Taste Test, Edition #17: Heaven Smile, Emily Chambers, MOZAÍK & more

Welcome to Taste Test, a review wrangling of SubmitHub-only gemstones.

“Cool Kids” by The Motion Epic

If Stranger Things needed a theme song, The Motion Epic would have it covered. He sprinkles lustful saxophone kisses behind shimmering curtains of chewy synths, inviting you along for a bubble-bursting thrill ride that’ll truly change your life. He’s a vitamin-rich staple of B-Sides & Badlands at this point, and for good reason. “Cool Kids” wiggles under the disco ball’s delicate caresses, the dance floor rolling away from underneath his body and appearing endless, timeless and without physical understanding like the Red Sea parting at Moses’ instruction. Pat DiMeo is a creative genius who tosses so much confetti into the air and lets it rain down into our eyes, and we ain’t hating it.

“The Veins of Love” by Heaven Smile

Some songs will haunt you for a lifetime. Daniel Moro falls upon that sword but relishes the downward spiral. “The Veins of Love” is nearly four years old, but there’s a magic that burbles to the surface through sloshing acoustic guitar, which floods outward for a moody 90-second introduction. His vocals, calling from the other side, tears minuscule slits in the fabric, and if you follow (and you must), you’ll succumb to a dangerously beautiful woodland. “Can you help me understanding why I don’t feel so alive?” he questions. It’s not so much a prompt for the world but himself, maimed by his inner demons and left for dead. But his performance is equally as warm, a daydream that lingers far longer than it’s supposed to. And we don’t care.

“Another Drink or Two” by Izzy Miller

Honeyed and bitter, Izzy Miller’s “Another Drink or Two” pricks the tongue on its way into his bloodstream. Heartbreak can be blunt-force trauma, and in his tears, Miller self-medicates with booze and pills, collapsing onto the bar-top in a haze. His pain manifests in ghoulish fiends sucking the blood from his veins, and they come to him even in broad daylight, never allowing him a moment’s relief. And so, he heads down to the local pub to fully submerse himself in not only liquid salvation but his unending sorrow. The tear-jerker (from his new EP, Precipice) follows a long heritage of drunken barroom ballads, but along with such accomplished players as Mike Daly (Travis Tritt, Hank Williams, Jr.), Joey Huffman (Soul Asylum), Shane Davis (Black Market Salesmen) and Ben Jobe (Wolves of Chernobyl), the weeper emerges as an exemplary story of eviscerating lonesomeness, timely in its own way.

“Strawberry Lip Smacker” by Caroline Kole

Even the cool scent of strawberry lip smacker is enough to transport pop reveler Caroline Kole back to her youth. The human mind is an absurd thing, possessing the ability to assign memories with vestiges of aromas, images, touches. The aptly-titled “Strawberry Lip Smacker” slaps with a tasty funk-splashed groove, owed to the production’s adherence to synths that mimic the provocative chirp of a saxophone, peeking between blinds of bubblegum textures. “I don’t wanna think about the rest of our lives,” she yearns, aching to relive her third-grade days. The innocence, the naivety, the vigor is freshly imprinted in her mind, popping the top on a fresh stick of strawberry lip smacker. Don’t fight it, just enjoy it.

“Keep On” by MOZAÍK

There’s not much difference between dream-chasing notions and a stained-glass window. Both are cobbled shards of color, which have happened to fall on hard times, broken and abandon, but have been repurposed for an even grander purpose. That’s the headspace of alt-pop darling MOZAÍK in concocting such an exuberant mixture as presented with “Keep On,” a love letter to all outliers to never give up, never give in. The beat is immense, borrowing a sensibility from tribal rhythms, and boils over with a frosty effervescence, as she learns to light her own way into the unruly wilderness. “Nothing can stop me from going,” she sings, the lite-house falling like stardust in the atmosphere. Leaving her footprints on our hearts, we, too, shall keep on as best we can.

“Left Alabama” by Emily Chambers

The charred, cracked highway rushed away from well-worn rubber tires. Adrenaline stormed through her body and flushed her cheeks. Seeing life, as it is, fresh and invigorating, for the first time in the sun’s sour yellow rays hit her squarely in the chest. Soul-pop singer-songwriter Emily Chambers was packed into her 1983 Dodge Camper Van and making her way to the next city. She’s the consummate working musician, but it has certainly been a tireless, thankless journey. She quit her day job and dove headfirst into an uncertain condition. “Left Alabama,” a brassy soul number about liberating yourself from the clutches of the mundane, perches on the rocky bluff overlooking the luxuriant stylings of Frank Sinatra and Aretha Franklin, meddling with Chambers’ own signature phrasing. It’s replenishing to the soul, giving life and true happiness.

“Spinning” by Jessamyn Day

Music and art are the backdrop of our lives. Storytelling works best as a vital life-line to existence, and sometimes, that involves taking a moment to breathe and bask in your surroundings. Lush folk writer Jessamyn Day drops the walls away from her life for a moment of pure bliss. “Spinning,” off her new EP, Painted Jezebel, blends every color of the world into a gorgeous tapestry. “Look in deep inside / You know that you found me,” she sings. In allowing herself just to be present, she recovers a missing part of her untamed heart. We all should be as free as she, fearless and unapologetically catching exactly the riches she oh-so deserves.

“There is a House” by Hayesville

A mysterious musician named Hayesville, his vibrato pierces your heart. The tremolo guitar flies through the barren tree branches, casting a threatening shadow across the front lawn, and the nomad peers from the dirty bedroom glass, narrowing his eyes on a figure approaching. “There is a House,” from his new album A Town, is a clearly-drawn, foreboding metaphor for his derelict mental state. The guitar scratches against the lyrics like nails to splintering hardwood, eliciting chills up and down the spine. “Why am I drawn to this empty house?” he mulls over in gruesome poeticism. Through his somber reflections, almost climbing the outer reaches of nature, drives the listener to reconfigure their own understanding of self.

“Big Enough to Be a Mountain” by Tiffany Williams

You can never be completely free of grief. It strangles you in your sleep, and you awake with a start, clammy and gasping for life. Only time can assuage those pangs, and even still, you just make room for it. Tiffany Williams arms herself with her guitar to find an ounce of relief. “Big Enough to Be a Mountain,” lifted from her recently-released debut EP, When You Go, falls out of the sky like a prayer in the dead of night. She screams out for mercy, to be liberated from such soul-crushing woe, to be able to finally move on. But perhaps, she does find at least a temporary fix in the music. The song floats from within the depths of the earth and vanishes over and through the hills, leaving behind only a faint imprint of a former life long extinguished. Maybe, that’s the trick ⏤ to clutch the pain tighter to your chest so it’ll get exhausted, too, and crumble onto itself.

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