Queen City Sounds
By Tom Murphy
Published Issue 131, November 2024
Almanac Man – Terrain
A scathing, noisy and sustained stab at dangerously delusional thinking, collective trauma and despair. As the title suggest this album examines the lay of the land in America in the present tense and the dire implications of its politics for its own population and the world in general. Its crawling, fractured soundscape nonetheless yields moments of what might be described as a cathartic melodicism, akin to what you might hear on a Chat Pile record, offering a shard of hope in resistance to a seemingly doomed future.
A Place For Owls – How We Dig in the Earth
In the earnest and expertly crafted, intricate melodies of this album, it is impossible to miss a sense of urgency and keen sensitivity to the precariousness of life. A Place For Owls takes a track title like “find your friends and hold them close” — that is all but a meme now from social media posts about the death of loved ones and the fragility of existence — and imbues it with a striking poignancy and vibrant delicacy. You don’t need to be a fan of midwestern emo to be drawn into the band’s vulnerable hopefulness, but it has the open-hearted expressiveness of the best of that music.
Blameshells – s/t
The relatively lo-fi production on this record is really the only way to capture and convey tracks that are written with an unpolished spirit informing the songwriting and performance. Calling it “garage punk” seems inadequate because the attitude in the vocals has the kind of irreverence and snarl one hears in the music of L7 and Tribe 8. It has an untamed rock and roll sound, like the band is not trying to be anything else but offering its own flavor of memorable melodies and hooks.
Gwisina – s/t
Amanda Baker’s imaginative production and command of sonic detail turns songs that might fall within the realm of glitchcore into something more coherent and intentional. Like Alice Glass’ solo work, there is real pain and self-examination behind these tracks that the otherworldly, futuristic vocal processing could — or is even — trying to hide. Rather, the sounds employed here embody the way it feels to experience being immersed in those emotions. Baker brings you into those peaks and valleys of lived psychological states for a collective catharsis through art pop.
Glass Parade – Path of Greatest Resistance
The glittery guitar tones and gritty melodies of the songs on this Glass Parade album, along with its fairly eclectic songwriting, are reminiscent of an all but lost time of 90s and 2000s alternative music. Like it’s coming to us from a universe where Sunny Day Real Estate, Hammerbox and Velocity Girl are the primary touchstones of musical DNA. Thread in some post-punk synth and moodiness and you get a sound that’s markedly different from the group’s regional peers.
Planes Mistaken For Stars – Do You Still Love Me?
This is the final PMFS album for which founding vocalist Gared O’Donnell recorded before his untimely passing in 2021. It is a harrowing and heavy yet exuberant statement on loss, death and precarious preciousness of the time you get to experience while alive. It also demonstrates the immense creative growth of the band’s always striking songwriting to the level of transcendent catharsis with each track. The music is dense with ideas and brimming with an expansive spirit that commands your attention, revealing added dimensions of nuance and meaning with repeated listens.
Pleasure Prince – General Pallor
As they deconstruct painful and harmful narratives we carry as imposed on us by culture or cultivated lived experience, Pleasure Prince’s neon pastel melodies and soothing tones offer a dreamlike realm of music in which to escape and examine these ideas from a safe distance. Even more than the band’s entrancing previous album, Numbers, General Pallor is like a late 70s Alan Parsons Project album as imagined through the lens of modern visionary pop auteurs like Black Moth Super Rainbow and Air. Except this duo injects a lush neo-soul flavor and soothingly transporting yet emotionally rich vocals with lyrics that honor how the hurt of life’s slings and arrows can linger longer when neglected and buried with no real attempt at self-healing.
For more see queencitysoundsandart.wordpress.com
Tom Murphy is a Denver-based music writer and science fiction/fantasy/horror creator. He is also a musician, historian and itinerant filmmaker.
Check out Tom’s October 2024 install of Queen City Sounds in case you missed it, or head to our Explore section to see more of his past reviews.