New Music, Emerging from your Local Scene
JAMS The Flava Child has released the first three singles from his forthcoming mixtape "Made With Love". This month we have seen the release of "Kush 4 Breakfast" and our personal favorite "Lemon Tree".
JAMS TFC is a talented emcee who was born in London but was raised in Chicago. He enlisted Pittsburg’s Billy Hoyle to provide the beats for this project and pairing seems to have truly sparked something special.
Blind Boy has released a new single called "Windows". This is the first new music from Baritone-voiced singer/songwriter since his debut EP, "Have You Seen The Sun?", back in December.
In keeping with their name, Bubble Tea and Cigarettes capture the enduring pleasures of the most fleeting of pleasures. On the two singles they released in 2020 the bedroom pop combo were just as likely to be found in the kitchen unpacking their latest comestibles with dreamy elegies dedicated to eating empanadas at 5am or about ordering fried chicken from the takeout joint downstairs in the middle of the night and the inevitable reflections upon one’s own mortality (“people all die soon”) provoked by such activities.
Newly signed to Madrid-based Elefant Records, the duo’s latest single ventures a bit further afield from their local bodega for inspiration, namely all the way to the Left Coast and ocean-adjacent “Santa Monica” in particular where the song and the sumptuous shot-on-location video (dir: Shicong Zhu) depict an amorous yet hesitant couple cruising down the “violet street” of a purple-hued Pacific Coast Highway shooting home movies and sucking on candy ring pops and smoking cigarettes while pondering the question “is this love ended or it never started?” before ending up at an sparsely populated amusement park straight out of Carnival of Souls and cavorting together in slo-mo illuminated only by the lights of the ferris wheel and the colored flames of hand-held sparklers before our narrator is finally left “lost in love” waking up alone in a parking lot as her partner speeds off on a motorcycle.
The languid longing and overall slowcore/sadcore/dreampop vibes of "Santa Monica" are ably assisted by twangy “Duane Eddy on Xanax” guitar, lugubrious strings and mournful castanets (two words you won’t see together elsewhere) with vocals that sound as if they’re emanating from a wormhole to another dimension more than from a human body and it all exerts an appropriate gravitational pull. BT&C is comprised of Andi Wang and Ruinan Zhang and while I’m not sure which one of them is “Bubble Tea” and which one is “Cigarettes” it’s no matter because together they capture the sugar-and-nicotine rush and subsequent comedown inherent in the combo and I’m guessing that they only left “weed gummies” off from their name because it got to be too long. So grab a jumbo straw and suck down some taro covered tapioca globules in musical form in between drags on a Pall Mall assuming this is up your alley. (Jason Lee)
In 2021, having just come out of a year in which the demand for psychotherapy grew by leaps and bounds, the Calm meditation app is on everybody’s phone it seems and fifteen quarantine pounds gained is the norm, now more than ever, we badly need a trippy record to help us to relax. In a half-normal, post-pandemic world, we’re yearning for a record made by a band who promises their music will take you on a journey and bring you back seeing life differently.
The Cush, a Fort Worth band consisting of husband Burette Douglas on vocals/guitar, wife Gabrielle on vocals/bass, Ben Hance on guitar and keyboards and Austin Green on percussion, place themselves in the “trippy genre” om their self-written Spotify bio, in which they also promise us a memorable musical journey. Their album “Riding In the Stardust Gold,” released April 23, was recorded at Fort Worth’s Empire Sound studio and Eagle Audio with Ben Harper’s Mad Bunny label imprint.
Although the new album often shows the expected musical influences of a trippy indie pop album nowadays (The xx, Alex G, The Cult, Slowdive), their imaginative songwriting and musicianship puts them more in the life-changing escape realm of “Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots” than that of a regular dream pop record.
There are two tracks here that swerve from The Cush’s happy sonic dream vacation to create a challenging — even frightening — mood akin to getting seriously lost while traveling: “Beneath The Lines” and “Chariots of Smog.” And they are both quite fun upon a second listening. Between the Deep Purple/Stone Temple Pilots/Black Sabbath/Faith No More metal guitars, these really rock hard! On “Chariots of Smog.” Burette sings like a moody teenager. On “Beneath the Lines,” Gabrielle’s usual sweetly gorgeous vocals turn satisfyingly tense and emotional, with a few shrieks thrown in for good measure. Their long-time fans will be very surprised at this new side of the band.
“Haters,” the album’s first single (and the only one that Ben Harper produced) is currently receiving radio airplay. Hopefully Ben Harper’s fans will spread the word as well so that music fans discover this gem of an album.
– Jill Blardinelli
Split Single has released a new single called "95 Percent" from their forthcoming album, Amplificado, which is due out June 25th on Inside Outside Records.
This is the project of Jason Narducy (Bob Mould Band, Superchunk, Verbow) who is joined this time around by REM’s Mike Mills on bass and Jon Wurster (Superchunk, Bob Mould, The Mountain Goats) on drums.
The video for "95 Percent" was beautifully animated by Grant Nickson.
Melkbelly is back with a new single called "Prehistoric Worm". This is the first new music from the Noise Rock group since the release of their 2020 album PITH.
You can catch Melkbelly as part of the recently released Riot Fest line-up which will be taking place at Douglas Park September 17th to 19th.
The Alt-Pop trio Iverson has released a new single called "How Does It Make U Feel". This late ’80’s, early ’90’s inspired track is accompanied by a video below which was created by and features the group lead singer/songwriter Charles Iverson acting out and through the array of emotions in the track.
Photo Credit: Jerry Maestas
L.A. artist Wallice shares the music video for “Off The Rails,” the title track to her new EP, out Friday, June 4th independently. The video portrays Wallice and her band as avatars of a Sims-like computer game, with her actions unexpectedly controlled by a puppet master unseen until the very end of the video. It’s a humorous metaphor for the way our current lives seem to be directed by an ever-present but unseen hand.
Musically, the track is an effervescent slice of indie pop. Beginning with Wallice’s innocent, if slightly stoned solo vocal, she’s soon joined by angelic overdubbed harmonies that fill the listener’s ears, until the track explodes with the full-band arrangment: surf-style guitar with mixed electronic and acoustic drums share the stage with Wallice’s vocal.
Wallice says of the new track: “’Off the Rails” is about feeling like you don’t have any control over your life and that the world is against you—and that you’re the only one that feels that way,” which definitely seems reflected in lines like: “my life’s a mess but I don’t give a shit/I never try my best I learn to live with it. I live my life like I’m the only one going off the rails.”
Fuzzy synth bass towards the middle changes the vibe slightly, and soon Wallice’s vocal begins to feel as distorted and reverbed as the lead guitar. Eventually you can hardly tell the difference when her voice and the guitar blend into one another at the very peak of the songs’ build-up. The guitar almost becomes an extension of the narrator’s buried stress and desperation. Gabe Hernandez
Billy Kim’s a busy person. Along with being a multi-instrumentalist member of electronic musician Tycho’s touring ensemble since 2016, he’s also been hard at work making music of his own as Karaboudjan (a reference to a ship in the Belgian artist Hergé’s classic children’s comic strip The Adventures of Tin Tin). And now we have our hands on “Let Go,” the second single from his forthcoming debut EP, IMAGO, scheduled for release this September, along with and exclusive look at the new music video for the track.
Intended as a tribute to Kim’s late father, “Let Go” feels simultaneously chilled-out and hard-hitting, if such a thing is possible. If it is, it’s certainly thanks to Kim’s excellent use of dynamics in the production, with fluorescent synth pads and electric pianos deftly sharing space with reverb-drenched guitars, rubbery bass guitars, cavernous, strutting drums, and spiraling tape-delayed vocals, while the whirlpool-like builds to the chorus betray a definite psychedelic streak in his sound.
“I want to thank you for your time here,” sings Kim during the chorus. If this new single is any indication, we’re eager to spend more time in Karaboudjan’s musical world very soon. Gabe Hernandez
Damiana has released the first single, "Sunken Lupine", from their forthcoming debut LP, Vines, which is due out on July 16th via Hausu Mountain.
This is the new project from two well known names in our experimental music scene, Natalie Chami (aka TALsounds) and Whitney Johnson (aka Matchess). These two have been performing together for awhile but this project is their first attempt to record together. The album blurs the line between composed and improvised in all the best ways.
Sometimes a song rips but in a highly controlled way. LAPêCHE is good at writing those kinds of songs and “Elbow Grease” is one of them. Opening with a driving tom-tom rhythm a tight little guitar riff, the song exudes a dark coiled intensity from the start. And the entrance of yearning yet slowly metronomic vocals only adds to the sense of anticipation with the opening line “It’s not so easy to uncover without splitting the seams” confirming the impression of something that’s contained waiting to be released.
The song’s lyrics as a whole appear to revolve around control and efforts to maintain it, or at least to appear to even when failing. But at a couple points the moody vibe gets broken by a stomping half-time riff leading into a repeated refrain of “rusted anchor pull me down.” It could all be a metaphor for addiction or obsession or Fleet Week who knows. Or for throwing oneself over the edge of a figurative bridge with a figurative anchor tied around one’s foot.
Or a real bridge. Speaking of ripping in a controlled way, LAPêCHE just released an official music video for “Elbow Grease" this last week, and in the video lead singer/lyricist/co-guitarist/keyboardist/tiny dancer (not really that tiny) Krista Holly Diem shimmies and twists and struts across the Kosciuszko Bridge (which spans the mighty Newton Creek separating Brooklyn and Queens) like a rogue Jazzercise escapee and still mangers to get off some good moves even constrained to a walking lane on a somewhat heavily trafficked bridge. So again we got the theme of controlled chaos and it’s engaging to watch. It’s also engaging to watch because personally I’ve crossed this bridge a good number of times on foot and by bike but now I realize I was doing it all wrong. What you see above is a much more aerodynamic approach to the crossage, and plus people will get out of your way if you’re bopping around like Jack Lalanne on poppers (if only Ludacris had thought of this approach).
“Elbow Grease” is the final track on LAPêCHE’s recent sophomore full-length release Blood in the Water (New Granada) which had reportedly been in the can for about a year before release, originally slated to come out right around when things went to Hell In A Handbasket so the band and label wisely held off. In the meantime, they’ve reportedly almost finished their next album and I’m sure it helped they purchased a Band Pod™ by Hasbro and hunkered down for months on end writing a new set of songs which means at least something good came of all this.
And finally, you may ask yourself, did I learn these facts by conducting an interview with the band? Hell no do I look crazy to you! Instead I leaned them by watching someone else conduct an interview with the band on FLTV—otherwise known as the Footlight Bar’s official Vimeo channel which is located in cyberspace right next to Ridgewood, Queens. Each episode of FLTV features a single band put under the microscope by host Kendra Saunders who asks penetrating questions while wearing a fashionable glitter encrusted mask, as well as live performances by the band in question. And you can watch all the episodes from the first season for a small fee on their Vimeo channel. Now where is my commission FLTV? (Jason Lee)
Emily Wolfe lets her light shine in her latest single “Something Better.” The song takes the listener on a ride by starting soft and sweet, then showcasing huge vocals, catchy guitar licks and powerful drums along the way. Simply put, after listening to “Something Better,” one can’t help but feel “better.” Even though the lyrical content is rooted in loneliness, the overall vibe is undoubtedly positive and it’s clear that Wolfe has been able to turn a painful experience into an uplifting pop-rock anthem.
Wolfe wastes no time jumping into the lead single from her upcoming album “Outlier.” Right away, she pulls you in with her distinct, high-registered vocals that straddle the line between classic rock and modern pop. It’s something that’ll appeal to many generations of music listeners, almost as if Stevie Nicks and Demi Lovato put their voices in a blender. The intro is gradually complemented with a straightforward drum beat and Wolfe’s scorching guitar riffs. There have been many artists who blend elements of pop and rock, but Wolfe does so in a way that should satisfy purists from both genres. She possesses the look, attitude, and guitar chops of a true Rock n’ Roller. Yet her crisp, dynamic vocal style, polished production, and uncanny ability to create an earworm chorus could easily land her on some of the biggest pop stations around the world.
Wolfe repeats that she’s “alone” and “tired” and looking for “something better.” She laments about the monotony of it all, and her yearning for a more exciting life is highly relatable — it’s easy to fall into a rut and mindlessly go about your everyday routine without ever stopping to ask, “Why?” Though this can be a sad reality, Wolfe ultimately is sending an optimistic message — that it’s never too late to fully go after what you want, and though we may find ourselves stuck at times, there’s always hope that we’ll find “something better.”
It’s easy to see why Emily Wolfe has accomplished so much in her young career thus far. She has her own sound, the edge and the “it” factor that appeals to a wide spectrum of listeners. “Something Better” highlights her ability to craft music that is catchy and pop-oriented, while also rocking out in the process.
– Quinn Donoghue
