Queen City Sounds and Art

Queen City Sounds Podcast S2E16: Eliza & The Delusionals

Eliza & The Delusionals, photo by Luke Henery

Australian pop band Eliza & The Delusionals release its debut full length album Now And Then in May 2022. The album came along as many have in the wake of the recent and ongoing global pandemic. The songwriting had begun in various stages of development prior to the pandemic and some prior to the group having embarked on the first leg of a big tour of North America in January and February 2020 with The Silversun Pickups. But the period of lockdown and then the prolonged time of not being able to tour with anything resembling reliability left the band with time to hone the songs and create an album that is brimming with a sense of nostalgia and reconnecting with a time in life and a time period in the early 2000s when perhaps if you were a kid in Australia or the USA, depending on life circumstances, you had the time and the ability to allow your imagination and your heart to take in experiences that stimulated both. Connecting with that headspace lending your current self the tools to navigate bringing a bit of that mindset into life today. In the fuzzy and chiming guitar work and singer Eliza Klatt’s melodious and exuberant vocals one hears an introspective articulation of a desire to liberate one self from one’s own limitations and of those imposed on you by circumstance. In this interview we were able to talk with Klatt about the origins of the band and its path to touring in support of its full-length debut.

Listen to that nterview with Eliza Klatt on Bandcamp and follow Eliza & The Delusionals at the links below. Catch the group with BODY at Lost Lake on Wednesday, 10/26/22 (doors 6:30, show 7:30).

elizaandthedelusionals.com

Eliza & The Delusionals on Instagram

Eliza & The Delusionals on Facebook

Secret Shame Explores Breaking the Cycle of Self-Harm as Self-Defense on “Color Drain”

Secret Shame, photo courtesy the artists

Secret Shame’s new album Autonomy releases on October 28, 2022 and the single “Color Drain” reveals new dimensions to the group’s songwriting. It’s material for the 2019 album Dark Synthetics were well within the realm of the death rock wing of post-punk with songs that shed great insight into the nature of trauma, addiction and mental illness and the struggles in coping with aspects of human behavior that are often fairly normal reactions to the pressures of living in a dysfunctional society. “Color Drain” finds the group in a more warmly melodic phase of its songwriting but one whose tenderness is not used to cover over the raw emotions expressed. It is a vivid portrait of living with the instincts of having suffered prolonged abuse, emotional and likely physical, and how those ways of surviving the experience can cause you to shy away from things that might be good for you suspicious of the motivations of everyone around you because you’ve had to live with the possibility that any act of kindness or tenderness might be the prelude to getting in deeper into your mind to elicit responses long lost to the emotional calluses built up from becoming accustomed to abuse. But the song dares to ask after the ways in which one might come to see this level of toughness, of learning to survive as romantic and how that pain becomes the way in which you know you can still feel in recalling it as a source of dignity when real dignity can be found beyond that dynamic. And that clinging to that dynamic even after you’ve somehow left the abusive situation can be a way to reinforce the pattern in anticipation of its recurrence. When your mind is focused on that pain to the near exclusion of experiences that can better define your life can be a difficult prospect to face and maybe that method of coping served its purpose. This song questions the boundaries of that way of being and living and in the end suggests the possibility of being open to help from those who don’t have a selfish agenda in a path of disrupting this circle of self-oppression. Listen to “Color Drain” on YouTube and connect with Secret Shame at the links below.

Secret Shame on Facebook

Secret Shame on Twitter

Secret Shame on Instagram

Queen City Sounds Podcast S2E15: Peel Dream Magazine

Peel Dream Magazine, photo by Samira Winter

Joseph Stevens has released three fine full length albums over the past few years under the moniker of Peel Dream Magazine including the 2022 record Pad. The 2018 debut album Modern Meta Physic presented a sound that had obvious musical touchstones in My Bloody Valentine, Velvet Underground and Stereolab as well as their own sources of inspiration. The hypnotic drones and fuzzy melodies over steady beats an obvious ear for crafting textural aesthetics that helped to shape the structures in the music. 2020’s Agitprop Alterna cemented Stevens’ reputation as a songwriter and artist who could combine heady atmospherics and widely dynamic music with poetic and insightful personal and cultural commentary. With Pad Stevens gently but significantly broke his own mold by swapping in a different sound palette including banjo, chimes, vibraphone and more extensive use of keyboards to create a softer sound that is more reminiscent of Harry Nilsson’s early 70s psychedelic pop albums and like those records there is a creative concept that runs through the album which is a journey in which Stevens is ejected from his own band, which is in most ways a solo project, and undertakes a journey to find a way back in. Though the soothingly dreamlike melodies and free weaving in elements of Bossa Nova and ambient folk gives the album an immediately palatable quality it is about the disconnect and anxieties that have careened into the general culture while taking a chance in finding ways to make connections again and to process the anxiety and trauma in a way that lands us in a better place. It reflects Stevens’ own journey from being a bit of a New York-based outsider to a member of the Los Angeles creative community. The album is worth a deep dive and allow its retro-futuristic sounds and style to sink into your brain with its therapeutic frequencies.

Listen to our interview with Joseph Stevens of Peel Dream Magazine on Bandcamp and follow the artist at the links below. Peel Dream Magazine performs at The Skylark Lounge on Wednesday, October 26, 2022 (doors 7 p.m., show 8 p.m.) with Calamity and Duck Turnstone.

Peel Dream Magazine on Instagram

Peel Dream Magazine on Facebook

Queen City Sounds Podcast S2E14: Rebecca Pidgeon

Rebecca Pidgeon, photo courtesy the artist

Rebecca Pidgeon is a singer and songwriter who was the lead singer of British pop band Ruby Blue in the late 80s. Around that same time Pidgeon embarked on her distinguished, professional acting career with her feature film debut in The Dawning (1988) starring alongside Anthony Hopkins, Jean Simmons and Hugh Grant. After Ruby Blue split in 1990 Pidgeon would eventually go on to release her debut solo album The Raven in 1994 launching a prolific career in music in parallel to her pursuits in acting which has lead to roles in films like State and Main (2000), Red (2010) and Bird Box (2018). Pidgeon’s latest album, which released on September 24, 2022, is Parts of Speech Pieces of Sound now available on CD, digital download and streaming on the various platforms one might expect. The album showcases Pidgeon’s multi-instrumentalist skills and richly melodic voice, Fernando Perdomo (bass, guitar, keys), Andy Studer (strings), Matt Tecu (drums) and Satnam Ramgotra (tablas). The use of drone, texture and melody might be compared favorably with the works of Jarboe and Alice Coltrane and likewise has an organic production style that lends the record an immediacy even as its compositions are simultaneously grounding and transporting to a tranquil and reflective headspace. The music connects her artistry with her explorations into science behind her lifelong yoga practice. It’s a unique pop record with evocative ambient soundscapes and delicate folk sensibilities.

Listen to our interview with Rebecca Pidgeon on Bandcamp and connect with the artist at the links below where you can find the places to order and listen to Parts of Speech Pieces of Sound.

rebeccapidgeonmusic.com

Rebecca Pidgeon on Instagram

Rebecca Pidgeon on YouTube

Rebecca Pidgeon on Facebook

Rebecca Pidgeon on Twitter

Nighdrator Gives Form to a Love Both Elemental and Vulnerable on “Scarlet Tendons”

Nighdrator opens “Scarlet Tendons” with the sound of water flowing and a mysterious keen in the distance before a distorted drone introduces clashing riffs and hanging rhythms that open a space for the vulnerable and introspective lyrics to follow. The music provides the sonic framework for an epic exploration of the nature of a kind of love that can engulf both people involved and the sensitivity and strength it takes to even try to make a connection that is so potentially deep work rather than getting lost in it. The metaphors of a love like the sea and the visceral image of scarlet tendons per the title and how tendons connect bones and thus a symbol for the core of your being and the motivating fibers that hold it all together. The heavy shoegaze sounds is a bit like the collaboration between Midwife and SubRosa that never happened but Nighdrator proves across its new four-song, self-titled EP that it’s primal, darkly psychedelic atmospherics stretch well beyond narrow genre definitions. Listen to “Scarlet Tendons” on YouTube and follow Nightdrator from Hattiesburg, Mississippi at the links below.

Nighdrator on Instagram

Queen Kwong Creates a Vivid Portrait of the Emotionally Stunted Wannabe Musician Male We Have All Suffered Ungladly on “Sad Man”

Queen Kwong really nailed an archetype of a man of stunted development trying to maintain a veneer of cool in the lyrics of her song “Sad Man” from her ambitious pop noir album Couples Only. But the video for the song has Johnnny Knoxville of Jackass fame playing the part of a figure like Havey Keitel circa Bad Lietenant. The lurid and gritty scenes while Kwong’s vibrant and dusky voice and haunted keyboard melody with Christian-Death-circa-Only-Theatre-of-Pain-esque guitar histrionics trace the edges of angst and agony on screen. Kwong herself plays a nun that serves as the conscience and reminder to Knoxville’s character of who he once was before he allowed himself to hurtle down a path of self-hating self-destructive hedonism and corruption. It’s all a powerful combination that anyone that has been part of any music scene in any city of size recognizes immediately but the specificity of Los Angeles is something we’ve all seen in movies and heard stories about for years except Queen Kwong puts the spotlight on the so not glamorous but much more common story of lack of success and clinging on to a myth and image of fake rock and roll romanticism rather than make an honest go of it with integrity. Watch the video for “Sad Man” on YouTube and follow Queen Kwong at the links below where you can also give a listen to the rest of Couples Only.

“VALE” is mirrored fatality’s Futuristic, Mystical Deconstruction of Late Capitalism’s Unraveling of a Sustainable World

mirrored fatality, photo courtesy the artists

The layers of image and sound represented in mirrored fatality’s “VALE” is the kind of glitch collage style mashup that pushes aesthetic boundaries. There’s no formal structure but that of the project’s own. It is a recursive flow of textures, tones and raw noise assembled as a reflection of the constant barrage of information to which we’re subjected daily. Except mirrored fatality in the video presentation of the track gives context of the erosion of our infrastructure and eco-system through neglect and the hubris of late stage capitalism. To someone conditioned completely to seek out only sound art in the form of conventional music might see and hear this stuff and think it’s just shy of random recordings of abstract internet memes placed together and that might in some ways not be far off the mark but it misses the point entirely. But people who have been tuned into what labels like Orange Milk and other forward thinking labels have been releasing in the realm of glitch-infused electronic music and artists like Giant Claw, Darren Keen, Goo Age and Andy Loeb will find that mirrored fatality’s aesthetics and arrangements not to mention the visual style much to their liking as the duo deconstructs the dubious virtues of our post-industrial society partly by creating music beyond the conventionally accepted zones of creative endeavor. Watch the video for “VALE” on YouTube and follow mirrored fatality on Bandcamp.

“Jangle med,” the solo offering from Orions Belte Drummer Kim Åge Furuhaug is a Refreshing Exercise in Free Jazz Lounge

Kim Åge Furuhaug, photo courtesy the artist

Orions Belte drummer Kim Åge Furuhaug puts in his solo offering in the band’s forthcoming set of solo albums from each member of the band (due November 18, 2022) with the lead single “Jangle med.” The song drifts along like a mellow boat trip down a tranquil stretch of river. Lap steel guitar stretches out a tone languidly as brushed drums trace a rhythm. Then piano runs replace the guitar in an offhand jazz style both urgent and following a simple chordal structure, in the background subtle upright bass thrums and provides a through line as orchestrated sounds swell and sax notes flutter and harp-like sounds chime in the middle distance. It sounds like a late 60s jam session but with modern instrumental choices in the palette but with the same freshness of improvisational composition that gave that music and this a compelling spontaneity of spirit that keeps you hooked until the end to see where the song ends up. Listen to “Jangle med” on Spotify and follow Norwegian avant-pop trio Orions Belte at the links below.

Orions Belte on Facebook

Orions Belte on Twitter

Orions Belte on Instagram

Ways Of Seeing Captures an Adult Sense of Heartbreak on the Hazy and Nostalgic “Walk Through The Crowd”

Ways of Seeing, photo courtesy the artist

The waves of repeating sound that course through Ways of Seeing’s “Walk Through The Crowd” flow like the ripple of memory that echoes through your mind when you’re reflecting on significant periods of your life. The touch of sultry saxophone in the song, the minimal percussion and impressionistic guitar work alongside the introspective vocals makes for a song that has a deep sense of nostalgia and regret accented by bell tones. One imagines a music video for the song in sepia tones and soft imagery. In the end it’s a sad song about letting go of cherished memories that bring you pain so that you can live in the present with what time’s left for you in this life. It’s a complex emotional expression and a depiction of heartbreak one doesn’t often hear in popular music outside of maybe something by The Church or another band that has managed to get well into adulthood and written music from an adult perspective and the giving life to the experiences that don’t fit neatly into the adolescent framing of a great deal of rock and pop. Listen to “Walk Through The Crowd” on Spotify and follow Ways Of Seeing on Soundcloud.

Live Show Review: Puscifer at Mission Ballroom 7/6/22

Puscifer at Mission Ballroom 7/6/22, photo by Tom Murphy

Puscifer’s most recent tour felt like more than a bit of rock and roll theater performance art. From the press photos of the band dressed up like parallel dimension Watchmen futuristic noir superheros replicated for the live show to Maynard James Keenan performing in character in more than one role to the stage sets and interludes between songs it was a full production from its early public announcements and intentional and conceptual aesthetics and execution. Chances are much of this was planned all along when Existential Reckoning was planned for the roll out in 2020 before the pandemic put all the brakes on anyone doing any shows much less a full fledged tour on every logistical level. It’s easy to imagine Maynard and the rest of the band having these ideas ready but this live show had the energy of pent-up exuberance let loose so that while not rough around the edges, there was an intensity that felt real and not an act in spite of the performance art aspect of the show.

Of course the show included what seemed like the whole Existential Reckoning album in its entirety and set up as a concept performance with Keenan and Carina Round on the ground level of the stage and on an upper area for various songs and for the final sequences of the show. It all felt like a futuristic rock and new wave glam rock fusion with sly social commentary. For most of the show the band forbade people in the audience from taking photos and such as perhaps an attempt to keep the focus on the show and its content and, well, the reason we all showed up to see the art rock glory of the band giving an exuberant performance informed by humor and intelligence. But what stood out most in some ways were the regular interludes in which the music took a pause and the video screens were filled with the image of Keenan as a mutant hybrid parody of Max Headroom and a conspiracy theorist TV show host and unleashing some of the most cartoonish and ridiculous examples of the kind of rhetoric you might expect and done so with a surreal glee that was the perfect break from the rest of the show. And yes, the concert in general had a level of stagecraft and content one doesn’t often see outside of a Nine Inch Nails or Radiohead gig so Puscifer in delivering arguably the best record of its career thus far did so with a riveting live show and the mix of humor and bombast you’d hope to experience.