Jupe Jupe imbues its single “World Is Fire” with an expansive and joyous spirit after an opening that sounds like a stumble that a single bass note launches into action. Musically its reminiscent of mid-1980s Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark with the moodiness, hopefulness and romance of poignant observations and grand declarations. Mid-song it even has a tasteful saxophone solo that takes the pause in the forward momentum of the rhythm and gilds it with touches of sass. By the end of the song it becomes obvious how perhaps all along a cello was providing some of the low end outside of the expert bass accents that lent the whole song the feel of some angular DC post-punk. The sound has the air of an orchestrated piece of music like glam rock chamber pop even as the words seem to be about the precariousness of the world as we know it and how we hold it together with hopes and dreams against the odds. Listen to “World Is Fire” on Spotify where you can listen to the rest of the new Jupe Jupe record Midnight Waits for No One which released on April 14, 2023. Follow Jupe Jupe at the links provided.
Atmosphere is a hip-hop duo from Minneapolis, Minnesota comprised of rapper Slug aka Sean Daley and DJ/producer Ant aka Anthony Davis. Slug and Ant have been influential well beyond their own remarkable work as artists as co-founders of the respected Rhymesayers Entertainment imprint which has long been one of the torchbearers of underground and alternative hip-hop going back to the mid-90s and releasing not just the work of Atmosphere but that of Aesop Rock, Brother Ali, Eyedea & Abilities, Dilated Peoples, Grayskul and others. Including its debut album Overcast! (1997), Atmosphere has released thirteen full albums and ten EPs up through the new record So Many Other Realities Exist Simultaneously (2023) making the project one of the more prolific acts in hip-hop. In its various lineups and incarnations Atmosphere has consistently paired sensitive and thought-provoking lyrics with a sonically rich and diverse production ranging from some more classic hip-hop sounds to the clearly experimental and avant-garde all to deliver powerfully evocative music that engages the imagination and the heart. In the live setting Atmosphere create an intimate and inviting energy that creates an environment of the shared experience as Daley’s lyrics aim to not just tell relatable stories with roots in his own direct experiences but with resonances for common experiences and emotional spaces we’ve all known. On the new record the songs take us through a journey through unrest and hope, the latter the primary feeling Daley hopes to convey to everyone that shows up to an Atmosphere show because it is hope that lingers and can carry you through trying times into those that are better.
SNEAKPEEK’s “Serendipity” explores themes of connecting dots from seeming fortuitous coincidences in everyday life. The music video has washed out colors and looks like something generated on a computer suggesting a kind of virtual reality and/or that we’re all living in a simulation and that we can figure out deeper or broader meanings with leaning into an intuitive awareness of messages from the universe. According to vocalist Dora Hiller the song was inspired by the teaching of Abraham Hicks (a non-physical entity channeled by Esther Hicks) and Yogananda (a Hindu monk who helped to popularize the practice of yoga in the West and proposed unified underlying principles to world religions). But whether or not one subscribes to these ideas there is something alluring to the song’s techno-industrial dance beat, layered synths combining a hazy distortion and playful arpeggios and Hiller’s melodious voice sounding like a confident guide into a realm of manifesting one’s dreams and aspirations through directed intention. Watch the video for “Serendipity” on YouTube and follow SNEAKPEEK at the links below.
When “Moonlight” by Amor Experientia begins it’s more a drift into texture and a processed piano loop and haunting downtempo vocals. But near the minute mark a sound like a scream signals the next passage of the song that has the cool, sultry/soulful female vocals that embody the tranquil strands of white light through the dark of night like a beacon through the dusky haze of the track. That scream-like pique of tone that punctuates the track is reminiscent of something Dilla would have done for Donuts but spookier and like a darkwave hip-hop track. It ends too soon and suddenly for an effect of getting a taste of something tantalizingly mysterious. Listen to “Moonlight” on Soundcloud.
Vinyl Williams offers us another transporting bit of cosmic pop with “Petroglyph” from his forthcoming album Aeterna which releases August 4, 2023 via Harmony Records. The bright drones wrap around the ethereal, floating harmonies like sparkling garlands while Williams’ vocals guide us through a magical landscape of sounds and fantastical imagery of sacred geometry and celestial bodies. The accompanying music video is like a journey through a cultural home city in an MMO with wondrous features to discover for the curious and intrepid explorer and carried aloft by the hazy uplift of the song that outros with a dreamlike shimmer into the next adventure. Watch the video for “Petroglyph” on YouTube and follow Vinyl Williams at the links provided.
The Onion Rats wrote “Choke” in 2020 when the pandemic was new and civil unrest over a variety of issues was ambient but one branch of that really got the spotlight when the protests around the murder of George Floyd by police flared far and wide. You can hear the frustration and rage in the song and at times the words flow in distorted bursts but the contorted sonic pathways of the song contain the acute awareness felt by most people who aren’t rich that the powers that be whether in the economic of political elite cared more for maintaining the regular flow of markets at any cost and a return to the illusion and delusion of “normal” as soon as possible however that needed to be rationalized and often plenty of people rationalized that to themselves in the name of the fiction of self-perceived and false notions of liberty and freedom. But you hear none of that foolishness in this song. It is imbued with the simmering anger at a social and economic order that treats most people as expendable and unimportant. In its darkly psychedelic nightmare harmonies there is that persistent awareness that the world as it is is propped up by a contingent reality that is dependent on an austerity consensus we could snap out of and topple late capitalism if we wanted to, if there was the will to do so. Listen to “Choke” on Spotify and follow The Onion Rats on Instagram.
Yeah Yeah Yeahs at Red Rocks 6/5/23, photo by Tom MurphyYeah Yeah Yeahs at Red Rocks 6/5/23, photo by Tom Murphy
The evening spring downpours in the Denver metro area took a break for the duration of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs show at Red Rocks but something about the atmosphere seemed to enhance a dream-like ambiance to the performance.
Perfume Genius at Red Rocks 6/5/23, photo by Tom Murphy
Opening act Perfume Genius turned the stage into something of a Broadway show set with a backdrop like a large theater curtain or a massive pipe organ. But whatever the exact nature of the image it enhanced the expansive power of Michael Hadreas’ operatic and impassioned vocals and commanding presence as he and his band performed a broad selection of ten songs from his most recent four albums including ending the set with a rousing version of “Queen” from 2014’s Too Bright, one of art pop classics of the past decade.
Perfume Genius at Red Rocks 6/5/23, photo by Tom MurphyYeah Yeah Yeahs at Red Rocks 6/5/23, photo by Tom Murphy
Yeah Yeah Yeahs are no strangers to Red Rocks over the years but how would the trio, a quartet for this tour, manifest its music for this concert? As someone who had only ever seen Yeah Yeah Yeahs once in 2002 when the group opened for Jon Spencer Blues Explosion after Liars did a mind melting set opening the entire show only to put on the kind of charismatic feat of rock and roll theater that has cemented the band as one of the greatest live acts of all time I had high expectations. Until recently reading Meet Me in the Bathroom and seeing the documentary of the same name I had more or less checked out of the band for the past twenty years but when Cool It Down came out in 2022 I’d hear singles randomly in public places and really got into those songs even though what I heard felt more mellow than I had been expecting from the group that put out that debut EP and Fever to Tell. A friend had gifted me an old promo copy of Show Your Bones awhile back and listening to that it was obvious I had missed out on years of music from one of early 2000s indie rock’s best bands through my own life’s inertia and following other paths of contemporary music.
Yeah Yeah Yeahs with Michael Hadreas at Red Rocks 6/5/23, photo by Tom Murphy
So how did Yeah Yeah Yeahs measure up 23 years into their existence? Brian Chase, Nick Zinner and Imaad Wasif walked onto stage in the beginning to set the mood. No big props, a projection screen mostly minimal until later in the set. When Karen O walked onto the stage she had an outfit like some kind of glam rock superhero mixed with Sun Ra (but what’s the difference there, right?). Opening the set with the opening track to Cool It Down “Spitting Off the Edge of the World” was an emotionally electrifying and epic swing into a generous selection of songs going back across all the full-length albums. Michael Hadreas joined Karen O center stage for his vocal contributions as he did on the studio record and the two singer’s keyed into each other and played off each other like old collaborators. And it was in that melancholic song that a sense of sustained joy coming from the musicians that permeated the rest of the concert.
Yeah Yeah Yeahs at Red Rocks 6/5/23, photo by Tom Murphy
There was a spontaneous energy to every song and you could see the band performing like they hadn’t been doing some of these songs for years, like they were playing this music at a small club but enjoying the large scale of the show and feeding off the energy of the collective moment. Karen O had the kind of on stage energy that’s impossible to resist and not be swept up into the music and share in her own excitement. You could see how the musicians all played off of one another and contributed to the momentum that coursed through from first song through the encore but in her movements and gestures and the enthusiasm she exuded, Karen channeled that to the audience and then back to the rest of the band in the kind of audience and performer interplay you hope to see but rarely experience at a large concert. So many of the songs are intimate and personal and that translated perfectly somehow to Red Rocks because Yeah Yeah Yeahs in this minimalistic stage set up put the focus on the human performance with projections like the spacescape later on and the streaming colors earlier accentuating the mood and providing atmosphere more than an inherent part of the appeal of the stage show itself.
Yeah Yeah Yeahs at Red Rocks 6/5/23, photo by Tom Murphy
There was no skimping on the energy, everyone in the band put their all into what they were doing and it was obvious that they wouldn’t rather be doing anything else but this thing they love that fortunately for them lots of other people love as well. When you’ve seen some of modern music’s greatest frontpeople for over 20 years it was perhaps more obvious this time out than it was in 2002 that Karen O and her combination of humor, exuberance and imaginative and unconventional style is one of the greats and that without the context of Zinner’s and Chase’s own passion and ability to sync with each other and connect with the people that showed up with such immediacy and affection none of this might have had the same impact. Evidently nine years after the previous Yeah Yeah Yeahs album, these now legends of NYC indie rock have plenty of new ticks up their sleeves and the ability to deliver the goods with one of the most captivating sets in a large venue in a decade.
Yeah Yeah Yeahs at Red Rocks 6/5/23, photo by Tom MurphyYeah Yeah Yeahs at Red Rocks 6/5/23, photo by Tom MurphyYeah Yeah Yeahs at Red Rocks 6/5/23, photo by Tom Murphy
Yeah Yeah Yeahs Set List for June 5, 2023 at Red Rocks Spitting Off the Edge of the World Cheated Hearts Pin Shame and Fortune Burning Zero Wolf Soft Shock Lovebomb Blacktop Sacrilege Turn Into Gold Lion Maps Heads Will Roll
La Sécurité’s video for “Anyway” and its lo fidelity imagery and lack of color correction looks like an alternative section of V/H/S/99 but instead of a more straight ahead punk band called R.A.C.K. in the “Shredding” story line it’s a band traversing a hybrid of Goth and New Wave. The retro melodies and sound is like of a band took a lot of inspiration from Missing Persons, B-52s and a sassy, irreverent, neo-death rock band. Except in this short film there are no murderous ghosts and instead we see the life of a band on the road or playing around town, in the practice space, playing video games and performing at the kinds of small clubs most bands do and making the most of it and not looking like Goth fashion victims but rather with a joyful exuberance and sense of humor that gives some context to a song that seems to be about the petty dramas many people get into when they’re operating from an inflated sense of their own tragedies and ego but not getting dragged into it all because scene or social circle drama, who can make much time for that? Watch the video for “Anyway” on YouTube and follow La Sécurité at the links below.
Vessel on its “Telephone” single truly puts the essence of a song into every moment. Like something out of an old hardcore tune, it dispenses with an intro, minimizes or eliminates a traditional outro and keeps the song lean, concise and imbued with a rare clarity. The song isn’t even two minutes long but in that time it conveys a message of yearning but not wanting to seem clingy but not shying away from genuine feelings and affection and how separation can feel like forever with your loved ones. The guitar line is minimal, like a single note melody more like a pulse, the bass line ascends and carries with it a swing heard in the emotive vocals and saxophone accents, all seeming to work in perfect tandem without overwhelming any of the elements until the end when everything comes together for a rich and full conclusion. It’s post-punk for fans of 99 Records artists and perhaps Essential Logic and Grass Widow. It’s a gentle song that is striking in how its sheer economy of songwriting can contain multiple emotional resonances. Listen to “Telephone” on Spotify and follow Atlanta’s Vessel on Instagram.
Boko Yout envisioned the seven tracks for the new EP AS SEEN ON TV (which released on May 12, 2023) as different channels of a fictional TV network called Boko Communications. Teleprompter sounds like something that was recorded, mixed and played on some old technology and on the verge of glitching out. Like some 1980s children’s toy technology with the electronics distorting slightly. But the vocals seem to trace an informal rhythm that’s more intuitive yet syncs up with the light splash percussion beats in the end. The lyrics sound like something an underworld hustler would say to a potential rival or up and coming underling who has gotten a little too big for their britches. But set to the swirl of otherworldly non-verbal vocals like cybernetic birds or anime faerie folk singing as a chorus for the main vocals, languid bass line and cascading dynamic the whole song has a more playful tone than one menacing. Maybe this channel on the album is one showcasing the grimier side of life but one with distinct style for which Yves Tumor might contribute theme music. Listen to “TELEPROMPTER” on Spotify and follow Boko Yout at at the links provided.
Queen City Sounds and Art 
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