Taste Test, Edition #14: Brown Kid, Luca Vasta, Nola Wren & more

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

“Complacency” by Brown Kid

We stagger through the halls of life, often bemoaning greener pastures and things just beyond our fingertips. “Some people want way much more,” muses folk singer and songwriter Eduardo (known onstage as Brown Kid), an insightful storyteller originally from Peru. “Complacency” reconfigures humanity’s innate yearning for more, more more, while also dressing up such weighted melancholy with a stark, and rather shimmering, optimism. The song, from his Rusty Strings EP, is very much steeped and mixed with chattering guitar work, and Eduardo’s plainspoken behavior is downright charming.

“King Whirl” by David Huckfelt

The drum pounds like his heart through his rib cage, subsequently dousing his latest cut with a watery darkness. David Huckfelt unleashes havoc on the emotional strings of not only the heart but of all the human existence, decorated with bluesy Americana ripped out of the earth itself. A sampling of his forthcoming solo EP, Stranger Angels, “King Whirl” sparkles in the rich orange glow of sunrise, tearing limb from limb as he confronts the smokey snarl of today’s continuing tragedy. He is unbound by the world in which he’s drowning, but that doesn’t stop him from retaliating as best he can.

“Bloodbath” by Nola Wren

Nola Wren licks the blade of a large butcher’s knife. The silver glistens in the muted rays of filthy garage-rock, sliced with alternative pop stabs and an rejuvenating lo-fi buzz. “Bloodbath,” off Scream into the Void, Pt 1, sinks the senses down to the bottom of a mountain lake. The waters rumble and roll across her skin, but she doesn’t let such madness completely numb her pain. “She might be the one / But I’ll never let you get away,” Wren casts a frightful gaze, fermenting her resolve to take her love back at all costs. It’s devilishly addicting.

“I Cave” by Elsa Åborg

Her voice twirls in the morning light of acoustic guitar, wrought with a stern, unwavering hand. The emotional pieces scatter as the song builds with trickling chords operating to snap and bend and twist and break. Elsa Åborg’s voice is tattered and feathered, sticky droplets of glue adhering to the doozy magnetism of “I Cave,” an airy woodland rendezvous just as dusk breaks the atmosphere. She rises and falls over the melody with a loose regret, the layering of vocals splashing the proceedings with a sour edge. “It’s not what it used to be,” she weeps, trying to strain even one ounce of emotion from her lover. But to no avail. It’s a tragically crushing fairytale.

“New Friends” by Cuja

The synths pummel the eardrums with softly vibrant explosions. “New Friends,” only her second-ever single, is a volatile club-rave concoction, seeing the pop up and comer Cuja aiming her freshly-sharpened arrow right for our hearts. As a new year looms just days away, Cuja dares to challenge the mundanity of her life and storms the midnight hour with a risk-taking attitude. And she sheds her past, old habits and the toxicity that had bound her, and rises from the ash to reclaim her identity, her dignity, her freedom. “Well, I don’t care what they say,” she coos in between flapping sheets of classically ’80s constructions and a hard-biting modern flip.

“Hurricane” by Albert Kass

Time is a relentless force. Witnessing his own wide-eyed self shooting through youth, sprouting his own wings and uprooting the past, folksman Albert Kass feels the brunt force of life’s natural procession. The guitar is warm to his skin, a makeshift soothing agent, but he loses his grip on the present whether he’s prepare for it or not. It’s deceivingly jovial and prances in sharply aloof movements. “Hurricane,” a primer from his forthcoming new album Young Old Man, is a tour de force of emotional jabs, owed to Kass’ silky but earthy vocal that seems to evoke the classics of 1907s folk-rock grandeur.

“Hear You Calling” by King Arthur

King Arthur grinds hard and fast. “Hear You Calling” zooms across a starry backdrop of electronica and house, casting off fumes of dance-floor majesty, and his voice is both angelic and demonically mesmerizing. “When I’m lonely, I think of us / The love you gave me was not enough,” he sings, situating his heart-torn tears onto the disco ball overlooking a sea of bodies writhing to each dirty beat. King Arthur is a marksman of the club, and we’d all be best left to succumbing to his wonderstruck devices.

“Sideshow” by Evan Petruzzi

The guitar lurches and screams. Evan Petruzzi, whose gentle hand reaches below the foamy surface, thrashes from the clutches of toxicity. It’s a hard, swift lesson but one which she basks in with pleasure. The new year brings replenishment, and she doesn’t take a single second of her rebirth for granted, choosing to wriggle away from the past and spit it out, rather generously. “I don’t want a heartbreak when you decide to go,” she sings, a fragility seeping into her phrasing. But she grows more resilient as the song crescendoes, later adorned with spectral-ish whistling, and she locks her jaw to safeguard her body from more ravaging heartache.

“Sicilian Coast” by Luca Vasta

In the age of hate-mongering politics, a story of one family’s journey to the shoreline of Sicily has never been so vital. Folk singer, songwriter and musician Luca Vasta blends her native tongue with evocative and erupting songwriting, tearing away metaphorical walls of humanity for a moment of compassion and understanding. “You’re home to me,” she sings, exchanging bitterness for truth in an attempt to heal. Her voice glides among the clouds, as she acts as a consummate storyteller for topics and issues that truly matter, and we’d be much better if we listened.

“Falling Down” by Andy Rozz

There are few things as exhilarating as the dance floor. Blog favorite Andy Rozz is a master of his trade, relinquishing the pain of the world for a glitter-fueled adventure across space and time through ripples of the universe. “Falling Down” whips through electric currents in a blink of an eye, and the feverish rash of synths rip across bone and skin without consequence. It’s a kind of euphoria he has yet to conquer, and here, with 2019 inches away, he manages to shock and awe as an agent of unfettered trouble-making skill.

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