Week in Pop
Amy Reid (half of Chiffon) presented a listen to the sparse new electro single “Only Tonight” off the solo album Hirsute available September 29 on Friends Records. Urgent pangs of immediacy are drafted into the sequencing of the song’s equation where Reid exemplifies the feelings & pressures & mysteries as to what moves & what news may follow as the night ticks dutifully toward the light of a new dawn.
Dude York’s big jam “Black Jack” featured off the Hardly Art album Sincerely gets radicalized via the Carlos Lopez projected visual effects. The Seattle group’s own Peter Richards is seen singing & standing solitary as Carlos projects an entire music video within the music video that plays about the entirety of Peter’s visage. Dude York forever, dear friends.
Nashville by Portland, Oregon artist Samantha Pinkerton has been making some wondrous tunes lately under the moniker of Prolly Knot. With word of the forthcoming EP It’s Not Anymore available October 20, we offer a listen to the first single “Perennial” that moves beyond the peripheral & into the persistent main frame space focuses of consciousness interference where those incessant thoughts of important peoples leave that indelible dash of prestige & perennial persistence in our mind’s eye.
Featured off Apollo Brown & Planet Asia’s collaborative album Anchovies available now via Mello Music Group, take in the gritty & grimy VHS filmed video for “Get Back” that features the duo posted beneath a viaduct. Apollo rewinds that video tape to tales that are further muddied via Planet’s woozy production that is restrained & solemn & reminds the present back to those familiar tracks & routes of the old schools.
Portland’s own Mo Troper shared the single for our weird & unsettling times with “Dictator Out Of Work” featured off their recently announced new album Exposure & Response available on November 17 from Good Cheer Records. With a bunch of brass & a whole lotta heart & courageous, anthemic chords; Mo makes a song you can pump a fist to while practicing your raddest dad air guitar as you sing along to a song about destitute despots.
Berlin’s own I’m Not a Band just released the album Past Forward & offered the serenity discovered on “Swimming”. A song that has the morning chill of a daybreak dip in the pool where back-stroke & side-stroke maneuvers are emulated in a host of electronic impulses that radiate with the brightness of the rising sun.
Freedom Fry present the fancy screen test visual of people, faces, expressions & everything that makes up odd affinities in the “Strange Attraction” video off the EP of the same name. From curious connection, acting out to self-actualization; the odd attractions that we all experience in one facet or another are brought into play here in the LA group’s single & video.
Becca Richardson shared the intimate & mystic video for “Wanted” featured off the album We are gathered here available October 6 that emphasizes the importance of being & feeling wanted by another that are illustrated through natural elements & relics. From fog to water & animal skulls & more charms; Richardson delivers a subtle anthem to the importance of connective & requited desires & how they affect us on deep, intrinsic levels & the like.
Bay’s own Lord Morgan dropped expressive litanies of wants & dreams with “Really Want” featured off the upcoming album Vibration is Player available at the end of September via Text Me Records. Morgan brings a big bossy back-beat with invitations for all to put all hands up in the air while Lord M illustrates urges of urgency & more notes of a narrative in progress.
The Tin Can Collective captured our hearts & attention this week with “A Different Light” where chords careen like a cluster of light that will bathe your ears & the entirety of your being with a feeling of newness.
Behold the Claire Bangser video for King James & The Special Men’s “Special Man Boogie” featured off their recently released debut album Act Like You Know available via Special Man Industries of New Orleans. Legends of Louisiana night life & locals congregate together to partake in a kinetic style & sound guaranteed to get your entire being moving.
Tempe, Arizona’s own Pistoleros dropped the new guitar wailing single “Did You Wake Up All Alone?” Featured off the new album Silver available November 3 via Fervor Records, the group keeps their 25-plus year legacy alive & well with a commitment to licks as blistering as the Tempe sun’s hot rays of pure heat.
In case you missed it, enter the post-industrial audio landscapes of Resin’s new EP Fidget that takes you down deep into the restless subterranean sectors. Truths & fallacies are shattered on “Lie”, to the compromising confrontations of moving onward on “Gave it up”, or the club-catered “Corners”, to the intense arenas of “Cartwright” that steer the listener straight down the corridor of “Hoarse” that keeps that maudlin beats howling into the alternate dimensions.
With the upcoming Transcends EP available September 29, check out Jackie Venson performing “Mysterious” live with a lot of passion & an elusive echo tone. A performance that showcases just Jackie & solitary electric guitar; Austin’s rising star provides real time narratives that take cues from rustic Americana traditions that travel through the heartlands, the coasts & then straight to the heart of the listener.
Australian’s own No Mono presented us with a listen to their debut track “Butterflies” that flutters in the glory of its own wavy production quality. The duo’s approach to arrangement synths ride a rapid rhythmic ebb & tide ripple of waves that will instill a sense of warm weirdness of the unusual & alluring all at the same time.
Covey brought some down-home senses of grounding & reflection with the self-spiritual strummer “Call Home” featured off the artist’s debut album Haggarty available September 22. The Boston artist brings something to wave your hands & arms upward along to with the feeling of expecting to reach out toward some sort of supernatural presence/spirit/someone.
Palm Honey presented us with the two parter Starving Hysterical Naked Part 1&2 and we start you off with a listen to the first sweet that has a guitar tone that might make you weep tears of blissful joy.
Palm Honey bring the second part that brings HOWL-esque hysteria & hunger to primitive pop levels with the second part of “Starving Hysterical Naked” that screams in a blaze of controlled dissonance.
Sam Leidig of North Carolina offered up a couplet of electronic auras to help ease us all into the autumn fray. “Eyelash” bats like a glitching & wing flapping dove that then rides gracefully into the pools of “Water Render” where electronic items meet natural essences via recordings that were made at Leidig’s Chapel Hill home a few days ago with just a guitar, keyboard & an iPhone.
Young RJ dropped the kinetic flows & smooth framework of “Motion” ft. Joyner Lucas & Statik Selektah featured off the upcoming release Blaq RoyalT. Featuring production from both RJ with Jay Dee, the artists apply a prosodic focus where the delivery runs laps around a subdued atmosphere.
Fran Lobo unleashed the new Charlotte Lowdell (from the Sorta Kinda Maybe Yeah collective) video for “WAR” that pits Carl Jung psychology against the human id. With a crew of quick moving dancers, an array of lighting effects & tense settings; Lobo lets out a creative battle cry that is a call to arms for all to unleash their own autonomy.
Boogie on down to Max Styler’s new single “Secrets” ft. CXLOE via Dim Mak Records that will get your night started on the right aloof & elusive electro footing.
OSHH presented a listen to the mesmerizing “All Mistakes” featured off the upcoming self-titled available October 6 through Blinc Records. Musing over human errors & the like are echoed like the cryptic knowledge harbored by the winds & atmospheres that understand the mysteries that remain unbenownst to our collective mortal minds.
Lean Year shared the gentle strings & sentiments of “Watch Me” featured off the upcoming self-titled album debut available October 20 Western Vinyl. Every chord & reverberation will tug at the heart strings that will set your mind & spirit toward the most earnest & pensive of personal places.
GGOOLLDD’s debut EP Teeth will be available later this December & graced us with the imaginative & awe-inspiring single “Excelsior Springs”. The vocals & electric elements send all involved instrumentals up into the rafters that hold the attics of ethereal places & more dimensions of discovery.
Mainland dropped the video for “I Found God” that features a host of real life couples with visuals directed by Similar But Different. The focus of folks finding one another, running toward each other, embracing one another, hugging & kissing & feeling closer to those sensations of the supernatural.
Race The Tide, fka Jesse Macht, is readying a North America tour titled the “Sunsets At” series & shared the single for “The Enemy” that pits protagonist dreams against the inner nagging of conflicting adversarial obstacles. The sound & feeling of a hell-bent road trip is elicited from the song that rolls with a weary-eyed impetus toward new dawnings & destinations of great destiny.
With an edited compilation of classic film footage, introduce yourself to M.R. Bennett with the song “Sorry” that offers up all apologies with strings & heart-shredding sentiments. Sweeping baroque textures will find you swept away in striking emotive tones that linger in the long after.
Also featured off the upcoming M.R. Bennett album In Light, allow your emotions to wander with the strings & subtle chord floating framework that is seen, heard & felt on the visuals for “Something of me”.
