Wild Carnation circa 1996, photo courtesy the artists
Wild Carnation formed in 1992 with Richard Barnes, Chrstopher O’Donovan and Brenda Sauter. Though all members of the band had been in Speed the Plough, the latter, lead vocalist and bass player, had performed with The Feelies and The Trypes (as well as others) and the new band would have some roots in the intricate guitar melodies and layered rhythms of the better bands out of the indie underground of Haledon and Hoboken, New Jersey. In 2023 the trio’s 1994 debut full length Tricycle was released on digital, CD and vinyl via Delmore Recording Society, the renamed Delmore Recordings label that issued the album initially. The energetic jangle pop of the songs and Sauter’s beautifully expressive vocals recall a sound of that era of which one hears echoes in Flying Nun bands, Elephant 6 and of course Yo La Tengo with the mix of tenderness and intensity, of irresistible melodies and emotional nuance that a certain vintage of indiepop embodied perfectly and which seems somehow even more relevant for the current era when that level of elegant songwriting and attention to sonic detail seems like something the world has finally caught up to more so than in years past.
Listen to our interview with Brenda Sauter on Bandcamp and to listen to Tricycle and keep up with all things Wild Carnation follow the links below.
David Heatley is a cartoonist, illustrator, graphic designer and musician whose comic work has appeared in or on The New Yorker, The New York Times, Mome, Kramers Ergot and McSweeney’s. His high school band Velvet Cactus Society had a couple of records out on Shimmy Disc in the 90s and for his 2008 graphic novel My Brain is Hanging Upside Down he recorded a soundtrack under his own name including a cover of The Ramones song from which he borrowed the title. He has also been a member of the band The Bischoffs. In 2021 he launched his animation production company Dream Puppy, Inc. and a television show based on his 2019 graphic memoir Qualification is currently under production by Gaspin Media. In March 2023 Heatley released his latest album If…, a collection of songs that seem to explore the concept of love, requited, not so requited, potential, as manifest in one’s life and the implications of that feeling in one’s life and how it affects how you live it. Its baroque pop and bossa nova sounds sounds like something from an earlier era but its sensibility and treatment of the subject matter is very modern and tinged with the kind of self-awareness and at times a touch of irony but never about love itself. In this interview we discuss his music and his life as an artist and his influences including his connections with the legendary Providence, Rhode Island DIY space Fort Thunder.
Listen to our interview with David Heatley on Bandcamp and follow the songwriter/artist’s doings on his website linked below where you can listen to the new album in its entirety.
Ghost Canyon Fest organizers (L-R: Brian Dooley, Cory Hager, Jeremy Brashaw and Sean Dove), photo by Tom Murphy
Ghost Canyon Fest is “A Boundary-Pushing DIY Music Festival” that runs August 11-13 across three venues. The event germinated as an idea among friends in the bands New Standards Men, Moon Pussy and Almanac Man who attended and/or performed at events like PRF BBQ, Caterwaul and No Coast and felt there was enough interest and enough mutual connections among bands well outside of Denver to hold a viable, like-minded festival in the Mile High City. In year’s past Denver hosted multiple festivals of strongly focused curation like Goldrush Festival, Transistor Festival, Denver Noise Fest, DAD Fest , Ultra Metal and in Boulder Communikey among others but left field sounds are largely not included in most other festivals in Denver. Ghost Canyon Fest in its inaugural year of 2023 goes to some length to shine a light on those sounds in a more high profile way including a mention in a recent issue of The Wire as a festival of note. If you go, expect to see stars of local and non-local noise rock, post-metal, noise and experimental dance and drone including BIG|BRAVE, Quits, Masma Dream World, Big’N, Church Fire, Pleasure Venom and of course the projects of the event organizers. For a full list and a schedule of events please and to purchase passes for the weekend or single nights visit the Ghost Canyon Fest website. At the site you can link to curated playlists created by various artists performing that weekend. This interview includes a conversation with Jeremy Brashaw (New Standards Men), Cory Hager (Moon Pussy), Sean Dove (Almanac Man) and Brian Dooley (Almanac Man).
Listen to our interview with the organizers on Bandcamp and look for our interviews with various artists performing at Ghost Canyon Fest in the coming weeks.
Charming Disaster is a “goth-folk duo” comprised of Ellia Bisker and Jeff Morris based out of Brooklyn, NY that has since 2012 written high concept songs that explore themes of human exploration of the natural world and the ways our attempts at explaining the world and our lives weave their way into culture in fascinating ways that are often hidden from contemporary society. In its songwriting Charming Disaster uncover these secret and often merely neglected connections and turn those paths of curiosity into fascinating narratives for its body of work. The project’s latest album is Super Natural History, a musical cabinet of curiosities in which each song is a curio and oddity of our collective mythological heritage in the form of stories of witchcraft, monsters and the underworld and where our ideas of magic and science intersect in alchemical fashion. The music is rooted in a sense of wonder and strong songcraft that renders the sometimes unusual subject matter accessible and immediately relatable.
Listen to our interview with Charming Disaster on Bandcamp, listen to Super Natural History below where you can also purchase the album digitally, on CD or vinyl on the group’s own Bandcamp site and follow the adventures and exploits of Charming Disaster at charmingdisaster.com.
Isadora Eden started as a solo project in a more indie singer-songwriter vein but even the early releases were imbued with an imaginative flair and an ear for deeper emotional coloring. As Eden brought on board collaborators to help flesh out the sound in the newer songs she was writing the music evolved into a darker, more sonically rich sound that was a bit more like something one might expect to hear from a songwriter like PJ Harvey or Mary Timony but more darkwave, more flourishes of atmospheric sounds both guitar-rooted and electronic akin to the stranger end of shoegaze. This creative period has resulted in one of the more fascinating records of 2023 in forget what makes it glow, the debut full-length for the project. Eden’s deeply evocative voice guides you through an introspective set of songs that are melancholic, reflective and in the end cathartic. Like the kind of dream pop record with some grit and edge, willing to wax noisy in moments as if to embody the way life and our subsconscious experiences are analog and meaningful, intimate, in a way pristine digital and curated experiences rarely are. The album will be available on vinyl and digital and for more information on finding group’s releases, social media and upcoming shows please visit the band’s website.
Listen to our interview with Isadora Eden and main songwriting partner and drummer Sumner Erhard on Bandcamp and catch one of the album release live shows listed below.
The Royal Arctic Institute, photo by Charlotte Hysen
The Royal Arctic Institute calls itself “an instrumental, post-punk, cinematic jazz quintet” and is currently based out of New York City. Its compositions strike one as soundtrack music for coastal noir with the hard to define sense that part of its sonic DNA is nearby large bodies of water and the ways sunrise and sunset ripple across the ocean. There is the mood of day into night as though the music was conceived and written for a time between an active workday and night time plans. The elegant melodies and percussion rise and resolve with an intuitive grace and evoke emotional states like the musicians have in mind creating imagery with luminous layers of tone and sonic shading. In 2022 the group released the From Catnip to Coma EP and in 2023 a companion EP From Coma To Catharsis perhaps charting and processing the long stretch of the early pandemic and its effects on life and the psyche. Both records were recorded and produced by James McNew of Yo La Tengo fame in the historic Neumann Leather Factory in Hoboken, New Jersey. The band consists of veteran musicians drummer Lyle Hysen (Das Damen, Arthur Lee), guitarists John Leon (Roky Erickson, Summer Wardrobe, Abra Moore) and Lynn Wright (And The Wiremen, Bee And Flower, Shilpa Ray), bassist David Motamed (Das Damen, Two Dollar Guitar, Arthur Lee, Townes Van Zandt) and keyboardist Carl Baggaley (Headbrain, Gramercy Arms) whose musical chemistry is obvious across the project’s recorded output. On August 4, 2023 Already Dead Records and Tapes will release a full length album on 12” LP vinyl of the two EPs combined as Catnip to Coma to Catharsis.
Listen to our interview with Carl Baggaley on Bandcamp and follow The Royal Arctic Institute at the links below.
REZN is a heavy psych band from Chicago whose forays into evocative and haunting music incorporate the aesthetics of doom, shoegaze and cinematic ambient to create dynamic soundscapes that capture a sense of the cosmic and of the deep mystery of nature. The group recently released its new album Solace. The record’s cover looks like something one might have expected on an old Rainbow or Hawkwind record of windswept mountains and the sunlight breaking through a raging storm. The music within is not unlike that expectation set of epic journeys and existential catharsis through finely sculpted and orchestrated volume and majestically accented rhythms. If Lovecraft and Michael Moorcock had somehow collaborated on a dark science fantasy trilogy in the modern era this is the music for that story—menace, spiritual contemplation and transcendence.
Listen to our interview with bassist Phil Cangelosi on Bandcamp and catch REZN on tour now (dates, streaming music and more information available at rezn.band) including a stop at the Hi-Dive in Denver with local doom legends Oryx on Friday, July 7, 2023.
Bestial Mouths, photo by Elemental Eyes Photography
Bestial Mouths began in 2009 as a band that early on might be considered post-punk but even its debut EP, 2009’s Stabile Vices, had elements of noise and industrial set to ritualistic rhythms with tribal percussion. All along, vocalist Lynette Cerezo who has a background in fashion and design brought to performances a striking visual presentation that drew upon the imagery of mythology and dreams in a creative interplay with the music. Cerezo’s lyrics have always explored issues of gender, identity and personal liberation and whether combined with the performance or not, certainly enhanced by the live experience, meant as a conduit for mutual inspiration and uplift by challenging arbitrary societal notions of “proper” social roles and behavior and aesthetics. A Bestial Mouths show and the music embodies aspects of the subconscious and what has traditionally been relegated to artistic darkness and the feminine, the intuitive and the supernatural. Cerezo through the practice of her art reclaims all of that as a source of power and dignity by demonstrating how it isn’t negative, that it is a part of a complete human life and that such things can be harnessed to the benefit of the self and all.
More recent Bestial Mouths records starting with the new arc of music since the project has been mainly headed by Cerezo since 2018 has reconciled the early post-punk and Goth sound and noise completely with the more mystical and non-Western experimental sonic ideas and rhythms that have been a feature if not the focus of the music since the beginning. But in 2020’s RESURRECTEDINBLACK, the first Bestial Mouths record crafted with Cerezo at the creative helm it’s all there for a listening experience not unlike the psycho-mystical depths of a Dead Can Dance album but darker and more harrowing and cathartic. The new album R.O.T.T. (inmyskin), with the acronym standing for Road of Thousand Tears drops on August 11, 2023 and continues the path of its predecessor but with the songs seemingly emerging from the murk that seemed entirely appropriate for a set of songs from a time of great uncertainty and treading new musical paths. Those appreciate Diamanda Galás’ elemental catharsis, psychic fearlessness and avant-garde sensibilities might find a great deal to appreciate about Bestial Mouths as will those with a taste for the political industrial punk of ADULT. and Jarboe’s deeply emotional and unfettered vocal performances but while in Swans and since.
Listen to our interview with Lynette Cerezo of Bestial Mouths on Bandcamp and catch the group perform in Colorado on Wednesday, June 21 at Vulture’s in Colorado Springs with WitchHands and eHpH and on Thursday, June 22 at Hi-Dive in Denver with Church Fire and DJ Shannon Von Kell as well as other dates announced on the band’s website (linked below) where you can find more information and links to listen and purchase music and merch.
Antibroth is the kind of band that defies easy categorization even though its angular rhythms is in line with post-punk but its energy is more what you’d expect out of a hardcore band but the sonics are more experimental and the sense of humor more surreal than fits neatly into a genre. The trio formed when Jeremy Mock and Dan Switalski met in the music production program at Denver University where they also met original drummer Wesley Wolfe. But early in the band’s existence Wolfe moved on to other concerns and Hayden Bosch stepped into the role after Mock saw him play in his former emo band at a school event and was struck by Bosch’s hard hitting style. Antibroth formed with its current line up right before the 2020 pandemic but when shows started happening again in later 2021 the group was able to demonstrate how it had been able to develop and woodshed material and became a fixture in the Denver underground who as relative newcomers encountered all the odd situations new bands face in terms of shows and venues available to them but quickly encountered hardcore shows at Seventh Circle Music Collective, Mutiny Information Café and other venues where hardcore and increasingly other likeminded bands were performing. Anyone that got to see Antibroth got to see a group with a lot of energy that harnessed a math-rock-esque precision worthy of Hella and Don Caballero and channeled it into music that could sound sometimes thrillingly unhinged but always captivating for not sounding like much else you were likely to encounter in Denver music with strong hooks and memorable melodies. And now Antibroth is closing the chapter of its existence with a final EP Satan and the Dying Baby (out June 16, 2023) and a tour with Endless, Nameless from Denver out to the East Coast and back. The three members of the band are going their separate ways on good terms and in the history of music many of the best bands have two and a half albums and some singles and done. Antibroth has definitely left its mark on anyone fortunate enough to catch one of the band’s spirited shows.
Listen to our interview with Antibroth on Bandcamp and give a listen to Satan and the Dying Baby and its other releases at the link below. Also below is the tour route for Antibroth’s last hurrah of live performances.
Antibroth Spring/Summer 2023 Tour with Endless, Nameless June 9 – Denver, CO @d3artswestwood w/ @rosevariety @wrathofthelamb
June 11 – Lincoln, NE Rancho Rodeo w/ Säbo
6/12 – Ames, IA @theaholeames w/Moscow Puzzles and Perfect Strangers
6/13 Chicago, IL @subtchicago w/ @tenmonthsummerband
6/14 Dayton, OH @blindrageshop SUPPORT TBA
6/16 Queens, NY @barfreda801 w/ @fallofthealbatross @voicemail.bandcamp @_mineshaft
6/17 New Brunswick, NJ Mum’s House w/ @pyre_screamo @hysteria_the_band
6/18 Philadelphia, PA @breadboxphilly w/ @mtworry @queasy.does.it
6/19 Pittsburgh, PA @mr_roboto_project w/ @fficus_pgh
Ivan Julian is a guitarist, singer and songwriter who many may know as a founding member of Richard Hell and the Voidoids. He has also contributed to music by as well as performed with the likes of Isley Brothers, The Clash (for instance he played on “The Call Up” from 1980’s Sandinista!), Matthew Sweet (with whom he toured for a number of years in the 90s), The Bongos, Shriekback and others. The child of a Navy officer, Julian spent a great deal of time living in other parts of the world including Haiti and Cuba but ended up in Washington D.C. as happens with families who have jobs with the federal government. Julian began playing guitar in his early teen years and was a touring musician at age 17 as a member of The Foundations. In his 20s Julian was part of that influential CBGB’s scene and crossed paths with a broad swath of the punk world and No Wave scenes and formed a group called Lovelies in 1988 with his then life Cynthia Sley of Bush Tetras. In February 2023 Julian released his new album under his name called Swing Your Lanterns, an album about the nature of character in a time of troubles and how that overlaps with the human condition, it’s an album about timeless themes of love and loss, dreams and contemplating the deeper meaning of it all. Musically it brings together the sounds of Julian’s long career with elements of punk attitude, blues, R&B, pop and art rock. It finds Julian in an imaginative mode with poignant commentary on our current era.
Listen to our interview with Julian on Bandcamp and give a listen to Swing Your Lanterns on Bandcamp where you can also purchase the album on digital, CD and pre-order the limited edition 160 gram vinyl.
Queen City Sounds and Art 
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