OKLAHOMA CITY – Once upon a time, the kind of windswept, danceable, electro-tinged indie rock and pop that we know and love was reserved for the summer season, offering something sunny and warm for those long days and windows-down drives that define the hot months.
But of course seasons don’t really mean as much now as they once did, and with the sun, the heat, and the summer rains stretching fully into the fall, we could use some of those indie bangers as badly as ever right now.
So we’re in luck that some of the scene’s finest purveyors of sullen synth-rock, defiantly dancey electro, and quirky, tight indie-pop have all dropped some new full albums to keep us dancing through the season until we collapse as hard as the climate.
splendora21 – ‘Intercessor’
After a few years of occasional, sporadic shows and even more occasional, sporadic singles, the long-awaited debut album of synth-heavy sad-rockers splendora21 is finally here.
A passion project of Tuff Sutcliffe and Lennon Bramlett of OKC heavy-hitters Mad Honey, splendora21 is a pretty significantly different animal, even as it still falls firmly on the same dense, gaze-y end of the spectrum.
Where Mad Honey has lately been embracing more atmosphere and intensity by cranking up the fuzz and the drumming power, splendora21 instead airs more on the side of wistfulness and nostalgia, with electro beats and manipulated loops keeping things moving with a rolling kind of sad forward momentum.
It’s all shockingly effective.
“Intercessor” buzzes through filters of digital fuzz and LCD-illuminated melodies, the sound of scrolling through old memories and pixilated photos in the middle of the night, with Sutcliffe’s floating-but-soulful croon always the human anchor grounding the tracks in a genuine emotion.
With the tracklist front-loaded with driving New Wave rockers and longing indietronica torch songs, the album’s second half sets its sights on a kind of deconstructed R&B, rolling the beats-per-minute down into “slow jam” territory and layering in jazzy piano wisps and electro horns before the raw, deeply human closer “murky waters.”
For an album that grew so gradually and that takes its shape through so many layers of texture and synthesis, “Intercessor” never feels overworked or distant.
At a time when too many bands seem to be mistaking “gaze” for a kind of dissociated, spacey detachment, splendora21 are using that fuzzed-out, synth-heavy, electro-grown sound to mine their own depths, not leave them behind.
“Intercessor” by splendora21 is available on streaming services now from Cowboy 2.0 Records.
Party Water – ‘Party Water’
It takes some serious audacity to open your debut album with a five-minute instrumental electro-dance improvisation.
But if there’s one thing Party Water clearly has, it’s audacity.
Another long-developing duo of scene mainstays, Party Water is the union of graphic artist/software engineer Galadriel Althea Lynn and guitarist/jazzman/amp-builder Kyle Reid.
With their powers combined, Party Water is turning out some seriously weird, wild, and unhinged indie electronica, perfectly primed for the strange, awkward dance party of your dreams, or the post-nuclear neo-western film soundtrack of your nightmares.
It’s all distorted loops, sun-blasted guitars, and liquid synth melodies alternating between instrumentals and songs exploring the too-often unspoken facets of womanhood, blunt feminine rage, or hyper-sexual power fantasy.
Each track is another sharp left turn, from the frantic chase sequence of “Disobey” to the quirk-pop of “Good Boy” to the resolute, “Miami Vice”-evoking “Blue Lights.”
If you’ve been wondering what it would sound like if Portishead and the B-52s morphed into one big band produced by Giorgio Moroder, Party Water is your answer.
Because that’s something we’ve all been wondering, right?
The self-titled debut album by Party Water is available on streaming services now.
Wet Muscles – ‘Modern Wing’
Less electro-focused but no less tightly melodic or creatively layered, college-aged indie-poppers Wet Muscles have been churning out a steady stream of albums, videos, and undisputable earworms for a few years now, but the sprawling “Modern Wing” is assuredly their most mature and confident offering yet.
Not content to simply rest against the walls of texture and nebulous “vibes” that a seeming majority of their Gen-Z rocker peers have made into the sound of the moment, Wet Muscles instead seem to have a laser-sighted focus on pop melody and unimpeachable indie structure.
It’s possible that singer/guitarist/leader Liam Hosty picked up the songwriting ropes from his dad (Norman indie legend Mike Hosty,) but the sound that he and the band have crafted is so far removed and so differently considered from his father’s garage-y stomp-rock that I’d say the comparisons end at the surname.
The sound here is all jangly guitars and dancey, electro-tinged keys and synth cameos bopping out catchy melodies that could have just as easily followed Pavement on some 90s college rock station with an attitude hovering somewhere between Death Cab for Cutie’s earnestness and They Might be Giants’ quirk.
But beneath all the tightly layered and sparklingly produced indie-pop armor are cracks of surprising introspection as Liam grapples song-by-song with the weight and realities of these formative years, moving away to college, stepping away from childhood, and landing face first in something like adulthood for the first time.
He’s written a bit about how these songs were inspired heavily by his first experience with the Chicago Institute of Art and how the vividly colorful, bright, and vital new memories of early adulthood can feel like the absurdist or rule-breaking creations of modern art in the “modern wing” of a museum.
But any song of transition is also a song of endings, and that comes through pretty clearly even in the titles on the tracklist, which feature ends, departures, and even eviscerations.
But hopefully all those endings are just a new beginning for more Wet Muscles in the future, because this is the kind of focused, thoughtful indie-pop that we’ll always need more of.
“Modern Wing” by Wet Muscles is available on streaming services now.
You can find out about local music and performance happenings in the OKC metro weekly in this music column by Brett Fieldcamp. | Brought to you by True Sky Credit Union.
Brett Fieldcamp is our Arts and Entertainment Editor. He has been covering arts, entertainment, news, housing, and culture in Oklahoma for 15+ years, writing for several local and state publications. He’s also a musician and songwriter and holds a certification as Specialist of Spirits from The Society of Wine Educators.
