Song Review – Page 42 – Queen City Sounds and Art

MOLTENO’s Brightly Melodic Dream Pop Single “Clouds” Invites the Listener to Connect Through Our Mutual Experiences With the Natural World

“Clouds” is MOLTENO’s third single from her Element 2 EP as part of her series of releases celebrating the elements and the way we’re connected with nature. With a pulsing beat like a train running along tracks and streams of bright drone MOLTENO intones about connecting with others through the vehicle of clouds which most humans experience as a phenomenon in the sky in all their diversity of shapes and manifestations and features like thunder and lightning and which have the capacity to stir the imagination and perhaps to wonder who else might be sharing a similar experience. Molteno’s clear and warm vocals and uplifting tones, , in moments reminiscent of Björk, provide vivid tonal imagery enshrouded with gentle hazy textures that transcend while honoring individual experiences with the natural world. Listen to “Clouds” on Spotify and follow MOLTENO at the links below.

“Old Enough” is talker’s Exuberant and Poignant Song Mourning the Special Connections of Youth Lost When Your Life Moves Forward

In “Old Enough,” talker almost brazenly broaches the topic of personal boundaries and how those change across a lifetime. Friends you once spent so much time around when you were young with no seeming boundaries with time limits and shared subjects who in some ways help define who you are as a person. But then as you grow older you will often grow apart because maybe you develop in ways that push you apart and if one person continues to cling to how things were without the self-awareness to realize that things are different it can prove painful, recognizing that barrier where once there was intimacy. The song is so upbeat and exuberant in talker’s typical fashion with spirited vocals and emotionally-charged melodies it can be easy to miss how insightful it is about changing interpersonal dynamics that work best if both people recognize and accept growth and even some natural distance that develops when you can’t spend so much easy and free time with each other that conveys a sense of closeness that is, to a large extent, circumstantial. It’s special for a time and that connection can stay special but it also has to change. The songwriter speaks poignantly to that moment of realization and a willingness to grow even if it means it has to hurt a little bit, even if it means we can feel lost for a time before we come to recognize and value the new connections we form as a natural outcome of growing up and yes being old enough to know that having a slumber party every weekend in the summer or hanging out until all hours because you feel like you have all the time in the world in a certain part of your life isn’t part of your current life and knowing that’s okay and even desirable. Watch the video for “Old Enough” on YouTube and follow talker at the links below. Look out for talker’s debut album out later in 2024.

talker on Twitter

talker on Facebook

talker on TikTok

Russian Baths’ Gritty and Ethereal Post-Punk Single “Bind” is a Harrowing Journey Through the Mind’s Dark Places

Russian Baths combines an elegant, ethereal guitar riff with one more gritty and dark throughout “Bind.” It lends the track a heaviness and dreaminess to match its subject matter that seems to be about the weight of family legacy and freeing oneself of its worst aspects cast in mythical terms with words about getting lost in darkness and trying to drown painful feelings and memories but never quite being able to escape them. The spooky motes of tone and dissonant drones that haunt the song highlight its more driving moments. It’s a song of great contrasts and tensions that build until the end when it dissolves and breaks down into the sound of wind. One imagines the influence of Bauhaus here or the more post-punk shadows in mid-80s Sonic Youth, no pun intended, but Russian Baths also manage to embody modern post-punk without succumbing to the stylistic trends of thin sonics that have made too much modern darkwave a bit cookie cutter. Listen to “Bind” on Spotify and follow Russian Baths at the links below. The band will have an album release show for its new record Mirror (to be available on streaming, digital download and as a vinyl LP) on the night of its album release day, June 14, at Main Drag Music in Brooklyn, New York, doors 8pm, $10.

Russian Baths on Facebook

Russian Baths on Instagram

BODEGA Joyfully Mocks Mechanized Consumer Culture in the Pop Post-Punk of “ATM”

BODEGA, photo courtesy the artists

Brooklyn’s BODEGA free associate the concepts of convenience, transactional relationships and culture on “ATM.” The animated video is playful enough in what looks like an older art style like something from an early 2000s web cartoon which fits the almost tribal rhythms of the song. The overall effect is like Killing Joke or Gang of Four indulging in a bit of pop punk whimsy. But the lyrics are incisive in sussing out how in all transactional relationships and the way capitalism has been baked into how we interface with much of the world and the culture and thus into at least some aspect of our psyches reducing organic and not-digital associations to those more monetizable and to think in that way. It’s insidious and BODEGA pokes fun at this aspect of our lives because you have to point out the absurdity of it all at least once in awhile or you end up, and pardon the expression, buying into the conceit that all things are economic acts in the classical “liberal” mode. In mocking how a-human it is, and with clever wordplay including juxtaposing the phrase “at the moment” (often reduced to “atm” in text speak) with the familiar cash dispensing machine, BODEGA shows us yet another way to hold onto our humanity and dignity because in many ways it’s all we’ve got. Watch the video for “ATM” on YouTube and follow BODEGA at the links below. The group’s recently released album Our Brand Could Be Yr Life is out now on streaming, digital download and vinyl.

BODEGA on TikTok

BODEGA on Instagram

Bug Facer’s Exuberantly Cacophonous “Fiery Demon Attacks Old Man on Bridge” is Like a Post-hardcore, Post-Surf Blast of Raw Power

Bug Facer displays a joyous cacophony throughout “Fiery Demon Attacks Old Man on Bridge.” That uplifts the impression that the song title and raw exuberance of its performance came right out of late nights playing D&D or some other fantasy RPG among bandmates (nevermind the photo) who later undertake the ritual of writing a song based on the marathon gaming session. This of course following having witnessed the surreal majesty of surf rock mutants Daikaiju and the inspired costume synthwave heros Magic Sword. Except that Bug Facer sounds like a psychedelic rock band that decided to deconstruct King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard into a primal essentials and blasted it back out in spirited lo-fi garage punk fashion including distorted vocals like shouted incantations. It’s a thorny mess that manages to also be hypnotic and infectious and unlike any obvious musical touchstones. Listen to “Fiery Demon Attacks Old Man on Bridge” on Spotify and follow Bug Facer at the links below.

Bug Facer on Facebook

Bug Facer on Instagram

“On Fire” by Influential Slowcore Band IDAHO is an Elegant and Evocative Call to Indulge Your Humanly Creative Impulses Because Life Doesn’t Last Forever

Influential slowcore outfit Idaho returns with its first album in over a decade with the May 31, 2024 release of Lapse (via Arts & Crafts on CD, LP, digital download and streaming). Lead single “On Fire” has a title that is perhaps a nod to foundational slowcore band Galaxie 500 but Idaho’s hushed and finely detailed sonics are its own. Liquid melodic lines flow and sparkle and fade in sync with Jeff Martin’s delicately rendered couplets. Call and response riffs intertwine with whorls of psychedelic shimmer all while the song’s layered dynamics complement each other with an elegant grace. The song seems to be one encouraging the listener, perhaps as an initial message to self, to indulge the inner life and cultivate the core of creativity within all of us and do something with it while you can because life doesn’t last forever and let’s face it so many pursuits we’re told matter more and what we often need to do to survive matter a lot less than in the grand narrative of our lives than getting to what is in our hearts to do with the time we have. Listen to “On Fire” on Spotify and order Lapse from Arts & Crafts here.

Primer Literally Rolls With the Punches of Life’s Emotional Ups and Downs in the Video For Experimental Synth Pop Single “Round and Round”

The title track to Primer’s forthcoming EP Round and Round (due out June 6, 2024 via Born Losers Records for streaming, digital download and cassette) is a subversion of synthpop conventions even those the artist established for herself on previous releases. The melodic progressions go off the expected sequence and warp well outside in a way that somehow feels both accidental and purposeful. As though Alyssa Midcalf is trying to break the cycle of which she sings in the song while trying to maintain a coherent sense of self. In the music video we see Midcalf rolling with literal punches from boxing gloves and looking dazed now and again and smiling at times and dancing in place with multiple images of herself, in the end having a laugh at the absurdity of it all because you have to have a sense of humor when it feels like you’re facing the familiar challenges of the demons of your own mind. The song is like a slow cycling carnival ride with a beautifully expansive tonal arc like a fusion of the sensibilities of a 1980s synth pop artist, Kala-period MIA and modern indie pop artists like Charli XCX except with Midcalf’s signature deeply atmospheric synth work to give the song its emotional heft. Watch the video for “Round and Round” on YouTube and follow Primer at the links provided.

Primer on Facebook

Primer on Instagram

Primer on Bandcamp

Sweet Fellas’ “I’m More Afraid to Lose My Job Than I Am of Dying” is a Beautifully Stark Ambient Commentary on Modern Life

The title of Sweet Fellas’ song “I’m More Afraid to Lose My Job Than I Am of Dying” is a poignantly bleak summation of life for many living under late capitalism. When the piece begins its bleak drones have a textural and tonal sweep, drift and flow that expresses what sounds like social bonds and one’s own psychology eroding and dissolving. In that haze of sounds there is a slowly evolving melodic figure, perhaps a piano processing minimal chords and faintly resonate like the flickering embers of hope in a devastated landscape. It has an emotional resonance with Tarkovsky’s 1979 existential and beautifully bleak masterpiece Stalker and Eduard Artemiev’s film score as a cutting through of values and aspirations we’re often told matter when deep down we know that life should be more than fulfilling the third rate technocratic goals of an oligarchy whose demands are baked into the social fabric. Listen to “I’m More Afraid to Lose My Job Than I Am of Dying” on Spotify and follow Sweet Fellas on Instagram.

Applied Communications Salvages the Crumbling Relevancy of the Cultural Touchstones of Youth in Bedroom Synthpop Single “Oxytocin Drunk”

Applied Communications, photo courtesy the artist

Applied Communications dives deep into Millennial nostalgia and inverted self-loathing on “Oxytocin Drunk.” The song has an upbeat melody and rhythm with expertly cadenced lyrics altogether like an indiepop MC Chris song. The song is beyond a parody of the angry nerd. It takes all the intrusive and dark thoughts that sink you when, for those that can relate, when you’re swan diving into the terminal velocity of the amplified anxiety zone and turns them into unlikely life rafts in the depression deep end. There’s a choice, wryly tragic joke about kids whose faces we’ll never see when the Tamagotchi dies. All amidst dated cultural references and the detritus of the symbols of a ruined middle class American life that were foundations of life if you were alive before the late 90s. Applied Communications both laughs and lets out a few implied tears at the absurdity of it all and the emotional anchors that helped define our lives swimming in consumer culture and in the end with a line about how he loves himself, a nod to the title of the song, and the trap of being too tied up in that yet needing to do so to have some thread of something to cling to that can’t really be taken away from you or forcefully redefined/sequeled/re-queled or discarded like so many of the things to which one might have a nostalgic attachment. And there is actual power and dignity in that realization. A lot of self-awareness and personal insight is packed into the roughly two minute song as well as a curiously poignant pop resonance that stays with you. Listen to “Oxytocin Drunk” on Spotify and follow Applied Communications at the links below.

Applied Communications on Instagram

Applied Communications on YouTube

Bad Flamingo Peels Back the Tedium of Understimulated Boredom on Retro Pop Single “Numb”

Bad Flamingo, photo courtesy the artists

Bad Flamingo expands its musical palette and songcraft a bit on “Numb.” Ratchet sounds provide some of the texture and rhythm. Like the band is sampling a wrench sound used to maintain the getaway car one imagines listening to a lot of the duo’s music. The bass slinks along, leading the song and ghostly guitar work resounds and fades in some moments and others the acoustic guitar the vulnerable and fragile melody. But of course the main driver are the vocals and the group’s signature storytelling of an impulse to bad behavior as an act of resistance against a society that necessitates boredom to function “smoothly” and lacks a channel for the energy that builds when people are feeling constrained by tedium and few varied enough options that feel like they actually matter. The chorus of “I’m bored, kiss me, if I’m going out I want you with me” speaks to a need for stimulation that isn’t being satisfied with a stale status quo. It isn’t exactly Rebel Without a Cause but a restless spirit and intrusive thoughts seem more realistic and instantly relatable anyway and that’s what Bad Flamingo excels at expressing in its songs that defy easy genre categorization but it is fine crafted pop music for anyone with a taste for retro sensibilities and the aesthetics of noir. Listen to “Numb” on Spotify and follow Bad Flamingo at the links provided.