Queen City Sounds and Art

Guava’s Lush and Hazy Dream Pop Single “Universal Angel” Fuses the Tranquil and Transporting Tonalities of Chillwave and Deep House

“Universal Angel” and its soft textures and hazy melodies is reminiscent of a period in music when early chillwave artists existed at the same time as some of the more creative deep house producers but never really collaborated. But Guava with this track taps into the meditative and transporting sounds of that time and fuses the styles perfectly here. The song featuring the introspective and warm vocals of Maddie Ashman considers the nature of genuine love and how it is only fully possible when both parties are free to connect without mitigating burdens. Whatever one’s own specific perspective on that subject might be the song’s lushly enveloping production and hypnotically measured rhythms is truly entrancing. Listen to “Universal Angel” on Spotify and follow Berlin-based, British producer, DJ and multi-instrumentalist Guava aka Bradley Hutchings at the links below. The latest Guava album Out of Nowhere released on October 27, 2023 via Hutchings’ own label Guava Noise.

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UK Noise Rock Duo Modern Technology Lay Into Global Inaction on Climate Change With the Colossal “Dead Air”

Modern Technology, photo by Jose Caamaño

You get a roughly 20 seconds of prelude before Modern Technology lays into “Dead Air.” The driving bass line and splayed accents on the drums early in the song are an apt vehicle for a song that about the climate disaster we’re experiencing in real time that we were told by officialdom was decades off and then recently 10-20 years as if that would placate anyone actually paying attention and living with the immediate effects. The distorted bass and vocals rip through that facade with images of an outdoors where the air is thick with pollution and “heat dome” effects in various parts of the planet. Noise rock, modern hardcore and extreme metal have been great vehicles for expressing the spirit of a time of multiple crises and London’s Modern Technology does so here with a colossal heft and yet leaves the song on a note of faint hope about how our civilization could change course and lessen the crushing impact of climate change even if we’ve seen no political global will on the part of the powers that be yet. Watch the video for “Dead Air” on YouTube and follow Modern Technology at the links below. The full-length album Conditions of Worth is out now including a limited vinyl edition via Human Worth with 10% of sales proceeds donated to the charity Choose Love.

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Lily Mae Harrington Channels the Righteous Angst of Her Inner Psychedelic Alanis Morrissette on the Spirited Single “Salty”

Lily Mae Harrington, photo courtesy the artist

Lily Mae Harrington leans into her “psychedelic Alanis Morrissette side” on “Salty.” The spirited, punk-y pop song relates a tale of an ex who conveniently has a new lover so soon after the breakup that he’s showing off on his Instagram account including photos with his family. She’s wearing Harrington’s shirt that he stole too. The lame indignities are a dozen and more with this guy. But Harrington gets graphic about how they met and how he’s up to the same moves with his new girlfriend that he did with Harrington because of course he is. Typical. Harrington’s line “And I’m mad that you’re happy” is delivered with such cathartic zeal even in the end when she near whispers it just owns the anger and outrage while letting it go at least a little. Many of us have been there and Harrington gives a righteous fury and infectious melody to those heated emotions. Watch the video for “Salty” on YouTube and follow Lily Mae Harrington at the links provided. Her 2023 EP The Sun is My Lover is out now.

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Moth Traps’ “Damaged Utensils” is a Warped Synth Pop Song For Fans of The Residents

“Damaged Utensils” begins with sounds like cars racing by on a nearby speedway. But Moth Traps has something much stranger in store for us as the soundscape transitions to what might be described as a synth pop song that mutates outside expected melodic shapes and rhythms. The vocals are mix of those that sound slightly slowed own and those that sound sped up like something one might hear on one of those strange albums The Residents were doing throughout the 90s and early 2000s. And the lyrics are also similarly surreal that make sense taken on their own logic. After all what is one to make of a chorus like “In this house we eat with damaged utensils/Always when we die now we use broken crockery”? That’s an interpretation best left to the individual listener given the rest of the lyrics but all arrows seem to point to a commentary on freeing oneself of the limits of preconceived notions of our cognitive framing of the world around us. It’s a bizarre song but one that is indisputably catchy and will strangely get stuck in your head. Listen to “Damaged Utensils” on Spotify and follow Moth Traps at the links below. The full album Atrophy Myths is out now on Exposed Code Records.

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Queen City Sounds Podcast S3E37: Sadie Dupuis of Speedy Ortiz

Speedy Ortiz started as a solo project for guitarist/singer Sadie Dupuis but expanded to a full band in 2011 that has gone on to release three EPs and four full-length albums including 2023’s Rabbit Rabbit. From the beginning Dupuis, also a visual artist, has done a most of the artwork for the band including its album covers and thus one gets a unique and personal aesthetic and perspective from the band’s music that has thankfully made its music challenging to pigeonhole outside of the umbrella term of indie rock. But there is also something immediately accessible about the pop songcraft and poetically and often cleverly observed lyrics that has set the project apart from artists more content with following an established style popular at any given moment. In October 2023 Rolling Stone magazine released a list of “The 250 Greatest Guitarists of All Time” where Dupuis charted at 176. And a quick listen to any of the band’s records reveals that Dupuis while an imaginative artist in her songwriting is also technically gifted musician who channels that talent into songs that come from the heart. Rabbit Rabbit is an album that explores various themes including survival mechanisms, those behaviors many of us undertake to get us through challenging times in our lives some of which we may not be consciously aware of adopting and which can affect us for much of the rest of our lives. And becoming aware of these patterns gives us some ability to guide our lives in ways we really want so that we can live instead of settling for mere survival. Its a complex and emotionally rich album that is also not short on humor and cultural Easter eggs for the perceptive listener that enrich the full meaning of the songs.

Listen to our interview with Sadie Dupuis on Bandcamp and follow Speedy Ortiz on its website linked below including its current US tour with a stop at Glob Hall in Denver on Thursday, November 16, 2023 with Space Moth and Mr. Atomic, doors 7pm, show 8pm.

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Queen City Sounds Podcast S3E36: Mike Baggetta of mssv

Mike Baggetta is the guitarist of mssv, a trio formed in 2019 that includes bassist Mike Watt (Minutemen, The Stooges et. al. ) and drummer Jim Keltner (Harry Nilsson, The Traveling Wilburys, Randy Newman, Bob Dylan, Richard Thompson, Neil Young, Phoebe Bridgers, Elvis Costello and numerous other collaborations). The latter has mostly been a songwriting and recording contributor to the project and veteran drummer Stephen Hodges (Tom Waits, Jonathan Richman, Wanda Jackson etc.) has been the percussionist for most of the band’s tours and now a contributor to the writing and recording music now as well. With the musical pedigree of the band with master musicians the music could be something mostly niche and for academics and the like but there’s a freshness to even the more tranquil passages of music that benefits from the spontaneous aspect of the songwriting and some real punk spirit in the performances. It’s a little like listening to a band that was equally rooted in jazz, angular post-punk and ferocious psychedelic art rock. The band’s new album Human Reaction is now available on 12” vinyl and digital download.

Listen to our interview with Mike Baggetta on Bandcamp and follow mssv at the links below.

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Haley’s Transcendent Pop Single “Walk Among the Dead” Dives Into the Complex Nuances of a Deep Love

On “Walk Among the Dead” Haley sounds like she’s singing to us from a spot high on a hilltop at a sky full of stars reflecting on the highlights and not so peak moments of a relationship. The shuffling beat sets a tangible foundation for the song as ethereal drones cast tonal colors in the background and a spare piano melody adds another moody dimension to the song to buoy up the clear and commanding vocals. The song feels like somewhere between a dream pop track and cosmic country or folk with lyrics that cast the challenges of the relationship about which Haley is singing in terms of accepting its challenges and its beautiful aspects in an adult way that values the connection even when it feels like it might sometimes hurt too much to sustain. In that way Haley makes even doubts seem like an aspect of any romance with actual depth of feeling to it. Listen to “Walk Among the Dead” on Spotify and follow Haley at the links below.

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Garage Sale’s Shoegaze Single “Blank Again” Washes Away Emotional Overload With an Alternately Raw Delicacy and Sonic Catharsis

Garage Sale sets a mood of delicate introspection at the beginning of “Blank Again” with a guitar riff that lets all the details of the chord shine through. The lyrics seem to be written from the perspective of someone who has been through a period of great psychological duress and trauma and recovering from a period of emotional exhaustion when you feel like you have nothing left. The rhythm feels like a tentative taking of steps into an unfamiliar way of being but wanting to get back to a place of being able to trust your feelings again and how your brain works rather than the mode its’ been in for too long of tangling with too much and not enough the way maybe things felt for a lot of people during the early pandemic period. Later in the song the gorgeously warped, melodic maelstrom of guitar and syncopated percussion and bass washes over you like its flooding in and taking away some of the doubt and anxiety that simmers below the surface of the song’s more tranquil moments. It’s a new chapter of experimentation in songwriting for the band based in Melbourne, Australia, and it showcases the group’s ability to genre bend in favor of more widely expressive songwriting. Listen to “Blank Again” on Soundcloud and follow Garage Sale at the links below.

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Babel’s “Mirror” is an Elegantly Expressed Dream Pop Song About Heartbreak, Breakup and Reconciliation

Babel’s seemingly simple composition for “Mirrors” lets the song’s arc of heartbreak, breakup and reconciliation hit as more melancholic than painful. The subtlety of the tone of resignation in the early part of the song as it flows into acceptance and then evolves into hope is remarkable in showing how often our hearts and minds can so easily switch from one feeling to another once our situational comprehension shifts and how affection doesn’t need to go through a torturous and dramatic process. Not if you’re an adult who understands that no one and no situation is perfect or ideal and that one’s emotional state need not be black and white. The change from the more somber use of piano to ethereal guitar and synth at the end is also an effective touch to change up not just the mood but the quality of the energy of expression with a change of approach to parallel the one more psychological. Listen to “Mirrors” on YouTube and follow the Finnish dream pop band Babel at the links below.

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Orions Belte’s “When You’re Gone I’ll Be Gone” Fuses Classic Pop Melodicism and Noisy Psychedelia to Craft a Unique Soundtrack to Heartache

Orions Belte, photo courtesy the artists

Norwegian art pop group Orions Belte teamed up with Norway Grammy-nominated vocalist Louien aka Live Miranda Solberg for the delicate dream pop of “When You’re Gone I’ll Be Gone.” The track from the band’s new album Women (released October 6, 2023) is a bit of a departure for the trio well known for its amalgam of progressive rock, indie pop and psychedelia. Louien’s melodious vocals are like something out of an earlier decade of pop music backed by subtle low end and percussion accents. But later in the song Orions Belte comes in with the distorted and noisy psychedelia swimming in the keyboard melody sounding like it’s melting off the pristine, icicle tones and the song pulses in increasingly cacophonous glory before ending with a minimal tranquil riff on acoustic guitar. The song takes us through a gamut of emotional shifts befitting the song title and the lyrics delivered by Louien. Listen to “When You’re Gone I’ll Be Gone” on Spotify and follow Orions Belte at the links provided.