Bernard Sumner – Queen City Sounds and Art

Crawling Vines, photo courtesy the artists

Chicago’s Crawling Vines released its Who Killed William Goose? album on January 5, 2024 and the single “ON A BRANCH” hits a specific emotionally complex resonance. That being an emotional rawness and fragility a and yearning for connection when it feels like things are falling apart. The guitar progression and the way it flares forward in moments and embodies a spare minimalism in others is reminiscent of something New Order would have done later in the 80s or maybe Bernard Sumner’s project with Johnny Marr, Electronic. But also of modern shoegaze/dream pop bands like Beach Fossils but with more fuzz tone. Yet in the vocals and overall tone of the song it has a similar embrace of human vulnerability and acknowledging needing people for whom one’s feelings are complicated. That interpersonal dynamic informs much of the rest of the album giving it a deeper mood than many other artists exploring this particularly spacious and sophistipop end of the shoegaze. Listen to “ON A BRANCH” on Spotify and follow Crawling Vines at the links below.

Crawling Vines on Instagram

With “Pale Fire” Last Wars seem to be tapping into some of that dark, moody vibe of A Place to Bury Strangers by way of synthwave inspired by Trans Am and Holy Fuck. The driving, distorted synth line and shuffling percussion that pushes the song at a headlong pace with whispery vocals painting for us an imagery of a decaying and fragmenting civilization and its impacts for one’s own life and psyche, not some abstract political commentary. When the guitar comes in it casts tonal fire against the dusky and fuzzy drone wall of electronic sounds like Bernard Sumner putting in some choice licks on a long lost Giorgio Moroder song for a soundtrack for an abandoned movie version of a William Gibson story. It’s a fierce yet fragile song that seems to draw out an accurate depiction of the fraught times we face when shit is getting real, Don’t Look Up is only satire because a comet isn’t coming to destroy us all but climate change is, and panicked nihilism is just not an option. Listen to “Pale Fire” on Soundcloud and connect with Last Wars at the links below.