Song Review – Page 59 – Queen City Sounds and Art

Mathilda Bohman Untangles Her Hurt and Heartbreak in the Cathartic, Orchestral Pop Song “I’m Okay”

Mathilda Bohman, photo courtesy the artist

Mathilda Bohman’s title for “I’m Okay” suggests a simple premise but the song we get is one of much more emotional complexity than simply a song of heartbreak and heartache. With spare guitar and gently synth melodies and washes of tone accented by processed percussion, Bohman’s clear and strong voice takes center stage in the song evoking deep feelings of being broken and vulnerable when articulating in details the ways in which someone who told her they loved her was toying with her emotions. Bohman relates the platitudes about relationships that people tell you growing up that end up feeling like false guideposts for life when they meet the reality of flawed people acting in selfish bad faith. There is an orchestral sweep to the way Bohman has arranged the song that is bright with life so that even though the lyrics are striking in capturing a low moment in life there is a self-awareness that hints at growing inner fortitude. Sometimes when you’re hurting you have to be honest with how it’s making you feel and speaking truth to your pain even if it might seem melodramatic to others. And really feeling it instead of burying it. It’s the hiding those feelings that amplifies them to haunt you with a crushing weight later in life. This song takes the opposite path and one that will ultimate lead to a better place. Listen to “I’m Okay” on Spotify and follow Mathilda Bohman on Instagram.

Waves_On_Waves Struggles With the Loss of an Identity of Melancholic Detachment on Synthwave Single “Messed up and Fell in Love”

Waves_On_Waves, photo courtesy the artist

Waves_On_Waves delivers another song of regret and inverted tragedy on “Messed up and Fell in Love.” With collaborators Crimewave and Death By Algorithm the producer and songwriter establish a driving beat with percussive bass synth and ghostly guitar to frame vocals that might be described as passionate but desolated. The beat bounces lending the synthwave song the aspect of a dance track perfect for a DJ night catering to fans of synthwave or darkwave. In moments the song is reminiscent of something one might hear on a Big Black Delta record with the dense but dynamic rhythm and understated melodrama. The lyrics seem to be from the perspective of someone who has come to romanticize their own misery, wearing his sense of melancholic detachment like an imagined barrier to getting hurt. But he meets someone who pulls him out of that adopted identity for a moment and thus the chorus and title, “Messed up and fell in love.” When you cultivate an aspect of your personality so meticulously and seemingly thoroughly it can feel like a mistake to allow yourself feel strongly and to feel a connection with someone against what you think of as your will. But in the song we hear a sense of resignation and even acceptance. The line “I’m defined by loss” becomes prophetic in the end because our narrator loses the veneer of sanguine cool at least to himself as well as the losses that have been the touchstones of his life and yet it seems this loss is one much more desirable. Listen to “Messed up and Fell in Love” by Waves_On_Waves on Spotify and follow the project at the links below. Look for the forthcoming collaborative album Coffin Kids due out in 2024.

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Martina Berther Explores the Wide Extent of the Sonic Possibilities of Bass Tone, Texture and Rhythm on the Haunted “Obertone”

Martina Bether, photo by Alexandra Baumgartner-Kopie

Martina Berther’s voicings on “Obertone” between the plucking of the bass and the background drone establish a haunted sense of unease and anticipation. The song has movements and it opens up in the second half but that enhances a sense that there is a hidden presence suggested in the mood of the song. As the title suggests Berther works in layered overtones with a hypnotic steady pace. It’s reminiscent of something from Brian Eno’s 1982 album Ambient 4: On Land. One can feel the texture of the plucked/struck bass notes contrasting with the ghostly overtone and that lends the track a physicality beyond the spectral moods like something from a transitional scene in a Jim Jarmusch film. Listen to “Obertone” on Soundcloud and follow the Swiss composer and musician at the links below. The song is from Berther’s sonically inventive and exploratory debut solo album Bass Works: As I Venture Into which became available April 5, 2024 on vinyl, digital download and streaming.

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“The Last Word” by evrshde’s is a Brooding and Slow Burning Downtempo Song of Regret Over Hurting a Loved One

“The Last Word” by evrshde sets a deep mood reminiscent of a Klaus Doldinger soundtrack (Das Boot in particular) with its rich low end, brooding resolves and richly saturated haze. Its a song that takes its time to deliver its story of a romance that was deep in its connection but also in its dysfunction. The sense of linger affection is palpable in the vocals as well as a spirit of regret over what was and could have been. The lyrics express an awareness of hurt dispensed in a moment of anger and the way people can say things to each other in times like that that later seem unimportant, foolish, stupid and unnecessary. The title is where our narrator seems stuck, haunted by her own words and how they can feel so final even when you don’t want them to be. How do you come back from causing such emotional pain to someone you love? The song with its strength of feeling offers a possibility of making amends even if its dusky atmospheres such hopes don’t seem possible. Fans of Boy Harsher and Bestial Mouths may find some resonance with evrshde’s richly rendered sounds. Listen to “The Last Word” on Spotify and follow evrshde at the links below.

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Bru-Kin’s Video for Futuristic High Life Pop Song “Miss Africa” is a Glimpse Into a World That Should and Could Be Here Now

Bru-Kin is a musical collaboration including Sylvie Nawasadio (ex-Zap Mama) and Bart Petitjean (Hakuna Patata). Its single “Miss Africa” and its attendant music video is a low key celebratory song about life and enjoying the fruits of success. It depicts people partying in a luxury setting but also the daydreams of a young woman who hangs out in a record shop and contemplates her future with images of of glamorous people dancing interspersed with images of colorful lines like neon signs in motion tracing and lighting up everyday life. Musically it’s rooted in African pop music, some touches of High Life, dub and a futuristic, international R&B. But mostly it comes across like what should be a hit song across national and cultural boundaries with its exuberant energy, rhythm and chill moods. Watch the video for “Miss Africa” on YouTube and follow Bru-Kin on Spotify.

Stinkus Encourages Us to Liberally Indulge the Simpler Joys That Enrich Our Lives on Lo-Fi Indiepop Single “23”

The title track to Stinkus’ debut album 23 (released April 5, 2024) has an air of nostalgia for simpler times and simpler joys as captured in the music video. We see some men playing a small scale version of soccer without much regard for who or if anyone is winning but making gestures toward caring. The song has spare guitar melodies and some background synth warble and shimmer. The vocal harmonies are slightly off center yet tuneful like something from an earlier era of indiepop when bands were taking a departure from where the mainstream industry was headed and recording on 4-track. But the production isn’t lacking though the aesthetic is lo-fi. Rather, it preserves a sound that is tender and homespun and thus immediately relatable. It closes playfully with voices sped up to cartoonish levels in banter imbued with camaraderie. The song is representative of Stinkus’ other music from the album in bringing together hazy atmospheres and charmingly slackery energy and sensibilities in the songwriting that embraces the mindset that we’ve been sold a bill of goods in modern society that encourages us to ignore our joy and humanity in favor of serving a system that is designed to enrich the one percent of one percent rather than the nurture all of us. Stinkus has clearly figured out a way to find a way to lean into a way to live in those moments where we can all indulge our better impulses on the regular throughout 23. Fans of Modest Mouse and Death Cab For Cutie will get a lot of mileage out of what Stinkus has to offer. Watch the video for “23” on YouTube and follow Stinkus at the links below.

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Michael VQ Evokes Late 90s Experimental Electronic Weirdness on Hip-Hop-Inflected IDM Single “The Remakes”

Even without the outstanding video treatment for the song, “The Remakes” by Michael VQ has a tonal resonance and immediacy of production that holds your attention from the beginning. It’s style is a bit like if Aphex Twin and say JPEGMAFIA or Aesop Rock collaborated on a track that was too weird to be the kind of hip-hop many people think when that expectation is set and too hip-hop for whatever genre tags one might want to apply to the work of Richard D. James. Voices are layered in the track to form rhythm and melody alongside the programming giving the whole affair an organic quality that is intimate while the processed beats lend it the aspect of a dance track for a more forward thinking modern rave event. The music video has vivid images mirrored in quadrants and constant motion and imaginative color palettes like an Edgar Wright film and the procession of figures hits like an experimental horror film minus the fear. The net effect will be reminiscent for those that remember of a time in the late 90s at night on MTV when some of the most forward thinking electronic music of the 90s found a place to be broadcast to people who might otherwise have never heard much less seen visuals for that music for years without being in the places where it came from. The imagery and the music together feels like a well kept secret that won’t be for long. Watch the video for “The Remakes” on YouTube. Look for Michael VQ’s album 4U&URMØN$TER out soon on Tanoshi Crime School Records. Connect with the artist at the links below.

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Taxidermy’s Post-hardcore Noise Rock Single “Rot” is a Map of the Uncomfortable Journey to Accepting Life’s Uncertainties

Taxidermy’s “Rot” begins with an intricate guitar figure and spare drums but the melodies quickly drift slightly discordant as the song unfolds. From a place of building doubt in the lyrics and the music conveying a sense of unraveling into a passage of sweeping churning distortion and back into unsettling tension. In the music video we see shifting scenes of people contemplating in natural surroundings and then sitting in the dark lit only by candlelight and the moon. Vocals go from tranquil to hysterical as the song leaps into jagged riffs and splayed rhythms that after some headlong momentum seems to break down, dissolving into lingering, fragmented tones that echo into silence. It’s like the song embodies a moment in life when all of the things you thought you believed in and which formed the foundation of your identity and psyche come into question to their very core and you have to come to terms with what you really believe or accept an uncomfortable but possibly more satisfying acceptance of uncertainty and flux and the impermanence of all things. Fans of Slint and Gilla Band will appreciate Taxidermy’s inspired use of asymmetrical structure and raw noise as a compositional element in the context of songcraft. Watch the music video for “Rot” on YouTube and follow Copenhagen, Denmark’s Taxidermy at the links below. Look for more to come from Taxidermy on Pink Cotton Candy Records.

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Jonas Verwijnen Expresses the Distortion of Inner Struggles With the Tranquility of Their Resolution on Ambient Glitch Track “This is Going Down the Wrong Path”

Jonas Verwijnen, photo courtesy the artist

“This is Going Down the Wrong Path” sounds in the beginning like emerging from a dark interior space into a place wide open with crystalline tonal textures that shimmer. From there Jonas Verijnen seems to use echoing tones and resonating, impressionistic bell melodies and hushed splashes of luminous yet percussive that sustain and linger. It sounds like the musical equivalent of an abandoned subway tunnel adjacent to more active lines with the sounds of acceleration nearby. Fluttering noises and rapidly echoing ethereal distortion boil up and dissolve rapidly like the flight of a dragonfly before it goes off in search of its prey. And just as suddenly the song ends leaving you wondering where this established sense of place leads and how the enigmatic atmospheres and lightly melancholic moods might resolve yet it doesn’t feel like an incomplete composition. Rather, it introduces the rest of Verijnen’s EP 1 (out April 5, 2024) which has titles referencing about miscommunication and yearning to be understood as well as neurodivergence and the struggles that spring therefrom. But there is a soothing side to the way the composer expresses psychological discordance in music that embodies inner struggles and coming to terms with them in the moment. It’s a consistently interesting balance throughout the EP’s five songs. Listen to “This is Going Down the Wrong Path” on Spotify where you can hear the rest of the EP.

Meli Levi’s Heartfelt “Echo in a Valley” is a Tender Look Back on Years of Self-Abuse Without the Cruelty of Self-Judgment

Meli Levi’s heartfelt “Echo in a Valley” is especially effective because it has an economy of songwriting and minimal arrangements that allow for wide open emotional spaces that come together for sweeping, orchestral passages. In the video we see Levi performing in front of a garage door with a bassist and a drummer but we also hear a string section that helps to fill up and brighten the song as it progresses toward a triumphant ending. It’s a song about looking back at the path you’ve been on and the patterns that you’ve worn into self-destructive ruts that seemed self-soothing at first but became a weight on your soul in the end. In the song we hear a willingness to embrace truth instead of the lies that sustained what you thought was helping you survive long term especially when everything seems to crash in on you emotionally and it can all feel overwhelming. The shimmering melodies with a touch of jangle and Levi’s expressive and soaring vocals render this song that speaks so poetically to a cycle of bad habits and breaking them instantly relatable without the cruelty of self-judgment. Watch the video for “Echo in a Valley” on YouTube and follow Meli Levi at the links below. Levi’s new EP All Things May Be released May 31, 2024 on vinyl, digital download and streaming.

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