Adult Programming still from video for “Let It Come 2 U”
The music video for Adult Programming’s “Let It Come 2 U” looks like something out of a better version of John Constantine: Hellblazer with the mix of the lurid, the gritty, the menacingly mystical and the surreal. The song itself is an upbeat synth pop song with a dark underbelly with vocals that have an edge and power like something you’d expect to hear in a death rock song. And maybe that’s what “Let It Come 2 U” is in some sense, an urgent death rock song written with the immediacy baked into a bright melody. Watch the video for the song on YouTube where you can sample several of Adult Programming’s other imaginative and playfully haunting music videos.
Still from the music video for Dan Sartain’s “Flaming Star”
Dan Sartain invites us for a journey into the myth of the Old West as embodied in American popular music on his new album Western Hills (due out in the Fall on Earth Libraries) but it’s one that subverts the paradigm a bit in presentation and execution. The debut single from the record “Flaming Star” is a cover of the song originally recorded by Elvis for his 1960 movie of the same name in which he plays a half Native American, half European American character in arguably one of The King’s greatest roles. But in the music video directed by Sarah Orr we do not even see Dan Sartain, we see an older black actor performing the song in surreal lighting and commanding your attention like a legendary Vegas performer playing a private room like a rock and roll magician, like Sun Ra of countrified rockabilly. It is both haunting and endearing precisely because of this experience of the song. The song itself and what it promises for the rest of the album gives us a different side of Sartain who, while not a household name, has built a mystique as a performer with his fans including the likes of Jack White and John Reiss (Rocket From The Crypt/Drive Like Jehu/Hot Snakes). The single is an example of a psychedelic cowboy ballad. Which you can’t say about too many songs. So take a gander at the video for “Flaming Star,” follow Sartain at the links provided and look out for Western Hills when it drops in the Fall.
The entrancing, spiralling melodies of “Golden Child” from Philadephia-based psychedelic band Magic Cobra leads you backwards and forwards through time in musical history. The shimmering, fuzzy and fiery guitar work melts with the keyboard undertones while preserving a core of folk-inflected songwriting. One hears echoes of Camper Van Beethoven covering Status Quo’s “Pictures of Matchstick Men” through the lens of late 90s Brian Jonestown Massacre. The potential nod to Syd Barrett’s “Golden Hair” is deft as well. Touchstones aside, “Golden Child” is an immersive sonic expression of joyous ardor. Listen to “Golden Child” on Soundcloud and follow Magic Cobra at the links below.
The minor chord progression in the guitar riff of Les Gold’s “Want U 4 Mine” sets the song up to go to interesting tonal and emotional places from the beginning. It seems to start as a kind of modern garage rock song but blossoms into a sonically rich bit of electronic psychedelia all while soul-inflected vocals lay out lines about a strong attraction in a manner more poetic and creative than the standard pop song and gives a sense that the attraction goes beyond the raw, physical kind. The lyrics aren’t just an expression of bravado-laden desire but also speak to the narrator’s own weaknesses and vulnerabilities. The driving electronic bass section later in the song alongside fiery guitar work and glimmering synth arpeggios bring to the song a rare richness of soundscaping that sets it apart from a great deal of music tapping into similar influences in post-punk, psychedelic garage rock and R&B. Listen to “Want U 4 Mine” on Spotify and connect with Les Gold at the links below.
On its single “Weak Sounds Are Hard to Hear When You Fear to Be Hurt” Frogooo addresses the way most of us have been conditioned to display a bravado and false strength in the face of our struggles and adversity. It’s a shield we put up between each other and a pretext for not acting in the best interests of our communities when conventional wisdom suggests we must pursue what we perceive to be our own best interests at the expense of others if need be. It’s a pathology that runs throughout Western history and culture but also manifests in cultures worldwide to varying degrees. That need for displaying strength and stoicism when sensitivity and and gentleness are a better approach and yield better results. That compassion and vulnerability are seen as deficits in a “practical” world is laughable, really, when we know better through practice and experience. Often if we’re patient and willing to be open to more than we’ve been conditioned to be and to take people and situations on their own terms rather than an imposed understanding we can expand what we know about ourselves. Musically, fans of Young Marble Giants, Malaria! and the Raincoats will appreciate the delicate yet urgent rhythms and intuitive dynamics that put the mind into an alternative headspace that reinforces the song’s message of people being in solidarity with those less fortunate or more vulnerable in the late capitalist end game before the next stage of human social evolution sets in and we can weather the inevitable crises ahead with humanity rather than adherence to “efficiency” and the dictates of the soon to be deposed masters of the mechanized economic order who demand austerity for the many so that the few can live not in real luxury that could be for everyone but a diminished form of it in the context of the dystopian world we’ve fallen into. The song says we all deserve better and suggests we can get there with these small gestures that taken as a whole are stronger than what currently seems monolithic like the vine that breaks concrete. Listen to “Weak Sounds Are Hard To Hear When You Fear To Be Hurt” on Spotify.
The music video for the Lycio single “Somebody” was put together from footage shot by drummer Alex Lowe often using vocalist Genie Mendez’s phone across three years of bonding as musicians and traveling to gigs. Which suits the subject of the song which, on one level, is about an unrequited love, which is surely a kind of metaphor for what it’s like to be in a band that isn’t yet known outside a relatively small circle of a fan base. The song, a compelling mix of downtempo and R&B-inflected synth pop, somehow encompasses that tentative feeling of experiencing that unrequited love with the hope and anticipation of that love becoming a reality or at least keeping your spirits up while you’re working your way through to accepting it’s never going to happen but not dipping, as most of us will, into a phase of despair thinking we’ll never find a love that is life affirming, fulfilling and healthy. That mix of emotions also parallels that of being in a band where you hope your songs connect with an audience or at least someone for whom what you express resonates and captures the imagination and all the effort and work you put in that no one much talks about because it’s the unseen, largely boring, drudgery, every day, un-glamorous activity that makes it all happen. The sorts of things that you sometimes have to make it fun for you to get through even though it’s part of the deal. You watch the video and you do see some of the frivolity amid the mundanity and that is the core of this lush, soulful song that recalls so many of the better, aspirational synth pop songs of the 80s by bands clearly steeped in soul and R&B: it embraces the romance of our infatuations and being swept up in pursuit of our dreams because life without those guideposts is barely life at all which jibes with the title of the song as well. Watch the video for “Somebody” on YouTube and connect with Lycio at the links provided.
Hanna Ojala takes a foray into the realm of earthy sensuality on her single “Spring in my Step.” The tropical flavor of the percussion via hand drum and the sounds of birds and insects from a warm climate serve as the backdrop of ritualistic poetry spoken in ode to the joys of being in one’s body and the pleasures one can indulge. And as usual, Ojala takes these words that could be, given a different musical context, a playfully hip-hop tribute to sublime hedonism, and infuses them with a spiritual dimension. But in the presentation she fuses the earthly with the transcendent through an unabashed and refreshing reconciliation of components of our psyche that much of our conventional cultural conditioning in the Western world suggests need to be separate and in the case of pleasure, that it is somehow embarrassing. Ojala shows with her dancing in the music video and her words and music that we can simply embrace and enjoy these aspects of the human experience without shame if we can manage to not take things overly seriously. After all, if you don’t have something that puts a spring in your step regularly, life is nothing but drudgery. Watch the video for “Spring in my Step” on YouTube and connect with Hanna Ojala at the links provided.
“Animal” from Anna Lidman’s 2020 EP POEM was written with composer Marc Tritschler and crafted with a vision to combine classical techniques and Lidman’s soulful and forceful melodies with arrangements for a chamber orchestra. The resulting song has a great deal of organic presence. The sheer physical presence of the song in your ear as the various textures rhythms and melodies interact with a dynamic flow. It sounds like something written and recorded spontaneously with a mind to capture that energy and the feel of a song you’re getting to hear live with the potential for some element to go off the rails for a moment but never really does. The unique percussion brings a playful flavor to the song and the short sweeps of harp and woodwinds lends the song an air of the mythical. Fans of CocoRosie and later Ani DiFranco will appreciate the musicianship and creative arrangements thereof in which musical chops serve the songcraft exceedingly well. Listen to “Animal” on Soundcould and follow Anna Lidman at the links below.
CANTRELL is a skater turned rapper based in Atlanta and in 2019 he released a promising yet sophisticated and fully formed EP called Devil Never Even Lived (which is a palindrome). An ear for a creative and emotionally vibrant beat is something he brought to his single “Crown Me.” The trap beat with a spare, impressionistic piano figure and melancholic drones the song give it a dreamlike weightiness that fits the rap, with a several bars from critically acclaimed rapper Mick Jenkins, about seeming to have to always be on alert from the pitfalls of life and the music business and the people who might be poised to take you out. That and all the challenges you have to juggle just to get through seemingly all the time. That kind of vigilance takes its toll on your psyche when you feel like you have to maintain it all times. The song reflects that existential tension while hinting at a hope of relief from that if only in accepting these perils and putting yourself in a frame of mind to feel how these things affect you without surrendering to despair. The title invokes the image of a checker game and how you get a piece across the board but you’re still in the game and you still don’t know if you’ll win. And that sense of realistic ambivalence strikes deep. Listen to “Crown Me” on Spotify and connect with CANTRELL at the links provided.
Mark McNamee, still from video for “Cosmic Dreams”
Mark McNamee takes us into the wonder of deep space and with “Cosmic Dreams.” The evolving melodic drones of the peace drift together, drawing us outward while inspiring a reflective mood. Impressionistic, almost percussive tones wink into and echo out of our focus of attention throughout like a new star system appearing to our vision amid a sea of stars making up the nimbus of illumination around us. Underneath it all a crackle of static gives a sense of grounding and connection with the familiar like we’re in a ship tracking down a long lost satellite that has started transmitting from a world information that suggests much but especially how its ancient instrumentation isn’t adequate to convey the totality of surroundings. The song sounds like the sense of anticipation of first contact except that in this case maybe that first contact is with the remnants of an alien civilization that will nevertheless expand our knowledge of the universe we share with untold numbers of diverse intelligent beings. Watch the visualizer for “Cosmic Dreams” on YouTube and connect with Mark McNamee at the links provided.
Queen City Sounds and Art 
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