I’ve uncovered many good songs in my online travels this month. Some from brand new bands, some from bands I already knew and love, some from bands I’m baffled I didn’t hear of sooner, and some from obscure bands from ages past. It’s also a very international mix this time, with bands from Italy, the US, Norway, Armenia and Greece. Perhaps you’ll discover something new like I did!
Slow Danse With The Dead ~ Crucifix
Check the album out here:
Pretty Addicted ~ Phobia
Pain’s not bad. It’s good.
Pretty Addicted makes its second appearance on my lists this month, with another track off of their recent Soul for Sale album. Upon repeated listens this song started to overtake “‘Tones and Whiskey” as my favorite. A song about dreaded phobias, especially of the dentist office, with its cringe-inducing sounds of drills in the background. I hate going to the dentist too, and had a very traumatic root canal done to me, so I can relate to this song. The line “I don’t want to be brave, I don’t want to overcome anything” stands out to me. Everyone looks at phobias as something you need to face and overcome, but what if you just don’t want to? There’s too much of a problem-solving mentality in psychology. I’ve gone through way too many therapists that tell you to just get over your problems when it’s much easier said than done. Then again, you do have to go to the dentist sometime, so learning to at least cope is something you kind of have to do, if overcoming the fear is impossible.
You can find the album here:
Ötzi ~ Scorpio
I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you Ohh but you’re a Scorpio!
This song is just a ton of fun. But what do they have against Scorpios? Are they saying they love someone despite their being a Scorpio? Are Scorpios unloveable? I don’t know a lot about Zodiac signs to be honest.
Ötzi is a post-punk band out of Oakland, California, making them neighbors with the other Oakland post-punk band Mystic Priestess (and again I wonder where the goth scene was back when I lived in the Bay Area, seems to have caught on after I moved to Florida in 2015). Musically they lean closer to punk more than a lot of post-punk bands do, with fast-paced vocals and heavy instrumentals, especially with this song. I was putting together a goth sax mix (which I should do another blog about) and asked for recommendations on Facebook, and this song came up, which is how I discovered it. And you will see the goth sax on full display in this music video. This song came out on their Storm album last year.
Jrimurmur ~ Es Kendani Em!
I am still trying to get the word out about this post-punk/coldwave band from Armenia, which has contributed to the soundtrack of my summer for sure. They have made my list three months in a row. While most of their songs are downbeat, dark and atmospheric, this song screams with passion. “Es Kendani Em” translates to “I am alive” (Ես կենդանի եմ in Armenian script; I wrote it in English transliteration because that is how the band lists it). The first word is pronounced more like “Yes” than “Es”, but that’s how transliteration goes sometimes. I can’t listen to this without also wanting to shout “Es kendani em!” The climax of the song has this phrase repeated like a mantra. The wolf howl in the background of the final screams is a particularly nice touch, gives the song a really carnal adrenaline rush. It reminds me of the cry of a nation surrounded by enemies, declaring that they still live in spite of their enemy’s attempts to destroy them. I am not sure this is the intended interpretation, but it’s what comes to my mind. It isn’t a proud or happy shout, but one of desperation. The entire song has kind of a feeling of despiration. It screams “I’m still alive in spite of everything!” The music video, apparently a Soviet-animated adaptation of The Jungle Book, seems a bit out of place, but I imagine it’s unlikely to be taken down for copyright.
Their album “Lur Mur” which debuted last June can be found on Bandcamp:
Rendez-Vous ~ Distance
Rendez-Vous is a post-punk band out of Paris, France (as one might suspect due to their name). They’ve been around for a few years, starting in 2012, and my discovery of this band thanks to YouTube recommendations was another of those “how did I not hear this sooner?” moments. This is the title track off their album Distance, their second EP which came out in 2016 to much acclaim from what I’ve read. This song was named one of the 100 best songs of 2016 by Les Inrockuptibkes magazine (which must be a pretty cool magazine to include post-punk). I suppose it was the music video that drew me in, which is what a good music video does. The video is age restricted and only viewable on YouTube so I decided there was little point in embedding it here, but here’s the link to it. It’s just people getting the ever-loving hell beaten out of them. It must have been recorded at some sort of riot. Wouldn’t want the kiddies to get scared, or see it and start giving their sibling a beatdown, eh YouTube?
Distance is available from Avant! Records.
Garden of Delight ~ Blessed Minutes
I was not able to find out where to buy the album, unfortunately.
Fear Condition ~ Paris at Night
We are returning to the bottomless well of the 1980s once more, the decade that keeps on giving. “Paris at Night” was released in 1986. The band Fear Condition formed the same year, in Thessaloniki, Greece. So the Greek goth scene has been around a lot longer than I realized, and I suppose modern Greek bands like Selofan owe a debt if gratitude to this band and others. This was another song that showed up on my quest for the goth sax, which you will find prominently featured here.
This is off their album Till Night Comes Again, which I was not able to find on Bandcamp, but if you’re really serious about getting it there’s a very expensive vinyl of it being sold on eBay. It’s out of my price range, plus I lack a record player anyway, so I can only hope it gets rereleased someday.
Rite ~ Beirut in my Garden
Rite is a post-punk band out of Italy, often spelling their name with a cross at the front of it which initially made me think the band name was “trite” (and no, my keyboard can’t make a cross). This song, “Beirut in my Garden”, is off their album Youth which came out in July of 2020. It’s a very low-key, chill kind of song with simple bass guitar and synth percussion, but I quite enjoy it. Who wouldn’t want Beirut in their garden? It would be worth it for the Lebanese food alone. Anyway, this is definitely a band to seek out if you’re a fan of post-punk, it has that classic sound that definitely could have come out in the early 80s.
Kalax - Never Let You Go
And now for a couple out-of-genre experiences where I’ll discuss a couple of the non-goth songs I’ve been into lately. Kalax is one of my favorite synthwave groups, as I tend to prefer synthwave with vocals (even though 95 percent of the genre is instrumentals). I was really into synthwave (aka retrowave) at one time in the mid-2010s, but nowadays the only bands I still really listen to are Kalax, The Midnight, Timecop 1983 and maybe a few others, provided there are vocals. I guess my musical tastes shift slightly every few years, but I’ll always have room in my heart for songs like the one above. This is another stirring song about a couple who have broken up or at least parted ways for some reason but still love each other, accented with passionate saxophone accompaniment. Yearning for lost love is a frequent topic in synthwave with vocals. Anyway, I will never stop thanking this band for the song “Let Go”, which I first heard after losing a job and it really kind of healed me. Although this song doesn’t really hit home for me in the same way I still really like it.
You can buy the single here:
Alice in Chains ~ Get Born Again
I went on an Alice in Chains binge a few weeks ago just because the mood struck me, and this song came up. It came out in 1999, and I don’t think I had heard it since then. I literally hadn’t thought about this song for more than twenty years, and it all came back to me. I’ve revisited the songs I liked in the 1990s so many times that it’s rare these days that I come across one I’d forgotten about that unlocks a long dormant memory. It used to play on the radio back then but somehow I never recorded it onto one of my mixtapes. There’s a very tragic backstory to this song I found out, as singer Layne Staley was deep into a heroin addiction that would cost him his life a few years later. He sang this weighing less than 100 pounds, and with no teeth. You can hear a lisp if you listen closely. Obviously the music video is using older footage of him. Although the song is about religious hypocrisy, you have to think this song was also about the end of his life in some subtle way; not literally about Staley’s impending death like David Bowie’s Blackstar album was for Bowie for example, but the subtext is there. Well, he needs to hurry up and get born again. Alice in Chains did continue on without him but as usual when a band replaces their singer it’s never been quite the same.
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