No, Said Joe

No Vacation // Dræm Girl

In a short few months the bay area based group No Vacation has without a doubt become one of my need to know artists for this year, Now a full fledged band, No Vacation’s carefree yet tight knit approach to dream pop is hard to sleep on and even harder to forget. No Vacation finds solace in those lingering emotions that we’d all wish we could do without, but there’s also a certain reassuring warmness and unbridled vibrancy to it all, as if each track is a little way of saying that somehow everything will be okay. 

No Vacation’s latest release, Summer Break Mixtape, is available via bandcamp along with their prior mixtape , Amo XO. You can also pick up Amo XO on cassette from their newly formed collective, Sensitive Boys.

Jamaican Queens // Never Felt Love

“Never Felt Love” finds Jamaican Queens singer Ryan Spencer struggling for air. He has a macabre way of reimagining exchanges with ex-lovers, but the simplicity of his storytelling has an eerie sense of truth to it. I find common ground with a lot of what he’s saying, and as the track progresses, more  and more of the morbid lyrics agree with me. Who am I, who is this tortured person I seem to have become. Spencer reminds me at the end of each verse, “It’s scaring me, too.”

Jamaican Queens’ newest album Downers is a drug cocktail equal parts elation and depression with heaving, fuzzy synth lines sprinkled throughout. At some points it goes down sweetly and smoothly, while at other times it has quite the bite, but there’s no denying this record’s ability to balance the harsh with the pleasurable. It is emo, paranoid, and self-indulgent: all the things we wish we weren’t, but we know that we are. The band leaves the listener with a simple insight: it’s kind of hard, but we can deal.

“KiwiKisses” by Trenton Point // KiwiKisses - Single (Out 6.1.15 via Vacant Magic)

Theodore Carl // Say ft. Bijoux

It starts out in a cavern, but you realize too late that it’s made of sand. It starts collapsing, a structural intensity that’s as feigned as his last words to you. You run, sprint, and just as the sand starts biting at your heels, you burst out of the cavern entrance as it crumbles behind you. 

Funny how a couple of insignificant granules can fuck up your whole day. You walk towards a stream nearby, your t-shirt clinging to your sweaty body. You take a drink and it tastes almost as sweet as his words sounded. Almost.

Theodore Carl makes songs that make me anxious but not nervous, and Bijoux deserves to be heard. They are both based in Ann Arbor, MI.