Queen City Sounds: August 2024 by Tom Murphy

Queen City Sounds
By Tom Murphy
Published Issue 128, August 2024

Acidbat – Empty Vial

The vivid tones and rhythmic textures on this album are a testament to Seth Ogden’s mastery of incorporating modular and analog gear into his imaginative production. These acid techno tracks are crafted from live hardware, and there is a great sense of space and an almost tactile quality in the way Ogden places each element of a song. In these alien and liminal soundscapes exists an oddly comforting familiarity, as though in writing these songs Ogden has tapped into deep mind tranquil spaces on the other side of the hypnagogic curtain. Maybe it’s because the level of sonic detail is so rich even in its layers of minimalism that each track hits like an accumulation of soothing patterns in the end.

Arlo and the Farm Toad – Kry Tough: A Kinky Tale

Art provocateur and curator Arlo White teams up with members of Manotaur (novelist Greg Hill and artist Maureen Hearty) with this curiously valid and well executed covers of songs by The Kinks. White has been in numerous underrated bands over the years and here he puts in a commanding and gritty vocal performance while Hill and Hearty do justice to interpreting the core of the music and its mix of vulnerability, elegance and working class angst. The Kinks stripped down to this trio format sound especially punk.

Cherry Spit – Demo

This band includes former members of Endless, Nameless and QUITS and live, there is a fiery intensity to their psychedelic No Wave noise rock that can be wonderfully overwhelming. The collection of demos here is a lo-fi showcase promise of what you’ll see on stage. Cyclones of guitar hysteria, arch yet sometimes hypnotic vocals, moments of dream pop tranquility and swaths of post-screamo mathcore shoegaze. It’s like a musical Pollock painting but in the creating of the painting rather than the finished product — it has that kind of fever dream intensity. Art post-punk for discerning weirdos.

Mourning Cloaks – phantom power

One imagines Kim Shively meditated on the types of sounds we come to ignore because they are part of our environment and turned them into musical features, adding a touch of subtle, ambient harmonic elements. Like an audio designed based artwork, this record truly puts your mind into neglected contexts and invites your attention, focus and acceptance as you hear sounds not always readily identifiable, yet part of the world Shively creates with each song. Is “room tone, 1973” a mini homage to Tim Hecker’s Ravedeath, 1972? Probably not, but the melancholic drone, exquisite dissolves and subtle swells should appeal to fans of the latter with Shively’s background in filmmaking adding an avant-garde cinematic sensibility to the entire album.

SPELLS – Past Our Prime

On this latest — and arguably greatest — record, SPELLS seems to break out of its pop punk mode and embrace more of its garage rock side, even dipping into the realm of angular DC post-punk. What has stayed consistent is how this five-piece that seems so celebratory and a party band live has lyrics that are poignantly self-aware and sharply observed. The title track is one of the most insightful songs of recent years about aging while clinging to what makes life worth living. This whole record is brimming with themes of loss, coming to terms with and resisting the limitations one has aged into, and solidarity with one’s fellow humans against despair and those aiming most urgently to increase it.

Unicorn Hits – s/t

Maybe no one but those closest to the songwriter thought Joe Grobelny’s latest band would sound like a vital blend of a noisy shoegaze group, a psychedelic pop project, and Mission of Burma. But this Unicorn Hits EP feels like a leap in a different direction by the former member of Façade, Everything Absent or Distorted, and Le Divorce. The jazz roots of the musicianship and songwriting can be heard in the expert arrangements by Grobelny and his bandmates even as they go off center into bursts of discordant haze as on the wryly humorous and on point, “Lipstick Linkedin.” Humor aside, this set of songs feels like a surfacing of deep, heavy feelings that have manifested into sonically liberating catharsis. 

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 July 2024  install of Queen City Sounds in case you missed it, or head to our Explore section to see more of his past reviews.