Velvety soft vocals penetrate the silence and immediately spellbind us with their modest melodicism in the opening bars of “Heroine,” one of the ten incredible tracks that comprise the new, self-titled album from Steel Blossoms. As the story in the song begins to unfold, the somber tone of the lyrics bleeds into the bittersweet serenade, and our hearts become bound to the evocative textures in the strings cascading from the…
Soap Bubble Dreams is the new album from indie/alternative rockers Para Lia from Germany. This new release should go up fast on the radar if it gets heard by the right people in the right places, because it contains everything that is no longer being done, and everything that’s still being done without all the proverbial bells and whistles. It features German musicians René Methner and Cindy Methner, each of…
The ever growing, ever evolving presence of technology in our lives means we will be seeing works like Greg Kieser’s Dear Machine: A Letter to a Super-Aware Intelligent Machine (SAIM) more. This slim tome, barely exceeding one hundred pages when you take out extraneous material like title pages and whatnot, nevertheless takes on an enormous mandate – Kieser structures the work as a “letter” composed to a future intelligent and “aware” machine…
“Vibrations,” the new single from acclaimed rapper NoTrace (and featuring vocalist Glenn Travis), isn’t a political song in nature, but its intellectual lyricism and intrepidly stylized narrative can’t help but evoke some pretty strong imagery and thoughts about our society as it stands today. In the track, NoTrace raps about the difficulties of life, keeping his head above the water one day at a time, never allowing too much of…
Francine Honey is an Ontario-based singer/songwriter that has a familiar, rustic tonality in her sound but consistently delivers heartfelt, inspired original lyrics that are relatable to all walks of life, and in her new album To Be Continued…, we witness her breakout moment transpire over the course of eleven sumptuous songs. We open with the rustling strings of “Snowflakes on My Eyelashes,” which features Honey collaborating with the equally talented Beth…
SPOTIFY: https://open.spotify.com/album/1ODcZglHuNODyXKhOT0E00 The Bobbleheads dish out an electrifying slab of authentic indie rock in their latest single “I Really See You,” and it’s really got both critics and fans abuzz from one side of the country to the next at the moment. In the colorful and surreal music video for the song, viewers become as entranced by the kaleidoscopic visuals as they are by the cerebral quality of the music,…
BANDCAMP: https://thevicsofficial.bandcamp.com/ A lumbering, jazz-influenced beat greets us as we descend into the clutches of a bulging bassline, which itself is peppered with a lusty texture that is as intoxicating as it is chill-inducing. Soon, a rich, multifaceted vocal scrapes against gilded guitar strings, shifting our focus away from the cerebral grooves resonating from the drums for a moment. There’s an air of mischievousness that we cannot escape from; it’s…
URL: www.caseyahern.com Among country artists, standing out can sometimes be as big a challenge as breaking through to the mainstream is, but for Cali country girl Casey Ahern, carving out her own identity in a sea of sameness isn’t difficult in the least. The singer/songwriter gives us a little bit of herself in four awesome songs that comprise her new EP He Was Summer, and though it isn’t the expansive introduction…
URL: https://www.derrickdavismusic.com/ Playful tempos punctuated with funk-influenced electric guitar. Twelve-bar blues taken out for a walk with a chilling bassline that throttles us into a wistful chorus. The lusty timbre of Derrick Davis’ honeysweet singing infiltrating an iridescent harmony at the peak of its catharsis. Whether it be “Best I Can,” “Blow Song,” “Hunter” or any of the other seven tracks that comprise his all-new album Anti-Social, Davis is bent on…
INSTAGRAM: https://www.instagram.com/mattshapiromusic/ New York indie star Matt Shapiro returns with his latest effort Fade In, an extended play that sees electronic grooves clashing with melodic, urbane poetry in six brilliantly produced tracks. Featuring such thrillers as the breakout singles “Rockaway Girl” and “The Addict,” as well as fresh cuts like “Johnny” and “Water’s Edge,” Fade In fuses vicious dance beats with likeable and familiar pop song structures, but it isn’t overly ambitious in…
Vocals sung in a half-whisper line the melody that greets us at the onset of “Monkeys,” one of eight new songs that makeup the whole of Jonathan’s latest album To Hold. Slowly, an unforgiving master mix crushes us with its compelling strength and gives way to an ethereal mixture of surreal guitar play and aching lyricism delivered in a passionate, tuneful wail. The band’s chemistry is tighter than ever before, and…
Shattering the silence with the hustle and bustle of a gorgeous piano melody, the rhythm of “Lovers Lament” pulls us ever so closely so that singer Julia King can season the music with her erotic crooning. King is no stranger to gracious grooves of this nature, but in this latest single she takes the jazzy timbre of her vocal to an entirely new level, pushing us into the core of…
If making psychedelic music relevant in 2019 sounds like an impossible dream, you need to make a point of listening to Little King and the Salamander (demos), the latest release from the one and only Merrymaker’s Orchestrina. In 14 multifaceted songs that blend smooth folk melodies with gargantuan space rock grooves, the trio bring the violent guitar experimentation of the 60’s into the 21st century, utilizing every modern weapon available to them…
Those who crave the delicate nuances of the Canadian wilderness but don’t want to venture out into the cold for themselves would do well to check out the new video for Stephanie Rose’s single “Luxury,” a prime cut from her EP Sprout, out now everywhere country music can be streamed. “Luxury” is a song about enjoying the rural treasures that come with a day marked by little more than a trip…
Wlady & T.N.Y. compile vicious beats and supple grooves in a titanic new dance track titled “Beatrice,” allowing singer Iossa to convey love’s endearing spirit through a collection of lyrics that bond with the musical backdrop elegantly. “Beatrice” isn’t the first time that Wlady & T.N.Y. have made beautiful music together, but it could be considered their most prolific single to date in terms of sonic virtuosity. In this song,…
A metallic revival of a 1980’s classic rock staple that is as vocally brooding as it is rife with brutal riffing, Black 9’s rendition of the Stevie Nicks/Tom Petty song “Stop Draggin’ My Heart Around” (originally released on the required 1981 LP Bella Donna) is a juggernaut of a cover and a fine new single from the acclaimed trio. Black 9 play a style of melodic heavy metal that owes as…
Records that have a concept behind them, whether musical or poetic in nature, tend to be sprawling, drawn out affairs that have a hard time remaining contained in the space afforded to them, no matter the size. While this can be said of Protovulcan’s Life is Twigs/Psychic Pinball, it shouldn’t be said without asterisking that for as over the top-jarring as this extended play is, the band couldn’t have rendered much…
Electrified twang coming face to face with a broad-shouldered acoustic melody. Echoing vocals stopped dead in their tracks by a stoic bassline and pulsating percussion to match. A bouncy, fizzy groove. The constant feeling that we’re galloping towards something new, inviting and worthwhile. These emotions and vivid textures are realized through the plaintive play and passionate admissions that follow in the pair of new songs that Dave Vargo has released…
R&B has been celebrating its third great renaissance of the last 70 years recently, and perhaps no one captures the essence of the genre’s new generation of performers and their worship of the old school better than Seattle’s Ronnue does. Popping his new single “Something About U (The Retro-Funk Mix)” and its accompanying remix into your CD player will result in taking a step back in time to the golden…
A pendulous bell is warning us that the clock has struck midnight. As if awakening from a horrid nightmare, we hear a gasp cut through the abrasive wails of the bell. A bittersweet vocal clings to a tempered guitar part that slowly skulks about in the distance. A softly spoken prayer joins it, followed by an electrified guitar that seems to emerge out of the ethers like some sort of…