Queen City Sounds and Art

jake minch Taps Deeply Into the Bittersweet Nostalgia of the Unstructured Time of the Summers of Our Youth on “strip mall”

During the late spring and summer of the early pandemic of 2020 it seemed like so much was up in the air and unless you were in a vital industry maybe you had plenty of time to indulge what it felt like to not have to be anywhere in particular at a particular time. Or if, like jake minch, you were in high school and it was a summer of talking with friends over video calls and bonding with friends in a way that involved a necessary physical distance but because you couldn’t necessarily make plans you could devote your time to these necessitated portals of communication and maybe that meant being more open and real and psychologically intimate than might have happened under normal circumstances resulting in a different kind of connection with your peers. For a brief period in our national history of recent years it seemed that most people recognized the fragility of their own existence and interdependence on other people they might have otherwise forgotten and that raw and vulnerable state of thing meant a bit more recognition of the value of other people in a way that wasn’t as obvious previously and an awareness that snapped back to business as usual soon enough. That extended liminal moment is what informs the emotional backdrop of minch’s song “strip mall.” With essentially just his delicate vocals and an acoustic guitar minch relates how memories of a t-shirt he saw an ex wear shopping at a strip mall when he returned home from college to visit and how that triggered an intense emotional resonance that brings him right back to the moments that helped define a significant moment in his life when he loved being younger and seeming to have all the time in the world to indulge in youthful exuberance and connections that seem like they’ll last forever in the context of one’s relative short life thus far but which wash past you quickly and maybe you hate that you’ll never be able to recapture that time in which you felt like you had so much freedom and endless possibilities even if there was a specter of a global pandemic in the case of minch and any other young person at that time. But many of us got to experience some of that energy again at a time in life when some adult concerns had of necessity to be put on hold for longer than we can consciously remember except in our youths. Maybe minch’s song is bittersweet and melancholy but it powerful conjures both those memories with the immediacy and accessibility of its emotional resonance in anchoring it to concrete imagery. Watch the video for “strip mall” on YouTube and follow jake minch on Instagram.

Queen City Sounds Podcast S3E35: Lance Lopez

Lance Lopez is a blues rock guitarist, singer and songwriter who was born in Shreveport, Louisiana but cut his teeth as a working musician in the French Quarter of New Orleans where he started getting paid work at age 14. At 17 he was recruited by former Stax Records hit-maker Johnnie Taylor and toured the Chitlin Circuit for half a year. He toured with Lucky Peterson for three years and spent some time playing for the Buddy Miles Express. At points in his career he was mentored by both Johnny Winter and Billy Gibbons, the later of whom remains a friend. Lopez released his debut album First Things First in 1998 and has had an active career with his own band since with an active touring schedule minus the pandemic period during which little if any live music was going on. On July 14, 2023 Lopez released his latest album Trouble Is Good (on Cleopatra Records), a vital and musically accomplished set of songs steeped in the tradition of blues rock commenting on the travails of everyday life. It’s also an album that comes off with a fresh take on an established style of music and an example of how great songwriting and creative musicianship doesn’t go out of style.

Listen to our interview with Lance Lopez on Bandcamp and follow Lopez at the links below.

Lance Lopez Website

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Galeet Dardashti Melds Traditional Persian-Jewish Music With Jazzy Post-punk on the Electrifying “Melekh”

Persian-Jewish singer, composer and anthropologist Galeet Dardashti collaborated with the voice of her late grandfather the late, Iranian singer Younes Dardashti on her latest album Monajat (released September 9, 2023). Sampling from an audio artifact that her grandfather recorded in Iran, Galeet artistically interpreted the Persian-Jewish Selihot ritual and crafted a call and response dynamic like time and space traveling on a set of music recorded and produced in a modern mode with the backing of Middle Eastern and jazz musicians in New York. The single “Melekh” puts the elder Dardashti’s vocals front and center in impassioned performance, the newer musical recordings setting a deep mood like a mix of alternative jazz lounge and Middle Eastern devotional music. The blend makes both somehow more accessible, the more traditional with a hip modern flavor like a new form of jazz rooted post-punk. Its a vibrant hybrid sound that both Dardashti’s sustain across all of Monajat. Listen to “Melekh” on Spotify where the rest of the album can be found as well for your listening pleasure.

Queen City Sounds Podcast S3E34: Bark

Bark is a rock duo based in Water Valley, Mississippi comprised of Susan Bauer Lee (drums and vocals) and Tim Lee (Fender VI bass and vocals) . It’s sound is akin to the kind of imaginative yet zesty power pop and jangle rock one heard in the 80s among artists out of The Paisley Underground, C86, Flying Nun Records and the various projects in which Mitch Easter and Chris Stamey were involved. In fact, Tim Lee was a touring member of foundational indie pop band Let’s Active when it was supporting the release of Cypress (1984). Prior to that Tim was a member of The Windbreakers and later on Swimming Pool Q’s. In 2021 Tim published his memoir of his time as a touring and recording musician as I Saw a Dozen Faces…and I rocked them all: The Diary of a Never Was. It recounts the story of a musician who experienced success and played in important bands but never quite became a household name and yet there are significant stories of American cultural history in the tales Tim relates. For the past two decades Susan and Tim toured with both Bark and Tim Lee 3. The band’s latest album Loud dropped on September 5 on 12” vinyl LP, CD and digital download via Dial Back Sound/Cool Dog Sound. The record is a looking back on being a band in recent years and the joys and foibles of being touring musicians with some choice cultural Easter eggs in the various references made to enhance and deepen the meaning and impact of the songs. Also on the record is poetic and sage social commentary that reveal Bark’s collective sensitivity to the challenges all of us seem to face in the world as we know it now.

Listen to our interview with Bark on Bandcamp and follow Bark at the links below.

Chris Ianuzzi’s Video for “Edge of the Earth” is a Visually and Sonically Mind-Bending Foray Into a Parallel Universe of Conscious Machines of the Future

Chris Ianuzzi, photo courtesy the artist

Chris Ianuzzi and his creative team of Serkan and ilke have crafted the perfect visualization for his song “Edge of the Earth.” Utilizing Stable Diffusion and Deforum AI SD Animation Pipeline, the music video looks like something Dash Shaw might use for his next animated film. After seeming to take a portal into the world inside the box of a set of synthesizer rigs, we see a group of people seemingly attending a deeply psychedelic live musical event with glowing mushroom trees and glowing sky objects with an ever shifting landscape with planets rising on the horizon and flowing architecture and coastline and colors and settings rapidly manifesting and evolving. The music itself sounds a little like a synth pop song as written by Coil working with Edward Ka-Spel. The combination is like multimedia uncanny valley and both menacing and entrancing. Unsettling and calming. In its endless use of patterns and color alongside sonics both textural and tonal, distorted and smoothly melodic the song and the video stimulate your brain in ways that a song and visuals crafted another way might not. And in the end we leave that universe through the aforementioned array of synthesizers into a tranquil exit. At a time when a a lot of psychedelic music feels pretty safe and rote this is the opposite of that. Watch the video for “Edge of the Earth” on YouTube and follow Chris Ianuzzi at the links below.

Chris Ianuzzi on Facebook

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Chris Ianuzzi on Bandcamp

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Kylie Monologue’s Ambient Drone Piece “Terry And Keith” is the Soundtrack to a Haunted Universe

Kylie Monologue started making music in 2022 at age 52 and as a self-taught musician who cites early Human League and Autechre as among her influences it’s difficult to know what to expect. But her drone track “Terry And Keith” slow swims in ethereal winds and a sense of haunted desolation. If there’s ever a remake of the 1985 science fiction disaster film The Quiet Earth or someone soundtracks an as yet uncreated science fiction universe where the mysterious ruins of a fallen galactic empire is explored for the causes of its dissolution this is the sound of a scene spent in spooked wonder at the sight of hitherto unknown architectural styles and thoroughly alien artwork. Listen to “Terry And Keith” on Soundcloud and follow Kylie Monologue at the links below.

Kylie Monologue on Bandcamp

Great Northern’s Darkwave/Dream Pop Single “Bad Light” is a Song About Shedding Outmoded Habits and Stepping Into What Comes Next

Great Northern, photo courtesy the artists

In naming “Bad Light,” Great Northern says it refers to how “bad light” is when “the light is shown on something you don’t want to see. You’re exposed & there’s no going back. It’s all the ways we turn ourselves inside out to avoid change.” The song itself is a bit like a breakup song with our old selves and our old ways of being and a farewell to our habits that no longer serve our lives. The pulsing synths and soaring drones over the soulful yet introspective vocals sound like an easing of this journey. The progression from a more tranquil mood into one more impassioned as the song progresses is like the struggle with shaking off who we’ve been holding onto so much like it really is us and not a collection of behaviors we thought defined us. But in the end we hear a peaceful acceptance of the necessary change. Fans of Chromatics and Tamaryn will appreciate the emotional tenor and tonal inflections of this song and the new chapter of Great Northern who stepped away from the project in 2015 and returned with an even more creatively realized set of new material. Listen to “Bad Light” on YouTube and follow Great Northern at the links below.

Great Northern on Facebook

Great Northern on Bandcamp

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Joh Chase Shows Us How to Experience Joy in the Acceptance in the Impermanence of All Things and the Thrill of Genuine Connection on “Risking It With You”

Joh Chase poignantly expresses a deep appreciation for the impermanence of so many things in our lives in the spare composition of “Risking It With You.” In emotionally raw and vulnerable vocals and minimal, slightly distorted guitar we hear in Chase’s song the importance of being devoted to what makes our lives feel enriched by our connection with one another and the people we dare to love however long that bond lasts on either side of that connection. In the music video we see Chase looking into the camera with a variety of backgrounds seeming so serious until the end when they break into a smile as the song concludes. It is simply an arresting song about how we can’t control everything in our own lives much less that of other people and we have to be comfortable with this fact in order to live a rich existence that benefits from not being too attached to circumstances beyond our ability to predict or fully influence. But that’s one of the things that makes life feel so vital and there’s a freedom in not being too tied to what we think we need and who we think we are on our own or in partnership with anyone no matter how that partnership lasts. But the closing line of the choruses, “But something I know for sure: I’m devoted to risking it with you” honors those moments of romance and connection that you can share with someone for the duration and exult in that joy without a need for control. Watch the video for “Risking It With You” on YouTube and follow Joh Chase at the links below. Look for the new Joh Chase album in 2024 via Kill Rock Stars.

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Old Man Canyon Ponders the Virtues of Being Taken Away by Aliens From a Dysfunctional World on Downtempo Dream Pop Single “What’s Even Real Anymore”

Old Man Canyon’s song “What’s Even Real Anymore” is a song about reality and what we assume to be reality and its music video inspired by a supposed UFO sighting is a perfect visual presentation of the song. It combines computer animation with footage of actual people and a natural landscape near Kamloops, BC in the desert hills of Cache Creek. In the beginning we see two people staring into the sky from a gas covered hill when one of them is abducted by an alien or is it? The next scene is of the band’s vocalist sitting in one of those claw machines where you can, if you’re skilled and fortunate enough, retrieve a tchotchke for paying some coin for the opportunity to guide that claw into a pit of of toys, trinkets or other items. The song itself is a lush, minimal downtempo dream pop sort of affair with a cascading keyboard arpeggio and low key bass line under introspective and hazy vocals. The images switch between real imagery and those clearly animated. Even without the benefit of the visuals of the video the song shifts between heartfelt emotion and dissociative thoughts that can descend into your brain when you’re feeling overwhelmed and recovering from overstimulation and burnout. And there’s something soothing about that dynamic that in the end when we see our protagonist being abducted it might even seem like a desirable possibility to escape from our current struggles even if that means being taken away by a mysterious civilization of which we have no knowledge or frame of references. But who that has lived in this era of late capitalism hasn’t felt this stirring in the imagination? Watch the video for “What’s Even Real Anymore” on YouTube and connect with Old Man Canyon at the links provided.

Old Man Canyon on Facebook

Old Man Canyon on Twitter

Old Man Canyon on Instagram

oldmancanyon.com

Fast Romantics Invoke a Sense of Lucid Dreaming and Parallel Existences on Exuberant Dream Pop Single “Smoke + Lightning”

Fast Romantics, photo courtesy the artist

Fast Romantics tap into the logic of dreams for its single “Smoke + Lightning.” Kirty’s ethereal vocals relay imagery and ideas that bring together words from something you might dream and half-remembered ideas upon waking but makes it work with the rush of bright melodies and the exuberant sounds of the song. It’s an entrancing reconciliation of experiences that seem impossible to know at once like mystical concepts placed in a pop song such as the transcendence of death and immortality, living parallel existences at once and the image of “dreaming in smoke + lightning.” The contrasts of conceptualization Fast Romantics make work in the context of a song that is uplifting and bright but about headier concepts that might seem dark and bizarre when presented another way. It lends the song an unexpected depth that invites multiple interpretations in the re-listening. Watch the video for “Smoke + Lightning” on YouTube and follow the Canadian band Fast Romantics at the links provided. Fast Romantics’ new album Happiness + Euphoria dropped September 29, 2023 via Postwar Records.