Category: pop

TRACK | Cate Le Bon – Puts Me To Work

5/5 golden merles

For my tastes and cultural conditioning, Cate Le Bon is one of the very best songwriters of the common era. We were raised in a relatively similar media swamps, with a few contorted icons on columns rising either side of the Atlantic, propped up by corporate speculation on prospective idolization.

Aside from some worthy ziggurats that punctuate the vista, inescapably, for all to admire or despise, there was a dearth. Subsequently, when these no longer inspired awe or became default elements of the horizon, we ventured out to scavenge from similar ruins.

And in this way she’s built her own effigy, ransacking and extracting, compiling traits over decades of accumulate influence and experimentation.

There’s only so much refining you can do. Looking in a mirror long enough, like repeating a word too many times, deprives it of its meaning. But here, on Cyrk, in the early days, the likeness is not terribly dissimilar to the antediluvian predecessors and the shared idols, but nevertheless still distinct. The track’s a melodic and collagist weaving, with much splendor to its magisterial superfluidity. We’re lucky to have the records.

TRACK | Ros Seresysothea – Chnam Oun Dop Pram Muoy

5/5 golden merles

There’s a great confluence of tones and influence in “Chnam Oun Dop Pram Muoy.” It is an excellent representative of the rich convergence of styles derived from historical and geopolitical factors from that 60s/70s era of Cambodian pop rock.

All the joy and artistry of the era was soon recontextualized into the brutal routing of history, undermining that expression and largely, if temporarily, extinguishing it. With greed, paranoia and might of crushing external empires coming up against a ruthless warlord’s genocidal backlash that rose to greet it, innumerable innocents were caught in between and the artist Ros Serey Sothea appears to have been among the victims.

Hegel wrote that “history is a slaughterhouse.” Gibbon that “History is little more than the register of the crimes, follies, and misfortunes.” But there remains a great soundtrack in between or even during the running of the gauntlet, some record of a vision for an alternative future.

TRACK | Perpetual Ritual – Perpetual Flood

5/5 golden merles

Seattle’s Perpetual Ritual have made a track of grinding gears and muted fireworks. A death rattle of a drumkit keeps the tempo for the mélange of blur and buzz.

Two rhythm guitars sit on either side of the channels and simulate the flood in all its perpetuity. The geographic configuration alters, leaving the deluge and a first-hand tale of adaptation for those that remain to hear and tell it.

The myths don’t do it justice; all the tired misinterpretations of nature’s intentions. It happened and here is the evidence, ready to be passed down and mangled and misread.

Temporarily, anyway. Until the Bandcamp servers rust or are willfully redacted. And the WordPress isn’t renewed for lack of funds. And the Wayback Machine shutters, and the google cache expires. And all the digital foundations that seemed fairly sturdy for a generation cruelly wash the thing away again.

But for a couple more minutes or years you can hear it on the Skrot Up page just over yonder.

TRACK | dead katz – Acid Ocean

5/5 golden merles

dead katz “Acid Ocean” feels like the quiet rumbling of indentations bound for the indelible. We know, coming from an era of great greed that lacks any consequence, preventative care is always more effective than recuperative, or reliance on technologies yet invented, or the belated panic-trauma of a last ditch surgery.

But what of matters beyond the body, when the size and scope are systems beyond our individual or (apparently) collective addressing? –When you only have the knowledge of what’s coming with no capacity for redressing this grievance?

The track has a metaphorical appreciation for waves and regard for the intention of other waves, spilling forward, falling backward. Somewhere in the ebbing and flowing, quite quickly you’re bound to lose track, there is always a rushing and the cause is not known. If we can’t take care of one another, what chance does the collective species have. It reminds me of the introduction written by Czelaw Milosz for Kudelka’s Exiles:

“Rhythm is at the core of human life. It is, first of all, the rhythm of the organism, ruled by the heartbeat and circulation of blood. As we live in a pulsating, vibrating world, we respond to it and in turn are bound to its rhythm. Without giving much thought to our dependence on the systoles and diastoles of flowing time we move through sunrises and sunsets, through the sequences of four seasons. Repetition enables us to form habits and to accept the world as familiar Perhaps the need of a routine is deeply rooted in the very structure of our bodies.“

“…An old anecdote about a refugee in a travel agency has not lost its bite: a refugee from war-torn Europe, undecided as to what continent and what state would be far off enough and safe enough, for a while was pensively turning a globe with his finger, then asked, ‘don’t you have something else?'”

TRACK | FLOWERTOWN – RCP

5/5 golden merles

After hearing some of my own particularly subdued songs a friend of mine once told me that music “was allowed” to have melodrama.

And while that is true and a good, generally speaking I still feel that subtlety is underrated. Or that its intentional utilization opens up avenues for other elements to be exposed or focused upon.

The understated can enhance the periphery, operating as its own aesthetic that presents but does not undercut or distract from a greater text or subtext. In this way the work is allowed to fold back on itself, and, in that muted intentional consistency, acts in elevating the emotional impact further.

The works of Yorgos Lanthimos in film work in this way. All characters assume a subdued, detached delivery and the resonance elaborates from small fluctuations within this new scale of framing. Small vibrations in feeling and action take on monumental significance. The contrast unveils and heightens that which would otherwise be at least partially obscured or overshadowed.

Subtraction is sometimes addition where perception is concerned. FLOWERTOWN’s “RCP” is working in a similar way. The idiosyncratic phrasing, creeping and cooing, in either variant of the spectral dual vocals, favors the subterranean, glacial structure of the track. The focus is shifted in an illuminating manner. It’s done with great craft all throughout the Theresa Street EP.

TRACK | Jacob Beck – Norwegia

5/5 golden merles

Jacob Beck’s “Norwegia” includes a rich and immense pallet of lo-fi tones. The grit of these tones is derived from but are not limited to: sand, ash, swarf and sediment. Lacking proper facilities, I don’t know what else it’s cut with. But the landscape painted by this constitution feels truly immense, originating only from a modest handful of well-textured elements.

Sun and surf drenched vocals couple with rattling instrumentation, alchemically sprouting complimentary crystalline percussive structures. It is a neatly crafted and coarse set of molecules.

Everything wraps and warps in the subsequent reverberations, disintegrating almost as quickly as it was formed. Gliding and careening, all coherent pop forms are quickly and agreeably broken into smithereens, the detritus of which produce a fine metallic mist. After a brisk 2 minutes and 46 seconds, should everything go to plan, the form evaporates before your very eyes.

With lead guitar-strings like filament for refracted light, load up the track with your woes rattling around your head and shortly thereafter you’ll have them promptly sorted; less by way of a wash and more a sort of grind and polish. Well forged, “Norwegia” is a real fine track that brings Beck’s First Collection to a close.

TRACK | The Strungs – Nothing is Possible

5/5 golden merles

The Strung’s “Nothing is Possible” is 85 seconds worth of a burning and cavernous sort of lo-fi pop rock. The molten emission of the primary vocal hook progress alongside a frenetic contrast of complimentary and clashing guitar tones, a late lead solo slung over the terminus, incised and gashing.

Abruptly the spell is cast and spent. Most songwriters would likely stretch and repeat a melody of this caliber well beyond its breaking point, plodding into the reaches of multiple unseemly minutes. But here, instead, the work is honed properly into a well tempered unit worthy of some small worship.

“Nothing is Possible” was forged in 2014. But more recently Totally Understandable was released, if you would like a fresher set of tracks extracted from the alluvium, processed, and worthy of praise.

TRACK | Gen Pop – Bell Book Candle

5/5 golden merles

Olympia-based Gen Pop’s “Bell Book Candle” is some good guts on display, smearing and smashing guitars decay alongside some thundering and twisted vocals. The production is a fair simulation of the unadorned and apparently undeniable.

I have no idea if the title/chorus is based on the Richard Quine directed film from 1958 or Pope Zachary’s 8th Century decree of excommunication for “exceptionally grievous sin.”

But my name is the same as that Pope. And I did once cohabitate with a Siamese cat. And I did recently watch Jimmy Stewart in Harvey. These combined attributes make me more qualified than most to tell you with some authority that the track is good regardless.

TRACK | Grayson Hamm – Wasted Days

5/5 golden merles

Some nights I dream too loud.

“Wasted Days” is a particularly dreamy track concerning how one goes about parsing and processing time which is considered carelessly or poorly spent.

The production summons a form of much delicate weaving and luster. Concurrent piano and guitar drawl in subdued elaboration, insulating the reverie. Intricately overlaid, wending the way forward, each instrument aligns sequentially and percussively without tangling.

The central thesis of the song concerns the totality of experience: taking the good with the bad and recognizing them as two pieces of a greater, inextricable whole. That all happenings accumulate, the exact origins of influence are not known, and our choice of actions after the cumulative events can always contort fate to good.

It’s a lovely track full of treble and tremble, bearing much quiet resolve and confirmation of agency.

TRACK | battle ave. – i saw the egg

5/5 golden merles

It’s with some conviction I say that battle ave.’s “I SAW THE EGG” is a great relief. It is a rarity within the indie/lo-fi rock genre to produce works of properly grandiose anthemic builds. And to achieve this within a 2 minute framework is even more impressive.

The underlying characteristics feel rightly justified in their ascent: beyond the layered textures there exists a vibrant language. The scenic phrasing introduces a compelling, strange, and a fine utilization of symbols, conveying some ancient accusations, seemingly derived in part from reconnoitering and part the recollection of a vision.

Each well introduced element –Vocalization, then organ, then a hook laden synth-scale, then digi drum and backing vocals– emerges in a sequence that consecutively raises the stakes without being overcome by doubt and retreating before the next tier. The song commits to this scaling, never finding an agreeable plateau and settling in, rather always pushing just a bit further into the approaching empyrean.

Full of precarity and becoming, it is a good and small wonder. The additional 4 tracks available in preview are very much worth a look and promising as well. A valuable document, the album releases April 1st.