Three things to gaze and/or click on, then three songs. This week we have pop punk, some music that I’m sure has a genre somewhere around here, and blues rock.
After you hit play on the a song of your choice, scroll back up to check out Queen of Heaven again; there’s a lot going on there.
This article from Jane Frank at NeoTextCorp about painter Paul Lehr opens with the question, “What words would YOU use to describe art that is indescribable?” To that I say, “check out this big ol’ eyeball lol:”
Brought to you by the University of Arts London, here are some collected works by Cicely Englefield.
Art by Tin Can Forest, a Canadian animation duo. The best place to see more is the catalogue page of their print store; each page, like the one for the above piece, Queen of Heaven, or the below piece, Eye in the Sky, has a high-resolution image.
New music: CAUTIOUS by House Parties. (Bandcamp or Spotify or YouTube). Pop punk from Dallas with heavy guitars. I love this modern drum sound where the main note is the thud of the toms instead of the pap of the snare.
House Parties is wildly under-famous for how good they are. Check out their song Broke, the least-listened track off their 2021 EP Tiny Rooms. That oughtta have ninety thousand views and a national cult following, but instead it’s under six hundred. I am doing what I can to rectify this unfairness.
New music: Prayer Song by Balkan Bump and Mah Zeh Tar. (Website or Spotify or YouTube). Music for clarinet, drum machine, trumpet, and sitar. The first 30 seconds or so of video are just some scene-setting as the fellow tunes his big blue sitar; feel free to skip ahead.
We first met Balkan Bump back in Newsletter 35, but that was behind a remix and a little cartoon guy with headphones; here we see the real deal. I adore the way the trumpeter (Will Magid, the band’s frontman) grooves along with the music when he’s not trumpeting.
Old music: Beverly Blues by Opia (2018). (SoundCloud or Spotify or YouTube). Blues rock, but like, poppy blues rock. The talking-blues intro leads in to a catchy chorus with the lead vocalist layered into a resonating steam whistle of melody. You’ll be singing along by the second “nothing to gain, nothing to lose.” If you have a subwoofer, use it; the bass is fat and delightful.
-Thomas