Madeline and Jordan Burchill of Beth//James (whose song “Lion Eyes” appeared in Spike Lee’s BlacKkKlansman) wander through a light woodlands in the morning in the music video for “The Sun.” The songwriters directed the video with filming by Madeline Northway and the spare percussion and guitar work ease into and out of the song like waters coming in and out with the tide and the sun creeping over the horizon and back at dawn and dusk. The vocal harmonies the duo brings to bear with a warm elegance suits well the metaphor of the sun with the love of one’s beloved and how it might have been something of which one was wary not sure to trust it and its potential as a steady nourishing presence but accepting it as a benevolent energy in one’s life that illuminates the darkest moments and shins on those more celebratory. Watch the video for “The Sun” on YouTube and connect with Beth//James at the links below where you can listen to the rest of the duo’s new album Get Together.
It’s not too often a song about being in a relationship with a narcissistic people pleaser who gaslights a romantic partner sounds so driving and upbeat. But elison’s “Covered Me” has some energetic, fuzzy guitar riffs and hazy vocal harmonies in the choruses like a dream pop song with a bit more of an edge. The guitar solo toward the middle of the song sounds like something out of an 80s pop tune the likes of which you might have heard in a Kim Wilde song. But contrast in energy between the progressive pace and Marissa Kephart’s strong yet wistful vocals and lyrics that really capture the portrait of a person who lies all the time in order to maintain a self-image and an illusion for others of a lovable person who is popular with everyone and whose lies are so pervasive that the person with whom they’re involved in an intimate relationship never really knows where they stand and can’t trust their own feelings especially upon witnessing the faux charm exercised with others and the emotional abuse delivered in private. That contrast of moods and sounds is a little reminiscent of the way Rilo Kiley would have some of the most emotionally devastating and sharply observed lyrics paired with beautiful and uplifting songwriting. Which in the end makes the musical complexity implied by that contrast all the more effective. Listen to “Cover Me” on Spotify and follow the duo of Kephart and Scott Yoshimura as elison at the links provided.
Rupe is a 23-year-old songwriter from rural, north Louisiana and somehow on his single “growing up is strange” he perfectly articulates a sense of nostalgia and loss that people usually only really fully feel in their thirties or older. The hazy shimmer in the background is the perfect tonal backdrop to a spare guitar melody and Rupe’s introspective immediacy in his vocals. He brings to the song details of life in a rural town that translate well to the cognate from your own life of people and places that made up the social circle you took for granted at important stages in your life whether that was in your youth, your young adulthood, even middle age or older. When Rupe sings “I thought those times would last/This life just moves too fast” it just rings true and even more so these days when the social artifacts of our lives are being torn down and replaced with a corporate version of what once had more resonance and meaning because of the memories made and the social context of a time that sit fondly in your memory. And yet change we have to accept and not get stuck in the past and we hear Rupe’s own acceptance that life moves onward whether we’re emotionally ready for it or not with the closing line “And oh for once it feels right.” While it’s nice to revisit a wonderful time in our lives it’s also good to make new memories to add not replace or take away the old. The song is reminiscent of early 2000s indiepop but doesn’t sound particularly stylistically beholden to a particular artist. It just has that refreshingly earnest and intimate feel that puts a song’s hooks into your brain. Listen to “growing up is strange” on Spotify and follow Rupe at the links below.
Betts(JP) layers a lightly distorted and oscillating tone over one lighter in frequency on the track “Moire 05” to suggest organic, fluid movement per the title of the song. Rather than the visual effect the sounds convey movements and resolve like ripples on the surface of a body of water. The cover art displays the image of a pool of water with the waves moving outward from a center where perhaps a solid object or a heavy drop of rain fell from a leaf. The song has a similar specific differentiation of texture and vibe that is subtle but as with the ripples in the cover image there are aspects of how the water moves from that center that create unique visual and physical impacts as the wave moves from the point of impact. It’s an ambient song but like most ambient it’s not the absolute uniformity of mood but rather the subtle changes in dynamics as the waves of sound move outward from the point of creation and as the source of the sounds modulates and the the sonic energy decays over time creating its own sonic phenomena. It’s a deeply relaxing track that seems to have come from a place of deep observation and meditation on the details of our everyday universe that can be missed as we cognitively rush toward the stimuli that catch our immediate attention. Listen to “Moire 05” on Spotify and follow Betts(JP) at the links provided.
Porter Chapman is apparently most well known as the live drummer for The Moth & the Flame’s 2019 tour but with his single as Bad Heather,“Stay In L.A.” from his forthcoming Sad Heather EP due out later in 2022, shows not just some inventive production on the percussion but an energetically forceful songwriting. The song has an intentionally lo-fi sound that best suits the messy emotions expressed in the song with some grit and the distorted quality of amplified feelings. There is a feeling of charged emotion borne of having to deal with a clinger on who is trying to ride your coattails to some imagined higher place but insists they’re going to be huge out of an overblown ego combined with a lack of self-faith. You know the type and it isn’t just in some music or art scene but someone who thinks they can use other people as a stepping stone to asset their own sense of self-importance. Probably most of us have witnessed this misbehavior but Chapman has given some unvarnished expression of the frustration with that social dynamic. Watch the video for “Stay In L.A.” on YouTube and follow Bad Heather at the links below.
Manpreet Kundi’s breathy vocals on the acoustic version of “don’t wake me” seem to serve as the aesthetic style of the rest of the instrumentation on the track. The piano, the strings and even the spare percussion have a touch of reverb that convey a sense of space and an air of the dreamlike suggested by the song’s lyrics. Kundi seems to be singing about a preference for bright dreams of a life where her feelings aren’t treated with a dismissive spirit and where “no consequence, no heaviness” can bring down getting to feel a sense of hope and potential fulfillment even if just in that time before waking. The simple request of wanting not to be woken up before the dreams take their natural course is pretty understandable especially when waking life can have so many heartbreaking complications. The contemplative, wistful tone of the song has an intimate immediacy that draws the listener in with words and sentiments that draw on basic emotional needs everyone has at some point in their lives when so much of our energy and attention is demanded by jobs, by family, by friends, by the world around us and we need some time to enjoy a pure feeling of bliss separate from the emotional rat race. Listen to “don’t wake me” on Spotify and follow Manpreet Kundi at the links below.
Imagine an alternate universe where the Cold War never happened and the conflicts for de-colonization went more humanely than in our actual history and Saigon was a thriving city and cultural center in the mid-70s with an active and inventive psychedelic prog scene that emerged unburdened by the pressure of internecine civil warfare. The exuberant and even celebratory instrumental music heard on Ki!’s single “Nắng Ấm” might have emerged with its lively guitar melodies and jaunty dance beats a full five decades before its 2022 release and perhaps been contemporaries with Fela Kuti and W.I.T.C.H. in an international music scene where ideas could more easily and readily influence each other for the better. It is the soundtrack of a retrofuturist vision for a much more nurturing time ahead of us. Connoisseurs of 1960s Cambodian pop and rock as well the aforementioned and Mdou Moctar will probably enjoy what Ki! is doing on this song. Listen to “Nắng Ấm” on Spotify.
Plus assembled a team of collaborators in Nige Hood and Monogem to create the dusky, urgent and moody track “The End (El Final).” The arc of pulsing synth melodies and luminous drones alongside beats that feel like the percussion equivalent of call and response frame a story of someone who struggles with the temptations of not just everyday life to put you off your hussle but also the trappings of success that can be seductive with people flattering you and pretending to be your friend all while looking for their own opportunity in crawling to the top of whatever industry you can name because there is that unnecessary competitive streak and aspect of to most important endeavors whether it needs to exist or not. The song is about maintaining a healthy sense of self and not overfeed the ego and stick to strong foundational principles. It is about the hustle of being an entrepreneur and/or an artist and the precariousness of balancing integrity and authenticity with success and maybe let a little of the latter go if it means you can be true to what you know is best. Musically the track is somewhere between commercial mainstream hip-hop in production but more experimental in the soundscaping bordering on darkwave for an effect that it sounds like something you’d hear in an epic Michael Mann crime drama even though it isn’t itself about a life in crime. Truly a song for night driving. Listen to “The End (El Final)” on Spotify and follow Plus at the links provided.
KCPK’s short film for the song “ATOM,” as directed and produced by PANAMÆRA is a dystopian science fiction epic in its own right. The medium pace with the layers of dusky tone, narrowly accented beats, textural melodies and a sense of impending catharsis pairs well with the visions we see of a future where the human race is facing the destruction of the world and transcendence in the wake of a super nova that opens a portal to another universe or another part of the galaxy for the few that survived the conflict implied with the oranges and burnished reds of the color palette coupled with blackened imagery and a sense of the world as we knew it having been scorched by warfare and climate disaster. Visually reminiscent of a Luc Besson film or The Road (2009) the sounds seem to contrast with the imagery in its deep house soundscapes yet pairs well with the pacing and sense of the epic and a transformational climax. Watch the video for “ATOM” on YouTube and follow KCPK at the links below.
Green Typewriters formed in 2007 out of songwriting sessions between Gioja and Jared Lacy. The couple had met in New York when Jared was visiting a cousin and the two hit it off immediately. Gioja had grown up in Orlando, Florida and had moved away to get away from had felt like a narrow social circle with limited life choices at the time. The band named itself after an Olivia Tremor Control reference and its own songs came out of a similar love of transporting sounds and recording experiments and like OTC those songs ended up being as much pop as psychedelia. Green Typewriters became a bit of a fixture in Denver’s indie underground in the late 2000s and early 2010s before going on hiatus while Gioja attended mortuary school and Jared pursued graduate studies in philosophy and religion. Though the project has been around for fifteen years it had never had much in the way of official releases minus some burned CDs the band would give away at shows. So it’s 2022 EP The Solar Anus (named after the parodic essay by Georges Bataille) marks its first official release and on cassette with artwork by Wendy Danger York. The album was produced and engineered by long time DIY/underground musician Zach Bauer who some may know for his fine recording skills but others more so for his numerous experimental bands like the punk noise outfit Zombie Zombie, the doom metal-esque The Outer Neon, psychedelic post-punk group Wicked Phoenix and Can tribute band Future Days. Those who regularly attended shows at Rhinoceropolis may have witnessed Zach as a member of Spellcaster’s Rock and Roll Time Travel Committee. What is less known is Bauer’s gift for writing and recording artistically ambitious pop songs, a skill he brought to bear in helping Green Typewriters realize making fifteen years of songwriting into a coherent and vibrant set of songs.
Listen to our candid interview with Gioja and Jared on Bandcamp linked below. Green Typewriters will perform at Enigma Bazaar celebrating the release of The Solar Anus on Saturday, July 16, 2022 with Falcon’s Eye. To connect with the band visit it’s LinkTree for the appropriate avenues.
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