Queen City Sounds and Art

Pynch Elucidates the Gutting Sadness of Certain Kinds of Modern Love on Gorgeously Melancholic Dream Pop Single “How You Love Someone”

“How You Love Someone” finds Pynch exploring melancholic feelings from a slightly different angle than usual. The slow glitter jangle of the guitar melody with the vocals sounding every slightly weary and plaintive serves well a song about a relationship that felt like something truly significant but which ultimately didn’t and couldn’t work out the way either person wanted. It perfectly articulates not just notions of modern love as ultimately temporary experiences but how people can often be so in their own head about what they think they want in a relationship and the feelings they associate with that fantasy that when a real human being fails to live up to that the instant urge to move on sets in rather than taking the time to develop real connection and cultivating that and not needing someone else to be a kind of weird vehicle for personal wish fulfillment they can never be. The synth work provides a lively pulse and vivid tones while the guitars are delicate and fleeting in their almost impressionistic character. Altogether it sounds like the feeling of ennui and disappointment and indeed a deep down sadness that things that seem to have had promise really didn’t not because they couldn’t between two people but because the will to really try wasn’t a shared sentiment in enough time to salvage what might have been. Watch the also rather romantically doleful music video set in city nightscapes on YouTube and follow Pynch at the links below. The group’s new album Beautiful Noise dropped October 3, 2025 on Chillburn Recordings on vinyl, digital download and streaming.

Queen City Sounds Podcast S5E31: Ches Smith

Ches Smith’s Clone Row, photo courtesy the artists

Ches Smith is a drummer, percussionist and composer originally from California and now based out of New York. His career as a musician has been varied and acclaimed including playing on albums with and playing with the likes of John Zorn, Mr. Bungle, Xiu Xiu, Fred Frith, Pauline Oliveros Terry Riley, Marc Ribot (as a member of Ceramic Dog), Secret Chiefs 3, Nels Cline and Dave Holland. Smith’s mastery of technique is not divorced from a creativity in crafting rhythms to whatever musical style and mode or mood he finds himself contributing to or writing himself with his various collaborators. In 2025 Ches Smith offered his latest opus, Clone Row which includes performances from avant-garde guitar legend Mary Halvorson, jazz luminary Liberty Ellman and multidisciplinary sound artist Nick Dunston. It’s an album of music that moves with imaginative flow of layered rhythms and tones like if one of those more gifted 2000s math rock bands like Hella and Battles were more into fusion and free jazz. Although instrumental the songs speak musically with a cinematic quality.

Ches Smith’s quartet for Clone Row is currently touring the USA with a stop at The Federal Theatre in Denver on Wednesday, October 15. Listen to our interview with Smith on Bandcamp and follow the musician and composer at the links below.

chessmith.com

Eric Angelo Bessel’s Ambient Single “Scavengers” is an Enigmatic and Haunted Evocation of the Mysteries of Hidden Depths

Eric Angelo Bessel, photo courtesy the artist

Eric Angelo Bessel is half of Portland, Oregon-based, ambient post-punk experimenters Lore City. With solo work the sound palette is more abstract and ahead of the October 31, 2025 release of his second solo album Mirror at Night, Bessel offers the single “Scavengers.” All the sound sources have a quality as though having passed through the ocean before reaching your ears so that the tonal lines don’t doppler so much as they might with the wind but resonate in a linger and trailing manner. Like an impossible piano being played at the bottom of the ocean with its notes intact, a Phantom of the Opera of the depths, a piece for the lost episode of The Undersea World of Jacques Cousteau in which the crew discovers the entrance to the ruins of Atlantis or at least their showcasing the wonders of the underwater constructions of Nan Madol. There is something of a spirit of wonder to the track as much as it is enigmatic and when it’s over all too soon it leaves you yearning for more of the mysterious side of our world not yet completely mundaned by overexposure. Listen to “Scavengers” on YouTube and follow Eric Angelo Bessel at the links below. Mirror at Night will be available on limited edition 12” vinyl, digital download and streaming.

lorecitymusic.com

Lore City on Twitter

Lore City on Bandcamp

Queen City Sounds Podcast S5E30: Shonen Knife

Shonen Knife is a pioneering Japanese punk band that started out in Osaka in 1981 inspired by the kind of music that influenced the Ramones like 60s girl groups and by the Ramones themselves. The trio were a rarity in Japan in the early days as an all-female group and its lyrics about food, animals and pop culture paired with infectiously upbeat melodies were all but a precursor to pop-punk and a focus on everyday joys over the horrible things we often face in the world we experience. After all, if you only focus on the negative it’s harder to get through tough times. Shonen Knife embraced by American artists and labels like K Records in Olympia, Washington and Sub Pop out of Seattle and Sonic Youth, Red Kross and Nirvana who were instrumental in getting the band a record deal with Capitol Records in 1992 for the release of its 1993 album Let’s Knife. Shonen Knife has remained a bit of a cult band since and its reliably fun music and charming and energetic live shows has justified its legendary status. The outfit’s latest album Our Best Place got a 2025 vinyl reissue available on the tour and afterward through the Good Charamel website. The album is vintage Shonen Knife with fun and sometimes surreal songs about good times, beloved food and personal empowerment.

Listen to our interview with Shonen Knife co-founder, vocalist and guitarist Naoko Yamano on Bandcamp and follow Shonen Knife at the links below. The band performs at HQ in Denver, Colorado on October 9, 2025 with The Pack A.D..

Shonen Knife on Facebook

shonenknife.net

King-Mob’s Industrial Post-Punk Single “Buddha Tombing” is Like the Menacing Soundtrack to a David Fincher Thriller

King-Mob’s single “Buddha Tombing” started off as music for a short film and composed of experiments with an AKAI S900 sampler. But what has evolved from that sounds like a mutated hybrid of Dazzling Killmen and A Place to Bury Strangers. Like deconstructed industrial post-punk but with deep reconfiguration of rhythm so that it comes off like a real time hip-hop beat played with live instruments. It has an edge, a brooding menace and it sounds futuristic and beautifully disorienting with its riffs stretched to the breaking point. The fractured beats really make it when paired with the measured pounding of the drums so that it does have a cinematic quality like a soundtrack to a new David Fincher thriller. Listen to “Buddha Tombing” on Spotify and follow King-Mob at the links below.

King-Mob on Facebook

King-Mob on Instagram

King-Mob on Bandcamp

Queen City Sounds Podcast S5E29: In the Company of Serpents

In the Company of Serpents, photo by Tom Murphy

In the Company of Serpents began as a kind of doom band in early 2011 and its first few releases were crushing, heavy affairs that set the group apart from other doom acts of the time partly because the core of the songwriting was always a little different. The lyrics seemed informed by a more than passing familiarity with esoteric knowledge well beyond knowing who Aleister Crowley was or that the Ride-Waite Tarot deck had art illustrated by Pamela Colman Smith. The band has also benefited from having immediately recognizable artwork including its double cross icon with the serpent in a crossed over Ouroboros image. Around the mid-2010s or so, singer Grant Netzorg, formerly of dark Americana band Bone Orchard, realized that trying to be the heaviest band in a world where many other artists were already in that league wasn’t where he wanted to be creatively. His deep interest in cinema and the cinematic possibilities in songwriting lead him to exploring more atmospheric guitar ideas in the vein of Ennio Morricone and Angelo Badalamenti with shades of Daniel Lanois. The 2017 album Ain-Soph Aur reflected this shift most fully and the next two albums Lux (2020) and A Crack in Everything (2025) expanded upon these instincts for crafting deep sonic narratives. The new record, though, is a new frontier for the trio now comprised of Netzorg (vocals, guitar), Ben Pitts (bass, lap steel) and Andy Thomas (drums) as it is Netzorg’s most personal album to date in terms of the lyrics that all but openly discuss his struggle with addiction and confronting his now former mentality with creativity and radical self-honesty. It’s easily the band’s finest and most emotionally stirring record and the first to feature the new line-up on a recording.

Listen to our interview with In the Company of Serpents on Bandcamp and follow the group at the links below.

In the Company of Serpents on Facebook

In the Company of Serpents on Instagram

In the Company of Serpents on Twitter

“Let Go/Ascent” by SOHN is the Sound of Both Cosmic Horror and Existential Transcendence

“Let Go/Ascent” by SOHN is almost iterative in its slow flowing, evolving harmonics and melodic pulses as the track goes from distant and dusky to bright and present. The music video depicts a sunrise and the music itself reflects a time of early morning quiescence with a sustained, slightly distorted synth drone that elevates in tone gradually and then rapidly before cutting off suddenly to give way to throbbing synth lines and an icy synth backdrop. The video for this half of the song shows an eye blinking at the rising dawn sun. Sonically it’s reminiscent of Sinoia Caves’ saturated synth work for soundtrack to Beyond the Black Rainbow and Ben Salisbury’s and Geoff Barrow’s score to Annihilation. It’s an enigmatic mood with elevated, abstract, spectral melodies anchored by distorted low end that warps and modulated the stretch out the trailing ends of tone for an effect that’s both entrancing and foreboding. Watch the video for “Let Go/Ascent” on YouTube and connect with composer and producer SOHN at the links provided. SOHN at the links provided. SOHN’s new album Albadas (Dawn Songs) is out October 10, 2025 via APM Records.

The Analog Detail of loverghost’s “sweet tooth” Render’s Lends Deeply Vulnerable Love Song a Cozy Intimacy

For the recording and music video for “sweet tooth,” Virginia Beach’s art pop band loverghost undertook meticulous, even granular, execution of production to maximize the analog feel of all elements. Recording partly to a Tascam Portastudio 424 (who that recorded up through the mid-2000s didn’t have one of those and how many wish they had one now?) and a video that includes VHS live footage, hand drawn animation, processing through analog video synthesis (something one most often sees done at a live show) and printing out hundreds of frames through a thermal printer to lend yet another layer of something that seems like it’s coming from another time the whole presentation of the song is incredibly intimate. Which suits its tender sentiments expressing love for someone that doesn’t really get and thus appreciate music which is a bit of a quandary if you’re a musician who these days have to orient part of their navigation of getting the music out toward the attention economy that is partly ruining the purity of creating and experiencing music directly. Musically it resonates with Broken Social Scene’s “Anthems For A Seventeen Year Old Girl” and its own deeply vulnerable energy. The song balances openly confessional affection and acceptance of potential rejection and being willing to risk that heartache if the feelings aren’t mutual. Knowing how much effort went into the final presentation of the song isn’t essential but one can feel the love and care that went into the whole thing listening the song and taking in its fascinating visuals and that makes a major difference in a world where so much music is treated as disposable by culture and for sure by the industry. Watch the video for “sweet tooth” on YouTube and follow loverghost at the links below.

loverghost on Instagram

loverghost on Bandcamp

Queen City Sounds Podcast S5E28: Melodies Never Lie

Melodies Never Lie is the solo project of Isaac Rivera. The musician/songwriter grew up in Denver and in the 2000s Rivera was part of the more left field end of the Denver indie scene as a member of chamber pop group Mehko and The Ocean Birds. He went on to more experimental musical projects before attending graduate school for Geography in Seattle, Washington for a handful of years. Shortly after the early COVID-19 pandemic Rivera returned to Colorado to take up a teaching position and reconnected with the musical community that has welcomed him in the 2000s and 2010s in the underground and DIY circles he had most been a part previously. In 2023 he started writing music for what would be his next project Melodies Never Lie. In November 2024 the debut album from the project When We Fall & Rise Together released digitally and on cassette and revealed Rivera having fused his more experimental leanings with his instinct for crafting melodies for a style that was both ambient and the kind of experimental indiepop and rock that had inspired him earlier in life. Less than a year later in June 2025 Rivera issued There’s Not Such Thing As Too Many Flowers. The new album built upon his experiments in synth, guitar, loops, percussion, electronic production and vocals for an album that delves deep into grief and the subversive and revolutionary possibilities of finding hope within oneself and one’s genuine connections with others and encouraging and cultivating the inherent dignity and unique gifts of each other. It’s an album that draws on more conventional and traditional melodic structures while stretching those beyond the usual boundaries and challenges the scarcity and conformist ideology of capitalism in the title of the album and the organic sprawl and informal structure of the songs.

Listen to our interview with Isaac Rivera on Bandcamp and follow Melodies Never Lie at the links below.

Melodies Never Lie on Bandcamp

Kramies’ Psychedelic, Orchestral Pop Single “Hollywood Signs” is a Trip From Haunted Headspaces to Tranquil Accceptance

Kramies’ lead single from the forthcoming new album Goodbye Dreampop Troubadour (out October 10, 2025) “Hollywood Signs” emerges as almost a musical avatar of the historic times we’re living through. Produced by David Bowie producer/engineer Mario J. McNulty, the song has a measured pace, sheets of spectral background harmonics and the songwriter’s voice relating a portrait of a relationship that has long since fallen out but where the connections linger. The lightly psychedelic choruses are reminiscent of something a gentle mashup of Sgt. Pepper’s and Days of Future Passed. Along with that an orchestral sensibility in the way the song is structured. The song sounds both deeply haunted and as though the feelings it conveys sustain an immediacy that keeps you engaged throughout. It’s the kind of song you can and want to lean back into for the trip through its melancholic spaces to its conclusion being left on the side of a pastoral roadside with the last of the warm mornings coming on before the full swing of fall in a state of rest—emotionally, physically and spiritually. It’s a perfect song for this season. Watch the beautiful lyric video with its lo-fi animation on YouTube and follow Kramies at the links below.