#synth-rock

Hello, dear listener. It’s your old pal, th3-0, back with another steamin’ slab of groovy Americana, served at room-temperature for coolness. For around nine months straight, I’ve been posting pretty much nothing but music from bands not based on popularity, but criminal levels of obscurity. It was a daunting task to be sure, one that netted far fewer yearly hits on musical installments than ever before. BUT DAMMIT, it was my pleasure to plant the seeds of these audial rarities in the darkest corners of the internet so that they may see light, thrive and live on in the memories of others. I regret nothing, and as such, I will continue this tradition for a bit longer by shining a little light at one of my favorite musical underdogs of all time, Cults. As their band name suggests, this was never a group that was destined for mainstream success and happens to mostly entertain a worldly but overall small cult following. Some people can’t stand their stuff for a few (mostly valid) reasons. Some folk like it in small, medium, or even high doses. I’m in the small-to-medium dose camp. There’s a haunting, manic depressive and distinctly ironic quality to their work that I keep on coming back to over the years. The instrumentals and lyrics are very self-aware, and I like music that I can relate to on some level. See that YouTube link above? Click it, it will hopefully expose you for the first time to High Road from their 2013 album Static. The song on the bottom of their page is from the same album, which is excellent in terms of emotional range. More details below, just scroll on down!

Hailing from Manhattan, this is perhaps one of the most underrated duos in recent memory despite their small and significant accolades. I first heard them as music featured on a television show, then I heard them on another television show and took it upon myself to investigate their catalog. I don’t think I could have recommended a more retro-sounding musical entry for this month’s installment. If you ever have a particular craving for new music that sounds like it’s from 5-7 decades previous in structure and tone, you can officially call off the search party! A hell of a lot of their catalog sounds like tunes from vintage 60’s girl groups (ala The Supremes or The Ronettes), only wrapped in a fresh stick of bubblegum chemically infused with dreamy and sometimes psychedelic ingredients. Its experimental indie pop stabbed at its very heart with a needle made of synth-rock, and the results are a simple but utterly surreal listening experience, especially when experienced for the first time. If it sounds like I’m selling you a drug, that’s because I am. In fact, take the first two hits for free, on me, you’ll likely be back for more. Both the songs I’ve posted here are from an album that succeeded this musical duo’s actual romantic breakup. This guy-and-girl duo were seriously involved with one another to start their combined careers and then had to learn how to record music and perform together after a breakup. They had to stare at each other in the eyes at a studio and write music together under these circumstances, imagine that. That takes strength and will, and they created a damn fine and almost supernatural-sounding album out of that pressure. Bravissmo! Way to carry on, seriously, good example on you two! Lead vocalist Madeline Follin’s vocals sound almost alien to me at times, as she can hit extreme highs and lows with her voice that sound both too high and too low to my ears. I like her weird but impressive vocal range, which matches well with Brian Oblivion’s wide-ranging contributions to create a multi-instrument and multi-vocal journey into another dimension. Some of their tunes are drenched in an ironic self-awareness that mocks you as you’re listening to it, as if it’s calling you out on your own bullshit and/or high hopes. I love that, I feel like nobody else can accomplish that kind of brutally self-aware vibe in quite the same way. They make songs that contain a rare type of mystery and intrigue, a full-on hypnosis at times, and a very special alchemical combination of elements that you can only find in the depths of modern music if you care to dig for your spoils. Just below, you can click on Always Forever to establish a dynamic contrast from the tune on top. Enjoy, dear listener.

GARY NUMAN - “NEW ANGER”

Few artists have quite as slavish a cult following as Gary Numan, but even a lot of us true believers tend to be a bit down on a lot of his output later in the 1980s, after his initial heyday bringing synthesisers into mainstream pop but before his metamorphosis into an elder statesman of industrial goth. Personally, it served as an important bridge for me to broaden my horizons, bridging the gap between more accessible synth-pop into the more strange and dissonant industrial underground...and yet, at the same time, I kind of “get” the sense in which a lot of this stuff is sort of bad? There’s a definite cheese factor about these albums, a sort of tryhard sensibility that comes from Numan’s apparent chasing of mainstream success despite the public being pretty deeply “over” him. The sort of overblown caricature of pop on display here is actually pretty fun in hindsight, though, and the tension between Numan’s punk roots and his facade of slick production invigourates the end result.

Essenger & Young Medicine - Lost Boys

Essenger recruits synth-rock trio Young Medicine in the long-awaited collaboration, "Lost Boys." Paying homage to the 80’s vampire thriller of the same name, Young Medicine’s live instrumentation and aggressive chorus vocals add a powerful edge to Essenger’s synth production and take the track for one hell of a ride. 

  Lyrics below the line.