With a title like “When David Bowie Passed Away”, you’d think you were in for a forelorn ballad about the passing of the Earth’s finest Starman but Commander Keen‘s latest isn’t about delivering on expectations. This burst of a song – clocking in at 1:15 – is an outburst of manic energy shouting at the travesty’s of the world. It has all the markings of a punk song but, again, Keen is defining expectations here by delivering a wall of affected guitars and doubled-up vocals that, magically, maintain a harmonious quality without losing a moment of bile.

Commander Keen will release their full-length Dying in the South on July 4th and, if this track is any indication, it’s going to be a rousing good time.

Quichenight, aka Brett Rosenberg, will be releasing their sixth official full-length album (not counting lost albums, EP’s and mixtapes) Cooler Heads on June 1st, 2018. In lead up to that unveiling, he teamed up with Helen Gilley – of Butthole – to create a wonderfully absurd Ode to the Road, or, rather, an ode to leaving the road.

It may be a forelorn love song at the core but the video injects it into green screen madness, ridiculous special effects and delightfully absurd stock footage insertions. Watching Rosenberg and video companion Ellen Pelerossi (also of Butthole) force pizza into each others faces while emoji’s and neon signs swirl around is an undeniable treat.

Cooler Heads is out June 1st on all the streaming networks and vinyl. There’s a listening party tonight, May 31st, at the Bowery Vault to hear the record a tiny bit early.

If you’re familiar with the Nashville Rock Scene, the lineup of members for Exotic Doctors is a litany of known names. Jerry Campbell and Ryan Ervin alone have an impressive resume of bands between them including Spider Virus and The Carter Administration, respectively. It’d be unfair to compare this debut record, Prescriptions, with their prior work but it’s nice context to establish that this ain’t their first rodeo in the realm of crafting a song.

That experience expresses itself most noticeably through a subtle comfort in the delivery of the songs. “Outta My Head” is an emotive release with mounting tensions throughout, while “Love Criminal” goes for straight rocker. The band easily slides between these styles without losing any lyric vulnerability.

It’s also worth noting that half the album was recorded and mixed at Jeremy Ferguson’s Battle Tapes studio and the other half was recorded on a Tascam 8, DIY home recording style. The sonic differences are certainly notable but never unsettling, as they simply add to the diversity of tools that the band deploys with experienced efficiency.

We played some TB8S on Volume 103 of the WOTT Music podcast but haven’t specifically called them out here on the site. If you are unfamiliar, this is an electronic undertaking that combines original synths and beats with samples from old commercials.

In this newest release, the “Bookmarks” single, the source material is culled from a 1990’s Life Savers commercial, a 1973 See ‘n’ Say commercial and a 1980 Apple commercial. It’s extremely fascinating to have the source materials linked in the description of the release as you can dive deeper to hear where each piece was extracted and manipulated into the new compositions.

The music itself is hypnotic and vintage feeling, an understandable vibe considering the elements that created it.