Tag: R.E.M.

Gilded Creatures Ride a Wave of Wistful Hopefulness Out of Personal Gloom on Dream Pop Song “I Can Get Morose”

Gilded Creatures, photo courtesy the artists

Supposedly Gilded Creatures are “the worst country band to have ever existed.” But that failure of genre adherence has given us the gorgeously melancholic “I Can Get Morose.” If one were to get deep into the weeds of style diagnostics of the song one hears threads of stuff like early Big Head Todd and the Monsters and following that musical DNA further back some R.E.M. (the vocals are very reminiscent of Michael Stipe). Maybe there is a good solid chunk of being subjected to a playlist of the peak popularity tracks by Counting Crows by one’s parents or nascent youthful nostalgia. But the guitar work is ethereal and glittery and the rhythms expansive as though washing the personal darkness and gloomy moods that can weigh one down at the best of times and certainly when the weather is waxing cold. Is this indie rock or dream pop or soft shoegaze? Does it matter when the spirit of the song gets in your head with an undeniable melodic hook or five and words of emotional solidarity in capturing the vibe a headspace of being sunk in defeated thoughts and seeking a break from it however you can in order to move beyond it? Not really. Listen to “I Can Get Morose” on Spotify and follow Gilded Creatures at the links below.

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Queen City Sounds Podcast S2E35: Mark Bingham

Mark Bingham, photo by Olivia Perillo

Mark Bingham got an early start in the music business when he was signed with Elektra Records at the age of 17 in 1966 and released a single on Warner Bros. before returning to his hometown of Bloomington, Indiana to attend university. At the time he started Bar-B-Q Records and in 1975 he relocated to New York City and started the band Social Climbers but also got involved in recording some of the city’s more adventurous artists like Glenn Branca, MX-80 and in particular Bush Tetra’s 1980 single “Too Many Creeps.” Bingham moved to New Orleans in 1982 and started The Boiler Room recording studio and in 2001 opened Piety Street Recording but ended operations with the studio in 2013. Across his decades as a producer, musician (studio, live), composer and recording engineer, Bingham has worked with R.E.M., Ed Sanders, John Scholfield, Flat Duo Jets, Allen Ginsberg, Marianne Faithfull, Elvis Costello, Allen Toussaint, Korn, Dr. John, Pretty Lights, Dave Matthews and countless others but is perhaps less known for his eclectic and vast body of work that is his own music. So from 2022-2023 Nouveau Electric Records is releasing Bingham’s collected work in 22 albums. The series began with the release of Mushroom Crowd and Goo Seneck on Friday, November 18, 2022 with albums released every two months through September 2023 including the recently issues William Blake in Bakersfield.

Listen to our interview with Mark Bingham on Bandcamp and please visit Bingham’s own Bandcamp below for more information on the producer and the aforementioned series of releases.