Five Songs For The Week, November 13th 2018
Trap Girl
I have seen all these bands at one point in a club, and two of them are not even on Spotify. They are locals streaming on Bandcamp, but that counts nevertheless, as it’s not because they are not on a major streaming platform that they don’t deserve your listen
Trap Girl – ‘New Kind of Kick’: This band is fearless and surprising, fronted by transgender Drew Arriola-Sands, they put a gender-bender twist to punk hardcore. This song is a new one and much more on the bluesy side, a sort of Stooges-meet-Glam-Rock, hard-hitting and fierce howling, with plenty of theatrics and bravado. You can almost see Arriola-Sands landing on the drumset at the end.
OGOD – ‘Disillusion’: With this crazy moniker (Over-Gain Optimal Death), they play a very heavy brand of punk metal with speedy to strident guitar solos and a unique rawness. Guitarist David Jasso seemed to have mastered the art of heavy riffs with beasty vocals wrapped around freaky fuzz, but the band is so loud live, that it is often difficult to hear anything of them. The song is an epic battle against everyone’s eardrums safety, but nothing can you make you stop listening to this angry fat loud noise.
Flying Hair – ‘Pills’: Like OGOD, they have a deeply enveloping sound, leaning toward heaviness and abrasiveness, with occasional parts which seem to be inspired by Thee Oh Sees. The expansive dimension of the song seems to stretch to infinity, part doom metal, part acid trip, part black hole dive with no return.
Dommengang – ‘Pastel City’: It almost starts like a classic rock expanding into a long road trip. All song-long, you can feel the wind blowing through the car window while the energy driven from the best ‘70s classics is fueling the track with a blues-rock ethic.
Coastal Clouds – ‘Bottle of Sunshine’: A fresh pop tune with wide-eyed vocals and plenty of sunshine as the title of the song let us know. It smells like morning walks on the beach with ocean breeze and views on Laurel Canyon, and it could be the best remedy when you are done with noise and distortion. Unsurprisingly, Coastal Clouds is the music project of Roberto Rodriguez who lives in Santa Monica.
