Queen City Sounds and Art

C.O.F.F.I.N.’s Proto-punk Thrash Rager “Factory Man” Captures the Vitality and Tragedy of the Industrial Working Class

Sydney-based rock band C.O.F.F.I.N. (aka Children of Finland Fighting in Norway) dropped its latest album Australia Stops on September 15, 2023 via Damaged Record Co and its singles have revealed the growth of the group’s ferocious punk sound. “Factory Man” is a burst of proto-punk and boogie rock, think Radio Birdman, The Saints and a touch of Motorhead. The song begins as like the kind of hard working and loving blue collar song to a man’s lover and how he has everything you need and if not he’ll get it and be a non-stop kind of guy. But halfway through the song it slows some and the lyrics turn to the reality of how living that way and being ground down by the work and perhaps die on the job as yet another disposable member of the proletariat in the cogs of industry. In showing that spectrum of the actual lived experience of a lot of people the group lends some dignity to the lives of people society and certainly the economy depends upon but readily anonymizes as a statistic whether things go right or wrong. C.O.F.F.I.N. captures both the vitality of industrial workers and the tragedy of an early death in “Factory Man” which is something one doesn’t hear much in rock and roll. Watch the live music video for “Factory Man” on YouTube and follow C.O.F.F.I.N. at the links below.

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Band Spectra Gives in to the Faint Hope Love Provides in a Time of Deep Melancholia on Dream Pop Single “Freckles”

Band Spectra’s “Freckles” somehow seems more resonant in Fall when the daylight hours diminish. A hazy sweep of a sound resonates with the paces in the song as a melancholic synth melody and simple beat create a mood of bittersweet resignation. The vocals courtesy Mary Leay are a near whisper like someone writing a letter to someone with whom they have a loving but complicated relationship or speaking softly to them late at night. Multiple interpretations could be drawn from the song but lines about needing to be brave in a moment but failing to do so because “I’d rather feel the safety of my doubts” and being demotivated by life’s downbeats and the ensuing unease that takes the wind out of one’s sails. The bit about “best days running toward the past” feels like something someone had to have written later in life and not the product of youthful bravado. But at the heart of the world-weary song is a faith in something in a bond with someone even if things seem challenging, perhaps to even give up one’s tendency to surrender to feelings of uncertainty. The song has a sad tone but in its entrancing atmospheres and its gentleness there is more than a trace of finding something good even when things feel desolate. Fans of Electric Youth and Chromatics will appreciate the songcraft and the deep sense of tapping into tender feelings here. Watch the colorfully minimalist video for “Freckles” on YouTube and follow Band Spectra at the links provided. The group’s self-titled album released on September 28, 2023.

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Montañera Expresses the Richness and Vitality of the Immigrant Experience With a Gentle Spirit and Grace on Ambient Pop Single “Tú – El Borde de Mi Arista”

Montañera aka María Mónica Gutiérrez floats in the slow flutter of swells and flourishes of textured, rhythmic tone on her single “Tú – El Borde de Mi Arista.” The track from her new album A Flor de Piel (released November 17, 2023 on Western Vinyl) examines the immigrant experience. The name of the song translates loosely into “You – The Edge of My Edge” in English. But more poetically, perhaps, the line of intersection between people and cultures and the arbitrary lines and boundaries we draw between people and cultures even when there’s overlap geographically, culturally and historically. The song’s tones are soft, gentle and enveloping and Gutiérrez’s vocals inviting and warm. There is a circular flow to the rhythms like a hypnotic frequency that is layered throughout and about which the atmospherics drift and reiterate as though guided by the words. Musically it fuses an environmental ambient aesthetic with a New Age pop feel akin to some of the later cosmic jazz compositions of Alice Coltrane. Whatever its roots of inspiration and direct or indirect meanings the song conveys a sense that the immigrant experience is rich and offers much to the nations where immigrants land and expands the reach and influence of the cultures from which they come as part of the grand vista of the human experiment on earth. Listen to “Tú – El Borde de Mi Arista” on YouTube and follow Montañera at the links below.

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Phosphene Casts Off Creeping Doomerism Once Again on Gritty Shoegaze Single “Levitation”

Phosphene puts a bit of a crackly edge in the guitar sound of “Levitation.” There’s a bit more of an urgency in the song than much of the rest of the band’s new album Transmute (which released on September 15, 2023). The record was more or less born during the peak COVID-19 pandemic period and often written and recorded as the duo practiced and worked from home and the increased proximity fostered a spirit of creatively expanding upon where the band had been before. This including themes of troubling current events and the existential anxieties that seemed to course through human civilization and manifesting in various ways and mutating into strange notions exacerbated by new use of technologies like deep fakes and the widespread proliferation and consumption of misinformation. Phosphene explores these themes and more in deeply atmospheric melodies and poetic and sometimes humorous observations on world events and how they influence everyday life. “Levitation” with its loops of distorted, incandescent guitar and propulsive rhythms and lyrics seemingly about the challenge of taking on so many of the stresses pushed on to you in getting through the world these days and internalizing them more than usual because it all seems to be hitting us hard and fast without much letup. But then to cast off that anxiety and bitterness from the burnout of processing it all again and again and starting to wonder if you still can. The sheer momentum of the song suggests that you can and that even if you’re not feeling it better to give it another shot rather than succumb to hopelessness. Listen to “Levitation” on Spotify and follow Portland, Oregon’s Phosphene at the links below.

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Endearments’ “Hazy Eyes” is a Refreshingly Earnest, Unconventional Dream Pop Love Song

Listening to Endearments’ “Hazy Eyes” and watching its performance music video is reminiscent of going to see shows in warehouses and DIY spaces in the late 2000s and early 2010s. The music is well-crafted dream pop with gorgeously minimal synths, inviting rhythms and vocals with a soft but emotionally rich immediacy. The lyrics are an unconventional love song where there are words about how normally feeling so close with someone and welled up with excitement often involves the kinds of substances people take to feel open to others but with a certain someone special that feeling is persistent and requires no indulging anything but honest feelings. There could be a layer of irony in the song but it just has a refreshing earnestness that makes it immediately accessible and with a freshness of spirit that pulls you in. But those projections on the band in the video of colored patterns and early video art really taps into a specific resonance of nostalgia but without the baggage of being overly sentimental. There’s an unvarnished quality to it that gives it a home made feel that makes anyone remember what it was like to go to shows at unconventional venues where someone would do visuals for all the bands and make it special on a low budget and how there was more a feeling of togetherness and community to that that hasn’t happened as much in the past several years in many places. Endearments makes it feel like we can have that again somewhere, some time with people who want to experience that again and for the first time which plays into the spirit of the song. It’s a whole package. Watch the video for “Hazy Eyes’ on YouTube and follow Endearments at the links provided. The group’s new EP It Can Be Like This dropped on November 3, 2023.

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BRATTY’s Poignantly Melancholic Indie Pop Single “Ya No Es Lo Mismo” is an Examination of the Grief and Confusion a Faded Love

Mexican indie pop phenom BRATTY released her new album TR3S on November 3, 2023 via Universal Music Mexico. Her single, co-written with fellow Mexican singer/songwriter Billy Miamor, “Ya No Es Lo Mismo,” which roughly translates into English as “It’s Just Not The Same,” is a bittersweet and melancholic song that examines the grief and confusion that happens when you feel like your once strong connection to a loved one is fading and is now shadow of what once added a layer of uplift to your life, a feeling that you both shared. In BRATTY’s vocals there is a poignancy to that sense of loss that is palpable. Sonically its reminiscent of chillwave artists of the early 2010s and seems to tap a bit into the 80s New Wave synth pop for the emotional and musical resonance but BRATTY’s vocals lend it a grounded quality that gives it an immediacy that’s impossible to resist. The music video shows BRATTY walking about a dark, fantastical landscape of masked figures with symbols on their faces like they resemble some secret code that once unlocked might lead to her figuring out what went wrong but in the end BRATTY shows us that sometimes it’s better to accept that mystery, mourn it and move on. Watch the video for “Ya No Es Lo Mismo” on YouTube and connect with BRATTY at the links below.

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War Violet Mourns the Losses of the Natural World and the Compromised Potential of the Human Race on Orchestral Pop Song “Different Formations”

War Violet’s use of strings and piano arrangements in “Different Formations” lend a classical sensibility to a song about the ways humans live on earth like we’re eager to escape it. Like it’s something to escape and that as a result its in some ways disposable. But Jummy Aremu’s vocals seem to mourn this unfortunate state of affairs as a tragic reality that never needed to come to pass. In the music video we see Aremu sharing a cab with a cast of characters at night like they’re celebrating like it’s their last day on earth. It really makes the song hit a little harder in spite the elegance of its composition and the orchestral beauty of its detailed melodies. With poetic pronouncements, Aremu points out the lost potential and the inevitable tragedy of loss of a world that seems inevitable simply because humans couldn’t believe in their own value and thus the world around them because of a lifetime of indoctrination to belief systems that atomizes everyone and renders all things with a utilitarian value rather than one more inherent and tied to a place in a an economic, social and/or religious hierarchy. In Aremu’s voice we hear a love of the world and a spirit deep melancholia at how it feels like our species has simply given up on itself and everything else in the world has to pay that price as well. A song can’t save the world but “Different Formations” offers a unique take on what we’ve lost and what we can lose and challenges the listener to think in lateral and powerful ways that can transform our approach to how we conduct ourselves on the planet. Fans of Kate Bush and Angel Olsen will appreciate Aremu’s union of classic and classical sensibilities with an employment of those sounds and structures in ways that subvert the usual methods and expressions. Watch the video for “Different Formations” on YouTube out now on Kill Rock Stars and listen to more War Violet on Spotify.

“Last Day of Summer” is Wild Arrows’ Melancholic, Feel Good, Existential Heartbreak Synthpop Song of the Season

“Last Day of Summer” finds Wild Arrows in an especially melancholic mood. The image of what is presumably singer Mike Law’s face rippling at the bottom of a pool is a great visual for the lyric video. It casts the singer in a mood of deep repose and flooded with feeling. The song is like dream pop steeped in the emotional colorings of one of those great songs from the earlier John Hughes movies or more recent teen comedies with the more hip soundtracks with a particularly poignant song in a key moment of the film. Its drifting glittery guitar riffs and shifting synth washes and steady beat hit immediately with the sound of a classic. But this is no song about the heartbreak of youthful romance or that of an older person looking back farming nostalgia for inspiration. The lyrics to this song is certainly about heartbreak but one more existential and the kind that strikes you so deep when hard realizations crash into your brain and sink your heart in a way that simple breakup can accomplish. It’s the kind of song that sounds like it came about after a major and acute existential crisis struck and this warm and bright song was the way to dilute that pain in something poetic meaningful after sitting with it for several moments. An adult with the capacity to still feel knows these moments where something will stagger you, a soul deep disappointment that can be triggered by a specific event or unexpected conflict with a loved one but often experiences that point to you knowing deep down that things can never be the same again and that the circumstances that you had perhaps been counting on and even depending on for years have dissolved or are rapidly doing so. And when that happens at a point in life that feels like a time of natural transitions in the past it can sink your spirits. But in writing this song in this tone of resigned and melancholic acceptance Wild Arrows it seems as though the band is showing how you can get through those rough emotional patches if you just feel it and live in and pick yourself up again and try to reinvent aspects of your life once again. Watch the video for “Last Day of Summer” on YouTube and follow Wild Arrows at the links below. The band’s new EP Rejection Bloom EP dropped on October 20, 2023.

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Bad Flamingo Explores the Allure of Revisiting the Romance of One’s Youth on the Dark Folk Ballad “White T Shirt”

Bad Flamingo, photo courtesy the artists

Bad Flamingo seems to have an endless well of takes on star crossed love and bittersweet nostalgia and “White T Shirt” finds the enigmatic duo tapping into a different palette of sounds in crafting a typically engaging song. Sounding like some kind of outlaw country folk pop song with a tone of youthful indiscretion shared between two young lovers rekindled when they reconnect after years apart though what brings them together in this moment is memories of past passion and bonding over the simple pleasures available to teenagers in a rural town. The fretting on the acoustic guitar is left in as a tactile detail as much as the line about “hands got rough but your lips are still soft” to anchor the song in physical reality. The chorus of “white t shirts falling to the floor, we’ve been here before, whiskey and cola from the corner store, drunk as before” really captures a ritual that might have been one of the few moments of actual joy and passion in an otherwise mundane existence. But then there’s the bit about “old habits dying so damn hard” as a recognition that while that earlier past time could get stale and seem like a dead end and thus our plucky narrator moved on to broader pastures even though she has taken a trip back home and encountered a past that still holds an allure the way the things from our youth often do even when we’ve moved on as adults. Bad Flamingo excels at taking earnest musicianship and performances atmospheric and imbued with a darkly romantic edge and turning the simple story into something approaching the epic and “White T Shirt” is no exception minus how the song demonstrates that the band is also able to consistently switch up its songwriting approach to lend its storytelling a unique dimension each time. Listen to “White T Shirt” on Spotify and follow Bad Flamingo at the links below.

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Chief Broom’s Jazzy Noise Punk Song “hidden in plain sight (walked away)” is the Sound of a Valiant Attempt to Escape the Clutches of Desperation and Despair

“hidden in plain sight (walked away)” is the title track to the debut album hidden in plain sight by Boise, Idaho-based guitar rock band Chief Broom. The album represents well the legacy of the late Tanner “TJ” Tuck, the group’s gifted and imaginative drummer who tragically passed away due to a fentanyl overdose on June 11, 2021 at age 22. This song showcases the broad sweep of Chief Broom’s sound from angular post-punk and post-hardcore to jazz flourishes with a through line of a chiming and deeply melancholic melody around which the song fragments and distorts in a swell of emotion with lyrics that seem to be about struggles with substance abuse and the betrayals that can happen in a social circle that help to keep people strung along and the conflict that often results when people are tangling with these issues especially when someone wants to get away from it all. The song has a sonic complexity that hits with a desperate energy and crushing simplicity and intensity of expression that is reminiscent of early post-rock bands like Slint and later hardcore inflected post-punk artists like Pink Reason. It has that level of deeply imagined and felt songwriting that sticks with you and is impossible to pigeonhole because in the making the music the musicians aren’t limiting themselves to genre tropes. The album was many years in the making due to personal issues dating to before the death of TJ Tuck and exacerbated with his passing and perhaps finding the very idea of mixing and mastering the music and giving it concrete form for the world to hear a painful endeavor but fortunately the legacy of the drummer and his bandmates was honored with the release of the album on September 28, 2023, what would have been TJ Tuck’s twenty-fifth birthday. Listen to “hidden in plain sight (walked away)” on Spotify and follow Chief Broom at the links below. The record is available on digital, cassette and limited vinyl editions via Mishap and Earth Libraries.

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Chief Broom on Mishap Records