SubmitHub – Page 31 – Queen City Sounds and Art

Holding Hour’s Finely Textured Shoegaze Single “Can I Leave Me Too?” is a Song About a Will to Difficult Emotional Honesty and Reconciliation

Holding Hour uses the occasion of a birthday on its new single “Can I Leave Me Too?” to explore some of the deeper nuances of a relationship. The direct and shifting rhythms reminiscent of a beat you might hear in a Yo La Tengo similar anchors the ethereal melodies and the gentle vocals of Marissa Kephart and Scott Yoshimura trading off vocal lines to explicate what is happening that might not be obvious to other people. The avoidant behaviors and painful self-awareness that sensitive people might bring out in each other when they’re involved if they don’t address their anxieties and insecurities and work on the relationship regularly. The background of ambient harmonics floating over the accenting bass lines, slightly overdriven guitar and generally delicate and warm tone of the song suggests that even though the song is almost uncomfortably honest in bringing to the surface personal truths there is a genuine connection in the relationship and it’s the beginning of working through the parts of the relationship that could be shuffled aside in the earlier phases and the thorny bits that many people would really rather never address. The tonal sheen and textures of the song is in the realm of the grittier end of shoegaze akin to earlier My Bloody Valentine or the solo work Kevin Shields did for the Lost In Translation soundtrack and the use of space in the song seems to reflect its spirit of giving space yet seeking reconciliation in spite of hurt feelings and instincts to hide and avoid the possibility of causing further harm. It’s in the end a song encouraging communication over silence with a title that suggests a touch of humor about a tense situation that doesn’t make a joke of anyone’s feelings. Listen to “Can I Leave Me Too?” on Spotify and follow Des Moines, Iowa’s Holding Hour at the links below.

Holding Hour on Instagram

Holding Hour on TikTok

Holding Hour on Facebook

Holding Hour on YouTube

Holding Hour on Bandcamp

Duckwrth Struggles With the Seductive and Destructive Nature of Addiction on Psychedelic, Electro R&B Single “Had Enough”

Duckwrth’s psychedelic, electro R&B single “Had Enough” is a deeply nuanced depiction of the struggles of addiction. The core metaphor is one of being in a toxic relationship that felt like it served you well enough to deal with some rough times in your life. And when it doesn’t but seems to you like the only thing that seems to help you will rationalize even the harmful aspects in an almost romantic way because what else is effective in chasing away the anxiety and other bad feelings except for the methods and healthier coping mechanisms you don’t know about or try because it seems like a lot more work. The playful synth work and sultry atmospheres of the song are reminiscent of the weirder end of late 80s Prince as filtered through Outkast in a neo soul mode. But Duckwrth’s commanding vocals have their own, unique quality that is perfectly cadenced in the inventive and organically evolving rhythms of the song. In the music video the singer frolics around his place in the early sunlight hours after the party dancing with great ease and style while casting out the poison of the night before and untangling in his mind where the good times of being in the throes of addiction and the pain that follows intertwine and perhaps tracing his own path to freedom from the seductive aspects of destructive behavior. After all without doing the work have you ever really had enough? Watch the video for “Had Enough” on YouTube and follow the innovative avant pop and R&B artist and designer at the links below.

Duckwrth on Instagram

Duckwrth on Facebook

Freedom Fry’s Psychedelic Pop Single “Sorry Situation Number Four” is a Loving and Shimmering Glimpse Back at Summertime Relationship Panic

Freedom Fry pulls us back to a summer mood in time for the chill of fall to start with “Sorry Situation Number Four.” The loops of guitar jangle and minimal percussion lend the song the feel of a psychedelic folk song of the early 70s and the vocals in the verses wax Dylan-esque in the arrangements if not in affect. That is if Dylan worked on a pop song with Roger McGuinn. The slight psychedelic shimmer on the vocals in the choruses are like the sun glimmering on the ocean and suit the romantic cast of the song as the keyboard melody swells in the background. The song seems to be one of unexpectedly sudden relationship panic (the sense that everything might be going wrong or that you’re about to lose your loved one even if none of that’s true) that flows into gentle reassurance of commitment and passionate connection. Though the song taps into a retro sound its emotional resonance has a charming immediacy and freshness that bears revisiting. Listen to “Sorry Situation Number Four” on Spotify and follow the Los Angeles-based duo at the links provided.

Freedom Fry on Instagram

Freedom Fry on Facebook

Cali Bellow Taps Into a Little Help From Her Friends on Hyper.Glitchpop Song “LFG!!!! (i just died)”

You don’t have to be a gamer to appreciate Cali Bellow’s single “LFG!!!! (i just died)” and its animated music videos with more signifiers than one would expect including an Aphex Twin logo on the upper left of the monitor and a NIN sticker on the lower right. But it helps. We see a figure navigating a top to bottom scroller and dancing on a nature path. The pitch shifted vocals sound like something you’d expect to hear in a hyperpop song and there are plenty of 8-bit sounds making up the soundscape and shimmering, bit-crushed tones to signal transitions. Obvious comparisons to Crystal Castles can be made but this song isn’t dark except for the mention of death and it’s a celebration of friendship and how hey can help each other out in our most challenging moments IRL or in game with a quick res or run through a place where we’re struggling. The symbolism of the latter and its application to real life is more apt than non-nerds would like to think. Even with the trappings of hyper/glitch pop there is something chill about the pace of the song as is the stride of the character in view in the video who seems to evade even the most low grade ambient hostiles. Watch the video for yourself on YouTube and follow Cali Bellow (aka Leah B. Levinson, bassist and vocalist of the great black metal band Agriculture) at the links below. The project’s new album Ciao Bella is out October 25, 2024.

Cali Bellow on X

Cali Bellow on Instagram

Stephen Becker’s Bittersweet “The Answer” is a Song About Delaying the Crushing Feelings of a Breakup For Just a Little Bit Longer

Stephen Becker, photo courtesy the artist

Stephen Becker’s “The Answer” sounds like a long-lost entry in the Elliott Smith songwriting catalog with his expert falsetto and emotional immediacy. But for this song Becker is joined by Taylor Vick (formerly known as Boy Scouts) and the song’s tale of impending breakup and the intense anxieties that lead up to that moment gains greater sonic dimension and emotional resonance. The layered and simple guitar work over shuffling rhythms is what lends the song its dreamlike and melancholic mood. But Becker’s lyrics alone are heartbreaking in their frank expressions of knowing things are wrong in the relationship but not really wanting it to end yet not knowing how to preserve it so like many people he tries one last thing that can’t possibly be a solution but can make one feel as though one has done something to belay the inevitable pain for long enough for things to turn around as summed up in the line, “Well I gave you the answer, I gave you the answer you wanted to hear.” But when you hear that line you know deep down, as it is obvious Becker is aware of as well, that such desperate hopes don’t really delay the inevitable. Watch the video for “The Answer” on YouTube and follow Becker at the links provided. His new album Middle Child Syndrome is out October 25, 2024 on streaming, digital download and vinyl.

Stephen Becker on X

Stephen Becker on Instagram

CATBEAR’s Brisk and Urgent Synth Pop Single “Grow Up” Speaks Truth to the Lie of Striving Culture

The brisk pace and forward momentum of CATBEAR’s new track “Grow Up” gives the song an upbeat quality but as the song progresses that urgency reveals itself to be a barely controlled desperation. The melodic dissolves and swells and expertly accented pace lends a cinematic quality to this song about how we’ve all been sold a bill of goods about society and its system of rewards and how we’re told to “grow up” when doing so means to have achieved middle class definitions of success even when the middle class is basically non-existent and that hard work and being “responsible” often means treading water and nothing more. But that feedback reinforcement mechanism we’ve all been conditioned to believe is just not adequate to meet the moment when people become acutely aware of the complete fraud of late capitalism. Does growing up and going into the working world mean simply grinding away at a dead end job with little chance of getting ahead with the promise of such dangled in front of you perpetually out of reach for most people? How does one cope with this bleak reality with ecological collapse and civilizational implosion seeming not too far on the horizon with the powers that be doing fuck all about it? It’s not cynical, as is said in the song, to not believe in this fake dream anymore even as a way to get through to a better job or better prospects. After all who has time for a finding a better job and qualifying for one when you’re working a job that leaves you feeling worn out at the end of the day? Or two jobs or two and a half? When the band sings the line “(It’s a test), it’s a test/And we try, just to find, the cheat code to life” it rings true because the game is rigged against you if you weren’t born to great privilege. When conservative types criticize “quiet quitting” and other such phenomena they’re the ones who are delusional thinking people should have to surrender their entire lives for not being born “lucky.” CATBEAR’s song is less than three minutes long but it gets to the heart of the anxieties of modern life with a catchy song synth pop song succinctly and with a poetic truth that even getting to hear it feels like validation and not dismissal of one’s concerns. Listen to “Grow Up” on Spotify and follow London’s CATBEAR at the links below.

Frances Whitney Struggles With a Quietly Troubled Breakup on the Warmly Melancholic Indie Folk Song “You Left Me For Jesus”

Frances Whitney, photo courtesy the artist

In the video for “You Left Me For Jesus,” singer-songwriter Frances Whitney sits alone with an acoustic guitar on a graffitied former pool in the desert seemingly in the middle of nowhere like a ruined neighborhood once sat. It suits the song about heartbreak and trying to process a seemingly sudden and unexpected breakup. Or at least in Whitney’s words one hears a confusion and an attempt to understand why it all happened not as a path to reconciliation so much but maybe out of a sense of personal closure because the split was a source of pain that can linger with you for years if you don’t process that grief. The lyrics suggest that maybe no one involves understands why the breakup happened making it all the more painful because it doesn’t make sense emotionally or logically. The music is a the sort of sun drenched folk of the Laurel Canyon vintage but with an atmospheric quality that is the hallmark of more modern music yet Whitney’s vocals have a classic quality that is vivid shines in the mix with a warmth to add a dimensionality to the melancholia. Watch the music video for “You Left Me For Jesus” on YouTube and follow Whitney at the links provided.

Frances Whitney on TikTok

Frances Whitney on Instagram

Hemlock Ernst Faces the Specter of Aging and Diminished Horizons on Industrial Hip-Hop Single “Remains”

Hemlock Ernst, image courtesy the artist

Hemlock Ernst (aka Sam Herring of Future Islands) and producer Icky Reels have created an all too relatable and poignant piece of beautifully bleak hip-hop with “Remains.” Streaming percussive textures and rattles run throughout the song as an urgent and desperate tone glimmers in the background while a fuzzy pulse sits in the foreground. It’s like if someone took trap production methods but plugged in the sound palette of EBM. The lyrics sketch out vivid portraits of what it feels like to get older and becoming increasingly aware of how your visibility in culture and social value diminishes when you can be dismissed as a has-been even if what you’re doing still has inherent value, even if as a simple human being you have a value of your own whether or not what you “produce” is perceived as cool or contributes to a narrow definition of the economy. This is especially true of creative people who if their work isn’t making as much money or isn’t perceived as moving forward, but too far forward, they’re set to the side. But often enough this is a product of being seen as “old” or “irrelevant” and in a culture that really only values utilitarian functionality and the ability to make money in established ways it isn’t enough to simply exist and not always having to chase the golden ring or certainly not by participating in a system in which all are disposable. The song sounds like a series of revelations that hit you hard as you hurtle toward and well into middle age. Because it’s then that you really start to take stuff of what you have left and what you’ve given and what’s been taken from you and you have to come to term with what, yes, remains of your time on earth and your ability and energy to do with it what you can that doesn’t feel like a waste of time if you can help it and trying not to despair if it’s not what you thought it would be and if you’re not where you imagined yourself when you were young. As if you have any idea or insight into that when you’re young. With contributions from Elucid of experimental hip-hop duo Armand Hammer the song’s words and sonics hit more deeply and with the weight of inescapable and undeniable truth. Listen to “Remains” on Spotify and follow Hemlock Ernst at the links below. The new Hemlock Ernst album Studying Absence LP is out October 16 via Tygr Rawk.

Hemlock Ernst on Instagram

Now After Nothing’s New Wave Goth Song “Criminal Feature” Exorcises the Legacy of Religious Trauma

Now After Nothing, photo courtesy the artists

Atlanta’s Now After Nothing gives us a fiery story of propaganda and mass manipulation with “Criminal Feature.” The song’s gritty guitar work, brooding bass line, swirling and bright synths and melodic vocals are reminiscent in a way of the pace and mood of “Celebrity Lifestyle” by Swans and how that song unites dark themes of human belief and internalized psychological manipulation with surprisingly catchy songwriting that is a bit of an outlier in the Swans catalog because of that. But Now After Nothing’s sound is steeped in a driving darkwave with great, ascending dynamics and socio-political commentary crafted to make heady themes palatable without sacrificing the essence of the content. The accompanying music video is especially effective in its evocation of the legacy of religious trauma many people know too well. Fans of the more New Wave-inflected end of Killing Joke will definitely find much to like about the song and what Now After Nothing has to offer. The group’s new album Artificial Ambivalence was released on September 13, 2024 is now available for streaming, digital download and as limited edition colored vinyl.

Now After Nothing on Facebook

Now After Nothing on Instagram

Korean Boyfriend’s Noisy New Wave Post-Punk Single “Middle Management” Perfectly Captures the Existential Dread and Melancholic Exhilaration of Occupying the Liminal Role on the Corporate Ladder

Korean Boyfriend’s “Middle Management” pulses and seethes with a low key desperate energy. With a driving, melodic bass line anchoring the song the layered synths are at once noisy and sounding like a lo-fi recording of melancholic yet upbeat synthpop from another era. The vocals aren’t buried in the mix so much as engulfed by the flow of noises including the minimalist, accented percussion. As the title of the song suggests the song seems to comment on that phenomenon of corporate work life of the figures who are simultaneously expected to enforce company policy and take ownership of dealing with situations that are above the pay grade of lower tier workers while not always empowered to actually enact a solution to challenges presented. Essentially they are the second layer of protection leadership enjoys from the consequences of a company’s mediocre product—whether physical or services. The song captures that feeling of constant tension and stress and existential dread of being in middle management and knowing what’s possible and what’s likely for customers and the people working under them and questioning the efficacy of having so much operational responsibility without adequate compensation. The spectral keyboard work in the background establishes a spirit of unease and faint hope and the tapestry of rhythms that interact throughout the song creates a feeling of having entered into an otherworldly zone outside of regular time and space yet the song never comes off bleak, but, instead, expressing compassion and solidarity toward an experience many of us have had or at least witnessed as we navigate the impersonal, late capitalist landscape of trying to survive. Listen to “Middle Management” on Spotify and follow Korean Boyfriend on Instagram. His new album Simple Face is out October 25, 2024.

Korean Boyfriend on Instagram