Clover Koval – Salt from the Beach
“Salt from the Beach,” from the new album Spatial Awareness, finds Burlington, VT’s Clover Koval lifting shoegaze’s swirling, hazy guitar and synth textures and applying them to a mellow bossa nova jam that sways like an island breeze. A wistful, muted trumpet solo near the end of song is another feature that you don’t hear from most bedroomgaze artists. With lyrics that discuss the experience of insomnia, this is an appropriate track to listen to while watching the sun rise on a sleepy Monday morning.
Chisara Agor – Anything
Chisara Agor is an artist from the South London district of Peckham whose music is a blend of folk, jazz, soul, and pop. “Anything,” from her new In-Between EP, feels like the kind of track that could accompany a cinematic moment of epiphany, triumph, release, etc, during which the central character bounds exuberantly down a city street in the middle of a rainstorm. Sashaying strums of delicate ukulele gradually build to an anthemic chorus; Agor’s voice effortlessly slips in and out of a falsetto when she asks the song’s defining question: “Do you believe/That everything and anything can happen?” An empowering (and incredibly catchy) listen.
Macabre Goat – The Red Skies
Macabre Goat has to be one of the best band names I’ve heard in a while. On “The Red Skies,” from Septem Ostiis Macabre (Latin for “The Seven Doors of the Macabre,” or something close to that), the Mexican death metal band relays tales of “a soul without body/falling into the depths of the underworld” through “blood-drenched clouds.” It doesn’t sound like a great time. Instrumental passages of atmospheric doom provide relief from the pummeling blast beats and unearthly shrieks and growls. Another Halloween-appropriate track to begin the week.
Bored In Pittsburgh 