SubmitHub – Page 100 – Queen City Sounds and Art

Erika Wester’s Heartbreaking and Gentle “Fifteen” is a Song About the Power of Small Gestures of Compassionate Affection

Erika Wester sounds like she’s brushing the gentle guitar chords throughout “Fifteen.” It provides the fragile textures and tenderly vulnerable mood of a song that is at once nostalgic and deeply melancholic. With each line Wester offers a vivid memory of a time that could be 10 years ago, 20, 30 or today. She taps into an emotional resonance that you never really age out of unless you get to a particularly callous and hard hearted place in your life. She recalls when she felt like she was growing up too fast and spouting off the kinds of sentiments that many bravado laden youths put out into the world that do the kind of emotional harm for which an apology can never be enough. But the song takes a turn from a memory of being fifteen and riding her bike to a time when she tries to console a friend or lover even though “I can’t fix the problems in your mind, god knows I barely tackle mine.” But she offers to a very basic, very simple but meaningful gesture of contact and comfort and says, “I’ll hold your hand in the dark if you want me to.” We don’t get to know the exact sources of pain, the searing images that stick with you that are hard to talk about and which no explaining away can easily soothe. We do hear about the aftermath in the song and some of the only ways that seem to work to help in a direct way that goes beyond mere words and straight to a sensation that communicates care without drama but imbued with significance. Listen to “Fifteen” on YouTube and follow Wester at the links below.

Erika Wester on TikTok

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Erika Wester on Apple Music

Xena Glas Manifests a Deep Sense of Physical and Psychological Movement on “To the A”

Xena Glas drifts her wordless vocals into the languid flow of tones of the beginning of “To the A” like a ghost inhabiting a public light display. The stereo effects on the track both pull us into the emotional frame of the sounds and allow us to share in the experience of engaging emotionally with a flow of sounds that is luminous and warm yet otherworldly. Rather than expressing what it might be like to jack into an AI circa early cyberpunk, it gives a sense of perhaps what it would be like to be an AI jacking into the brains of an organic being and wading through the intricate gossamer pathways constantly creating new pathways in fractal patterns of the raw stuff of memory and creativity. And yet there is a sense of a journey through this interior world that reveals in the end that maybe the sounds reflect how we navigate to utilize a large physical network like a subway system. And yet both resonances work as Xena Glas calls upon a more abstract sense of journey with her tonal arrangements so that one can hear whatever journey is most prominent in one’s mind and find in the song the frequencies to reflect our sense of passage. Listen to “To the A” on Spotify, connect with Xena Glas at the links below and listen to the rest of the evocative new EP Movement which became available on October 28, 2022.

Xena Glas on Twitter

Xena Glas on Instagram

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Bad Flamingo Speak to a Sudden and Vulnerable Awareness of Mortality and the Preciousness of Life on “I Won’t Let You Die Young”

Bad Flamingo, photo courtesy the artists

The creepy guitar squiggle at the beginning of “I Won’t Let You Die Young” finds Bad Flamingo employing another effective method in complementing its imaginative songwriting. Throughout the song that sound like if a sleepy frog was an instrument isn’t overused, it just serves to let the ghostly other guitar work shimmer out more vividly and the melancholic vocals to glider over the song even though they sound particularly intimate with the sound of a toy xylophone struck to add a nice touch of delicacy for a song about mortality and feeling that so acutely and wishing a long life for a loved one. The way the twin vocals harmonize captures a vulnerability that’s palpable and sounds like it comes from a place of knowing too well and too often what it’s like to lose important people in your life too soon and yes entirely too young and the ache that can revisit you suddenly and put you in a place where you feel it all over again. It could be a bummer but there’s something reassuring about remembering that connection and the immediacy and unguarded moments that feel like life shared in the present tense. Listen to “I Won’t Let You Die Young” on Spotify and follow Bad Flamingo at the links below.

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Bad Flamingo on Instagram

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Spirits in the Pillar Dissect and Dismantle the Corrosive Effects of Capitalism on the Human Spirit on “Stack Lyf (Inauguration of the Megaslump)”

Spirits in the Pillar, photo courtesy the artists

A title like “Stack Lyf (Inauguration of the Megaslump)” can be a lot to take in but Spirits in the Pillar infused its latest album Scaled-down Expectations (which released on October 7, 2022) with a great deal of creative ambition and deep social awareness. This song gets to the crux of the core anomie of the modern era by laying out a visceral, experiential perspective on how modern capitalism has extracted value not just from the environment but from all realms of human endeavor and existence down to how you spend your time and channeling your dreams and aspirations along specific lines to bolster the process of funneling all goods to narrower destinations at the highest places of the economic ladder. Iain Rowley gives voice to the pain and desperation and frustration of the time with a palpable intensity of feeling and the music that winds around and helps to manifest a critique of and resistance to the process is somewhere between art rock and the angular post-punk one would expect out of a band on Dischord. Think early King Crimson meets Fugazi. This aesthetic runs throughout the album and the band offer us a particularly vivid and poetic distillation of the psychological pain of an era and an analysis that points to ways of dismantling the process at least in the way one orients with the world as it is. Listen to “Stack Lyf (Inauguration of the Megaslump)” on Bandcamp where you can also listen to the rest of Scaled-down Expectations and connect with Spirits in the Pillar at the links below.

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Linebeck Deflects Shallow Romantic Foolishness With Expansive Dream Pop Single “Waste My Time”

Linebeck sure makes disappointment, disillusionment and a jaded attitude toward someone who doesn’t measure up sound so romantic on its single “Waste My Time.” Its slowly scintillating melody and emotionally expansive vocals speak to someone who lacks substance and has all these promises and empty gestures that are all surface and intended to be charming but obviously don’t measure up when it comes offering substance and not the shade of romantic love. It captures the kind of relationship or relationship to be in which one person is all overtures to seem exciting but at the end of the day that person wastes your time because you’re just another notch on the belt of their ego fulfillment and they move on once they feel like they’ve drawn you into their sphere but with no intention of even having the veneer of commitment because that would require actually having a connection with someone even if it’s not forever. And in the song we hear how forever isn’t necessarily wanted or needed but definitely not with someone whose affections are fleeting and shallow. That the song has an upbeat energy in exhilarating dream pop colors gives the song a depth that is more than the object of the song deserves. Fans of Blushing and Letting Up Despite Great Faults will appreciate the moods here. Watch the video for “Waste My Time” on YouTube and follow Linebeck at the links provided.

Linebeck on TikTok

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Linebeck on Twitch

“All Abord,” the Opening Track to Colin Stetson’s Score for The Menu is the Embodiment of the Playfully Humorous Side of the Dark Comedy Horror Film

Colin Stetson’s soundtrack scoring of recent years has garnered his gift for dynamic composition orchestrating sound rich elements great critical acclaim. And “All Aboard,” the lead track from his soundtrack to the recent dark comedy horror film The Menu starring Anya Taylor-Joy, Ralph Fiennes, Nicholas Hult, Hong Chau, Jane McTeer, Reed Birney, Judith Light and John Leguizamo has the hallmarks of a classic score of an earlier era of cinematic music. Stetson is rightly known for his avant-garde jazz work and he brings to bear here eclectic arrangements that intertwine with melody, texture and rhythm suggesting visual elements unfolding as the song progresses. Some strings seem to sketch in bold lines while others fill in some of the shading and synth gives it a rich color that flows with the pulse of the light, minimal percussion. It sounds like an organic, living landscape expressing itself in lush detail. Though The Menu is a horror movie the song has a jaunty quality that hints at the humor and self-awareness you’re about to find yourself witnessing in the rest of the film. Listen to “All Aboard” on YouTube and follow Stetson at the links below.

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Candy Cigarettes Delves Deep Into the Foundations of Identity and Aspirations on “Where To”

Lane Mueller’s Candy Cigarettes returns with its first album in six years with the September 23, 2022 release of Horse Lungs. As with the album overall, the single “Where To” is like a collage of experiences and sounds arranged in a pop format. Mueller’s vocals are widely expressive and introspective and ambient atmospherics flow into processed piano loops joined by synths that rise in hysterical arcs that amplify the melodrama of the poetic lyrics before the song drops into samples of a woman’s voice asking “Why was that?” “What for?” and “With who?” It’s a song that suggests that many people take on a role and interrogate others for not putting on a similar pose and pick them apart as an act of self esteem but of course that way of being is inherently fragile. Musically the song and all of Horse Lungs is reminiscent of The Legendary Pink Dots in terms of the eclectic arrangements and raw emotional expressions that delve deep into dreams and the roots of desire and motivation. Listen to “Where To” on Spotify and follow Candy Cigarettes at the links below.

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Candy Cigarettes on YouTube

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Syzygy’s Synth Pop Disco Song “Soothe” Transforms Abrupt Self-Awareness Into a Celebration of Self-Acceptance

Syzygy from Melbourne, Australia have tapped into a dark realm of synth pop that sounds like an extrapolation on where Ladytron was circa 604. But rather than take that electroclash foundation into shoegaze, this duo sounds like it listened to a great deal of 1980s Giorgio Moroder and found a musical language suited to exploring emotional habits through the kind of dance pop that makes a meaningful dive into foundational psychological spaces accessible and desirable. On its new album Anchor and Adjust (released October 14, 2022), Syzygy delves into the nature of power dynamics in relationships of all kinds and of dysfunction arising from getting stuck in ruts that can feel like instincts and a core of your personality when it’s merely how you’ve trained yourself how to navigate through life. Through its brooding synths and meditative rhythms the band comprised of Rebecca Maher and Gus Kenny formerly of synth punk band Spotting find paths of working through transforming habits by offering alternative outlooks. The song “Soothe” refers to the behaviors we all adopt without realizing it to untangle anxieties through self-soothing. Some self-medicate and self-soothing is related but can manifest in movements that give us a sense of control through an act of comforting even if it doesn’t make sense to anyone else because it never has to, it need only distract ourselves from overwhelming discomfort. One might see that as a method of dissociation but it’s also a method of emotional survival in a period of extreme duress. The song goes into that subject in a way that is personal and demystifies it as something normal and not a source of shame and negative self-consciousness. Rather the songs fast pace and energetic and irresistible rhythm make this burst of awareness turn into acceptance. Listen to “Soothe” on YouTube and follow Syzygy at the links below. Anchor and Adjust is now available in a limited, transparent purple vinyl edition.

Syzygy on Instagram

Syzygy on Apple Music

“Seasons” by jman & the pigs is an Introspectively Poignant Experimental Pop Song Informed by Existential Humor

There is something comical about the music video for “Seasons” by jman & the pigs. The two musicians wear sweat bands while going out on a mountain hike with the beginning of the video on black and white until they discover a synth, an amp and other musical gear near a river. And they seem caught in a loop from Autumn to the snows of Winter then to the thaw and greening of Spring but all in color. Then when the song ends it’s back to black and white. It’s reminiscent of the way Secret Agent was black and white until the fifteen episode interlude that was the series The Prisoner and when the agent escapes The Village it’s back to the black and white of Secret Agent again. The pastoral sound of the music with drums and keyboards and introspective vocals is very serious and sincere with sentiments that are poignant about the passage of time in one’s life and life’s seasons passing by. It’s a layered level of meaning conveyed in this presentation of the song including how life has complexity and nuance and isn’t all one aspect or another and that poetic truth can coexist with a healthy sense of humor. Fans of the film work of Mark Duplass will definitely appreciate the video treatment. Watch the video for “Seasons” on YouTube and follow jman & the pigs at the links provided.

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Nicolas Snyder Summons a Benevolent Otherworldly Presence Through Ritualistic Percussion on “Toll Bell”

Nicolas Snyder, photo courtesy the artist

Nicolas Snyder has done scores for the Showtime documentary on Rick Rubin Shangri-La as well as various other cinematic projects. For his latest album Spell of Remembrance (available in full as of September 30, 2022) Snyder seems to explore memory, personal and collective, through crafting sound environments drawing upon field recordings of texture and tone complemented by his own sonic touches for a result that is not unlike editing a film but perhaps from a more sound design perspective. The single “Toll Bell” utilizes various bell sounds as drops of tonal percussion as atmospheric elements and as informal rhythm. Saxophone flutters in the background and in escalating arcs creates a sense of menace and mystery. Snyder left in the sound of air flowing and natural distortion lending the song a subtle textural element that grounds the whole as an almost tactile listening experience. It is immersive overall and when we hear water running in the middle distance and then the sound of a creature repeating a wordless phrase toward the end of the song one wonders what indeed the toll bell brought forth out of the cosmos. Listen to “Toll Bell” on YouTube and follow Nicolas Snyder at the links provided. Spell of Remembrance is now out on vinyl, cassette and as a digital download.

Nicolas Snyder on Instagram

Nicolas Snyder on Apple Music