Carly Paradis sounds like she should be singing from a heavenly chariot on “The Crushing Weight Of History.” Joined on vocals by Jonas Bjerre of Danish alternative rock band Mew, the song is large, sustained chords and scintillating ambient tones, horns and strings accenting the majestic dynamics. The title suggests an elevated subject whether that’s the actual weight of history on the world scale or the weight of one’s own personal history coming in to cast a shadow of doubt and uncertainty in the face of something that seems promising and not wanting to jinx it by mulling over one’s mistakes and letting one’s past eclipse the good in your life. An epic, melodramatic love song with grace and grandeur is rare but with the help of Michael Stein of S U R V I V E and Doug Dare of Erased Tapes and other collaborators, that’s what Paradis has crafted here. The song is the lead track from Paradis’ third album Nothing is Something which was released this past Friday, November 29, 2019. Listen on Soundcloud and follow Paradis at the links provided.
ZEDSU’s single “Love Liquor” flows with an easy energy synergizing lush production and a melancholic guitar loop. The latter combining precision with an introspective tone. ZEDZU’s lyrics are a poetic meditation on the complications that can happen with love when a rival wants to take what is perceived as rejection as the pretext for violence. It’s as though the vocals are one side of a conversation in which the narrator tries to come to terms with such extreme feelings without saying they’re invalid. It’s a tricky point to discuss and ZEDSU offers no solutions except to hint at the foolishness of needing for there to be violence when that won’t get the aggrieved party what they want anyway. ZEDSU zeroes in on that tragedy, and thus the melancholic mood, of that conundrum in which many people have found themselves. It perfectly articulates the idea of escalated ambivalence not know what to do or what is the best thing to do in a situation where you must make a decision even when you know anything you do is going to hurt someone and the poignancy of that moment. Musically it hearkens to that 2002, self-titled Hymie’s Basement album on which Yoni Wolf and Andrew Broder combined psychedelic folk and hip-hop so effectively and creating a fascinating hybrid sound. ZEDSU brings together similar elements but with the production and the effect on the voice, there’s a hint of the more luminous end of modern pop as well and its own incorporation of sounds out of electronic dance music and trap. The song doesn’t hit you over the head with its originality in the beginning but by the end its perfect blend of styles and emotional colorings into its own sound is strikingly so.
The structure of Half Shadow’s “Gravity” is a fascinating thing to chart as the song seems to be made up of intersecting structures of rhythm following an intuitive path. Like with each iteration of lyrics is an iteration of thought, sketches really, with a new permutation of what has come before as Jesse Carsten ponders one of the central mysteries of our universe and how it might impact our everyday lives. He starts on the cosmic scale with “What if gravity turns out to be everything / They say the moon holds us where we are.” Then on to considering how the waves of gravity are “shaping us mysteriously” and how it has shaped the entire universe as well. It is one of the aspects of the universe that Stephen Hawking tangled with throughout his studies of cosmology and one whose nature is still not fully understood by science beyond its observable effects. The gentle, hypnotic acoustic guitar riffs of the song loop and reverberate as if serving as an analog to the often subtle effects of gravity. Fans of Karl Blau will appreciate how the song uses natural reverb and creative composition to create an analog mirror of a more electronic music aesthetic. Others may hear echoes of Sam Mickens’ adventurous rhythms and tones with The Dead Science. In the context of the rest of Half Shadow’s great 2019 album Dream Weather Its Electric Song “Gravity” is a step in a journey to understand the mysterious corners of the world that affect us and influence our lives and who we are from our physical form, the environment in which we navigate life and how it all influences our cognition. Carsten strives to find meaning in these mysteries of the natural world and the subconscious mind across the eleven songs of the record through deconstructing familiar songwriting styles and bring the logical mind into alternate pathways of operating. Listen to “Gravity” on Bandcamp (where you can also hear and download the whole album) and follow Half Shadow at the links below.
Yune taps into a rich sonic palette on its single “Ørkensangen.” It sounds like loops of organic sounds IDM style mixed with subtle synth work, dub-like bass and luminous vocals. The name of the song translates to English from Danish as “The Desert Song” and its rhythms informed by Tuareg musical structures so its whole aesthetic has an expansive, dreamlike quality designed to allow the imagination to wander along with its interlinking patterns and outside the strictures of linear Western thought while preserving a sense of the familiar like memories of a dream just out of reach of the conscious mind. Fitting for a song about going within to search for answers when everything seems hopeless and perhaps pointless and coming out with a sense of being at peace with uncertainty about the future. Listen to “Ørkensangen” on Soundcloud, follow the Danish quintet at the links below and look for the debut Yune album in March 2020.
What:Black Mountain w/Ryley Walker When: Friday, 11.29, 8 p.m. Where: Bluebird Theater Why: Black Mountain is one of a handful of bands that was associated with 2000s “stoner rock” that evolved past and beyond the tropes of that genre. Probably because from the beginning the psychedelic end of its sound was more developed than some other bands that were essentially making a form of what’s now called “drone metal.” But even at the beginning, with its 2005 self-titled debut, the band wrote heavy songs with an ethereal tonal architecture like “Heart of Snow.” The group’s 2019 album Destroyer is its first with former Sleepy Sun guitarist/vocalist Rachel Fannan and Adam Bulgasem of Soft Kill. It sounds like it has more extensive use of synthesizer than previous albums and thus having more in common with obvious influences like Hawkwind and Can. Live the new direction for the band has been more immersive and hypnotic without sacrificing its rock and roll punch, a testament to its integration of its musical instincts and incorporation of even more of Jeremy Schmidt’s transporting synth work which he used to great effect on the soundtrack to dark science fiction film Beyond the Black Rainbow under his moniker Sinoia Caves.
What:Cheap Perfume Burn It Down album release, SPELLS, Plasma Canvas and Wild Lives When: Saturday, 11.30, 8 p.m. Where: Hi-Dive Why: Cheap Perfume is the Colorado Springs-based punk band who make no bones about their feminist political orientation but that really should be part of anyone’s agenda in the modern world and a centerpiece of any human who claims to have morality, ethics, basic human decency and concern for human rights as part of their perspective on the world. But Cheap Perfume makes it fun with pointed songs that while sometimes snarky are heartfelt and clever but with no fence sitting. Its new album, Burn It Down, is being released this night with some of the Mile High City’s best punk acts sharing the stage for the occasion.
Tuesday | December 3
The Allah-Las circa 2014, photo by Tom Murphy
What:Allah-Las w/Mapache & Tim Hill When: Tuesday, 12.3, 7 p.m. Where: Gothic Theatre Why: In the rush to cop the 60s and early 70s southern California sound in the past half decade and more so many bands seem to have mimicked those Laurel Canyon artists outright. Allah-Las dipped into a similar pool of references but didn’t forget to write great songs or to inject that with modern sensibilities. Its soundscapes are paired well with entrancing melodies and not merely indie rock with some reverb and chorus and a laid back vibe. Its 2019 album LAHS is typically introspective and expansive with more than a dash of playfulness.
Wednesday | December 4
Men I Trust, photo by Tom Murphy
What:Weird Wednesday: Sporehive, Fables of the Fall, Babushka’s Naughty XXXmas Carols, DJ Andy Z When: Wednesday, 12.4, 9 p.m. Where: Bowman’s Vinyl and Lounge Why: Weird Wednesday this month will include experimental drone collective Sporehive, chamber folk quartet Fables of the Fall, Babushka of Little Fyodor & Babushka fame doing her Naughty XXXmas Carols and DJ Andy Z spinning tunes.
What:Turnover & Men I Trust w/Renata Zeiguer When: Wednesday, 12.4, 8 p.m. Where: Gothic Theatre Why: Men I Trust has been described any number of ways but the live band evokes the mood of dusky nightclub R&B and soft lighting. But without evoking the early 70s Laurel Canyon pop sound so much in vogue lately. The band’s videos look like some kind of cinematic rendering of 1980s home movies and in a way reminds one of fan videos various people have made for Boards of Canada. It’s not often a band can maintain some sense of mystique these days but Men I Trust definitely has some. Currently touring in support of its lushly downtempo 2019 album Oncle Jazz.
The video for Philip Morgan Lewis’ “Blowtorched Dreams” (released on TX2 Records on 10/28/19) was filmed in Los Angeles and the black and white format with the video glitches seems like a good match for the song. It’s a kind of psychedelic blues track about a person who has hit bottom in a place where dreams are manufactured and to where many go in pursuit of unrealistic dreams. The warping and wefting guitar line traces that descent into the gutter once the dreams of stardom seem like a cruel joke, and abstracted to the larger world, how we were told all these myths about success through hard work, the presentation of so many realms of American culture and business as a meritocracy and how that sort of narrative plays out worldwide and how it seems everyone has realized it’s a complete and utter sham with some foolish holdouts thinking they’re going to be the exception. The distortion in the song represents that cognitive dissonance and the waking up to the nightmare but also the strand of hope in at least coming to these dark realizations because knowing the truth is the first step toward at least trying to have a better life. Watch the video on YouTube and follow Philip Morgan Lewis at the links provided.
You’re in an elevator in the first ever game designed for direct plugging into your brain and the luminous walls blink slowly with a new tone with each new floor. The game is one where you step out of the elevator into the 1980s except you’re not there to kill Sarah Connor before she gives birth to John Connor. You’re not there to see about preventing the U.S. crime rate rising by four hundred percent by 1988 in order to prevent the president in 1997 from having to play the tape from the cassette collection of a dead cab driver instead of a lecture on “nuclear fusion” to forestall a war between China, Russia and America. You are there to find the original sources of cultural artifacts and their contexts to bring back to a now near future and in doing so you navigate weird business meetings in Hollywood, dance clubs during the development of techno and early IDM, shows to learn techniques from pioneering hip-hop artists and hang with experimental filmmakers who aren’t being coached by focus groups in producing stories that resonate to this day. It’s a strange game but your companion, a mixture of modern production and lo-fi sounds, is Screen Time’s track “Machines.” Plenty of electronic music with a leg of inspiration in the 80s is dystopian in tone or curiously positivistic, “Machines” captures the vibe of a decade learning to incorporate technology into people’s lives in a way that serves them rather than the way things have apparently flipped in the 2010s. While likely not the root of this song, listening to it makes your brain flow in a different direction than usual and that’s a welcome quality these days in music. Listen to “Machines” on Soundcloud and follow Screen Time there as well.
There’s more than a little bit of Electric Light Orchestra in Indoor Fins’ “Here It Goes.” Though technically the bedroom project of Timothy Nelson it sounds like it was written having in mind a giant audience and its huge riffs and urgently expansive mood comes out of a dark time in the songwriter’s life when it seemed that family tragedy with illness, the breakup of his old band and his relationship at the time dissolving struck in short succession. The bright and colorful tones and dense atmospherics that hit you and push out feelings of stasis reflects the carefree spirit of the song born of a need to break free of a mental state that can leave you psychologically paralyzed for weeks and even years. The single is part of the recently released Indoor Fins EP Amber Arcade (out November 11) and if “Here It Goes” is any indication of Nelson’s power to transmogrify despair into pop gold then surely the other songs have much to offer in that regard as well. Watch the visually arresting video for “Here It Goes” on YouTube.
Aisha Badru’s vocals sound so close in and vulnerable on her single “Water” it immediately puts you off expectations for what the song will be making whatever it is emotionally accessible. The minimal keyboard work and guitar figure as pure tone swirl and resolve in the background as Badru’s words paint for us a different kind of love song, one that suggests an understanding of love that seems more enlightened, compassionate and ultimately more pragmatic than many traditional notions of the emotion that cast the understanding of the feeling as having a possessive quality. Badru sings “we cannot be the keepers of anyone’s key we have to love in a way that sets ’em free” and depicts the inevitable future when we aren’t scrambling all the time to make time for ourselves and others. Badru envisions a more nurturing society to come and proposing the idea that “people are water, they need to be free, they need to explore more what they want to be” and later, “people are water, let ’em be, let it breathe, let it leave.” The love Badru sings of is one that isn’t selfish but one that shows a caring for the full development of those we love and who love us back in a way that doesn’t treat love as a scarce resource but a way of being that uplifts everyone. It’s a beautiful sentiment and idea presented in a luminous melody with Badru singing to us like a good friend who has been through the wringer but come back a wiser better person bearing no malice or judgment. Listen to “Water” on YouTube and follow Badru on Soundcloud.
Ailie MacK sounds like she’s singing the soliloquy of a musical sitting on a luminous black cube of glass staring out into a faceless crowd on her single “Anxiety.” She asks questions the way those kinds of doubts and ponderings can paralyze you or worse when caught up in the grips of anxiety. She goes through the litany of fears that run through the minds of everyone who has ever suffered from a panic attack and anxiety attacks shy of one. Except MacK stretches them out and sets them to music and casts them forth in a manageable form as a line of song surrounded by the glow of ethereal melodic synths. It would be more obvious to write a song with anxiety embodied as something that feels like those moments where you feel like you could die at any time and maybe that would be preferable to experiencing that feeling for even a moment longer. MacK’s song sounds like taking a step or ten back and separating out those questions and putting them into perspective while asking rational questions about those fears. “If the sky isn’t falling what do I do now? If I answer to the calling does it mean I know how?” There is no bravado in those lyrics. When she admits feelings that seem like utter monoliths of personal disaster she seems to put them into a manageable emotional size: “I get tired of myself and it takes patience to live and learn, I try my best to be grateful for what I earn, I pride myself on not giving into the fear.” When she asks “Will I die this way or will I mend?” she leaves open possibilities to a positive outcome instead of the tunnel vision of anxiety seeing only ultimate ends until the wave passes. As suggested earlier, with the song MacK puts anxiety in slow motion, sets it to a rhythm and an introspective melody and both honors the experience while offering a way not to be controlled by it. It’s frankly a brilliant and original approach to a malady that is much more common than many people are willing to admit and getting to hear a song that tackles it in this way will hopefully be helpful. Listen to “Anxiety” on Spotify and follow Ailie MacK on Facebook. Also below is a video of the making of the song and well worth a watch too.
Queen City Sounds and Art 
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