Tag: STAR

Video by William Ruben Helms

Lyric Video: Gnaw Shares Bruising and Anthemic “Star”

Emerging Singaporean indie rock outfit Gnaw have quickly developed a sound that meshes elements of 90s alt rock, shoegaze and power pop mangled through digital processing and noise paired with lyrics that touch upon lingering memory and motion.

The Singaporean outfit’s debut single “Gnaw” is a bruising, hook-driven song that brings back memories of 120 Minutes-era MTV alt rock, complete with the classic grunge song structure — alternating quiet verses and loud choruses — but with an incredibly modern sensibility.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: Bliss Abyss Shares Anthemic “star”

Singer/songwriter and musician Peter Wallner has been a fixture of the Bay Area and West Coast music scenes for the past couple of decades: He has spent stints in a number of local and nationally recognized acts, including industrial shoegaze duo Astronomers Anonymous, and anthemic synth punk trio Whisper. While playing in Some Ember, he pioneered a drop-tuned “Lodge Goth” guitar style inspired by Angelo Badalamenti. And under his stage name Peter Lightning, he played in post punk outfit and JOVM mainstay act Wax Idols.

Wallner later joined Heaven’s Club as a keyboardist, which eventually led to him playing guitar with Deafhaven during their extensive 2022 European, UK and Scandinavian tour. Across more than a dozen projects, Wallner has refined a sound that blends atmosphere with urgency and melancholy with melody.

His latest project, Bliss Abyss can trace its origins back to the pandemic. Initially started as a synth pop experiment, the project evolved into its current iteration featuring Wallner (vocals, guitar), Kevin None (bass) and Josh Unger (drums). The project crystallized when Wallner met producer and bassist Joe Finocchio while performing in hardcore punk supergroup Culture Spy. After hearing demos, Finocchio quickly committed to producing an album.

Bliss Abyss’ sound sees the band meshing shoegaeze haze with post punk urgency. The result is sometimes dark and angular, sometimes bright and jangly and always driven by Wallner’s melodic instincts. The project’s forthcoming Joe Finocchio-produced debut album is collection of songs with a unique sonic identity that’s tied together by Wallner’s songwriting voice with each song designed to simultaneously stand on its own, while being park of a larger whole. Wallner’s lyrics are dreamlike confessions where heartbreak and desire unravel in a way that’s intimate yet surreal.

The trio’s debut single “star” is an upbeat, 120 Minutes-era MTV-like anthem that showcases their part jangle pop, part shoegaze sound and their ability to craft a big, catchy hook and chorus. And at its core, the song is rooted in a much-needed bit of hope in our very dark, chaotic moment that reminds the listener that sometimes you just need to manifest your dreams — and then get out there and grab it.

“The song started as a kind of spell, a vision of manifesting a life worth living. It’s meant to spark hope in anyone who’s lost,” the band’s Peter Wallner says. “Picture the life you want, the person you actually are, and don’t let anyone’s bullshit block your light. You’re a star, perfect as you are, made from stardust, burning through the same abyss as everyone else.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Los Angeles’ Jawdropped Shares Fuzzy Power Pop Anthem “Star”

Los Angeles-based outfit Jawdropped — Roman Zangari (vocals, guitar), Kyra Morling (vocals, tambourine), Sam Edwards (bass) and Joe Fastigi (drums) — features grizzled scene vets, who each come to their newest project together from a trail of previous projects, including Alms, The Shaking Hands, jerseygirl, Destiny Inn and others. Connecting through their involvement run the local DIY scene and their mutual respect and admiration for each other’s work, the band has quickly built up buzz for pairing tongue-in-cheek lyrics with catchy hooks and melodies in a way that recalls early 90s alt rock.

Adding to the growing buzz surrounding the band, they’ve opened for Chanel Beads, Fish Narc, PHF and others. And they recently signed to Fire Talk Records‘ imprint Angel Tapes, who also released their debut single “Star.” “Star” is a Dinosaur, Jr.-like bit of power pop featuring fuzzy, distortion pedaled power chords, thunderous drumming, big catchy hooks and saccharine sweet boy-girl harmonies. And while nostalgia-inducing for the old heads out there, the song is rooted in a subtly modern sensibility, much like bands like Glimmer and others.

“Star” presents the age-old tale of small-town girl moving to the big city to follow her dreams. But she swept up in the city’s seedy underbelly, partying and strung out on coke — like a star!

Directed by Jack Dione of untitled (halo), the accompanying video is a shot on supersaturated and grainy VHS-styled visual that captures the band’s goofy, freewheeling energy while following them through the streets of their hometown.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Ellevator Shares a Hook-Driven and Incisive Look at Social Media and Presentation

Hamilton, Ontario-based indie rock outfit Ellevator — Nabi Sue Bersche (vocals), Tyler Bersche (guitar) and Elliott Gwynne (bass, synths) — have received attention nationally and across the blogosphere for a sound and approach that draws equally from late-aughts guitar music, post-rock, U2, Peter Gabriel, Kate Bush, Feist, Spoon and Death Cab for Cutie paired with lean, razor sharp hooks and Bersche’s earnest, pop star-like vocals. Thematically their work touches upon power, love and loss from lived-in, personal reflections and experiences. 

Their self-titled EP amassed over a million streams across all of the digital streaming platforms. Adding to a growing profile, the members of Ellevator toured across North America with Our Lady Peace, Matthew Good, BANNERS, Cold War Kids, JOVM mainstay Rich Aucoin, Dear Rouge, Bishop Briggs, Arkells and Amber Run. 

Ellevator’s long-awaited, full-length debut, the Chris Walla-produced The Words You Spoke Still Move Me officially dropped today. The 12-song album sees the Canadian outfit documenting universal experiences like existential longing, romantic power struggles and the never-ending work of true self-discovery with the deeply personal and highly specific — notably, Nabi Sue Bersche’s experiences entering into and leaving a religious cult.

In the lead-up to the album’s release, I’ve written about three of TWYSSMM‘s
singles”

“Easy,” a song that revealed a band boldly making a decided step forward in their sound and approach while seeing them embrace the fact that they’re a rock band: Earnest and lived-in lyrics are paired with enormous hooks, raw and passionate performances, deliberate craftsmanship and slick studio polish.

“Easy” may arguably be one of the most deeply personal songs on the album, with the song drawing directly and intimately from Nabi Sue Bersche’s life: For a period of her life, Nabi Sue Bersche was a member of a religious cult, and the song is a rumination on the good and evil things we are raised to believe without question. “I was raised in the world of charismatic Christianity – an offshoot of Pentecostalism,” Ellevator’s frontwoman explained. “God was magic and prophetic ecstasies happened every Sunday. As a child, I spoke in tongues and prayed until my body swayed with a gentle force like wind knocking me backward. A deep and abiding love of the natural world took hold of me. I witnessed firsthand the wild power of music – how it could uplift, ensnare, console, inspire.

“When I was 17 I moved to the other side of the world and joined what would most accurately be described as a cult. I prayed for strangers I met in parking lots. I shut my eyes and read the dappled light between my lashes like tea leaves that could divine the future. Vulnerability was a badge in that community so I learned to overshare. Teachings were given in the language of freedom while the stiff hand of purity reduced my body to a shameful temptation. Growing up like that gave me a love of music, a nose for bullshit, and a lot to unravel. This song is about the good and evil things we are raised to believe. I was held captive by an ideology that severely limited my life and my perspective of the world around me. It’s a process I’m still in the middle of, this work of extraction.”

TWYSSMM‘s second single was the 80s rock/pop-like anthem “Sacred Heart,” which featured an expansive arrangement centered around slashing power chords, twinkling keys and Nabi Sue Bersche’s yearning vocals. While sonically recalling John Mellencamp‘s early-to-mid 80s output, Rod Stewart’s “Young Turks” and Stevie Nicks, “Sacred Heart” details swooning and urgent, young love in its guilelessness, passion, fearlessness and neurotic self-consciousness.

“This one’s a love song about how intimacy and deep knowing can make it feel like there’s nothing left to discover, and choosing to push on anyway in search of new depths, “Ellevator’s Nabi Sue Bersche explained. “Ty [Tyler Bersche] (guitar) and I got married on a cold spring morning when I was 22 and he was 19. There wasn’t much chance to sell each other on our own myths, to be the mysterious stranger from outta town: we wrote our origin story together. Learning to love each other better has been a strange journey and the great gift of my life.”

“Party Trick,” TWYSSMM‘s third single was a slow-burning and atmospheric ballad that accurately captures the insecurity, anxiety and flightiness of a young person still figuring out who they are and what they are: They seemingly adopt and discard identities, interests and beliefs until they stumble onto something that maybe suits them. While drawing from deeply personal experience, the song is rooted into something incredibly universal — something we’ve all done at some point or another in our lives.

“A friend said to me that being in a band means never growing up,” Ellevator’s frontwoman says in press notes. “It’s easy to feel like Peter Pan on tour, all the trappings of adulthood a hundred truck stops and a thousand miles in the rearview. I started writing this song to my teenage self: a flighty, insecure kid posturing confidence. I’d jump around to all the different cliques like a self-styled Ferris Bueller, leaving just before friendships could settle in. Being on the road brought out those same old tendencies: keep it all on the level, don’t go too deep. Driving down the highway, floating through the hall/Everything is different, nothing’s changed at all.”

“STAR,” TWYSSMM‘s fourth and latest single continues a remarkable run of enormous, hook-driven anthems featuring twinkling keys, propulsive drumming, shimmering and angular guitar lines and a sinuous bass line paired with Nabi Sue Bersche’s plaintive vocals. Sonically “STAR” — to my ears, at least — is a slick synthesis of Stevie Nicks, U2 and Death Cab for Cutie while rooted in a both personal and universal experience: Our tendency to play dress up and attempt to put on our best airs for the outside world — especially through the lens of social media.

“There are so many ways to disguise ourselves I don’t think we even notice we’re dressing up anymore,” the Canadian outfit’s frontperson explains. “Good art has a human point of view, which is to say it’s nuanced, complicated. It often doesn’t have a clear agenda that’s easily distilled, packaged, and sold. Flattening that perspective into something that fits neatly between the clean lines of social media has been difficult for me. Learning how to do it has changed the way I see the world, brought out ugly instincts, and magnified my vanity and insecurity. The wildest part is that this sort of curation and performance is no longer reserved for people like me: artists who pay people lots of money to convince you to listen to our music. Any fourteen-year-old on TikTok has given at least as much careful attention to their brand as I have. But the neurochemical trick these platforms play is just the latest version of a very old phenomenon. We’ve always built our identities carefully: showing the world our good side is an intrinsic part of evolution, whether it’s holding our arms high to make the bear think we’re bigger than we are or an Instagram story of our eight-car-garage.

“I started writing this song about Sable Starr and the baby groupie scene from the 70s in West Hollywood. Writing about licked lips, hey sweethearts, and other abstractions of crude men is a natural place for me to write from. Like a lot of people, there’s a deep well of rage to draw from there. But it morphed into a song about me, how the fucked up aspects of my industry have shaped me, how I’ve bent to the wills of people and entities I don’t trust. When the road runs out, will I be waiting around? Will I still be pretending?”

Directed and shot by the band’s frequent collaborator Cam Veitch, the accompanying video for “STAR” is optimized for viewing on a mobile device in vertical full screen. But whether you’re watching it on a computer as I have or on a phone, we see the members of Ellevator adopting cartoonish. one-note personas, which only capture a small portion of the complicated, flawed people behind the person. But the likes, the shares, the fucking clout!