Queen City Sounds
By Tom Murphy
Published Issue 143, November 2025
Broken Record – Routine
One of the most emotionally resonant expressions of the complete and utter discrediting of not just the American Dream, but of the mid-century capitalist foundation of that notion. That all started to crumble in the mid-1970s, and America has been in denial as the impetus to the current dystopian state has accelerated over the past half century. Passionate vocals and distorted melodies in urgent, atmospheric flares throughout give each song a poignancy that touches you to the core. However, Broken Record doesn’t just leave us with despair. It offers us visions of how things could and maybe should be if we only had the will to make it happen, while demonstrating radical solidarity with lyrics that evoke our collective pain so vividly.
Patrick Dethlefs – Patty
Dethlefs has long demonstrated a gift for sensitive and thoughtful observation in his songwriting. This record finds him using gentle sounds to reflect and assess with the same level of emotional awareness that has made his catalog a worthwhile listen. His vocals occupy the central part of the mix as they should. But with an ace band including Jess Parsons and Mark Anderson, the music has a warm aura in which feelings can stretch and expand to the shapes they need to in order to be understood and felt fully. These songs don’t just ably capture the moment of mind but also the realization of patterns in one’s life and how that can inform a psychologically healthier future.
The Picture Tour – Blood. Machine. Gasoline.
There is simply more grit and bite to this record than the band’s haunting predecessor. The songs are like the soundtrack to an urban retro-futurist noir that someone should make — but set it in late 90s Denver, where urban decay was abundant and fledgling, working-class counter-culture types can render their romantic, creative impulses a reality in a crumbling republic. With the impending economic collapse, maybe this is a sage-like, dark shoegaze prediction of the near future.
Supreme Joy – 410,757,864,530 Dead Carps
The title of this record is like something from a Beat Takeshi fever dream. The music sounds a bit like that too, but if one only listened to 1980s records by Sonic Youth and The Clean for a few months, and then only Women and John Dwyer records for a couple more. All the while meditating on the demented and fragmented psyche of American society from the perspective of the works of Langston Hughes, James Baldwin and Angela Davis. This wildly psychedelic post-punk thrills us with how it is willing to go fully left field noisy, while preserving a core of spirited punk songcraft.
yunha – self-titled
The beats and ethereal melodies of the songs on this album have a playful quality, but at its center, there is a deep melancholy that courses through many of the lyrics. Musically, it sounds like it has roots in witch house and glitchcore over trap beats. The vocals are often processed including an expanded use of Auto-Tune type effects and pitch shifting, resulting in a quality that acts like a device to disassociate from painful memories and unfulfilled yearnings, while honoring the truth of both in one’s psyche.
Victim of Fire – The Old Lie
Of course the D-beat black metal hardcore thrash of this record is ferocious and powerfully delivered. But “The Old Lie” discussed throughout the album is how war is sold to the working- and middle-class as a necessity that brings glory to the “warriors” and “honor” to the nation. These songs catalog the terrible consequences of war on the psyche of those affected, on the participants, and on how perverted it is to think of war as being good for the economy, when it only wreaks destruction. The romantic myths of war at the core of its appeal are aggressively dismantled here. A welcome set of sentiments as world leaders seem poised on the brink of expanding empires at the expense of us all. Can a record stop all of that? No, but it’s important for people to express and then to act on resistance to the authoritarian project.
For more see queencitysounds.org
Tom Murphy is a Denver-based music writer and science fiction/fantasy/horror creator. He is also a musician, historian and itinerant filmmaker.
Head to our Explore section to see Tom’s monthly install of Queen City Sounds.