Queen City Sounds and Art

Live Show Review: Wallice at Mission Ballroom 02/24/22

Wallice at Mission Ballroom 2/24/22 photo by Tom Murphy

About five minutes into Wallice’s set it looked like someone had passed out or otherwise fallen down near the middle of the room. But instead of letting the show go on while staff took that person to another area the band stopped to make sure the person was taken care of while urging other people present to remember to drink their water and otherwise take care of themselves. When it was determined that things were fine Wallice Watanabe and her band got back into the swing of the music.

There were people present who didn’t know who Wallice is referring to her as the “opening act.” I didn’t know that her name was pronounced with the first syllable like the word “wall” and thus the name pronounced much like “Wallace.” But these distractions and observations aside, what Wallice’s singles and creative music videos didn’t make so obvious was how the songs were written aiming for more than a bedroom pop type of thing even if many of them were probably written in that way. All the singles you might know like “23,” “Hey Michael,” “Punching Bag,” “Little League,” as well as other Off the Rails tracks, and new material were showcased and Wallice commanded the large stage of the Mission Ballroom not like it was her or that of her bandmates first time on the stage. Wearing a cowboy hat and dancing about with dramatic flair and with little in the way of a set or special lights Wallice had obvious charisma and poise. The diversity of the material has been one of the songwriter’s strong points and one of the new songs came off like some kind of post-grunge rocker more than the pop songs but it all fit in somehow. Bassist Caleb Buchanan also engaged the audience directly at times and seemed like a long time collaborator (perhaps he is) and his contributions to great recent records by Mamalarky and Pulp are proof positive that he could easily add to Wallice’s aesthetic.

Maybe most people weren’t there to see Wallice having bought tickets to the Still Woozy show but with the strength of the material and the live performance, coupled with the graceful ease and friendliness of the performers drawing you in, there’s a better than average chance that in a year or two, Watanabe and her band of that time will be headliners in their own right.

“Olympic Skeleton” by McDead is Like an Instrumental, Wire-esque Soundtrack to the Exploration of Past Sites of the Olympics

If Wire had done a more pop score to the 2022 Winter Olympic games it might sound a bit like McDead’s instrumental post-punk song “Olympic Skeleton.” The driving, angular guitar lightly distorted with a touch of fuzz, playful interludes with call and response with synth bell tones, accented leads, start and stop dynamics that come off like freezing on an image for a second before the tenor of the song switches. Yet there’s a brightness to the song that contrasts a bit with the image conjured by the song title which might make those in the know recall the 2010 horror film Frozen (nothing like the beloved 2013 Disney animated feature). But there are no dire endings here and no morbid tones which gives the song a surreal aspect like someone years from now finding a skeleton from a lost fan or competitor found while excavating a former Olympic site and pondering on who that person is and how they got to be there. Perhaps it’s all just a play on words with the name of the project in mind and/or an oblique commentary on what happens to the sites of Olympics once the games move on to the next country following all the development no longer always put to civic use. And on that note, check out the song on Bandcamp and explore the works of Kev McDead by following him at any of the links below.

New Goo’s “Distancer” is a Finely Crafted, Ebullient, Otherworldly Indie Pop Gem

“Distancer” sounds like New Goo rapidly laid down layers of sound collage and yet this dynamic works as an unconventional architecture for what is essentially a pop song. It has a buoyant energy that carries you along for ride through bursts of sonic color and textures. Which is why Aspen De Rosa’s video (linked below on YouTube) with the bit about carnival rides seems so fitting. Dot Ashby of New Goo imaginative uses a keyboard chord that would be atonal in another context yet seems to perfectly complement Ashby’s breathy and melodic vocals. It never feels rushed and to say it’s reminiscent of a more manic and classic indie pop flavored Broadcast might be to overstate the song’s momentum and yet the song really hooks you from the beginning with sounds both alien and comforting that are instantly inviting into an alternative creative headspace that inspires repeated listens. Check out the track for yourself on YouTube and follow New Goo at the links below.

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Live Show Review: Cautious Clay at Bluebird Theater 2/18/22

Cautious Clay at Bluebird Theater 02/18/22, photo by Tom Murphy

Cautious Clay brought a bit of a package tour for his performance at The Bluebird Theater no Friday, February 19, 2022. With the 2021 release of his debut full-length album Deadpan Love, Clay revealed a songwriter who has come into his own with a strong and coherent creative aesthetic that spans and transcends narrow genres and the show beginning to end broke with obvious expectations.

Julius Rodriguez at Bluebird Theater 2/18/22, photo by Tom Murphy

The opening act was Julius Rodriguez on keyboards with drummer Brian Richburg Jr and bassist Philip Norris. It was jazz in that moody yet lively mode that seemed to draw on the mid-to-late 60s NYC jazz vibe. The energy and fluidity of the ensemble felt like classic post-hard bop improv with modern sensibilities in the electronics so a blend of the classic with the accessibly avant-garde. A lot of jazz in the last 40 years is boringly academic in approach and feel but Rodriguez is not cut from that cloth, his blending of almost lounge jazz style, funk and pop was compelling and captivating the entire time his trio was on stage.

Cautious Clay took the stage with a calm and chill charisma and exuded an ease and level of comfort that also didn’t mask how happy he was to see so many people coming out to support this run of shows in Colorado where he had three dates including on in Aspen. Julius Rodriguez took the role of keyboardist, utility percussionist and second guitar. The band rounded out with a bassist, a lead guitarist and a drummer whose names I didn’t catch (sorry, guys) while Cautious Clay (Joshua Karpeh) performed on guitar, flute and saxophone as well as provided the softly yet strongly soulful vocals. Across nearly twenty songs, including the encore, the band showcased why Clay is rapidly gathering a strong fan base with many people seeming to know the words to pretty much every song.

Was the music we got to see hip-hop? Is it R&B? Is it a smooth kind of funk? Is it jazz? It’s all of that and presented in an immediately accessible way due to Clay’s charismatic and relatable energy with words that are capable of articulating challenging feelings and experiences with a rare poetic clarity without offering hackneyed premises. His stories and sentiments hit as real but manifested creatively into song. This wasn’t Clay’s first time in Denver and he related how he had played, perhaps even at the Bluebird Theater then, in 2019 and had had a good time then too and the crowd for this show was certainly enthusiastic. I had only heard the studio material prior to the show but Clay exceeded any expectations I could have had. You might have been excused for thinking he might have performed solo with tracks and maybe one other musician but this performance was proof of his ability to sync with other musicians for the kind of musical alchemy that presents as much stronger and more visceral and vibrant especially when the musicians click and Clay brought with him some people familiar with his material who swung well into the music together with a spontaneity that makes for a striking show. Also the singer’s intelligence and basic human compassion was obvious in his banter with the audience and among his bandmates which makes a subtle but important difference for any artist and how their personality connects with people as fellow humans. If Cautious Clay isn’t playing bigger rooms on his next tour it would be surprising as word gets out.

The Wistful and Melancholic Tones of don’t get lemon’s “D.I.E.I.N.T.H.E.U.S.A.” is the Sound of Accepting a Dim Future That Hopefully Never Quite Arrives

don’t get lemon, photo by Anthony Flores

The second single from don’t get lemon’s album Hyper Hollow Heaven (out March 26, 2022 on à La Carte Records) has the rather dire title “D.I.E.I.N.T.H.E.U.S.A.” and the lyrics hit with the resigned nihilism born of an accurate assessment of where human civilization is trending. But the music is a special kind of lush, synth pop like bedroom production style Roxy Music or Crush-period Abe Vigoda. In the video Austin Curtis, the band’s singer, seems to party privately in the few creature comforts available in late capitalism before the utter collapse: oddly plentiful, Asian grocery items that seem like a cruel and surreal joke, karaoke night lighting and equipment, late night Vegas lounge aesthetic. This while the audio equivalent of VHS video fidelity and visuals to match has Curtis singing about basically being ready for the end of the world or at least the world as we know it and knowing that it’s kind of too late to do anything to stop it. One imagines if synth pop had existed in the fourth century Roman empire it would take on a tone like this between climate change, widespread political corruption and fiscal malfeasance, deep social divisions, international strife, pandemics and other crises that ended up rendering the most powerful economic and political entity the world had ever seen unable to rally to address the many built in ills that were contributing to its downfall. Many perceptive people had to have seen it coming and had there been a popular art form that survived we might have seen the ancient equivalent of a song like this born out of similar struggles, pressures and a sense that it’s all worse than a recession or political partisanship gone wild. This band personalizes the ambient anxiety of the time with a soothing song that commiserates with us a downer mood. But contained within it is the seed that we could turn this whole thing at least partly around but do you see anyone overthrowing the oligarchic power and economic structure in the next five to twenty years? Seems unlikely so while perhaps hoping and working for the best may as well enjoy some of the small joys of life before it’s completely over. Watch the video for “D.I.E.I.N.T.H.E.U.S.A.” on YouTube and connect with don’t get lemon at the links below.

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Dot Allison’s “Love Died In Our Arms” as Remixed by Lee “Scratch” Perry is Overflowing With Richly Emotional Seductive Energy

Having first come to prominence as the frontperson for One Dove Dot Allison has had a long and distinguished career with numerous collaborations and an acclaimed solo career. Now Allison has the distinction of having been part of Lee “Scratch” Perry’s final work: his remix of her song “Love Died In Our Arms.” The songwriter and vocalist has long had a gift for imbuing her work with a lush warmth and an enveloping quality informed by great emotional nuance. The almost undulating structure of “Love Died In Our Arms” lends itself well to Perry’s dub treatment as the breathy vocals float through reggae style instrumentation, echoing tones, a vibrant keyboard mid song like a non-linear, cinematic presentation of film slides from a person’s life projected in slow motion animation. It’s the kind of song in which it would be easy to get lost especially when played on a powerful sound system embraced by its alchemy of layered sounds and exquisite sound design coupled with its richly emotional seductive energy. The remix is part of Allison’s forthcoming Entangled Remix EP but for now you can listen to the single on Spotify and follow Dot Allison at the links provided.

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Elodie Rêverie Elicits the Spirit of a Great and Transformative Romance on “Casa I Don’t Know”

Elodie Rêverie, photo courtesy the artist

Elodie Rêverie brings a great deal of mood and atmosphere to her new track “Casa I Don’t Know.” With her usual sultry and widely expressive voice, Rêverie sings about a love that can and should happen and one that contains an element of mystery because they two people don’t necessarily know each other well or if they do that element of fantasy and purity of feeling toward one another hasn’t evaporated with familiarity. The music video for the song shows Rêverie, looking a little like a young Natalie Wood, frolicking around a private pool and giving attention to an unseen figure capturing intimate but not lurid moments in their life together. In black and white with footage either from or made to look like taken from an old camcorder with the “PLAY” indicater and the rightward pointing triangle in the upper left of the screen and the “SP” in the lower left letting us know it’s being recorded at the speed that produced the best image fidelity on that old technology. This touch and the small video glitches enhance a sense of nostalgia and old fashioned romance perfect for the tenor of this song. The piano melody, the whispery production on parts of the vocals, the slowly sweeping synth tones, it all gives the song a beautifully hazy aspect that lends the sense of romance an appropriately dreamlike quality as something it could all be and putting that intentionality into the songwriting. Many love songs are hackneyed but Rêverie’s ear for classic pop songcraft and imaginative yet sincere emotional performances with attention to dynamic nuances has consistently meant her songs are instantly affecting and durably appealing. Watch the video for “Casa I Don’t Know” on YouTube and follow Elodie Rêverie at the links below.

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Seven Layer Piano Cakes Captures the Uncertainties, Insecurities and Urgencies of Parenthood on “Remy”

Seven Layer Piano Cakes, photo courtesy the artist

Through his musical project Seven Layer Piano Cakes, Justin Hoyt offers us his single “Remy” about his young son. Plenty of artists have written songs about and/or for their children to the point where it’s all but a subgenre. But Hoyt begins with “Hey little man, the clothes I bought don’t seem to fit” and later “did your growing up have anything to do with me” and for a moment you may think there was some kind of separation but it’s really about how quickly your kids can grow up and you as a parent are usually just doing the best you can without much in the way of having a map for doing things right and never certain if what you’re doing is adequate or appropriate or helpful or nurturing the way maybe you should be or which would be optimal. Hoyt ponders these insecurities while hinting that being concerned about all of these things probably means you’re at least trying to do things the way you should and that will always mean more and be more effective than giving up and not trying to be at least a halfway decent parent. The melancholic tone of the song matches the uncertainty Hoyt expresses so well and the dynamic of the song shifting from slow moments of contemplation to urgent passages marking the seemingly impossibly rapid passage of time is a great evocation of how the pace of being a parent feels in the living it. Watch the luminously beautiful visualizer video for “Remy” on YouTube and connect with Seven Layer Piano Cakes at the links provided.

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Duchamp-Killer Created a Self-Decomposing Sonic Collage Automaton for “Live in the sounds”

Duchamp-Killer’s new single “Life in the sounds” is a bit like taking a journey through the composer’s usual Rube Goldberg-esque soundscape: looped, introspective guitar, sampled bubbles, various percussive sounds, rain stick, processed bird sounds echoing. All with a sense of motion and at one point the whole thing sounds like it’s being played in reverse order with some signal processing indicating the same. Like an ever evolving collage of sounds suggesting a tropical setting at twilight. It is as mysterious as it is playful, as simple as its aggregate of sounds reveals an expressive complexity that never seems overwhelming. And then toward the end this song that seems to be its own sonic ecosystem starts to unravel in organic fashion and dissolve into its component parts. Listen to “Life in the sounds” on Soundcloud and connect with Duchamp-Killer at the links below.

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Tablefox Honors the Struggle of the Modern Social Rat Race on “Keep Them Guessing”

Although from New Zealand, Tablefox channels strands of 90s Britpop on its new single “Keep Them Guessing.” The driving, atmospheric melodies and soaring yet grounded vocals and searing guitar work brought to bear also seem to evoke a sense of running ahead of a brooding menace and escaping just in time. What that threat might be doesn’t matter as much as the energy of that sort of motivation and eventual triumph gives the song an irresistible momentum. The song seems to be about that old chestnut about faking it until you make it and that elusive quality today in the age of social media accessibility of maintaining a mystique about oneself so that can be an asset even if it’s essentially a pose as much as projecting an image of glamour and all good times all the time. But hey if you’re one step ahead of your troubles and of people figuring out you’re not as cool as you’d like them to think or that they might initially think of you when they don’t see the real person maybe you’ll be alright. But is that a worthy goal and use of your time and energy in life? The song doesn’t answer the question but it does express some sympathy with the social rat race forced on most people these days in one way or another and in doing so the song honors the struggle even if it doesn’t quite celebrate it. Watch the video for “Keep Them Guessing” on YouTube and connect with Tablefox at the links below.