Boko Yout envisioned the seven tracks for the new EP AS SEEN ON TV (which released on May 12, 2023) as different channels of a fictional TV network called Boko Communications. Teleprompter sounds like something that was recorded, mixed and played on some old technology and on the verge of glitching out. Like some 1980s children’s toy technology with the electronics distorting slightly. But the vocals seem to trace an informal rhythm that’s more intuitive yet syncs up with the light splash percussion beats in the end. The lyrics sound like something an underworld hustler would say to a potential rival or up and coming underling who has gotten a little too big for their britches. But set to the swirl of otherworldly non-verbal vocals like cybernetic birds or anime faerie folk singing as a chorus for the main vocals, languid bass line and cascading dynamic the whole song has a more playful tone than one menacing. Maybe this channel on the album is one showcasing the grimier side of life but one with distinct style for which Yves Tumor might contribute theme music. Listen to “TELEPROMPTER” on Spotify and follow Boko Yout at at the links provided.
If Buzzcocks dirtied up their sound a little and shot it through with buoyant synth melody and distilled a song to its essential minute thirty-six it might sound a little like “Television Funeral” by Mononegatives. There’s something gritty and lo-fit, even gloriously amateurish to the production on the song but its energy is infectious like when Wire cut to the chase on every song on Pink Flag or POW! gone even more punk but seeming to draw upon the sensibilities of another era and bringing to it some new vitality, a collision between New Wave and punk to produce a sound that was never supposed to be reconciled back in the day but absolutely can now without cultural betrayal or irony. Or not too much irony. Listen to “Television Funeral” on Spotify where you can hear the rest of the new Mononegatives album Crossing the Visual Field and follow the band at the links provided.
Mcclendon’s dusky, saturated synths on “Loving For A Season” and the relaxed pace of the song conveys a mood that captures a melancholic spirit born of an acceptance and yearning for meaningful connection. You hear a sense of loss and in its streaming atmospherics and in the lonely saxophone expressing the ache more fully than the vocals which carry the weight of what could have been. It sounds like a song set in a story of a tragic love that couldn’t last forever set in the backdrop of a time not so far from now when people are hiding from pollution reddened skies except for a rare simply hazy blue day now and then when a glimmer of hope for the future and unguarded personal connections seem more easy. One might describe it as apocalyptic synth pop but one more rooted in a realistic scenario of diminished possibilities rather than a perilously dramatic and sudden downfall and the romance of a climate like that hits more acutely. Listen to “Loving For A Season” on Spotify and follow Mcclendon at the links below.
A Very Special Episode, photo courtesy the artists
“Strobes” finds A Very Special Episode pulsing with a driven energy and an aggressive and noisy sound that sounds like the band is trying to push everything into the red and holding on for dear life. It’s a song that has moments of disorienting echoes and scorching melodies and a sense that it could all combust at any moment and with the chorus of “Freak me out” it’s almost a challenge to see if one can have that kind of experience in a way that flirts with the dangerous but not necessarily the negatively destructive. It’s a fine line and the song with its washes of sonic fire and spirited vocals embodies a yearning to have an experience that blows open previously known boundaries and habits that have hemmed one in without knowing it. Watch the psychedelic video for “Strobes” (yes, there are strobes so those sensitive to that effect be advised) on YouTube and follow A Very Special Episode at the links below. Fans of A Place to Bury Strangers and Ganser will appreciate this band’s particular flavor of post-punk.
Laura Wolf’s “Calligraphy and Calculations” is a genre-bending song that fuses elements of chamber pop and sound design production. Wolf’s vocals are a melodic near whisper like she’s writing a letter or rehearsing a conversation with someone for whom she has an unrequited affection. Sounds and tones interweave and spin off in playful whorls and staccato echoes like the musical equivalent of stop motion animation treatment of a child’s storybook. But the subjects are adult and the compositions imbued with a depth and sophistication coupled with a whimsical aesthetic that fans of Tune-Yards and the more avant end of Emily Yacina will appreciate for its delicacy of spirit and creative emotional insight. Listen to “Calligraphy and Calculations” on YouTube and follow Laura Wolf at the links below. Her new album Shelf Life released on June 2, 2023 via Whatever’s Clever.
“Train” is practically pointillist in the rapid fire execution of its rhythms. But in short order Dick Dudley’s song unfolds some in a paradoxically herky jerky, The Fall-esque giving the song an urgent mood. The vocals are delivered in what might be described as a desperate deadpan depicting the daily routine of a man who seems locked into a ritualistic daily routine but resisting inwardly with no direction “with his elbows up and his legs spread wide” in a gesture of confrontational repose even though “he’s just another passenger with no time for his kids and no kiss for his wife.” Sounds like the kind of person who knows this isn’t living but lacks the self-awareness to go for a life that would mean something or to adopt an attitude toward a job that is providing for him and his family that keeps the work and its stress on him in perspective and not treat it like it matters as his whole identity and maybe develop a personality that includes finding joy in his existence somewhere rather than be so buttoned up. Ultimately this jagged yet loose song is one of compassion for someone who doesn’t know how to break this cycle or lacks the will to recognized that the unclenched jaw is superior to self-reinforced diligence over nothing no matter what anyone suggests to you. Fans of Protomartyr and IDLES will find some strong resonances here. Listen to “Train” on Spotify and follow Dick Dudley on Instagram.
Malmö’s video treatment for “Brutalisme” juxtaposes the stark architecture suggested by the title of the song with mass human activity that has been an expression of a support for brutality or resistance to the same. In black and white the visuals trace the layers of drone and the shining tones that peek through the curtain of cycling sounds like the frequency of the inevitable rush of historical events and repeated human activity that in the moment can seem like the most important thing in your life when carried about in groups and mass movements. But when one can pull back with the perspective of history one can pick out the themes and triggers, the rise and fall of social organization and to marvel at both the resilience and fragility of societies and individuals that make them up. The tenor of the song is one of wonder and awe rather than menace or inevitability. It sounds forward looking rather than simply cyclical even as the entire track sounds like one great becoming. Watch the video for “Brutalisme” on YouTube and follow the French ambient artist at the links below. His EP from which this song is drawn Les Grands Ensembles EP released on February 17, 2023.
The impetus behind the writing of Springworks’ song “Joke of the Season” was the feeling of hearing a lot of uniformity in in music, probably popular music, and how a stylistic trend of production method will run through a huge swath of music or really form of art for awhile. In the 2010s too many years meant yet another “garage rock” band that sounded like everything else on Burger Records or a “psych rock” group that wasn’t particularly genuinely psychedelic or really even trippy but just had a little reverb or delay on the guitar and vocals to thicken the tone and give it a little atmosphere. Just prior to that the whole chamber pop thing or indie Americana. If you listened to a radio station touting the indie music format you might very well listen to a half hour of music and not know it was a different band from different decades. The title refers to a joke told too often, or really any trick or rote creative choice or habit repeated to the point of being stale rather than reliable.
So did Springworks succeed in bursting past a popular trend of today or at least burst through an instinct to repeat a successful formula? When the song begins it’s not unlike a good psychedelic pop song with some resonance for psychedelic music of the 60s but around the halfway point the song shifts into a piano driven section with samples for a half minute a so before returning to the musical themes of the beginning of the song. But the chorus of “We are the joke of the season” in the outro gives us a clue as to the conclusions reached in writing the song. It’s like what Thirteenth Century Zen master Dōgen wrote “Before one studies Zen, mountains are mountains and waters are waters; after a first glimpse into the truth of Zen, mountains are no longer mountains and waters are no longer waters; after enlightenment, mountains are once again mountains and waters once again waters.” It seems Springworks in undertaking challenging their own internalized creative complacency that seems to have infected too much of popular music discovered that some principles of songwriting work for a reason bur that in “Joke of the Season” the innovation comes in the structure of the song and the reworking of the placement of lyrics and not getting stuck in stale habits yet not rejecting completely what you do well. Is that indeed the titular realization? A perennial desire to revolutionize your creative aesthetic only to conclude that you can only be you but you can reconnect and reconfigure your methods and mode of expression. And to be fair does Springworks sound like a band in a worn out popular style? No. “Joke of the Season” is effective in the way Springworks has always deconstructed lo-fi psychedelic pop, the band just found a new way to give it a fresh approach. Listen to the song on Spotify and follow the band at the links below.
Louise Burns is channeling a bit of the eternal late night summer energy on “Bloom.” The hazy saturation of the synths billowing around Burns’ hushed yet warm vocals and clearing away by the end of the song is reminiscent of the glory heyday of early 2010’s chillwave sound and Neon Indian in particular. But Burns updates the production and the sense of nostalgia is more leaning into the melodrama underpinning that music that makes it a perfect vehicle for being caught up in strong emotions and swept away by feelings of romance and infatuation. There is a purity and clarity in Burns’ expressions of hopefulness and yearning in the song and that is what elevates the sentiments beyond the suggestion of how sad it might be as mentioned at the beginning of the song. Instead it’s easy enough to be caught up in this wave of affection along with Burns. Listen to “Bloom” on YouTube and follow the Canadian singer/songwriter at the links below.
Lo Artiz has taken a major bout of heartache and set it to a chill and melancholic beat with “get by.” It’s neo-soul flavor takes just a touch of the sting out of mistreatment and feeds into a spirit of wounded resilience that flows through the song. But lines like “Lately all I do is cry, but imma still get by/So clean, still whenever I walk by/You know imma get by” are so poignant it captures such a specific feeling when you feel like you didn’t do anything wrong but got treated like you don’t rate by some trifling fool who you thought might have been different. So you just lean into that feeling, that ache and relive some of those memories and ride that pain until you’re through it and maybe, just maybe, not have to revisit it with the clown of the moment and be stronger for it going into the future and preserve some of your dignity in the process. Listen to “get by” on Spotify and follow Lo Artiz at the links below.
Queen City Sounds and Art 
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