Category: Mid Day Music Blast

Mid Day Music Blast : Aubrey Haddard – “Charley”

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We’re here with a mid-day bluesy ballad that would fit in right along with Kate Bush’s discography, but with her own personal flair that keeps me coming back to this song for the last 4 years. As Haddard says in the refrain, “I can’t get you out of my head.” The Brooklyn-based Haddard put together an impressive debut with her 2018 album Blue Part. While Haddard released two singles prior to the album, it quickly became clear that “Charley” was the true show-stopper.

With a voice that sounds straight out of a smokey late-night lounge, Haddard pines after “Charley” with her voice pleading with them to come back around and appease the desire that’s got them stuck in the singer’s head. To me, this perfectly captures that new relationship energy that we can so often get sucked up in when we’re excited about a new connection and obsess a bit over getting our fill.

That’s not even to mention the emotional build musically in this one. The guitar work keeps it simple enough that it never overpowers Haddard’s voice, but the riff itself is catchy and keeps you humming it long after the 2:33 song has drifted away. Another nice touch is the background almost angelic vocalizing that builds up to the song’s crescendo before Haddard fades us out with excellent control.

Charley, oh could we go back, just 24 hours

24 hours is all I need

I could see you, I could meet you

One more time, one more time

What’s going on? I was sitting around and now

I can’t get you out of my head…

Aubrey Haddard – “Charley”
Haddard’s newest album Awake and Talking (2022) is available everywhere.

Mid-Day Music Blast: MOWUKIS – “A Quick Stab In The Heart”

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I don’t know about you guys, but I immediately thought of Radiohead or Polyneso when I first heard these guys. Considering those are two of my favorite bands, that immediately made this one of my favorite new songs. MOWUKIS bio says simple: “I write music to lower the weight.” I’m not entirely sure what it means, but I have some guesses. My silly answer is that he writes so much music that he doesn’t have time to over eat. My serious answer is that he’s using music as a form of therapy, like a lot of us artists tend to. He’s lowering the weight of the world, or his soul, or whatever metaphor you want to use.

The song only has two verses, so even though I normally wouldn’t put a full song’s lyrics, it’s not too egregious. Let’s check them out:

“I…
I just fed the lions
made them such cowards
made them such a lie.
I had,
I had to draw out solutions
to keep this jungle of eyes
from eating my delights.

King,
Alone in full possession
A kingdom-broken-passion
A quick stab in the heart.
Walls,
To keep ourselves from motion
Citizens as pollution
Are slowly passing by.”

I feel like I could attempt to write an essay on these lyrics. Instead, I’ll hit a couple of high points. How does feeding the lions make them cowards? If you put them in captivity and give them a consistent meal, does their drive for hunting start to dissipate? If that’s true, and we generally know that it is. It changes them into a “lie”, a shell of what nature shaped them into over the millennia. We then see this King, who can make lions into cowards, ruling over a kingdom with a broken passion. A citizenry that is safe behind walls, but wasting their lives away now that all the passions are gone. It’s a really great mirror to the lions before and a beautiful song overall.

-Caleb

 

Mid-Day Music Blast: Bethia Beadman – “At the Beach”

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Well, if you know me personally, which most of you don’t, you’ll know that the Neil Young “Out of the Blue” reference immediately caught my attention. But here, she’s flipped it in a clever way to discuss dipping your feet in the blue ocean, as well as a flipping of understanding, since it follows up showing difference when she says:

“I don’t know what it’s like to be a man
And peer into the kill
Out of the black into the blue
You dip your feet into the cool”

And that brings up the most striking thing to me overall about this song. Yes it has incredible vocals that are timeless, but the lyrics really stand out to me. It seems to be setting herself against various men in her life, namely her father.

“Hell I’m just here inhabiting the holes
That you dig and dig so you can feel better

Looks like a castle in the sand
If only fathers would stick around
But I don’t know what it’s like to be a man
I don’t know what it’s like to be a man.”

Which might ultimately explain the Neil Young reference. She’s talking to someone of an older generation, her father, in a language he will hopefully understand. She’s trying to acknowledge the difficultly of being a father while also telling her father how painful it was that he wasn’t around, and the impact that it’s left on her, and all the other daughters who’ve grown up without fathers, leaving holes where there should be sand.

-Caleb

Want to hear more? We’ve added this song to our July TOTD playlist on Spotify. Check that out here.

 

 

 

Mid Day Music Blast: TyC “SELFISH”

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Recently, TyC lost his father earlier than expected due to a massive heart attack. He was left with an unexpected void in his life, and turned to music as his therapy. The song that he came out with, SELFISH, is the song that most people internalize when in the same situation and they don’t know how to get it out. This song has helped TyC find some solace, and can do the same for others. We feel like it’s selfish to focus on ourselves at a time like this, but in actuality, that is exactly who the person who passed would want us to focus on. They want us to do whatever it takes to find healing.

Starting the song with a voicemail is pretty cool, but I think the content of the message is what’s important. It’s absolutely nothing. It’s the kind of message you receive and you say to yourself, “Why did they leave me a message? I know I missed their call. I’d call them back either way.” That’s the beauty of it. This message has taken on a whole new life now given the situation. Even the most mundane things become mementos and key pieces of remembering someone. I had a friend who died, and I still keep a bottle cap from a Nehi that he had been drinking the previous day and left on my dresser. It seems so ridiculous to some people, but it’s a memory of us sitting around and playing Uncharted all night, crushing sodas to stay awake.

TyC goes in with a simple but pronounced beat, keeping the focus first and foremost on the lyrics, but layering bass lines and orchestral sounds to really bring this song to life. A beautiful tribute to his late father, TyC is getting therapy through his music, and is passing something really special along to us in the process.

 

Mid-Day Music Blast: The Amber Unit – “Brother”

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The Amber Unit have been playing music for a long time now. It’s quite a feat to keep a project going for two decades, and you can tell their music has a sense of maturity and crispness in it that only comes with that much experience and work flow. The song itself seems to describe a relationship between two brothers. Let’s dive into some of the lyrics:

“I follow right behind you
in the dark ~ If you just turn
around you’d see me standing
~ Like some kind of demon ~
Demon, demon, demon ”

I’m not sure if this is from a younger brother’s perspective, but that’s what it seems like to me. He is following behind the older brother, and the older brother doesn’t realize how his shadow has cast some of the mentality of the younger brother.

“Cause this is getting
dangerous, serious oh brother,
oh brother ~”

Press release: “In 2018 the new album “Fear No Giant” will be out. (it actually already is at the time of writing this, here is a bandcamp link for you.) If you’ve met the band and their music you already know what to expect: it will be neither more of the same nor something trendy. Having emerged from the mist of youth they can see now from afar how spring had radiated its light. With minimal changes in the lineup of the band, rewarding side projects and other bands (Pirates from Mars, Vic Hofstetter Solo, Ifoterius, Mistral, Brandhaerd, Karin Portmann, The Kitchenettes) some years have passed since. The Amber Unit has had half a lifetime of music so far. Rather than just a series of concerts and releases, it is has been a of love and suffering, careers and children. They used to be wild and dreamy in the past, but now they’re telling us of delayed love and bleeding lips. They encourage us to leave behind the wrong preachers, reminding us that it is the small things that kill. What they’ve learnt after half a lifetime of music, they are putting into song.”

I know I’m excited to dive into all their music new and old.

-Caleb

 

Mid Day Music Blast – LIEZA “Yellow Roses”

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LIEZA’s new single, Yellow Roses, is exactly what you want for that summertime jams playlist you have on Spotify. It starts out as a lot of songs do, with LIEZA catching a partner cheating on her, but it puts a slight twist on that; the partner says the name of the third party while in bed with LIEZA.

The song then goes into how LIEZA won’t take any shit, and they both need to move on. I love the sentiment here. LIEZA takes the power away from her (ex)partner by standing steadfast in her resolve to end things while they beg for forgiveness and promise it won’t happen again.

You’ve got love in your eyes
and I’ve got karma in mine
cause every promise was broken
you were drunk
and she was high
it meant nothing,
it felt fine,
but is it still fine when we’re broken

Femke, friend of the blog (really, we’ve just posted a song of hers before. we want to be her friend though), worked on this song with LIEZA, and it only took them 45 minutes to write it. With ethereal dream pop composition and a pure and pitch perfect voice, LIEZA is already turning heads even though she’s new to the pop scene. She inked a deal with Whizbang earlier this year, so 2018 is shaping up to be a pretty great year for the dream(y) pop artist.

“I don’t want to be that girl, coming second to your second girl.“

Mid Day Music Blast: Mel Bowen – “On The Wrong Side”

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“Looks like summer has finally arrived/ and now the rivers are all running dry”

Man I love me a good horn section. That was the first thing that stood out to me about Mel Bowen’s lovingly crafted track “On The Wrong Side”. If I can direct you to one place in the song worth revisiting again and again, go check out 2:30 or so. There’s a smooth guitar solo that perfectly captures the emotion of this song. So what is that emotion? To me it seems like a cruel irony. “Seems like winter’s getting harder each year” is what immediately follows the summer line I quoted at the top of the article. So it seems to be a damned if you do, damned if you don’t sort of introspection. We hate winter, and it’s coldness, we hate summer and it’s drought inducing heat. We are constantly “on the wrong side” of the proverbial fence, and every time we hop it to the other side, the grass suddenly starts flourishing where we once were.

This irony is how I imagine many of us feel at different points in our lives, I know I have. The solution? Well if I had a good one, I’d be writing self help books and making millions I suppose (of course, even if I had a bad one I could probably do that, *ba dum tss*). But the only thing I’ve ever had help me out of one of those seasons is to stop looking over the fence and try to find any beauty I can underneath my feet. i.e. try to appreciate what’s right in front of me. This is obviously a lot easier said than done. If you liked this track, don’t forget to check out Mel Bowen’s EP “Everyday’s a Holiday’ wherever you get your music.

-Caleb

Another place to find Mel Bowen is on our June TOTD Spotify playlist. You can find that right here.

 

 

Mid-Day Music Blast: Baraka – “Plateau”

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Let’s explore a chill and jazzy track on this lazy Sunday. I don’t know about you guys, but around here, all the bars do jazz on Sunday afternoon, and though this isn’t really classical jazz, I thought this song fit perfectly. What is your favorite part of this song? I think for me it’s the various use of woodwinds. Flutes, and piccolos and pipes are all under utilized in music today I think. (note: I don’t know enough to say if these are flutes, piccolos, some synth made to sound like them, but it’s a nice touch regardless)

Bio: “Baraka aka Geoffrey Dean is an Electronic Music composer and jazz pianist originating out of Washington D.C. The sound is a unique blend of Electronic, Hip hop, Jazz, R&B, Chillout, Downtempo, Glitch Hop and a variety of other influences.  Baraka adds a unique hybrid of harmonies and original compositions that are sure to interest you with mellow grooves and unique glitch soundscapes. Baraka‘s latest release “Lazarus Chamber” on Itunes, Spotify, and other resellers.”

I hope wherever you are today, sipping mimosas, lounging in chair, resting in bed, that this song gives back to you exactly what you need.

-Caleb

Want to hear to hear more? Check out this song and others on our June TOTD playlist right here.

 

Mid Day Music Blast: B*Boss “If You Leave Me”

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Originally when we received this song, there was no video with it. I am so glad we waited to post until the video was released, because it pulls everything together. When asked what the track was about, B*Boss answers quickly, knowing exactly what their message is, “This is a story about life, as seen from a place where we spend up to 1/3 of our lives, our beds. Our bed bares witness to some of the most private and intimate moments of our lives. Our secrets, our desires, our dreams and our fears. In bed, we laugh, we cry, we ponder, we obsess, we explore, we discover, we love, and we even die. For many of us, our bed is the most familiar place we know. It is the one place where we feel safe.”

bbodd

As you watch the video, you see a life unfold before you, from beginning to end, and the short film takes place in the different beds the character has throughout their life. It goes from beautiful triumphs, like the first person they ever had sleep in the bed with them, all the way to terrible defeats, like the upheaval of a marriage. The story is tangible, and the characters are real. This is what a music video is supposed to be. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I like looking at the artist lip sync the song for 3 min…no… I really don’t. I like stories and I like storytellers.

If you leave me
make sure you leave me lying in my bed

Is someone cutting onions? Damn.

Make sure to check out this song and every other song we’ve posted in June on our Spotify playlist.

We also have a new podcast coming out on Monday. Subscribe and catch up on other episodes here.

-Seth

Mid Day Music Blast: Kuwaisiana “Virgin”

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I love songs with something to say. I mean, most songs have something to say, I guess, but not many of them have something real to say. Relationship problems, how great you are, and dreamscapes make up 99% of all lyrics (probably), so the song, Virgin, from the multinational band, Kuwaisiana, is a welcome surprise.

With raw instrumentals, and complex composition, Virgin gets into one of the biggest moneymakers on the planet: war. The song dives into how the war machine has been effective in not only stealing land and making people wealthy, but also how its role in our lives has made us desensitized to things that should appall us.

“I’m a virgin
in a VR headset
Show me the army
Occupy me”

That is the last line of the song, and it hits so hard. In less than 15 words, they talk about how the military industrial complex can be found in everything from pornography to technology, and at this point, we are inviting it into our homes without even realizing it.

Transitioning between discourse and harmony, this song covers the gamut of emotions. We love bringing you something upbeat and interesting for the Mid Day Music Blast, the fact that the Blast is actually talking about blasts today, is just a…well…blast.