Tag: Austin TX

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Slumbering Sun Share Horror Movie-Influenced Visual for “Dream Snake”

Austin-based doom metal outfit Slumbering Sun — Monte Luna’s James Clarke (vocals), Destroyer of Light’s Keegan Kjeldsen (guitar), Temptress‘ Kelsey Wilson (guitar), Monte Luna‘s and Scorpion Child‘s Garth Condit (bass) and Destroyer of Light’s Penny Turner (drums) — is an All-Star band featuring acclaimed members of Texas’ underground metal scene. 

After the breakup of their previous band, James Clarke and Keegan Kjeldsen resolved to forget the bitter pain of an album that would never be released, by creating something new. They decided to start a new band with an album that Kjeldsen wrote between work on other projects. The pair continued the creative process at their rehearsal space with a few songs strummed on a clean, electric guitar: Clarke began to write melodies with the pair finishing lyrics. 

Clarke and Kjeldsen recruited Temptress’ Kelsey Wilson, who made the commute from Dallas for the writing and recording process. Scorpion Child’s Garth Condit and Destroyer of Light’s Penny Turner, who played in other bands with Clarke and Kjeldsen respectively were recruited to be the band’s rhythm section — and from that point on, Slumbering Sun was a full-fledged band. 

Released earlier this year digitally and on cassette and CD, tthe Austin-based doom metal outfit’s full-length debut The Ever Living Fire was recorded in a week-long recording session this past summer. Sonically, their full-length debut sees the band exploring broader melodies than their previous work while drawing from Celtic folk, doom metal act Warning, as well as 90s grunge rockers Soundgarden and Alice In Chains. 

In the lead-up to the album’s release, I wrote about three singles:

  • “Liminal Bridges,” an expansive song featuring an atmospheric introduction with swirling, shoegazer-like textures, followed by stormy, power chord-driven riffage and thunderous drumming paired with Clarke’s melodic crooning and enormous, arena rock-like hooks. The track sonically brought — to my ears, at least —  The Sword  to mind — ok but with a prog rock-leaning sensibility.

  • “Dream Snake,” an equally expansive track that opens with Black Sabbath and Soundgarden-like intro with fuzzy, power chord-driven riffage, thunderous drumming and a soulful solo paired with Clarke’s Ozzy Osbourne-like delivery until roughly around the five-minute mark. At that point, the song morphs into a sludgy doom metal dirge for the next two minutes or so before a gorgeous string arrangement carries the song into a gentle fadeout. Lyrically rooted in longing and heartbreak, “Dream Snake” sees the members of Slumbering Sun drawing from different eras one metal and doom metal and crafting something both familiar and new.

  • Album title track “The Ever Living Fire.” Continuing a remarkable run of expansive, mind-bending material, the song begins with a gorgeous 35 second, acoustic guitar-driven introduction before quickly exploding into an expressive and soulful doom metal dirge, built around sludgy power chord-driven riffage, thunderous drumming and Clarke’s crooning. And around the five minute mark, the band introduces a melodic hook that shifts the song in a trippy display of densely layered guitars. The song ends with a roughly minute-long, gorgeous acoustic gutter driven coda making it one of the more prog-leaning songs of the album’s released singles. 

Continuing to build about the attention the album’s first three singles have received throughout the course of this year, the Austin-based doom outfit recently shared the video for “Dream Snake.” Directed by the band’s James Clarke and Keegan Kjeldsen, the video follows four buddies driving to their regular dive bar for drinks and hijinks. They all happily greet their bartender, who serves them all their regular drinks. The bartender offers them a special stash of drugs called Sumatran Dream Flower with devilish delight. “Y’all really wanna get fucked up? Well I gotcha,” he seems to say. Fittingly, after snorting the Sumatran Dream Flower, they start having wild and paranoid visions of evil creatures wanting to kill them. Little do they know, it’s not a hallucinogen-fueled fever dream; it’s very real. B movie horror menace and bloodshed ensue to hilarious, goofy effect.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

Chicago-based singer/songwriter, multi-instrumentalist Elijah Montez is the frontman and creative mastermind behind the rising psych pop project Daydream Review. After relocating from Austin to Chicago, Montez and Daydream Review began catching the attention of Chicago’s leading tastemakers and beyond with the release of 2020’s “Blossom” and 2021’s retro-tinged, self-titled debut EP.

Last summer, the Chicago-based artist released two tracks, an A-side “Sensory Deprivation” and a B-side “Dream Sequence #29,” as a palette cleanser to his Daydream Review self-titled debut EP — and a teaser of new material. That material quickly established Montez as one of Chicago’s most buzz-worthy new artists. Adding to a growing profile, he supported that material with a lot of time touring with a backing band featuring Kaitlyn Murphy (backing vocals and auxiliary percussion) and a rotating group of friends. 

Daydream Review’s 13-song full-length debut Leisure is now out through Side Hustle Records. The album sees Montez aiming to expand upon the layered sonic world he has created — and continuing to push the boundaries of modern psych pop with dynamic production and reflective, existential lyricism. “Leisure is about the ever-present tension between the desire for free time, for personal enjoyment and leisure, and the demands that capitalistic society places on those desires, and how it restricts the ability to enjoy that free time,” Montez explains. ” Your job and work, to me, seem to be consistent specters that haunt your ability to enjoy your free time, knowing that those demands are always awaiting you when your free time comes to an end.”

That uneasy balancing act between work and free time informed much of the album’s creation and its themes. “Leisure,” Montez adds “as a concept, became something almost otherworldly and that much more desirable, something you dream about when you have so much time funneled into work, and the repetitive act of balancing those two ends up being something almost hypnotic, and I tried to channel all of that into the sonic qualities of the album.”

In the lead-up to the album’s release, I’ve written about three singles:  

  • “Have You Found What You’re Looking For,” a mellow slow-burn centered around painterly, shogeazer-inspired textures created by glistening, delay and reverb pedaled guitars, fluttering synth arpeggios and paired with a trippy groove and Montez’s ethereal delivery. The song sees its narrator asking himself — and in turn, his listener — if they’ve actually found what they’ve been looking for, with the tacit understanding that they may never actually find it anyway. 
  • “No Eternity,” another slow-burn centered around lush, glistening and wobbling synth arpeggios, a mix of blown-out beats and live drumming paired with Montez’s plaintive cooing and his penchant for well-placed, razor-sharp hooks. While sonically, “No Eternity” brings Currents-era Tame Impala to mind, Montez explains that lyrically, the song is inspired and informed by current events:  “Lyrically, it may be the closest to a song specifically about COVID–not the pandemic itself, but between the BLM protests in Summer 2020 and this change a lot of people have had to the nature of work, I had a hard time thinking of how things would look on the other side of it, and trying to make sense of the future when the only context you have is the past,” Montez says.
  • Album title track “Leisure,” which continued a remarkable run of slow-burning material, but while rooted in a Quiet Storm-meets-Tame Impala-like groove paired with twinkling keys and Montez’s breathy falsetto cooing. But despite the late night grooves, the song evokes — and expresses — a world-weary exhaustion and frustration that feels all too familiar.

Montez celebrates the release of Leisure with the release of “Dissolving.” Built around languorously buzzing guitars, twinkling synth arpeggios and a relentless motorik groove paired with Montez’s gentle and dreamy cooing, “Dissolving” is a sleek and seamless synthesis of Dark Side of the Moon and Currents that manages to evoke a gentle and slow-burning dissolving of a magic mushroom trip.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Pink Mexico Shares Brooding and Bruising “Dungeonhead”

After stints playing drums for acclaimed singer/songwriter Shilpa Ray and a list of other bands, Robert Preston Collum (guitar, vocals) stepped out into the spotlight with his solo project Pink Mexico. Preston self-released his 2013 full-length debut Pnik Mxeico, which caught the attention of Austin-based label Fleeting Youth Records, who then re-released the album the following December.

Collum relocated to Brooklyn in the fall of 2014 to begin recording what would be his sophomore album. Following countless Brooklyn shows during the course of 2015, the project extended into a full-fledged band with the addition of Grady Walker (drums, vocals) and Ian Everall (bass). Collum’s Pink Mexico sophomore album, 2016’s Fool was released through Burger Records and French label Big Tomato Records. He and his bandmates supported the album with an opening spot for Honus Honus (a.k.a Mam Man) during that artist’s November 2016 tour.

Pink Mexico’s third album 2019’s DUMP was released through Burger Records and Little Dickamn Records. Unlike the previously released albums, where Collum played all the instruments, DUMP is the first album that features Everall and Walker on their respective instruments.

The band’s fourth album, 2020’s Idiot Piss Illiterate was released through San Francisco-based label Broken Clover Records.

Earlier this year, Pink Mexico announced their signing to Quiet Panic Records, who will be releasing their fifth album, Mirrorhead. Slated for a May 19, 2023 release, Mirrorhead was written and recorded during the period of its predecessor’s release. But while Idiot Piss Illiterate‘s material rode on a frantic garage rock undercurrent, the forthcoming album reportedly swaps out ragged pace for bruising waves of heavy sound, interspersed with moments of stripped back exposure. Thematically, the album’s material is rooted in a recollection of memories and experiences woven through the reconstruction oft he self and a bold sense of experimentation.

Mirrorhead‘s first single “Dungeonhead” is a 120 Minutes MTV-era alt rock-inspired aural assault centered around layers of reverb-drenched, fuzzy and distorted power chords and thunderous power chords paired with Collum’s plaintive and ethereal lead vocal. But under the ironically detached delivery and enormous hooks, is a song that evokes a palpable sense of unease.

Pink Mexico’s Robert Preston calls “Dungeonhead,” “a track about never feeling comfortable in one’s own skin while reflecting on the obscurities of life during a time when the regular version of confusing and fucked up is even more fucked up and confusing.”

Directed by Steven Ungureanu, the brooding and uneasy accompanying video for “Dungeonhead” was shot across my home borough of Queens. I recognize a number of significant locations including Ridgewood, Jackson Heights, Forest Park, Ridgewood Reservoir, Far Rockaway and more.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: Don’t Get Lemon Shares Groovy, 80s-Inspired “Blow-up”

Currently split between Austin and Houston, Don’t Get Lemon — Austin Curtis (vocals), Bryan Walters (bass, percussion) and Nick Ross (synth, guitar, drum programming) — is a dance pop outfit with a glam-leaning, synth-driven sound that draws from 70s Berlin and 80s Manchester.

Deriving its title from Michelangelo Antonioni’s swinging 1966 motion picture Blow-Up, the Texan trio’s latest single “Blow-Up” is a decidedly 80s Madchester/Manchester-inspired bop built around glistening synths arpeggios, Curtis’ ironically detached delivery, a motorik-like groove, angular guitar attack, and bursts of polyrhythm featuring bongo and electronic drums paired with bombastic hooks. The trio explain that the song, which features lyrics pierced together, borrowing from William S. Burroughs’ famed cut-up poetry technique and imagery inspired by David Lynch’s Blue Velvet is a “glimpse into the unseen dark.”

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

Chicago-based singer/songwriter, multi-instrumentalist Elijah Montez is the frontman and creative mastermind behind the rising psych pop project Daydream Review. After relocating from Austin to Chicago, Montez and Daydream Review began catching the attention of Chicago’s leading tastemakers and beyond with the release of 2020’s “Blossom” and 2021’s retro-tinged, self-titled debut EP.

Last summer, the Chicago-based artist released two tracks, an A-side “Sensory Deprivation” and a B-side “Dream Sequence #29,” as a palette cleanser to his Daydream Review self-titled debut EP — and a teaser of new material. That material quickly established Montez as one of Chicago’s most buzz-worthy new artists. Adding to a growing profile, he supported that material with a lot of time touring with a backing band featuring Kaitlyn Murphy (backing vocals and auxiliary percussion) and a rotating group of friends. 

Slated for an April 7, 2023 release through Side Hustle Records, Daydream Review’s 13-song full-length debut Leisure reportedly sees Montez aiming to expand upon the layered sonic world he has created — and continuing to push the boundaries of modern psych pop with dynamic production and reflective, existential lyricism. “Leisure is about the ever-present tension between the desire for free time, for personal enjoyment and leisure, and the demands that capitalistic society places on those desires, and how it restricts the ability to enjoy that free time,” Montez explains. ” Your job and work, to me, seem to be consistent specters that haunt your ability to enjoy your free time, knowing that those demands are always awaiting you when your free time comes to an end.”

That uneasy balancing act between work and free time informed much of the album’s creation and its themes. “Leisure,” Montez adds “as a concept, became something almost otherworldly and that much more desirable, something you dream about when you have so much time funneled into work, and the repetitive act of balancing those two ends up being something almost hypnotic, and I tried to channel all of that into the sonic qualities of the album.”

So far I’ve written about two singles:

  • “Have You Found What You’re Looking For,” a mellow slow-burn centered around painterly, shogeazer-inspired textures created by glistening, delay and reverb pedaled guitars, fluttering synth arpeggios and paired with a trippy groove and Montez’s ethereal delivery. The song sees its narrator asking himself — and in turn, his listener — if they’ve actually found what they’ve been looking for, with the tacit understanding that they may never actually find it anyway. 
  • “No Eternity,” another slow-burn centered around lush, glistening and wobbling synth arpeggios, a mix of blown-out beats and live drumming paired with Montez’s plaintive cooing and his penchant for well-placed, razor-sharp hooks. While sonically, “No Eternity” brings Currents-era Tame Impala to mind, Montez explains that lyrically, the song is inspired and informed by current events:  “Lyrically, it may be the closest to a song specifically about COVID–not the pandemic itself, but between the BLM protests in Summer 2020 and this change a lot of people have had to the nature of work, I had a hard time thinking of how things would look on the other side of it, and trying to make sense of the future when the only context you have is the past,” Montez says.

Leisure‘s third and latest single, album title track “Leisure” continues a remarkable run of slow-burning material but this time, rooted in a Quiet Storm-meets-Tame Impala-like groove paired with twinkling keys and Montez’s breathy falsetto cooing. But despite the late night-like groove, the song evokes — and expresses — a world-weary exhaustion and frustration that feels all too familiar.

“This song is about the absolute compression of your soul and destruction of your time that work culture and capitalism has made commonplace. There’s an uncertainty that it creates in terms of how you view your life, and how you’ll look back on it, how you can take care of yourself and your loved ones.” “Sonically,” he continues, “it has elements of psychedelic soul, so there’s a groove in it, but I think the arrangement communicates the exhaustion that’s baked into the lyrics.”

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Lauren Lakis Shares Yearning “Take My Hand”

Lauren Lakis is a Baltimore-born, Austin-based singer/songwriter and musician, who specializes in a brooding and churning take on shoegaze centered around authentic, honest lyricism. Lakis and her backing band have extensively toured across the West Coast, sharing bills with Ringo Award-nominated rocker Tracy Bonham. She has also played in front of sold-out crowds at Doug Fir Lounge and at Santa Cruz’s The Catalyst.

During the pandemic, Lakis performed several live-streamed shows, partnering with Bandsintown, Jam in the Van, B-Side TV, Rock to End Rape Culture, KXLU, ACLU and JuJu Live.

Recorded at Seahorse Sound, the Baltimore-born, Austin-based artist’s Billy Burke-produced Daughter Language was released by Green Witch Recordings in 2021 to critical acclaim from Flaunt, Wonderland, Earmilk, Ladygunn, Buzzbands LA, Grimy Goods, Atwood Magazine and more.

Daughter Language‘s highly-anticipated follow-up, the Carey McGraw-produced A Fiesta and a Hell was recorded in Austin and is slated for a Fall release through Green Witch Recordings. The album’s first single “Take My Hand” is a brooding and stormy bit of shoegaze built around an alternating quiet and loud sections featuring glistening guitar textures for the verses and swirling, stormy power chord-driven choruses paired with Lakis’ achingly yearning vocal. The single, as Lakis explains is about “forgetting what you thought you knew, letting go, bravely opening your mind to something radically different. She adds “What if you were wrong? Are you able to admit it? Can you shift with the ever-changing landscape of reality, or are you stuck in your ways? I found myself stepping into the unknown in many ways the past few years, forced to entertain the notion that maybe I didn’t know everything, and in that I found freedom.” 

Shot in Rapid City, South Dakota and Badlands National Park, the accompanying video follows the rising singer/songwriter hanging out with a large tortoise, going through a dinosaur park, dancing on a dinosaur statue and more. It’s a surreal yet highly symbolic romp through the wilderness — both natural and constructed.

Lakis will be playing at next week’s The New Colossus Festival. I’lm looking forward to catching her.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Slumbering Sun Shares Trippy 120 Minutes MTV-era VIsual for “Liminal Bridges”

Austin-based doom metal outfit Slumbering Sun — Monte Luna’s James Clarke (vocals), Destroyer of Light’s Keegan Kjeldsen (guitar), Temptress‘ Kelsey Wilson (guitar), Monte Luna‘s and Scorpion Child‘s Garth Condit (bass) and Destroyer of Light’s Penny Turner (drums) — is an All-Star band featuring acclaimed members of Texas’ underground metal scene. 

After the breakup of their previous band, James Clarke and Keegan Kjeldsen resolved to forget the bitter pain of an album that would never be released, by creating something new. They decided to start a new band with an album that Kjeldsen wrote between work on other projects. The pair continued the creative process at their rehearsal space with a few songs strummed on a clean, electric guitar: Clarke began to write melodies with the pair finishing lyrics. 

Clarke and Kjeldsen recruited Temptress’ Kelsey Wilson, who made the commute from Dallas for the writing and recording process. Scorpion Child’s Garth Condit and Destroyer of Light’s Penny Turner, who played in other bands with Clarke and Kjeldsen respectively were recruited to be the band’s rhythm section — and from that point on, Slumbering Sun was a full-fledged band. 

Released last Friday digitally and on cassette and CD, the Austin-based doom metal outfit’s full-length debut The Ever Living Fire was recorded in a week-long recording session this past summer. Sonically, their full-length debut sees the band exploring broader melodies than their previous work while drawing from Celtic folk, doom metal act Warning, as well as 90s grunge rockers Soundgarden and Alice In Chains. 

In the lead-up to the album’s release, I wrote about three singles:

  • “Liminal Bridges,” an expansive song featuring an atmospheric introduction with swirling, shoegazer-like textures, followed by stormy, power chord-driven riffage and thunderous drumming paired with Clarke’s melodic crooning and enormous, arena rock-like hooks. The track sonically brought — to my ears, at least —  The Sword  to mind — ok but with a prog rock-leaning sensibility.

  • “Dream Snake,” an equally expansive track that opens with Black Sabbath and Soundgarden-like intro with fuzzy, power chord-driven riffage, thunderous drumming and a soulful solo paired with Clarke’s Ozzy Osbourne-like delivery until roughly around the five-minute mark. At that point, the song morphs into a sludgy doom metal dirge for the next two minutes or so before a gorgeous string arrangement carries the song into a gentle fadeout. Lyrically rooted in longing and heartbreak, “Dream Snake” sees the members of Slumbering Sun drawing from different eras one metal and doom metal and crafting something both familiar and new.

  • Album title track “The Ever Living Fire.” Continuing a remarkable run of expansive, mind-bending material, the song begins with a gorgeous 35 second, acoustic guitar-driven introduction before quickly exploding into an expressive and soulful doom metal dirge, built around sludgy power chord-driven riffage, thunderous drumming and Clarke’s crooning. And around the five minute mark, the band introduces a melodic hook that shifts the song in a trippy display of densely layered guitars. The song ends with a roughly minute-long, gorgeous acoustic gutter driven coda making it one of the more prog-leaning songs of the album’s released singles.

Building upon the attention the album’s first three singles have received, Slumbering Sun recently shared an accompanying video for “Liminal Bridges.” Fittingly set in a creepy forest, the video is split between the band performing the song at night — at points shot through a hazy filter. The other half of the video features two women performing a series of weird rituals seemingly meant to get them to a different realm of consciousness. If you grew up watching 120 Minutes, this one definitely will bring back some fond memories.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: Daydream Review Shares Lush and Atmospheric “No Eternity”

Elijah Montez is a Chicago-based singer/songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, frontman, and creative mastermind behind Daydream Review. After relocating from Austin to Chicago, Montez and Daydream Review began catching the attention of Chicago’s leading tastemakers and beyond with the release of 2020’s “Blossom” and 2021’s retro-tinged, self-titled debut EP.

Last summer, the Chicago-based artist released two tracks, an A-side “Sensory Deprivation” and a B-side “Dream Sequence #29,” as a palette cleanser to his Daydream Review self-titled debut EP — and a teaser of new material. That material quickly established Montez as one of Chicago’s most buzz-worthy new artists. And adding to a growing profile, he supported that material with a lot of time on the road with a backing band featuring Kaitlyn Murphy (backing vocals and auxiliary percussion) and a rotating group of friends. 

Slated for an April 7, 2023 release through Side Hustle Records, Daydream Review’s 13-song full-length debut Leisure reportedly sees Montez aiming to expand upon the layered sonic world he has created — and continuing to push the boundaries of modern psych pop with dynamic production and reflective, existential lyricism. “Leisure is about the ever-present tension between the desire for free time, for personal enjoyment and leisure, and the demands that capitalistic society places on those desires, and how it restricts the ability to enjoy that free time,” Montez explains. ” Your job and work, to me, seem to be consistent specters that haunt your ability to enjoy your free time, knowing that those demands are always awaiting you when your free time comes to an end.”

That uneasy balancing act between work and free time informed much of the album’s creation and its themes. “Leisure,” Montez adds “as a concept, became something almost otherworldly and that much more desirable, something you dream about when you have so much time funneled into work, and the repetitive act of balancing those two ends up being something almost hypnotic, and I tried to channel all of that into the sonic qualities of the album.”

Last month, I wrote about “Have You Found What You’re Looking For,” a mellow slow-burn centered around painterly, shogeazer-inspired textures created by glistening, delay and reverb pedaled guitars, fluttering synth arpeggios and paired with a trippy groove and Montez’s ethereal delivery. The song sees its narrator asking himself — and in turn, his listener — if they’ve actually found what they’ve been looking for, with the tacit understanding

“Have You Found What You’re Looking For,” Leisure‘s first single is a mellowm and ethereal slow-burn centered around painterly, shoegazy textures: glistening, delay and reverb pedaled guitar, fluttering synth arpeggios and a trippy groove are paired with Montez’s equally ethereal and plaintive delivery. At its core, the song sees its narrator asking himself — and in turn, his listener — if they’ve found what they’ve been looking for, with the tacit understanding that they may never actually find it anyway. 

One of the last songs written for the album, Montez explains, “I had written roughly the first half of the song and was unsure where to take it, and I remember trying different things, and talking to myself saying, “Have you figured it out? Have you found it?” Montez adds the theme of the track spoke to the broader themes of the project as a whole, “The overarching theme of the song fits quite well in the context of the album–being dissatisfied with work, dissatisfied with the state of the world, and dissatisfied with capitalism at large, and searching for something that can fill in the void that all that dissatisfaction leaves.” 

Speaking to the production and cyclical pattern of its rhythm, Montez says, “I think that’s reflected in the sonic quality of the song, this repetition and cycling through your thoughts and having that “a-ha” moment, where you realize you’re looking for something that may not come.”

Leisure‘s latest single is the lush, slow-burning “No Eternity.” Centered around lush glistening and wobbling synth arpeggios, a mix of blown-out beats and live drumming paired with Montez’s plaintive cooing and his penchant for well-placed, razor-sharp hooks, “No Eternity” manages to bring Currents-era Tame Impala to mind. Sonically, the track came together long before the lyrics. and its dreamy, lush atmosphere compelled Montez to follow through and finish it.

“Lyrically, it may be the closest to a song specifically about COVID–not the pandemic itself, but between the BLM protests in Summer 2020 and this change a lot of people have had to the nature of work, I had a hard time thinking of how things would look on the other side of it, and trying to make sense of the future when the only context you have is the past,” Montez says.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

Austin-based doom metal outfit Slumbering Sun — Monte Luna’s James Clarke (vocals), Destroyer of Light’s Keegan Kjeldsen (guitar), Temptress‘ Kelsey Wilson (guitar), Monte Luna‘s and Scorpion Child‘s Garth Condit (bass) and Destroyer of Light’s Penny Turner (drums) — is an All-Star band featuring acclaimed members of Texas’ underground metal scene. 

After the breakup of their previous band, James Clarke and Keegan Kjeldsen resolved to forget the bitter pain of an album that would never be released, by creating something new. They decided to start a new band with an album that Kjeldsen wrote between work on other projects. The pair continued the creative process at their rehearsal space with a few songs strummed on a clean, electric guitar: Clarke began to write melodies with the pair finishing lyrics. 

Clarke and Kjeldsen recruited Temptress’ Kelsey Wilson, who made the commute from Dallas for writing and recruiting process. Scorpion Child’s Garth Condit and Destroyer of Light’s Penny Turner, who played in other bands with Clarke and Kjeldsen respectively were recruited to be the band’s rhythm section — and from that point on, Slumbering Sun was a full-fledged band. 

Slated for Friday digital, cassette and CD release, the Austin-based doom metal outfit’s full-length debut The Ever-Living Fire was recorded in a week-long recording session this past summer. Sonically, The Ever-Living Fire sees the members of Slumbering Sun exploring broader melodies while being inspired by Celtic folk, doom metal like Warning, as well as beloved 90s classics like Soundgarden and Alice In Chains. 

In the lead-up to the album’s release later this week, I’ve written about two singles:

  • “Liminal Bridges,” an expansive song featuring an atmospheric introduction with swirling, shoegazer-like textures, followed by stormy, power chord-driven riffage and thunderous drumming paired with Clarke’s melodic crooning and enormous, arena rock-like hooks. The track sonically brought — to my ears, at least — The Sword  to mind — ok but with a prog rock-leaning sensibility.
  • “Dream Snake,” an equally expansive track that opens with Black Sabbath and Soundgarden-like intro with fuzzy, power chord-driven riffage, thunderous drumming and a soulful solo paired with Clarke’s Ozzy Osbourne-like delivery until roughly around the five-minute mark. At that point, the song morphs into a sludgy doom metal dirge for the next two minutes or so before a gorgeous string arrangement carries the song into a gentle fadeout. Lyrically rooted in longing and heartbreak, “Dream Snake” sees the members of Slumbering Sun drawing from different eras one metal and doom metal and crafting something both familiar and new.

The Ever-Living Fire‘s third and latest single, album title track “The Ever Living Fire” continues a remarkable run of expansive, mind-bending material. Beginning with 35 second gorgeous, acoustic guitar-driven introduction, the song quickly explodes into an expressive and soulful, doom metal dirge rooted into sludgy riffage, thunderous drumming paired with Clarke’s crooning. Around the five minute mark, the band introduces a melodic hook that shifts the song into an explosive display of layered guitar work. The song ends with a roughly minute-long gorgeous, acoustic guitar-driven coda. It’s arguably the most prog-leaning of the album’s released singles.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: Waldo Witt Shares Trippy “Without A Sound”

Chapel Hill, NC-based singer/songwriter and musician Waldo Witt embraces 60s and 70s psychedelia — think Todd Rundgren, King Crimson, and Brian Wilson — alongside a continued adoration of 80s soft rock and disco, which results in a vibrant hook-driven sound, paired with structural twists and turns.

Witt’s latest album Long Daze, Dark Nights is slated for a February 24, 2023 release. The album further cementing the Chapel Hill-based artist’s nostalgia-tined song, but it doesn’t linger too long in the past. While hook-heavy throwback odes are abundant, the album’s material was recorded with modern production techniques and is centered around contemporary thematic concerns. Informed by the past few tumultuous years, the album thematically touches upon uncertainty, instability and unpredictability.

The album’s creative process began during the summer of 2020 in Taos, NM. Witt, his wife road-tripped through much of the pandemic, and much of the album’s lyrics were written while traveling across isolated areas throughout the country. including rural Montana and Colorado. So the material was rooted in introspection and soul-searching.

He also wound up in a variety of studios, where the ensuring musical collaborations were with new and old friends alike. Much of the album’s recording took place at James Petralli’s Austin- based Radio Milk Studios and Witt’s Chapel Hill home.

The album’s latest single “Without A Sound” is a dense, lysergic song featuring blown-out drums, twinkling keys and soaring hooks paired with Witt’s plaintive falsetto. The end result is a song that to my ears sounds as though it were drawing from Pet Sounds-era Beach Boys and Tame Impala. The song — to me, at least — bridges several different eras in psych music in a slick yet logical fashion.

“This was one of the last songs I wrote for the album, I was really embracing some of my earlier musical influences – the ones that first got me really excited about music like Syd Barrett and Brian Wilson,” Witt explains. “So it’s kind of this psychedelic journey through time, looking through a lens of bright eyed bliss and innocence, and using that lens to try to make sense of or understand the chaos of recent years.”

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

Austin-based doom metal outfit Slumbering Sun — Monte Luna’s James Clarke (vocals), Destroyer of Light’s Keegan Kjeldsen (guitar), Temptress‘ Kelsey Wilson (guitar), Monte Luna‘s and Scorpion Child‘s Garth Condit (bass) and Destroyer of Light’s Penny Turner (drums) — is an All-Star band featuring members of Texas’ underground metal scene. 

After the breakup of their previous band, James Clarke and Keegan Kjeldsen resolved to forget the bitter pain of an album that would never be released, by creating something new. They decided to start a new band with an album that Kjeldsen wrote between work on other projects. The pair continued the creative process at their rehearsal space with a few songs strummed on a clean, electric guitar: Clarke began to write melodies with the pair finishing lyrics. 

Clarke and Kjeldsen recruited Temptress’ Kelsey Wilson, who made the commute from Dallas for writing and recruiting process. Scorpion Child’s Garth Condit and Destroyer of Light’s Penny Turner, who played in other bands with Clarke and Kjeldsen respectively were recruited to be the band’s rhythm section — and from that point on, Slumbering Sun was a full-fledged band. 

Slated for a February 24, 2023 CD, cassette and digital release with a vinyl release over the summer, because of pressing plant delays, the Austin-based doom metal outfit’s full-length debut The Ever-Living Fire was recorded in a week-long recording session this past summer. Sonically, The Ever-Living Fire sees the members of Slumbering Sun exploring broader melodies while being inspired by Celtic folk, doom metal like Warning, as well as beloved 90s classics like Soundgarden and Alice In Chains. 

Late last year, I wrote about the expansive “Liminal Bridges.” Centered around a song structure featuring an atmospheric introduction with swirling shoegazer-like textures, followed by stormy, power chord-driven riffage and thunderous drumming paired with Clarke’s melodic crooning and some enormous, arena rock friendly hooks, The Ever-Living Fire‘s first single sonically brings The Sword and others to mind — but with a prog rock-leaning sensibility. 

Clocking in at a little over 8:30, The Ever-Living Fire‘s second and latest single “Dream Snake” further establishes the Austin doom outfit’s penchant for expansive song structures: Opening with fuzzy power chord-driven riffage and thunderous drumming paired with Clarke’s Ozzy Osbourne-like delivery, the song first nods at classic Black Sabbath and Soundgarden-like metal, complete with a soulful yet forceful solo. At the five minute mark, the song turns into sludgy doom metal dirge for a good two minutes before a gorgeous burst of strings carry the song into a gentle fadeout.

Lyrically rooted in longing and heartbreak, “Dream Snake” sees the members of Slumbering Sun drawing from different eras one metal and doom metal and crafting something both familiar and new.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: Chicago’s Daydream Review Shares Ethereal and Painterly “Have You Found What You’re Looking For?”

Elijah Montez is a Chicago-based singer/songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, frontman, and creative mastermind behind Daydream Review. After relocating from Austin to Chicago, Montez and Daydream Review began catching the attention of Chicago’s leading tastemakers and beyond with the release of 2020’s “Blossom” and 2021’s retro-tinged, self-titled debut EP.


Last summer, the Chicago-based artist released two tracks, an A-side “Sensory Deprivation” and a B-side “Dream Sequence #29,” as a palette cleanser after his self-titled debut EP and a teaser of new material. Along with the release of material that quickly established Montez as one of Chicago’s most buzz-worthy artists, he has spent plenty of time on the road with his backing band featuring Kaitlyn Murphy (backing vocals and auxiliary percussion) and a rotating group of friends.

Montez’s Daydream Review debut, the 13-song Leisure is slated for an April 7, 2023 release through Side Hustle Records. The album reportedly sees the Chicago-based artist aiming to expand upon the layered sonic world he has created — and continuing to push the boundaries of modern psych pop with dynamic production and reflective, existential lyricism. “Leisure is about the ever-present tension between the desire for free time, for personal enjoyment and leisure, and the demands that capitalistic society places on those desires, and how it restricts the ability to enjoy that free time,” Montez explains. ” Your job and work, to me, seem to be consistent specters that haunt your ability to enjoy your free time, knowing that those demands are always awaiting you when your free time comes to an end.”

That uneasy balancing act between work and free time informed much of the album’s creation and its themes. “Leisure,” Montez adds “as a concept, became something almost otherworldly and that much more desirable, something you dream about when you have so much time funneled into work, and the repetitive act of balancing those two ends up being something almost hypnotic, and I tried to channel all of that into the sonic qualities of the album.”

“Have You Found What You’re Looking For,” Leisure‘s first single is a mellowm and ethereal slow-burn centered around painterly, shoegazy textures: glistening, delay and reverb pedaled guitar, fluttering synth arpeggios and a trippy groove are paired with Montez’s equally ethereal and plaintive delivery. At its core, the song sees its narrator asking himself — and in turn, his listener — if they’ve found what they’ve been looking for, with the tacit understanding that they may never actually find it anyway.

One of the last songs written for the album, Montez explains, “I had written roughly the first half of the song and was unsure where to take it, and I remember trying different things, and talking to myself saying, “Have you figured it out? Have you found it?” Montez adds the theme of the track spoke to the broader themes of the project as a whole, “The overarching theme of the song fits quite well in the context of the album–being dissatisfied with work, dissatisfied with the state of the world, and dissatisfied with capitalism at large, and searching for something that can fill in the void that all that dissatisfaction leaves.” 

Speaking to the production and cyclical pattern of its rhythm, Montez says, “I think that’s reflected in the sonic quality of the song, this repetition and cycling through your thoughts and having that “a-ha” moment, where you realize you’re looking for something that may not come.”

Video by William Ruben Helms

Live Footage: Dayglow Performs “Then It All Goes Away” on “The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon”

Sloan Struble is a 20-something  Aledo, TX-born, Austin, TX-based singer/songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, producer and JOVM mainstay best known as Dayglow. Struble can trace the origins of Dayglow back to when he was a teen, growing up in a Fort Worth suburb that he has referred to as a “small football-crazed town,” where he felt irrevocably out of place. 

Much like countless other hopelessly out of place young people everywhere, Struble turned to music as an escape from his surroundings. “I didn’t really feel connected to what everyone else in my school was into, so making music became an obsession for me, and sort of like therapy in a way,” Struble recalled in press notes. “I’d dream about it all day in class, and then come home and for on songs instead of doing homework. After a while I realized I’d made an album.”

Working completely on his own with a minuscule collection of gear that included his guitar, his computer and some secondhand keyboards he picked up at Goodwill, Struble worked on transforming his privately kept outpouring into a batch of songs — often grandiose in scale. “Usually artists will have demos they’ll bounce off other people to get some feedback, but nobody except for my parents down the hall really heard much of the album until I put it out,” Struble recalled. With the self-release of 2018’s Fuzzybrain, Struble received widespread attention and an ardent online following — with countess listeners praising the material’s overwhelming positivity. 

In 2019, Struble re-released a fully realized version of Fuzzybrain that featured Can I Call You Tonight,” a track that wound up being a smash-hit back in 2020, as well as two previously unreleased singles “Nicknames” and “Listerine.” 

2021 saw the release of Stubble’s sophomore album  Harmony House, an album that was inspired by the 70s and 80s piano-driven soft rock that he had captured his ears. Interestingly, around the same time, he had been watching a lot of Cheers. “At the very beginning, I was writing a soundtrack to a sitcom that doesn’t exist,” Struble recalls. And while actively attempting to generate nostalgia for something that hadn’t ever been real, as well as something most of his listeners had never really experienced. Thematically, the album concerns itself with a deeply universal theme — growing up and coping with change as being an inevitable aspect of life. 

The album featured the infectious and sugary pop confection “Close to You,” a track indebted to 80s synth-led soul — in particular Patti Labelle and Michael McDonald‘s “On My Own” Cherelle’s and Alexander and O’Neal‘s “Saturday Love” and other duets, but imbued with an aching melancholy and uncertainty. He then made his national late night TV debut on Late Show with Stephen Colbert, where he, along with his backing band, played “Can I Call You Tonight.” 

Last year, Struble released his third Dayglow album, People In Motion. Entirely written, played and produced by Struble, the 10-song album continues his reputation for crafting upbeat, optimistic, hook-driven pop rooted  in his desire to steer clear of conflict and offering someone something to love. 

The album featured “Second Nature.” Arguably the funkiest and most dance floor friendly single Struble has released to date,””Second Nature,” is sort of like a slick synthesis of 80s pop, Daft Punk, The 1975, and LCD Soundsystem, with glistening synths, Struble’s plaintive vocal, an infectious vocodered vocal-driven hook and an in irresistible, feel good vibe.

“‘Second Nature’ is one of the most ambitious songs I’ve made so far. I didn’t think it would be a ‘Dayglow’ song until the rest of People in Motion started to take shape,” Struble says in press notes. “I made so many versions of it— I just kept writing more and more melodies and ideas. The Logic file ended up being like this 15 minute jam that I eventually condensed to be the near 6 min song it is.

I was really inspired by songs like Lionel Richie’s ‘All Night Long,’ Michael Jackson’s ‘Wanna Be Starting Somethin’, and of course Daft Punk. I just love songs that have repeatable chord progressions that never seem to even reach their potential— they just keep going on and on. Lyrically and musically I wanted to create a song that felt like that. A song that just celebrates itself and the joy of dancing and making music. It doesn’t even feel like ‘Second Nature’— it feels completely innate and natural to make music to me. I love it more than anything and it feels like what I was made to do, and ‘Second Nature’ just grasps that idea and runs with it confidently.”

The JOVM mainstay was recently on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, where he performed album single “Then It All Goes Away,” an exuberant, feel good, pop anthem, which sees Struble harmonizing over a strutting bass line, twinkling keys, copious, DFA Records amounts of cowbell and the JOVM’s unerring knack for big hooks. Even in a live setting, Struble and his backing band are having themselves a helluva time, playing a fun song.

“I made “Then It All Goes Away” after coming home from my Fall 2021 North America tour. I started writing the bassline during my morning coffee and I finished the full composition by the end of the day. It felt so fresh and natural to write-I was just having fun honestly. It felt like a year’s worth of unconscious ideas all came to the front of my brain at once and just spilled out. I was really just thinking of my fans the whole time making it and imagining ‘how can I make a Dayglow song that feels so familiar, yet feels like a brand new experience entirely?”

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Dayton’s Nick Kizirnis Shares Bluesy and Mournful “The Distance”

Nick Kizirnis is a Dayton, OH-based singer/songwriter and guitarist, who has spent the past two-plus decades writing genre-twisting and genre-defying material on over ten solo albums, while also collaborating playing in bands like The Mulchmen, Tobin Sprout’s Eyesinweasel, Cage and others with a collection of up-and-coming local musicians.

Over the past decade or so, the Dayton-based artist has focused on guitar-driven compositions; but his latest solo album The Distance sees Kizirnis returning to writing lyrics and arrangements while simultaneously being a step forward stylistically. As Kizirnis explains, he had a desire to push himself beyond anything he had previously done. “I wanted ti to be new and different from what people had heard from me,” the Dayton-based musician and songwriter says.

Kirzirnis’ long-time friend, Austin-based drummer Mark Patterson had just temporarily relocated to Dayton to visit family and prepare touring and recording as a member of acclaimed indie outfit Son Volt. Patterson had offered to work on the material that Kizirnis had worked on, enhancing the material’s arrangements based on his experience playing in the Austin scene. During the creative process for the Patrick Himes-produced The Distance, Kizirnis began to feel that writing for his voice was limiting the material. He recruited Cincinnati-based singer/songwriter and cellist Kate Wakefield, one-half of the duo Lung, to contribute vocals.

Wakefield’s background as an opera singer, plus her years of recording and performing helped pushed the fledgling album and recording sessions into high gear. “Kate brought a completely new dimension to the songs,” Kizirnis says. “The moment she sang them, they were transformed into something so much more.”

Brooding album title track “The Distance” features contributions from Deke Dickerson’s Crazy Joe Tristchler (guitar), Himes (Hammond B3 organ) and Wakefield (cello and vocals). Along with Kizirnis, Tristchler, Himes and Wakefield craft a bluesy and mournful soundscape that recalls The Heartless Bastards and crying-in-your-beer honky tonk. The song’s narrator realizes that their relationship has come to the end of the road, and that its time for both parties to pack up their things and sadly move on,

The Katie Marks 2D animated video for “The Distance” features the song’s central couple falling in and out of love. And as they part ways, we see an animated Kizirnis playing guitar in a desolate, roadside honky tonk.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

Austin-based doom metal outfit Slumbering Sun — Monte Luna’s James Clarke (vocals), Destroyer of Light’s Keegan Kjeldsen (guitar), Temptress‘ Kelsey Wilson (guitar), Monte Luna‘s and Scorpion Child‘s Garth Condit (bass) and Destroyer of Light’s Penny Turner (drums) — is an All-Star band featuring members of Texas’ underground metal scene.

As the story goes, after the breakup of their previous band, James Clarke and Keegan Kjeldsen resolved to forget the pain of an album that would never be released, by creating something new. They decided to start a new band — and with an album that Kjeldsen wrote between work on other projects. The pair continued the creative process at their rehearsal space with a few songs strummed on a clean, electric guitar: Clarke began to write melodies with the pair finishing lyrics.

Clarke and Kjeldsen recruited Temptress’ Kelsey Wilson, who made the commute from Dallas for writing and recruiting process. Scorpion Child’s Garth Condit and Destroyer of Light’s Penny Turner. who played in other bands with Clarke and Kjeldsen respectively were recruited to be the band’s rhythm section — and from that point on, Slumbering Sun was a full-fledged band.

Slated for a February 24, 2023 CD, cassette and digital release with a vinyl release over the summer, because of pressing plant delays, the Austin-based doom metal outfit’s full-length debut The Ever-Living Fire was recorded in a week-long recording session this past summer. Sonically, The Ever-Living Fire sees the members of Slumbering Sun exploring broader melodies while being inspired by Celtic folk, doom metal like Warning, as well as beloved 90s classics like Soundgarden and Alice In Chains.

The Ever-Living Fire‘s first single “Liminal Bridges” is an expansive and towering song centered around three distinct segments — an atmospheric introduction featuring swirling, shoegazer-like textures followed by stormy power chord-driven riffage, thunderous drumming paired with Clarke’s melodic crooning and some enormous, arena rock friendly hooks. “Liminal Bridges” sonically brings The Sword and others to mind — but with a prog rock-leaning sensibility.

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