Blushing (band) – Queen City Sounds and Art

Sloome begins the title track to it’s latest EP Wonderful Nice with a sweeping drive and jangly guitar. But the song goes off this course in unexpected ways with a slowdown and wind back up to full flight. Like the song is breaking down periodically and losing momentum. But inside these cracks in conventional structure give the song some room to breathe and to shift tone from the urgent to the reflective and in the end reconciling these impulses as the guitar tones soar and shimmer, warping like a structure getting misshapen in the heat of the headlong passages. The relatively lo-fi production lends the song the feel of something recorded in another era weaving together the delicacy of a C86 dream pop band and a more modern shoegaze/art pop band like Wombo or Blushing. At least fans of those things will appreciate the way Sloome seems to effortlessly incorporate strands of influence and creative impulse on this song and the rest of the EP. Listen to “Wonderful Nice” on Spotify and follow Sloome from Modesto, California on Instagram.

“Summer Love” from Helsinki-based band Lala Salama begins in a hazy reverie and then kicks into urgent, warping surges of guitar and ethereal vocals in a kind of interplay of the tranquil and the passionate. At times it’s reminiscent of The Flaming Lips’ “Race For The Prize” in its pacing and tonal palette but in terms of its dynamic twists and turns more akin to the likes of the avant-pop aspects of Asobi Seksu circa its 2006 album Citrus and more contemporaneously Blushing’s exquisite melodic whorls and uplifting rhythms. Listen to “Summer Love” on YouTube and connect with Lala Salama at the links below. Look out for Lala Salama’s album All That Plazz forthcoming in 2023.