Stereo Soul Future took some inspiration from photographer Peter Hujar for its new single “Chelsea Pier.” Hujar’s black and white photos captured the vibrancy, the life, the diversity – the essence of New York City and American culture and cityscapes until his untimely death in 1987. The gentle yet effervescent melody parallels Hujar’s sense of curiosity and wonder. The opening line “No one was afraid to die” and the expansive dynamic of the song looks back fondly at a time that seemed to be one enshrined by a sense of possibilities with New York City and its abundant urban decay and neglect as a canvass for culture and art to project and reflect ideas and life and a place where American creative types could go an interact with like-minded folks and be who they are and find some part of the city where a community for who you are existed. While the context is specific the ethereal pop song could be about most cities of size in America and elsewhere before predatory real estate developers and the oligarchy as well as moneyed no culture having heathens decided to come in from their suburban refuges from the unwashed urban masses and live closer to work, buying up cheap, neglected properties and displacing the people and places that had made the city a desirable place to live. This song is a nostalgic view back to a time before that was happening everywhere but without the bitterness expressed above. It gets at the essence of that magic time when it seemed gross income inequality wasn’t pricing everyone out of being able to create culture and co-exist without as much struggle. In linking this nostalgic view to Hujar’s beautiful and representative art the song personalizes the perspective and makes it thus a more original take than some, albeit utterly understandable, screed against gentrification. It’s a poetic reminder of what we lost and can maybe again regain in another form. Listen to “Chelsea Pier” on Spotify and follow Stereo Soul Future at the links below where you can also find information on hearing the rest of the band’s new album Sex Scene.
“Free,” the first single from Koresma’s forthcoming North EP begins with the kind of soft synth figure that suggests snowbound landscapes, female vocals floating through an evolving melody accented by minimalist electronic percussion. Bubbling arpeggios swell into the foreground and retreat like a wind. Spare guitar filigrees give the song some of its grounding but the song is structured to convey a memories of the songwriter’s grandfather’s stories of living in the Faroe Islands, an archipelago between Iceland and Norway. The track succeeds in capturing for us the stark beauty and sense of the whole world open around you that must have been part of everyday life and thus the title. Listen to “Free” on Soundcloud and follow Koresma at the links below.
The steady pace of Poppy Jean Crawford’s “Same Old Tricks” with the initial winsome vocals almost make you think you’re in for a solid indie pop song. But as the song progresses one gets the impression that the singer is tapping into some of the dark spaces of the mind that old blues singers used to go to in evoking a weariness at finding the same patterns of abuse, from self and others, and returning to those situations and encountering the same lines with different wording and wondering when, if ever, the narrative is going to change on the part of anyone involved. Which is a more nuanced take than pointing the finger. The steady and simple guitar figure gives way to blown out psychedelia, comes back down and blossoms again as Crawford’s vocals nearly crack from the strain of emotion flowing through her taut performance. Apparently Rob Campanella of The Brian Jonestown Massacre helped Crawford to hone in on the sonics of the single so we can look forward to hearing more emotionally charged tracks from the songwriter soon. Listen to “Same Old Tricks” on Soundcloud.
“Fooled By You,” the fifth release from his Days of Heaven EP, Simon D. James, sounds like he was writing this song while having a revelatory, haunted dream of a past love on a breeze swept hilltop, the landscape in amber and sepia tones. The haze of tonal white noise provides the embodiment of fog through the field of sound as James sings with a world weary forlorn quality, drawing out each syllable as minimal guitar traces the sad shadows of a misery his unconscious mind is now able to process and let go. It’s an interesting way to end an EP that begins with great energy and spirit but which is about making the same mistakes in life and being worn out into submission to a core of wanting to reclaim your dignity after your conscious mind has given up and after your ego has been eroded enough for a new, and hopefully better, you to emerge. Listen to “Fooled By You” on Soundcloud and follow James at the links provided.
In the background of Ocean Pleasant’s “Premonition” synths swell like a combination of memories and visions of the future. This while the soulful vocals and textured yet hypnotic beat keeps you focused in the moment. Inspired in part by the scent of a candle left behind by an old roommate, the song is about our minds’ ability to comprehend information that isn’t fully processed by our conscious thoughts and that information comes to us through intuitions and flashes of insight that eventually do manifest in our lives and conscious understanding. But that if we arrest our Western culture-trained instincts for only valuing and thus only perceiving strictly materially empirical information we can utilize these ways of understanding to our benefit and to the enrichment of our lives individually and collectively. The way the song is structured reflects the way perceived time ebbs and flows not unpredictably but inconsistently if we analyze it outside of the experience of it, but on the experiential level those ebbs and flows are natural and make sense and have a consistency that transcends the limitations of linear logic. Fans of Lorde will enjoy how Ocean Pleasant combines dynamic, lush soundscapes written as a downtempo pop song, imbuing it with emotional richness and authenticity. Listen to “Premonition” on Spotify and follow Ocean Pleasant at the links below.
Something about the expert blend of the electronic and the analog and the natural sounds and the subtle production on tummyache’s new single “Commonplace” that help to highlight the experience of the conflicting emotions and confusion in sorting out the way life doesn’t give us signposts or a manual to the inherent meaning of it all. In part of the song Soren Bryce sings about how getting her name on her birthday was the first thing that belonged to her and that speaks directly to how one’s mooring in one’s own life can be that tenuous that’s its the one tenuous connection to your identity of which you can be fairly certain. As the song progresses it escalates into noisier, swirling chaos and frustrated screaming before ending with an abrupt fade. One gets the feeling from the song that part of having meaning in life is to feel special and not commonplace and part of that is having an identity and knowing your place in things, or at least a sense of such. As grow into adulthood the social boundaries become less distinct and our connections to people perhaps less firm and so we impose rituals to reconstruct these grounding associations even if they don’t make sense until we can no longer lie to ourselves and we begin to ask who we really are if we haven’t spent a good deal of our lives building that. And even if you do there will probably come a time when you realize it’s all coming apart and your sense of meaning in life erodes as well. This song captures being there in the moment of crisis from the initial sense that something is off to the psychic cacophony that comes from losing your sense of self and place. Listen to “Commonplace” on Soundcloud and follow tummyache on her YouTube channel linked below.
Cat Casual & The Final Word, photo courtesy the artist
Cat Casual & The Final Word’s “Asphalt” sounds like an artifact from the early 80s when the music world hadn’t completely sorted out where the line between post-punk, psychedelia, New Wave and power pop lay. The urgent, clipped rhythm guitar riff, tripped out keyboard work, William Benton’s impassioned vocals and serpentine and fiery guitar solo at the end sound like the band has deconstructed the modern instinct for tapping into music’s past not to cop a classic aesthetic so much as to create something different inspired by music from a time before everything popular in the mainstream was somewhat a product of mediated tastes. This gives the song and the band’s sound in general a certain freshness along with an air of the classic. Listen on YouTube as well as watch the performance video and follow Cat Casual & The Final Word at the links below.
In calling its new single “Leonard Nimoy,” CHAD from Portland, Oregon casts an interesting image. Most people who know who Leonard Nimoy is sees him as Mr. Spock from Star Trek, a character who seems devoid of emotions played by a highly emotional human. But even in the Star Trek universe the Vulcans have merely tightly controlled their emotions through social engineering to avoid the violent conflicts of their distant past. This song is about the desire to have that kind of control but how as a real human you can’t fully escape your feelings and at times we feel like we’re controlled by them. In the context of certain relationships this emotional conflict takes on the metaphor of a storm when weather systems come together. Musically its like a baroque kind of pop the likes of which you might hear on a Chromatics record or something Julee Cruise might do if she’d come up through listening to 90s indie pop. Although melancholic and wistful the song is brimming with regret that things can’t and won’t work out, giving the tone of the song an emotional complexity that isn’t obvious. Listen to “Leonard Nimoy” on Soundcloud and follow CHAD at the links provided.
Dutch pop songwriter Molina’s first Spanish language track “Parásito” uses the metaphor of a parasite for the type of love so consuming and, frankly, co-dependent that it is not unlike the consuming relationship between a parasite and its host, unable to live without the other and either or seeking to be perpetually connected for its nourishment. The cadence of Spanish lends itself well to the unconventional structure and rhythms of the song as well as its dramatic emotional and tonal flourishes. The guitar against the more menacing synth passages gives the song an airiness and a heft in equal measure at times reminiscent of Grimes or Zola Jesus and the ability of both artists to make experimental music that comes across as pop unless you break down what’s going on. In that way, Molina here is able to inject ideas into the song that expand your own expectations for what an accessible song might sound like. Listen to “Parásito” on Soundcloud and follow Molina at the links provided.
What:Sun Blood Stories, Space Jail, The Teeth of the Hydra and Prayer Hands When: Thursday, 10.17, 7:30 p.m. Where: Glitter City Studio Why: Sun Blood Stories from Boise, Idaho, has been creating its experimental psychedelic music since 2011. Though the band emerged around the time when the most recent wave of psychedelic rock was headed toward its peak, Sun Blood Stories seemed to come from a different place. Its shows feel a bit like you’re seeing what a traveling, shamanistic musical ceremony might be like. Its songs, some rock, some weirdo folk, all informed by an attempt to create a mood and an experience as much as, or more so, than melody. The group is now touring in support of its 2019 album Haunt Yourself.
What:Temples w/Honey Harper When: Friday, 10.18, 8 p.m. Where: Gothic Theatre Why: Temples from Kettering, England made big waves with its debut album Sun Structures at the apex of the neo-psychedelic era. But one thing that has set Temples apart from its peers is its mastery of layered dynamics like an orchestration of oil projections. The Krautrock-like rhythms, the sheets of luminous ethereal sounds, the haunted and the soaring vocals, guitars carrying both melody and texture shimmering throughout, Temples didn’t get stuck playing in an indie folk band that discovered weird pedals one day and jammed out to “Anemone” by the Brian Jonestown Massacre endlessly. Temples perfectly weds pop songcraft with mind-altering sound experiments. Its 2019 album, Hot Motion, finds the band exploring new vistas of evocative soundscaping mixing a palette of classic psychedelic era rock sounds and strong songwriting with modern sensibilities.
What:Riceboy Sleeps (Jónsi & Alex Somers) w/Wordless Orchestra When: Friday, 10.18, 7 p.m. Where: Paramount Theatre Why: Most people probably know Jónsi as a member of Sigur Rós and thus no stranger to transcendent, orchestral music. With his partner Alex Somers he makes experimental ambient music and their latest album, their first with this project in a decade, is 2019’s Lost & Found. The show will be an evocative production with Wordless Orchestra conducted by Robert Ames with orchestra arrangements by David Handler. A mixture of classical, ambient and the avant-garde, the footage from this tour so far has shown a moving performance of uncommon grace and hushed intensity.
What:Aldous Harding w/Hand Habits (solo) When: Saturday, 10.19, 8 p.m. Where: Larimer Lounge Why: Aldous Harding’s weirdo folk songs and compellingly eccentric performances is definitely for fans of Kate Bush and Joanna Newsom. Her 2019 album Designer is a showcase for her storytelling genius.
What:Guerilla Toss w/cindygod and Corner Girls When: Saturday, 10.19, 8 p.m. Where: Hi-Dive Why: A brilliant collision of dub, post-punk and psych-synth imbued disco, Guerilla Toss brings an upbeat yet surreal sensibility to its shows. It’s new record, What Would The Odd Do?released October 18 and this is more or less the band’s tour kickoff show.
What:Get Your Ears Swoll 11: The Vagrant Sea, Landgrabbers When: Saturday, 10.19, 8:30 p.m. Where: The People’s Building Why: The Vagrant Sea is a punk-inflected noise rock band or a noisy punk band. Either way its members are veterans of Denver’s underground rock scene including former members of The Symptoms, Dirty Lookers, Tarmints and many others. Landgrabbers is a honky tonk punk band with emphasis on the latter. At a time when most punks are aiming for a niche subgenre, Landgrabbers refreshingly focus on writing solid songs and leave the fashion show, sonically and otherwise, to those more inclined.
What:The Distillers w/Death Valley Girls When: Saturday, 10.19, 7 p.m. Where: Ogden Theatre Why: The Distillers’ brash punk rock burned bright and flamed out between starting in 1998 and breaking up in 2006 leaving behind a few records of songs about raging against feeling like being kicked to the bottom rung but making that kind of scrappy underdog status seem glorious. Singer Brody Dalle cut a commanding figure and after the band split she spent some time writing music in Spinnerette and under her own name. But as of 2018, The Distillers are back together at a time when maybe its ferocious performances with snotty yet tuneful songs will find a wider audience hungry for something that vital. Also on the bill is Death Valley Girls whose inspirationally bizarre blend of surf rock, post-punk and psychedelia is truly born of an individual collective imagination channeled into spirited performances.
What:Clay Rendering, Weathered Statues, French Kettle Station, Prison Glue When: Saturday, 10.19, 9 p.m. Where: Rhinoceropolis Why: Clay Rendering is often called a mix of dream pop and black metal and that’s fair enough but it might also be considered a rebirth of synth infused death rock. Its 2019 album California Black Vows sounds like what Iceage might have sounded like if it went more darkwave and less in the direction of The Bad Seeds.
What:Jonathan Richman w/Tommy Larkins When: Saturday, 10.19, 7 p.m. Where: Daniels Hall at Swallow Hill Why: Because Jonathan Richman is the godfather of twee pop and radical sincerity in vulnerability in rock music. And he hasn’t exactly toned down that approach as a performer in nearly fifty years. He’s a national treasure.
Sunday | October 21
Voight, photo by Tom Murphy
What:All Your Sisters, Weaken, Voight and Fatal Fantasy (DJ) When: Sunday, 10.20, 8 p.m. Where: The Zodiac (Colorado Springs) Why: All Your Sisters from Los Angeles and Denver’s Echo Beds (playing the Monday show in Denver at Rhinoceropolis) are headed out on a tour to the East Coast. The former released the album Trust Ruins in April 2019 and re-established itself as practitioners of harrowing, industrial death disco. Voight are a jagged machine of sound and sometimes convulsive, sometimes broodily intense sounds that erupt with a barrage of cathartic energy to purge the dulling effects of late capitalism.
What:All Your Sisters w/Echo Beds, Midwife and B|_ank When: Monday, 10.21, 9 p.m. Where: Rhinoceropolis Why: For All Your Sisters see above on October 20. Echo Beds is an alchemical combination of stark hardcore aesthetics and organic industrial post-punk.
What:Whitney w/Lala Lala When: Monday, 10.21, 7 p.m. Where: Ogden Theatre Why: Whitney’s debut album Light Upon the Lake (2016) benefited from both hitting a trend early of the sort of Laurel Canyon, countrified psychedelic pop embraced in the American underground and from its exquisite arrangements and ear for dynamics in a way that has been missing from far too much modern pop music. The follow-up album, 2019’s Forever Turned Around is a tender and sensitive meditation on the fear and confusion hanging in the collective psyche of late complicated by issues of addictions of various kinds, a heavier than expected set of subjects from music that sounds so spacious and heavenly.
What:Chelsea Wolfe w/Ioanna Gika When: Tuesday, 10.22, 8 p.m. Where: Stanley Hotel Why: What could be more perfect than the haunting intensity of Chelsea Wolfe’s songs, performed acoustically as is the style of at least one of her albums, at the haunted Stanley Hotel in advance of Halloween? Wolfe recently released her new album Birth of Violence which features some of her more acoustic songwriting than the heavy drones and atmospheric black metal of her last few offerings. It showcases a more intimate side of Wolfe’s deeply personal storytelling rather than the nightmarish visions with which you might be more familiar with the artist and a testament to her enduring talent.
The KVB, photo by George Katsanakis
What:The KVB w/Numb.er and Eventually It Will Kill You When: Tuesday, 10.22, 8 p.m. Where: Larimer Lounge Why: The KVB’s synth-driven post-punk is reminiscent of Fad Gadget’s dark avant-pop with its distorted, urgent soundscapes and brooding, introspective vocals. Currently touring in support of its 2019 album Submersion.
John Paul White, photo by Alysse Gafkjen
What:Shovels & Rope w/John Paul White (of The Civil Wars) When: Tuesday, 10.22, 7 p.m. Where: Ogden Theatre Why: John Paul White one half of bluesy Americana duo The Civil Wars with Joy Williams. In 2019 he released his third solo album The Hurting Kind. Its flavor is a little more introspective than some of his previous work with The Civil Wars. But the level of detail and warmth of tone is there. Apparently he was inspired by the almost orchestral production and songwriting of early 60s Nashville acts and he brings that sensibility to this new batch of songs by taking his gift for turning simple and spare elements into a lush sound that touches on fine emotional notes. Exquisitely crafted songs by one of America’s premier songwriters. Shovels & Rope is the alternative country band from Charleston, South Carolina comprised of Cary Ann Hearst and former Denverite, and former Tinker’s Punishment frontman, Michael Trent.
What:mxmtoon w/Alexander 23 When: Wednesday, 10.23, 7 p.m. Where: Larimer Lounge Why: mxmtoon went from bedroom pop musician to international renown from 2017 to 2019 initially releasing more humorous songs and moving on to more sincere expressions of feeling. Her 2018 debut EP plum blossom garnered her critical acclaim for her finely composed pop songs that feel spontaneous and insouciant. Through social media and other internet outlets like TikTok, Vine, Snapchat, Soundcloud, mxmtoon, or Maia, has made comedic videos and shared her work connecting with hundreds of thousands of fans. In 2019 she released her debut full-length, self-released, the masquerade. There’s something lighthearted but genuine about her songs and her intuitive knack for an earworm melody and wordplay is consistently impressive.
What:Free Music, Koto Robo, Cop Circles album release, French Kettle Station, J. Hamilton Isaacs When: Wednesday, 10.23, 9 p.m. Where: Rhinoceropolis Why: Cop Circles is the weirdo afrobeat/avant-garde jazz influenced project of one Luke Leavitt. He is releasing his latest album Penultimate Conclusions at this show. Also on the bill is eccentrically brilliant experimental pop project Free Music from Minneapolis, the relentless and inspired adult contemporary/glitch/synth pop hybrid of French Kettle Station, J. Hamilton Isaacs’ transporting modular synth compositions and Koto Robo’s synthesis of 80s video game sounds (though not 8-bit) and synth pop.
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