As seasons change, what rings out the right way musically changes too – perhaps as fall sets in you like to look for things that sound a little warmer, a little more mellow, some different sonic hues than the brightness of summer. For a few tunes in that direction, look no further than this week’s edition of 3 Songs You Have To Hear:
“Rings Of Saturn” by Soccer Mommy
Soccer Mommy and Snail Mail, contemporaries and luminaries of 20-teens indie rock, head out on a co-headline tour this fall (unfortunately without any stops in our corner, but hopefully they’ll reconvene soon!), and Sophie Allison (aka Soccer Mommy) has a new single out before she hits the road. Allison has a nearly-peerless renown for mining the melancholy and highly emotional, and looks to the sky for answers in “Rings of Saturn”, begging formations of stars and celestial bodies for the way forward, for what to do next. Whether they hold the answers or not, Allison certainly succeeds in providing a space for solace in others peeking at the heavens for some kind of sign.
“Blister Sunrise” by M83
French electronic stalwarts M83 return with their first new album in three years this month, I Wrote You A Letter, and that album’s first single “Blister Sunrise” harkens back to their earlier days not with a sense of retread or retreat, but with vigor and verve. Synths are luscious and swelling, the soundscape is massive overall, and there’s even screams (?) to be heard. Catharsis is achieved with flying colors here in the latest from M83, and it's making a good forecast for what’s to come on the full album.
“Wander” by Bleary Eyed
If you’re a tuned-in modern-day shoegaze listener, you maybe already know that Philly is a major hot spot in that scene these days – not only for critical labels like Julia’s War, but for bands like Bleary Eyed. The band had an excellent album out last year in Easy, made an appearance at the who’s-who in the genre Slide Away festival back in the spring, and now step into fall with a new single, “Wander”. Their woozy, electronics-forward sound continues in full force here, with breakbeat drums, glitchy sonics, and obscured vocals making both a sort of hazy stasis on the surface but a darker undercurrent pulse below. Bands like Bleary Eyed prove (like many of their contemporaries) that the sounds enmeshed in this particular corner of guitar music are still full of tantalizing fruits ripe for picking.
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