SubmitHub – Page 142 – Queen City Sounds and Art

Ugly Twin’s Dramatic Atmospherics of “Crabs Are Crustaceans” Take Life’s Vulnerable and Private Moments and Makes Them Mythic

The ebb and flow of Ugly Twin’s “Crabs Are Crustaceans” are like the tides themselves with slow swells and surges that are also irresistible like the moods that sometimes crash into your psyche when you’re in a period of peak sensitivity. The melodic bass line leads us in with sustained guitar drone and introspective vocals with the wall of sound giving way to more textured guitar riffs that take us to the edge of a fall off into vistas of distorted waves of feeling and then back to a reflective mood. The dynamic is reminiscent of some of the more soundscapey emo bands of the 90s and early 2000s like Juno and Sunny Day Real Estate and the way they could sound so huge and dramatic and vulnerable all at once. The tactile imagery in the title of the song of having a hard shell and soft insides adds another layer of resonance for the song that seems very relatable in a society where one is expected to always put up a tough front and often internalize it even if it isn’t really who you are. Watch the video for “Crabs Are Crustaceans” on YouTube and listen to the track and more by Ugly Twin on Spotify.

https://open.spotify.com/embed/track/1IrFJT11UaPYXFtHnZtHi5?utm_source=generator

Lazy Queen’s “Bed/Head” is a Tenderly Cathartic Pop-Punk Anthem About Weathering Emotional Trauma

Lazy Queen trick us for the first few moments of “Bed/Head” into thinking we’re going to hear an odd yet endearing synth pop song. The strange and beautiful video treatment by Johan Lundsten solidifies this impression even as the song ramps up into an energetic rock song about mental health issues, the downfalls of self-medication and self-isolation while dealing with anxiety and emotional trauma from a break-up or everyday life which these days can certainly provide enough psychological turmoil and insecurity about a broad spectrum of concerns. These days we might call these fuzzy guitar riffs and strong vocal harmonies indie rock but fans of the better pop punk of the late 90s will find much to like about Lazy Queen’s anthemic choruses and poignant lyrics. What sets this band and this song separate from that older world of music is that words aren’t about some girl who wronged some guy or those kinds of relationship dramas. The lyrics for this song are written from a more general human perspective and the music video depicts romantic escapades between characters whose gender might not be so easy to identify definitively nor does it matter, the situation they’re in is what’s relatable and beset by masked antagonists who try to thwart their being together as symbols of the stumbling blocks in life and in one’s own head toward happiness and even self-acceptance. Watch the video for “Bed/Head” on YouTube and connect with Lazy Queen at the links below.

lazyqueenband.com

Lazy Queen on Twitter

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Lazy Queen on Instagram

Sam Rosenzweig Edges Closer to Reconciling a Conflicted Psychology on “Conqueror”

Sam Rosenzweig, photo courtesy the artist

Sam Rosenzweig’s “Conqueror” casts a great internal struggle in terms of a conflict between the self one most closely, consciously identifies and an aspect of one’s psychology that often seems at odds with who we think we are and want to be. Bringing together hazy, distorted synths with acoustic guitars, the songwriter is able to create a highly expressive palette of sounds to give emotional resonant nuance to the almost mythical narrative. Rosenzweig depicts undertones of the reconciliation of internal tensions, impulses and instincts in terms of how the titular conqueror gives him “a light [he] could not see” as in illuminating and providing comprehension of things that he otherwise might never consider. The line “Throw me to the desert, take away the key, I’ll wait until the rocks here begin to speak to me” indicates a willingness to be transformed by this conflict as part of a struggle to becoming a more fully realized human through actual growth and psychological expansion even if it seems like a mysterious process whose outcome your current mindset can’t completely process in this moment. Rosenzweig in effect personalizes this core dynamic of the human mind with accessible lyrics that convey the message in vivid images. Though more a dark Americana song with synths that has more in common with Smog and Talk Talk than some other music that might fall under that broad category, fans of Rome and Angels of Light will appreciate Rosenzweig’s sensitive yet steady and intense vocal delivery and the blend of deeply introspective mood and gritty textures. Listen to “Conqueror” on Spotify and connect with Sam Rosenzweig at the links below.

Sam Rosenzweig on Instagram

Ben McElroy’s “Bed Down In The Murk” is a Neo-Classical Ambient Manifestation of the Benefits of Slowing the Mind to Open the Spirit

Ben McElroy uses a slowly shimmering and roiling drone to ease us into “Bed Down In The Murk.” The word usage in the title suggests a foggy, dark place of ambient menace. But the song and its impressionistic violin phrases echoing into a an indeterminate distance like a lonely player inspired by a hazy sunset. Thus the word “murk” takes on another implied meaning, not gloomy but of a mist that obscures the everyday world within which in your private physical and by extension psychological place the imagination can wander and the mind open to the unexpected or at least to uncoil from having to focus on so many of the mundane things we’ve created to prevent ourselves on a collective level from putting our energies toward creating a civilization where the focus is on doing great things with compassion and creativity rather than on being merely “productive” in the demented sense that is the focus now. This song sounds like it’s informed by these subconscious, low key, rebellious impulses that exist in all people and upon which McElroy is drawing the energies to inform the gentle pacing and flow of “Bed Down In The Murk” and following our better instincts. Listen to the song on YouTube and connect with McElroy at the links below. Look out for the full length album How I Learnt to Disengage From the Pack out January 28 on The Slow Music Movement.

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Ben McElroy on Twitter

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Fragile Gods Seek Relief From the Deep Anxieties of the Modern Era on “Medicine”

Fragile Gods channel a touch of early 80s New Wave synth pop on the single “Medicine.” It gives the song an uplift and nostalgic glow even as the lyrics are made up of a series of thoughts that point to a deep sense of personal dysfunction. The lyric “Everything is fine until it isn’t” seems like something everyone that has had to live through the last twenty years at a minimum can relate to directly as diminishing expectations and the unacknowledged glass ceilings have been pushing downward and one finds ways to rationalize your way through this increasing sense of anxiety either through believing that you can grind away and enter the economic upper 1% only to find out that that group of people is being crushed under too by their own 1%. When the male and female vocalists sing about trying to find something, in this case medication because other methods might take too long to help in the moment, to make themselves feel better when the economic system is essentially collapsing under its own weight and ecological disaster is being completely unaddressed by the world at large ready to make all existing economic systems and arrangements completely irrelevant not in our children’s or grandchildren’s lifetime but within the next two decades it seems irrational to think it’s realistic to want anything other than a little comfort in the last days of the world as we know it. But in the tradition of other synth pop bands like OMD, Human League and New Order, Fragile Gods use a subversion of melodic pop playfulness to deliver content with a touch of uncomfortably honest irony to not act as soporific but as balm on the nerves to get through to maybe a time when we can do something real about what’s ailing us because nihilistic cynicism and despair aren’t going to be adequate to the situation. Listen to “Medicine” on YouTube and follow Fragile Gods at the links provided.

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Fragile Gods on Facebook

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JAF 34’s Film and Music Video for “EMPTY” Charts the Contours and Internally Corrosive Impacts of The Rat Race of Late Capitalism

Think of the new album video by JAF 34 “EMPTY” as something of a short cosmic thriller and science fiction film with obvious nods to 2001: A Space Odyssey, Jodorowsky, Stephen Kostanski and Panos Cosmatos. Musically the arc is like taking the very concept of dream pop to much more ambitious heights than usual. Yes, the flowing, refreshing synth drones that evolve and slip into the cracks of consciousness. Sure the ethereal, simple guitar line that wanders even as it suggests a distant destination. But JAF 34 doen’t leave it there, chapters of this song proceed to give a musical depiction of the way we have regulated our time on the earth and given up so much of our lives to the commodification of not just our waking hours but how the content we help to create to offer up as products of social capital monetizable as experiences and bits of information for others and as markers algorithms can use to market to us and to other people whose own characteristics and patterns of behavior and consumption match our own. This recursive feedback loop the film suggests does in fact leave us fairly empty and running on a kind of treadmill that serves capital instead of our genuine selves. The music thus in the point in the film reflects the layers of distortion and, flux and frantic and desperate activity and for what? More wandering and chasing paths outside our genuine and organic interests and desires and following those suggested to us by an impersonal economic model that enriches large corporations at the expense of society and our individual psyches. It’s an ambitious piece of work that has more in common with a work of art out of FLUXUS, Holly Herndon or Laurel Halo than any standard experimental electronic or rock artist as its social critique is inseparable from its execution. Watch the “EMPTY” in its entirety on YouTube and connect with JAF 34 at the website linked below.

JAF 34 Website

Artemis Orion Explores the Ways We’ve Learned to Desire Love on “visions”

Artemis Orion’s “visions” (part six of her song cycle/EP “honey”) gets a bit of a high definition boost on the Nine Paths remix. The original definitely wasn’t lacking and fits perfectly in the context of an album meditating on the arc of love throughout one’s life. This remix, though, emphasizes the low end and sharp edges of the track and gives it a bit of an industrial flavor toward the end. The video for the original version of the song (on YouTube embedded below) reveals a song that examines the nature of how we experience and conceptualize our desires on even the subconscious level through both social conditioning and how we’ve taught ourselves about what we can and should expect from others particularly in the context of an intimate relationship. The disorienting landscapes, the flow of symbols and signifiers in the video work perfectly with the ethereal vocals and expert use of reverse delay to take the melody out of the usual logic of musical rhythm. The imagery suggests a hazy early winter morning and the tenor and sentiments expressed speak to a cultivated sense of compassion for oneself and the vulnerabilities of others. Fans of Married in Berdichev, Grouper and Midwife will find much to like in what Artemis Orion has to offer with this song and the rest of “honey.” Listen to “visions” on Spotify, check out the captivating video on YouTube and follow Orion at Instagram linked below.

Artemis Orion on Instagram

Alex Wilcox Takes Us to Where Ancient Earth Radio Broadcasts Have Gone to Play on “BOO.”

Listening to Alex Wilcox techno track “BOO.” it pays to give it the time to develop from a pulsing beat to staccato vocal blips accenting the rhythm while a background drones ease into the brisk pace of the song. Oscillating bubbles of sound warp through right before a high pitched alien voice speaks to us in a language we don’t understand, its voice echoing like a dream of a memory of taking the subway in a futuristic nation we’ve never been to. Other voices come in as though you’re receiving radio signals sent from earth forty years ago preserved by the cold of outer space arriving at some distant star far from the earth and captured for analysis and enjoyment as a sample by an electronic artist who has an affinity for cultural media artifacts from ancient earth. Then the full seven minute and one second of the track are over right after all sound sources trigger at once to build to a grand blowout and burnout of all processed signals fading away. Whatever the nature and methodology for the song, Wilcox has definitely taken us on an unusual musical journey by going beyond the bounds of conventional techno songcraft. Listen to “BOO.” on Spotify and connect with Wilcox on Soundcloud as well.

“Song for the Garden” is Half Shadow’s Cosmic Folk Ode to Our Innate Connection With the Forces and Manifestations of Nature Within and Without

There’s that section in the 2005 Flaming Lips documentary The Fearless Freaks where we’re shown publicity photos of the band wandering in a psychedelic landscape and they’re referred to as these trippers and weirdos when Wayne Coyne really wasn’t someone into psychedelics. But that aesthetic and sentiments expressed and the complexity of impressions resonate with the music video for the latest Half Shadow track “Song for the Garden” (from the forthcoming album At Home With My Candles due out April 7, 2022 on Bud Tapes & Dove Cove Records). Jesse Carsten sits with an acoustic guitar in a natural landscape of rock formations, beaches, drying plants, woods in the near distance as animations layer over the top of the footage and images collage together in sync with the way his vocals meld and melt together with the warping background melody and the processing of his own vocals. The lyrics poetically describe what seems to be a mystical experience with the spirit of the natural world itself as an aggregate entity of which we’re never really apart except in the limited and self-involved cognition of typical human consciousness. The music is somewhere between ambient pop, cosmic country and psychedelic folk and wonderfully not choosing to fit into a narrow genre. It’s a song that washes through your mind and makes the truth of being connected to a larger existential context obvious and impossible and unnecessary to resist. Sonic touchstones perhaps worth mentioning would be solo Syd Barrett, Orbit Service and Legendary Pink Dots but best experienced for yourself so watch the video on YouTube and follow Half Shadow and Carsten at the links below.

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Early Signs Approaches the “Highs and Lows” of Ebb and Flow of Fortune in Life With Zen-like Humor

Early Signs catalog the various ways in which life’s peak moments and not so lofty heights seem to work in parallel in our lives on “Highs and Lows.” The song written in a psychedelic pop Americana style loosely follows a cadence not unlike that of Warren Zevon’s 1977 hit “Werewolves of London” and like that song there is a sense of darkly ironic humor without malice. In this song the lyrics goes down a list of situations where we work hard, get recognized for such in petty ways, only to be rewarded with the opportunity to do more work or rewarded in other dubious ways such as the “social media queen” who trades her “boundaries for compliments” all while endeavoring without taking into consideration burnout, our own and that of the very situations we’re in. Is the song warning against being too satisfied before another downturn in life, against getting too comfortable? Or just bemoaning the perceived inevitable. The song works with multiple interpretations of one of the basic facts of life—that the good times don’t last forever. And that knowing this means that maybe you can roll with the flow of fortune and failure without despair. Listen to “Highs and Lows” on Spotify, look for the debut album out in April 2022 and follow Early Signs at the links below.

Early Signs on Instagram