Wonder Showzen – Queen City Sounds and Art

Don’t mind that the video for “Idiot” looks like something that could have been a segment on Wonder Showzen with the woman in a romance with a giant white rabbit with blue eyes that seems to become perilously ill early into the relationship. This surreal visual is a perfect and poignant companion to a song seemingly about heartache, tragedy, loss and redemption. Its lush melodies and processional pace comes off like music from a dream where the sometimes nightmarish realities of real life turn out okay for real and where happy endings don’t have to be the stuff of fairy tales and movies. It is deeply hopeful and soothing even though the music video depicts the challenging realities that will visit us all at some point in our lives but which we can handle while feeling all of those painful emotions and not be sundered by them. Good Grim’s 2022 album Enchantment seems rich on songs that take heavy experiences and sets them to music that soften the blow without watering down the emotions. Watch the video for “Idiot” on YouTube and connect with Good Grim at the links provided.

Good Grim on Facebook

Good Grim on Instagram

Good Grim on Apple Music

Nicholas Rahn’s treatment in the video for Grocer’s song “Calling Out” presents the appropriately surrealistic mood of the song. People dressed in animal suits as a pig, a bird, a horse and perhaps a caterpillar work regular jobs as part of the usual rat race and in desperate need of some time out of that maddening and mind-dullening world as exemplified by the discordantly playful, herky jerky dynamic of the song with guitar both in staccato melody and in frantic pace with the rhythm. The vocals sound like inner dialogue diary entries sketching out the unspoken thoughts and all but shouting them like a triumph over the overwhelming mundanity of too much of everyday existence. The video ends with the members of the band sitting at a diner table being served by the caterpillar in one of the more meta music video moments in recent times and ending like we’ve just seen an outtake of an episode from Kids in the Hall, Mr. Show or Wonder Showzen with a different cast. Fans of Dehd and Lithics will probably find something endearing about the song and what Grocer is doing in general. Watch the video for “Calling Out” on YouTube, follow Grocer at the links provided and check out the rest of the group’s new album Numbers Game which released on May 6.