BY TOM MURPHY BOLONIUM – FONEY Replete with now archaic cultural references — “Avoid the Noid” being well past its due by date — a song titled “Outta Touch” weaves those other such pop culture relics in perfectly. Including an homage to lovable arch nerd Pee-wee Herman, this “accordion rock” album manages to work against all odds. It takes the concept of being self-aware and irony to new levels while not sacrificing an eccentric musical vision that could be pure gimmickry, except for the superb musicianship and detailed attention to songcraft. Are these people super into Zappa, Sleepytime Gorilla Museum, and They Might Be Giants? If not, it sounds like it’s aimed toward fans of all three. FLUTTER – WHEN YOU LOVE SOMEBODY On first listen this EP is like taking a time machine back to the late 70s or early 80s when the memory of Big Star and the Raspberries were fresh and The dB’s were in that lane innovating the sound of power pop. But Flutter’s guitar has a little more garage rock grit and punch behind the jangle and melodies, evoking 2010’s vintage sound. The lyrics about the travails of love and yearning for connection are refreshingly free of modern notions of self-awareness, and hit as utterly sincere as delivered by Josh Colpitts’ Phil Lynott-esque baritone. JEFFREY WENTWORTH STEVENS – MY MYLAR LUNGS As summer transitions to fall, these songs are like a catalog of the more mundane moments of warmer months. If you take a moment to pause and appreciate, you’ll find the elegant beauty in the details of experiences and stimuli you normally take for granted and pay no mind. The minimal techno beats are as much texture as route to deliver the calming rhythms and harmonic interplay of tones coming into the foreground and fading back. Like Stevens was able to imagine the changing of larger patterns of weather and season, while creating the musical equivalent of that subtle shift. It’s a deeply calming and introspective set of ambient compositions that are beyond nostalgic to capturing eternal and recurring emotional resonances as sound collages. RUBEDO – CITRINITAS Recorded at RARE Records in Winchester, TN, one imagines a touch of the kind of soul and pop music produced in Memphis and Nashville absorbed into these songs. Rubedo has always had a gift for crafting a hook. But here, the music has soulfulness — an extra level of thoughtfulness and introspection — that’s long been there, but is now much more at the forefront. The first side is tender songs about a love, with an expanded spiritual aspect to its expression, elevating the sentiments well beyond cliche. When “Oligarch Slank” kicks in, it’s pure righteous outrage thrilling in rhetoric and its fiery, fuzzed-out arrangements. Side Two is thus a little dirtier in tone with more aggressive and noisy songwriting, yet still informed by a love of human struggle for a more nurturing world heard on Side One. TIME – RADIOLARIAN BALLET All of Time’s albums — including those as Calm. with AwareNess who does some production here — are like the literary successor of insurgent poetic artforms. His most recent records have deeply personal stories in which he finds ways of tracing experiences into larger social narratives and analysis. It is critical pedagogy in practice, minus the pretension of assuming he can enact transformation in others. Instead his work encourages our own honesty and truth in finding ourselves in the constellation of human consciousness that has the power to enact change. And yet, the melancholic and layered beats is what draws you into these complex yet accessible stories and keeps you listening. ZEPHR – PAST LIVES The glittery guitar tone that carries the melody of “Rome,” and the dual vocals with an enthusiastic momentum, hits the brain like a wonderful fusion of Hot Water Music and Hüsker Dü. It evokes the raw exuberance and thrill of being alive even with its challenges and disappointments. Throughout the record, the band vividly captures working class life and the struggle to find joy and meaning when the carpet gets yanked from underneath you by late capitalism. That despair cuts into your friend circle, yet finds a way to embrace what’s vital and sustain a sense of personal dignity. FOR MORE, VISIT QUEENCITYSOUNDSANDART.WORDPRESS.COM
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