In another “near miss,” I almost made the mistake of sleeping on STORRY. Hailing from Toronto, this self-produced songstress and JUNO award nominee putting out eclectic R&B and pop. “Intimate Abuse” is her latest offering, celebrating real love thriving in the shadow of abuse. STORRY’s voice simmers with impassioned thriving. She is a soul child picking apples from the tree planted long ago by Mary J. Blige.
Front and center is resilience learned from being coerced into the sex industry. It’s a bravely unpopular position to take. It is an uphill battle against big-moneyed interest that has been successfully marketing itself as empowering rather than endangering. “Even well-meaning family members would tell me not to share my experiences,” she writes, “because there’s a lot of shame and victim-blaming when it comes to abuse and the sex industry.” STORRY’s biggest asset is her willingness to tell her story – despite a world that silences people like her. Brava.
Check out the video for “Intimate Abuse” below, and a dozen more on her YouTube.
During my annual May/June burnout I ended up sleeping on some incoming tunes that needed to be heard, but I knew I had to go back to through the inbox for May release “Sour in the Sun” by Scarlett Flynn. Woozy bass and keys paint a downtempo portrait behind Flynn’s enigmatic voice. It sounds a little like Kate Bush fertilized Portishead’s egg sac. It’s another song ruminating on lockdown ennui, a common theme these days, but Scarlett Flynn presents it through a “horror of choices” that color the illustration vividly: “I haven’t decided yet/celery or cigarette/to sour in the sun or split the water/to reach for the gun or the stars.”
The track comes off Scarlett Flynn’s upcoming solo album Living is Hell. This is her debut after fifteen years of co-lead vocals with pop/folk outfit Running Red Lights. Check out the video below, too.
Les Cooper knows how to set the mood. Hailing from the Toronto area, this multi-instrumentalist and producer has a long history of orchestrating ambivances through working with musicians, symphonies, and television shows. With his new release Noise, Cooper uses his decades of skills to paint portraits of uncertainty. Gentle but tinkling rhythms and a solid emotional core make Noise a really flavorful listen.
Noise starts with “Stranger,” a tune that gets a little deeper under my skin with each play. The album’s second track, “Noise,” shimmies with a bossa-nova flavor and hummingbird vocals of Caroline Marie Brooks. Despite its anxious lyrics, it vibes more like abandoning Saturday evening plans for Hulu rather than braving the outside world. It ends up being a standout track, the most upbeat of the bunch, and the one with the “date night with the boo” flavor. It’s also a great showcase of Cooper’s vocals, which are warm with a touch of elevating rasp.
Gorgeous video for Best Of You by Anne Douris
“Best of You” is a thoughtful nodder about being stuck under the weight of others’ good intentions, when the world, even at its best, can be smothering. “And the world pulls you ’round/and the sky pulls you down to the ground,” Cooper illustrates, that illustrates powerlessness to one’s routines. Further, “Keep It Down” seems like an answer to “Noise,” like the far end of a relationship when curling up doesn’t seem like the safe place it used to be. Cooper conveys that sense of and tension isolation in his lyrics. It rolls with a country melancholy played on something with a bow (“cinematic strings” he calls them in a blurb). Together, these three songs seem to (in my mind) illustrate the conflict of whether internal spaces are fences or prison walls, or perhaps a bit of both.
Noise is a great record for lovers of acoustic guitar sounds with not-too-much electrical diddling. It’s just so carefully put together that it’ll draw you in and trap you. I get flavors of Massive Attack and later-years Talk Talk. Check it out.
Trying to write while neck deep in the grind means sometimes good tunes fall through the cracks. Here I’m going to offer my inbox some relief while sharing worthy musical goodness with you lovable clickers. Five tunes not to miss coming right up!
Opeongo – tragedy
Artwork by Patrick Decourcy
Opeongo’s voice is so uniquely clear that it paints “tragedy” in bold colors. His tone is sweet and vaguely nasal that it feels like Steve Harley, making “tragedy” feel very glam. It nods so good and demands your attention. The lyrics tell a grim story of Canadian-indigenous genocide, but end in the potential for hope as voices like Opeongo’s try and remember history so it never repeats. It’s gorgeous and sorrowful, and that voice will stick to you.
“We Were Strangers” has a post-punk drum flavor and an electro agenda. The chorus has that kind of foot-stomping energy that is completely magnetic. The result is a pop tension that feels a lot like 1am with four drinks in the gullet, about to make a very exciting bad decision. Vaguely nostalgic, exacerbated by the video’s visuals as the viewer perpetually leaves everything behind. There’s just something about that combination of tones that is so compelling.
Soulful, smooth, and cool as hell, Lydia Persaud’s “Good For Us” is the flavor of self-care and new clarity. Simple rhythm and delicate guitar let Persaud’s voice wash over and cleanse the soul as she sings the praises of time away from one’s lover. The video sees Persaud smudging away the bad vibes and spending some much-needed personal time with her besties. Send the other half out for groceries and roll out the bath bombs to melt into this one.
It’s hard to top an original, but John Orpheus gives and old favorite new breath in his Afro-pop cover of Radiohead’s “House of Cards.” Capitalizing on the original’s minimalist percussion, Orpheus adds delicate Caribbean rhythm that gives the song a new optimism. His vocals feel a bit like Phil Collins at moments. Refreshingly honest, video director Patrick Hodgson illustrates the tune with images of real couples in love, from the joyful to the mildly erotic, which capture the (often underrepresented) love shared in a long-term relationships.
It starts like a post-punk electro tune until the beat takes on this off-kilter syncopation that rests on the border between darkwave and electro jazz, if there is one. Noisy and tense, “Blood” is trying desperately to break through the weighted chains of our algorithmic technological oppression. “Blood” is visceral, and stressful, and so very easy to connect with if you’ve ever felt overburdened by the world as it has been engineered. Visuals show (what I interpret as) sufferers escaping their homes to find the last vestige of land free from the looming pressures of technocracy, only able to find rest by laying in the woods in snow. I get it – screens can start to feel like prison walls. Engage with this one.
This one is a smooth head-nodder by way of Algerian-born Canadian Aladean Kheroufi. Like a Beatles grandchild, “Love…” is declaration of peace. It’s a roadmap to agape,or universal love – the kind of love that would heal the world. With its latte-smooth vocals and downtempo soul sound, Kheroufi brings us back to a feeling when it seemed like love among humanity could really defeat all evil. It makes this song a welcome respite from the world. The video combines fuzzy film filtering with pleasant scenes from Kheroufi’s life, evoking a wistfulness for a time before… you know. Check out the 60s motifs and funky b-side “Every Girl.”
Les Cooper a Toronto’ based producer, mixer, multi-instrumentalist, JUNO award winner, and very cool name haver, has released his debut single, “Stranger.” It starts with buzzy tones before Les’s haunting vocal slides into consciousness. Layers upon layers of swirling instrumentation weave through Cooper’s mellow voice. The speaker of the song seems to carry a very intense and public hurt as it tells the pain of feeling left behind after someone else’s success: Everyone will say that you’re the one that shook them up/the one that tore them down. There is a sense of the speaker struggling through this rawness as they encounter this person’s exploits in other places: Everyone may write about the things you did, the lies you told, the hearts you broke. I get the sense that the hurt may be public, but the speaker feels quite invisible, like they’re the one becoming a stranger. It’s a good atmospheric mellow. I wonder what he’ll come up with next.
Last Tuesday night, it was Springtime in February in NYC, but…it was HOTTER. THAN. HELL. over at Berlin on Avenue A as Sate and her band took the stage for a free and early show. Small in size is Berlin but that did not deter the Toronto native and her beast of a band from making it seem like the biggest show in town. As her boys walked onto the stage the energy already felt different, a statement was about to be made. Moments later Sate would arrive right behind a sample from TheExorcist film… “Do you know what she did? Your cunting daughter!” looking like a powerful goddess with her braids tied back to appear like long ram-like horns with her head shaved on the sides in literal leather and lace boasting a shirt that read “Be Polite You Fucker” we were already all sold – You know how sometimes you’re at a gig and halfway thru it the band really hits their stride? Well, right out of the gate this outfit was absolutely on fire. As someone who reviews shows I don’t really like to be on my phone during them and I often don’t take a lot of photos or notes at gigs either, if any at all. I just stand there and try to absorb everything I can. – And on this night and millions of others I did just that – “Sate”: Satisfy a desire to the full – no namesake could ever be worn more true as this woman, this powerhouse, lead her band thru a fierce 8-song set. Covered in sweat, Sate blurs the lines of everything you think you may know…about anything. It’s so goddamn refreshing. Don’t come to her shows with any preconceived notions, cause your ass best stay out in the cold. The chemistry between the singer and her band was so powerful, I’m talking Godzilla baby! It’s just a group of people absolutely on the same page, tight and in tune. These are real songs from real people and there is very little to apologize for.
Sate setlist 2.05.19 Berlin NYC
Sate writes songs about making her mark (Famous), Family (What Did I Do), power (Warrior) and everything in between. During this show I felt like we were all a part of some killer party. The audience was a melting pot and hung on every song only wanting more in the end. To say that we were satisfied would be very true, but sated? Not at all cause everybody in that room wanted more and more and more! Brave and bold, every song was a burner, especially new single “Dirty Little Lie” which also has a killer new video to go along with it. Plain and simple, if you have the opportunity to see this outfit live, DO IT and thank me later, but thank them first.
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