Taste Test, Edition #19: Café Spice, Brian Walker, Ivy Mairi & more

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

“Bn2” by Café Spice

Like cinnamon flakes atop whipped cream and a mocha bubble, folk trio Café Spice lasso a delicious, perfectly-sweetened and frothy brew. “If time is winding up, then how is it that sometimes it’s slow,” Georgia Gage, Eleanor Lang and Niamh Feeney configure their voices in breathless twig shapes, earthy but untied to the ground. They float away on the sea breeze up and away into the mist, as they offer up wisdom to a dear friend forever tormented by unrequited love. But the performance is far removed from any ounce of bitterness, but it remains as a firm, yet soothing, embrace.

“Call Me” by Brian Walker

Buried in apparitions of the past, ghost-like imprints gently crossing between the physical world and the unknown, electronica man Brian Walker tries to be patient with his new song “Call Me.” It winds up with spectral-ish synths and vocal distortion, beckoning from across borders of time and sucking on a straw of R&B, as much as the raspberry-smacked bubblegum of mainstream (ala The Chainsmokers). “I still remember how I held your hand,” he sings, framing flashing images of his former lover in such a cloudy mental present. “And I remember when I left for school / ‘Cause breaking up is hard to do.” The song twirls sideways, both musically and emotionally, as shards rattling like overturned bass in broken, fuzzed-out speakers.

“Palmtrees” by Paris Love-Child

“Palmtrees” sway with rugged, bone-bent strings, plucked and snapped and then baked in the sun. Paris Love-Child writhes as she tries to untangle her wild emotions, her heartbeat galloping right into the ocean’s oncoming tidal waves, from the logic of her mind. “I don’t know how I feel this way / Maybe my thoughts are running wild with my emotions,” she quakes in her shoes, the production tip-tapping in frantically jarring beats, the grooves fraying and splintering off into mid-air. The music is as a sailboat being tossed about without an anchor, and Love-Child is a valiant captain, whose sole mission is to evoke unbridled, tear-swelling provocation.

“Prayer” by Ivy Mairi

Grief is inescapable. And it comes in sharp, blood-curdling jolts. Finding herself in the muck of its early stages, electro-pop suitor Ivy Mairi sends up a painstaking and quite affecting pray into the world, words that float but bite, soothe but shock, entice but extricate. “This is a prayer to the one who left me behind,” she sings with incisive frankness, her words shielding her away from the misery and bitter cold, at least for a time. “Just come home after the weekend / Just get this out of your system,” she urges. In deflecting, she actually comes to process and handle the reality now set forth as tracks in the snow ahead, almost as if ash in the firestorm.

“Falling Down” by Drew Young

Swallowing the bad is as vital as basking in the good with this so-called life. We must earn a few scars to fully realize the potential of what lies ahead, often at the mercy of ourselves and our own twisted psyche. Americana spinner Drew Young steps upon his soapbox with his new song “Falling Down,” a jaunty stretch of hope in the aftermath of complete ruin. “Sometimes, it’s a little hard / Sometimes, we don’t get it right / Sometimes, we don’t see the light,” he sings, situating his misfortunes of job loss and heartache as the fuel to hit him into overdrive. His vocal is as nectar, saccharine but tasty, and he instills within all of us a sense of embracing the journey, no matter the costs.

“Sucker Punch” (live) by Sigrid

Pop doesn’t deserve Sigrid. Armed with her debut LP, Sucker Punch, coming like a tiger bounding through the Sahara March 8, the firebrand is taking the industry hostage with her pulpy genre-mixing. Often straddling pop and hip-hop with an infectious poise, leaning into the raw nerve of her lyrics and paired with hyper-charged production, she commands even more attention with a live rendition of the album’s explosive titular cut. “I’m freaking out ’cause I’m scared,” she confesses, in both a power play to endear us to her even more and as an unexpected musical throat-jab. She’s moving the needle in decisive increments, and while she may still fly just under the radar, too close to comfort, we say, she is a giant ’bout to stomp her contemporaries to dust.

“Katerina” by Luego

Patrick Phelan cozies up to the listener with a fire-induced romantic tale. “Katerina,” named after a Russian dancer with whom he struck up a love-strung relationship, goes down as smooth as whiskey, leaving a hint of sorrow in trace amounts. “I would sing to you all that I could,” Phelan, known onstage as Luego, sings. His croons puff up like smoke from a campfire, swirling into the blackness with abandon before falling like a veil onto the starry map overhead. “I won’t be thinking that much / My feelings are good,” he continues to knit up a cinematic portrait of their dalliance. He’s firmly planted in the present but longs for the magical intoxication of the past.

“Heaven (All Around You)” by Apollo LTD

It’s a cliche statement, but we really do only get this one life. It’s what we make it, the good, the bad, the ugly, the devastating. Turning to a stark, stunning and heaven-bound piano ballad, musicians Jordan Phillips and Adam Stark crack open a visceral performance with the aptly-titled “Heaven (All Around You).” In tearing open their wealth of life experiences, drawing up unimaginable pain, evidenced with a stormy vocal that gets the skin crawling (in the best way possible), the alt-pop duo let the listener find a cathartic release from their own lives. “You know what I meant when I said I couldn’t live without you” penetrates the heaviness, a smoke screen that seems nearly insurmountable. But they claw through it anyway with ferocious determination and unleash a blissful confessional.

“Anyway” by Pete Berwick

Some relationships are nothing but chaos, two bodies cascading through space at the speed of light on a destiny of destruction. Fraught with tension, releasing it through blustering guitars, cow-punk singer-songwriter Pete Berwick not only illustrates the full breadth of such a flammable relationship but basks in its snarling, engulfing flames. “Anyway” clings to the classic country spirit (think the good ole days of the outlaw) and explodes on impact. His voice is as rubber tires on gravel, but its impression is one of ripened wisdom and experience. “I hurt you / And you hurt me / Both of us claim victory / And in the end, nobody wins / So we find ourselves again,” he sings, resigning himself to the fact that they were, coincidentally, meant for each other after it all.

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