Boy With Apple, photo by Christian Valenzuela Barrondo
Boy With Apple’s final single from its debut album Attachment is “Good For You.” The song’s ethereal melodies are enveloping and transporting and though there is the gorgeously gossamer guitar work and winsome vocals for which the band has become known there is an element to its composition that seems rooted in the aesthetics of electronic music and beatmaking. The result is a composition that drifts into your brain and takes you on an emotional journey exploring uncertainty in love while holding a certainty about how you feel. The line “How can I be good for you when I’m not even good for me” is delivered with such delicacy it speaks to a perspective of unselfish yearning, of wanting to love and be loved but not to harm in the course of a relationship. Fans of Black Tambourine and Lush will appreciate the genre-bending style of the song and the way it articulates complex feelings with an expansive musical reach and a willingness to let the sounds linger and interact organically with an analog sparkle. Listen to “Good For You” on Spotify and follow Gothenburg, Sweden’s Boy With Apple at the links provided. The Boy With Apple debut album Attachment was released March 15, 2024.
Sleepyhead is a rock band that formed in New York City in 1989 at a time when the underground rock of the 1980s in the USA and the UK flowed into what became alternative music by the 90s. But for a brief period Sleepyhead began in the golden age of the indiepop that that one heard in the music of the C86 bands and on Sarah Records. One might have heard echos of the Paisley Underground in the music and of criminally underrated groups like Game Theory and Let’s Active. But Sleepyhead had firmly established its own vibrant musical identity by the time of its 1993 debut album Punk Rock City USA on the even now respected forward thinking pop imprint Slumberland, home to the likes of Black Tambourine, Peel Dream Magazine, Weekend, Papercuts and The Reds, Pinks and Purples. Musical history may remember Sleepyhead in the same company as Chicago’s Material Issue whose own legacy of great pop songwriting and great energy and intelligence and warmth informing the songwriting was critically acclaimed at the time but largely neglected since. With a bit of an extended hiatus following the 1996 album Communist Love Song, Sleepyhead returned with 2014’s Wild Sometimes and a strong reminder of how Sleepyhead’s sharply observed lyrics and creative songwriting concepts remained intact. In 2022 the group, a trio of Rachael McNally, Chris O’Rourke and Derek Van Beever, released New Alchemy, named for the New Alchemy Institute, a research center that did work in organic agriculture, aquaculture and bioshelter design and operated between 1969 and 1991. It was the sort of very pragmatic, sustainability research steeped in the ideas of thinkers like R. Buckminster Fuller that the world could honestly use more of in the face of the multitude of challenges we face with the climate and adapting economic thinking toward something more rational and nurturing not just of the planet but of our own civilization and individual lives. The music is graced with that great shiny jangle guitar work and exquisite vocal harmonies that have made Sleepyhead’s music standout from the beginning and with it a freshness and exuberance that hits the ear as something wholesome and nurturing yet subversive in weaving in heady ideas and focusing on songcraft over adhering to a trendy style. Every song makes great use of space while also brimming with a fortifying denseness of detail and musical ideas. Classic Sleepyhead and a welcome entry in the catalog of one of the great bands of the alternative era.
We had a chance to speak with the band and you can listen to that interview on Bandcamp and to connect with Sleepyhead visit its website where you can find links to listen to their music including New Alchemy. Before the interview you can check out the music video for the single “Pam and Eddie” on YouTube.
Young Prisms channel a great deal of The La’s 1990 hit “There She Goes” on the song “Honeydew” in its romantic whimsy, loose yet focused rhythmic structure and irresistible melody. But Young Prisms’ imbue their song with gloriously incandescent guitar swirl that gives the sentiments a dusky haze suggesting a sense of dreamlike nostalgia to match the black and white, hyper realistic imagery of the music video of a woman walking, dancing down darkened streets and parking lots toward her car where…there’s a body in the trunk and instantly casting a different emotional flavor to the song and lines like “I believe in you, Honeydew.” Here you are thinking maybe this song reminds you of the hazy melodies and oh-so poignant vocals you love in music by Black Tambourine and Drop Nineteens and things take a turn for the darker. Perhaps there was a perversely humorous intention behind this video treatment but it also points toward the cinematic quality of Young Prisms’ music and the ways some filmmakers expert in musical placement will use a gorgeous song in contrast to some of the bleakest moments in the film or a precursor thereof. All soundtrack free associations aside, “Honeydew” is a bittersweet song of conflicted love. You can watch the video on YouTube and the song also appears on the album Drifter out digitally March 25, 2022, on vinyl July 1, 2022 on Fire Talk. Follow Young Prisms at the links provided.
Queen City Sounds and Art 
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