SubmitHub – Page 67 – Queen City Sounds and Art

Paging Doctor Moon’s Indie Pop Single “Scars” is a About Overcoming Your Defenses to Find Genuine Connection and Intimacy

Paging Doctor Moon, photo courtesy the artists

Paging Doctor Moon utilizes a delicate, jazz-like arrangement on “Scars” to deliver a song about yearning for connection. The instrumentation glides along and then rushes together in the moments of elevated emotion throughout the song for an effect like an indie pop equivalent of Steely Dan. In the vocals we hear what for some might be the familiar thoughts of making life harder for yourself because of how you’ve had to cope with the struggles in your life. But there are also lines about needing help with overcoming one’s own barriers. The lyric “I wanna see you for who you are/so you have to break through these ancient scars” speaks to a self-awareness of habits that maybe you don’t always have the ability and will to break because at some point in your life they served a purpose of protecting you from shoddy treatment, at least emotionally. It’s a short song at three minutes one second but this existential struggle gets a fairly deep examination set to a song that creates a musical setting to ease the process with a breezy tone that honors the motions through which your brain goes when trying to reach a better place after years of self-conditioning to get through an often challenging life. But the will to trust and to seek honest connection runs deep in song’s words and its expansive spirit. The animated lyric video for the song by Luke Paulina, Giuliana Fox and Danielle Powell both illustrates the complexity of emotions expressed in the song and also how setting one’s own words into the physical world rather than keeping them in your head can often be a map to sorting through the mess. Watch the video for “Scars” on YouTube and connect with Paging Doctor Moon from Pittsburgh, PA at the links below.

Paging Doctor Moon on Instagram

Paging Doctor Moon LinkTree

Lenka’s Indie Pop Single “Champion” is a Heartwarming Song About Appreciating the Love You Have

In the video for “Champion,” Lenka sits against a white backdrop as illustrative sketches of objects representing the lyrics appear both on the background and across her own white shirt. Around halfway through guest vocalist Josh Pyke appears in his own white shirt with the black and white animated sketches accenting his own lines. Toward the end of the video the floating drawings are filled in with color and moving with a vibrant activity to match the climax of the song. It’s all a playful and lighthearted way to present Lenka’s upbeat pop song about how she doesn’t need grand gestures for someone to prove their love to her when it’s real, just the knowledge that she’s supported in life and her feelings by someone with whom she shares a mutual understanding and regard. And that such tangible and enduring affections are mutual. It’s a simple message and in its earnestness seems sincere and uplifting when many other pop songs are about a journey and struggling for it. This song is about appreciating what one has without second guessing it. Watch the video for “Champion” on YouTube and follow Lenka at the links provided. The new album Intraspectral was released on November 17, 2023 and available to stream on Spotify also linked below.

Lenka on Facebook

Lenka on Instagram

lenkamusic.com

being anne Collaborates with Søme on a Doleful, Downtempo Interpretation of Sugarbabes’ “Overload”

Ahead of the release of her forthcoming EP (expected in February 2024), being anne enlisted the services of producer Søme for a moodier and even more downtempo cover of the 2000 debut single by Sugarbabes, “Overload.” The vocals float through ghostly textures and melodies in a near whisper bringing to the song a gently melancholic aspect that renders the original as less a dance pop track and one that seems to interpret the lyrics in a way that taps into tragedy of its narrative. With the wood block beat, doleful strings and nearly abstract piano and the samples of the sounds of a train on the track as the conveyance to take the narrator to a better place this version of “Overload” sounds like a song out of a Matthew Vaughn movie about a doomed romance. Listen to “Overload” on Spotify and follow the artists at the links below.

being anne on Instagram

body / negative’s “persimmon” is a Melodious Tapestry of Transcendent and Deeply Soothing Tones

Mastered by Slowdive’s Simon Scott, body / negative’s forthcoming album Everett (Track Number Records on December 8, 2023) includes contributions from Madeline Johnston aka Midwife and Randall Taylor aka Amulets. The album’s sixth track “persimmon” features Justin Maranga of Dune Altar Records and Lionel Williams (Vinyl Williams). The song begins with echoing, ethereal tones in the middle distance and the sound of a voice like all of it is coming to you from deep inside a cave or from across a canyon where the acoustics are just right enough to carry sound from a distance so that it’s discernible if not explicitly identifiable. The effect is like that feeling of half-remembering a dream on waking up and wanting to get back to it. In this case a more solid bit of percussion comes into the foreground surrounded by melodious, abstract voices and a floating echoing set of tones. One stream of sound seems to be going one direction and the other in the opposite but all circling and interweaving into a tapestry of textures and soothing music into which the anxious wrinkles in your psyche can unravel. It is a music that invites you to take it on on its own terms without needing to impose a genre as a tool of comprehension as in that mix are elements of ambient, slowcore, shoegaze, musique concrète and post-rock but combining to create something uniquely entrancing. Listen to “persimmon” on Spotify and follow Los Angeles-based artist body / negative at the links below.

body / negative on Instagram

The Down & Outs’ “Mars” is an Edgy, Noisy Post-punk Song About a Twisted Romance

The beginning of “Mars” by The Down & Outs is a torturous sound like someone is playing some field recording of a feedbacking guitar in a subway and manipulating that signal so that you’re not even sure what you’re hearing. But it’s an apt introduction to the song ahead that itself sounds like glam rock influenced post-punk song being performed in the tight confines of a utility closet because it’s the only space available on the moon base from which a near future staging area for flights to the planet Mars are located. Sure the fidelity is hard to place because clearly the production has a keen ear for sonic detail. But the passionate performance and vocals that are reminiscent of what might have happened if Chrome was way more into Bowie and collaborated with The Faint to deliver what sounds like the story of a twisted romance. And in the end the vocals repeat the chorus of “We can go Mars sometime!” to the point of being nearly unhinged giving the whole song a genuinely edgy tone. Listen to “Mars” on Spotify.

Finnish Psychedelic Garage Punk Band Kaksipäinen Koira Debuts Lively Then Introspective Single “Kuolema voittaa aina”

Kaksipäinen Koira (in English, Two-Headed Dog) is a supergroup group Finland signed to All That Plazz that includes guitarist/singer Tero Huotari (Teksti-TV 666, HÄN and Kuusamo) and drummer/vocalist Aliisa Keränen (Bad Sauna, Lala Salama), “Kuolema voittaa aina” (“Death Always Wins”) with bassist/singer Otto Pekkola rounding out the live lineup. Its debut single “Kuolema voittaa aina” (“Death Always Wins” in English) is short (two minutes six seconds) but begins with a charging rhythm like a Reatards song inspired by Buzzcocks with a fuzzy melody and call and response vocals before shifting gears just over half way through to a more introspective and atmospheric feel with the previously urgent pace slowed to something more leisurely. The production is appropriately lo-fi but the range of sounds and in so economic a fashion points to promising material ahead for the new project. Listen to “Kuolema voittaa aina” on YouTube and connect with Kaksipäinen Koira, possibly a sly Roky Erickson reference, at the links below.

Kaksipäinen Koira on Bandcamp

Kaksipäinen Koira on Instagram

“Big Elsewhere” by vireo is a Tender Dream Folk Soundtrack to a Heartwarming Day Trip

“Big Elsewhere” by vireo sounds like something a bunch of super creative kids wrote in their tree house long before forming an actual band. It has that quality of openness and a sense of wonder and an unhurried spirit. Its chiming guitar work and bird-like keyboard melodies behind tender vocals individually and in harmony. The music video, made by Suzanne Gomes, looks like a fall weekend spent on the coast with gray skies and choppy waters. It’s all the spontaneous aesthetics of Super-8 and no strict narrative structure, just images like what you might shoot if you weren’t planning but merely documenting your experience for yourself. And the song feels like that too. It’s a mere one minute, fifty-three seconds but in that time vireo sounds both like a futuristic indie pop thing informed by the sort one heard and experienced in warehouses and house shows in the 2000s and early 2010s. The kind of music that has an undeniable charm and appeal but always very home made feeling like the choices of instrumentation are idiosyncratic executed with an unexpected originality. Maybe someone would call this band shoegaze but the sound is much more in line with the kind of borderline twee, dream pop folk that would fit well on a bill with say a Stephen Steinbrink or Microphones. Even Wolf Colonel. Its an intimate and inviting sound that seems to be a part of the group’s style that resonates strongly with the DIY musical experience of a decade and more ago. Watch the video for “Big Elsewhere” on YouTube and follow Pittsburgh’s vireo at the links below.

vireo on Facebook

vireo on Bandcamp

vireo on Instagram

Red Kate’s “Home of the Slave” is a Searing Punk Rock Take Down of the Persistent Ills of Genocide, Racism and Predatory Capitalism

With righteous fury, Red Kate in its song “Home of the Slave” draws a line connecting the genocide of indigenous people, slavery and white supremacy generally and the course of capitalism and its fallout for those that aren’t among the elite. The logic couldn’t be more obvious to anyone paying attention but Red Kate maps it all out in a relatable way without excessive abstraction. Musically the song rings some bells like its resonance with somehow both “T.V. Eye” by Stooges and early D.O.A. – just that kind of politically charged political punk of the latter and its undeniable hooks and the willingness to go off standard lines of rhythm and tone of the former yet propelled by an irresistible momentum that rages with the excitement of being able to utter the critical truths that are the song’s lyrics. Listen to “Home of the Slave” on Spotify and connect with Red Kate from Kansas City at the links below. The new Red Kate album Exit Strategy dropped on November 10, 2023 and now available on digital and vinyl as well as streaming.

Red Kate on Facebook

Red Kate on Twitter

Red Kate on Bandcamp

Red Kate on Instagram

Red Kate page on Black Site

C.O.F.F.I.N.’s Proto-punk Thrash Rager “Factory Man” Captures the Vitality and Tragedy of the Industrial Working Class

Sydney-based rock band C.O.F.F.I.N. (aka Children of Finland Fighting in Norway) dropped its latest album Australia Stops on September 15, 2023 via Damaged Record Co and its singles have revealed the growth of the group’s ferocious punk sound. “Factory Man” is a burst of proto-punk and boogie rock, think Radio Birdman, The Saints and a touch of Motorhead. The song begins as like the kind of hard working and loving blue collar song to a man’s lover and how he has everything you need and if not he’ll get it and be a non-stop kind of guy. But halfway through the song it slows some and the lyrics turn to the reality of how living that way and being ground down by the work and perhaps die on the job as yet another disposable member of the proletariat in the cogs of industry. In showing that spectrum of the actual lived experience of a lot of people the group lends some dignity to the lives of people society and certainly the economy depends upon but readily anonymizes as a statistic whether things go right or wrong. C.O.F.F.I.N. captures both the vitality of industrial workers and the tragedy of an early death in “Factory Man” which is something one doesn’t hear much in rock and roll. Watch the live music video for “Factory Man” on YouTube and follow C.O.F.F.I.N. at the links below.

C.O.F.F.I.N. on Facebook

C.O.F.F.I.N. on Instagram

coffinband.com

Band Spectra Gives in to the Faint Hope Love Provides in a Time of Deep Melancholia on Dream Pop Single “Freckles”

Band Spectra’s “Freckles” somehow seems more resonant in Fall when the daylight hours diminish. A hazy sweep of a sound resonates with the paces in the song as a melancholic synth melody and simple beat create a mood of bittersweet resignation. The vocals courtesy Mary Leay are a near whisper like someone writing a letter to someone with whom they have a loving but complicated relationship or speaking softly to them late at night. Multiple interpretations could be drawn from the song but lines about needing to be brave in a moment but failing to do so because “I’d rather feel the safety of my doubts” and being demotivated by life’s downbeats and the ensuing unease that takes the wind out of one’s sails. The bit about “best days running toward the past” feels like something someone had to have written later in life and not the product of youthful bravado. But at the heart of the world-weary song is a faith in something in a bond with someone even if things seem challenging, perhaps to even give up one’s tendency to surrender to feelings of uncertainty. The song has a sad tone but in its entrancing atmospheres and its gentleness there is more than a trace of finding something good even when things feel desolate. Fans of Electric Youth and Chromatics will appreciate the songcraft and the deep sense of tapping into tender feelings here. Watch the colorfully minimalist video for “Freckles” on YouTube and follow Band Spectra at the links provided. The group’s self-titled album released on September 28, 2023.