Queen City Sounds and Art

Pink Turns Blue Announces the Release of Its 2025 Album BLACK SWAN With the Release of the Existential and Melancholic Titular Single

Legendary German post-punk band Pink Turns Blue is set to release its new album BLACK SWAN on February 28, 2025. Its lead single of the same name as the album title is a melancholic, almost brooding, existential examination of modern malaise and how the seeming meaningless or essential aimlessness of going through the motions of our lives can leak into the psyche like a slow acting poison that brings about a dissatisfaction with even the most comfortable lives and making a living and getting by. Especially when that mindset and perception masks how it’s resting on a civilizational delusion regarding rising authoritarianism, inequality, the specter of climate disaster that most powerful world governments seem to be glossing over. The song speaks to a yearning to plug into something more meaningful and relevant because there is more to life than even ethical consumption and identifying with any aspect of where one fits into one’s economic utility to any political or economic structure in all of human existence right now. The song goes deeper than the surface level and immediate concerns because the neglect of that inherent depth of understanding and feeling and sensitivity is what fuels so much of our collective sense that things could and should be better for everyone and everything if our energies weren’t feeding back as despair or funneled into consumptive endeavors and livelihoods that don’t build toward a mutually nurturing civilization. Watch the beautifully melancholic music video for “Black Swan (But I Know There Is More to Life)” on YouTube and follow Pink Turns Blue at the links below.

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Yiigaa’s Lushly Downtempo Pop Single “Follow Lights” Embodies the Allure and Energy of Urban Nightlife

Yiigaa’s sultry and lush “Follow Lights” perfectly evokes the romance and energy of city nightlife. But in its undeniable allure for anyone seeking a variety of experiences and the ability to get lost with the variety of social circles and options available for someone willing to dive in. The song has a quality that has a hushed quality like the anticipating of going out and of the late night energy of coming down off the stimulation of an evening of adventure and socializing. Or even observing the human drama unfold around you while engaging in some of your own. The song combines downtempo sounds with an energetic flow of tones and rhythms accented by a strong melodic bass line that embodies the undercurrents of a large city—an ambient sense of activity and opportunity that can be both alluring and overwhelming at once. But the song itself has an immediate accessibility and inviting spirit that pulls you into its charming sense of place immediately. Listen to “Follow Lights” on Spotify and follow Yiigaa at the links below.

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The Avant-Jazz-Folk Pop of Talk to Your Neighbor’s “Knock” is Both Intimate and Mysterious

Talk to Your Neighbor, photo courtesy the artists

“Knock” is the kind of song that unfolds according to its own organic logic yet utilizes familiar elements of spare, possibly finger-picked guitar and slide guitar swells around vocals in a folk style. The song fills out heading into the two minute mark with luminous keyboard melodies and minimal percussion while maintaining an intimate sense that you’re hearing a confessional diary entry on isolation. Then in the last third or so of the song it waxes into unraveled strands of psychedelia, free jazz and deconstructed Bossa Nova. The band’s name, Talk to Your Neighbor, suggests one should connect with one’s immediate community and the title of the song more than hints at a way to break that barrier between people with a simple gesture. In a realm of indie rock it’s refreshing to hear a song that doesn’t have obvious touchstones with elements that are uniquely its own with an unexpected accessibility in spite of its avant leanings. And yet fans of Dry Cleaning will appreciate the wonderfully weird places the song goes. Listen to “Knock” on Spotify and follow D.C.’s Talk to your Neighbor on Instagram.

Wyatt E. Collaborates With Vocalist Nina Saeidi For Hypnotic and Ritualistic Doom Drone Track “The Diviner’s Prayer to the Gods of the Night”

“The Diviner’s Prayer to the Gods of the Night” is a collaboration between Belgian doom band Wyatt E. and Iranian singer Nina Saeidi of progressive metal duo Lowen. The lyrics come from an ancient Babylonian/Akkadian poem used in night divination in appeal to distant constellations while the doors of heaven were shut after night had fallen. The song incorporates Middle Eastern tones and compound rhythms so that the song flows with an intuitive rhythm that along with Saeidi’s rich vocals bring the listener into a musical realm immersive and hypnotic in its orchestration of elements, ritualistic in its appeal and simultaneously otherworldly and grounded. Fans of late 80s Dead Can Dance and Nancy Mounir’s experiments in fusing modern production and older recordings. Listen to “The Diviner’s Prayer to the Gods of the Night” on Spotify and follow Wyatt E. at the links below.

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Stūrī Zēvele’s First Single Since 2020 is a Atmospheric and Foreboding Post-punk Song About Social Isolation

Stūrī Zēvele, photo courtesy the artists

Latvian pop band Stūrī Zēvele returns with its first music since its fantastic 2020 indiepop record Labvakar. The single “Neviens” (in English “Nobody”) is stylistically radically different but with the same level of detailed songcraft including the music video created by Artava studio artists Raitis Bērziņš and Zigmunds Ziemelis. It looks like and was filmed in a secondary school gymnasium (in Latvia’s capital city Riga) but at night with minimal lighting. The brooding crawl of the electronic rhythm and minimal instrumentation suits is reflected well in the images of people citing in a circle seemingly meditating on something heavy while another figure movies as though engaged in a mix of dance and Tai Chi. There is an undercurrent of something foreboding until the song picks up and the scene in the video looks like things are unraveling—behavior, emotional outbursts and the poise of the dancer until she opens her eyes as if waking from a dream and at this point the song ends suddenly as well like we’ve been privy to the soundtrack to private thoughts as outlined in the lyrics (in English below). There is a sinister undertone about the lyrics and and expressed desire for privacy and not granting others automatic access to minuscule details of our lives and how that fact of so much of modern existence can engender an impulse to isolate even as the illusion of connection puts up barriers between us. The song leans into those tensions and is more like something you’d expect from a post-punk band in substance and sound but the group’s music, though consistently inviting and accessible, has always resisted easy categorization and commands attention on its own terms. Watch the video for “Neviens” on YouTube and follow Stūrī Zēvele at the links below.

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“Neviens” English lyrics

We don’t go in at all
if there are others sitting in the cafe.
It’s unpleasant when strangers listen to what you order,
when strangers watch you eat.

We don’t show the way to strangers on the street,
if a stranger calls – we don’t pick up.

We can’t be photographed, filmed – it’s forbidden.
Let no one speak on our behalf.

Super Massive’s Retro Synth Pop Single “Caught In A Web” Highlights the Insidious Aspects of Our Hyper-Connected Culture

Super Massive, photo courtesy the artists

“Caught In A Web” sounds like Super Massive was tapping into some early 90s Berlin dance club that hosted Lene Lovich to infuse the song with some eccentric retro flavor. Its bouncy rhythms and percussive synth tones conspire to support the song’s themes of the modern fact of being connected with all kinds of people due to social media and the way technology interacts with our lives and impacts our psyches and self-conceptions, how that warps how we relate to one another and by association how modern life often makes being connected necessary to function with the economy even if we minimize our participation. Super Massive plays upon how that connectivity has its own seductive energy that encourages knowing too much about what other people are up to in an insidious kind of surveillance culture. Listen to “Caught In A Web” on Spotify and follow Super Massive at the links below.

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Robert Ascroft’s single With Britta Phillips “Where Did You Go” Finds Its Haunted, Sensuous Pop Manifested Vividly in a Brooding Noir Music Video

Robert Ascroft and Britta Phillips, photo courtesy the artists

The video for Robert Ascroft’s song “Where Did You Go” features vocalist Britta Phillips (Luna, Dean & Britta) driving down a lonely highway in black and white looking troubled while a less troubled version of herself occasionally seems to taunt her from the passenger seat. The song itself reflects this noir image with a light buzz of guitar and echoing piano lines with a slinky bass line that accents the steady percussion hitting the beats like the images of the dashed lines of the highway streaming behind the image. At some point the troubled Britta, who has been driving, disappears and the other Britta gets a moment of thrilled panic. The song itself seems to be about haunted insecurity and dissociation while contemplating the aspect of oneself that seemed to be able to hold it together and act with confidence and clear thought—about feeling lost and and not quite oneself to the point where you feel adrift from the course of your own life. The song is one of the singles from Ascroft’s forthcoming album Echo Still Remains is out January 31, 2025 via Hand Drawn Dracula which promises plenty of stories of contemplative melancholy and sorting through memory and the neglected places in the heart. Watch the video for “Where Did You Go” on YouTube and follow Robert Ascroft at the links provided.

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Norwegian Ambient Artist springwell. Orchestrates Billowing Harmonic Drones and Gentle Breezes For Becalming Single “air”

“air” by springwell. emerges from the ether more than begins or ends. The sound of breezes pass through the sound field from various directions paradoxically slowly and with momentum. A harmonic drone flows in expanding and repeating slow arcs like clouds visibly floating across the placid sky or fog shifting in opacity as it passes into and through the landscape illuminated faintly by moonlight. The effect is almost tactile the way any of those weather phenomena often are and with the same calming gentleness and tranquility that can transfer those moods into your own consciousness and replace the usual, everyday anxieties and concerns. Listen to “air” on Spotify and follow springwell. on Instagram.

Expose’s Vivid Yet Enigmatic Noise Rock Single “The Constant” is a Trip Into Unorthodox Psychedelia

“The Constant” by L.A.’s Expose puts vivid and intricate, atmospheric guitar work to the forefront while the vocals haunt the background like a modern cognate to Slint gone psychedelic. And like the latter there’s a dreamlike haze to its drifting melodies and surges of rhythm. Those drifts of tone swirl a little like there’s a bit of wide-ranging phaser on the guitar allowing its soaring moments to seemingly move slowly but with a bit of incandescently fiery intensity. In the end the song settles into a spacious fade out with elements pulling back into a luminous sonic fog. The music is of a lineage that skips the past fifteen years of psychedelic rock and seems to tap into that time when The Flaming Lips still had Jonathan Donahue or when he was emerging with the early Mercury Rev recordings but the gentler and more mellow end of that without compromising on getting into noisy, mind-bending musical spaces. Watch the video for “The Constant” on Youube and follow Expose at the links below. The band’s album ETC releases on streaming, digital download and limited edition vinyl January 24, 2025 via Quindi Records.

“Double Blind” is tinvìs’ Heartfelt Song of Reflection and Regret for Love Lost

The undercurrents of “Double Blind” by Austin-based singer-songwriter tinvìs, aka Joel Daniel, run with a measured calm but over it in his vocals one hears the yearning, regret and pain paralleled by the simmer of rhythm and mournful strings. Together the elements create a rich tapestry of mood of someone who recognizes deeply how he more or less neglected an important relationship in consistently small yet significant ways taking it for granted in pursuit of a career blinding him to everyday life. But when that relationship is gone he loses track of time and a sense of place that means something to his core, a foundation to his life he failed to maintain. It isn’t a melodramatic song of heartbreak and heartache but one that feels more like the kind of deep and persistent hurt and and shame at not doing the right thing when it would have been so easy and should have come naturally. And yet it is this flash of awareness that seems to have instilled a dimension of emotional growth that will hopefully remain if the connections can be rekindled and if not a sensitivity to the needs of the people around one that will carry on to the next relationship because being a human and becoming the kind you want to evolve into can be a lifelong work in progress. Watch the lyric video for “Double Blind” on YouTube and follow tinvìs at the links provided.