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BOWIE’s Synth Pop Single “Good All On My Own” is a Triumphant Examination of Self-Discovery

BOWIE’s video for “Good All On My Own” charts an inner narrative most people can relate to with all the stories and identities you’re conditioned and to which you’re socially rewarded to conform—at least as well as you can—and you do until you get to a place in life when you become comfortable with who you are and who you’ve wanted to be or who you’ve become aside from all the layers of adjustment that had nothing to do with living as a good person but more arbitrary standards of culture that develop and become the expected norm even if it doesn’t make sense for everyone. In the video we see BOWIE covered in green grime that gets “washed off” and she gets dressed up in a pink, “girly” outfit and sits there looking really unimpressed by the transformation. And at the climax of the song she gets back into the grey-green “filth” of one’s genuine self but is really the self one comes to recognize as perfectly acceptable and a rejection of imposed, superficial personality traits as signified by a standardized image that is intended to convey identity. It is a journey for self-discovery of the authentic self and throwing off what one has learned that don’t seem to suit you. The video is like an experimental film. But the song is a finely syncopated bit of uplifting synth pop driven by BOWIE’s wide-ranging vocals and heartfelt melodies and by the end of the song accompanied by a bombastic horn section and screaming guitar to drive the message of self-validation home. Watch the video for “Good All On My Own” on YouTube and follow BOWIE at the links provided. BOWIE’s The Right Way Up EP releases September 2023.

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Lo Artiz Pokes Some Lighthearted Fun at Our Dysfunctional Ways of Coping With a World on the Brink With the Neo-Soul Single “the last of us”

Lo Artiz leans heavy into her neo-soul sound on “the last of us.” The nuanced accents on the beat give it a different feel than a lot of music in the realm of R&B these days in that they’re solid and anchor the song into a strong groove. The singer’s voice is playful and sultry in delivering words about ways many of us cope with this sense of impending doom that seems to hang over the world for anyone actually paying attention and sensitive to the forces that much of the power centers of our civilization have been able to ignore because wealth has shielded them from the worst consequences but now it’s just inescapable. So who can blame people for taking not the healthiest choices in offsetting the ambient despair through self-medication, not always the most ideal sexual experiences but something to take our minds off how real things have been and the various ways we plug ourselves into the lives of others whether they’re people we know or celebrities who may or may not deserve our attention. Lo Artiz pokes fun at these impulses in the song while acknowledging sometimes we humans don’t always know a better way of dealing with life unvarnished and without filters. Listen to “the last of us” on Spotify and follow Lo Artiz at the links below. Look out for her sophomore album out September 2023.

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The Title Track to Sleepy Gonzalez’s Mercy Kill EP is Soulful Dream Pop Song About Letting Go

Sleepy Gonzalez, photo courtesy the artists

The title track to Sleepy Gonzalez’s Mercy Kill EP concludes that June 30, 2023 release on a note of closure. From the beginning of the song and its atmospheric, orchestral arrangements the male and female vocals in tandem seem to be bidding goodbye to a chapter in life, maybe a time of struggle that felt for a long time like something you had to do endure or get through to get where you thought you wanted to be. But when you get there it’s rarely what you’ve made it out to be in your head but at least it gave you a direction to go instead of being lost with nothing to strive toward. Whether that be a place in life, a point in one’s career or in one’s creative pursuits, a relationship or all of it and more. The whole EP has more than mere undercurrents of melancholic feeling but “Mercy Kill” itself seems to tie up the loose threads of one’s life in one particular passage of it in a way that makes it feel easy to let go of what no longer serves your life. Each song of the EP seems like an exploration of some facet of those themes but its outro song is like listening to the musical equivalent of watching the end credits of an existential indie film and Christian and Ally from the band have an emotive harmonization that is reminiscent in moments like what one hears between John Doe and Exene Cervenka of X, more readily apparent in earlier tracks of the EP, but here too when the shoegaze and dream pop instincts dissolve some and a touch of soulful jazz flavor sweeps through to give it an aspect of late not ponderings and because of that it hits a satisfying spot in the mind and of letting channels of anxiety and pain go in a way gentle and organic. Listen to “Mercy Kill” the song and the EP on Spotify and follow the Vancouver, British Columbia-based band at the links below.

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Qozy’s Deconstructed and Distended Lo-Fi Indiepop Song “Pieces” has the Sound of Acceptance of Uncertainty

Qozy sounds like he’s deconstructed and distended the elements of a lo-fi indiepop song on “Pieces.” There is a repeating guitar figure that sometimes echoes slightly in chords while a bass line that sounds like it’s on the verge of melting holds a kind of rhythm alongside the minimal percussion. The vocals sound like existential poetry written in a state of disorientation and unmoored from standard reality. Yet it also seems to be the description of a simple path out of that headspace. “Forgotten where to go/Take the way you best know/Losing form/Piece it all back up.” What does this mean? It matters less in the precision of literal meaning than the cadence of the words and how it all fits in with this beautifully unusual song.As the song progresses toward the end the tones and rhythms seem to unravel and go in their own directions like the tenuous grasp of form that seems to be the central struggle of the song has resolved in dissolution. Fans of vintage 2000s Siltbreeze bands or 90s lo-fi home recorded pop and its 2000s descendants will appreciate this song and the rest of Qozy’s 2023 EP Sleep Over which dropped June 17, 2023. Listen to “Pieces” on Spotify and follow Qozy at the links below.

Qozy on YouTube

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Paul Cousins’ Process Video for “Broken Patches of Sky” Reveals the Method of Crafting its Analog Ambient Tranquility While Preserving Its Mysterious Resonance

Paul Cousins used reel-to-reel machines, tape loops, speed alterations, random assembly and frippertronics in recording and manipulating the music that became “Broken Patches of Sky” (from the artist’s debut album Vanishing Artefacts which released on April 14, 2023 on digital and bone white vinyl). The process video demonstrates a bit of this level of craft alongside pastoral footage and snippets of lead cells of film and what looks like educational and industrial cinema of a bygone era. Cousins left in the tape hiss to give the track a sense of texture to ground the introspective and echoing melody, the sounds of tape speeding up and slowing down to suggest organic transitions and the hint of percussive artifacts from piano and/or struck, prepared guitar before being put through processing to give those notes a lingering and streaming aspect. Overall it’s like using older technology to simulate what some now might do with full digital technology and sampling and putting that extra effort in gives the song a mysterious resonance that keeps your attention to its minimalist composition like a soundtrack to a dream following a deep session of meditation. Fans of early 80s Eno forays into outer and inner space will appreciate the vibe here. Watch the video for “Broken Patches of Sky” on YouTube and follow Paul Cousins at the links below.

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Baleen’s Spirited Shoegaze Track “Ocean Hue” is Like an Exhilarating Trip Out to Sea on a Sunny Day

“Ocean Hue” begins with an ambient tranquility of floating and sparkling motes of sound before Baleen ramps the song into high gear with whirling guitar fuzz. The male and female vocals in ethereal tandem float on the soaring guitar melody and steady yet expressive percussion. The warping and winding dynamic of the song and its cool swirls of tone and the exuberant energy of the song embody a trip on the ocean on a sunny day coasting the waves at high speed. There is an exhilarating quality to the song that the band sustains until the very end when the sounds recede into the tranquil depths and warp out of tune in a wonderfully disorienting fashion. Listen to “Ocean Hue” on Spotify.

Skycabin’s Soul-infused Downtempo R&B Single “Somnia” Articulates a Deep and Hopefuly Yearning to Wake Up From the Collective Human Nightmare

“Somnia” is the culminating moment in Skycabin’s “waterfall series.” The single is steeped in the sounds of soul and R&B, with a commanding performance from acclaimed singer Denise Stewart, as well as 90s downtempo. The song has a defiant and striving tone but the lyrics are brimming with expressions of anxiety that most people living in the world and paying attention might feel themselves. And the chorus of “I’m living in a bad dream” has a hint that all of this chaos, conflict, static and desperate challenges feel like a moment in time that has been building for decades and longer from which we might find ourselves free if there was a collective shift in consciousness, a waking up, from outmoded and unproductive ways of thinking and being. For several years now it seems as though unfortunate and nightmarish events have been transpiring at an accelerating pace and it leaves little time for recovery so maybe you dissociate a little to survive the day but with the impending sense of what could come next. The song and its AI generated, Afro-futurist imagery suggests a hope against hope and a will to get through this period and shake off the collective human nightmare. One can only hope. Watch the video for “Somnia” on YouTube and follow Skycabin at the links provided.

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Dax Collaborates With Ten Artists to Deliver a Powerful Message of Human Solidarity Through Embracing Our Mutual Frailty and Sensitivity on “To Be a Man”

Dax and his collaborators, image courtesy the artists

Dax tapped ten artists from his TikTok open verse challenge for the Mega Remix of “To Be A Man.” For the ten plus minutes of the song the various artists take a verse and give a multiplicity of voices and thus a different emotional and musical take on the subject of what it means to be a man struggling with the pressures and expectations of the modern world and the ways one copes that leads to self-neglect and often enough self-abuse. For Dax his source of strength in his lowest moments has been his faith but also his belief that there has to be something better than the tools he’s been given by culture and society and in evolving flashes of personal insight throughout his career as a songwriter thus far it is feeling the hurt, sadness and disappointment rather than burying it, to be vulnerable and share those moments of perceived weakness because running from them is the path to actual weakness, undermining you from inside. By the end of this treatment of the song Dax and his collaborators have taken us through a song that is essentially an epic R&B confessional and given it moments of vibrant hip-hop, pop and even country because the core of the song with a much wider resonance even beyond the struggles of being a man because in this world living as a human with our limitations in a civilization that seems bent on mutual destruction can wear you own. Dax sees solidarity in that truth that we all feel and we can all benefit from some sensitivity and the strength of being able to be so honest. Watch the video for “To Be A Man (Mega Remix)” on YouTube (for a full list of contributing artists, see the video notes) and follow Dax at the links provided.

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La Sécurité’s “Hot Topic” is a Post-Punk Dance Anthem of Feminist Solidarity

La Sécurité’s vocalist and multi-instrumentalist Éliane Viens-Synnott worked with Gabriel Lapierre to produce the music video for “Hot Topic” and give it the air of a choreographed, avant-garde dance piece. Turns out it’s an edited version of an original performance video by Viens-Synottt but it fits the angular post-punk song perfectly. Its driving bass line has a danceable fluidity like something out of a Bush Tetras song but its unconventional percussion part – an almost motorik beat mixed with a percussive keyboard figure intertwining with splashes of guitar and vocals declaring self-affirmative sentiments setting boundaries in no uncertain terms. “Is there something I can do/To make this any clearer for you?/I don’t wanna talk/I just wanna dance/I don’t owe you any answers/You can fuck off with your banter/Cut the crap, you’re not funny/I don’t need a drink/I make my own money” – those words and more in the rest of the song are the kind you wish you’d hear more often even beyond the context of a dance floor where some people, almost always men, think they can take liberties because they think the setting entitles them to doling out unwanted, often aggressive attention. This song pairs a whimsical melody like a casual dismissal of the nonsense with an edgy, pulsing rhythm and dark atmospherics for an unbeatable net effect of wit and strength. Watch the video for “Hot Topic” on YouTube and follow La Sécurité at the links below. The group’s new album Stay Safe! dropped June 16 via Mothland.

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Sivan Levy Plumbs the Obscured Places of a Loved One’s Heart on the Tender Ambient Pop Song “I Thought I Heard You Call My Name While You Were Sleeping”

Sivan Levy brings you into “I Thought I Heard You Call My Name While You Were Sleeping” with ambient sounds of birds in the distance. You may wonder if it’s from the song or outside your window. But then her ethereal vocals come in on a steady electronic beat and resonate in drawn out repetitions at the end of a line of lyrics. The melody is formed out of those processed vocals and background drones so that the whole track has an introspective luminescence, the musical equivalent of soft lighting and fog. Which fits the song seemingly about buried and guarded emotions that Levy is trying to reach past to get to the feelings she knows are there but which life experience and socialization obscures with unconsciously adopted, expected behaviors. It’s a tender and unconventional love song in a situation that seems challenging without the sensitivity to navigate ingrained habits. Fans of Jenny Hval and Kelly Lee Owens may appreciate Levy’s command of atmosphere and nuanced emotional expressions in this song. Listen to “I Thought I Heard You Call MY Name While You Were Sleeping” on Spotify and follow Sivan Levy at the links below.