SubmitHub – Page 66 – Queen City Sounds and Art

Swan Hill Navigates Nostalgia and Not Living in the Past on the Exuberant Fuzz Pop Single “Rosebud”

Swan Hill from Swansea, Wales, UK tap into a period of music that will remind you of what might be called “classic alternative rock” at this point in the exuberant drive of “Rosebud.” As the title suggests, assuming its something of a reference in some way to Citizen Kane, its a song about the sometimes crushing weight of regret when combined with nostalgia and how one’s own life and the world can pass you by so quickly in the living it can crash into your brain in near panic attack inducing waves of despair at the time you might feel like you’ve been wasting at doing what? The opening of the song and the way the more quiet opening riff gives way to a more urgent, fuzzy, guitar melody is reminiscent of something The Who might have done. But the rest of the song hits more like “Can’t Hardly Wait” or a particularly upbeat Dinosaur Jr song. The lyrics about “hundreds of old scratched copies of Otis Redding ‘s Blue, TV dinners cold, I get we’re getting old” conjures a specific time and place of life when maybe you had all the time and spare money to indulge a romanticized view of going to thrift shops in search of lost and neglected gems in the record section and eating quick meals on the cheap and not thinking about the future overmuch until it the time catches up to you. And what all of us think of fondly back with the lens of nostalgia eventually does catch up with us but so long as we can embrace what we cherished as having a value tied to a certain time in our lives maybe we can try not to live a lot in the past. “Rosebud” embodies and celebrates that moment of awareness and the navigation of memory, feeling and living in the present in a way that also feels vital. Listen to “Rosebud” on Spotify and follow Swan Hill at the links provided.

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Nikodimos’ “Driftwood” is a Dreamlike Journey to Soothe a Devastated Psyche

The melting, drifting rhythm at the beginning of Nikodimos’ “Driftwood” and the way it progresses organically and seemingly intuitively with the off beat emphasized gives the whole song a mysterious and dreamlike quality. Like the ghost of J Dilla stepping in to guide the structure and flow of a more ambient Flying Lotus song. The vocals all sit behind the percussion seemingly commenting on a relationship that one suddenly realizes has never been rooted in a mutually beneficial association but rather in which you can be discarded once your immediate usefulness has passed. The unmooring feeling of that flash of insight that casts you adrift in your heart and mind and free floating in a morass of confused emotion until your find your footing once again. The song captures that feeling so accurately it is vivid and striking in its informal structure and shifting tonal arrangements. Fans of the aforementioned artists and the retrofuturist dub of Gonjasufi will appreciate Nikodimos’ willingness to go off standard musical devices here. Listen to “Driftwood” on Spotify where you can also listen to the rest of the new Nikodimos album What Colour is the End? which released on October 26, 2023 via Berlin-based label XYZ123.

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Nighdrator’s Epic and Stirring Heavy Shoegaze Song “Frigid” Embodies the Storm of Contrasting Personality Types

Just in time for the cold to begin setting in with some bite and force is Nighdrator’s single “Frigid.” It’s sets a steady pace with the flooding distortion on the guitar wailing and floating like a bleak, icy, windswept landscape accented by the percussion and low end, the bass droning like mysterious and menacing rumblings in the distance. All while the vocals keep a sense of warmth and feeling in a song that seems to be about someone who is incapable of emotionally giving in a regular, human way even when you extend yourself to them whether that is the product of trauma or social conditioning the epic dynamics of the song embody an intensity of emotion when contrasting personality types come together. Fans of the more ethereal end of doom metal or the heavier end of shoegaze will appreciate the hybrid of styles Nighdrator brings to this song and its output thus far. Listen to “Frigid” on Spotify and connect with Nighdrator at the links provided.

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“My Head” is Soft Punch’s Indie Power Pop Song About the Will to Push Past Everyday Anxieties and Frustrations

“My Head” by Soft Punch sounds a little like an indie rock update of New Wave power pop and XTC. It has those attentions to detail and uplifting melody with lyrics about a seemingly never-ending struggle with a bevy of things to get through the day. And in the end the song goes off the rails into triumphant and gloriously chaotic noise to burn out the anxieties and frustrations outlined in the song. Singer and songwriter Rye Thomas is based in Washington, D.C. and he’s no stranger to overcoming seemingly impossible barriers to a normal life. In 2013 he acquired a mysterious, debilitating illness that left him home bound as someone who was already an active musician (touring in bands like Pash and Tereu Tereu) but for whom then many sounds triggered severe migraines. But he didn’t stop writing music even if that meant 30 minutes a day with just a minimal keyboard and a cassette recorder to capture his song ideas that when his health improved some he was able to hone into a fine body of work which can be heard on his album Above Water which released on Bad Friend Records on September 15, 2023. Watch the video for “My Head” directed by Jonathan Howard on YouTube and follow Soft Punch at the links below.

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Sonny & The Sunsets’ “Androids” is a Modest, Indie Garage Folk Protest Song Against Ritualized Conformity

Sonny & The Sunsets, photo by Sarah Moore

With the title “Androids” you may not be expecting the folk-inflected garage pop song Sonny & The Sunsets have given us from the Self Awareness Through Macrame album that released on September 1, 2023. The bright accents in the jangle give it a physicality that gives its circular riffing some real momentum and at times it’s reminiscent of some of New Order’s more garage-y moments like “The Village” or like later period Beat Happening. But Sonny Smith’s words about wanting to be able to honest and comfortable in his truth and genuine feelings with another person give context to “Androids” as a symbol for how we so often have to be politic in life and adopt a depersonalizing presentation to fit in with a technocratic view of humanity that seems in place in so much of public life. So this song is about a quiet resistance and rebellion for one’s humanity in the face of the pressure to conform and become a product to be tweaked like, yes, some android. The rest of the record has similar expressions of moments of focusing and thinking about presumed norms and things we take for granted without ever examining whether they’re really of value or whether its more dead weight conforming impulses and ritualized behavior. Listen to “Androids” on Spotify and follow Sonny & The Sunsets at the links below.

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A Beacon School Coaxes Us Into Stepping Into Our Best Life With Effervescent Dream Pop Song “KITM”

A Beacon School, photo courtesy the artist

A Beacon School unfurls a swirling, kaleidoscopic melody to wash around the introspection expressed in “KITM” (which means keep it to myself). This finds entrancing form in the music video by Alex Beebe and Chase Wagner with illustrative colors, geometric shapes and spectral overlays and following some seemingly educational film footage about a variety of red flowers that grow on trees and bushes. But the colors are all otherworldly with the blues overwhelming the greens and the rose tones enhanced. We see an image of a boat coming into harbor in the night and hands placing tiles as colors switch and flash. It’s all very surreal yet oddly reassuring. The song is like if Animal Collective collaborated with Washed Out to make a tonally rich yet hushed shoegaze track. It teems with energy yet doesn’t overwhelm and because of that it invites an immediate re-listen. For a song that seems to urge you to stop procrastinating and take that next crucial step into a rewarding life it coaxes more than cajoles and that makes all the difference. The new A Beacon School album yoyo released on October 13, 2023. Watch the video for “KITM” on YouTube and follow A Beacon School at the links below.

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Shelf Lives’ Electro Post-Punk Song “Off The Rails” is a Short Course on Self-Deprogramming From Consumerist Psychosis

Shelf Lives start “Off The Rails” with a repetition of the line, “No fuckin’ way man” as the song careens into a glitchy, driving song that captures the headiness of the hypnosis in being caught up in a cycle of consumerism. Succinctly, Shelf Lives with the touches of distortion on the lead vocals and the frantic pace of the song and its urgent electronic melodies incisively outlines how consumerism can tap into basic human psychology and induce compulsive behaviors and manipulate the mind’s reward and punishment system at a basic level that’s provided and marketed to us as little things that we can buy as a seeming shortcut to fulfillment when it just isn’t. The chorus of “Can’t go off the rails now ’cause you’re none in a million” encapsulates how consumerism both controls and depersonalizes in equal measure with the corrosive nature of its inherent appeal as a tool of capitalism in a social and economic system that reinforces compliance on a nearly instinctive level. Shelf Lives in creatively delineating the dynamic point to how we can deprogram ourselves in first breaking the cycle of manufactured desire. Listen to “Off The Rails” by electro post-punk band Shelf Lives on Spotify and follow the group at the links below.

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&Tilly’s Video for New Age Dream Pop Single “In Circles” Transports Us to an Aquatic World of Tranquil Contemplation

&Tilly’s video for “In Circles” was shot entirely on iPhone but its color palette and textural detail looks like something that could be part of an A24 film set in parallel universe. We see a figure seeming to be floating on and in azure waters with visuals of luminous, aquatic invertebrates floating gracefully about and a shoreline of darkened trees. The music itself is elegant layers of processed piano, sublimely subtle guitar and ethereal percussive sounds and hushly melodious vocals. Perhaps even plucked violin to give it all an even more classical sensibility that lends the song a timeless aspect like something that could have come from a more pop 90s New Age alternative music realm for fans of Enya and Loreena McKennitt or newer artists like Cate Le Bon or Julia Holter. But &Tilly’s sound is also in the realm of dream pop but with more than usual mastery of sonic details masterfully orchestrated. Watch the video for “In Circles” on YouTube and follow &Tilly at the links provided.

Coworkers Exorcise the Inner Tension and Cognitive Dissonance of Striving to Thrive in Late Stage Capitalism on “Legwork”

The sense of building tension and being a the breaking point drives the first part of “Legwork” by New Orleans post-punk band Coworkers. Spiky guitar work and hypnotic repetition are the perfect framing for a song seemingly told from the perspective of a man who has tried so hard to fit in and to do what you’re supposed to do to earn acceptance by the powers that be, however low rent, and turning himself into what he thinks would garner him the recognition and rewards that in a more sane social and economic system he would have. But he knows it was all a waste of time and in the chorus there a touch of a desperate break and the emotions rage. The opening bass line and general tone of the song is reminiscent of The Fall’s “Bombast” but of course more manic and unhinged in a thrilling way. Most of us have had to go through the soulless motions of a job or social situation only to realize we’re not the special people who get all the rewards society has to offer and one of the only sane things to do is write a fun and emotionally explosive yet surreal humorous song about it. Listen to “Legwork” on Bandcamp and follow Coworkers at the links below.

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