Writing about music in lieu of human interaction
Care Package is a recently formed dream-pop outfit featuring members of Baseball Dad and Urban Heat Island; the band's debut EP, I Wanna Swim, came out this month. The EP is filled with twinkling bits of melody that come in the form of guitar arpeggios, glockenspiel plinks, and filigreed synth adornments. The group proves itself … Continue reading Daily Yinz – Care Package – Blue (I Wanna Swim)
E.W. Harris is a futuristic folk artist from Akron, OH (not Pittsburgh I know, but the dude's got musical connections to the city, so we're counting it) who recently released a single called "Bad Ghost." The track uses a series of impressionistic, forbidding images to tell the story of a ghastly late-night murder and subsequent … Continue reading Daily Yinz – E.W. Harris – Bad Ghost
Helga Scheibert is a Transylvania-raised, CMU-affiliated pianist who released an album called "Mirror Image" in May. The album's music is an eclectic blend of classical, jazz, folk, and experimental piano stylings. While listening, you'll hear roiling low-note swells, jaunty, sophisticated bounces, theatrical flourishes, virtuosic runs, and a dash of field recording here and there. "Whale … Continue reading Daily Yinz – Helga Scheibert – Whale Song
Melt are a collection of PGH music veterans who recently released a swampy self-titled debut. Melt contains all of the stoner rock staples: wooly, anvil-heavy guitars, chord progressions dripping with swaggering menace, and fuzzed-out vocals pitched at a rawk god register. The album art, which displays an entity--part angler fish, part cyborg, part coral reef, … Continue reading Daily Yinz – Melt – Holy War
SAMURAE goes acoustic for the antimaterialist self-care ballad "Tree Talk." SAMURAE, an R&B artist who possesses a truly mighty set of pipes, strips her sound down to a simple guitar and piano combination for some "Tree Talk," allowing her muscular voice and introspective lyrics to take center stage. Overtop a swaying, Randy Newman-esque groove, SAMURAE … Continue reading Daily Yinz – SAMURAE – Tree Talk
Polish Hill's Elias Khouri makes a bold, glammy statement with his latest single, "Wanted You To Know." Songs about music are an essential part of many genres' canons. From Billy Joel to A Tribe Called Quest, Chuck Berry to Natasha Bedingfield, artists have drawn inspiration from their own creative processes for decades. An even more … Continue reading Daily Yinz – Elias Khouri – Wanted You To Know
On Hubbs's recent single, "Routes" (produced by Big Jerm), the rapper pays tribute to the bus lines and landmarks that have shaped his life. Big Jerm's lush boom-bap instrumental, filled with glistening strings and dramatic guitar stabs, provides ample space for Hubbs to spin the most internal-rhyme-heavy ode to the Pittsburgh Port Authority that you'll … Continue reading Daily Yinz – Hubbs – Routes
Pittsburgh's experimental Ongoing Box label recently released The Watershed, a new album by Doctor Matt (the sophisti-pop pseudonym of Matt Aelmore from Watererer, How Things Are Made, and many other ventures). The album comes with the following description: "The Watershed is Love and redemption in the inevitability of climate change. AI drum programming makes sophistipop … Continue reading Daily Yinz – Doctor Matt – The Watershed
Self-described "garage-folk" artist Lindsay Dragan returns with "Everywhere," a soaring rocker that reaches for transcendence in the face of hardship. The track is led by a propulsive rhythm section, airy guitar arpeggios, and a wistful violin motif that mirrors the song's central vocal refrain, a belted "It's everywheeeere" that seems to encompass a life's worth … Continue reading Daily Yinz – Lindsay Dragan – Everywhere
Jazzy noise (noisy jazz?) outfit Skeletonized recruited multi-instrumentalist Nathan Berlinguette for their latest album, Future Shock. Berlinguette's contributions on guitar, synths, and electronics add a sense of creeping dread to Skeletonized's unhinged wallop. The swirling drones and spiraling shards of melody that underpin "Your Boring Life" elevate the song's gnarled thicket of squealing saxophones and … Continue reading Daily Yinz – Skeletonized Quartet – Your Boring Life
