Queen City Sounds and Art

The Fourth Wall’s Contemplative and Bombastic Post-punk Pop Single “Darkness of Heart” Explores the Personal Impact of Colonialism in Reverse

For The Fourth Wall’s new album Return Forever (out March 15, 2024 via DevilDuck Records), Stephen Augustin has demonstrated a real gift for infusing fairly straightforward songwriting and visual presentation with complex and subversive ideas. For the single “Darkness of Heart” it starts out fairly folky and pastoral with Augustin going about some mundane home activities and having some coffee but then the song blasts out with bombastic rhythms and blaring guitar yet overlaid with vocal harmonies one might more expect to hear in an old indiepop song. The title is obviously a nod to Joseph Conrad’s classic 1899 novella Heart of Darkness but taking the theme of the novel of colonialism and imagining that dynamic in reverse with the colonized to integrate into the colonizer’s world only to find that not everything is as promised or presented. In the song we hear a contemplation of the aftermath of that experience with the lines “I can never tell/if I repeat what I repel/become the heart of darkness to quell/the darkness just to start it all again.” By going through that process of imagining a different, even parallel, history creatively, Augustin invites us to imagine a world to come that whether it is ready or not will reckon with its past perhaps not all at once in dramatic fashion but in bits and peaces, spurts and stops and as messy as our own development as people. Watch the video for “Darkness of Heart” on YouTube and follow The Fourth Wall at the links below.

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Mimi Pretend Consoles the Bruised Hearted in the Loving, Late Night Dream Pop Melodies of “Smith Lake”

Mimi Pretend taps into a similar emotional realm of melancholic nostalgia and hazy melodies as Chromatics and Julee Cruise on “Smith Lake.” The atmospheric low end of the bass grounds what is otherwise a fairly ethereal song but so do the lyrics that seem to be about someone who is a lost soul in the world who feels unloved by his mother being consoled by someone who does love him. Fluttering, softly distorted guitar haunts the edges of the song alongside sparkling tones that conjure images of late night conversations interrupted by shooting stars and distant sounds of the road. The imagery of the song probably represents the kind of people many of us know who bother to pay attention to what’s going on with people beyond the obvious but which isn’t too well hidden of emotional trauma and acting out trying to find love and acceptance somewhere not really knowing how and not trusting it when it presents itself in your life. All because of the rejections and low key, or not so subtle, gaslighting and emotional abuse most of us have received at some point along the way because how many people really come from a completely healthy family dynamic? Some people seem to take it harder than others and/or the hurt is deeper and more consistent. This song is a gentle touch in counterpoint to those ways of being and relating to others. It’s a loving tribute to a loved one cast in pastoral dream pop that lingers with you throughout the song and long after. Listen to “Smith Lake” on Spotify and follow Mimi Pretend at the links below. The project’s new EP Colorado 1996 released on January 5, 2024. For fans of the aforementioned as well as Mazzy Star and Low.

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The Gorgeously Layered Textures and Melodies of Deth Rali’s “Candle in the Dark” is a Short Passage of Mystical Psychedelia Worth Getting Lost Within

Deth Rali, photo by Julianna Photography

Deth Rali’s 2021 album Light Levels felt like an ambitious dream pop album, orchestral in its composition and completely immersive in its soundscapes. The band’s latest single “Candle in the Dark” immediately feels like it’s organized organically with subtly expansive waves of tone guided gently by finely cadenced percussion. Like you’re listening to the ghost of a memory of psychedelic fantasy movies from another decade but manifesting as as song within which one also hears echoes of 90s indiepop and whatever amalgam of dream pop phase Animal Collective, chillwave and the bright and soothing synth composition of the late, great Norm Chambers (aka Panabrite, think Soft Terminal period) probably isn’t even part of the band’s musical DNA. It’s a song that gets into your brain and you feel better for having experienced its soothing frequencies. The band regularly performs live in Denver and Colorado so if you can, witness this stuff in person for the full effect. Listen to “Candle in the Dark” on Spotify and follow Deth Rali at the links below.

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Dinah’s Avant Folk Single “Ferns” is a Minimalistic Meditation on Finding Inspiration for Inner Strength in the Natural World

Dinah’s new single “Ferns” (from her forthcoming album Dinah! due out February 23) begins with a minimalist clarity, spare guitar work and the songwriter’s alto voice bringing to the song an air of mystery. As the song progresses we hear some simple electronic percussion and synth but all more rhythmic and textural in effect lending the song a fragile vulnerability that conveys an emotional authenticity even as the lyrics are somewhat enigmatic in their explicit meaning. Dinah employs the imagery of nature and how many of us find an emotional resonance in the natural world that we don’t often find directly in human society and the ways our true intentions can be masked or compromised by agendas that may not even be our own. The line “Gentle white pine, teach me to stand strong” is so simple and in the context of the music video it makes a powerful poetic sense the way find strength in their spiritual beliefs or in their memories or other sense of energies bigger than standard, everyday human existence. It’s like leaning back into one’s imagination for the kind of fortitude that can’t be taken away and can have a consistency where other sources of strength can falter. Fans of the more minimal, folk end of Xiu Xiu will appreciate how Dinah cuts the songwriting and the words used to their essential emotional core on this song and the other singles now available to hear from the album. Watch the video for “Ferns” on YouTube and follow Dinah at the links below.

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Kidä’s Entrancing IDM Pop Song “Sand Invades Everything” is Imbued With a Sense of Cosmic Sensuality

Kidä has collaborated with the likes of Yves Tumor and Gaika and her new single “Sand Invades Everything” is well within that realm of genre-bending, boundary-pushing electronic pop. Her lush, ethereal vocals are buoyed by a dynamic beat and pulsing electronic bass. The lyrics brim with images of desire and sexual themes of mythical dimensions yet rooted in visceral, earthly experiences. It’s like a pure fusion of downtempo, industrial pop and IDM. The moods are deep and expansive, engrossing. The bendy, Middle Eastern string melody and the sheer soulfulness of the song blend the exotic with a sense of immediacy. Fans of Sudan Archives will appreciate the cohesive, eclectic sound and the way it moves through your mind and takes you to a better place. Listen to “Sand Invades Everything” on Spotify and follow Kidä at the links below.

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Queen City Sounds Podcast S4E10: Bex Marshall

Bex Marshall is a blues musician from the UK who started making a name for herself internationally with the release of her 2008 debut album Kitchen Table. But by then Bex was already a veteran having worked as a croupier at 18 and traveling around the world working gaming tables on cruise lines and illegal poker games in Amsterdam. She spent a good deal of time in Australia and often hitch hiking on cattle trains and otherwise added to her life experiences for her songwriting. Marshall started playing guitar at 11 and since then has honed her craft and her prowess as a blues musician is obvious from her records and her fiery live performances with a commanding voice that got her invited to serve as the “Janis” by Sam Andrews, the original guitarist of Big Brother and the Holding Company, on their 2014 European Tour. Marshall’s musicianship and songwriting while rooted in the blues transcends the category with the creativity of her craft and one of her main inspirations is the late, great, rock and R&B singer Tina Turner. Until now, Marshall’s most recent album was 2012’s The House of Mercy. A rigorous touring schedule, the 2017 loss of her husband and executive producer Barry Marshall-Everitt and of course the 2020 pandemic and its fallout stretched the timelines for many artists. But on March 1, 2024, Marshall will release her new record Fortuna via Dixie Frog. The new album is a showcase for Marshall’s passionate performances and masterful musicianship as well as her keen ear for imaginative arrangements in a musical style that can sometimes seem fairly narrowly traditional.

Listen to our interview with Bex Marshall on Bandcamp and follow her at the links below including the pre-save link for the new album.

Fortuna Pre-Save Links Via Dixie Frog

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Easy Sleeper’s “Timekeeper” Highlights the Ways Our Internalized Regulation of Time Negatively Impacts Our Quality of Life

Easy Sleeper, photo courtesy the artists

The breezy guitar jangle of the opening of Easy Sleeper’s “Timekeeper” suggests the song may be about some nostalgic portrait of a poignant earlier time in life. But the guitar work is soon joined by vocals that seem a little strained and at points punctuating the chorus with shouted lines because the song is about the pressure time exerts on all our lives from the time we’re forced to be aware of it early in life to the way it regulates the existence of most of us, the conscious awareness and imposed adherence to time tables, from school, work, other obligations, social and otherwise, and in the last third of the song the guitar turns from beautiful and borderline pastoral to distorted and intense like the weight time weighs on us all. After all what could be more demented and destructive than imposing a time of your life at which you’re supposed to accomplish this or that or when you’re an artist the demand for inspiration and creative development as a product that can be reliably produced when so many of our actual timelines are idiosyncratic and not subject to the whims of a marketplace. The fact that the song goes from organic whimsy to anxiety-wracked angularity is a brilliant mirror of life from the childhood of most people to adulthood. There has to be a better way. Listen to “Timekeeper” on Spotify and follow Easy Sleeper at the links provided.

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Queen City Sounds Podcast S4E09: Tigercub

Tigercub is a rock band from Brighton, England that formed in 2011 by vocalist and guitarist Jamie Stephen Hall and drummer James Allix who met a university and joined by bassist Jimi Wheelright in 2012. From its earliest releases the trio has demonstrated a knack for crafting commanding hard rock with a cinematic sensibility that it has consistently evolved into a body of work that has expanded its range and variety of expression across now three albums including arguably its most fully realized work to date with 2023’s The Perfume of Decay. The group’s 2021 album As Blue as Indigo delved deep into themes of anxiety, depression, mortality and loss. The latest release found the band exploring the use of found tapes that Hall had been collecting from old Dictaphone machines found in thrift stores as a layer of atmosphere that served as almost a sonic canvass upon which its hard rocking sound could find a subtle context. It’s a subtle effect but for the keen listener there’s a certain something to the music on the record that lends it an emotional impact like a well chosen setting and time of year can add something unmistakable and compelling to a film.

For the new album some of the themes of the previous offering linger as emotional fallout and reflecting the kinds of experiences we all go through when we’ve been through a particularly traumatic period and have to return to going through the usual daily experiences with a different emotional lens having been changed by grief and existential turmoil. For the new record the group seems to have taken in the influence of early shoegaze and Can in terms of working out the underlying moods and atmospherics and challenging themselves to produce something another level of creative ambition with its arrangements. You can hear the impact of Queens of the Stone Age in its fluid use of heavy guitar and rhythms but in its perhaps not as obvious ear for the aesthetics of electronic music and in the structure of where the sounds sit in the mix one might compare Tigercub to Failure whose own fusion of hard rock, post-punk and the influence of cinematic sound design has yielded its own career of noteworthy records.

Tigercub is currently on tour with alternative rock legends Porno for Pyros for what is apparently it’s farewell shows and you can catch them at The Fillmore Auditorium in Denver, Colorado on Thursday, February 22, 2024, doors 7 p.m., show 8 p.m.. Listen to our interview with Jamie Stephen Hall on Bandcamp and follow Tigercub at the links below.

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Vania and Cravat Come Together For the Entrancing IDM Chillwave Fusion of “Only You”

NYC-based singer and songwriter Vania teamed up with Spanish experimental electronic pop band Cravat for an utterly transporting and entrancing single “Only You.” The song is about a relationship that really isn’t so great for either person but in which there’s something to the bond even though it involves hurt feelings as the cost of staying together. Vania’s lilting vocals with a touch of processing sounds like a pop star from another world dancing in the unconventional rhythms crafted as tonal swells and drifts of percussive tone guided by a pulsing rhythm. It’s like a true fusion of chillwave, hyperpop and IDM and drawing on the sense of melancholic nostalgia of the first, the otherworldly structures of the second and the free association of aesthetics, sounds and technologies to craft beats borrowed from across decades baked into the third. Though the song is frank in its winking embrace of the elements of dysfunction that are part of many relationships that aren’t meant to last it celebrates the feelings that went into forming them. Listen to “Only You” on Spotify and follow Vania at the links provided.

“If Your Sky Should Fall” by evrshde is a Tender Dream Pop Song of Affection and Understanding

“If Your Sky Should Fall” finds evrshde draping a measured, echoing beat in billowing tones and descending, gauzy tones. It’s a love song but invokes a more unconventional, nuanced and complicated understanding of what it means to actually relate to anyone who is sensitive and has struggled with the disappointments we all face, scarred a bit by emotional abuse and weary of potential mistreatment, guard up and hesitant to be involved—wary of needing to fulfill an idealized role that they can’t really consistently live up to. The pacing of the song is like a slow walk down a darkly foggy path with the music swelling up with incandescent flares of warmth and light periodically to light the way. And that’s the vibe of the song in general, gentle, unobtrusive but reassuring. Fans of HTRK and the more enigmatic and ambient end of Enya will appreciate the song’s soundscapes. Listen to “If Your Sky Should Fall” on Spotify and follow evrshde at the links below.

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