Sofia Coppola – Queen City Sounds and Art

“Recent Mineral” by Church Chords is an Enchanting and Mysterious Blend of Krautrock, Bossa Nova and Noise

Church Chords’ forthcoming album elvis, he was Schlager (out February 26, 2024 on Otherly Love Records) sounds like an ambitious, experimental post-punk album years in the making with numerous collaborators that songwriter and producer Stephen Buono brought together after the manner of a hip-hop producer. And you get a taste of what’s in store with the single “Recent Mineral” with the quietly sultry vocals of Genevieve Artadi who sings in Portuguese. What are the lyrics about? Might have to ask someone that understands the language or wait for the full release of the record. But you don’t need to know in order to really be taken in by the finely accented percussion and hypnotic arrangements of texture tones, slashes of echoing, stretching, warping guitar altogether reminiscent of Young Marble Giants, Faust and an abstract Bossa Nova band mixing it up to make a song that is entrancing and mysterious and you wouldn’t think overmuch about if it was in a movie like something Jim Jarmusch or Sofia Coppola would produce.

Church Chords on YouTube

Church Chords on Instagram

Cam Maclean’s “Visions” is a Nostalgic and Mysterious Pop Noir

Cam Maclean’s enigmatic, dusky pop single “Visions” on the surface level sounds like a modern equivalent of yacht rock song but with the chill vibes and perpetually on vacation energy cut out completely. It’s more like the kind of song that would be perfect for a noir drama directed by Sofia Coppola but written by Ed Brubaker. There is an existential undercurrent to the song that comes from a place of deep introspection and when Maclean sings of how “there is no darkness that can purify his soul” it just makes sense from the perspective of darkness as a metaphor for the unknown and that in too many realms of life it’s not there on the edge of town or in neglected corners of downtown areas in a compelling way. And the song sounds like a melancholic reflection on how things have changed and how it changes people and the places they live and how what was special about so many cities is being bleached out by corporate developers and the like buying up so many “undervalued” property and draining the personality out of every place many people might like to live and make their own in a social ecosystem that isn’t comprised of moneyed monoculture and the businesses and public works that seem to cater to that. Who can say if Maclean had this perhaps heavy handed socio-political, analytic projection but this moody song, a touch of accordion adding a nice glimmer of nostalgia, certainly captures a time in life when you’re assessing what it’s all about and where you are in life and how you took for granted simple and familiar comforts as it’s fading away. Listen to “Visions” on YouTube and connect with Maclean at the links provided.

Cam Maclean on Facebook

Cam Maclean on Twitter

Cam Maclean on Bandcamp

Cam Maclean on Instagram

Egopusher Conveys a Sense of Great Emotional Poignancy and Emotional Complexity on “Patrol Rework”

Egopusher has described their music as being akin to something Sofia Coppola would have in a science fiction movie of her making and the duo’s song “Patrol Rework” bears this concept out. It is minimalistic, lush, moody and yet has a physicality that feels like both a wind sweeping past you and into the distance only to return like the flutter of feelings when a memory strikes you and you take the time out to contemplate the swirl of emotions evoked strongly yet again. Which is a bit like Coppola’s own filmmaking—a creative evocation of nostalgia and the role of memory in shaping your emotional reactions. But “Patrol Rework,” though tinged with melancholy also feels like a lingering on a memory and living in that moment not as a negative or a positive but as the complexity of experience that often is how we lived and felt at a time of great significance to us. And as something remembered not for any specific resonance but as something poignantly felt giving it the significance and power that a specific context anchors so strongly in our psyche. The songwriters’ use of a simple and evocative piano figure, strings bowed and plucked, synth drones, processed white noise and tonal sweeps is layered but of a piece that covers a great spectrum of sound while sounding tastefully spare. Listen to “Patrol Rework” on YouTube and follow Egopusher at the links provided.