”

Genre Is Death, photo courtesy the artists

On “Attractive People” Genre Is Death sound like they took a time machine back to 1980s New York (their hometown) and got to experience bands like Live Skull, early No Wave and Pussy Galore firsthand and shed obvious influences on their return to our era. What we hear is a caustic and noisy, haunting and thrilling song that weds mechanistic rhythms to discordant guitar and a hypnotically driving bass line to create a different kind of musical darkness with which the band shreds shallow aspirations and lifestyle over substantive living and creating. The lyrics are minimal, mostly “You don’t have a life/You just want to be attractive” and “It’s just a lifestyle” that can seem general but when combined with the music’s headiness and confrontational sound it speaks to anyone that recognizes certain social phenomena in the culture when there seem to be people who like the association of cool within a subculture or parasocial attachments without having to do anything to actually be so and live in a way that commits to something real which requires actual effort more than being attracted to the image of authenticity and accomplishment. Watch the video for “Attractive People” on YouTube and follow Genre Is Death at the links below. The band’s LP is out May 1, 2026 on In the Red Records.

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Genre Is Death on Bandcamp