The resonant sound of bell tones introduces us to brednotbred’s densely rhythmic, flowing collage of textures and tones that is “sod.” Fluttery and furiously energetic percussion pushes the song along as ethereal melodies intone like a conversation between the bells and a more airy yet vivid synth tone is happening with the percussion making punctuated commentary. Like those percussion sounds are the voice of a teletype machine off duty and having something to say about the world in its own flurry of words and taking the time to listen as well as contributing. Whatever the nature of this conversation between machines it sounds otherworldly and friendly and the opposite of the dystopia sometimes depicted in film when inorganic entities communicate. Listen to “sod” on Spotify as well as other electro-mechanical discourse on the new brednobred album Antipsych which was released on November 9, 2023.
Strange Men is a punk duo comprised of drummer/vocalist Róisín Isner and guitarist/vocalist Ashley Clayton whose splintered, fuzzy outbursts seem to channel the likes of the gloriously feral grunge punk of Babes in Toyland and the stripped down and amplified garage rock of The Bobby Lees. In the video for its single “Hot Nights” directed by Panda Dulce (aka Kyle Casey Chu, co-founder of Drag Story Hour) it looks like Strange Men is performing in haunted shed replete with with a figure like something out of a Japanese ghost movie (possibly Chu) except less menacing the band and more the embodiment of the clashing chords and rapid contrast of introspective and screamed vocals this time out provided by Isner. The song seems to be one of contrasts itself: “Hot days make hot nights/Cold days make cold nights.” And how on hit nights she comes alive as does the band. The lyrics clearly aren’t meant to be linear and more an expression of the primal forces underlying the music. Fans of the likes of Shearing Pinx, Nü Sensae and the aforementioned will get the most out of this song just 86 seconds long that rapid runs through all the essentials of what makes for a great punk song with cool hooks, cathartic vocals and a complete lack of self-indulgent excess. Watch the video for “Hot Nights” on YouTube and follow Strange Men from San Francisco at the links provided.
Foghat is an English blues rock band that formed in 1971 initially featuring three former members of Savoy Brown with guitarist and vocalist Dave Peverett, bassist Tony Stevens, guitarist/slide guitarist Rod Price and drummer Roger Earl. Throughout the 70s Foghat enjoyed great commercial success garnering eight gold albums, one platinum and one double-platinum. Perhaps best known for its singles “Fool for the City” and “Slow Ride” both from the 1975 album Fool for the City, Foghat became a staple of the airwaves and later classic rock radio with its music appearing on multiple soundtracks over the past few decades. Its sound on recording and live has been noteworthy for the balance of sounds with the rhythm section as prominent as guitar and vocals, not always the case in the classic rock era and pop music of its heyday. The band split in 1984 but re-formed in 1993 and has been recording and performing live since. The sole founding member of the band these days is Roger Earl and the current line-up includes Bryan Bassett former guitarist of Wild Cherry (most famous for 1976 hit “Play That Funky Music”), bassist Rodney O’Quinn and lead vocalist and guitarist Scott Holt. In 2023 Foghat released its latest album, its first studio record in seven years, Sonic Mojo, a showcase for the group’s chemistry and facility with performing blues classics by Willie Dixon, Howlin’ Wolf, Chuck Berry, B.B. King as well as its own finely crafted material.
Listen to our interview with Roger Earl on Bandcamp where we discuss a bit of the history of Foghat, his time auditioning for The Jimi Hendrix Experience and his continued engagement in performing music. Foghat links below.
On the surface Spunsugar’s glittery shoegaze single “White Sneakers” seems to be an offbeat love and lust song. But its melancholic tone with undercurrents of regret point to an interpretation of its unusual lyrics and imagery. Like a love song yearning for someone for whom you shouldn’t hold such feelings but earnest in its expressions though the sentiments as expressed sound like the words of someone inexperienced, naive and awkward and cast in terms that might seem unusual to anyone else but in your head they might make sense in the way of an unrequited fantasy of the kind that happen all the time in the teenage mind. And it’s that sensibility that Spunsugar captures here. Most people have had these kinds of thoughts and cinema and literature is not short on examples of people expressing that reality in all its awkwardly endearing and sometimes cringeworthy glory. In the music video the members of the band are seen walking around a rural or suburban Swedish landscape when all the green is gone and in the distance we see hints of neglected human dwellings and vehicles while the the vocalist sometimes hangs around a rusted out football goal. And there’s something very self-aware and sentimental about this aesthetic captured in an image quality like something from a camcorder recording. Like having a fondness for a place and time in spite of yourself because of how genuine the feelings are in those moments in your memory and how the reality of it isn’t as romantic as you remember for anyone else and yet it doesn’t quite matter in the living it and in the enjoying of revisiting those feelings knowing how silly it might be. Apparently the song started as a cover of “Carrie” by Europe but definitely sounuds nothing like that now minus maybe some of the synth tone but in context that is the perfect origin story for the song. Watch the video for “White Sneakers” on YouTube and follow Swedish shoegaze/dream pop band Spunsugar at the links below. The song appears on the group’s new album A Hole Forever which landed November 17, 2023 via Adrian Recordings.
SORROWS is a dark pop duo based in Denver, Colorado comprised of singer Glynnis Braan and drummer Lawrence Snell. The project came together over the course of a few years when Braan and Snell were performing and experiencing music in similar circles, Braan catching alternative rock band Meet the Giant (in which Snell still performs) one night and hearing the group do a Massive Attack cover and wanting to meet them and Snell witnessing Lady of Sorrows, Braan’s former solo project, and feeling like he could contribute to Braan’s already captivating performances. The two formed DA’ANS, an electronic dance pop group, that performed briefly with its final show being two days before the COVID lockdowns. And over the course of the extended period when shows weren’t happening Snell and Braan came to work together on music as both had ideas for production and songwriting that complemented each other well.
Snell is from a small city between Coventry and Leicester in the middle of England and experienced the flourishing of acid house and trip-hop firsthand and played in various alternative rock bands throughout the 90s and early 2000s. Braan was born in Denver and came of age when downtempo and trip hop gained a foothold of popularity in the USA as well. So that mutual love of a certain kind of deeply atmospheric, emotionally rich and soulful, sonically immersive music has been a driving force in the songwriting of SORROWS. Snell moved to the US in 2003 with his wife who has a medical job the prospects for which seemed best in Denver and he soon came to appreciate life in the city and came to be involved in the vibrant indie rock scene in the 2000s as a member of the great shoegaze Americana band Colder Than Fargo and then in the long-incubating Meet the Giant that spent nearly a decade developing its music and songwriting before debuting in the late 2010s. Braan attended Denver School of the Arts and went through the art and music programs but didn’t join a band until years later when she met and came to work with Avery Fantom in Angel War which was a unique fusion of conscious hip-hop, operatic vocals and darkwave until he relocated out of state.
SORROWS debuted both its self-titled album and live band performances in 2022 and it was immediately obvious the level of creative development and focus Braan and Snell put into their new band paid off. Braan’s commanding and expressive vocals and Snell’s ability to accent rhythms and bring an attention to percussion tonality were are a strong foundation to the imaginative soundscapes and entrancing melodies that is the hallmark of the project’s sound. Fans of darkwave and downtempo will appreciate SORROWS’ creative evolution out of those sounds but even more how it’s something markedly different.
Listen to our interview with SORROWS on Bandcamp and follow the duo at the links below. Its next live show is on Saturday, December 9, 2023 at Glob in Denver, Colorado.
With mostly just an acoustic guitar and jhis voice, Jake Minch is able to pack a lot of emotional power and vulnerability to the songs from his October 20, 2023 EP how many EP. For the single “whose you are” we get a music video that looks like footage of someone documenting a time of great transition in a time of cold weather and journeys away from the places one knows best and the inevitable disruptions that occur and the necessary change of physical and social scenery and thus the nature of the emotional bonds one built with the people closest to you. The song is like a diary entry in its raw and poignant honesty and with some simple poetry it conveys impressions of connection, intimacy and the yearning for that when it’s something in the past and how confusing and painful it can be and how it can linger and still haunt a present that doesn’t seem so far to measure up and create new memories with the same depth of psychic resonance. Musically it’s reminiscent of artists like Wolf Colonel and perhaps Microphones but in a current manifestation of those creative impulses and mode of expressing those all too real feelings that strike you in a moment of peak loneliness and desolation. Watch the video for “whose you are” on YouTube and follow Jake Minch at the links below.
Mike Marchant is a singer-songwriter from Denver who left an indelible mark on the indie rock scene of the late 2000s and 2010s. His first band that garnered real attention was Widowers whose imaginative and darkly heartfelt songs had what might be described as a haunting accessibility. The group’s shows were passionate performances in which the considerable gifts of its membership contributed to something greater around Marchant’s simple yet sophisticated songwriting and thoughtful lyrics. It was a band that was birthed in the Denver DIY scene but found popularity in the then Denver indie rock scene before splitting around 2010. Marchant never had an ambition for the band commercially and aimed mainly to put out the band’s sole record in 2008. Widowers didn’t break up so much as drifted apart. These days keyboardist Mark Shusterman plays in Nathaniel Rateliff & the Night Sweats. In the band were talented weirdos who played experimental music and very much with ears open for the new sounds of that time. Guitarist Davey Hart moved to Chicago and has been active in various bands. Guitarist Zack Brown and bassist Mark Weaver who were also in Constellations with Shusterman drifted out of music as did the late Cory Brown. But Marchant was still writing music and performed some solo shows and then joined indie rock band Houses for a period as kind of a sideman with Andy Hamilton take more the lead in that project. At some point Marchant was asked to perform a show with some of his own music but then assembled a band with some of Denver’s finest musicians including Cole Rudy (now in Dragondeer), Grant Israel (formerly of technical death metal legends Elucidarius), Fernando “Fez” Guzman (now of Kiltro, formerly of Fissure Mystic and Fingers of the Sun among others), Crawford Phileo (formerly of Vitamins and Manos and briefly in Widowers), Maria Kohler (Kitty Crimes, Mercuria and the Gem Stars) and other musicians as the occasion presented itself. He dubbed it Mike Marchant’s Outer Space Party Unit in tongue in cheek fashion.
Then in 2012 Marchant was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s Lymphoma and getting treatment for and living with it turned his life upside down for some years as overcoming it (which has has) became central to his life as did finally getting clean from drugs with the help of EMDR therapy. While recovering Marchant relocated to Santa Fe, New Mexico to be away from the temptations of the big city and its music scene and got into a job helping in art sales. But being in Santa Fe put in him the right circles to meet film maker and scoring composer Luke Carr and the two struck up a creative partnership beginning in 2015 with a project they called Lightning Cult. It was an altogether more experimental project than most of which Marchant was until then known though Marchant had an appreciation for plenty of weird and avant-garde music coming up as a fledgling musician. It was an entirely recording project with limited if any live performances. But up to this time Lightning Cult has released two full-length albums and two EPs. In 2020 Marchant debuted his solo project Steady Circuits which focused more on electronic composition and sound design and graced with Marchant’s signature introspective and melodic vocals, yielding two full length albums and an EP thus far. Marchant hasn’t performed Steady Circuits live as yet but we may see either or both projects on stages in the coming year or two.
Listen to our interview with Marchant on Bandcamp and follow his work and that of Bernlore Studios at the links below.
Alunawolf worked with producer HyperXa on the sultry hyper-pop inflected single “Like You Hate Me.” The singer’s vocals sound swim in dark atmospheres shimmering with light motes of tone and swells of luminous melody as she relates hours spent yearning for her lover. The lyrics express a certain kind of tension and desire where we hear how she’s reluctant to let herself feel such a heightened level of desire for someone. And thus the lyric “Love you like you hate me” makes a certain kind of sense contrasting those feelings that for many people are two sides of the same coin of emotional intensity. And in lines like “Love you like an animal/eat you like a cannibal” we hear that base level of attraction that can take you by surprise in a way you can resist because it’s not rational or go with it. Alunawolf in this song decides to go with instinct and pleasure. HyperXa’s beats and layers of atmosphere give the song a futuristic feel like it’s from a time and place that should have come to pass had our civilization taken a different path the past few decades and a club hit for a time that should have been now in a world free of austerity. And it’s that spirit the song delivers. Fans of Dua Lipa and Charli XCX may find some of that emotional and sonic kinship here. Listen to “Like You Hate Me” on Spotify and follow Alunawolf on Instagram.
J. Wilms is releasing his third album as s singer-songwriter The Fighter on digital download, stream and 12” LP vinyl through Cart/Horse Records. Jeremy Williams came of age in the Atlanta, Georgia area and got a BA in Music from Georgia State University before going on to get a Master of Music at CUNY Queens College in NYC. His diverse career as a musician led him to jamming with Ornette Coleman at his loft, a brief stint in Chico Hamilton’s band on guitar, played bass on Broadway for a production of the musical Fela! which turned into the opportunity to play with Fela Kuti’s son Femi Kuti at venues around the world including The Shrine in Lagos, Nigeria. He has recorded with Bebel Gilberto, Beyoncé, TV on the Radio, arranged strings on Run the Jewels’ 2020 album RTJ4 and after moving back to Atlanta still works as a sideman in both his hometown and NYC, writing scores for film and other forms of media and as an educator. In addition to his singer-songwriter output Wilms is the leader of progressive metal band NOMOTO. With the new record Wilms gives us a set of songs about self-rediscovery and connecting with his roots without being limited by them. It’s a journey of an album with production that renders every song up close and personal, intimate, and thus vulnerable. It’s a open and deeply personal work with music that’s reminiscent of older rock groups like The Band and more modern indiepop of the 90s vintage and imbued with a freshness of spirit that makes for a set of songs that is immediately accessible and relatable to anyone that has ever had shake off the dust of life and reinvent oneself yet again while trying not to lose oneself.
Listen to our interview with Jeremy Wilms aka J. Wilms on Bandcamp and follow Wilms at the links below.
With the soft shimmer of crystalline chimes and an enigmatic, mechanical beat and melancholic strings to usher in Lost Ark’s “A Fallen Angel Weeping,” the song feels more like a cinematic experience than one more musical. The percussive details convey a depth and distance like what you’re hearing is the sound of a gallery for sound generating sculptures with its own soundtrack so that the assembled sounds create their own complementary orchestra of noise. When the beat stops a little more than three and a half minutes into the song it’s like some essential feature has left the gallery and the sounds wind down with a descending drone, a single bell tone seeming to count down on notes on a scale and in the distance we hear a voice repeating the words “falling down” before it too disappears and later on a voice with an aspect like words put through a reverse delay signals the end of the song. In retrospect its a bit like a spooky and haunted Art of Noise song and one not attached to any particular genre of music that demands and commands attention on its own terms. Listen to “A Fallen Angel Weeping” on Spotify. The Lost Ark compilation Primus Impunctus from which the song is drawn became available on November 6, 2023.
Queen City Sounds and Art 
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