Queen City Sounds and Art

Pain in the Yeahs’ “Former Terraformer” is a Retrofuturist Post-Punk Dance Club Hit

“Former Terraformer,” the title track to Pain in the Yeahs’ new EP hits with a retro electronic post-punk aesthetic like James K. Ultra did some world building while writing the songs. In its distorted synths, driving rhythms, pounding percussion one imagines the dance club pop counterpart to Author & Punisher. But for a dance club set in a universe where Alien, The Terminator and Blade Runner somehow coexist, humanity has defeated the A.I. to colonize outer space and come to terms with hostile life forms and life can still be a bit of a grind because despite these strides in civilizational development the originating sin of crony capitalism has leaked into far future human endeavor. And thus the title of the song as though one could live long enough in this future scenario where being a terraformer was your prior avocation and now you’re burnt out and recognize that what you wanted out of this bizarre life of fake endless horizons and opportunity was a love that cut through that haze. And this song is a romantic ballad to that yearning. The chorus of “I need you, Candy/Candy do yo see me/I’m all fucked up this evening/I’m working hard, getting stronger/But the nights are getting longer.” And the opening line of “I could never turn my back on you even if I saw the worst in you/You that it’s true/Back on earth things are strange/I make money but I feel the same” speaks to this ennui and seeking meaning in career when it feels like you’re just going through the motions as part of some big, unfulfilling machine is not unlike how a lot of people feel now. It strikes at universal themes and like all science fiction conceits is a commentary on the present. Listen to “Former Terraformer” on Spotify and follow Pain in the Yeahs at the links below.

Pain in the Yeahs on Instagram

The Album Leaf Pairs With Bat For Lashes to Imbue “Near” With the Warmth of Yearning Affection

The Album Leaf, photo courtesy the artist

Jimmy LaValle as The Album Leaf brings a real sound design and cinema score aesthetic to his tracks for the forthcoming album FUTURE FALLING (due out May 5, 2023). But he is able to transform the background and pure mood aspect of that form of songwriting into ambitious pop songs like “Near” which features Bat For Lashes aka Natasha Khan. The song sounds like the kind of tune you might write if you were trapped by winter snows in isolation and yearning for contact with someone for whom you have a deep affection. The sweep of textural drone in the background flowing with percussion that seems to move in the seemingly random manner of precipitation while highlighting Khan’s soulful and introspective warmth and gift for conveying an expansive and enveloping spirit. Listen to “Near” on YouTube and follow The Album Leaf at the links below.

The Album Leaf on TikTok

The Album Leaf on Facebook

The Album Leaf on Instagram

thealbumleaf.com

Gurriers’ Raging and Intense Send-Up of Online Culture “Approachable” is the Noisy Post-Punk You’ve Been Looking For

Gurriers hit us with a flood of imagery and moods in the video for its song “Approachable.” It’s a heated and heady send-up of a culture and its commentators who, as they say, live online in that kind of personal echo chamber of hyper reality in which rage culture brews in a cauldron of dissociative psychosis. The video is a mashup of news imagery cut with abrupt savagery and inspired editing and animation. It perfectly complements a song where guitar howls in whirling noise and the driving rhythms buoy the distorted vocals in a dancecable fury that fans of Viagra Boys and IDLES will find immediately resonant. Though the song sounds like someone on the verge of a psychotic break it also seems imbued with a wry sense of humor that gives it a self-aware edge. One only imagines what this kind of seething energy might be like to witness live. Watch the video for “Approachable” on YouTube and connect with the Irish post-punk band Gurriers at the links provided.

Gurriers on Instagram

Queen City Sounds Podcast S2E41: Buck Gooter

Buck Gooter is a “Ghost-motivated electronic rock” band from Harrisonburg, Virginia originally consisting of the duo of Terry Turtle and Billy Brett. Across many releases starting in 2006, Buck Gooter has charted a unique creative vision from the music to the artwork and performance style. At times a self-styled “industrial blues” group Turtle and Brett infused their highly political and insightful songs with an electrifying intensity and layered aesthetics fusing the avant-garde with the immediately accessible. Like a punk band that got into arthouse films and drew more inspiration from the likes of The Screamers, Butthole Surfers and Chrome than the usual suspects. Turtle tragically passed away on November 20, 2019 but left the legacy of the band to Brett who has continued Buck Gooter and releasing albums to which Turtle contributed posthumously including 2021’s Head In A Bird Cage and the new album Ghost Brain which includes samples of Turtle’s vocals and music with contributions from Oliver Ackermann of A Place to Bury Strangers who recorded, mixed and mastered the record at Death By Audio in Queens, NY. It represents but the end of a chapter in the life of the band and a new beginning.

Listen to our interview with Billy Brett of Buck Gooter on Bandcamp and see the band on tour in the USA now including on Friday, April 14, 2023 at Glob in Denver with Polly Urethane, Nightshark and Pythian Whispers, show at 9, $10. The tour itinerary below following the Denver show.

4/15/23 – Albany, CA @ Ivy Room 4/16/23 – San Francisco, CA @ Thrillhouse
4/18/23 – San Pedro, CA @ The Sardine 4/19/23 – Los Angeles, CA @ Permanent Records Roadhouse
4/21/23 – Phoenix, AZ @ The Lost Leaf 4/22/23 – Miami, AZ @ Miami Loco Arts Festival

buckgooter.com

Buck Gooter on YouTube

Buck Gooter on Instagram

Buck Gooter on Facebook

Pacing’s “Aliens” is a Chill Dream Pop Song of Acceptance of Leaving the Earth With Mysterious and Benevolent Aliens

Strummed acoustic guitar sets the mood and meter of Pacing’s unusual slowcore pop song “Aliens.” Drums accent the lines and in the background we hear the sound of plucked strings that might be a keyboard or processed violin or harp, spare piano, flutters of electric guitar and at one point the noise of a car on a highway coinciding with the line “the car you drive.” It’s a spooky yet oddly comforting song and in the last sixth of the song two of the choruses are layered and it almost sounds like chaos yet it oddly syncs up with the vocals not quite harmonizing but close enough to seem like it. But the lyrics sound like the words of someone dissociating after an abduction by aliens with words about being in “the big space machine that they fly in the sky with the birds” and “I can see my house from here.” At one point in the song Katie McTigue drops in a quirky single word in observation in“cool” after the bit about being able to see her house, breaking the fourth wall of the song narrative, not unlike Laurie Anderson dropping in a “Hi mom” in “O, Superman.” The abrupt ending of the song could be ominous but the tenor of the song is one of acceptance of this unique and novel situation and with the way the world is now who wouldn’t want to be abducted by what seem to be benevolent aliens? Listen to “Aliens” on Spotify and follow Pacing at the links below.

Y La Bamba Explores the Contours and Shading of Complex Romantic Feelings on “Dibujos De Mi Alma”

“Dibujos De Mi Alma” is the lead single from the new, and seventh, Y La Bamba album Lucha. The title translates into English as “Drawings of My Soul” and with the usual inventive blend of styles it expresses a complex emotional state. Luz Elena Mendoza Ramos says the “song was written for a romantic partner right before the shutdown in 2020” and that it is “a song of longing for this person but at the same time trying to detach myself from the unhealthy parts of connection.” Which is a perfect sentiment for that confusing time that also forced many of us into a period of isolation and reaching an unusual clarity of priorities and boundaries. For the song Ramos and the band employ a typically shifting and layered yet spare polyrhythm in the percussion, bass and the orchestrated pacing of sounds. Her vocals sound like a reaching into the delicate places of the psyche for a conversation with self that teases out the strands of emotion to take in the honest resonances to glean a true gauge of feeling. The insights issue from the psychedelic tinge of guitar and the strength of singing Ramos brings to bear in the last half of the song as it fades into an elevated tone. It’s a song that is gentle in the beginning and has an effect like a psychological cleansing by the end with the sifting out of un-useful uncertainty and ambiguity in favor of a healing knowing of where one’s hear should be going. Listen to “Dibujos De Mi Alma” on YouTube and pre-order Lucha on the Tender Loving Empire website linked below.

Pre-Order Lucha by Ya La Bamba on Tender Loving Empire here.

The Veldt’s “Sweeter” is a Psychedelic Soul and Shoegaze Tribute to a More Transcendent Love

Shoegaze/alternative soul legends The Veldt released its new album Entropy is the Mainline to God on September 2, 2022 with a batch of songs that re-establish the group as a unique and powerful voice in the realm of genre-bending music. The video for “Sweeter” directed by xiouping features Daniel Chavis floating in a quantum vortex of images looking like he’s traveling through a wormhole to a higher state of being and following a route to a more transcendent love as per the chorus of “Sweeter/deeper/when you need her/love to love you.” It invokes some of the dreamlike moods of late 70s Donna Summer and late 80s Madchester if that whole thing had gone through a psychedelic soul revival. Watch the video for YouTube and listen to more of The Veldt on Spotify and Bandcamp.

The Power of Dax Compels You to Follow Your Better Instincts on “The Devil’s Calling”

Dax is always reliable for a visually fascinating music video and that for “The Devil’s Calling” is like a short existential horror film. In the song Dax outlines how he’s struggled with the forces of evil in his life and sees them threatening the people in his life as embodied by the figure of The Devil. Whether or not you’re a Christian, Dax’s embrace of his better instincts and habits as being with God as a source of strength against the influence of our weaker inclinations. He invokes, Malcolm X, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Rosa Parks as people who leaned on their faith as reinforcing a will to personal liberation and the song with its haunted yet urgent beat and Dax’s forceful verbal flow makes choosing the better path seem more desirable than the opposite even if you stumble along the way through life. Watch the video for “The Devil’s Calling” on YouTube and follow Dax at the links below.

Dax on TikTok

Dax on Facebook

Dax on Instagram

Night Hikes’ Warmly Dreamlike “Perfect Wonder” is a Soothing Reminder to Exercise Gentle Self-Kindness and Patience for a More Fulfilling Tomorrow

Night Hikes imbue the title track from their recently released Perfect Wonder EP (released March 24, 2023) with a dreamlike haze and an uplifting spirit. Its lightly distorted synths have a soothing effect that mixes nostalgic reflection with a hopeful wistfulness of opening horizons that Neon Indian had on the Era Extraña album. But there is no patina of regret and no “Perfect Wonder.” Its very much about accepting how things are now and how current frustrations, struggle and limitations are so often not permanent and with some effort and patience, with no small amount of self-kindness, you can get through those times to reach a better place. The lines “And when the present washes away/I let tomorrow make it okay/Somehow I know it’s all worth waiting for/And I’m inclined to stay and see.” This is not a sentiment of false hope, it is a very gentle pragmatism that requires only to resist egotistical impulsiveness and not blind faith so much as trusting in natural processes you don’t always know or see to work out. Listen to “Perfect Wonder” on YouTube and follow Night Hikes at the links below.

Night Hikes on Facebook

Night Hikes on Twitter

Night Hikes on Instagram

Chrome Waves’ “Under the Weight of a Billion Souls” Seethes and Resonates With Hope For a Brighter Future for Humanity

The performance video for Chrome Waves’ “Under the Weight of a Billion Souls” showcases the groups twin and complementary virtues. There is the feral and acidic vocals and driving beat one might associate with black metal as well as the rapid, ascending guitar riffs but paired with a moodiness and melodic touch that gives its more aggressive elements an immediacy and accessibility that allows its songs to reach a little deeper. This song in particular is expansive and its message of cultivating our collective responsibility toward one another as fellow humans and going beyond tribal obsessions and narrowly crafted and conceived social circles for our mutual benefit seems especially poignant and relevant at this moment in our development as a species. The yearning guitar arcs and gritty ambient soundscape both posits a question about if it’s possible to transcend our current social and psychological limitations and offers an emotional resonance suggesting in the affirmative if we want to. Watch the video for “Under the Weight of a Billion Souls” on YouTube and listen to more Chrome Waves on Spotify. The group’s new album Earth Will Shed Its Skin releases April 28, 2023 on M-Theory Audio (link to Bandcamp below).