Queen City Sounds and Art

Tomike Smoothly Makes the Case for Sticking With Your Values and Ethics on Electro-R&B Track “Need to Go”

Tomike_NeedToGo2_crop — Tomike, photo courtesy the artist

Tomike addresses an issue most people have dealt with in some fashion in their lives on her single “Need to Go.” The track, a follow up to her 2019 EP Stage of Love, is about finding yourself where you think you want to be only to find you are not around people like you, not around people who really even understand where you’re coming from or who can relate to your values. In her specific case, Tomike was inspired by her experience of being a graduate of law school with the corporate world ahead and potentially a lucrative career but one where you end up maybe using your knowledge and skills toward ends that don’t fit with your morals and ethics. The lushly electronic R&B song flows with seemingly effortless grace as Tomike’s gently soulful vocals lay out the scene and addressing issues of race in a way that honors her specific experience while universalizing the struggle with setting aside the path that would seem practical and which you’ve worked your whole life to attain only to find maybe it isn’t what you thought it could and would be. It’s a dilemma but one that Tomike makes seem not so difficult in the end by deciding to exit the scene that would force her to compromise not just her values but herself. Listen to “Need to Go” on Spotify and follow the Irish singer-songwriter at the links provided.

open.spotify.com/artist/1kETB3sIaKJ2uuC9xb6eCI
twitter.com/xoTomikexo
instagram.com/tomike_j

Carley Sunn Eviscerates Power Tripping Narcissists on “How Many Horses Do You Have?”

CarleySunn_HowManyHorsesDoYouHave1_crop — Carley Sunn “How Many Horses Do You Have?” cover (cropped)

“How Many Horses Do You Have?” finds Carley Sunn dipping into a glimmering, bass and synth driven 80s-era synth pop/new wave post-punk sound, like maybe the songwriter was taking in a lot of The Sound’s middle era, Sparks and early Wall of Voodoo. Maybe Sunn was into Echoes period The Rapture too or Les Savy Fav. What gives the song an interesting dichotomy is like all of those bands there’s the bright, melodic atmospheric element paired with an emotional intensity to the vocals. The story of the song is about a power tripping hypocrite who seems to have taken all his manufactured success symbols of proof for his validity as an authority figure. “How many damsels have you saved? How many pirates have you killed?” the vocalist asks in mockery of the faux heroics and the title of the song taking that dig even further. One only imagines the exact inspiration behind the song but we’ve all been in situations where someone in our lives seems to have so much power over us for a while, always entirely too long, and they seem to get a thrill out of their ability to control us and manipulate us thinking we don’t see through them and that their power will last forever when it never does. Listen to “How Many Horses Do You Have?” on Spotify and follow Carley Sunn on Instagram.

Ellie Moon Masterfully Walks the Line Between Exuberance and Insouciance on “Indecisive”

EllieMoon_Indecisive1_crop — Ellie Moon “Indecisive” cover (cropped)

Ellie Moon’s video for “Indecisive” looks like something she might have shot for Instagram stories post with the minimal effects and cartoon-y lettering. She looks so over it until she engages directly with the chorus of the song where her animated dancing matches the uptempo moments of a song in which she explores the myriad choices that seem to be imbued with importance and the quandary of struggling to choose between every decision for everything in one’s day with competing demand affecting seemingly everything you do. “I used to be indecisive but I’m not so sure” is the key line to the theme of the song but one thing that doesn’t seem so tentative is the way Moon seems to effortlessly blend styles from a Herb Alpert horns-inflected indie pop by way of Red Pony Clock to a relentlessly upbeat, sweeping melody and a paradoxical mix of exuberance and insouciance. The contrast between these modes and moods gives what might otherwise be a solid pop song some creative depth that isn’t common enough. Watch the video for “Indecisive” on YouTube, follow Ellie Moon at the links below and look out for her forthcoming EP Moonisms due out in 2020.

instagram.com/thisiselliemoon
facebook.com/thisiselliemoon
twitter.com/thisiselliemoon

“Hineh Ani” is a Vibrant Example of Rachel & Eliyahu’s Expression of Love of Culture and Each Other From Their Album Open the Gates

RachelNEliyahu_3crop — Rachel & Eliyahu, photo by Briana Di Mara

Eliyahu Sills and Rachel Valfer have made a name for themselves among fans of world music as members of The Qadim Ensemble, a group whose music synthesizes various musical traditions of the Middle East. Their new album as the duo Rachel & Eliyahu Open the Gates (released on January 31, 2020) is a collection of Jewish Middle Eastern music inspired by both contemporary work and the more traditional. The single “Hineh Ani” displays the lively and richly imagined compositional quality of the project’s music incorporating wind and string instruments, percussion, harmonium and dynamic, melodic vocals in Hebrew. The impetus behind the writing of the album was to demonstrate a love for culture, the music therefrom and for each other and the songwriting reveals layers and nuances of that love in the sonic details of musicianship and the polyrhythms inherent to the music giving it an ever-evolving and hypnotic quality while maintaining a vibrant and energetic quality. Listen to “Hineh Ani” on Soundcloud.

“Pray For Me” by WITCHZ is a Heartfelt Plea for Aid in Transcending the Grips of One’s Personal Demons

WITCHZ_PrayForMe1_crop — WITCHZ, photo courtesy the artist

“Pray For Me” by WITCHZ combines a bit of lush spaghetti Western guitar with trap production, reggae and highly emotional vocals. It evokes the imagery of someone looking back on the personal demons that have to some extent helped to define his life and its direction with a melancholic ambivalence. The structure and signal processing on the song has a cinematic quality, particularly when the rhythm slows down like a film that is warping out in front of you, like the chapters in one’s life hitting you as points at which you recognize in retrospect that you had a chance to take a different path but you feel like you took the turn that led further down negative road. And yet the song is a plea for help in climbing out of one’s own personal hell into a better place, to redemption and a chance to free oneself of those demons once and for all. Listen to “Pray For Me” on Spotify.

Yaglander Has an Ambivalent Existential Crisis on “Changing Lanes”

Yaglander_ChangingLanes1_crop — Yaglander, image courtesy the artist

Listening to “Changing Lanes” by Yaglander, one thinks of The Clean and The Fall and their gift for combining lo-fi production, loose guitar jangle, slackery vocals and a knack for an unconventionally tuneful melody. The minimal guitar riff punctuated by a lively keyboard arpeggio alongside vocals that sound like they were sampled by on a mono recording from the radio gives the song an strange quality of mixing not just styles but eras of recording and songwriting. Like a collage of indie pop and garage rock this song about aspiring to commit to a course of action and mentality but being unsure where to direct that energy when too many things seem viable but also doomed to failure or disappointment. Or, frankly, that choosing would demand too much of you and where you feel you’ve been comfortable in what you assume is the core of your personality. It’s also a song about thinking you know who you are and what your identity might be and your values only to be struck by the realization that, like too many politicians in our time, you really stand for nothing and your values are contingent on what you think are polar opposites in the world around you where everything seems to be changing whether you’ve adapted or not. Listen to “Changing Lanes” on Soundcloud and follow Yaglander at the links below.

soundcloud.com/user-825645319
open.spotify.com/artist/0ZrNtIUB2Ek9DGgg7jwkTb
yaglander1.bandcamp.com/releases
facebook.com/yaglander
instagram.com

Linebug’s Video for “White Nights” Displays a Journey Out of the Stasis of Personal Darkness Into the Brightness of Living

Linebug_WhiteNights2_crop — Linebug, image courtesy the artists

With 2,200 hand-drawn frames, created by digital artist Christian Gundtoft, the video for Linebug’s “White Nights” captures the sense of utter emotional isolation in the depths of depression. The pulsing omnichord and piano progression counts out the meditative passage of time in which you feel trapped in your own head, helpless. The figure cast in white in bed surrounded by black is so evocative of being in the seemingly perpetual grey zone of emotional stasis. But Line Bøgh’s breathy vocals serve as a sort of guiding light out of that realm singing about how Spring and its greater sunlight chases away some of the gloom of seasonal depression and augments the will to pull oneself out of one’s prolonged downstate generally. The video mirrors the heightened mood of the song when the subject of of the video dons the read dress and exits the dark room into a field of light. Rather than being trapped by the dark, the possibility of stepping into a world of movement and freedom seems possible with some patience and holding on to what faith that things can be different that may still linger deep within during those prolonged periods of psychic funk. Watch the video for “White Nights” on YouTube and follow Linebug at the links below. Recently Linebug toured using the video art as a projection for the concert so if you have a chance to catch the Danish artist live, you may get to witness the full multimedia presentation.

facebook.com/linebugmusic
instagram.com/linebugmusic

Noukko Ponders the Deeper Meaning and Intersection of Life and Creative Expression on “The Soup”

Noukko_TheSoup1_crop — Noukko “The Soup” cover (cropped)

From the video for “The Soup” one might get the impression that Noukko does everything on the song including the video. And she nearly did excepting Ronald Kool shooting the video and Michel van Schie mastering the track. You see Noukko play all the instruments, sing and act. It reflects the creative integration of a song pondering the nature of existence while juggling the demands of life and our personal drives and curiosity about how it all fits together and if what we’re doing has any significance and importance beyond our immediate social and cultural context. The overarching theme of the song informs the songwriting and the sonic details as the percussion is more expressive than conventional, the distorted guitar lead wouldn’t be out of place in some 90s alternative rock song but here waxes contemplative, the cadence and lilt of the vocals suggest some Kate Bush influence without being imitative merely tapping into some of the existential queries that Bush delved into as well, the minimal keyboard and piano work places an upward melodic structure that gives the song an elevated quality. Yet all these idiosyncratic elements give what might otherwise be simply a solid pop song a more creatively ambitious cast without hitting you over the head with its weightiness. Watch the video for “The Soup” on YouTube and follow Noukko and Ronald Kool at the links below.

noukko.com
soundcloud.com/user-600686401
open.spotify.com/artist/1tSC2akd29inEOKNBcfHun
youtube.com/user/MEGAKOOLmusic/videos

yuh Evokes a Misty-Eyed and Hopeful Morning After on “Without a Trace”

Yuh_WithoutATrace1_crop — yuh, “Without a Trace” cover (cropped)

Intertwining, bright, distorted synth swells and impressionistic guitar ring in “Without a Trace” by yuh. When the vocals come in they sit in the mix like another instrument, processed to phase slightly contemplating the morning after. But rather than having all that central a role in the song the words muse wistfully about what happened as trickles of the new day, and new possibilities, come in and sweep away any attempt at imposing greater than warranted significance or misplaced regrets, rather, focusing on impressions and what made life feel a little more magical for some fleeting moments. The splash of synth, the repeating guitar figure and twinkling percussive sounds like ethereal windchimes take us out of that reverie and into emotional daylight. Listen to “Without a Trace” on Soundcloud and follow yuh there as well (linked below).

soundcloud.com/yuhfavoriteband

Stephen Caulfield Captures the Sense of Mystery and Wonder at Seeing the Lights of a Ship Passing in the Dark On “A Light In the Sea at Night”

StephenCaulfield_FieldOfView1_crop — Stephen Caulfield, photo courtesy the artist

There is something mysterious and tranquil about seeing the lights of a ship on a large body of water at night as it passes either in the distance or nearby. Whether a passenger ship or a ship of a different purpose whose navigation lights alert you to their presence in the darkness. Stephen Caulfield gives voice to that stirring of the imagination on his song “A Light In the Sea at Night.” Slow pulsing drones cross over each other and distort at that intersection of tone to embody the break in the darkness from the ship lights, the fluidity of the motion and in the background a hint of sound like the ship’s radio providing essential data or a program played to have something human with the crew at the helm through the night when they’ve all talked about each other’s lives into oblivion and it’s too late to have anything interesting to say. Caulfield captures both the way sight of the ships is striking and sets the mind to wonder where the ship might be going or coming from and who would be aboard at that hour as well as the comfort in the meditative isolation from the everyday world that must exist if you’re on the crew, the movement, the constant sound of machines operating, the lap of the water on the hull and the sounds one chooses to bring aboard to maintain that connection to a world outside such a hermetic setting. Listen to “A Light In the Sea at Night” on Spotify and follow Stephen Caulfield at the links provided.

music.apple.com/gb/artist/stephen-caulfield/373965991
soundcloud.com/stephencaulfield
open.spotify.com/artist/195QIuEghR5Q1Sw9YaRd80
youtube.com/channel/UCx91H6ozB4oFSfQHJfjhyXQ
twitter.com/scaulfield
facebook.com/stephencaulfieldmusic
instagram.com/scaulfield