Taste Test, Edition #16: Morning River Band, Megan Nash & more

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

“Drinking Blues Reprise (3,700 Brokenhearted Days)” by Morning River Band

Morning River Band reach their hands into the sandy remains of life on their new album, Brambles. With “Drinking Blues Reprise (3,700 Brokenhearted Days),” they don’t mince words on the violent byproducts of pain, exchanging sugarcoated optimism for shards of truth. Frontman Jeffery Fields rips open his chest in a confession that’s wrapped in delicate, warm fixtures from his trusty band of players, Arthur Herrmann (guitar, vocals), Denny Barron (bass, vocals) and Joe Idell (drums, vocals). “I’ve been standing in his shadow / Courting suicide / So, I hope you’re sleeping soundly in your lover’s arms tonight,” Fields sings, approaching the topic the only way he knows how.

“Spun Like a Record” by Cascade Crescendo

Woven fast and furious on a loom, “Spun Like a Record” is jamgrass group Cascade Crescendo at their most audacious. Their adept finger-plucking ignites the bones, glowing from the most basic level of human existence, and powering up on soul-affecting magnetism. As the latest morsel from their new album, Chasing the Sun (out February 15), the Americana-pointed troupe of players, which primarily includes frontman Hunter White, Aden Beck (mandolin, vocals), Taylor Skiles (upright bass)  and Harrison Olk (banjo, vocals), are saucy but cool, aloof but grounded, towering but simple. They brashly zig and zag down an overgrown backwoods dirt road, relishing in the sun’s incisive grip while allowing the breeze to fill their lungs.

“Butterfly” by Jelly Ellington

The gears turn and twist, loosely formed from the hypnotic lick of electric guitar, which scratches at the earlobes in devilish angst. Jelly Ellington’s “Butterfly” is a beguiling and sinister piece, and his voice seems cast in a distorted looking glass only newly uncovered from the darkest corners of the attic. He lingers on the lyrics, poetic, yet tragic as they are, and even the down ‘n dirty guitar solo evokes a savage beauty long torn from this world. The song, which sits so far removed from his previous work, anchors what will surely be Ellington’s liberation movement, an EP expected later this year.

“The Skin I’m In” by Amanda Rheaume

Folk musician Amanda Rheaume sheds her cocoon, flaps her budding rainbow wings and soars off into the horizon. “The Skin I’m In” engages with the brokenness of this world, turning issues of mental health, gender expectations and body dysmorphia into the catalysts to love herself through it all. She wears her pain as battle scars, leathery to the touch but striking reminders of the past’s tragic, frayed ends. But make no mistake, she’s casting off her former self and re-upping on compassion and understanding. “Stay brave,” she teaches with an unwavering hand. She brings the world into her embrace, too, as her voice goes down smooth and forever enriched through her experiences.

“Snowbank” by Megan Nash and Bears of Hazenmore

Puffs of snow pile in cotton candy figurines, which swirl and prance about in the gusting arctic winds. Megan Nash plops her feet at the center of the snowstorm. Winter is unending like a fairytale, and “Snowbank,” in its magnificence, weighs down in slowly-melting melancholy, the clink of tambourine calling across snowcapped guitar and other percussion. “These freezing fingers search for a spark,” Nash sings, an expansive of sound rising and falling as the countryside does in the dead of winter. She’s both trapped and recharged by the season’s tart breath.

“The River is Rising” by Joanne Rand

The gravels gurgle in her throat, and as the river’s edge pulls back upon the green and lively bank side, Joanne Rand stands her ground, situating her feet squarely at her enemies. “The River is Rising,” a pulsing, vital cut from her new album, Just Keep Going, pokes at the listener and instructs them to never apologize or let the typically monstrous elements (manmade and otherwise) to dissuade them from finding their truth and reason for living. “Nobody lays a hand / Nobody lays a lazy finger on me,” she sings, locking her jaw and her eyes in an act of gutting defiance. She’s got a hawk-like precision to her phrasing, switching between weathered sandpaper and a nearly operatic vibrato, silky and sweet. She’s a wild child, and she won’t go down without confronting today’s evil powers.

“Hard on Yourself” by Nick Bowen

Nick Bowen twinkles and shakes in the soft streetlight of Bob Dylan and Ryan Adams, whose influence radiates through every tattered layer of Bowen’s enveloping new single, from his upcoming self-titled release (out January 22). He’s a confident product of classic indie-rock and sensitive singer-songwriter, drenched in the early ’90s, of course, but his vocals carry an unforgettable texture and character about them. “Hard on Yourself,” which thrashes in a lo-fi, naturalistic way, acts as a healing agent in troubled waters. “Won’t you drown it out when you’re hard on yourself,” sings Bowen, straining himself to reconfigure himself. His selfless tribute not only proves to reground him to earth but replenish the listener’s own sorrow.

“Cut Class | Hall Pass | Mall Dash” by Alpha Chrome Yayo

Born under fuming neon lights and the effervescent-bleached Saved by the Bell typeface, Belfast producer Alpha Chrome Yayo delivers intoxication of true 1980s bliss up on a silver platter. “Cut Class | Hall Pass | Mall Dash,” with all its synthetic blips and dips, soundtracks our wistful pleasures of an era now nearly 30 years in the rearview mirror. It’s Sixteen Candles, Dirty Dancing and Pretty Pink wrapped up in a snuggly, fuzzy fleece, decorated with stars and rose-colored hope for the future. We may have to warn you, though: there’s a sure-fire guarantee you’ll get swept up in the track’s romance and even meander back to the heyday of your youth. Beware.

“Blue” by MK Ellison

MK Ellison traipses along in her pain. “Blue” scratches in the dirt, etching out harrowing images through the quake of acoustic guitar and later erupting in agonizing blades of violin and cello. “I’ve got nothing to give,” she cries out, rending her heart from her chest and laying it out as a sacrifice to the gods. As a song lifted from her debut EP, Good October, “Blue” buckles under the weight of shame and self-doubt, dark entities which spin a suffocating web in the mind. She somehow manages to release all that despair in breathy whispers, planted resolutely in the line of fire and finally cutting ties from a friendship that has long since expired.

“Neckties and Suicides” by Jakob Leventhal

The stigma surrounding mental health and the plague of suicide has reached a fevered pitch, thusly afflicting more pain on the outcast. But folk poet Jakob Leventhal extends genuine compassion with “Neckties and Suicides,” the second single from his upcoming album, Oh, So Bittersweet, never skimping on the vivid imagery. His blunt lyricism is paired with an airy and soothing arrangement. He’s a siren on the shore shoving you back on land. “Raindrops are heavy things when it’s crashing on your skull,” he sings. It’s not a force of manipulation but rather one to remind the downcast of what it feels like and means to be truly alive, letting the scenery to pour into your pores.

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