Happy Mondays – Queen City Sounds and Art

Aggressive Soccer Moms’ Weirdo Post-punk Song “Darling” is a Moody and Surreal Declaration of Self-Respect

Aggressive Soccer Moms, photo courtesy the artists

Swedish post-punk group Aggressive Soccer Moms inject some surreal creativity into the genre with its single “Darling” from its new album QUINT (released March 9, 2023). Fans of Sex Swing and Sleaford Mods will appreciate the arch vocal delivery in poetic couplets and the full embrace of lo-fi electronics and stark minimalism employed to great dramatic effect. The use of percussion and horn-like blasts on what could be a processed saxophone is like the kind of mutant disco and free jazz the Pop Group brought to its classic 1979 debut album Y. Who can say what the lyrics mean in a concrete sense but lines like “You call me an idiot, you don’t get to call me darling, you call me a loser, you don’t get to call me darling, you call me a liar, you don’t get to call me darling” suggest an association gone sour in which or narrator, as it were, calls out the hypocrisy and emotional betrayal in no uncertain terms and while the vocals aren’t angry in the visceral sense the words speak to coming from a place where one discovers one’s inherent dignity, done with shabby treatment tolerated under the cloak of misguided affection. At times the song and others on the album are reminiscent of The Happy Mondays gone bleak and moody. Aggressive Soccer Moms are clearly Swedish and if bands like Refused and Viagra Boys at a minimum are any indication this variety of irreverent art punk is very much a thing there but fans of UK weirdo post-punk especially from Sheffield and Manchester will appreciate what Aggressive Soccer Moms are doing now and seemingly have been for the past half decade and more. Listen to “Darling” on Spotify and follow Aggressive Soccer Moms at the links provided.

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Springworks’ Deconstructed Psychedelic Pop IDM Song “Nigerian Slum” Pushes the Boundaries of What Constitutes the Accessible

If Anne Dudley relaunched The Art of Noise as an IDM project, it might sound like what Springworks has done with “Nigerian Slum.” It sounds like it brought in samples from toy instruments and vintage, eccentric synth sounds to make the slinky bass line. But then the song shifts into an unusual retro psychedelic pop song with twin vocals that seem to weave in and out of the spectral keyboard work and sleigh bell-esque percussion. In trading off the lines syncopated the way they are it’s reminiscent of The Happy Mondays had that group of yobs went the route of indie pop but bringing in an echoing saxophone to trace the drawn out paces. It’s the kind of song that should have been a hit in the logical third generation in the wake of Madchester had it more fully absorbed the influence of late 80s Cabaret Voltaire. Truly a psychedelic pop song following the songwriters’ most experimental instincts in expanding what can constitute the accessible. Watch the video for “Nigerian Slum” on YouTube and follow Springworks at the links below.

Springworks on Facebook

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KEG Pose a World Without Humans in the Video for the Charmingly Frantic “Farmhands”

“Welcome to SMELVE VILLAGE” are the first words we see in KEG’s video for “Farmhands” before we enter a village of mushroom houses, green skinned short humanoids with pointy ears and the band performing in herky jerky manner citing a litany of complaints and observations which the aforementioned creatures object to with a parade carrying signs saying “HUMANS FUCK OFF” while one of their number summons a giant creature that shows up out of the local pond and consumes the band as the view pulls back and we come to see it was either a very strange TV show, certainly an unusual music video and/or a glimpse into an alternate reality we may not want to visit but where certainly magic is real and our species doesn’t dominate the world. There is some comfort in that mere possibility even as the band carries on with a frantic yet tuneful song of rapid guitar arpeggios and vocals on the verge of some kind of break. Visually the video is like a cross between what Dash Shaw did for My Entire High School Sinking Into the Sea, the cartoon style of Adventure Time and what Richard Linklater did with Waking Life. Musically imagine the borderline unhinged moments of The Rapture, the surreal wordplay and off kilter rhythms of Parquet Courts and the irreverence and disregard for all regular song logic of their own of Happy Mondays and you’ll be somewhere near the inherent charm of the track. Watch the music video below on YouTube and connect with KEG at the links provided.