Mary Lou Newmark’s “Stitch” from her 2022 EP A Stitch in Time could be considered to be in the same realm of music as early The Art of Noise. What genre is a song that pulls together the sounds of classical violin in a modern pop mode, impressionistic percussion accents, the sound of a train horn, shakers, little glitches and pointillistic beeps and a jaunty dynamic that ties it together into a coherent whole? And then for the song to have an interlude of sampled clicks, water flowing, teletype machine running and video game-esque noises before heading back into violin led sections like a post-modern interpretation of Aaron Copland’s “Hoedown” that shifts seamlessly between all of these soundscapes for a song unlike much of anything anyone else is doing now. Listen to “Stitch” on Spotify.
Yvie Oddly punches up with swagger on “Topsy Turvy.” The beat is like surreal carnival music in a horror comedy film with ascending percussive tones marking time and accenting the vocals. Oddly sounds so comfortable with her sassy lines about living life how she wants and deserves like there could be any doubt and anyone questioning pretty basic stuff are on a fool’s errand. The title could refer to the dynamic in society where a queer person of color is expected to be on the bottom rung but not here, not in Yvie Oddly’s town where wears the crown. There’s something undeniably fun and appealing about the rapper’s upending of the usual paradigms and conceptions running what many might think of as mainstream society but it’s just what many of us have been used to and to expect and this song with its playful and strong music and wordplay offers an alternative to a bland and conformist world. Listen to “Topsy Turvy” on Spotify and follow Yvie Oddly at the links provided. Catch Oddly on the Strange Love Tour throughout the USA Starting November 1, 2023.
Cosmic Kitten from Long Beach, California offer us a unique behind the scenes look into the recording process of its new record Laugh of a Lifetime in the music video for “Songbird.” Charmingly enough the group recorded its setting off to San Francisco to record with Steve Moriarty former drummer of Seattle punk legends The Gits and throughout the video we see scenes in the studio working on music likely beyond the single in question. But the song’s fuzzy melodies and introspective mood syncs so well to what the song seems to be about and the self-doubt that can bring you to self-sabotage and how being self-aware of one’s own self-destructive impulses aren’t something to hide from because that can lead one into a shame spiral of dissociation and avoiding the parts of yourself that are wonderful and underrated and shoving that to the side when exploring the paths to behaviors can be more productive than judgment. The easy pace of the song points to that kind of calm and patience one can cultivate by just being honest and realistic with yourself. Sure Cosmic Kitten is recording the album with the drummer of one of the great, underrated bands of the alternative rock era and having it mastered by Jack Endino whose touch on all the early Sub Pop releases and well beyond is kind of a big deal too though Jack is someone you can write to and enlist his services without going into a panic about the cost. “Songbird” is emblematic of being a creative person and struggling with bouts of impostor syndrome and sidestepping that pitfall by taking a moment out to living in those feelings and instead of avoiding them leaning into them. The rest of the album is less introspective and more outright punk in that late alternative rock era fashion and scrappy and thoughtful at once. Fans of L7 and Betty Blowtoch will definitely find something to like about what Cosmic Kitten has been crafting across its career thus far. Watch the video for “Songbird” on YouTube and follow Cosmic Kitten at the links provided. Laugh of a Lifetime released on May 5, 2023 and is available for you to give a listen on the band’s Spotify page.
Nighdrator builds a scaffolding for the unfolding sounds of the rest of “Wilted Wings” with its opening guitar riff. But the song ramps up into a processional ritual of contemplative, distorted spirals within which Emma Fruit with soaring vocals offers a rare insight into how often our best efforts can seem doomed from the beginning from reaching full flight like Icarus and his wings of wax rendered inadequate because of his hubris. There’s a tragedy to that psychological dynamic that the band captures so well with its ability to let tones hang and burn giving the whole song an elevated sense of world weariness. Sonically it seems to bring together the aesthetics of post-punk and the tribal doom of a band like SubRosa and in moments it’s reminiscent of Gerard McMahon’s song “Cry Little Sister” from The Lost Boys but more epic in tone and poignantly mournful of the thwarted potential presented in the song’s words. Listen to “Wilted Wings” on Spotify and follow Nighdrator at the links below.
Feefawfum sound like a band that is working at musical cross-purposes but with great precision on “So Capable.” The dissonant vocals shouldn’t work but do because the song seems to be one about the breakdown of the established social order when it’s stressed. There is a frantic quality to the collision of guitar, drums and bass that is reminiscent of The Fall gone even more mad or like Preoccupations before the name change at its most unhinged. Guitars sometimes sound like horns when the chords ring out in a shifting sustain. But the whole time it feels like the whole thing could call over like when Protomartyr goes off its own rails into the realm of borderline chaos but reeling it back in with an intensity of feeling that imbues the song with a heightened mood of thrilling tentativeness that finally releases that nervous energy in the end. Listen to “So Capable” on Spotify, follow Feefawfum at the links below and look for the full length Feefawfum album 100 due out on digital and vinyl September 8, 2023.
Bestial Mouths, photo by Elemental Eyes Photography
Bestial Mouths began in 2009 as a band that early on might be considered post-punk but even its debut EP, 2009’s Stabile Vices, had elements of noise and industrial set to ritualistic rhythms with tribal percussion. All along, vocalist Lynette Cerezo who has a background in fashion and design brought to performances a striking visual presentation that drew upon the imagery of mythology and dreams in a creative interplay with the music. Cerezo’s lyrics have always explored issues of gender, identity and personal liberation and whether combined with the performance or not, certainly enhanced by the live experience, meant as a conduit for mutual inspiration and uplift by challenging arbitrary societal notions of “proper” social roles and behavior and aesthetics. A Bestial Mouths show and the music embodies aspects of the subconscious and what has traditionally been relegated to artistic darkness and the feminine, the intuitive and the supernatural. Cerezo through the practice of her art reclaims all of that as a source of power and dignity by demonstrating how it isn’t negative, that it is a part of a complete human life and that such things can be harnessed to the benefit of the self and all.
More recent Bestial Mouths records starting with the new arc of music since the project has been mainly headed by Cerezo since 2018 has reconciled the early post-punk and Goth sound and noise completely with the more mystical and non-Western experimental sonic ideas and rhythms that have been a feature if not the focus of the music since the beginning. But in 2020’s RESURRECTEDINBLACK, the first Bestial Mouths record crafted with Cerezo at the creative helm it’s all there for a listening experience not unlike the psycho-mystical depths of a Dead Can Dance album but darker and more harrowing and cathartic. The new album R.O.T.T. (inmyskin), with the acronym standing for Road of Thousand Tears drops on August 11, 2023 and continues the path of its predecessor but with the songs seemingly emerging from the murk that seemed entirely appropriate for a set of songs from a time of great uncertainty and treading new musical paths. Those appreciate Diamanda Galás’ elemental catharsis, psychic fearlessness and avant-garde sensibilities might find a great deal to appreciate about Bestial Mouths as will those with a taste for the political industrial punk of ADULT. and Jarboe’s deeply emotional and unfettered vocal performances but while in Swans and since.
Listen to our interview with Lynette Cerezo of Bestial Mouths on Bandcamp and catch the group perform in Colorado on Wednesday, June 21 at Vulture’s in Colorado Springs with WitchHands and eHpH and on Thursday, June 22 at Hi-Dive in Denver with Church Fire and DJ Shannon Von Kell as well as other dates announced on the band’s website (linked below) where you can find more information and links to listen and purchase music and merch.
Paul Burke and Steve Shaheen of Toy City met while playing in the alternative rock scene of Boston in the 1990s but returned to music during the 2020 pandemic lockdown period and traded files recorded in studios in New York City and San Francisco. The self-titled debut album mixed by John Russell of modern noise rock legends Kal Marks and mastered by Joe Lambert released on May 5, 2023. The single “Mountains” has an unvarnished yet sophisticated charm like something these guys recorded in their practice studio but the songwriting reveals a keen ear for interlocking rhythms and an intimate mood even within a song that pulses with energy and is both brooding, yearning and hopeful with expressions of missing someone or perhaps one’s old self as one grows in new directions, perhaps outgrowing old associations and a past life to which one cannot return even if you’ve returned to familiar activities and pastimes once put on the shelf for years. It’s like a theme song for the project and the album and mentions of taking things one step at a time even if it’s clear Toy City have a command of imbuing its songs with an earnestness, elegance and economy of expression. Fans of early Failure and more recent songs by The Church will find something to appreciate in the introspective soundscapes and sincerity of the songwriting not just on “Mountains” but on the rest of the eponymous debut. Listen to “Mountains” and more on Spotify and follow Toy City on Instagram.
Laura Brehm’s video for “Wonder” as directed and choreographed by Alexandra Light is like something out of a futuristic fantasy graphic novel written by Tillie Walden. It has that vast sense of space, fine emotional nuance and mystique as Brehm wanders in spaces of colossal architecture, in meadows with companion dancers in white, floating in water moving in slow motion, in a ballet studio, the motion like a ritualistic analog to the ethereal flow of melody and the outwardly expansive flow of sound. The song seems to be about one of rediscovering the wonder of life after a period of healing from a trauma requiring her to suppress who she is and her spirit in order to weather that time. But the mood of the song is reconnecting with one’s true self and ready to move forward free to be and become who one was always meant to be. Think Björk making a transcendental dream pop song and you have an idea of the layers of electronic beats and sweeps of tone that help to put the focus on Brehm’s introspective and resonant vocals. Watch the video for “Wonder” on YouTube and follow Laura Brehm at the links below.
Bees in a Bottle released its latest album The Sun Left and Took The Moon With It on April 14, 2023 with linking themes of stories, according to the Bandcamp preview, “written from the perspective of various women who’ve lost a loved male rock icon to suicide or drug addiction. These are the inner conversations of wives and mothers struggling their way through grif asking for meaning, hope, and ultimately, a way back to themselves.” The lead track “Wet Widow” is not just a great introduction to an emotionally and creatively ambitious album, it embodies the vulnerability, the pain and the resilience of the aim of the music. The song begins with a hushed grace with vocals like a burning ember that’s been suppressed for uncounted time allowed to flare forth in bursts of feeling and earnest expressions of newfound strength and independence. Musically one might think of the shimmery elegance of the best end of Eleventh Dream Day’s scrappy slowcore styling or of Throwing Muses’ poetic and pointed songs dipping into personal myth and homegrown folkloric narratives. Fans of Low will appreciate the elegant compositions and expansive spirit tied to unvarnished emotional fortitude found unexpectedly in our most fragile moments. You won’t hear lines so real and raw as “Put a gun to my head if you really want to see inside, it’s the only way you’ll get your piece of mind/Because I won’t be your tragedy porn little widow all wet with tears” in a song by artists not willing to go off into the thrilling and psychologically perilous deep end in search of personal truth. Listen to “Wet Widow” on Spotify and follow Bees in a Bottle at the links provided.
If roller skating rinks were still an active concern and not a retro kitsch thing preserved as almost a museum of another era, They Kiss is making music that would be perfect for skating the night away and in particular the new single “Synth Pop Beat” (a title the song amply lives up to) from the duo’s 2022 album Feeling With You. The song is a romance of two people “living the dream” together combining their complementary energies to be able to perhaps accomplish more than they could or would separately. The saturated synth tone and blissed out melodies fuse trip hop sensuousness and chillwave’s deep sense of nostalgia and daydream-y mood. The beats are meditative in the way dancing can be and the song as well as much of the rest of the album can put you in a mood to indulge pleasant memories while angling for an even better future. It is the antithesis of the anomy of the current era of human history and we could all use a break from that anxiety even if only for the duration of a song or a dozen. Listen to “Synth Pop Beat” on Spotify where you can find the rest of the album and follow They Kiss at the links below.
Queen City Sounds and Art 
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