dream pop – Queen City Sounds and Art

Eventually Flowers’ Melodically Uplifting Dream Pop Single “Chasing Time” is a Song About Moving On to Your Better Horizons

Eventually Flowers, photo courtesy the artists

Eventually Flowers’ expansive and melodically vibrant single “Chasing Time” is a song about not wasting time chasing after what we think we should be doing with our time when we could make the most of what is in front of us. The song was originally written by vocalist Janise Lazart a decade ago but developed now and then into its current form where it has an exuberant spirit and urgency aimed at brushing aside the tendency to hyperfixate as a creative person when it’s best to move on and, often enough, come back to a song or a pursuit when your skill set, sensibilities and psychology is better equipped to make the most of something that was ahead of its time in your own life. Or in the moment be willing to let go whatever that means or looks like because some things, situations or people can ultimately be a complete diversion from your best path. Musically the song is reminiscent of early Drop 19s and early Pale Saints and the way that music had an uplifting quality with free-flowing atmospheric melodies. Listen to “Chasing Time” on YouTube and follow Eventually Flowers at the links provided.

Eventually Flowers on Instagram

Nadine O’s Alluring and Haunted Downtempo Pop Single “Siren Song” is the Perfect Song For a Fog Enshrouded Late Night Club

Nadine O puts enough of an effect on her vocals to give them a slight echo and reverb on “Siren Song” to give a mood of reflection, yearning and the psychological ripple of memories that haunt you. The minimal percussion comes in and out of the track as if in sync with the melancholic string arrangement. The whole song feels like something out of a European late night club in a port city, of course, like Anita Lane in her more orchestral pop mode. It’s a song seemingly written from the perspective of the titular siren beckoning for the ship that resisted her call to come back but as perhaps a stand-in for expression a yearning for a connection that seems out of reach. Stylistically fans of downtempo and a more brooding, dark pop will find Nadine O’s way with weaving together texture and atmosphere in an immersive and dreamlike musical concoction. Listen to “Siren Song” on YouTube and follow Nadine O at the links provided.

nadinemusic.com

Nadine O on TikTok

Nadine O on Instagram

Deniz Cuylan’s Mythical Dream Pop Single “Big Blue” Evokes a Sense of a Cultivated Inner Life

“Big Blue” by Deniz Cuylan sounds like music from a cult fantasy story from Iceland. The sequenced bell tones carrying rhythm and some of the melody seem to run out ahead of the main section of the story like guiding lights along a pathway at night. Strings and harmonic tones course through the song like winds of tone creating a dream like, otherworldly mood as Sarah La Puerta’s elfin vocals provide a warm human emotional coloring relating a story of a garden in the ocean as a metaphor for a cultivated inner life and shared experiences. It’s a song that is both soothing while acknowledging melancholic moods and personal emotional challenges with its gentle, layered textures and hypnotic interweave of near abstract melody. Listen to “Big Blue” on Spotify and follow Deniz Cuylan at the links below.

Deniz Cuylan on Facebook

Deniz Cuylan on Instagram

Coloma’s Introspective and Melancholic Dream Pop Single “Skylights” Eases Lingering Emotional Turmoil With Its Gentle Touch

Coloma brings an intimate air to “Skylights” with a steady, jazz-like beat and gentle guitar accents and gossamer melodies around deeply introspective, melancholic vocals. It has a reflective mood processing sadness and a sense of guilt over how things have gone and a yearning for some kind of reconciliation. In moments the way the vocals and guitar are arranged and sync up in their tones is reminiscent of early Mojave 3, Mazzy Star and the more dreamlike moments of Throwing Muses. The tenderly shimmering slowcore style of the song keeps you engaged with its expansive vulnerability and in the emotional moment and treating psychological pain with the gentleness required to get through the toughest dips in mood and truly feel the feelings one might bury on initial impact in order to not be sunk by them. The sensitive and subtle production all around really helps the song to shine and for the emotional beats to hit perfectly. Listen to “Skylights” on YouTube and follow Coloma at the links provided.

Coloma on Instagram

Coloma on Apple Music

Moodlighting’s Effervescent Single “Guardrail” is a Dream Pop Song About the Foibles of the Tourist Mindset

Moodlighting, photo courtesy the artists

Moodlighting has been talented at crafting simple and uplifting melodies with guitar and vocals from its early days when the duo was performing in Denver before relocating to California. Its new single “Guardrail” is paired with “Rude sometimes” and the song showcases layers of delicate guitar with crystalline tone and expertly accented, chiming jangle riffs that complement perfectly almost ethereal vocals like a latter day Slumberland Records. The song sparkles and sounds like it’s dancing about with how the rhythms are arranged. And yet the song appears to be about being annoyed with tourists in Australia, you know the kind, that treat places they visit like an exotic and disposable commodity instead of a place with a true sense of place and organic community that has to contend with how attractive it is to people who don’t feel like they need to respect the complexity and dignity of a place and people that aren’t just there to cater to your implicitly consumerist mindset. But the song on its own feels like a soothing and unexpected breeze in the summer and an evolution into an expanded songwriting style for the band whose new album party school! drops in early August. Listen to “Guardrail” on Spotify and follow moodlighting at the links below.

moodlighting on Instagram

moodlighting on Bandcamp

Bad Flamingo Expands Into Sultry, Synth-Infused Dream Pop on “Velvet”

Bad Flamingo, photo courtesy the artists

Bad Flamingo continues its streak of musical evolution and surprise with its latest single “Velvet.” Not only is there an enigmatic, noir video with grainy visuals like something captured in the 90s on Super-8 or DV but for this song the duo introduces more full use of synth/keyboards to create mood, texture and an emotional resonance that is both reflective, romantic and sultry. The cascading keyboard figure and the spare percussion subtle bass work coupled with vocals that go far wider than the band has typically gone in the past from vibrant lows to soaring highs like Martha Davis from The Motels. It’s more like a dark dream pop New Wave song than some of the more gritty blues pop of a good stretch of the band’s earlier songs yet it preserves the band’s gift for making love sound like a deliciously forbidden but pure and beautiful thing all at once. Watch the video for “Velvet” on YouTube and follow Bad Flamingo at the links below.

badflamingomusic.com

Bad Flamingo on Facebook

Bad Flamingo on Instagram

atmos bloom’s Tender Dream Pop Single “Everything” is a Warmly Rendered Soundtrack to Hopeful Reflection

The uplifting, delicate energy of “Everything” accompanied by the music video with layers of cityscapes with the band atmos bloom superimposed over it, or vice versa, feels like a soundtrack to hopeful reflection. The guitar leads seem to dance over a buoyant rhythm even in the more melancholic and meditative moments. Tilda Gratton’s vocals seem to switch with complete facility between vulnerable and warm and yearning and urgent all with a delicacy of feeling that is accented and anchored by a minimal but comfortingly ever present bass line locked in with percussion that expertly guides the moods of the song with its pacing. The melodic shift in the last third of the song with a little more grit in an otherwise fairly ethereal song for just a few moments truly sets this song apart from a standard modern dream pop song. Watch the video for “Everything” on YouTube and follow London’s atmos bloom at the links provided.

atmos bloom on Facebook

atmos bloom on Instagram

atmos bloom on Bandcamp

Hissuae’s Cinematic, Intimate and Transcendent Art Pop Single “Guilty Pleasure” Mixes the Personal With the Mythical

Hissuae breathes a sense of the intimate and cinematic into “Guilty Pleasure” with her ethereal and vulnerable vocals. The song’s arrangements are orchestral and minimal in their intertwining of sweeping piano and percussion so that the song feels like an immersive, living entity in the listening. In the background the barest touch of synth lends an otherworldly quality that puts the more human elements in the foreground and catches one’s full attention. The singer-songwriter’s singing style is reminiscent of the ways Kate Bush and Loreena McKennitt could intermingle the personal with the mythical in fine nuances of vocal expression. For a song that seems to be about transcending mundane, everyday existence that is the perfect tonal mode for the song to take. Listen to “Guilty Pleasure” on Spotify and connect with Hissuae on Bandcamp.

Lukka’s Synth-Infused Dream Pop Single “Fabric of the Cosmos” is a Ballad of Acceptance of a Universe in a Constant State of Flux

A sense of constant expansion flows through the psychedelic harmonies of Lukka’s “Fabric of the Cosmos.” The song seems to be an extended reflection on the concept of impermanence in an ever changing universe as reflected in our own natures and how every moment is different from the next in ways that we may not notice without taking out a moment to take in that realization and how acceptance of this eternal state of flux and contingent realities can be found in considering essence of the natural world around us like the ocean and the metaphor attributed to ancient Greek philosopher Heraclitus about not being able to step into the same river twice. Our culture places a premium on confidence in absolutes but Lukka here seems to suggest the greater wisdom is in being able to live with a more fluid and dynamic existence that is closer to the actual nature of the world in which we find ourselves. Philosophical/metaphysical considerations aside the song is a soothing and bit of synth-infused space rock/dream pop that fans of Stargazer Lilies and Public Memory will appreciate best.

MAKEUP Breathes Otherworldly and Fantastical Melodies Into the Ethereal Synthpop of “Finger Driver”

The swirls of ethereal harmonics and melodies in the hazy synths of MAKEUP’s “Finger Driver” pair well with a background of icy tones and a spare electronic beat. The artist’s processed vocals offer an emotional uplift in a song that could otherwise be melancholic. The mood is reminiscent of lightly fogged DIY skate parties in the late 2010s and like a soundtrack for a more hopeful indie science fiction thriller. Fans of Chromatics and Electric Youth will find some strong resonance in MAKEUP’s mastery of tone and organic yet otherworldly and fantastical melodies. Listen to “Finger Driver” on Spotify.