Frank's 5 Under 50k (06/22)
#3--Vocalists, DIY, Symphonies, String Specialists, and Mania.
Walking the tightrope between singer-songwriter pop vocalist and grimy, nimble beeps and boops, nuum has impeccable balance. His voice is seriously good, sometimes concealed by the self-produced stems that seem to kick down the door halfway through a handful of his tracks, especially his 2023 mixtape “Heart Tape.” Definitely a major page taken out of “things with wings” era ericdoa and an exciting newcomer.
Alt-DIY sleaze bow to your newest disciple. I’ve been tapped into Nora’s music since 2020 when her single “Button” came up on my Discover Weekly. Its spitball-style syncopations behind the seductive strum of some sort of synth-string while she sings under a mutter feels equally uncomfortable as it does captivating. She maintains this self-proclaimed “singing succubus” title in her sound, her most recent EP “Stories in Flesh” showing serious growth in all-around production quality without abandoning the enigmatic, unapologetic realities of her beginnings.
Multi-talented hardly scratches the surface of this quartet. I swear each of the band-members can play 27 instruments at a time because they manufacture some of the craziest violin, saxophone, piano, vocal, wind-chime (?) arrangements I have heard in a really long time. I use “intention” to describe production in a lot of these reviews, however, the intention in this music is to riff and riff some more until the music sweeps you up and takes you to lala land.
Angel Diaz, professionally Vyva Melinkolya drones out for the girls who don’t know they need it. As a close collaborator to the likes Ethel Cain and Midwife, there’s a slow, deep, oftentimes booming nature to the music she assembles. Her most recent solo project “Unbecoming” is an unhurried, shameless, at times exalted occupation of space. I have to mention also that she is a lapsteel and baritone guitar legend, tracks like “Song About Staying” and her contributions to Cain’s track “Punish” serving as blaring evidence to the fact.
“Scrappy, wonky, eclectic” is the elevator pitch for the Shrewsbury based collective and they are telling the complete truth. They’ve got that sort of Red Hot Chili Pepper twang and CAKE-esque delivery, but there’s more to that. These Massholes have a sense of mania about them; a positive carelessness and a good sense flexibility that I think serves them incredibly well. Because it’s so relaxed, tracks like “See Me Now” and “Know it All,” among the rest of their catalogue spill out into an instrumental-vocal concoction that with the right audience could make for some pretty wicked live shows that I hope to be in attendance for.