Queen City Sounds and Art

Pallmer Explores the Quiet Joys of Living Present as a Human on Avant-Folk Single “Carbon”

The layered rhythms of Pallmer’s “Carbon” reflect the themes of the song around identity and humanity and recapturing the feeling of being alive rather than that of someone going through the motions of what it would look like to be a living person. The rapidly plucked cello figure that runs through much of the song as a loop is like being acutely aware of the flow of blood in the body while the bowed melody is like the warmth and wakefulness of conscious human existence, the cycling, bubbly tone a little like a focus on the pattern and sensation of breathing. Emily Kennedy’s vocals are reminiscent of an old folk and jazz style that lends itself well to expressing authentic human emotion and experience, at times even hearkening to a more folk-inflected Suzanne Vega song. In the music video directed by Jordan Anthony Greer we see Saint John-based dancer G.C. Grant moving about freely in a wintry forest landscape shot along the Nashwaak River but it’s not random, it seems more like a ritual designed to re-center and reconnect with oneself, to exult in the sensations of living in a body and in being present rather than living as a presentation. The latter being something we’ve come to internalize as normal in too many areas of life and the song explores the feeling of that imposed and adopted dissociation and a path back to actual normalcy. Watch the video for “Carbon” on YouTube and follow Pallmer from Fredericton, New Brunswick, Canada, at the links below. Pallmer’s new album Swimming released on January 12, 2024.

pallmermusic.com

Pallmer on Facebook

Pallmer on Instagram

Queen City Sounds Podcast S4E06: Brian Polk

Brian Polk has been a fixture of Denver’s local music and literature scene since the 90s. From early punk bands to current projects like the politically-charged art punk bands Joy Subtraction and Elegant Everyone to the deeply personal and sharply humorous, long-running ‘zine The Yellow Rake, the defunct but culturally significant magazine Suspect Press and his fiction (including novels Turning Failure Into Ideology (2007) and Placement of Character (2017)) , Polk has brought a level of craft and intellect to the local scene that frankly we could stand to see more of around the Mile High City. In 2023 Polk released his latest book a bit of a memoir of his time going to see music and becoming involved in the punk subculture called A Lifetime of Ephemera: 25 Years in Punk Told Through Ticket Stubs, Flyers & Memorabilia. It’s an engaging document of Polk’s becoming immersed in punk as related through anecdotes about live show’s he has attended with ticket stubs as they were available, flyers and other memorabilia linking the shared memories to a physical link to the event itself. It was an inherently great idea for a memoir and Polk simply put the work in and present it in a highly accessible manner with insightful commentary about the significance of punk in his life even beyond the music and a subculture in which he could become involved at young age. Perhaps especially significant is Polk’s documentation of the local music scene and venues and the experience of being in a place like Denver and of a time that isn’t otherwise well covered in any other source in one place. In some ways it picks up where Bob Rob Medina’s important 2019 book Colorado Crew: Denvoid Part 2 – A Collection of Tales & Images from The Colorado Punk Scene 1988-1996, his sequel to the also crucial 2015 book Denvoid and the Cowtown Punks: A Collection of Stories From the ’80s Denver Punk Scene. Polk connects the line from that era of the local punk scene to the current era, filling in a critical gap in the narrative of Denver’s underground music scene in a form and style that’s accessible and illuminating.

Listen to our interview with Brian Polk on Bandcamp and follow Polk’s work at the links below. Catch Elegant Everyone at The Skylark Lounge on Wednesday, January 17, 2024 with Cheap Perfume and Dead Pioneers. Doors 8, show 9, $10 advanced, $13 at door.

Buy A Lifetime of Ephemera at Mutiny Info Café

Elegant Everyone on Instagram

Joy Subtraction on Facebook

yellowrake.com

birdymagazine.com

Eva Snyder’s Bids Farewell to Old Habits and Ways of Being in the Ethereally Melancholic “Dead to Me”

Eva Snyder leans into feelings of disappointment and hope in the expansive and moody “Dead to Me.” Using the word “maybe” to open so many lines of lyrics, Snyder envisions a better life, better habits, better ways of being and better ways of feeling throughout the song and aiming to leave behind who she was when she allowed herself to be hurt and manipulated by bad faith fools as you do when you’re someone who is more emotionally open and vulnerable and draw all sorts of types to you. In the song we also hear Snyder’s fears and insecurities like going back to her hometown because it wouldn’t be that bad and she wouldn’t feel like a failure who fell short of following her dreams. But in those moments of the song we pull for her and the backing vocals serve as a bit of a voice of her conscience and low key cheering on her more fortifying impulses like not being limited by memories of past behaviors even as the impulse to repeat past mistakes weighs heavy. The continually expansive tone of the song with its melancholic piano accents running alongside synths that swell and pass into the ether always in forward motion. Yet in the back and forth conversation with self it seems as though in Snyder’s expressive and winsome vocals we also hear the will to move beyond these moments of self-doubt as hinted by the title and how sometimes we have to think of phases of our lives in those terms. With the spare elements of the composition, Snyder is able to explore an uncomfortable and messy emotional complexity with clarity. Listen to “Dead to Me” on Spotify and follow Eva Snyder at the links provided. Look for Snyder’s debut album Seventeen set to release on May 3, 2024.

Eva Snyder on Facebook

Eva Snyder on TikTok

Eva Snyder on Instagram

Eva Snyder on YouTube

“All My Life” is the Soulfully Evocative Debut Trip-Hop Single From the Collaborative Project of boerd and Boko Yout

Listening to “All My Life,” the lead single from the soulfully evocative debut collaborative EP Griot by Swedish producers and songwriters boerd and Boko Yout (out as of January 12, 2024 via boerd’s Blunda imprint) and its dusky atmospheric tones and textural downtempo rhythms you hear the kind of thing that might have happened had Tricky and Massive Attack worked together after the release of Mezzanine. It’s a song with themes of self-involvement and escapism and how in pursuing something that feels meaningful with your life’s work you can stay emotionally stunted by having to grind in performative fashion. As an artist that means you might lose yourself trying to please people through asserting your self importance in chasing perceived creative breakthroughs in trying to continually prove yourself. But in the song’s lyrics we hear the words of the narrator’s mother, and as it turns out that of Boko Youth aka Paul Adamah himself, advice to stay grounded and thus connected to your authentic self rather than one processed and filtered through fickle and shifting expectations. The spectral, lingering organ melody just below the accented percussion and expertly executed flourishes of vinyl scratching definitely hits that mode the founders of trip-hop hit that expresses so well a reflective mood conducive to releasing the angst of modern life. It’s a sound that helped to humanize electronic music and with the vocals here it’s a vibe that hits deep. With this collaboration that classic sound gets a subtle production and aesthetic update that feels fresh. Listen to “All My Life” on Spotify and follow boerd at the links below.

BODEGA’s Psychedelic Power Pop Art Punk Single “Tarkovski” is a Spirited Song About Breaking the Rules

BODEGA, photo from Bandcamp

“Tarkovski” is the lead single from BODEGA’s forthcoming album Our Brand Could Be Yr Life (due April 12, 2024 via Chrysalis Records). Of course the title is a reference to the great Russian filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsy but also snow skiing. Guitarist and vocalist Ben Hozie noted that he was taken by Tarkovsky’s book Sculpting in Time and its rules and guidelines for filmmaking often broken by Tarkovsky in actual practice even while those principles are still useful. It’s a testament to how art is actually made and how any actually interesting artist has to reconcile inspiration and intuition with concepts and technique without being strictly limited by any of it. As the band has been playing the song live it has improvised the middle section with words selection considering their efficacy as a sound in the music more than the literal meaning. The song engages in a bit of genre and style time traveling as well with strong melodies in a fashion reminiscent of 1980s power pop and New Wave. The middle instrumental section sounds a bit like what might have happened if The Replacements did a cheeky, off the cuff tribute to both The Velvet Underground and The Clean with hypnotic, noisy, inexplicably beautiful and moving riffs. BODEGA as always finds a way to make a catchy song that goes off center into unpredictable territory and brings you along for the ride even if the person addressed in the song doesn’t really want to go on that ride despite asking to be taken to the zone whether as a deft reference to Tarkovsky’s deeply existential 1979 masterpiece Stalker and in the more cosmic sense or being in the area and headspace where the action happens or both. It’s a promising peek into the art punk heights BODEGA will take us to when the new record drops just over a week after Tarkovsky’s April 4 birthday. Watch the video for “Tarkovski,” a visual and thematic nod to the films of the director in a fog enshrouded forest, on YouTube and follow BODEGA at the links below.

BODEGA on TikTok

BODEGA on Instagram

“Sleepless in Eugene” is Loic Moonmattress’ Poignantly Existential, Ambient Hip-Hop Shoegaze. Late Night Jazz Lounge Love Song

Loic Moonmattress, photo courtesy the artist

Loic Moonmattress sets the scene in subtle and power fashion at the beginning of “Sleepless in Eugene.” The sound of soft white noise like a breeze, warping tones like springs and strings being stretched beyond their bounds and then elegant guitar and the vocalist speaking words of contemplation of the moment and reflecting on the day prior. Gently strummed guitar accenting the lines over piano. Drones incandesce and fade. The lyrics weave a gorgeous and deeply thoughtful and observant narrative that vividly expresses emotional moments that sit well in the music. It leaves the impression of thoughts sketched out in a late night lounge but one where the regular customers are all gone and outside is the gentle splashing of the seashore, meditative and soothing. You have the place to yourself and the resonant space upon which to cast your thoughts and music. The words are spoken in measured passages that play well with the length of the meters so that the expression of the thoughts have an intuitive aspect to the way the poetry plays out, a fusion of prose and more structure poetic forms. It seems to be a love song to someone with whom one has a powerful, unique and creative connection but with none of the hackneyed conceits of other songs that might be similarly characterized. In combining concrete imagery of life and the world with existential observations the artist in this particular format with the deep mood music and informal, organic rhythms he invites the listener in to the intimate thoughts that speak to how it’s important to hold on to these moments of freedom from the rush and press of the world as usual and to hold onto the people who can share in similar dreams and sensibilities, who value a gentleness and vulnerability of spirit as it opens one up to the often hidden details of the world and the essence of humanity in others which is a key to living an enriching emotional life. It’s the kind of song that with repeated listens you pick up on an incredibly poignant turn of phrase that makes the whole piece resonant even more strongly. Is this an ambient song? Hip-hop? Cosmic, folk-jazz shoegaze? Whatever it is the song commands taking it in on its own terms. Fans of Shabazz Palaces and Flying Saucer Attack will truly appreciate what Loic Mooonmattress has crafted here. Listen to “Sleepless in Eugene” on Spotify and follow Loic Moonmattress on Instagram.

“Painthing” by shedde0d is the Haunted Sound of Hope in the Aftermath of the Current Wave of Climate and Political Disaster

There is a distinct feeling of accidentally tuning into a secret television station before everything went digital when shedde0d’s “Painthing” begins. Hazy white noise with an unmistakable background presence. Then the distorted archaic keyboard melody comes in breaking and going off any standard, recognizable progression in key. More impressionistic like a robot out of an old Asimov or Philip K. Dick story woke up in the ruins of an abandoned amusement park on a remote planet left behind during the expansion of a galactic empire with a vague notion of its original programmed mission but enough self awareness to explore outside of those parameters and in the absence of other beings to provide input, set about to make its own carnival orchestra piece completely unaware of how it’s “supposed” to sound. It’s refreshingly reminiscent, on pure vibes alone, of the mysterious and psychedelic quality of science fiction cinema of the 70s like Zardoz or Logan’s Run where the future wasn’t so readily predictable and we could imagine the collapse of civilization into small, sequestered Utopias that can go sideways while the rest of the world recovers with the remains of our former, quasi-advanced civilizations. This song sounds like what it would feel like to take that as a launching off point of speculation into the kinds of music that might have been made if your point of reference was 1980s post-apocalyptic cinema but set in the sprawling “development” of an expansive galactic civilization where niche interests could survive and be left alone to progress on its own after the priorities once injected into them have moved on. Larry Niven and David Brin picked up where the ideas of the Foundation series left off and this song is like a musical equivalent of imagining a time and place that isn’t too far off and isn’t set in what seems like the likely aftermath of catastrophic climate change and the impending disaster of rising, global authoritarianism and austerity. This song is the sound of the hope of there being survival well into humanity’s future where someone or something picks up the fragments of culture and makes something hauntingly beautiful out of it. Listen to “Painthing” on Bandcamp and follow Portuguese experimental project shedde0d at the links below. The full album The New Kid dropped on December 24, 2023 and is filled with similarly fantastical music creations.

Shadow Sides’ Brooding and Ethereal “heroine with meaning” is a Dark Post-Punk Portrait of an Intense and Irresistible Yet Dysfunctional Romance

Shadow Sides, image courtesy the artists

Shadow Sides captures a certain post-modern decadence on what might be called its signature song “heroine with meaning.” One of the lyrics mentions the concept of shadow sides and how we all have them. For some it’s just the more emotional and non-linear logical, creative side, and for others it’s a definite dark side and probably for most there’s a little of both and it’s not as discretely sorted out as all of that. The song has a fantastically brooding bass line and ethereal post-punk guitar work with almost whispered vocals like a voice in that subconscious dark coming to the fore and speaking uncomfortable truths that one often fears admitting to oneself. It’s a song about an intense relationship between people who might just be bad for each other and the double entendre of the song title is surely no accident including the idea of how performative and ritualized it can all feel. Many people find themselves attracted to someone with a passionate intensity that bypasses reason and logic at some point in their lives and that can short circuit one’s ability to navigate challenging times in a way that’s healthy but that allure is undeniable even when you know it’s bad for you. And yet there is a whole body of creative work about that connection that for many people feels soul deep and difficult if not impossible to shake. The lurid tone of the song and how it sounds like a decadent and weary love ballad is definitely part of its appeal the way film noir and the novels of the likes of Bret Easton Ellis or Chuck Palahniuk can draw you in for a story that is going to have some wildly uncomfortable moments that fascinate nevertheless. Musically it’s in the vein of the darkwave end of post-punk but the strong bass line and present yet disembodied vocals set it apart from how some of that music can be a little sonically thin. As for the subject matter? If you’ve been in a relationship or few like that described above this song will absolutely speak to you. Watch the lyric video for “heroine with meaning” on YouTube and follow Los Angeles’ Shadow Sides at the links below.

Shadow Sides on Facebook

Shadow Sides on Instagram

Mathilda Bohman’s Orchestral Pop Single “Paradise” is a Soaring and Aching Tribute to the Loss of a Loved One

Mathilda Bohman, photo courtesy the artist

On her new single “Paradise” Mathilda Bohman sounds like she spent a lot of time feeling and thinking about issues of loss and coming to terms with what that means and how it affect how you conduct the rest of your life. The details in the song of words from a friend or a family member who died too soon written in a letter giving words of comfort, reminding those left behind that she was going to paradise and that she’ll be alright and that so will everyone experiencing the loss. The orchestral arrangements and the soaring and melancholic violin melody sync well with Bohman’s expressive and affecting vocals suit the subject matter well. There is no soft pedaling these events in our lives but hearing Bohman’s song even if you don’t share the same or even adjacent spiritual beliefs is a nice reminder that these losses can lead us to honor the lives in ways that help process the grief with creativity and grace while feeling it intensely without the reservations that can trap us in a cycle of grieving. Bohman may be a 17-year-old singer from Sweden but has clearly plumbed the essence of what it means to lose someone close and to find a way to keep going. Listen to “Paradise” on Spotify and follow Mathilda Bohman on Instagram.

Queen City Sounds Podcast S4E05: Lunar Tunes

Lunar Tunes is the the collaborative musical project from Felix Fast4ward (also Felix Ayodele) and Grant Blakeslee (MYTHirst and Skyfloor). The two musicians have been a staple of the local experimental music scene with music that blurs the boundaries between dance music, ambient, indie rock, folk and hip-hop. In both their individual projects and this collaboration, Felix and Grant utilize a spectrum of electronic instruments and those more analog for a hybrid style of performance and production that yielded a half dozen songs on the recent Pieces of Advice EP that are like the more playful and uplifting end of IDM. In moments songs hit like what chillwave might have evolved into had its primary songwriters been more steeped in jazz and avant-electronica. The songs are emotional expansive with even the hint of heaviness eased out of melodies and tonal choices that might be melancholic in the hands of other songwriters. The attention to percussion, rhythm and textural elements is impressive and reminiscent of more experimental hip-hop producers and IDM sound architects alike. Altogether it’s a testament to how the two musicians complement each other well with their individual sensibilities and musical skill sets. It’s an eclectic yet unified and coherent aesthetic of forward thinking, dance adjacent electronic music that is a hallmark to a monthly event Alphabeat Soup that Blakeslee helps curate the second Thursday of the month at The Black Box in Denver, Colorado.

Listen to our interview with Lunar Tunes on Bandcamp and follow the Felix Fast4ward and Grant Blakeslee at the links below. Also linked is the YouTube playlist for Pieces of Advice.

Felix Fast4ward on Instagram

Grant Blakeslee on Instagram