Elena Ross begins “With You” like a walk in the forest with the sounds of birds and the sounds of twigs breaking underfoot and a brush of bell sounds. When her clear and melodious vocals come in with a spare piano figure underneath it’s like coming into a clearing and having a moment to take in a moment of absolute tranquility and the time to indulge reliving a memory, a cherished moment like a living daydream. The piano melody expands and strings enter with a touch of synth tone to lend the song a touch of heartbreak at simply having to remember a fond time with someone you love but holding onto that yearning. The song was inspired by Slavic folk fairy tales and sonically dwells in dark, haunted woods minus a sense of menace. But it does retain a sense of tragic romance and the cinematic. Listen to “With You” on Spotify and follow Elena Ross at the links below.
CATBEAR’s “Higher” is inspired by a time before video calls when people only heard a voice on the other end of a phone and you only had words and your imagination in connecting with people. A time when maybe you would actually talk with friends and lovers for long periods of time late into the night discussing whatever came to mind without the distraction of visuals or the pressure to share anything. Your focus could and would be just on that moment and the undeniable emotional bond of it almost as pure as that could be. The music has a retro synthpop feel with the hazy synths and infinite horizons that matches well with the romance inherent to the song’s lyrics and concept with soulful and soothing vocals that are lush and introspective that lead you through a journey into a moment of emotional intimacy and deep affection, something that seemed more attainable decades ago and could be again if everyone involved were committed to not being on call or on demand to the social and economic forces of our current era even if only for a night or a day. CATBEAR makes that seem not only possible but inherently desirable with this song. Listen to “Higher” on Spotify and follow London synthpop duo CATBEAR at the links provided.
After eight years of no obvious new music issued into the world Cincinnati, Ohio-based indie-pop band Bad Veins gives us “Wendy” from its new album Imposter (released on December 1, 2023 via Dynamite Music). The visual concept of the video (as directed by Cat Rider) for song seems to be one of a man watching old VHS camcorder footage of the titular character to whom the yearning and melancholic lyrics are directed. He stands against the screen singing as the images wash over him as the memories swirl in his mind and break his heart. It sounds like the relationship was one currently on a break because our narrator had a bit of an emotional disruption. The lines “One thing I know/If I hang around/The undertow will take me down/Wendy I grow more afraid of drifting further everyday/I never meant to come undone/I never thought I’d miss someone like I miss you, Wendy” pack a lot of meaning into such a small space. The song has that kind of energy like John Waite had on his 1982 hit “Change” but the sounds are the more hazy synthpop of that era and it perfectly suits the mood of regret and hope that songwriter Benjamin Davis captures so poignantly in this song. Has the narrator ruined things in that bond forever with his mental health issues or is there a more positive resolution? Who can say but the heartache is palpable and immediate and that’s what makes the song so compelling because so many of us have been there at some point in our lives. Watch the video for “Wendy” on YouTube and follow Bad Veins at the links below.
Former The Manhattan Love Suicides drummer Rachel Barker returns with a new project A Door and debut single “Do You Want Me To Come In Your Feed?” During the peak early pandemic Barker started making visual art the likes of which can be seen in the cover art for the single. Barker has a hole in her spinal cord which affects her ability to play guitar and the automatic expressionist figure work of her visual art she believes is her body’s attempt to correct her proprioception and spinal alignment. The artwork is a bit reminiscent of the work of Edvard Munch, Picasso and Chagall but very much her own style. The song is a noisy, chaotic affair with flairs of distorted atmospheres and hovering guitar shimmer like a menacing shoegaze-y post-punk song akin to the likes of her old band but not pop and much more pointed. Its lyrics are a critical and incisive examination of what might be described as a mechanization of culture and the monetization of curiosity and serendipity through the harnessing of algorithms on the internet and especially in social media to connect your supposed interests with how they can be marketed to in an overall attempt to manipulate behavior for an insidiously automated revenue stream for corporations that have no interest in or insight into what might actually peak your curiosity or spark your imagination. The refrain of “get out of my head” speaks to the uncanny yet gross and predictable “recommendations” that stem from clicking on anything or following a thread or a stream of content or doing a simple internet search using Google or other essentially data mining tools that also serve as a method of routing your path to sponsored websites. In the 80s and even early 90s the dystopian future looked maybe even a little bit desirable and in the Terminator films Skynet was a conglomeration that could be defeated. But when the dystopian future involves feedback loops that give you a massive dopamine hit for only giving attention to what you already know and already know you love or mildly like, culture can end up being one, gigantic, bland mess. And this writhing, buzzsaw melody and fracturing rhythm of the song with scathing words for the headlong slide into a bland monoculture is more of the kind of thing we should want to hear and not be so drawn to playlists that cater to background noise comfort rather than challenging or at least idiosyncratically human expressions that aren’t so easily slotted into a marketing campaign. Fans of A Place to Bury Strangers and Firefriend will find a good deal to like here. Listen to “Do You Want Me To Come In Your Feed?” on Soundcloud and connect with A Door at the links below. Maybe the band will “raid” your Twitch channel while you’re streaming Diablo IV, Black Desert Online or Baldur’s Gate 3 but probably not. They, and you, have better stuff to do.
The music box sound introduction to Tashi Delay’s “Blue” is a recurring device like a companion to the main rhythm line running through the song and one that introduces a whimsical element in a song about how one processes trauma. Sometimes the event hits you and you spend some moments trying to figure out how it could happen. Those music box tones are like those moments. The rest of the song has some crunch to it and a loping, menacing yet sinuous bass line and in the music video Emily Seabroke looks slightly shell shocked with a blue light partially washing out her image as her vocals follow the melodic line up and down her wide register. The image then fragments into crystalline chunks that fall way as all the sounds converge and a bluesy and noisy guitar solo burns through and fades giving way to an introspective outro that suggests that even if you overcome this immediate trauma response the mind has a way of submerging that pain only to return at a later date when you may or may not be ready to take it on from some emotional distance. Watch the video for “Blue” on YouTube and follow Tashi Delay at the links provided. Tashi Delay’s self-titled debut album became available on November 10, 2023 on Spotify.
London-based post-punk band Beige Banquet is set to release its debut album in 2024 as a full band and its first recorded in a studio to capture its full live forcefulness and sonics beyond the limitations of the bedroom recordings of its earlier releases. The first single of the album is the frenetic and headlong “Animals.” The song creates a powerful emotional resonance with its propulsive bass line and urgent, noisy, searing guitar shimmer, splayed and finely accented drums with Tom Brierley’s vocal lines as descriptive statements about how at our base all humans are animals that respond to environmental pressures and stimuli in a similar fashion especially under pressure and in a state of stress and discomfort. Fans of the more discordant end of shame and the angular side of JOHN (TIMES TWO) will likely find some musical spiritual kindred here. Listen to “Animals” on Spotify and follow Beige Banquet at the links below.
Church Chords’ forthcoming album elvis, he was Schlager (out February 26, 2024 on Otherly Love Records) sounds like an ambitious, experimental post-punk album years in the making with numerous collaborators that songwriter and producer Stephen Buono brought together after the manner of a hip-hop producer. And you get a taste of what’s in store with the single “Recent Mineral” with the quietly sultry vocals of Genevieve Artadi who sings in Portuguese. What are the lyrics about? Might have to ask someone that understands the language or wait for the full release of the record. But you don’t need to know in order to really be taken in by the finely accented percussion and hypnotic arrangements of texture tones, slashes of echoing, stretching, warping guitar altogether reminiscent of Young Marble Giants, Faust and an abstract Bossa Nova band mixing it up to make a song that is entrancing and mysterious and you wouldn’t think overmuch about if it was in a movie like something Jim Jarmusch or Sofia Coppola would produce.
In the writing of its new album A Lump of Death: A Chaos of Dead Lovers, Greek experimental metal band Unverkalt took its cues from events of the 1970s involving cults, criminal acts and serial killers that seemed to be in the news on the regular in that decade. The songs have a darkly haunted quality and its atmospheric parts have a distorted and gritty quality that lends a menacing air of the macabre to every track with vocals that are part epic and melodic and at times reminiscent of Cranes. It’s truly a different kind of record in the world of heavy music and doesn’t fit in the usual subgenres. The single “Mr. Monster” begins with a buzzing, hovering sound that might be a synth or a looped guitar part. But then hanging guitar chords come in with softly pounding drums and vocals delivering a story that seems to be that of a person who feels conflicted and yet eerily accepting of someone who commits unspeakable acts against others and feels compelled against their will to engage in lethal behavior. The pulsing synth sound in the song hits like a flickering light in a dark room illuminating the activities with the starkness of a strobe imposing a visual sense of slow motion. And the song does sit suspended like that for moments before it floods with all the guitars, vocals, drums and electronic sounds in a dramatic denouement. Fans of SubRosa/The Keening/The Otolith, Faetooth and Windhand will greatly appreciate Unverkalt’s unorthodox and creative approach to crafting evocative heavy music. Listen to “Mr. Monster” on Spotify and follow Unverkalt at the links below. A Lump of Death: A Chaos of Dead Lovers was released on October 20, 2023 via Argonautica Records on digtal download, streaming, vinyl and CD.
“Plastic Lungs” is a song that sounds like its falling apart as it goes forward. It has a loose clockwork beat and its layers of atmospheric discordant guitar work really fit the mood of a song that seems to be about someone who is coming apart more than a little himself. Lines like “I know that memories and nightmares sometimes feel the same” and “I don’t think my dreams are as kind as they used to be,” “I know you’re wondering what’s wrong” and “I think it’s happening again but when” resonate with the feeling of someone who has experienced a mental breakdown in the past and/or witnessed it in someone close to them. In the music video the wintry kaleidoscopic colors and the doubled imagery and a face obscured by colored television snow and other imagery and it pairs well with the song and its themes of being on the verge of being overwhelmed by one’s own personal demons yet resisting that pull with creative work and expressing the possibility with emotional honesty rather than trying to hide from one’s own psyche. Imagine a lo-fi Mercury Rev gone lo-fi shoegaze indiepop and you have a good idea of the rich tonal moods of Rew’s song “Plastic Lungs.” Watch the video on YouTube and follow Rew at the links provided.
Daniel Trakell imbues “Waves” with a spirit of deep introspection and gentle rhythms and textures. His breathy vocals and the shimmery lap steel draw you in to a story about two people who were once close and parted ways because one person is still struggling with their inner demons years later and yet the metaphor of an ocean that washes random and not so random things on shore and provides a global path taken by a wide variety of travelers who may not even mean to return to their old hangouts. We hear a pained acceptance in Trakell’s voice as he creates the portrait of a person who seems to always be on the run in a futile attempt to escape their troubles embedded deep in their psyche rather than face them and reconnect with those that love them in an authentic and enduring way. But for some people this doesn’t happen and they come in and out of your life whether physically and/or emotionally and you try to value your time with them even when their going away always seems to elicit a wave of sadness. It’s a folk song with immersive moods and its haunted melodies linger with you long after the song has ended. Listen to “:Waves” on Spotify and follow Daniel Trakell at the links below. His new album Into the Blue arrived on November 24, 2023.
Queen City Sounds and Art 
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