Taste Test, Edition #21: The Southern Companion, Kimberly Townsend & more

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

“Few Too Many Hours” by The Southern Companion

Frontman Darren Hodson illustrates great skill and tenderness with a lullaby called “Few Too Many Hours,” a lilting refrain pinning together a relationship’s dire, crumbling state with his new-found sense of worth. “We both know if I pull you in close, then I won’t break even,” he weeps over his guitar, spinning as a carousel ’round and ’round and ’round. He loses himself in the blurring colored lights, the intoxicating, unrelenting breeze hitting him squarely in the face and knocking him down again. But he’s somehow pulled back into the orbit of toxicity, both in wonder and dread. The fragile ballad is a vital, pulsating cut from the band’s third album, Shine a Little Light, a monstrous force of accomplished songcraft and emotion

“Steps” by Kimberly Townsend

Violin breaks like glass beneath the surface. Folk weaver Kimberly Townsend wrangles her heartstrings among such piercing instruments, which float and gurgle as the ocean cracking the sand’s scruffy edge, and she ventures into the unknown with relish, as if there’s absolutely no other option. She takes it up as a sword, iron and unruly. “I can choose to hide it close or set it free,” she mutters to herself. And with a flourish, she gathers her strength and will for the adventure afoot, not knowing what to expect but knowing all-too-well that her next “Steps” will bring about the independence for which her body so desperately hungers. The airstream of a tune is lifted from Townsend’s new EP, The History and the Heart of It, a potently wrought collection of poems born out of her bones.

“Call It Fate” by Macey Estes

Love is nearly always perfectly imperfect. R&B shape-shifter Macey Estes shoots right at the heart with “Call It Fate,” an acoustic guitar-built temptation about what it really feels like to be in love. She’s not concerned with shallow platitudes; in fact, she casts those beneath her feet, stomping them into dust, before digging even deeper into the top soil for the cold, hard truth. In one vocal take, she allows her voice in every shade of its intonation, sometimes feeling rugged, to steal away and really inhabit common universalities. “I call it magic,” she sings in celestial hushes. “I’m sinking into your heart rate.”

“Fuck Love” by The Sweet Kill

“It’s never enough,” singer Pete Mills spits on the grave of Cupid with a cinematic, dangerously twisted anthem. He retaliates against a system hell-bent on force-feeding concepts of love at first site and the grandeur of romance itself. Mills draws comparisons between the highs of love and feeling needed to addiction, entangling the listener into treacherous territory from which they’ll never escape. “Creeping in the shadows / Licking your lips / Take me to the gallows, so vicious / I’m addicted,” he owns up to his sins through holes in his teeth and an unquenchable thirst aching in his throat. “Fuck Love” is the companion piece to “One Love,” a Valentine’s Day treat.

“Armageddon” by Lily Denning

All eyes on her, Lily Denning flexes the full extent of her showmanship and style with her debut single “Armageddon,” practically a post-apocalyptic fire-dance of resistance to life’s thorny tentacles. “The more I let you down / What goes comes back around,” she sings as her lungs fill up with smoke and lets her body float away from the earth, almost as a rapture. Denning, 19, quickly transforms into a Xena-like warrior and strikes down the toxicity that has long weighted her down and soured her very existence. “I’ve taken chances / Seen where it all goes wrong,” she concedes, the production igniting a rebellion in the airwaves.

“Horcrux” by Fernweher

Some of us never truly belong. But then we all belong everywhere. Dark-pop sorcerer Fernweher cooks up a delightful potion of mayhem, as he struggles to understand his place in the world but then embraces such a state of eternal angst. The song’s volcanic eruptions mirror magical stardust, and the frantically-laced drum work exemplifies the many jagged shards of himself that become known as horcruxes. He’s scattered to the four winds, and while he may never, ever recover those again, he finds solace in that. “Horcrux,” which soon devolves into a cult-ish chant, samples his forthcoming The Son of The Black Ocean EP.

“Sick of You” by DNMO and Sub Urban

Tears cloud his eyes, and his cheeks are flushed. DNMO finally breaks free from the claws of a relationship with “Sick of You,” painted with a thick coat of distortion, owed to producer Sub Urban’s knack of stirring the pot, and he plants his feet, firmly digging in his heels for the oncoming storm. The emotions boil right on the surface, and DNMO’s thumb-biting sensitivity fuels the ferocious, untethered bitterness as a serpent sinking its fangs into its victim’s porcelain skin. “I hope to god you leave me soon,” he lashes his tongue in acidic whips. Lugging around such a weighty lyric, DNMO and Sub Urban make a mad dash to the dance floor to shed the remaining vestiges of the past, choosing to rage-dance away the pain.

“Love Me” by Felix Cartal and Lights

The always fiery, vigorously-talented Lights has nothing but love on her mind these days. “Love Me,” concocted in partnership with producer Felix Cartal, whose skills elevate a simply-constructed dance track into a body-waving excursion right into the eye of a glitter-rave, injects the listener with a funky shock treatment. Subsequently, they can’t help but groove the night away, as they process their own sun-kissed romance, and right up into the Milky Way. “Why can’t I make you love me?” Lights begs amidst a cosmic odyssey of spacey synths and a blanket of stars, which fall down around her shoulders to soothe her anguish. “I can’t get you off of my mind,” she admits, pointedly letting her guard down in hopes of some kind of response from a lover, who plays the annoyingly coy type. “Why do I keep wasting my time?”

“Everything Falls Apart” by Patrick Park

Five years is damn near an eternity in the music business. But folk tunesmith Patrick Park makes his long-awaited return a splashy one, indeed. “Everything Falls Apart,” anchoring his new album Here/Gone, out April 26, is a blissfully melancholy snapshot of the inevitable deterioration of humanity. “The darkness will find you,” he sings, almost nonchalantly shaking the dust from his shoulders of the end of the world. The shadow descends around him, and even in the face of such a grim fate, one we all must process eventually, there’s a glimmer of hope shimmering behind his eyes. “All that’s left is the truth,” he sings.

“Kids” by Franke

She’s as a ghost fluttering in his eyes. He’s surrounded by a sea of other women, but Brooklyn pop purveyor Franke can’t help but see himself fading away from the present. “Kids,” off his brand new Internet Heartbreak EP, is as a glass figurine turning over and over in his hands. “That’s why we should keep it like this / Finger on the trigger, really know I don’t miss,” he swings between well-cooked layers, his voice ebbing and flowing in a forever dream-state. “Time I could do it for the kids / Call it like I see it and you know I don’t miss.” The song is both brawny and brittle to the touch, a hype-sensitive confession on the dance floor that you just can’t shake.

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