“Western Line” might well be the signature song of Neil Foster’s new album Stormlight. Its spare soundscape suggests a snow covered landscape traversed via rail and peering out the window, marking time by the towers and the steady shuffle of wheels on tracks and the mechanisms driving motion in the distance, the rest of the world obscured by the falling snow. Soft pulses of tone accenting stages of the journey and ethereal, all but wordless female vocals courtesy Utasvi Jha giving voice to memories and passing thoughts as you wend toward a mysterious destination. Listen to “Western Line” on Bandcamp and follow the link to give a listen to the rest of Stormlight. Connect with Neil Foster at the links provided below.
Is the sprawling collection of The Offspring CDs in the background image of the Bandcamp page for this album a big hint of what’s in store when you listen to this album from Chicago’s The Christmas Bride? Yes and no. Is there some irony involved with that presentation? Probably and a quick look through the track listing (“Kajagoogoo Head” and “Manic Pixie Dream Boy” come readily to mind) it’s obvious a healthy sense of humor in general and about life’s most absurd and unfortunate moments and situations informs the songwriting. Pop punk’s transmutation of pain and disappointment into self-deprecating poetry set to energetic music is the genre at its best and that dynamic runs throughout this album. It’s essentially a master class in pop punk with distorted melodies akin to what you’d hear on a Hüsker Dü record as on “Cereal Monogamist,” itself a send-up of the concept by taking the title literally for the lyrics. “The Rock & Roll Hippies of Love” is reminiscent of an Alice Donut song in turning an unusual concept into a surreal power pop song. “Kajagoogoo Head” is curiously a hardcore song in the middle of the album that is the mutant child of later Black Flag and JFA. The band’s signature song, “The Christmas Bride,” traces in miniature the un-glamorous origin story of the band working shitty jobs and aiming to do something with more meaning. And despite the deep and playful irreverence of the subject matter and attitude toward most of these songs there is an earnestness and solid sense of song craft that renders it a worthwhile listen beginning to end like an album of solidarity for real human existence and experiences born of genuine feelings that infuse each song with an unexpected vitality. Listen to Dark Romance of a Midnight Wanderer on Bandcamp.
“Peregrine” shimmers into your ear and takes you with soaring tones to an otherworldly realm as depicted in the Michelle Zheng-directed music video. The dream logic of the song and the video complement each other well. Luna Noon’s crystalline percussion muted bass ground the ethereal vocals and playful, ghostly synth melodies. The confused and disorienting, vaguely menacing interaction between the characters in the video before they reconcile and the lyrics of the song describe the way one can become lost in your own head swept up in a mood of the moment cast adrift on a sea of your own emotions. The song is reminiscent of Laurel Halo’s willingness to go off standard tonal structures and Holly Herndon’s surreal, percussive compositions and that artist’s own penchant for working in uncomfortable emotional spaces as a vehicle to explore one’s own lived psychological dynamics. Watch the video for “Peregrine” on YouTube and connect with Lunar Noon at the links provided.
Hugar processed multiple sound sources for their new single “volt.” Synth, piano and trombone all processed to a point of near abstraction and pure mood and channeled as a soothing flow of soft tones. It seems to replicate a time of thoughtful isolation while snowed in with memories of a sunny day drifting into your consciousness in contrast to the sound of winter wind outside heard faintly while your mind is focused on a neglected passion project that is best completed without distractions. The song itself while quietly commanding also hangs well in the background as a resonant set of tones that calm the mind and nudge your brain back on track. Watch the video directed by Blair Alexander Massie on YouTube and connect with Hugar at the links provided. Look for Hugar’s album Rift due out January 21, 2022 on XXIM Records/Sony.
Uèle Lamore orchestrates textures, melodic drones, percussive tones and swirling, swelling synths with a masterful command of dynamics on the single “The Dark” (from her forthcoming album Loom). The accompanying video directed by Akiko Nakayama perfectly embodies Lamore’s synergy of ideas and layers of sound with imagery that initially suggests plasma flares and evolves into the movement of liquid and air as if under a slide like a black and white oil projection with all the granular detail intact with the intricate and organic flow of disparate elements that together create a striking visual experience in absolute sync with Lamore’s bright and breezy yet focused composition. Watch the video for “The Dark” on YouTube and connect with Uèle Lamore at the links provided.
Nat Tate returned in the summer of 2021 with a modest two song single/EP called Penelope. The acclaimed songwriter and guitarist has produced some of the most inventive pop music in a more folk vein in the past several years and their work with experimental pop outfit Chimney Choir helped to realize Tate’s always clear and strong creative vision. Penelope is relatively speaking more minimal but also stripped back to simple and basic elements. The title track is a gentle and affectionate tribute to a loved one that expresses the uncertainties arc of that relationship and Tate’s persona insight and powers of observation in keying in to qualities of personality and behavior that might be missed by an artist with a lower degree of self-awareness. The shuffling percussion and keyboard accents that provide an unconventional melody that is a kind of counterpoint to Tate’s nuanced vocals. “Play Along” and its quivering echo treatment on the lingering fringes of vocals, the toy-like quality of the percussion track with staccato bass marking the boundaries of the melody and spare moody keyboard tones give an unconventionally surreal quality to a song about the ways people will often go along to get along and not question what other people want them to do as long as it isn’t too extreme even if it’s not what they might choose to do themselves. In that way it is one of the most tender calling out of someone’s bad impulses and instincts ever crafted into a song. It all marks a different direction for Tate who, whether it’s acknowledged much or not, has been pushing her own envelope as an artist from the beginning never being able to be pigeonholed in terms of songwriting, musicianship or mode of expression. Thus this is a promising new foray into the songwriter’s career thus far. Listen to “Penelope” and “Play Along” on Bandcamp linked below.
New Standards Men make music that defies simple genre categorization. Its threading together and fusing of multiple streams of influence has produced a music that has the subversive spirit of punk, psychedelia and the avant-garde, the technical prowess of jazz and metal and all informed by a sense of humor and disregard for stylistic convention. All while creating a prolific and surprisingly coherent and strong body of work including its 2020 and 2021 companion albums I Was A Starship and Spain’s First Astronaut respectively. The group came together in late 2016 when current members Drew Bissell and Jeremy Brashaw started jamming with another friend to produce music that drew on a desire to make music through a sort of improvisational/spontaneous composition approach that continues in the writing process to this day. The aforementioned albums were written and recorded during the same session but with the music having a slightly different flavor, one more heavy, psychedelic doom jazz, the other more John Zorn-esque free jazz. Companions in mood but clearly different facets of the New Standards Men sound. With now shows happening for over a year the group couldn’t release I Was A Starship in the usual fashion with the album release show but the record managed to pretty much sell out of its first run. It was then the band approached Chuck Coffey of the Denver-based Snappy Little Numbers imprint with the thought of reissuing the album and a tape of Spain’s First Astronaut and give a second wave of energy behind promoting those recordings. We had a chance to sit down with Bradshaw and Bissell to discuss their long history in underground music in both southern Iowa, where both spent much if not all of their formative years, and Denver and their deep comprehension of the dynamics of scenes as well as the process of making and releasing their music.
On Thursday, December 9, New Standards Men will have an album release show at the Hi-Dive as a co-album release show with Alien Neighborhood, joined for the night on stage by SPELLS and Moon Pussy. Listen to the interview with the band on Bandcamp below and connect with New Standards Men and Snappy Little Numbers at the links provided.
“Dream Weaver” builds in your mind images of clear lines, open spaces and unstructured time. The latter suggested by its spare rhythms and cycling melodic synth line with languid, echoing arc of luminous tones over delicate bass accents. It is the mood of a countryside train ride with hours to go to reach your destination and no demands on your attention or energy. It eases your mind into a leisurely state ready to take in whatever comes your way with a Zen-like tranquility. Its minimal techno beat is akin to more chill IDM or trance and while unobtrusive it isn’t music that fades into the background so much as actively soothes your conscious mind. Listen to “Dream Weaver” on Spotify and connect with Mokhov at the links below where you can also listen to the Solid State Dreams album in its entirety.
“Welcome to SMELVE VILLAGE” are the first words we see in KEG’s video for “Farmhands” before we enter a village of mushroom houses, green skinned short humanoids with pointy ears and the band performing in herky jerky manner citing a litany of complaints and observations which the aforementioned creatures object to with a parade carrying signs saying “HUMANS FUCK OFF” while one of their number summons a giant creature that shows up out of the local pond and consumes the band as the view pulls back and we come to see it was either a very strange TV show, certainly an unusual music video and/or a glimpse into an alternate reality we may not want to visit but where certainly magic is real and our species doesn’t dominate the world. There is some comfort in that mere possibility even as the band carries on with a frantic yet tuneful song of rapid guitar arpeggios and vocals on the verge of some kind of break. Visually the video is like a cross between what Dash Shaw did for My Entire High School Sinking Into the Sea, the cartoon style of Adventure Time and what Richard Linklater did with Waking Life. Musically imagine the borderline unhinged moments of The Rapture, the surreal wordplay and off kilter rhythms of Parquet Courts and the irreverence and disregard for all regular song logic of their own of Happy Mondays and you’ll be somewhere near the inherent charm of the track. Watch the music video below on YouTube and connect with KEG at the links provided.
“Teenage Teardrops” begins with a hushed and stirring dynamic to frame a narrative about the ways youthful aspirations and ability to see possibilities and find meaning in simple things like, as mentioned early in the song, meaning on a seven inch record, can be leached from your psyche if you’re in an environment that doesn’t nourish the soul in even the simplest ways. “I can’t cry anymore” is such a simply lyric but in the context of the song it encapsulates having reached a point where you find yourself in a place geographically and/or emotionally where you have lost the ability to even mourn a situation that no longer serves you because you’ve given so much so freely without thinking about it. When you’re young you think you have infinite time and opportunity to do what you would like but even at a young age bleeding yourself dry for a lifestyle or a job or a relationship or for anything or anyone can catch up to you. Later in life that timeline shortens and this song acknowledges that reality of having moments of vitality feeling like youth and when you’re tapped out it can leave you feeling confused and devastated. The orchestral quality of the song with melancholic piano and synths driving the melody while husky vocals seem to dance and sway with the gently strummed guitar line and finely accented percussion suggests a cinematic quality and experience evocative of everyday experiences elevated to the mythic. After that fashion it is reminiscent of where XTC went with its own songwriting from the mid-80s onward and early solo Barry Adamson. Listen to “Teenage Teardrops” on Bandcamp and follow the Rec at the links provided.
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