Queen City Sounds Podcast – Page 9 – Queen City Sounds and Art

Queen City Sounds Podcast S4E25: Steven Lee Lawson

Steven Lee Lawson, photo courtesy the artist

Steven Lee Lawson is a singer-songwriter from Denver whose musical exploits date back to the late 90s and early 2000s when as a fledgling musician he was involved in a variety of styles of music including the experimental/krautrock of Zubabi before finding his lane at the edges of Denver’s indie rock scene in the mid-2000s with the more classic pop and Americana-inflected projects like Oblio Duo and its multiple incarnations with then songwriting partner Will Duncan (now of Pleasure Prince). Lawson’s poetic lyrics shed a light on his attempts to come to terms with life challenges and struggles with a society and culture seemingly stuck on boosting dull and crass commercialism and anti-human systems of politics and economy. Lawson also spent some time as a sideman in bands like Ross Etherton and the Chariots of Judah before dropping out of actively being involved in music for a handful of years and then getting back into the joy of creating music again in recent years. Obvious touchstones like Harry Nilsson, Townes Van Zandt, Sparklehorse and Neil Young can be heard in Lawson’s musical DNA but his songs have always seemed deeply personal and idiosyncratic including his new EP Help Is On the Way due out June 27, 2024 and available as a limited edition 7″ through Snappy Little Numbers.

Listen to our interview with Steven Lee Lawson on Bandcamp and follow the songwriter at the links below. There will also be an EP release show with Blacktop Musical at The Broadway Roxy in the downstairs speakeasy on June 27, 2024 at 7pm.

Stream Steven Lee Lawson here

Steven Lee Lawson on Instagram

Queen City Sounds Podcast S4E24: Stephen Bluhm

Stephen Bluhm is a songwriter based out of Hudson, New York who released his latest album Out of the Nowhere. Into the Here on April 19, 2024. It is the second full-length from Bluhm and one whose sophisticated, orchestral arrangements lend the songs a cinematic and storybook quality with exquisite details and attentiveness to aspects of production and composition that reminiscent of a The Magnetic Fields or Belle & Sebastian record or the level of richness of aesthetics one associates with a Wes Anderson film. It sounds like something from another era with deeply personal and idiosyncratic yet instantly relatable lyrics. The songs are literate art pop gems with an autumnal flavor that hits as old timey in its sensibilities but not in the folk Americana tradition so much as more in the vein of Rodgers & Hammerstein on the chamber pop and indie folk scale.

Listen to our interview with Stephen Bluhm on Bandcamp and follow the songwriter at the links below. Out of the Nowhere. Into the Here is now available for streaming, digital download and on vinyl.

Stream Stephen Bluhm’s music here.

Stephen Bluhm on Instagram

stephenbluhm.fun

Queen City Sounds Podcast S4E22: Becky Otárola of bellhoss

bellhoss, photo courtesy the artists and taken at JCPenney

Bellhoss is an indie rock band from Denver, Colorado that began in 2017 as the solo act of Becky Otárola that grew to a full band within a couple of years. The songwriter came up in Southern California immersed in folk and bluegrass and underground music of the 90s and 2000s. Otárola moved to Denver in the first half of the 2010s and in the early days of the project she played open mics at Syntax Physic Opera and as perhaps a natural progression from there fell in with the local indie scene and as the band developed so did the songwriting and by the time of the release of the 2019 EP Geraniums bellhoss its sound had taken on aspects of slowcore with delicately rendered melodies and a warmth of expression reminiscent of Waxahatchee and Jay Som. With the release of the 2024 EP A Rose, a Thorn, bellhoss revealed a knack for blending vulnerable and thoughtfully observant songwriting with luminous dream pop and a bit of musical edge. 2024 also sees Otárola organizing the inaugural SarahFest, an all ages music festival designed to give a platform to female and female-fronted bands along Colorado’s Front Range taking place at The Mercury Cafe on Saturday, June 15.

Listen to our interview with Otárola on Bandcamp and follow bellhoss at the links below. Also linked is the ticket link for SarahFest.

SarahFest featuring Bellhoss, The Milk Blossoms, Luna Nuñez, Dream of Time, Gartener, Summer Bedhead, Tammy Shine, Nina De Freitas and Demigod (DJ set) at Mercury Cafe, June 15, 2024, all ages $20
6PM.

bellhoss.com

bellhoss on Facebook

bellhoss on Instagram

bellhoss on Twitter

bellhoss on YouTube

Queen City Sounds Podcast S4E21: Gene Hoglan of Death to All

Death to All, photo courtesy the artists

Death was one of the foundational bands in the metal subgenre sharing its own moniker. Along with Possessed and Necrophagia, all of which started in 1983, Death created an extreme form of guitar-driven music that combined speed with a heaviness and aggression that served well its often horrific subject matter. Its debut full-length Scream Bloody Gore (1987) set a high bar for the genre with convoluted guitar work courtesy the band’s de facto leader and sole consistent member until his 2001 untimely passing Chuck Schuldiner. Its horror cinema themes and intensity wasn’t for every metal fan of the time but the influence of the record on what would come in its wake in extreme metal and the genre of death metal itself is undeniable. Subsequent albums built upon the technical aspects of the music and its lyrics moved on from horror themes and by the time of 1990’s Spiritual Healing the lyrics engaged in social commentary and horrors of the real world and its own breed of monstrous human behavior. Across its subsequent albums the songwriting blossomed in technical complexity and focus in lyrical themes in expressing poetic personal perspectives. Tragically Schuldiner passed in 2001 of a brain tumor but the legacy of Death lives on in its obvious and deep influence on modern heavy metal. Drummer Gene Hoglan was a contributor to the albums Individual Thought Patterns (1993) and Symbolic (1995) and one of the driving forces behind Death To All, a project paying tribute to the creative achievements of the band and its primary songwriter, Chuck Schuldiner.

Death To All performs tonight June 9, 2024 for its second night of its Denver residency at The Oriental Theater where it will perform the 1998 album The Sound of Perseverance in its entirety along with cuts from Individual Thought Patterns (1993) and Symbolic (1995). Cryptopsy will open the show at 6:30.

Death To All on Reversed Records

Death To All on Instagram

Death To All on Facebook

deathtoallband.com

Queen City Sounds Podcast S4E20: Caterwaul Festival

Caterwaul is a music festival that showcases of paragons of the weird, loosely defined, in underground music. The organizers of the event have been steeped in left field music going back decades as musicians, bookers, record label employees, running labels and otherwise active participants throughout the ecology of the subculture. Since 2022 Caterwaul has hosted a finely curated and small scale event across two venues so that attendees can realistically catch every act if they so choose. This has meant lineups featuring the likes of Chat Pile, Multicult, Kal Marks, Big Business, Tunic, The Grasshopper Lies Heavy, Moon Pussy, Animal Bite, A Deer A Horse, Big’n, Heet Deth and Cherubs. All of which represent not just representative of a spectrum of the best of underground weird music but also active participants in their local, national and international communities in keeping non-mainstream music not just a vital, viable but rewarding milieu in which to operate. Organizers Conan Neutron (Conan Neutron & the Secret Friends), Rainer Fronz (Learning Curve Records) and Melanie Thomas have all helped to establish and maintain the connections that make the festival possible but going through to its third year in 2024 when the event runs Friday, May 24 through Monday, May 27 at Mortimer’s and Palmer’s in Minneapolis, Minnesota. This year’s festival will include performances by Brainiac, Oxbow, Flooding, Whores., Part Chimp, J. Robbins Band, Couch Slut, Gaswar, Thrones, Ganser, Almanac Man, Quits, CNTS and powertakeOFF. For more information, the full schedule and to buy tickets please visit caterwaul.org.

Listen to our interview with Conan Neutron and Rainer Fronz on Bandcamp.

Queen City Sounds Podcast S4E19: Young Rising Sons

Young Rising Sons are an alternative pop band that formed in Brooklyn in 2010. Bassist Julian Dimagiba and drummer Steve Patrick grew up in Red Bank, New Jersey playing music and caught singer Andy Tongren performing an acoustic set at a New York Cit bar and struck by his skills talked with him later about joining their fledgling band. The new group spent a few years with different names while writing songs and settling on the name Young Rising Sons. In 2013 the group signed with Dirty Canvas Music and their 2014 debut single “High” became a bit of a global viral hit leading to the band signing with Interscope that same year. For the following two years the quartet toured opening for the likes of Halsey, Weezer, The 1975 and The Neighbourhood. Although Young Rising Sons delivered three EPs with Interscope as with many other worthy artists that didn’t translate to the commercial performance expected by a major label. In 2017 the band parted ways with Interscope and a year later announced a hiatus that lasted a couple of years. Since reconvening the outfit has been regularly releasing singles and in 2022 it dropped its debut full length Still Point In a Turning World. Tongren’s soulful and passionate vocals and the tight pop songcraft of the band has remained intact. Its body of work including its new single “(Un)Happy Hour” reveals a sensitivity to the complexity and fragility of human life and the importance of accepting the high points and the low to experience to make it through an oftentimes challenging existence with dignity and a sense of fulfillment.

Listen to our interview with Andy Tongren of Young Rising Sons on Bandcamp and follow the band at the links below. Young Rising Sons performs at The Bluebird Theater on Sunday, May 5, 2024 with Diva Bleach (doors 6:30pm).

youngrisingsons.net

Young Rising Sons on Instagram

Queen City Sounds Podcast S4E18: Je est un Autre

Je est un Autre, photo courtesy Dylan Desmond

Je est un Autre is a solo project from Dylan Desmond who is perhaps most well known as half of cosmic doom band Bell Witch. Borrowing the name, which means “I is another,” from poet Arthur Rimbaud’s declaration on the nature of being, Desmond has crafted a set of six songs for the project’s debut album Flatworm Mysticism (released March 1, 2024 ) that embody an evocative style of soundscaping and composition reminiscent of the soundtracks to the existential science fiction and adventure noir films of the 70s and 80s like Aguirre, the Wrath of God, Stalker, Sorcerer and Blade Runner and more contemporary manifestations of similar creative impulses like the films of Robert Eggers, Alex Garland and Rose Glass. Desmond had some opportunity to exercise these creative skills when Bell Witch launched its Patreon in 2021 and he beagan writing original pieces to be paired with sections from influential films. But he set aside the bass he usually plays in Bell Witch and took on synths as the vehicle of expression. The album has titles that suggests ideas from obscure science and esoteric knowledge with sounds that perfectly embody those resonances.

Listen to our interview with Dylan Desmond on Bandcamp and follow Je est un Autre and Desmond’s other projects at the links below.

bellwitchdoom.net

Bell Witch on Bandcamp

Queen City Sounds Podcast S4E17: Orange Peel Moses

Orange Peel Moses has been a figure in the Colorado music scene going back over a decade. He first came to prominence in the 2000s for his collaborations with production duo Friends in Stereo garnering critical and popular acclaim for a string of singles that bridged a gap between pop, indie rock and electronic dance music. Around that same time the Orange Peel Moses also entered into a long career as a singing telegram artist whose performances have appeared on television. He is also a stilt performer who has been onstage with LMFAO and Will.i.am at Ultra Music Festival in Miami as well as the Electric Daisy Carnival. He has also done impersonations of various characters like Hunter S. Thompson, The Grinch, Jack Skellington and The White Rabbit from Alice in Wonderland. You might not be able to track down a conventional physical release of any Orange Peel Moses music because he’s mainly been focused on occasional singles as original releases including his new song “Under the Eclipse.” The song was written by OPM who also performs lead vocals but the rest of the music was brought to life by collaborators like engineer, producer and musician El Javi, Erik Deutsch on piano (Leftover Salmon, The Black Crowes, Dixie Chicks etc.), percussionist Zay Alejandro Rios and backing vocals by Lex Alvis. All mixed and mastered by Andy McEwen at Crucible Recording in Eldorado Springs, Colorado. The song is about a man who is looking for a partner with whom to make a “magical eclipse baby with him during a total solar eclipse.” In the lushly colorful music video we see live musical performances tof OPM test-driving the song in front of audiences mixed with frolicking in clubs and scenes of the narrator of the story living out his dream. Musically it’s a charming and humorous blend of piano driven, folk-inflected indie rock and gentle psychedelia reminiscent of early 70s Cat Stevens. In the wake of the release of the single Orange Peel Moses will perform during the Texas Eclipse event at Reveille Park Range Friday April 5, 2024 through Tuesday, April, 9, 2024 in the path of totality. Following that on April 19 at Archipelago Clubs for “Singaversary: 20 Years of Singing Grams” to mark a major anniversary of his career.

Listen to our interview with Orange Peel Moses on Bandcamp, watch the music video for “Under the Eclipse” below and follow the artist at the links provided.

orangepeelmoses.com

Orange Peel Moses on Facebook

Orange Peel Moses on Instagram

Orange Peel Moses on Twitter

@orangepeelmoses

Queen City Sounds Podcast S4E16: Dust City Opera

Dust City Opera, photo courtesy the artists

Dust City Opera is a rock band from Albuquerque, New Mexico whose sound interweaves orchestral Americana, dark psychedelia and art pop into cinematic and literary songs filled with evocative tales of “sadness, madness and mayhem.” But within the group’s rich body of work there is a surreal sense of humor and humanity that reveals an empathy for the human condition and the characters and situations depicted in which listeners can identify aspects of their own experiences navigating our often physically and emotionally perilous world. Since it’s 2018 foundation, pick any of Dust City Opera’s albums from its 2019 debut album Heaven to 2022’s horror and science fiction themed Alien Summer record to the 2024 EP Cold Hands (released March 8 via Rexius Records) and you’ll hear imaginatively eclectic arrangements and vivid narratives from a band that seems fully realized even as it’s still relatively early in its career. There is a theatrical sensibility to the music that translates to the band’s live performances that fans of the likes of DeVotchKa and Beirut will appreciate.

Listen to our interview with Dust City Opera on Bandcamp and follow Dust City Opera at the links below. Dust City Opera is now on tour starting April 4, 2024 throughout Colorado and the midwest including a stop in Denver at Swallow Hill on Saturday, April 6 with Avourneen, doors 7pm, show 8pm. THIS SHOW HAS BEEN RESCHEDULED FOR SEPTEMBER 7, 2024.

dustcityopera.com

Dust City Opera on Instagram

Dust City Opera on Facebook

Dust City Opera on YouTube

Dust City Opera on TikTok

Queen City Sounds Podcast S4E14: Chew

Chew is a band from Atlanta, Georgia whose music defies simple categorization. Until late 2023 Chew had been a trio is now a duo comprised of Brett Reagan who plays sampler, synth bass and guitar while running strobe lights and Sarah Wilson who plays drums and bass lines with a drum sample pad. The project has toured the US and Canada extensively with three European tours under its belt. Because the outfit’s music is so unorthodox it’s music spans and often in the same song the realms of psychedelic and noise rock, ambient, noise, industrial and electronic dance music. Fans of the likes of fellow travelers of eclectic weirdness like Guerilla Toss, Black Moth Super Rainbow and The Spirit of the Beehive will find an immediate connection with the music Chew has been crafting since its inception. Its 2022 album Horses resonates with recent releases by Jockstrap and Sextile without the inspiration of either to feed into its stream of inspiration and influences. In addition to the music Chew’s surreal album covers and inspired song titles suggest more than a passing familiarity with esoteric knowledge and other obscure and niche realms of knowledge as well as a knack for clever wordplay. It all adds up to an uncommon depth of creative development that rewards anyone taking in the music and its presentation beyond the surface level.

Listen to our interview with Brett Reagan of Chew on Bandcamp and follow Chew at the links provided Chew performs at The Skylark Lounge on Monday, March 25, 2024 with local noise rock phenoms Moon Pussy and legendary industrial dance trio Church Fire. Doors 7:30 p.m..