Queen City Sounds: December 2023 by Tom Murphy

Published Issue 120, December 2023

Welcome to the short list of non-local music I found compelling over the past year, much of it is informed by seeing the artist live. Hope this list is interesting and useful to you as well as the extended list to be published on queencitysoundsandart.wordpress.com in early 2024.

Andy Loebs — Hyperlink Anamorphosis

Plunderphonics sample jazz reincarnation of Art of Noise.

Bark — Loud

Gritty, poetic power indiepop of classic college rock vintage. 

Bestial Mouths — R.O.T.T. (inmyskin)

Entrancing and unsettling portrait of our eviscerated world in industrial EBM colorings.

BIG|BRAVE — nature morte

Noise folk doom epics of the current state of civilizational and ecological disaster and turmoil. 

Blonde Redhead — Sit Down For Dinner

Winter haunted dream diary entries of clandestine heartbreak exposed. 

body / negative — everett

Gently evocative ambient sonic Polaroids of love and loss. 

Buck Gooter — Ghost Brain

Harrowing, seething and blunt industrial anthems of resistance to corporate domination of our lives. 

Cinema Cinema —  Mjölnir

Raging dark art jazz hardcore. 

Dale Hollow — Hack of the Year

Self-aware, sublime honky-tonk pop. 

Deeper — Careful!

Lively post-punk deconstruction of personal trauma and existential dread. 

Djunah — Femina Furens

Scorching heavy-noise-blues poems tracing a path of recovery from C-PTSD.

Fever Ray — Radical Romantics

Uniquely insightful left field synth pop exploration of the full dimensions of love. 

Firefriend — Decreation Facts

Anti-fascist, mind-bendingly psychedelic noise rock. 

Flooding — Silhouette Machine

Caustic slowcore blasts to the legacy of abuse and oppression and their perpetrators. 

Genesis Owusu — STRUGGLER 

Bombastic synth punk funk and R&B. 

GUJI — self-titled

Subversive New Wave garage punk pop.  

hackedepicciotto — Keepsakes

Nine chamber symphony odes to friendship and enduring memories.   

Hannah Jadagu — Aperture

Intimate dream pop and R&B infused reflections on family and the legacies of your upbringing. 

JOHN — A Life Diagrammatic

A joyful and noisy post-punk menace to creeping authoritarianism. 

Korine — Tear

Poignant emo-inflected post-punk shoegaze.

Lula Asplund and Kyle Bates — A Matinee

Electro-acoustic ambient analog of the brain 

MSPAINT — Post-American

Posi anti-capitalist synthcore post-punk.

Protomartyr — Formal Growth in the Desert

Despair and transcendence through intense songs of melancholic catharsis.

SDH — Fake is Real

Beginning to end thoughtful industrial darkwave bangers. 

Sextile — Push 

The post-punk / big beat / IDM / gabber / trance fusion you need in your life. 

Shabazz Palaces — Robed in Rareness

Cosmic and mystical ambient hip-hop leaning into the poetry of socio-cultural time travel. 

Sleaford Mods — UK Grim

Stream-of-spicily-irreverent-anti-authoritarian-social-consciousness industrial post-punk hip-hop.  

Speedy Ortiz — Rabbit Rabbit 

Witty and ambitious art pop exorcisms of trauma and destructive power dynamics. 

Sprain — The Lamb as Effigy

A furious and inspired collision of performance art, progressive post-punk and psychedelic, angular hardcore. 

Strange Ranger — Pure Music

Seamless and immersive amalgamation of future garage, shoegaze and indie pop. 

Stuck — Freak Frequency

Wiry noise punk manifestos against the empty promises of a decaying empire. 

Sweeping Promises — Good Living Is Coming For You

Post-riot grrrl New Wave lo-fi indiepop.

Taleen Kali — Flower of Life

Spirited post-garage punk shoegaze psychedelia. 

The Keening — Little Bird

Orchestral and cinematic Gothic folk murder ballads.

The Serfs — Half Eaten By Dogs

Retrofuturist, dystopian death disco synth punk.

Troller — Drain

Strikingly melancholic, fractured industrial shoegaze dream pop.

Water From Your Eyes – Everyone’s Crushed

Sample-driven, mutant IDM pop with off center rhythm beatmaking.

Wednesday — Rat Saw God

Inspired and brash yet vulnerable heavy shoegaze and indie country pop.

Y La Bamba — Lucha

Explorative, Latin psych folk that reconciles the multiplicity of identity. 

Yo La Tengo — This Stupid World

Thrillingly avant-garde and thematically pointed later career offering that doesn’t skimp on the tender moments from the foundational indie rock legends.   


For more see queencitysoundsandart.wordpress.com


Tom Murphy is a Denver-based music writer and science fiction/fantasy/horror creator. He is also a musician, historian and itinerant filmmaker.


Check out Tom’s November Queen City Sounds install in case you missed it or head to our Explore section to see more of his past reviews.

1 thought on “Queen City Sounds: December 2023 by Tom Murphy”

  1. Pingback: Queen City Sounds: A Tribute to Shizuko “Suzie” Murphy by Tom Murphy - BIRDY MAGAZINE

Comments are closed.