Queen City Sounds
By Tom Murphy
Published Issue 135, March 2025
Ghosts of Glaciers – Eternal
Echoes of drifting melody form a musical equivalent of ripples on the surface of a lake created by carefully dropping stones into its depths. But for this band, the wave forms crash and escalate into epic passages that dissolve back into tranquility with a masterful precision. There are no lyrics on this album, but the way the trio orchestrates space and tone suggests a narrative the way the imagery evoked in titles like “The Vast Expanse,” “Sunken Chamber” and “Ruined Fortress” stir the imagination. The guitars, drums and bass sound like they’re pulling apart a veil to another more majestic era and then basking in the sheer majesty of its mystery, capturing the spirit of phenomena and human achievement not rooted in a profit motive.
Gila Teen – SoftWareWolf
Expertly peppered with media and other cultural references, Gila Teen once again offers us a refreshingly raw melange of lo-fi indiepop, shoegaze, emo, power pop and post-punk. Every song feels like a heartachingly poignant diary entry that is so vivid in describing a moment any person with any level of sensitivity is feeling right now in this fraught era that seems to be escalating beyond anyone’s control. The music is appropriately slightly off-center because it’s the only sound that makes sense when you’re this real about the anxieties and concerns that are boiling in your mind, the things that are felt so strongly you can’t simply disassociate to get through. Rather, this band seems to understand that you have to just express these urgent feelings rather than repress them, to find your voice and use it with creativity, and not worry about whether it conforms to some conventionally approved form.
(the) Kindercide – S/T
If you ever saw this band you never forgot it. A relentless collision of savage grindcore brevity and hardcore aggression. Completely irreverent lyrics often depicting cartoonish violence and transgressive sentiments. The band didn’t put out much but it’s all here in its thorny and absurdist glory on an album released originally in 2003 and reissued by vocalist Dan Phelps on limited edition lathe cut and for digital download on Bandcamp via his now largely defunct Ash From Sweat Records imprint. Live this band was unhinged and its recordings fortunately capture that wild energy as well as anyone really could. Think JFA mutated by The Locust and Agoraphobic Nosebleed.
Moonspeed – Sea of Stars
Some 16 years since the previous Moonspeed album Flowers of the Moon was released, this new offering emerged in 2024. Including songs recovered from early recording sessions, it is a rich reminder of the period when Jeff Suthers and Shannon Stein (of Bright Channel, Suthers also of Pale Sun) were collaborating with friends to produce a type of space rock that incorporated acoustic instrumentation as well as keyboards. Perhaps in contrast to the gloriously dense atmospheres of Bright Channel, these songs are contemplative in a manner suggested by the album’s title with gently lush soundscapes and aspects of modern classical music, non-Western polyrhythms and Ennio Morricone woven in. The effect is a dreamlike journey through psychedelicized, pastoral shoegaze passages that induce a lingering tranquility.
Salads and Sunbeams – Into the Starless Night
The exquisite clarity of tone throughout this album is immediately striking. It is not an artificially pristine lucidity because there is a warmth and sensitivity in the songwriting, refreshing in its human immediacy. Sure, the touchstones are there of 60s psychedelic pop and 90s indiepop, but it isn’t imitative. There is a creative ambition and execution underlying every song, and the poetry of the lyrics combine the mythical and the personal in equal measure. The fantastical imagery functions in a similar way that a Tom Robbins novel or a Neutral Milk Hotel album captures perfect moments that strike you as significant in real time. Nathan Brazil has saved up nuggets of such peak moments to craft a storybook of an album that can be intense in its emotional honesty. But its casted in perfectly crafted melodies cradled in comforting rhythms and informed by deep psychological insight into what it is to be an adult that hasn’t forgotten what it feels like to experience the vitality of life.
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 February install, in case you missed it, or head to our Explore section to see more of his past reviews.