Queen City Sounds and Art

Luminatrix Creates a Compelling and Dark Vitality on Smoldering, Punk Breakup Song “China Again”

The edgy jangle of the introduction to “China Again” by Luminatrix promises something menacing ahead. What makes this song so fascinating and definitely sets it apart from other rock songs that are clearly tapping into earlier eras of music is that the strands of influence are rich and intertwining and result in something original but with a classic resonance. In Jenna McGrath’s vocals you can hear some of the poetic inflection of Patti Smith and Chrissie Hynde and the emotional intensity of Carrie Brownstein when the latter channels harrowing experiences and mixes them with a delicacy of feeling to create a psychologically complex mood. The crunchy guitar riff alongside a haunting, hovering surf rock warble, the enigmatic laughter early in the song, the steady cadence and the sense that the song could tip over into a dramatic emotional outburst gives this song of a relationship being at a decisive end over being weary of one’s partner’s numerous offenses and foibles a dark vitality that invites repeated listens. Fans of Death Valley Girls will definitely appreciate what Luminatrix has to offer in its own songwriting. Listen to “China Again” on Spotify. Luminatrix’s new album Antihero dropped September 25, 2023.

Paging Doctor Moon’s Indie Pop Single “Scars” is a About Overcoming Your Defenses to Find Genuine Connection and Intimacy

Paging Doctor Moon, photo courtesy the artists

Paging Doctor Moon utilizes a delicate, jazz-like arrangement on “Scars” to deliver a song about yearning for connection. The instrumentation glides along and then rushes together in the moments of elevated emotion throughout the song for an effect like an indie pop equivalent of Steely Dan. In the vocals we hear what for some might be the familiar thoughts of making life harder for yourself because of how you’ve had to cope with the struggles in your life. But there are also lines about needing help with overcoming one’s own barriers. The lyric “I wanna see you for who you are/so you have to break through these ancient scars” speaks to a self-awareness of habits that maybe you don’t always have the ability and will to break because at some point in your life they served a purpose of protecting you from shoddy treatment, at least emotionally. It’s a short song at three minutes one second but this existential struggle gets a fairly deep examination set to a song that creates a musical setting to ease the process with a breezy tone that honors the motions through which your brain goes when trying to reach a better place after years of self-conditioning to get through an often challenging life. But the will to trust and to seek honest connection runs deep in song’s words and its expansive spirit. The animated lyric video for the song by Luke Paulina, Giuliana Fox and Danielle Powell both illustrates the complexity of emotions expressed in the song and also how setting one’s own words into the physical world rather than keeping them in your head can often be a map to sorting through the mess. Watch the video for “Scars” on YouTube and connect with Paging Doctor Moon from Pittsburgh, PA at the links below.

Paging Doctor Moon on Instagram

Paging Doctor Moon LinkTree

Queen City Sounds Podcast S3E38: Benjamin Jayne

Benjamin Jayne, photo by Benjamin Wright

Benjamin Jayne is the musical project of Benjamin Wright based in Brattleboro, Vermont. On the 2019 debut album HI-LO the songwriting might be characterized as an introspective, gentle folk rock. For the follow-up 2021’s Theater introduced more electronic elements to craft the moody and thought provoking songs and included extensive contributions from Wright’s sister Amanda Wright in vocals, piano and bells as well as one of her own compositions. Since the start of Benjamin Jayne, Wright has enlisted the services of Drew Skinner for mixing and production including on the new album Broken (released October 13, 2023). The music for Broken is darker and heavier befitting the subjects of trying to reconciling who people are in comparison to who they remember themselves to be and the cognitive dissonance and distance we can experience as we try to come to terms with it all and how we want to live and be going forward.

Listen to our interview with Benjamin Wright on Bandcamp and follow Benjamin Jayne at the links below.

benjaminjayne.com

Benjamin Jayne on TikTok

Benjamin Jayne on Instagram

Lenka’s Indie Pop Single “Champion” is a Heartwarming Song About Appreciating the Love You Have

In the video for “Champion,” Lenka sits against a white backdrop as illustrative sketches of objects representing the lyrics appear both on the background and across her own white shirt. Around halfway through guest vocalist Josh Pyke appears in his own white shirt with the black and white animated sketches accenting his own lines. Toward the end of the video the floating drawings are filled in with color and moving with a vibrant activity to match the climax of the song. It’s all a playful and lighthearted way to present Lenka’s upbeat pop song about how she doesn’t need grand gestures for someone to prove their love to her when it’s real, just the knowledge that she’s supported in life and her feelings by someone with whom she shares a mutual understanding and regard. And that such tangible and enduring affections are mutual. It’s a simple message and in its earnestness seems sincere and uplifting when many other pop songs are about a journey and struggling for it. This song is about appreciating what one has without second guessing it. Watch the video for “Champion” on YouTube and follow Lenka at the links provided. The new album Intraspectral was released on November 17, 2023 and available to stream on Spotify also linked below.

Lenka on Facebook

Lenka on Instagram

lenkamusic.com

being anne Collaborates with Søme on a Doleful, Downtempo Interpretation of Sugarbabes’ “Overload”

Ahead of the release of her forthcoming EP (expected in February 2024), being anne enlisted the services of producer Søme for a moodier and even more downtempo cover of the 2000 debut single by Sugarbabes, “Overload.” The vocals float through ghostly textures and melodies in a near whisper bringing to the song a gently melancholic aspect that renders the original as less a dance pop track and one that seems to interpret the lyrics in a way that taps into tragedy of its narrative. With the wood block beat, doleful strings and nearly abstract piano and the samples of the sounds of a train on the track as the conveyance to take the narrator to a better place this version of “Overload” sounds like a song out of a Matthew Vaughn movie about a doomed romance. Listen to “Overload” on Spotify and follow the artists at the links below.

being anne on Instagram

body / negative’s “persimmon” is a Melodious Tapestry of Transcendent and Deeply Soothing Tones

Mastered by Slowdive’s Simon Scott, body / negative’s forthcoming album Everett (Track Number Records on December 8, 2023) includes contributions from Madeline Johnston aka Midwife and Randall Taylor aka Amulets. The album’s sixth track “persimmon” features Justin Maranga of Dune Altar Records and Lionel Williams (Vinyl Williams). The song begins with echoing, ethereal tones in the middle distance and the sound of a voice like all of it is coming to you from deep inside a cave or from across a canyon where the acoustics are just right enough to carry sound from a distance so that it’s discernible if not explicitly identifiable. The effect is like that feeling of half-remembering a dream on waking up and wanting to get back to it. In this case a more solid bit of percussion comes into the foreground surrounded by melodious, abstract voices and a floating echoing set of tones. One stream of sound seems to be going one direction and the other in the opposite but all circling and interweaving into a tapestry of textures and soothing music into which the anxious wrinkles in your psyche can unravel. It is a music that invites you to take it on on its own terms without needing to impose a genre as a tool of comprehension as in that mix are elements of ambient, slowcore, shoegaze, musique concrète and post-rock but combining to create something uniquely entrancing. Listen to “persimmon” on Spotify and follow Los Angeles-based artist body / negative at the links below.

body / negative on Instagram

The Down & Outs’ “Mars” is an Edgy, Noisy Post-punk Song About a Twisted Romance

The beginning of “Mars” by The Down & Outs is a torturous sound like someone is playing some field recording of a feedbacking guitar in a subway and manipulating that signal so that you’re not even sure what you’re hearing. But it’s an apt introduction to the song ahead that itself sounds like glam rock influenced post-punk song being performed in the tight confines of a utility closet because it’s the only space available on the moon base from which a near future staging area for flights to the planet Mars are located. Sure the fidelity is hard to place because clearly the production has a keen ear for sonic detail. But the passionate performance and vocals that are reminiscent of what might have happened if Chrome was way more into Bowie and collaborated with The Faint to deliver what sounds like the story of a twisted romance. And in the end the vocals repeat the chorus of “We can go Mars sometime!” to the point of being nearly unhinged giving the whole song a genuinely edgy tone. Listen to “Mars” on Spotify.

Finnish Psychedelic Garage Punk Band Kaksipäinen Koira Debuts Lively Then Introspective Single “Kuolema voittaa aina”

Kaksipäinen Koira (in English, Two-Headed Dog) is a supergroup group Finland signed to All That Plazz that includes guitarist/singer Tero Huotari (Teksti-TV 666, HÄN and Kuusamo) and drummer/vocalist Aliisa Keränen (Bad Sauna, Lala Salama), “Kuolema voittaa aina” (“Death Always Wins”) with bassist/singer Otto Pekkola rounding out the live lineup. Its debut single “Kuolema voittaa aina” (“Death Always Wins” in English) is short (two minutes six seconds) but begins with a charging rhythm like a Reatards song inspired by Buzzcocks with a fuzzy melody and call and response vocals before shifting gears just over half way through to a more introspective and atmospheric feel with the previously urgent pace slowed to something more leisurely. The production is appropriately lo-fi but the range of sounds and in so economic a fashion points to promising material ahead for the new project. Listen to “Kuolema voittaa aina” on YouTube and connect with Kaksipäinen Koira, possibly a sly Roky Erickson reference, at the links below.

Kaksipäinen Koira on Bandcamp

Kaksipäinen Koira on Instagram

“Big Elsewhere” by vireo is a Tender Dream Folk Soundtrack to a Heartwarming Day Trip

“Big Elsewhere” by vireo sounds like something a bunch of super creative kids wrote in their tree house long before forming an actual band. It has that quality of openness and a sense of wonder and an unhurried spirit. Its chiming guitar work and bird-like keyboard melodies behind tender vocals individually and in harmony. The music video, made by Suzanne Gomes, looks like a fall weekend spent on the coast with gray skies and choppy waters. It’s all the spontaneous aesthetics of Super-8 and no strict narrative structure, just images like what you might shoot if you weren’t planning but merely documenting your experience for yourself. And the song feels like that too. It’s a mere one minute, fifty-three seconds but in that time vireo sounds both like a futuristic indie pop thing informed by the sort one heard and experienced in warehouses and house shows in the 2000s and early 2010s. The kind of music that has an undeniable charm and appeal but always very home made feeling like the choices of instrumentation are idiosyncratic executed with an unexpected originality. Maybe someone would call this band shoegaze but the sound is much more in line with the kind of borderline twee, dream pop folk that would fit well on a bill with say a Stephen Steinbrink or Microphones. Even Wolf Colonel. Its an intimate and inviting sound that seems to be a part of the group’s style that resonates strongly with the DIY musical experience of a decade and more ago. Watch the video for “Big Elsewhere” on YouTube and follow Pittsburgh’s vireo at the links below.

vireo on Facebook

vireo on Bandcamp

vireo on Instagram

Red Kate’s “Home of the Slave” is a Searing Punk Rock Take Down of the Persistent Ills of Genocide, Racism and Predatory Capitalism

With righteous fury, Red Kate in its song “Home of the Slave” draws a line connecting the genocide of indigenous people, slavery and white supremacy generally and the course of capitalism and its fallout for those that aren’t among the elite. The logic couldn’t be more obvious to anyone paying attention but Red Kate maps it all out in a relatable way without excessive abstraction. Musically the song rings some bells like its resonance with somehow both “T.V. Eye” by Stooges and early D.O.A. – just that kind of politically charged political punk of the latter and its undeniable hooks and the willingness to go off standard lines of rhythm and tone of the former yet propelled by an irresistible momentum that rages with the excitement of being able to utter the critical truths that are the song’s lyrics. Listen to “Home of the Slave” on Spotify and connect with Red Kate from Kansas City at the links below. The new Red Kate album Exit Strategy dropped on November 10, 2023 and now available on digital and vinyl as well as streaming.