Song Review – Page 64 – Queen City Sounds and Art

Amiture’s Darkly Lurid Industrial Noise Rock Single “Billy’s Dream” Simmers With the Desperate Electricity of a Person on the Verge of Breaking

There’s something sinister about the sound and dark visual style of the video for “Billy’s Dream” by Amiture. It’s reminiscent of Dom and Nic’s treatment for The Chemical Brothers’ “Setting Sun” video. It all seems normal but there’s an underlying unsettled quality to the surreal aesthetic. But this Amiture song is more steady in its pace even when it bursts forth with the processed percussion and guitar sounds. Like an industrial song written by Nick Cave who is bored with anything resembling the standard sounds. It’s like an even more post-punk The The and the story of a man, Billy Lamb, who has lost track of who he is and slips in and out of a dream of prowling underground gambling establishments haunted by memories of his family, both his father and his son, and how he wants to escape his circumstances but seems drawn back into his personal nightmare by his own weaknesses. But the desperation is there and we hear it in the music. The steady snare strike and the contorted, textural tones generated by heavily modified guitar signal or electronically create a disorienting atmosphere where it feels like the whole thing could careen off into hysterical psychosis from its sustained emotional intensity and because of that there’s a thrilling simmer of electricity throughout the song. Watch the video for “Billy’s Dream” (directed by Cyrus Duff, produced by JZ Tinneny and shot by Owen Smith-Clark) on YouTube and follow Brooklyn’s Amiture at the links provided. The duo’s new album Mother Engine drops February 9, 2024 via Dots Per Inch Music on streaming, download and vinyl.

Amiture on Facebook

Amiture on Instagram

Crystal Canyon’s Tenderly Melancholic “Sierra” is a Shoegaze Tribute to the Late, Great Julee Cruise

Crystal Canyon, photo courtesy the artists

“Sierra” is Crystal Canyon’s tribute to Julee Cruise “which guitarist/vocalist Lynda Mandolyn says is, ‘me having a conversation with her spirit, dreamlike.’” And the song’s drifting and hazy atmospheres and processional pace with guitar sounds trailing off like an early morning fog in the sunrise. The drum accents hit perfectly to punctuate the paces and Mandolyn’s introspective vocals relate late night meditations on heartache and heartbreak and processing the flood of feelings in a way that won’t hit as hard even if they hit deeply. The way the song gently unfolds and repeats the themes with a hypnotic quality will appeal to fans of Slowdive’s unorthodox crafting of melody and mood as well. Listen to “Sierra” on YouTube and follow Portland, Maine’s Crystal Canyon at the links below. The group’s new album Stars and Distant Light was released November 3, 2023 on streaming, download and vinyl.

Crystal Canyon on Instagram

Listen to the Uplifting Electro-Mechanical Conversation of brednotbred’s Single “sod” From Antipsych

The resonant sound of bell tones introduces us to brednotbred’s densely rhythmic, flowing collage of textures and tones that is “sod.” Fluttery and furiously energetic percussion pushes the song along as ethereal melodies intone like a conversation between the bells and a more airy yet vivid synth tone is happening with the percussion making punctuated commentary. Like those percussion sounds are the voice of a teletype machine off duty and having something to say about the world in its own flurry of words and taking the time to listen as well as contributing. Whatever the nature of this conversation between machines it sounds otherworldly and friendly and the opposite of the dystopia sometimes depicted in film when inorganic entities communicate. Listen to “sod” on Spotify as well as other electro-mechanical discourse on the new brednobred album Antipsych which was released on November 9, 2023.

brednotbred on Instagram

Strange Men’s Haunted Music Video for “Hot Nights” is a Concise Catharsis of Noisy Punk

Strange Men is a punk duo comprised of drummer/vocalist Róisín Isner and guitarist/vocalist Ashley Clayton whose splintered, fuzzy outbursts seem to channel the likes of the gloriously feral grunge punk of Babes in Toyland and the stripped down and amplified garage rock of The Bobby Lees. In the video for its single “Hot Nights” directed by Panda Dulce (aka Kyle Casey Chu, co-founder of Drag Story Hour) it looks like Strange Men is performing in haunted shed replete with with a figure like something out of a Japanese ghost movie (possibly Chu) except less menacing the band and more the embodiment of the clashing chords and rapid contrast of introspective and screamed vocals this time out provided by Isner. The song seems to be one of contrasts itself: “Hot days make hot nights/Cold days make cold nights.” And how on hit nights she comes alive as does the band. The lyrics clearly aren’t meant to be linear and more an expression of the primal forces underlying the music. Fans of the likes of Shearing Pinx, Nü Sensae and the aforementioned will get the most out of this song just 86 seconds long that rapid runs through all the essentials of what makes for a great punk song with cool hooks, cathartic vocals and a complete lack of self-indulgent excess. Watch the video for “Hot Nights” on YouTube and follow Strange Men from San Francisco at the links provided.

Strange Men on Instagram

Spunsugar Capture the Sugary Sweetness of Teenage Romantic Fantasies on the Self-Aware Dream Pop Single “White Sneakers”

On the surface Spunsugar’s glittery shoegaze single “White Sneakers” seems to be an offbeat love and lust song. But its melancholic tone with undercurrents of regret point to an interpretation of its unusual lyrics and imagery. Like a love song yearning for someone for whom you shouldn’t hold such feelings but earnest in its expressions though the sentiments as expressed sound like the words of someone inexperienced, naive and awkward and cast in terms that might seem unusual to anyone else but in your head they might make sense in the way of an unrequited fantasy of the kind that happen all the time in the teenage mind. And it’s that sensibility that Spunsugar captures here. Most people have had these kinds of thoughts and cinema and literature is not short on examples of people expressing that reality in all its awkwardly endearing and sometimes cringeworthy glory. In the music video the members of the band are seen walking around a rural or suburban Swedish landscape when all the green is gone and in the distance we see hints of neglected human dwellings and vehicles while the the vocalist sometimes hangs around a rusted out football goal. And there’s something very self-aware and sentimental about this aesthetic captured in an image quality like something from a camcorder recording. Like having a fondness for a place and time in spite of yourself because of how genuine the feelings are in those moments in your memory and how the reality of it isn’t as romantic as you remember for anyone else and yet it doesn’t quite matter in the living it and in the enjoying of revisiting those feelings knowing how silly it might be. Apparently the song started as a cover of “Carrie” by Europe but definitely sounuds nothing like that now minus maybe some of the synth tone but in context that is the perfect origin story for the song. Watch the video for “White Sneakers” on YouTube and follow Swedish shoegaze/dream pop band Spunsugar at the links below. The song appears on the group’s new album A Hole Forever which landed November 17, 2023 via Adrian Recordings.

Spunsugar on Facebook

Spunsugar on Instagram

Jake Minch’s “whose you are” is Like a Diary Entry Brimming With the Raw Vulnerability of Feeling in a Moment of Peak Reflective Loneliness

With mostly just an acoustic guitar and jhis voice, Jake Minch is able to pack a lot of emotional power and vulnerability to the songs from his October 20, 2023 EP how many EP. For the single “whose you are” we get a music video that looks like footage of someone documenting a time of great transition in a time of cold weather and journeys away from the places one knows best and the inevitable disruptions that occur and the necessary change of physical and social scenery and thus the nature of the emotional bonds one built with the people closest to you. The song is like a diary entry in its raw and poignant honesty and with some simple poetry it conveys impressions of connection, intimacy and the yearning for that when it’s something in the past and how confusing and painful it can be and how it can linger and still haunt a present that doesn’t seem so far to measure up and create new memories with the same depth of psychic resonance. Musically it’s reminiscent of artists like Wolf Colonel and perhaps Microphones but in a current manifestation of those creative impulses and mode of expressing those all too real feelings that strike you in a moment of peak loneliness and desolation. Watch the video for “whose you are” on YouTube and follow Jake Minch at the links below.

Jake Minch on Instagram

Alunawolf and HyperXa Infuse Hazy Hyperpop Single “Like You Hate Me” With a Sultry and Vibrant Sense of Yearning and Desire

Alunawolf worked with producer HyperXa on the sultry hyper-pop inflected single “Like You Hate Me.” The singer’s vocals sound swim in dark atmospheres shimmering with light motes of tone and swells of luminous melody as she relates hours spent yearning for her lover. The lyrics express a certain kind of tension and desire where we hear how she’s reluctant to let herself feel such a heightened level of desire for someone. And thus the lyric “Love you like you hate me” makes a certain kind of sense contrasting those feelings that for many people are two sides of the same coin of emotional intensity. And in lines like “Love you like an animal/eat you like a cannibal” we hear that base level of attraction that can take you by surprise in a way you can resist because it’s not rational or go with it. Alunawolf in this song decides to go with instinct and pleasure. HyperXa’s beats and layers of atmosphere give the song a futuristic feel like it’s from a time and place that should have come to pass had our civilization taken a different path the past few decades and a club hit for a time that should have been now in a world free of austerity. And it’s that spirit the song delivers. Fans of Dua Lipa and Charli XCX may find some of that emotional and sonic kinship here. Listen to “Like You Hate Me” on Spotify and follow Alunawolf on Instagram.

“A Fallen Angel Weeping” by Lost Ark is Like Moments Spent in a Neglected Gallery of Noise Generating Sculptures in the Dead of Night

With the soft shimmer of crystalline chimes and an enigmatic, mechanical beat and melancholic strings to usher in Lost Ark’s “A Fallen Angel Weeping,” the song feels more like a cinematic experience than one more musical. The percussive details convey a depth and distance like what you’re hearing is the sound of a gallery for sound generating sculptures with its own soundtrack so that the assembled sounds create their own complementary orchestra of noise. When the beat stops a little more than three and a half minutes into the song it’s like some essential feature has left the gallery and the sounds wind down with a descending drone, a single bell tone seeming to count down on notes on a scale and in the distance we hear a voice repeating the words “falling down” before it too disappears and later on a voice with an aspect like words put through a reverse delay signals the end of the song. In retrospect its a bit like a spooky and haunted Art of Noise song and one not attached to any particular genre of music that demands and commands attention on its own terms. Listen to “A Fallen Angel Weeping” on Spotify. The Lost Ark compilation Primus Impunctus from which the song is drawn became available on November 6, 2023.

Jack Quinn’s Expansive Ambient Song “Poppies” is the Sound of the Mind Stirring Slowly to Full Wakefulness

Jack Quinn’s ambient composition “Poppies” draws your attention immediate by evoking a sense of something mysterious yet calming coming into your consciousness perhaps unnoticed in your everyday life for some time. The crystalline piano echoes of melody hang in the cloudy drone like faint rays of sunshine through a springtime fog but experienced on a rare warm day in late winter. It sounds like something opening up in your brain after a long period of feeling like you’ve been coasting through moods of being adrift in your own life. It is the sound of a manifesting clarity found in a stretch of tranquility in a time of daily disruptions and angst. The drawn out sounds trailing into the distance and the swells of guitar meshing effortlessly through the piano is like a calm awakening. Fans of Eno’s early 80s period in particular his collaborations with avant-garde pianist Harold Budd will resonate deeply with this song. Listen to “Poppies” on Spotify and follow Jack Quinn at the links below. Look for Quinn’s new album Music For Painting due out on December 8, 2023.

Jack Quinn on Instagram

Middle Sattre Exposes and Exorcises Some of the Contradictions and Gross Hypocrisies of a Theocratic Culture on Starkly Gorgeous Ambient Folk Song “Pornography”

In titling the song “Pornography” Hunter Prueger of Middle Sattre references a couple of instances of adults sexualizing a child in the name of modesty or chastity. Setting the these stories against a backdrop of acoustic wall of sound gives it a gentle yet intense quality that conveys a sense of compassion for the victim of that kind of attention. We hear melodic drones that sit in the background and give an evolving emotional undercurrent to the music but when it combines with the horns at the end it is starkly chilling playing over the recording of a middle aged man lecturing young women about the way they dress and how it can attract unwanted attention, the sort he is giving out. It’s a haunting yet poignant telling of a small sampling of the sorts of situations Prueger saw coming up queer and Mormon. That tension informs the forthcoming Middle Sattre album Tendencies due out on February 9, 2024. Fans of Elliott Smith’s fragile and emotionally refined songwriting and Microphones’ fusion of avant-garde folk and ambient soundscapes will surely find “Pornography” fascinating as well as the rest of Tendencies. Listen to “Pornography” on Spotify and follow Middle Sattre at the links below.

Middle Sattre on Facebook

Middle Sattre on Instagram