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Gilded Creatures Ride a Wave of Wistful Hopefulness Out of Personal Gloom on Dream Pop Song “I Can Get Morose”

Gilded Creatures, photo courtesy the artists

Supposedly Gilded Creatures are “the worst country band to have ever existed.” But that failure of genre adherence has given us the gorgeously melancholic “I Can Get Morose.” If one were to get deep into the weeds of style diagnostics of the song one hears threads of stuff like early Big Head Todd and the Monsters and following that musical DNA further back some R.E.M. (the vocals are very reminiscent of Michael Stipe). Maybe there is a good solid chunk of being subjected to a playlist of the peak popularity tracks by Counting Crows by one’s parents or nascent youthful nostalgia. But the guitar work is ethereal and glittery and the rhythms expansive as though washing the personal darkness and gloomy moods that can weigh one down at the best of times and certainly when the weather is waxing cold. Is this indie rock or dream pop or soft shoegaze? Does it matter when the spirit of the song gets in your head with an undeniable melodic hook or five and words of emotional solidarity in capturing the vibe a headspace of being sunk in defeated thoughts and seeking a break from it however you can in order to move beyond it? Not really. Listen to “I Can Get Morose” on Spotify and follow Gilded Creatures at the links below.

Gilded Creatures on Facebook

Gilded Creatures on Instagram

IN LIFE’s Psychedelic Post-Punk Song “Deliverance” is an Anthem Against Succumbing to the Ambient Anxiety of Life in Our Modern Dystopia

Oakland’s IN LIFE wrote its new album Strawberry Blonde (released on September 8, 2023) trading ideas and music files back and forth during the peak isolation period of the COVID-19 pandemic as many musicians did. But there’s a coherence in the emotional resonance of its songs as they deal with the various ways life got precarious for all of us and the small things we took for granted and the ways we thought we could operate, particularly anyone in industries that require human contact either directly or indirectly as in the case of the music industry or music scenes or any of the performing arts, or the service industry entirely. The pandemic has highlighted in shocking detail the interconnectedness of human civilization and the drastic limitations of our current methods of organizing. In the music video for the song “Deliverance” we see the band operating as it once did with footage of the band live at venues like The Caravan and the legendary DIY space 924 Gilman spliced in with footage of the city and Nick Noro offering lines from the song clad in various band t-shirts including those for Sepultura and Drab Majesty. Musically the song walks an alluring tightrope between post-punk, psychedelic rock and shoegaze with fragile melodies on guitar and keyboards with percussion keeping a steady and hypnotic pace matched by Noro’s introspective cadence. The song both celebrates the beauty of the life that is so precarious while mourning the various ways we maybe got comfortable with operating though perhaps it nods to the complacency born of privilege or a survivor’s pragmatic dissociation in an unsustainable late capitalism Dystopia. “Deliverance” captures that mood of holding on to the ability to craft creative work to alleviate the ambient anxiety of today and not to be swallowed up by it entirely. Watch the video for “Deliverance” on YouTube and follow IN LIFE at the links provided.

IN LIFE on Bandcamp

IN LIFE on Instagram

SLW cc Watt Work Out Getting Clear of Suspect Associates on the Psychedelic Jazz Folk Song “Help Me”

Samuel Locke Ward from Iowa and Mike Watt from Pedro (maybe you know him for his stints in Minutemen, The Stooges, fIREHOSE and other notable bands) delivered another fine collaborative record as SLC cc Watt in Purple Pie Plow out now via Kill Rock Stars on vinyl and digital. The lead single “Help Me” is like a psychedelic folk indiepop campfire glam rock song. It’s the kind of song with a rhythm and pace that would invite some group participating clapping along to the beat. It’s reminiscent of the kind of bands you’d see at DIY spaces around a decade and a half ago but with a sound more borne of recent years. Like an even more charmingly slackery The Flaming Lips. The song seems to be able taking action you think is going to improve your life but you get caught up in doing so with a bunch of people who turn out to be disreputable jerks and you realize maybe you have a bit of that in you but that in coming to the realization of your associations comes the awareness that you have much more to offer as a human than where you might be now and it’ll just take that extra step to get away to a better place. For the album Ward and Watt worked with drummer Dean Clean and tapped friends Joe Jack Talcum of Dead Milkmen fame and Bob Bucko Jr., an Iowa avant-garde music luminary who is a member of free jazz and electro duo Sex Funeral and noise rock jazz Krautrock combo New Standards Men. It’s a sprawling odyssey of poetry and storytelling set to earnest, jazz flavored psychedelic folk and delicately rendered pop rock. Listen to “Help Me” on YouTube and follow the links below to connect with the project, hear more tracks and to order the record.

SLW cc Watt on Bandcamp

SLW cc Watt on killrockstars.com

Seja Rides the Waves of Psychedelic Melodies and Motorik Rhythms of “Time To the Brim” to a More Fulfilling Place

“Time To the Brim” by Seja is teeming with layers of tone from guitar, to pulsing and shimmering synth with a steady, almost motorik beat and in moments is reminiscent of a 90s trip-hop band but more psychedelic. It progresses in steps with lyrics like personal mantra coaxing oneself out of static headspace and diving into how the music breaks out of the repetitive rhythm in the last half of the song with swirling guitar sound that goes off standard rhythmic meter while still anchored to the beat until the end when the haze of synth slow arcs to silence. Emotionally it’s like Seja trusts in the float of the slow momentum of the song to nudge herself to a place she wants to be and leans into the melody with her vocals. Fans of Curve and the more electronic end of Blonde Redhead may enjoy the physicality and entrancingly disorienting melodies running through this sing. Listen to “Time To the Brim” on Spotify and follow Seja at the links below. The new album Here Is One I Know You Know was released on August 4, 2023 via It Records.

Seja on Facebook

Seja on Instagram

REYSHA RAMI Industrial Hyper Pop Hip-Hop Song “S0ULFUL_4NARCHY_EXUM” Casts Off Oppressive Cultural Legacies

The beginning of “S0ULFUL_4NARCHY_EXUM” had a sound like you might imagine would precede the hunters team arriving for another round of attempting to wipe out the alien invaders in the manga Gantz—a distorted, accelerating tone. REYSHA RAMI’s processed vocals drop in like a digital avatar of a human in a virtual landscape. It’s just over two minutes of industrial hyper pop hip-hop with some lines dropped in by guest vocalist Exum. It’s a song of liberation from oppressive cultural legacies that fans of early Crystal Castles will appreciate and when Exum comes in one is reminded of Doesone lending a further dimension of science fiction flavor to the song. So many ideas are packed into the song it feels like it couldn’t possibly be so brief in duration yet it flows with a commanding energy. Listen to “S0ULFUL_4NARCHY_EXUM” on Spotify and follow REYSHA RAMI at the links below.

REYSHA RAMI on TikTok

REYSHA RAMI on YouTube

REYSHA RAMI on Instagram

McKenzie Stubbert Orchestrates a Journey From Quiet Tension to a Place of Solace on Electro-Acoustic Ambient Track “Err”

KcKenzie Stubbert recorded the piano part of his song “Err” on a 1949 Acrosonic with the subtle touches of analog imperfection that ends up giving the piece some character without having to manufacture sound anomalies in post-editing. The spare and drawn out dramatic aspect of the song with the accompanying ethereal drone lends the whole an air of mystery. The music video written and directed by Habitual Loss and featuring Crissi Badurina and Sarah Minor is like an elevated horror short about two women who go to a remote location, a winter retreat perhaps, to deal with religious trauma after undergoing the sort of conversion therapy to drive out “inappropriate” impulses or thoughts, whatever those might be. We see one of the women floating in air at one point and later writing and turning and twisting in bed all before that experience has been cast off and an emotional reconciliation can begin. Which is also the emotional arc of the song that starts with tenderness, grace and subtlety and across the journey of the composition Stubbert brings us to a place of great calm. Watch the video for “Err” on YouTube and follow Stubbert at the links below. His new album, from which this track hails, Waiting Room was released on August 18, 2023 via Curious Music.

McKenzie Stubbert on Bandcamp

McKenzie Stubbert on Instagram

Nick Norton’s Electronic Ambient “Slow Night at the Arcade” is a Welcome Journey Into a More Leisurely and Therapeutic Headspace

There’s something almost mystical about Nick Norton’s composition and video work for his single “Slow Night at the Arcade.” We see what at another time might hit someone as one of those old fractal videos from the 90s but also like a psychedelic evolution of the screen from the hold video game Tempest. It starts off like a short trip through violet clouded space to a wormhole bounded by angular walls. But with those walls/alleys turning in a slow spiral as motes of light drift toward us from a distant sun surrounded by luminous gasses emanating from its center. Like a journey through a wormhole to a more tranquil sector of the universe. The steady, calming pulse anchors the streaming haze of melodic synth tone and playful bursts of sound and orchestrated runs of notes and bleeps and blips punctuating the flow of soothing drone. The title suggests the kind of job that really doesn’t exist anymore the way it did in the 80s, 90s and early 2000s when someone might be working shifts at a video game arcade and the ambient sounds of various machines on start screens would generate an ambient hum that collectively feels like a world at rest with maybe a few players at machines changing that flow of mood but in the end creating a meditative backdrop. The sheer relaxed mood that conjures in a world that seems out of joint where nothing much seems chill is remarkable and Norton captures that energy perfectly with this song. The songwriter/composer wrote “Slow Night at the Arcade” and the rest of his new album Music For Sunsets (which released on September 15) alongside his recovery from a severe mental health break at the height of the 2020 pandemic ironically while working hard to help raise funds for other suddenly out of work musicians and getting back into music production and building a home studio. That can be a challenging and lengthy process but if this song and the rest of the unique ambient soundscapes of the new album are witness to and proof of Norton’s discovery of sounds and ideas that can guide the mind to a more restful place. Watch the video for “Slow Night at the Arcade” on YouTube and connect with Norton at the links below.

Nick Norton on Facebook

Nick Norton on Bandcamp

Nick Norton on Instagram

Unca John Humorously Sends Up Extremist Delusions on Lively Power Pop Ballad “Your Opinion”

Unca John’s irresistible power pop hooks on “Your Opinion” and warmly welcoming vocals are a fantastic contrast to the subject matter of the song. Imagine Camper Van Beethoven having emerged in the 2020s and that pointed, wry sense of humor but with such a knack for compelling songcraft and you have an idea of what you’re in for when Unca John takes us on a tour through the recent years of American political culture when the most crazed notions and extreme views came out of the fringe into our everyday lives. Unless you’re a bit of a ring wing lunatic yourself given to flights of deranged fancy yourself you will recognize the people Unca John addresses in the song in humorous and succinct yet detailed fashion and even invoking an old ultra conservative ghost that never died off with the John Birch Society and has come to haunt even current dominant conservative circles when extremists call Barack Obama, Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, some of the most corporate centrist Democrats of our time, communists and cultural Marxists. Unca John goes much further into that mode of thinking where people feel special because they think they have secret and hidden knowledge that the “deep state” doesn’t want us to know even though their hero and avatar of an entire movement was president for a full four years enriching himself and his family at public expense. Unca John voices our collective frustration with this bizarre wave of destructively delusional thinking that has been boiling for decades but which has seem to have burst in dramatic fashion all over public life. All in the name of people believing their opinion, without merit or uninformed by actual critical thinking, matters enough to be imposed on everyone else. Maybe this sort of no bones about it ridicule will help but even if not, Unca John has delivered a solid slice of pop goodness with some rhetorical grit. Listen to “Your Opinion” on Spotify where you can listen to the rest of his excellent 2023 album Midlife Crisis Vanity Project.

Media House’s Vulnerable Dream Pop Single “Maybe” Encourages Us to Re-examine Our Entrenched and Self-Destructive Habits of Mind

Media House’s “Maybe” sounds like the cycling guitar part with a touch of chorus and tremolo to give it a bit of a resonant shimmer is like something out of a music box. That is if such a device included a more complicated expansion as the song progresses. But that kind of repetition like a sample to establish the reflective mood of the lyrics. It’s a song that sounds like it was written alone with the vocalist looping parts and bringing them all together in the end to augment a song that seems to be about reconsidering one’s choices and how some of them can have a cumulative negative impact on others and thus one’s own. The line “Maybe there’s a price to pay when everyone is gone” is the most telling because many people really do think they can do it all alone and don’t need anyone else but that’s sheer foolishness as a human being. Then “Maybe there’s another way to go about this life” suggests that perhaps what we think we know about ourselves and our life isn’t the best way and it will leave us confused when we drive people away without meaning to because ego can bring you to think how you are and how you behave is best. Without being obvious this delicate, almost dream pop song offers a gracious way out of being so stubborn and attached to ways that don’t serve your best interests by beginning most of the lines of lyrics with the word “maybe” and the various dimensions of one’s life conceptions and assumptions about being your authentic self that may be outmoded. Listen to “Maybe” on Spotify and follow Seattle’s Media House at the links below.

Media House on Facebook

Media House on Instagram

https://soundcloud.com/user-726857672-519089547

The Vacant Lots Unleash Hypnotic Coldwave Single “Amnesia” Ahead of the Release of its New Album Interiors

The Vacant Lots are set to release a new album Interiors on October 13, 2023 via Fuzz Club but ahead of the release of that fifth record by the Brooklyn-based band we get the single “Amnesia.” The music video is in black and white like with flickering images like a VHS collage someone made splicing together scenes on an old video mixing board. Across the image are drawings in lines of light like Stan Brakhage had a hand in designing the visuals. Musically the streams of distorted synth and background melancholic melodies supporting disaffected vocals akin to what The Church might have sounded like had it gone in for a coldwave sound rather than psychedelic, arty post-punk. The production is lo-fi but unlike many other modern post-punk and darkwave bands that have gone that route the composition of the song has a tonal dimensionality that combines a modern approach to drum machine programming with a self-awareness of how the song will sound in various environments including live where it seems this song would flood the room with its hypnotic frequencies. Watch the video for “Amnesia” on YouTube and follow The Vacant Lots at the links provided.