Published Issue 120, December 2023
Welcome to the short list of non-local music I found compelling over the past year, much of it is informed by seeing the artist live. Hope this list is interesting and useful to you as well as the extended list to be published on queencitysoundsandart.wordpress.com in early 2024.
Andy Loebs — Hyperlink Anamorphosis
Plunderphonics sample jazz reincarnation of Art of Noise.
Bark — Loud
Gritty, poetic power indiepop of classic college rock vintage.
Bestial Mouths — R.O.T.T. (inmyskin)
Entrancing and unsettling portrait of our eviscerated world in industrial EBM colorings.
BIG|BRAVE — nature morte
Noise folk doom epics of the current state of civilizational and ecological disaster and turmoil.
Blonde Redhead — Sit Down For Dinner
Winter haunted dream diary entries of clandestine heartbreak exposed.
body / negative — everett
Gently evocative ambient sonic Polaroids of love and loss.
Buck Gooter — Ghost Brain
Harrowing, seething and blunt industrial anthems of resistance to corporate domination of our lives.
Cinema Cinema — Mjölnir
Raging dark art jazz hardcore.
Dale Hollow — Hack of the Year
Self-aware, sublime honky-tonk pop.
Deeper — Careful!
Lively post-punk deconstruction of personal trauma and existential dread.
Djunah — Femina Furens
Scorching heavy-noise-blues poems tracing a path of recovery from C-PTSD.
Fever Ray — Radical Romantics
Uniquely insightful left field synth pop exploration of the full dimensions of love.
Firefriend — Decreation Facts
Anti-fascist, mind-bendingly psychedelic noise rock.
Flooding — Silhouette Machine
Caustic slowcore blasts to the legacy of abuse and oppression and their perpetrators.
Genesis Owusu — STRUGGLER
Bombastic synth punk funk and R&B.
GUJI — self-titled
Subversive New Wave garage punk pop.
hackedepicciotto — Keepsakes
Nine chamber symphony odes to friendship and enduring memories.
Hannah Jadagu — Aperture
Intimate dream pop and R&B infused reflections on family and the legacies of your upbringing.
JOHN — A Life Diagrammatic
A joyful and noisy post-punk menace to creeping authoritarianism.
Korine — Tear
Poignant emo-inflected post-punk shoegaze.
Lula Asplund and Kyle Bates — A Matinee
Electro-acoustic ambient analog of the brain
MSPAINT — Post-American
Posi anti-capitalist synthcore post-punk.
Protomartyr — Formal Growth in the Desert
Despair and transcendence through intense songs of melancholic catharsis.
SDH — Fake is Real
Beginning to end thoughtful industrial darkwave bangers.
Sextile — Push
The post-punk / big beat / IDM / gabber / trance fusion you need in your life.
Shabazz Palaces — Robed in Rareness
Cosmic and mystical ambient hip-hop leaning into the poetry of socio-cultural time travel.
Sleaford Mods — UK Grim
Stream-of-spicily-irreverent-anti-authoritarian-social-consciousness industrial post-punk hip-hop.
Speedy Ortiz — Rabbit Rabbit
Witty and ambitious art pop exorcisms of trauma and destructive power dynamics.
Sprain — The Lamb as Effigy
A furious and inspired collision of performance art, progressive post-punk and psychedelic, angular hardcore.
Strange Ranger — Pure Music
Seamless and immersive amalgamation of future garage, shoegaze and indie pop.
Stuck — Freak Frequency
Wiry noise punk manifestos against the empty promises of a decaying empire.
Sweeping Promises — Good Living Is Coming For You
Post-riot grrrl New Wave lo-fi indiepop.
Taleen Kali — Flower of Life
Spirited post-garage punk shoegaze psychedelia.
The Keening — Little Bird
Orchestral and cinematic Gothic folk murder ballads.
The Serfs — Half Eaten By Dogs
Retrofuturist, dystopian death disco synth punk.
Troller — Drain
Strikingly melancholic, fractured industrial shoegaze dream pop.
Water From Your Eyes – Everyone’s Crushed
Sample-driven, mutant IDM pop with off center rhythm beatmaking.
Wednesday — Rat Saw God
Inspired and brash yet vulnerable heavy shoegaze and indie country pop.
Y La Bamba — Lucha
Explorative, Latin psych folk that reconciles the multiplicity of identity.
Yo La Tengo — This Stupid World
Thrillingly avant-garde and thematically pointed later career offering that doesn’t skimp on the tender moments from the foundational indie rock legends.
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 November Queen City Sounds install in case you missed it or head to our Explore section to see more of his past reviews.
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