Song Review – Page 55 – Queen City Sounds and Art

“Tug Champion” by Sailor Winters is a Fascinating Layering of Industrial Noise Drones and Abstract Looped Melodies

Sailor Winters, photo courtesy the artist

Sailor Winters is the project of noise artist Ryan Cox from the state of Georgia, USA. His latest single “Tug Champion” sounds like a distorted, flowing, abstracted howl layered over an enigmatic, repeating melodic figure reminiscent of the energetic yet melancholic piano work in Moby’s 1995 song “God Moving Over the Face of the Waters” as used to great dramatic effect at the end of the film Heat. The contrast between the two sounds paired together is fascinating on its own but the net emotional effect of the track is one of unease and catharsis. It sounds otherworldly like the field recording of an automated deep space mining robot relieving some of its own tedium with a bit of music as it repairs the life support system of a not often visited, asteroid mining colony. Whatever Cox’s inspiration the sound piece showcases the creative and expressive possibilities of not being tied to having to create music that adheres to a standard commercial genre or any of the tropes of harsh noise. Listen to “Tug Champion” on Bandcamp.

Meow Piglet’s “Doors” (featuring Luke Batista) is an IDM Genre Bending Examination of the Elusive Meaning of Recurring Dreams

Meow Piglet’s icily haunting track “Doors” is about recurring dreams and how each can be a portal to another part of one’s subconscious or to another iteration of experiences from one’s unwaking hours. The human mind is often drawn to memories of dreams as potential answers to questions that occur while awake and for the song the image of doors and falling through them resonates with the familiarity of the dream state and how people and stimuli from that time are often unfamiliar yet seem a normal part of dreaming. The song itself is a series of portals into various realms of music. The beginning has a ring of menace and of dark spaces with a circular, slightly distorted vortex of tone and a minimal, percussion beat like the sound of a train track before shifting to more textural sounds as the focus and then on into gorgeous passages that may remind certain listeners of the blissful noises of 1991, foundational IDM song “Papua New Guinea” by The Future Sound of London. And yet further into the song there is an indie electronica passage where we hear singer Aurora Hentunen’s melodious voice offering a poetic rendering of a concrete description of the aforementioned dream exploration and the cyclical nature of dreams and how their true significance, assuming there is any, can elude us even when we turn to them for answers. Though the song traverses various moods, styles and genres of electronic music it all feels somehow like a unified aesthetic the way our dreams feel like a continuous experience that too shifts throughout their duration. Listen to “Doors,” with contributions from audio-visual artist Luka Batista, on Spotify and follow Helsinki, Finland’s Meow Piglet at the links below. The group’s latest album Deeper released on December 1, 2023.

Meow Piglet on Facebook

Meow Piglet on TikTok

Meow Piglet on Instagram

Meow Piglet on YouTube

Alfah Femmes New Wave Art Pop Song “Trench Coats” is a Playfully Subversive Homage to Its Hometown of Gdańsk, Poland

Alfah Femmes is a band from the metropolitan area of Poland and specifically Gdańsk. It’s particular aesthetic draws on a variety of styles for inspiration, blurring the lines between post-punk, New Wave, art-pop and indie rock and its new single “Trench Coats” is a playfully subversive take on a song about one’s hometown. In the music video we see vocalist Sofia Bartos in black and white dancing against the backdrop of colorful views of the band’s home city with the lyrics seemingly addressed to some guy in a trench coat who seems occupied with looking at his Tissot (a luxury brand of Swiss wristwatch) but who could very well be plotting a bit of skullduggery. The sparkling guitar melody and steady drum beats sound like something that one would expect from one of the artier New Wave bands from California in the 80s like Romeo Void and with a similarly irreverent edge to the songwriting. That Tricity is considered the California of Eastern Europe seems like a more than passing resonance in terms of the tone and musical style. And yet the chiming guitar work and warping synths and Bartos’ melodious vocals are also reminiscent of the jangle-y college rock of the American Southeast of the 80s as well particular when a string part graces the later parts of the song when Bartos’ head and hands become disembodied for a moment like a nod to the Cheshire Cat from Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. Visually and musically “Trench Coats” seems simple in its charms but contains in both a referential complexity that keeps it a fascinating experience rewarding those who take the song in beyond its obvious charm and solid pop songcraft. Watch the video for “Trench Coats” on YouTube and follow Alfah Femmes, whose name is an obvious nod to Violent Femmes and not so obvious reference to Australian indie rock group Danny Kelly & The Alpha Males, at the links below.

alfahfemmes.com

Alfah Femmes on Twitter

Alfah Femmes on Facebook

Alfah Femmes on Instagram

Crawling Vines’ Moody Shoegaze Single “ON A BRANCH” Navigates a Yearning For Connection When Things Feel Like They’re Falling Apart

Crawling Vines, photo courtesy the artists

Chicago’s Crawling Vines released its Who Killed William Goose? album on January 5, 2024 and the single “ON A BRANCH” hits a specific emotionally complex resonance. That being an emotional rawness and fragility a and yearning for connection when it feels like things are falling apart. The guitar progression and the way it flares forward in moments and embodies a spare minimalism in others is reminiscent of something New Order would have done later in the 80s or maybe Bernard Sumner’s project with Johnny Marr, Electronic. But also of modern shoegaze/dream pop bands like Beach Fossils but with more fuzz tone. Yet in the vocals and overall tone of the song it has a similar embrace of human vulnerability and acknowledging needing people for whom one’s feelings are complicated. That interpersonal dynamic informs much of the rest of the album giving it a deeper mood than many other artists exploring this particularly spacious and sophistipop end of the shoegaze. Listen to “ON A BRANCH” on Spotify and follow Crawling Vines at the links below.

Crawling Vines on Instagram

Ghostcake’s Fantastically Otherworldly Melodies in Dream Pop Single “Get It Right” Imbues a Time of Challenges With an Irresistibly Uplifting Spirit

“Get It Right” by Astoria, Queens, NYC synthpop artist Ghostcake has an uplifting charm that captivates from the beginning. Its ethereal bell tones, pulsing, warm bass and drifting melodies is like the memory you’d want to have of going to an unlikely combination of 1980s arcade and theme park minus any of the dark side of any of that. The beats are like something you’re more likely to hear on a hip-hop track with the steady cadence that supports well some choice bars but the music is more in the vein of a fantastical anime sequence where the lead character has time to follow her bliss in a wonderland of delights. The main lyric that we hear echoing slightly here and there is “I swear I’ll get it right” which introduces a deeply human element in this otherwise otherworldly and surreal pop song but lends it an irresistible hopefulness. Listen to “Get It Right” on Spotify and follow Ghostcake at the links below.

Ghostcake Streaming Links for “Get It Right”

Ghostcake on Facebook

Ghostcake on Instagram

CR&M Melds Hypnotic IDM Loops and Prog Psychedelia on the Dreamlike “Mondegreen”

The guitar figure that runs throughout CR&M’s “Mondegreen” might for some be reminiscent of Acid Mothers Temple’s 1997 psychedelic rock classic “Pink Lady Lemonade.” But around it is a rapidly repeating textural tone like a fluttering, cybernetic dragonfly. When the vocals come in like a disembodied presence in a dream it’s calming if barely discernible. At two and a half minutes in the tones cascade down over the forward progression of the original riff and the two vocalists ripple off one another in a dreamy shimmer that accentuates the mood of the song of transcending mundane existence and indulge a full blossoming of the imagination as a key to emotional and psychological liberation. Through composing the song so it taps into the aesthetics of genuinely psychedelic rock and the hypnotic loops of IDM it truly sounds like something different as it dares to incorporate sound elements that are outside the bounds of standard, pristine music production. Listen to “Mondegreen” on Spotify.

Animal Feelings’ Remix of Lila Swain’s Dream Pop Single “Calling” Amplifies Its Sensual Downtempo Atmospherics and Sense of Mystery

Lila Swain entrusted Animal Feelings to lend more than a touch of cinematic soundscaping to her 2023 single “Calling.” The original is a spare yet soulfully evocative electronic pop song. For this remix the textures are accented and augmented so there is a quality like something from a futuristic music box in this version. The sounds of alien birds warble and Swain’s vocals echo ever so slightly and bleed into one another like a sound in the conscious world entering a dream state without interrupting it whereas the echos in the original seem distinct and spaced out slightly more. All of the atmosphere elements stream out to the edges and beyond the horizon and the song is transformed into something one might expect more from a rare and obscure but treasured downtempo compilation from the late 90s. Except the sensibilities here are all modern with how Animal Feelings interpreted Swain’s original composition’s emotional impact, deconstructed some of the elements and reassembled them to lend the song an impressive depth of dynamic atmospheres to amplify all the song’s emotional resonances. Listen to the Animal Feelings remix of Lila Swain’s “Calling” on Spotify and follow the Australian singer and songwriter Swain at the links below.

Lila Swain LinkTree

Lila Swain on Facebook

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HolyKimJo’s Immersive, Slowcore Sound Collage of “Photosynthesis In Your Love” is an Homage to the Invisible Forces of Our Lives That Sustain It

HolyKimJo recorded the music for “Photosynthesis In Your Love” on an old tape recorder to give it that unique touch of the analog experience which is closes to life and emotions as we experience them directly. The format preserves and communicates a constant flow of atmospheric sounds around the vocal melody like a keen awareness of environment and the rhythms of the world around you would convey to you if you stop to pay attention. The song itself is about the invisible forces we take for granted that sustain life and one’s well being that one can take for granted until the moment we focus on our own awareness whether that’s photosynthesis or the love of and for another and so many things that make our lives feel significant while we live it. The song is on a slowcore vein with minimal guitar work and breathy vocals akin to The Microphones circa The Glow, Pt. 2 or even an old Flying Saucer Attack song. But it isn’t derivative, it feels like its own universe of sounds, a collage of field recordings, guitar, processed vocals and drones that feel like a unified sensory experience which the beautifully enigmatic music video embodies perfectly with its sense of wonder at the great expanse of existence. Watch the video for “Photosynthesis In Your Love” on YouTube and follow Seoul, South Korea’s HolyKimJo at the links below. The album Her Name, Like a Fading Polaroid released November 29, 2023 and is now available on streaming and as a digital download on Bandcamp.

HolyKimJo on Instagram

Lost & Profound’s “Comet” is an Unorthodox Breakup Song in Tones Melancholic and Anthemic

Lost & Profound, photo courtesy the artists

A sound like a sitar opens “Comet” by Lost & Profound lending it an exotic quality before it drops out and Lisa Boudreau’s vocals come in with an intimate tone for quite an unorthodox breakup song. What might have been sitar reveals itself as potentially acoustic or electric guitar processed to give the bends a strange voicing. But which accompanies the vocals alongside low key percussion and a background pulse as though the words of the song are meditative and intentional rather than mournful. Our narrator uses the metaphor of being a river that can overflow for being a person of strong emotions while later in the song using the image of self as comet, fiery and headed to distant realms to the same effect. But the chorus “I’m a teardrop, watch me fall” that floats in the song in its most melancholic passages expresses the heartbreak and intense moment of regret that lingers but doesn’t last forever. Stylistically the song shifts from a more dream pop sound to a touch of country rock swagger mid-song when going into that bit about being a comet and the guitar is more expansive and crunchy and Boudreau’s vocals joined by backing vocals echoing her lines for the most anthemic moments of the song before the outro back into vulnerability and fadeout to some tasty backwards delay on the guitar to close out a chapter in a life story. Listen to “Comet” on Spotify.

Whipper Snipper’s Dark Dream Pop Single “I Fell” is a Brooding and Ethereal Journey Through Loss and Acceptance

“I Fell” by Whipper Snipper has a darkly wandering structure made up of seemingly interconnected circles of melody and rhythm. The music video depicts in black, white and grey tones a landscape of what look like legos of a person navigating a fantastical landscape dodging being caught up in the grips of gigantic arachnids. The moody bass line that introduces the song is a near constant presence that feels reassuring like a lifeline to reality from a realm of dreams and enchantment as seems depicted in the lyrics. The imagery of falling for someone and becoming lost and unmoored. When the percussion and bass drop out at around the 1:50 mark for haunting, teeming synth melody and a melancholic electronic piano figure filling that void it feels like emotional free fall. But all elements come together in the end and disappearing a little at a time before the final line of the song where the vocals sit all but alone and the vocalist sings, “Unchained, untroubled, unhinged.” And that captures the unsettling aspect of the song even though its atmospheres are beautiful and mysterious but at its heart it expresses that sense one can get when you think you got what you wanted in life in a relationship only to find out despite once feeling a deep sense of connection, attraction and affection all of those can dissolve for reasons you may never fully understand yet even in that liminal moment a sense of freedom, relief and acceptance can mix in with a sense of loss. Fans of Cranes and Just Mustard may appreciate the entrancing yet understated brooding quality of this song. Watch the video for “I Fell” on YouTube and follow Whipper Snipper at the links below.