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The Soothing Expansiveness of green typewriters’ “europa” is an Oasis of Tranquil Cosmic Psychedelia

green typewriters in 2011, photo by Tom Murphy

The debut single by Denver-based psychedelic indiepop band green typewriters contains touchstone nods to other music but “europa” is so idiosyncratic and born of an individual vision that one hopes to encounter in the crowded world of the modern musical landscape. The music video for the song features vocalist Gioja (prononced “joya”) Lacy languishing playfully about contemplating cosmic imponderables as streams of animated starlight emanate from the box of imagery sitting on a field of stars. Her image is awash in purples and pinks and touches of warm colors to convey an unmistakable dreamlike quality. And musically one hears in its slowly undulating depths hints of early Bowie and the hauntingly languid pacing of T. Rex’s “Cosmic Dancer.” A touch of the compassionate moods of Flaming Lips’ “Do You Realize?” And in this song there are sentiments of looking to the stars but really to powers and presences beyond the obvious of everyday life. The arrangements of brushed percussion, saxophone and trombone shouldn’t work but tied together with Lacey’s vocals and the way the song moves like a wave of lived memory, reliving a pleasant dream that’s a reminder that as challenging as things can be that there is a space of peace and possibility within you that you can tap into to weather those struggles and find some element of the magical at any point in your day. And like the aforementioned artists green typewriters seem to find a way to convey how we need not be completely defined by or trapped by the mundanity and drudgery of our immediate surroundings. Certainly the 1970s in the UK had more than its fair share of bland oppression and today you don’t have to look far to find something to find depressing and anxiety-inducing. But wallowing there endlessly serves no good purpose and music like this can be a thread out of the seemingly endless barrage of despair floating about. Watch the video for “europa” on YouTube. The track is the first song on the group’s new album The Solar Anus and you can listen to the rest of the long-awaited debut album by the duo on Bandcamp and to follow green typewriters visit its LinkTree below.

green typewriters LinkTree

AUS!Funkt Challenges Us to Choose Engagement in Life Over Wallowing in Jaded Acceptance of a Diminished World on “Turn To Rust”

A figure that looks corroded by life walks through the neon/LED sign and street light illuminated streets of a major city, at times at a casual stroll and then with more urgency, looking over his shoulder. What is this scene about in the music video for AUS!Funkt’s video for “Turn To Rust”? The industrial disco beat and the hushed vocals with the lightly distorted bass line is reminiscent of Nicolás Jaar’s “Space is Only Noise.” Except that this song has a more exuberant melody that gives an uplift at key points even though the lyrics seem to be about feeling eroded by the demands and travails of life and a world that seems to be falling into a similar level of disrepair and disuse. And the challenge to do something about it or any other aspect of life or just succumb to crumbling to rust and “Gathering dust.” The simple drive of the song suggests a favorable choice without spelling that out. Watch the Chris Cunningham-esque music video for “Turn To Rust,” the title track from AUS!Funkt’s new album, on YouTube and follow the Toronto-based post-punk band at the links provided.

AUS!Funkt on Facebook

AUS!Funkt on Instagram

Resolute Vibration Tap Into Neglected Parts of Your Brain to Evoke the Cosmic Wonder of the Universe on “The Stars Above”

Even as the members of Resolute Vibration reveal how the music is made in the performance video for “The Stars Above” it does nothing to detract the sublime tonal bath they produce. Surely it’s intentional in the composition and execution but it looks like Michael Garbett and Alex Price are simply intuitively in tune with each others’ processes and working in sync to produce the subtly in rhythm and frequencies elicited from Garbett’s vibraphone and Price’s guitar. There is no flash, there doesn’t need to be and would be out of place with music that seems aimed at eliciting a sense of wonder in moments of tranquility. Like maybe you get some time outside the haze of light pollution endemic to cities and catch a glimpse of the full night sky unencumbered by the sound and energy of civic life and are struck with the yes cosmic beauty of the universe that you will never likely get to visit but whose existence and presence speaks to something deep in the subconscious. Resolute Vibration taps into that often neglected part of the brain and creates that feeling all across this track. Watch the video on YouTube, connect with Resolute Vibration at the links provided and give a listen to the rest of the Resolute Vibration album Volume 4 which released on April 15, 2022.

Resolute Vibration on Facebook

Resolute Vibration on Instagram

Teenhood Upends the Logic of Patriarchal Parenting on the Starkly Urgent Post-punk Single “Same Mistakes”

Teenhood’s throbbing and urgent single “Single Mistakse” tackles the age old generation gap struggle in a way that initially seems like the usual callout of adult hypocrisy. But between the melancholic drive of the lead guitar and that of the bass and drum machines the vocals adopt the perspective of a parent so steeped in the worn out patriarchal perspective that tells all of us we need to be tough and strong in the neglectful and ineffective, unsustainable ways that have become the norm for too many for too long. Not the nurturing approach to being a parent but the “tough love” variety that doesn’t even take accountability for the consequences of the failure of that approach. Though mid-song there is a crack in tha presentation when mistakes made are admitted like a tacit admission that the guiding worldview doesn’t really work but also pushing responsibility for the lived legacy of a cultural feature that was never particularly viable even if it has often been common. In taking on that persona the song calls attention to the utter lack of reason and logic to that way of being and sets it to stark atmospheres and propulsive energy in the modern post-punk mode. Listen to “Same Mistakes” on Spotify and follow Teenhood at the links below.

Teenhood on TikTok

Teenhood on Instagram

Buick Audra’s “Afraid of Flying” is an Emotionally Complex Song of Self-Acceptance and an Embrace of Life’s Ambiguities

“Afraid of Flying” is the kind of reflective song that could feel more melancholy or resigned. And there is a note of resignation in Buick Audra’s lyrics but her tone is more about self-acceptance and owning up to her development and shortcomings as a human who is struggling with her own insecurities and flaws to live with dignity and integrity and trying to learn about how she relates to herself and other people and not get lost in someone else while still somewhat lost in oneself from time to time. The expressiveness of Audra’s vocals is perhaps the most impressive aspect of the song and paired with imaginative rhythm guitar that lends the track a free flowing warmth its pretty irresistible as a pop song with some emotional complexity and depth to it that stays with you not as a weight but as an uplifting energy that comes of hearing someone express ideas and feelings that don’t fit into the positive or negative paradigm of how we’re supposed to feel about life and relationships. In the music video Audra changes outfits and in a way that makes sense for the song and its message sheds outmoded ways of being and puts on those that better suit an evolved mindset that is more sustainable in life lived as a real human being. Watch the video for “Afraid Of Flying” (maybe, maybe not a nod to Erica Jong’s 1973 novel Fear of Flying) on YouTube, connect with Buick Audra (also of Friendship Commanders) at the links below and look out for her new album Conversations with My Other Voice out September 23, 2022 with a memoir to follow.

Buick Audra at Facebook

Buick Audra on Twitter

Buick Audra on Instagram

The North Country Amplify an Instinct Toward Insightful Self-Examination on Orchestral Indiepop Track “Inside Outside”

The North Country, photo courtesy the artists

A sense of what might be called restrained calm pervades The North Country’s “Inside Outside.” Acoustic instruments weave through contemplative and soaring vocals. A processional pace in the rhythms magnifies the self-examination in the song’s lyrics as often we need to take the time and the attention to recognize the granular details of our lives in order to attain consciousness of the assumptions and privileges under which we are operating so that actual person growth can begin rather than simply living life as though our reality is “normal.” The opening lyrics “I’m awash in a sea of my own dull comfort/While outside the fire burns/It turns four hundred thousand throats to choking ashes/I’m inside baking bread.” So yes, the album from which the song hails, Born at the Right Time (Exquisite Corpse) out July 15, 2022, was written during the deep time of quarantine with band members contributing to the composition of all the songs but out of this collective work there was an acute awareness of the limitations and challenges of people outside the band’s immediate social circle. And this level of self-awareness permeates the album with a self-critical sensibility minus self-flagellation that is always refreshing to see and hear. The orchestral arrangements of “Inside Outside” adds to intimate feel of the song by amplifying the experiental element of the songwriting and how these feelings impact you rather than an externalization and abstraction of those emotions. Listen to “Inside Outside” on YouTube and follow The North Country at the links below. The limited edition vinyl of the stylistically eclectic and beautifully crafted Born at the Right Time (Exquisite Corpse) releases around September 14, 2022.

The North Country on Facebook

The North Country on Instagram

Panda Riot Breaks the Clichés of the Adult Breakup Song With the Expansive Melancholy and Grit of “Ultramarine”

“Ultramarine” sounds like the end scene or a movie but it sits in the middle of Panda Riot’s new album Extra Cosmic. The guitar melodies seem to be flowing forth in a slow moving geyser of uplifting moods and intermingling with effervescent keyboard sparkles in a sustained state of bliss. The distorted edges of the rapid flow of atmospheric haze convey a sense of crystalline structure paradoxically coursing and evolving as though change its lattice composition every moment as the turns of emotion hit. For a song that seems to be one of acceptance of complex emotional dynamics and the mixed feelings that can make things messy unless you find a way in your heart to not be too attached to the way you think things need to be instead of how they are but without being doormat. It evades the clichés of songwriting by taking a different perspective than the agonized sense of betrayal and loss and by turning a melancholic chord progression into something expansive and wistfully hopeful. Even the title of the song suggests blue moods and the green of new growth in a single word and that’s more poetic and clever than you often get in rock music. Listen to “Ultramarine” on Soundcloud and follow Chicago’s long-respected shoegaze band Panda Riot at the links provided.

Panda Riot on Instagram

La Vie Sauvage and Pet Snake Embody the Dark Inner Impulses of Anxiety Through the Catharsis of Darkwave Industrial Track “Angst”

La Vie Sauvage, photo courtesy the artist

The keening tone and textural drone that opens “Angst” by La Vie Sauvage is unsettling enough. But when Pet Snake’s vocals come in like a demon whispering from the darkness of one’s own inner depths the song takes on a quality like experiencing a possession firsthand. The sound of metal on metal setting the pace, the chittering drone that runs throughout in swells and valleys, the squelched siren tone all conspire to make for a track that is a supernatural horror movie experience in the first person experienced through your ears and while that may not sound like a fun experience it is certainly interesting and different and more original than a conventional piece of music and a different take on the realm of darkwave and industrial especially given some of the synthwave compositions that La Vie Sauvage has put into the world. Listen to “Angst” and its catharsis of anxiety through the embodiment of that pervading sense of menace on Spotify and follow La Vie Sauvage at the links below.

La Vie Sauvage on TikTok

La Vie Sauvage on Instagram

Wild Arrows Eases Wounded Emotional Confusion to Warm, Celebratory Acceptance in the Hazy Ambient Pop of “Here’s the Ghost”

Wild Arrows is a band headed by Mike Law of posthardcore bands EUCLID and New Idea Society but don’t expect that style of music on its new album Loving the Void. The single “Here’s the Ghost” exemplifies the fusion of musical ideas and palette of sounds. It begins as an almost ambient, synth pop meditation on being stuck in a feeling and the repetition of the line “So what if I still love you” the way you can get trapped in your head and the recursive loop of an internal narrative that probably serves to salve your wounded feelings but can be counterproductive in re-establishing psychological health. But halfway through the song the energy shifts and the words to “I only wanted to be with you in a way that you were all your own so here’s the ghost.” It’s a flipping of perspective from an aggrieved self-focus born of hurt to one of coming to terms with the break-up and maybe beginning to see a way clear of the unhealthy aspects of the relationship. The sudden yet somehow subtle shift of pace and tone around the 3:20 mark is an interesting way to show how your psychological orientation toward anything can change without having to lose anything. The uplifting sweep of the song out of a dreamlike melancholia is a dramatic evolution worthy of Mercury Rev. The whole album feels like a tapping into the emotional territory of Law’s other projects but through the lens of early OMD and that unlikely alchemy makes for a collection of fascinating and emotionally vibrant music. Listen to “Here’s the Ghost” on YouTube and follow Wild Arrows at the links below.

Maja Lena’s Lilting Art Pop “No More Flowers” is a Gorgeously Mystical Breakup Song For Friends and Lovers Alike

The lush background synth swells, the exquisitely accented bass line and Maja Lena’s warmly soaring vocals on “No More Flowers” itself sounds like a pagan cognate of something Rubblebucket might someday do. But in the context of the music video filmed, edited and costumed by Martha Webb (who also designed the flag) with choreography by Anders Duckworth and a sword provided by Bob Watson (look out for cameos from Apollo the Goat) it’s like a the mystical journey of a Viking priestess warrior as she carries out the proper ceremonial exercises and gestures to attain the next stage of her development and taking on more aspects of her power and prestige. Which could be a metaphor for the song which poetically mythologizes the ways in which people relate to one another and the barriers we put up so that people can’t get too close unless we want them to and the oblique ways in which we drift apart. It’s a song that delves into a realm of human interaction not often written about with that level of insight and creative imagery of not offering extravagant gestures of good will toward people we don’t want in our lives anymore. Watch the video for “No More Flowers” on YouTube, look out for the full album out on Chiverin likely later in 2022 and follow Maja Lena at the links below.