SubmitHub – Page 16 – Queen City Sounds and Art

Raz Olsher’s “Can’t Have What You Want” is a Haunted and Existential Theme Song to an Imaginary Cowboy Tale

Craters of the Lost Souls is a 2025 album by London-based producer and composer Raz Olsher. It’s music for a spaghetti western that maybe takes place simultaneously in the world of the 1960s retro-futurist TV series The Wild Wild West and that of Jodorowsky’s El Topo as designed by Moebius. On lead single “Can’t Have What You Want, harmonica echos, dusty guitar sounds shimmer, a sound like a guitar processed to sound like someone gently and slowly creating chords to sound like dragging a mallet across the pipes of a xylophone. The leisurely pace is both soothing and haunting and captures the loneliness and grandeur of being a traveler across desert landscapes to fates as yet determined but beckoned by the promise of intrigue and adventure. Listen to “Can’t Have What You Want” on Spotify and follow Raz Olsher on Bandcamp.

Dr. Rocket’s Psychedelic Pop Single “Maybe It’s Time” is a Song About Being Willing to Set Aside One’s Ego to Love Genuinely

Dr. Rocket sounds like a psychedelic version of The Band on “Maybe It’s Time.” Meaning elegant, folk-rooted songwriting and nuanced and detailed musicianship and surprisingly self-aware lyrics. The song appears to be one about someone trying to come to grips with how he undermines his relationships through neglect and not committing out of a strange sort of insecurity. The kind where you think you’re doing enough to cultivate your relationships but maybe it’s all from your own perspective and not so much about the other person’s needs but your ideas of what their needs should be. But if you deal with your own anxieties you can maybe, just maybe, have the psychological space in your mind to being open to changing how you go about things. The gentle melodies and delicate vocals reflect a sincerity in that will to change that feels poignantly sincere. Listen to “Maybe It’s Time” on Spotify and follow Seattle’s Dr. Rocket on Instagram.

Welsh Electro-Punks teehin Dismantle the Least Inspiring Aspects of Music and Popular Culture on Raging Single “LARA SCOFFED”

The single “LARA SCOFFED” by Welsh electronic-post-punks teethin is refreshing in its subversion of any expectations one might have using genre tags to give potential listeners a touchstone. The scathing lyrics are simultaneously vulnerable and delivered with a righteous outrage at how the way the way one is “supposed” to operate as an artist in order to get attention for your music or even to get it heard and how that’s intertwined with soft power engines of oppression and capitalist psychological warfare against actual culture is engulfing and cathartic. The songwriting fuses rock sounds with electronic production methods including dub so that the song pulls you along its its heady melange of big beat rhythms, whatever Underworld was doing in the first half of the 90s and post-hardcore thorniness and a dusky and caustic sound that is pure punk spirit without fitting into some neat box as too much punk of the past 40 years has seemed to want to fit. It’s ferocious and exhilarating and calls to task some of the least inspiring aspects of music and popular culture. Listen to “LARA SCOFFED” on Spotify.

Peter Martin Vividly Encapsulates the Challenging Climate of Trying to Be a Musical Artist Today on Indie Folk Single “Trying To Break A Band”

Peter Martin really delves into the the depressing end of trying to be a musician in the modern cultural milieu on his song “Trying To Break A Band.” The old formula, or so many people thought and still think, is you play a bunch of shows however you can and someone discovers your music either at a show or these days by stumbling across your music randomly somehow or on a playlist. Then maybe you have the social skills or contacts to get an opening slot for a cool gig and that raises your profile some except it never really does. The opening lines of the song will hit some as crushingly hard in their summation of reality for most: “If a tree falls down and nobody hears it/Did it really sound like my music career?/I’m bleeding myself white paying or PR/And on top of that my laptop packed up/Intonation’s fucked on all of my guitars.” Because you can pay for PR to hopefully get someone who will pay attention to your music that might have an audience with the right kinds of people who crave what you’re giving. Maybe someone will pick up on your music on TikTok and you’ll go viral. But probably not. And with music journalism and blogs in the gutter/all but non-existent since its early 2010s peak and little or no incentive for people to champion your work it can be pretty dispiriting. Martin expresses this ennui perfectly in his delicate melodies and fragile guitar work. That sense of hitting your head against the wall of apathy and neglect for creative work that is a feature of our culture today. Yet the ability to articulate this mood and state of mind so vividly and poetically sure has to count for something and Martin’s warmth of tone is compelling and fans of Owen Ashworth and Sparklehorse will appreciate the emotional notes Martin strikes throughout the song. Listen to “Trying To Break A Band” on Spotify and follow Peter Martin on Instagram.

The Frenetic Layers of Colorful Sound and Rhythm on A Place To Bury Strangers’ “Let It All Go” Has Perspective Altering Qualities Akin to Avant-Garde Cinema

A Place to Bury Strangers, photo by Ebru Yildiz

“Let It All Go” hits immediately with the crackling and headlong energy we’ve come to expect from A Place To Bury Strangers’ more frenetic offerings. But something about the mix and production conveys an almost visual sense experienced as music. The hyped up motorik beat is insistent but guitar tones flash and fade downward and sideways like the streaks in a post-impressionist painting style lending a sense of suspended time. Oliver Ackerman’s voice echoes rapidly like a dub ghost haunting the beat, the rapid fire guitar melody both pushes to the forefront of the track and then pulls back into the rhythmic and tonal maelstrom so that throughout the focus of sonic field shifts like the musical equivalent of a Stan Brakhage film. Listen to “Let It All Go” on Spotify and follow A Place To Bury Strangers at the links provided.

A Place To Bury Strangers on Twitter

A Place To Bury Strangers on Facebook

A Place To Bury Strangers on Instagram

A Place To Bury Strangers on Bandcamp

dedstrange.com

Public Health’s Noise Rock Single “Goblets” Begins With Angular Moodiness and Ends in an Explosion of Sonic Catharsis

Public Health, photo courtesy the artists

Listening to the angular rhythms and harmonic motes of tone over the main riff in Public Health’s vibrant post-punk/noise rock single “Goblets” will remind some of DC post-hardcore, Efficies and even that band’s Chicago hardcore rivals Articles of Faith. The driving bass and the abstract guitar hanging off it while vocals hang slightly in the background When the cleaner lines in the beginning of the song head into more chaotic and intense territory you can’t help but be swept along into that catharsis. In the end the song is more reminiscent of the gnarly yet disciplined dissonance of Chicago noise rock bands of the 90s but with the dynamic swing and moodiness of a Dischord band. Listen to “Goblets” on Spotify and follow Hamilton, Ontario’s Public Health on Instagram.

LunaLight’s “Tranquility” Embodies the Calming Spirit of the Title With Layers of Luminous Atmosphere

Julia Thomsen aka LunaLight, photo courtesy the artist

The subtle depths of soothing ambiance of LunaLight’s “Tranquility” feels like easing into a universe of open spaces and gentle energy. The sound of water flowing and luminous breezes of tone alongside the minimalist keyboard melody softened into the sense of lingering, fond memories without the need for language to express that immediate human feeling is sustained throughout the song. It’s only two and a half minutes but doesn’t seem to short and the arrangement is the sort of thing you could listen to on a loop until any anxieties in your brain loosen out of your psyche. Listen to “Tranquility” on Spotify and follow composer Julia Thomsen and her projects Calm Senses and LunaLight below.

Julia Thomsen on Instagram

Julia Thomsen on YouTube

Johnny Falloon’s Furious Post-Punk Song “Circumcision” is a Surreal and Absurdist Treatment of the Curious Practice

Johnny Falloon from Athens, Georgia deliver a musical body horror song in “Circumcision.” It launches with fury and intensity like a post-hardcore noise rock song that fans of Amphetamine Reptile and Touch and Go bands will immediately find resonates with that realm of music well. And in the last third of the song the Jesus Lizard-esque madness gives way to a calm passage that is nearly spoken word as the singer sounds like an even more deranged Jim Morrison going on in fever dream fashion about his foreskin to some odd yet amusing free jazz that fit the subject matter perfectly. The song takes aim at a “health practice” that is very common in the Western world and even a tradition even though it’s not biologically necessary or even advantageous. The song’s lyrics depict the foreskin as a character that becomes a replacement for our narrator in his own life. It’s an absurdist treatment of honestly a curious practice which is probably the only way to treat what for many will be an uncomfortable subject. Listen to “Circumcision” on Spotify and follow Johnny Falloon on Instagram. The band’s new album Tell Hell I’m Not Coming dropped on May 30, 2025.

Tom O C Wilson’s Spectral Pop Single “Better Off” is a Song About Reconnecting With Oneself

Tom O C Wilson, photo courtesy the artist

Tom O C Wilson takes a fascinatingly left field turn with his experimental, electronic pop single “Better Off.” Bringing in Australian singer-songwriter The Magic Lantern on vocals, the song’s tones echo rapidly and convey a sense of being out of phrase with normal reality. The melodic shimmer of bell tones with crystal clear vocals and minimalist percussion manages to somehow be surreal and intimate and accessible at the same time. And the song seems to be about a person coming to terms with breaking up with someone whose influence forced them to bury or otherwise subsume parts of themselves to adapt to their particular and likely peculiar demands. It’s ultimately a song about reclaiming one’s psyche and making sense of what happened and how one can and should exist outside of an oppressive social context even if one was willing to enter into that situation to begin with because of a sense of affection that might have worked at one time and the early phases of which one is often willing to overlook how one is diminished and truncated in the attempt to be part of someone’s life. The song sounds like something spooky from the Warp Records catalog and it pushes the notion of what pop music can sound like just a little further afield. Listen to “Better Off” on Spotify and follow Tom O C Wilson at the links below.

Tom O C Wilson on Twitter

Tom O C Wilson on Instagram

Tom O C Wilson on Bandcamp

TV FACE Scorches the Sociopathy of Oligarchs on Noisy Post-Punk Single “Boots Pocket Coffin”

Lancaster, UK’s TV FACE is back with another ferocious, noisy and scathing dig at the economic elite with “Boots Pocket Coffin.” The song as wonderfully pointed as it is has an undeniable dance beat punctuated by spirals of hysterical guitar sounds and angular rhythms. The song builds a heady momentum from the beginning and pulls you into its catharsis immediately as well. There is a playfully mocking tone to the lyrics that suits well its depiction of the dire fate to which the ultra-wealthy seeming casually willing to throw the bulk of humanity as disposable bits of paving on their highway to pointless economic excess and for what? Sane civilizations do not suffer billionaires and hundred millionaires to exist. But here we are and TV FACE spell out so well how everything is not enough to sociopaths who live only for accumulating wealth and doing nothing positive or even really visionary or interesting with their unjust theft of the public good. Look for the new TV FACE album Wolf Rents Bark due out September 2025. Fans of stuff like mclusky and Viagra Boys will definitely find a great deal of appreciations for the rhetoric and headlong pace of this band’s output generally. Watch the video for “Boots Pocket Coffin” (warning on strobe effects) and follow TV FACE at the links below.