Eleventh Dream Day – Queen City Sounds and Art

Chicago-Based Psychedelic Jazz Supergroup Yr Knives Reconciles Desperation and Catharsis on “Fear&Trimbling”

Yr Knives is a new project from Chicago-based composer and arranger Paul Karner along with Andrew Trim (Hanami and Retroflector), Brian J. Sulpizio (Health&Beauty), Douglas McCombs (Tortoise, Eleventh Dream Day) and Quin Kirchner. The writing for the forthcoming album Begin Yr Singing (out October 30, 2026 via Western Vinyl) began in 2022 with Karner, Trim and Sulpizio across various sessions before sharing the music with McCombs and Kirchner who helped to complete the pieces. Lead single “Fear&Trimbling” utilizes single guitar lines to trace feelings of anxiety while a more discordant line expresses the discordant, nervous energy as the rhythm somehow both keeps an even beat but sounds like it starts and stops to accent a state of mind that is a little scattered and trying to make sense of internal psychological turmoil as exacerbated by external emotional stimuli. The song pairs harried intensity with a will to unraveling or channeling off that mood into paradoxically labyrinthine structure and distorted minimalism. It sounds both frantic and cathartic like a modern embodiment of the more avant work of the likes of free jazz rebels Sonny Sharrock and Albert Ayler. Watch the retro-psychedelic music video for “Fear&Trimbling” on YouTube and follow Yr Knives at the links provided.

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Pullman Returns With Pastoral Ambient Single “Weightless” Featuring Former Members of Tortoise, Codeine and Eleventh Dream Day

Pullman returns after two decades with a new album Pullman III due out January 9, 2026 on Western Vinyl. The group which includes former members of Tortoise, Codeine, Eleventh Dream Day and Rex is primarily a studio project recording pastoral soundscapes with mostly acoustic instruments offers us a new single in “Weightless” with a free flow of warm guitar, textural and impressionistic percussion and a nearly hypnotic rise and fall dynamic as the main harmonic sounds seem to shimmer and glimmer in an organic pattern. It has a quality like a sonic suspension constantly resonating and revealing details of its quality with each moment. Listen to “Weightless” on YouTube and follow Pullman at the links below.

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Bees in a Bottle Peer Into the Psychological Deep End on the Powerful Slowcore Track “Wet Widow”

Bees in a Bottle, photo courtesy the artists

Bees in a Bottle released its latest album The Sun Left and Took The Moon With It on April 14, 2023 with linking themes of stories, according to the Bandcamp preview, “written from the perspective of various women who’ve lost a loved male rock icon to suicide or drug addiction. These are the inner conversations of wives and mothers struggling their way through grif asking for meaning, hope, and ultimately, a way back to themselves.” The lead track “Wet Widow” is not just a great introduction to an emotionally and creatively ambitious album, it embodies the vulnerability, the pain and the resilience of the aim of the music. The song begins with a hushed grace with vocals like a burning ember that’s been suppressed for uncounted time allowed to flare forth in bursts of feeling and earnest expressions of newfound strength and independence. Musically one might think of the shimmery elegance of the best end of Eleventh Dream Day’s scrappy slowcore styling or of Throwing Muses’ poetic and pointed songs dipping into personal myth and homegrown folkloric narratives. Fans of Low will appreciate the elegant compositions and expansive spirit tied to unvarnished emotional fortitude found unexpectedly in our most fragile moments. You won’t hear lines so real and raw as “Put a gun to my head if you really want to see inside, it’s the only way you’ll get your piece of mind/Because I won’t be your tragedy porn little widow all wet with tears” in a song by artists not willing to go off into the thrilling and psychologically perilous deep end in search of personal truth. Listen to “Wet Widow” on Spotify and follow Bees in a Bottle at the links provided.