Jeremy Ray - "M.I.N.O"

By Gerard Marcus

With so much (needed) attention being placed on some deep rooted issues in our country, it may sometimes be hard for people who don’t face systemic harassment on a regular basis to remember that people who normally face that harassment have been facing it their entire lives. A lot of the issues that are now seeing more or less universal empathy have sadly become normalized in the world of the afflicted. There’s a tension between a lot of the new voices strongly calling for change, and an unwillingness of some from affected communities, who have been given false promises before, to believe that call. Jeremy Ray’s new single/video ‘M.I.N.O’ (murder is not opportunity) explores this tension from the side of the afflicted. 

The video is a simple one, finding Jeremy in an acid-kissed dreamscape proposing questions and relaying observations from the mind of someone who is searching for an optimistic future, but has experienced the dulling pain of crushed hope again and again. ”Are we not on stolen land?” Jeremy asks, pointing to the foundation of pessimism. How can a person looking back at our country's entire history open themselves up to believe this time will be different? “So involved you couldn’t see the violence.” How does that person know this isn’t another passing social media phase driven by people's inability to access a lot of the normal comforts of their daily lives? As soon as those people regain their comforts, will they just lose interest like they have so many times before? “Well I wake up scared for my brothers / Hope they’re not mistaken for another man.” This struggle is everyday. 

How do you comfort that? For those new voices so adamant to take action, how do you convince a person who’s mother, father, grandparents, great grandparents, and on have been harassed and taken advantage of that change is coming to a system that defines the rules of the society they live in? There is no one answer, but a strong way to start is by giving your continued time and attention. When life for you gets easier again, don’t forget that this ease isn’t universally experienced. The struggle for equality has been a frustrating, Sisyphean struggle for a lot of us. It would be nice to finally have enough people stick around to help us make it to the top of the hill.

This is the first solo release from Jermey Ray (formerly Dove Lady) who, rumor has it, will be doing a release on Canada based label Vain Mina Records in the not too distant future!

Baseball Gregg - Calendar

By Phillipe Roberts

Deadlines aren’t sexy, but they sure get things done. If you’re reading this, you’ve likely had dozens of artist friends who’ve taken on a “write a song a day” challenge, fought tooth-and-nail to hold themselves to the grind of Inktober, or ground down the keys on their laptop for National Novel Writing Month. Though our bodies and minds chafe at the idea of taming our creative impulses those seemingly artificial constraints can produce some wildly organic results.

Reigning in their substantial creative powers and assembling a cast of all-star DIY collaborators, Baseball Gregg did the damn thing and put out a single every month of 2019. Now assembled into the appropriately named album Calendar, the singles surprisingly coalesce into a fun, satisfying whole that miraculously avoids sounding haphazard and disconnected. Instead, it threads seasonal obsessions and changing moods through with the band’s expert command of winking indie pop sincerity and gift for peppy hook-writing.

Baseball Gregg gently glides across a spectrum of genres - surf, rock, even feather-light R&B–but generally sits in a more grounded version of early aughts indie pop kings The Unicorns, mixed with the bedroom psych of Brooklyn upstarts Crumb. Colorful album opener “Toursong” lays out the palette that Baseball Gregg works across Calendar–bright, beach-ready guitars, whispered voices piling on top of one another, and no-frills, groove-forward drumming conducive to solo dancing in your room or softly bopping around to at the front of an outdoor concert. An ode to friendship on the road, its bubbly heart-on-sleeve nostalgia feels almost religious in its faithful lack of cynicism, and carries through into “Waiting”s slow-hand phaser solo strut. The optimism is so infectious and hits so suddenly that, if your head wasn’t already nodding, you might think Baseball Gregg is deflecting from some hidden inner darkness.

Thankfully, the floor never quite disappears from under you; anywhere the album gestures towards grim reality, the band assert, forcefully, that there’s nothing but love at the heart of it. Even death isn’t safe from a rose-colored re-evaluation on “Gratitude”, where we’re urged to chalk the transition into unconsciousness (or whatever else awaits) up to having the “best dream you’ve ever had”, as placid acoustic guitars and watery synths weave a cozy hammock of sounds from which you’ll gladly doze off into the hereafter. Warbling keyboards and goofy guitar turnarounds subvert the creeping dread of poorly-managed mental illness on “Pleasure and Pain.” The frank discussion of packing a bowl when you know that “this much weed / it’s not good for me” and the numbing effect that self-medication leaves you with is somehow made more effective by keeping it to these diaristic snippets of epiphanies on the journey. Existential dread doesn’t need to be so heavy all the time, and Calendar is better off for its levity.

Guest stars make a huge impact on Calendar. For all of Luca Lovisetto and Sam Regan’s expert songcraft, the album’s undeniable highlight is “The Movies,” featuring prominent lead vocals from Brooklyn’s own Pecas. Played against a delightfully jazzy solo from William Corduroy, her intimate innocence in connecting a beautiful first date to a lifetime of bliss through breathy, utterly dreamy vocals makes it feel almost criminal that it’s the album’s second shortest song. Similarly, a knockout saxophone feature from Jacopo Finelli kicks album closer “Never Bored” well past its almost blindingly on-the-nose use of the unstoppable Young Folks-esque whistle hook, and gives you something concrete to hold onto as the album itself slips off into the distance.

In a twist of fate, Calendar is less a time-capsule documentation of specific emotions and times, and more of a playlist of sturdy indie pop hits that can stand the test of time. Baseball Gregg and their deep bench of featured artists are onto something here. Unlike its namesake, don’t throw this one away after just one year; slide the dates to the right, rewind, and connect the dots.

Check out Baseball Gregg on their Bandcamp.

Panther Hollow - Atoms in the Universe

By Phillipe Roberts

Guitar-backed meditations on insignificance tend to accumulate in locations with a little bit of breathing room–where folks live close enough to taste forest-cleansed air, feel the spray of the ocean, or gaze out into the eerie desert night with a sense of wonder and enough wisdom to quench your ego before the majesty of “empty” space. Perhaps it’s the daily grind of charming and clawing your way to the top in the urban world, or the grandiose monuments to human exceptionalism that cities pretend to be, but within these walls, it’s be big or go home.

Well light pollution be damned; Queens’ Panther Hollow are out here, squinting through a telescope for a taste of that sweet, sweet insignificance on their track “Atoms in the Universe.” The opening and title track for an EP released a year ago today, the song balances gentle folk finger-picking and phaser-enhanced psychedelic rock bombast as it tumbles through a window-gazing reverie into a more innocent time “when we were atoms in the universe / falling down.” Led by Bernardo Ochoa’s telephone-effected vocals and meandering guitar, Panther Hollow paints an ambiguous scene that manages to feel immediately emotionally familiar. From the gentle romance of “when you're right beside me, no one contains us / but our clothes” to the dorm-room psychedelic come-down poetry that “your room is an island / where we are stranded” calls to mind (maybe just mine?), Panther Hollow comes equipped with the lyrical artillery to match their own formidable instrumental fireworks.

The song premieres today on ThrdCoast with a brand new music video. The brilliantly salvaged remains of an animation project, the melted studio playthrough of the song shows off the constellation of collaborations behind Panther Hollow. “This whole process definitely took longer than I intended,” explains Ochoa. “At the time I was planning on organizing a visual EP, and I initially wanted to animate all four songs. But after we released the audio in February, I realized that publishing and moving on was more important to me than finalizing my initial vision. So what's left is these amazing videos shot by Camille Petricola and animated by Joyce Zhao and Dan Criblez. It wasn't what I thought it would be when I first started conceptualizing the EP, but I'm super happy with the work that came out of it.”

Stream the full Atoms in the Universe EP at the band’s Bandcamp page.

Grimm Grimm - Ginormous

By Phillipe Roberts

Back under his longtime alias Grimm Grimm, Koichi Yamanoha gets a little sappy on his new single, “Ginormous,” the title track from his third solo album dropping on February 28. The song blends a glimmering organ riff with harmonized vocals from guest singer Paz Maddio for a soothing midnight waltz, accompanied by a video that brings out its dime-store kitsch elements in a lo-fi green screen romp through long-distance love.

Much like her work in the criminally underrated London trio Value Void, Paz Maddio’s hushed vocals strike a haunting presence in the mix. Kept at a chilly dry tone devoid of reverb to emphasize the gradually building intimacy at the heart of this long-distance confession, her voice creaks and trembles through every syllable as she outlines her own nervous truth–“I want to get in trouble with you.” When this climatic line hits, it’s delivered with all the strength of a bashful whisper, steeped in the tension of admitting that the uncertainty–the unforeseen danger ahead–is part of what she’s fallen in love with. 

Maddio’s voice works incredibly well in this universe of fragile nostalgia, and Yamanoha, working with Italian producer Marta Salogni, brings a lovingly-crafted batch of retro sonics to sweeten the deal. The aforementioned organ does most of the heavy lifting with its slightly muffled, gloomy tone. But the delicate strums of guitar, the shuffling drums and–as any good doo-wop revival song should include–the weeping string arrangement in the coda, suggest an intentionally rough-cut DIY innocence that perfectly compliments its dreamy, bleeding heart adolescent romanticism.

Directors Seth Pimlott and Pearl Doughty-White construct the video’s loose narrative from the fragmented lyrics of “Ginormous,” sending a woman off into the wilderness in search of her lost love, played by Yamanoha. Gliding through a series of black and white backdrops, she gazes lovingly at his picture and dodges shimmering spirits in a forest past a singing mountain. But when the time comes for their long-awaited reunion, and her cautious wave in his direction fails to catch his eye, she returns to the ghosts and dances instead. It’s a remarkably effective video–just one look, and you won’t be able to listen to “Ginormous” again without summoning up your own ghost choir to dance along with.

Brother Moses - What Does It Take?

By Charley Ruddell

Living in New York requires a touch of masochism. At the end of the day, sometimes a daily commute feels as cumbersome and irritating as boarding a rush hour F train strapped with a sousaphone.

“Thousand bucks a month to keep your pillow off the pavement / When’s it gonna work? When’s it gonna break?” frontman James Lockhart asks with exasperation on “What Does It Take?,” the newest single from NYC-via-Arkansas indie rock quartet Brother Moses (off their forthcoming sophomore effort Desperation Pop). The song’s accompanying video—created by Jake Ruth and band member John Lewis-Anderson—uses a NYC resident encumbered by a sousaphone to highlight how difficult the little things, like riding the subway or catching a car, can be in a city like New York.

“What does it take to be wanted?” Lockhart’s poses with fervor. For being a band with barely two years of NYC experience under their belts, Brother Moses seems to understand the city’s imposing tonnage on daily life. Amidst the angular guitar grooves of “What Does It Take?,” Lockhart delves into the loneliness of being one amongst millions. But while his perspective guides the narration, the song’s industrial sounds suggest another main character: New York City itself. Disguised as a gentle harmony are the sampled sounds of a subway car screeching to a halt; a girthy saxophone solo in the song’s midriff reverberates like it’s reflecting from the tile halls of Union Square station. There’s detachment in Lockhart’s voice when he sings the most New York lines known to mankind: “Let the water in the shower turn to freezing / Listening to Ira just to help you fall asleep.”

All of this isn’t to say “What Does It Take?” is completely joyless—in fact, its peppy guitar riffs and chipper demeanor imply a sense of fun. There’s an off-kilter pop-ness within the arrangement that feels akin to the guitar-driven indie pop of a band like Local Natives in their early days—Lockhart also sports a similar vocal huskiness to that of Big Red Machine. With every fluttering guitar riff and every gang vocal, Brother Moses is a band that knows the best way to reach people using raw emotion is with a saucy hook and a tempo over 110.

The song’s accompanying music video is as innocent as it is on the nose, cheekily capturing a struggle in mundanity using a metaphor with whimsy. It’s a video full of familiarities—a subway saxophonist, construction on Bushwick Ave, vibrant street art—that brings the zany energy of wide-eyed transplants to the forefront. As the final moments come to a close, the sousaphonist smashes a racket in a siege of frustration while the band members, clad in red acolyte robes, wail the song’s refrain in the background: “What does it take?”

No one ever said it would be easy living in New York. No one ever said it wouldn’t be fun, either.