Tag Archives: indie rock

Michael Boezi – No Love Songs, Vol. 2

Posted by John Lithium on

Label Description: These songs invite progressive, collectivist, and non-confrontational reflection as an antidote to the years of programming and propaganda we all endure. Let’s help each other UNLEARN. Let’s afford each other the space to grow. //

SONG SUMMARY:
01. Knocks – Finding the energy to take positive action
02. I Gotta Go – How life goes on amid daily horrors
03. Temperature Drop – How no one’s coming to save us
04. Last Song – How AI art & music will change us
05. Read Me Out – Turning the page on the Boomer’s world
06. Nothing Left – Silence will speak on your behalf if you don’t
07. Doing Any Good – How advocating for change is depleting
08. Fever – How to develop empathy for the victims of disinformation
09. The Recidivist – How old habits and ideas imprison us
10. Graveyard of Good Intentions – We’re fighting the wrong battle
11. Cheap Seats – How to deal with the “Billionaire Problem”
12. Wipe Right Out – How you won’t listen to me anyway

We are waking up one by one. The algorithms will try to keep us apart because this is what those in power fear the most – that we learn from each other’s experiences. //

This is why art is so important. Stories and narratives are the only way to create positive change. So we come together around art. And conversation. And solidarity. And big ideas. //

Positive change is a collective effort. Individualism is our common enemy. //

PRAISE:
“My pick for this week is the just released ‘No Love Songs Volume 2.’ Singer/songwriter/guitarist Michael Boezi and a bunch of fine musicians bring us a great collection of songs about the unfortunate state of the world.

Despite the subject matter, which is presented through great lyrics and excellent instrumentation, the album is not depressing, because it’s a perfect example of how art is essential in hard times, of how we can work through chaos by using our creativity.”

— Aaron Smith (source: BlueSky)

CREDITS:
Lyrics and music by Michael Boezi

PERFORMERS:
Michael Boezi: Voice, guitars on all songs
Dave Brophy: Drums & percussion on all songs
Joe McMahon: Bass guitar on all songs
Andrew Stern: Lead guitar on 2, 5, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12
Andrew Stern: 12-string guitar on 8, 9
Andrew Stern: Slide guitar on 12
Britt Connors: Backing vocals on 3, 6, 8
James Rohr: Wurlitzer on 3, piano on 6
Andy Santospago: Pedal steel guitar on 1, lap steel on 4
Aaron DeGraff: Backing vocals on 9
Dave Brophy: Backing vocals on 1, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 11, 12
Peter Fernandez: Rhodes on 1, 2, 9
Peter Fernandez: Organ on 1, 2, 5, 8, 9
Peter Fernandez: Synth & other keyboards on 1, 5
Andrew Stern: Triangle on 2
Dave Brophy: Organ on 7

PRODUCTION:
Recorded at Studio Solitaire in Somerville, MA
All songs engineered by Dave Brophy
Backing vocals engineered by Mike Connors on 3, 6, 8

Arranged by Michael Boezi and Dave Brophy
Produced by Michael Boezi and Dave Brophy
Mixed and mastered by Dave Brophy
Cover photograph by Michael Boezi
Cover design by Michael Boezi

Cover image:
Title: [Emma Gillingham Bostwick, half-length portrait of a woman, three-quarters to left, facing three-quarters to right]
Artist: Mathew B. Brady
Date: Between 1851 and 1860
Source: Library of Congress
Underlying Rights: Public Domain Worldwide

℗&© 2025 Control Mouse Media, LLC
Published by Control Mouse Media, LLC, Boston, MA. All rights reserved. Unauthorized duplication is a violation of applicable copyright laws. UPC: 057829394049

Publisher IPI: 1126697538 (ASCAP)
Michael Boezi IPI: 1126697636 (ASCAP)

Unwed Sailor – High Remembrance (Current Taste Music)

Posted by John Lithium on

Formed in the late 90s, Tulsa’s Unwed Sailor embrace a unique form of bass-led, instrumental pop with post-rock dynamics that glide between white-knuckled heaviness and breezy melodicism. Since returning from a decade-long pause in 2019, a prolific spree of creative exploration and genre blending has yielded their finest work to date, including Mute The Charm (2023), Underwater Over There (2024), and Cruel Entertainment (2025).

To craft their eleventh album, High Remembrance, founding member Johnathon Ford brought a series of home-recorded drafts, demos, and hooks to the studio, where they came to life with long-time collaborators Matt Putman (drums) and David Swatzell (guitar) guided by themes of nostalgia and the bittersweet comforts of memory. Across the album’s eight tracks, there are shades of peak era alt-rock grit, late 70s AM radio swagger, and rapturous New Wave abandon, among other touchstones that defy easy categorization.

“Truest Sentence” opens with vinyl crackle and a tremolo chime that summons an effortless groove full of layered guitars, complex percussion, and Ford’s distinctive bass guitar buzz, as catchy and head-noddingly punchy as ever. Lead single, “West Coast Prism”, pairs an indelible melodic hook with upbeat drums and a jangly arrangement that transforms into a driving, technicolor refrain. True to its title, the song evokes white light splitting into a spectrum, as spacious synths and soft backing vocals create an aura of melancholic bliss; Ford fittingly cites “a deep fondness for the ocean, surfing, redwoods, and rocky coastline of Oregon” as the spiritual backdrop for its environment.

Inspired by the ways that memories create personal identity, “Don’t Let Go” could be a lost alternative radio earworm with its taut pacing, crunchy tone, and woozy guitars, while its deceptively simple rhythm section and glitchy electronics root it firmly in the present. “Cinnamon” forefronts beautifully arranged acoustic guitar countermelodies, along with layers of subtle detail, choral vocals, and relaxed, upper-neck bass guitar strums. According to Ford, the song is “a tribute to the 70s and 80s country music that soundtracked family trips to the desert when I was a kid,” with Townes Van Zandt’s “Pancho and Lefty” as a particularly meaningful anchor point.

At this point in Unwed Sailor’s storied career, Ford finds some of his strongest inspiration in reflecting on where the project began, while perpetually pushing it forward with new ideas, arrangements, and genre infusions. “It’s become about holding onto the things you love the most,” he notes, “including yourself.” His chord-driven bass playing remains the common thread through the band’s records, lending a familiar gravitas and warmth to every new collection.

The second side of High Remembrance commences with “Punk Broke”, an homage to the band’s Seattle origins – and David Markey’s famed documentary, 1991: The Year Punk Broke – where whammy-bar wobble, palm muted picking, and shimmering synth stabs lead into an anthemic guitar solo that descends over a field of crisscrossing melodies. With its twang, reverb, and cumulus clouds of slow-attack keys, “Gingerman” evokes a nighttime desert drive with the cobalt fade of the day behind a jagged silhouette of distant mountains, while the sonic contrasts and layered mix of “Three Jewels” offer up the album’s most rewarding headphone listen.

Title track, “High Remembrance”, showcases Unwed Sailor’s ability to employ a relatively simple arrangement to create a memorable, widescreen finale and embody the tone of the album as a whole. Written back during the band’s hiatus in the 2010s, the song feels like a familiar forest trail seen during all four seasons at once, and as it closes with a long fade, we are left in the blurry, liminal space of memory, absorbing the last few moments of a reverie before returning to reality.

℗ + © 2026 Current Taste
Written, Performed & Recorded by Unwed Sailor (Johnathon Ford, Matthew Putman, David Swatzell, Patrick McGill)
Produced by Unwed Sailor and Kendal Osborne
All songs mixed by Kendal Osborne & Johnathon Ford
Mastered by Mat Leffler-Schulman
Assistant Engineer – Tristan Wright
—-
Engineered by
Matthew Putman at Electric Nebraska in Ft. Smith, AR
Kendal Osborne at Closet Studios in Bixby, OK
Johnathon Ford at Current Taste in Tulsa, OK
—-
Artwork/Design/Layout/Text/Font by Gary Prendergast
Published by Current Taste Music (BMI) / Mute the Charm Music (ASCAP)

Cate Le Bon – Michelangelo Dying (Mexican Summer)

Posted by John Lithium on

Label Description: Its creation led by pure emotion, Cate Le Bon’s seventh record Michelangelo Dying usurped the album she thought she was making. The product of all- consuming heartache, her feelings overrode her reluctance to write an album about love, and in the process became a kind of exorcism. What emerges is a wonderfully iridescent attempt to photograph a wound before it closes up but which in doing so, picks at it too.

Musically, there is a continuation and expansion of a sound a machine with a heart that has taken shape over her last two records (2019s Reward and 2022s Pompeii) as Le Bon has increasingly taken control of the playing and producing herself. As guitars and saxophones are pushed through pedals and percussion and voices are fed through filters, an iridescent, green and silky sound emerges, with flashes of the artistic singularities of David Bowie, Nico, John McGeoch and Laurie Anderson surfacing and disappearing below the waterline throughout.

What were left with is an ever-changing, continuous entity, a kind of song cycle. Each iteration reflects and progresses the last, each one a shard of the same broken mirror shifting, glinting, concealing and revealing, depending on how it is turned in the light. There are ultimately, Cate asserts, No revelations. No conclusions. There is no reason. There is repetition and chaos. I eventually allowed myself a vacant mind to experience it without resistance and without searching for a revelation or order to any of it.

An exercise in the viscerality(sic) of life, of love, of humanity for both listener and artist, Michelangelo Dying knows what it is to hold, to be held, and to be exquisitely, profoundly alone. “The characters are interchangeable” concludes Cate, “but at the end of it all, its me meeting myself.”