Wellbeloved brings together some seemingly disparate elements for its single “The Values” from its most recent album The Rusty. Distorted yet slightly shimmering guitar to psychedelic effect, splayed percussion tracing the edges of rhythm while also keeping the unconventional beat, Velvet Underground-esque guitar solos that burn over and through a drone of keyboards and bass holding the song together through force of while. It all sounds like its coming apart and colliding together elements that shouldn’t work but somehow do. David Wellbeloved lists a bevy of things going wrong in the world, all well familiar to anyone that has survived the past several years, and in listing them you get the feeling he is trying to make sense of these phenomena as well and all the angst that comes from having to deal with this flood of negative stimuli every day. But the line “Everybody’s yelling but nobody’s saying anything new” gets to the core of the collective psychological issue that is perhaps blocking actually dealing with the world as it is and with issues as they are and that is not questioning the dominant paradigms that seem to be running most people’s lives. The outsized faith in one’s own ideas and beliefs is a common shortcoming and maybe Wellbeloved isn’t suggesting he has the answers but there can be no doubting maybe taking some time off pointless self-assertion and taking the time to figure out if our stories make as much sense as we think is in order but with most people having to work too much to get by we’ll see if a more nurturing and sane world can emerge in spite of the failings of our crumbling worldwide civilization. Listen to the psychedelic blues punk of “The Values” on YouTube and follow Wellbeloved at the links provided.
Queen City Sounds and Art 
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