Taste Test, Edition #20: Elaine Palmer, Deep Parliament, Model Child & more

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

“Blackened Heart” by Elaine Palmer

There’s nothing like kicking up gravel and dust, ripping down a desert highway from civilization, and feeling the sun-bleached air in your lungs. The landscape is peppered with lonesome vegetation but the thrill is replenishing. Americana troubadour Elaine Palmer plots a sojourn out on the open road with her new song “Blackened Heart,” lifted from her upcoming EP, Desert Songs, out later this year, and she’s as a hawk caw-cawing overhead amidst a rumble of the drum kit and guitars. “Words are honey on my lips,” she swoons into the arms of backing vocals, smooth yet jarringly haunting. “Take me right back to the start,” she realigns her spirit for the wayward nature of a mistress named music.

“Diesel Lullaby” by Franchise

First love can be as exhilarating as a dangerously slippery slope to nowhere. Miami electronica producer Franchise employs twinkling production, calling upon the child-like wonder and click-clacks of Owl City, for a weathered story about overcoming brutal, relentless, downright manipulated heartache. “You made me feel like a fool / So many times when you took for granted all that I do,” he lashes beneath a blanket of stars. But the pain hangs in the back of his throat, gurgling up in sticky bubbles. “Diesel Lullaby,” his sophomore single, chronicles tremendous promise, both in evocative delivery and magical flourishes. It’s heart-wrenching but leaves you somehow empowered.

“Trash” by Model Child

“I’m a fucking heart attack,” spews Model Child, configuring society’s carnivorous consumption habits between heaps of punk-rock braggadocio. The first single for this particular creative outlet, “Trash” is a flammable, toxic, grungy finger flick and clocks in at just over two minutes. “I’m trash,” his cloying monotone lacerates the rip cage, exposing a charcoal heart gasping, gaping right back at him. He puts the hook on loop for much of the runtime, a vocoder-effect layered like sour paint. The synths dig hard and deep into the ripened dance aesthetic, often feeling like a blacklight of new-wave strings, swollen, red and blistered. “I ain’t fiction,” he later confronts, monstrously challenging the status quo of the American dream.

“Scared to Love” by Swamp Music Players featuring Laura Jacobs

Bad boys are a mystery. Many hide behind a shield of machismo, sometimes hardening themselves from ever really feeling empathy or even love. A band of musicians called the Swamp Music Players turn to folk singer-songwriter Laura Jacobs for guidance on “Scared to Love,” a shiny uptempo seeking to understand why men shadow themselves away in the cold darkness. “Why you so scared to love?” Jacobs poses the staunch question, out of concern rather than a harmful infective. She searches for the answers herself throughout the swirling saloon-style verses, planted right at the center of classic honky-tonk and neo-traditionalism. “I’ve only got myself to blame / Still a part of me thinks you’ll change,” she sings, wrangling conflicting feelings about her suitor whose fallen right through her fingers.

“Perfect Bad Day” by Aqua Seafoam

A New York area indie band, Aqua Seafoam swallow folk, electronica and throwback funkadelic whole in one full-chested gulp. “Perfect Bad Day,” torn from their self-titled debut EP, quakes with an electric guitar’s gentle growl and curls their clammy hands around the light and the dark in a cool dichotomy. It’s at times welcoming of the melancholy, heaving and then collapsing under the gravity, but reemerges out of the caves as a creature of the night, gracefully reborn. It’s a sullen and engrossing composition whose translucent skeleton glows from some place unknown to mankind. “Swimming in the foam, curled up in the tide,” the group paints in lush strokes on the opening stanza, trickling in intimate unease on the current state of things. “I see me growing old / But no the more so wise.”

“Love Me” by RV3RS featuring JackEL and Skip Martin

Skip Marton’s brassy horns wash over the tropical house foundation in fluffy swooshes, blending the fruity drink for a night out on the dance floor. “Did you even love me?” questions JackEL, who turns his heartache into the banger of the century and permits himself to find utter bliss in the music. The confetti rains down upon his shoulders, and the buzz reaches an irresistible apex, busting open his inhibitions to finally let go of the pain, once and for all. The beat crescendoes just at the time, and his voice fades into the vivacious backdrop, shedding the past in one sweeping flourish. RV3RS has an undeniable knack for dressing up a breakup as an end-of-the-world tagline, and “Love Me” operates as a feathered arrow right to the heart.

“Taste of Your Love” by Host

Electro-pop provocateur Host conjures up lacy synths for a creamy dreamscape. “Taste of Your Love,” a self-proclaimed anti-Valentine’s Day breakup anthem, off her new EP, out on Monday (February 18), juggles bizarre, centripetal rhythms and skin-scratching euphoria for a truly liberating piece of pop royalty. “Too weak to carry a heavy heart,” she sings in hushed tones, letting her bruised heart to guide her feet into glory. Even as the song explodes into every dazzling color of glitter, she remains squarely in control and seemingly penetrates into the future, a shapeshifter that won’t let a little bit of misery to completely destroy her. “The story just never gets old,” she sings. And with that, she rockets out of orbit to build her very own.

“Up on Me” by Smoke Season

Gabby Bianco and Jason Rosen are a tidal wave of sex and grooves. “Up on Me” is their latest entry into a burgeoning catalog of soul-pop with a sun-kissed twist, polished with lush reds, oranges and blues. A love letter to their east LA homestead, dripping with sultry swagger, the song sees Bianco flip her voice as laundry in a soft summer’s breeze, aching yet poetically transcendent. Alongside Rosen, whose heartier voice anchors the story from back-to-front, Smoke Season have constructed a a towering cathedral of some of pop’s finest melodies. “Baby, don’t you give up,” croons Bianco, a rosy oil painting rushing from her vocal cords as a painter’s brush to a blank canvas.

“Voice Coil Unwound” by Comprador

Charlie D’Ardenne untethers the gruffness of his voice and lets it clash against the abnormalities of 100-year-old piano keys. It’s a mix that might not work as pigeon-scratch on paper, but it’s captivating. “Voice Coil Unwound,” which lurches from the abyss with severity and speed, bends everything that it touches; the light, the air, the ground snaps in half. “We go through the woods,” stages D’Ardenne, known as Comprador in his work. As coarse as his voice is, an endearing quality that gives the song even more crunch, he glides effortlessly between the blurred lines of folk and indie-rock. “I wish you’d think out loud,” he pleads in his soft-spoken way. The songwriter is currently working on his fourth extended play.

“Back to Me” by Deep Parliament

Out of the Netherlands, Deep Parliament is poised to take over the world in 2019. Look no further than her latest ticking time-bomb called “Back to Me,” in which she recovers from a breakup with remarkable poise. “I stay on my hustle / ‘Cause ain’t nothing for free,” she sings, musing on both self-care and legitimate coinage. She keeps her heart open for the possibility of rekindling that flame, but she reminds herself to keep her own well-being as top priority, knowing full well she run the world. Plinky synths reverberate in a lush display, and the beat grows thicker and thicker by the second. Deep Parliament feels deep, and she falls hard, whether she wants to or not. But that’s all part of the chase.

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