Wolf Colonel – Queen City Sounds and Art

Jake Minch’s “whose you are” is Like a Diary Entry Brimming With the Raw Vulnerability of Feeling in a Moment of Peak Reflective Loneliness

With mostly just an acoustic guitar and jhis voice, Jake Minch is able to pack a lot of emotional power and vulnerability to the songs from his October 20, 2023 EP how many EP. For the single “whose you are” we get a music video that looks like footage of someone documenting a time of great transition in a time of cold weather and journeys away from the places one knows best and the inevitable disruptions that occur and the necessary change of physical and social scenery and thus the nature of the emotional bonds one built with the people closest to you. The song is like a diary entry in its raw and poignant honesty and with some simple poetry it conveys impressions of connection, intimacy and the yearning for that when it’s something in the past and how confusing and painful it can be and how it can linger and still haunt a present that doesn’t seem so far to measure up and create new memories with the same depth of psychic resonance. Musically it’s reminiscent of artists like Wolf Colonel and perhaps Microphones but in a current manifestation of those creative impulses and mode of expressing those all too real feelings that strike you in a moment of peak loneliness and desolation. Watch the video for “whose you are” on YouTube and follow Jake Minch at the links below.

Jake Minch on Instagram

“Big Elsewhere” by vireo is a Tender Dream Folk Soundtrack to a Heartwarming Day Trip

“Big Elsewhere” by vireo sounds like something a bunch of super creative kids wrote in their tree house long before forming an actual band. It has that quality of openness and a sense of wonder and an unhurried spirit. Its chiming guitar work and bird-like keyboard melodies behind tender vocals individually and in harmony. The music video, made by Suzanne Gomes, looks like a fall weekend spent on the coast with gray skies and choppy waters. It’s all the spontaneous aesthetics of Super-8 and no strict narrative structure, just images like what you might shoot if you weren’t planning but merely documenting your experience for yourself. And the song feels like that too. It’s a mere one minute, fifty-three seconds but in that time vireo sounds both like a futuristic indie pop thing informed by the sort one heard and experienced in warehouses and house shows in the 2000s and early 2010s. The kind of music that has an undeniable charm and appeal but always very home made feeling like the choices of instrumentation are idiosyncratic executed with an unexpected originality. Maybe someone would call this band shoegaze but the sound is much more in line with the kind of borderline twee, dream pop folk that would fit well on a bill with say a Stephen Steinbrink or Microphones. Even Wolf Colonel. Its an intimate and inviting sound that seems to be a part of the group’s style that resonates strongly with the DIY musical experience of a decade and more ago. Watch the video for “Big Elsewhere” on YouTube and follow Pittsburgh’s vireo at the links below.

vireo on Facebook

vireo on Bandcamp

vireo on Instagram

Straight White Teeth’s Urgent Yet Tender Indiepop Ballad “yml” Glows With the Warmth of Heartfelt Affection

Straight White Teeth, photo courtesy the artist

Straight White Teeth brings to its song “yml” the kind of tender and earnest sensibility that graced some of the better underground indiepop of the 2000s like Microphones, Wolf Colonel and Transistor Radio Sound. The letters may or may not stand for the lyric “You’re my love” in the chorus but the use of those letters in the title is emblematic of the gentle quality of this song that’s a poignantly endearing declaration of affection for a loved one that is heartfelt and quietly passionate in a way that suggests maybe to make a bigger production would introduce a level of extravagant dishonesty that might embarrass. Within the song’s lyrics are words revealing a level of vulnerability and sensitivity that really anchors the sentiments and the lush yet spare arrangements. An energetic and at times borderline atonal piano melody runs throughout that works like a rhythmic feature over which the introspective vocals float and in the choruses echoes ever so slightly in a touch of reverb. It’s an exercise in songwriting economy without short changing what is clearly a sincere statement of love felt to the core. Listen to “yml” on Soundcloud and follow Straight White Teeth at the links provided.