Forbidden Friends :: "Tiny Hands"

Nimble, nasal vocals dance over a guitar progression that would make John Darnielle at least smile on Forbidden Friends' debut single "Tiny Hands." As a split from Portland power-poppers The Thermals (if this doesn't make you scream, "Now we can see!" you've missed it), Forbidden Friends share the certain candor of the their parent band, each lyric self-consciously confessional and unapologetically so. In moments, the arrangement gives itself over to a certain authoritarian surreality, positing, "How does it feel to rule the world and rule the people/with tiny hands and tiny evil/never knowing if you're real?" A rollicking and unsettled ride, we are left confident of what we hold in our grasp and what we simply never understand.

Listen :: Forbidden Friends - "Tiny Hands"

Work Drugs :: "Rad Racer"

Riding the last crest of the chillwave movement, Work Drugs have a collection of three singles that manage to survive the redundancy of such quickly shifting critical groupings. By next year, everyone will be into something else and, my sense is Work Drugs won't care. On "Rad Racer" they divine their best chorus to date, evoking the material metaphor of driving through some persuasively neon urban nightscape. The vocals are candid and hushed, like this highlighter secret, bright and fuzzy, lost and not terribly upset about it.

 

Alex Winston :: "Locomotive" and "Sisterwife"

Alex Winston is building a bizarre carnival of pop. Original demos and singles like, "Animal," seemed to indicate that this uber-talented young singer would end up in an Old Navy commercial, but it was hard to see how deep the critical creative pool would run. Not that the Ingrid Michaelson career arc is a bad one, but it is surely limited (see: her second record). Conversely, Winston is an evolution, blowing clear through the cutesy limitations of her first work, erupting with a bigger sound and these freaky, Kate Bush (it is the year of Kate Bush) vocals. On "Locomotive," she is both brutal, "I wish I cared about the things you care about but I don't", while still insisting on these powerful laws of inertia in the chorus. On "Sister Wife," the arrangement is a booming, swaying circus tent with Winston in the middle as ringmaster, tamed animal and trapeze swinger.

Listen :: Alex Winston- "Locomotive"
Listen :: Alex Winston - "Sisterwife"
Listen :: Alex Winston - "Medicine"

Bird of Youth :: "Bombs Away, She Is Here To Stay"

Brooklyn's Bird of Youth build a structure of guitar-driven indie pop that recalls a well-produced early-career Rilo Kiley. Only on this version, Jenny Lewis' vocals are swapped for the candor and unimpressed timbre of Beth Wawerna, something that channels a more optimistic 1991 Liz Phair. Of course, all these comparisons, useful tracking devices they may be, do little to help frame the fun of the chorus where the snare drum steps forward and Wawerna finally lets herself go on the eponymous lyric. Sounding so firmly blase in the first third, she sets herself up as a sympathetic figure - or is it just earnest? - as the song swells around her, these confessions gaining strength with a hint of agony at the edges. Bird of Youth's debut record, Defender, is out May 24th and was produced by Will Sheff of Okkervil River, an influence you can hear if you listen real close and care about what Will Sheff's music sounds like.

Listen :: Bird of Youth - "Bombs Away, She Is Here To Stay"

The Seedy Seeds :: "Verb Noun"

Suckering you in with flourishing strings and a lazy acoustic guitar progression, The Seedy Seeds end up somewhere more ambitious than their cheeky name and aesthetic belie. "Verb Noun" courts this clip-clop electronic beat which the band then lays under a beautiful cacophony of instrument and melody. Like a folk-inspired Moonbabies, the male and female vocals trade off halfway through when the arrangement seems to find a secondary momentum that the initial assessment never have hinted at. The chorus, a repeating and elevating lyric, "I don't want to do just anything," supports murderous lines like, "Is it any less than if I make it with force, than if I was forced to make it?" The hook stays in your head for days, "I don't want to do just anything," a call to higher purpose or greater results or both.  

Listen :: The Seedy Seeds - "Verb Noun"

Mansions :: "Blackest Sky"

Down-stroke guitars and power-pop influence drive Mansions' latest single, "Blackest Sky," a song about what we've lost. At its root it is an alternative rock song from the late 90s, updated with hints of more recent acts like The Thermals. Lyrically, independent rock frequently addresses themes of lost youth but perhaps never so directly. Front man, Chris Browder, howls in the chorus, "My youth was stolen from underneath my nose," while he traffics in self-conscious nostalgia with verses about friends, whiskey, lawn chairs and summers spent under the blackest sky. For most of the rock kids, their youth was something misplaced, lost like keys slipped in between the cushions of the metaphysical couch. For Browder, his youth was robbed, placed down for a minute and disappeared into the great indifference some insidious back pocket.

Listen :: Mansions - "Blackest Sky"

Dreamers of the Ghetto :: "Connection"

We won't offer a mid-apocalyptic eulogy for a rapidly ghettoized American experience. In fact, we assume Bloomington, Indiana's Dreamers of the Ghetto only invoke the term in the general specific, metaphorical, hope-in-the-unseen sort of way. These are small town kids with big dreams, or something similar, tapping the soul of our common experience, you know, back when things were good. On "Connection," yearning vocals search for pathos, a hint of a gravel at the edges, the narration of these post-industrial hymns for an age that maybe never existed and is certainly not coming again. The driving guitars push the edges of the arrangement's real estate while atmospheric synths mope like the search is in vain. Unrequited and lonesome, Dreamers of the Ghetto are coming this year, a vanishing point on the horizon, unreachable and intentionally so.

Connection by Dreamers of the Ghetto