Taste Test, Edition #7: Suzy Callahan, Jesse Daniel, BAER & more

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

“Holding Pattern” by Suzy Callahan

Suzy Callahan’s music has been featured in TLC shows and highlighted by NPR, and her new single “Holding
Pattern” is a true testament to why her music has won over so many hearts. “Holding Pattern” lifts into a euphoric
haze, her background harmonies molding around the feather light picking of her acoustic guitar, a soft piano twinkling
in the distance. She holds out her syllables as if to hold on to her temporary escape, and refuses to come back down
to earth, though out of choice or necessity is unclear. – Chris Will

“Soft Spot (for the Hard Stuff)” by Jesse Daniel

The swig of whiskey misses his mouth completely and dribbles down across the scruff of his chin. Boot straps caked in mud, Jesse Daniel channels the rugged outlaw spirit as he steps into the bright, sharp neons of a honky-tonk dive. He carries the weight of the world on his shoulders, and despite it all, he lets out a hoot and holler with “Soft Spot (for the Hard Stuff),” a diabolically old school-hungry fire chaser. Walking the line, between fiction and truth, he plots a night out gone wrong that ultimately lands him behind bars. “I’ve seen hell in an empty bottle,” he confesses just as things begin to escalate and slip from his grasp. It’s devilish and naughty and cathartic.

“Addicted to Vibes” by BAER

The sun plays peek-a-boo against the ricocheting shadows on the towering cityscape walls. The afterglow shimmers in her tears, too, but BAER brushes them away, and they fall like glass onto cement. “I’m addicted to your vibe / I might risk it to get high,” she whispers into chewy drum work and starlit synths. Feeling suffocated over a relationship, whose other half can’t seem to or dare to commit long-term, the pop newcomer flips the script and brandishes the hurt for an underdog anthem. It’s that first shot after a heartbreak when the club is just getting bumpin’, and you pull your girlfriends closer and laugh the pain away with the bubbles rushing from your drink and into your veins. It’s that intoxicating.

“Give Me a Call” by NorthKid

The synths shoot across the sky with kaleidoscopic twinkles. Norwegian pop quintet NorthKid dance in the radiance of their cell phones, full of possible adventures to come, and their search for love is absurdly naive but just as irresistible. “Give me a call,” they bargain. The hook is not so much a desperate plea but a magical escapist fantasy, dusted between airy house drops and distorted vocal tricks. They’re itching for a good time, and it’ll happen one way or another, if even only in their minds.

https://open.spotify.com/album/4KKDVkAWpwTLy799q2OcdA?si=ZW-T8aBHQ9i7PWRS2k9B9A

“Overboard” by Jay Bird

He’s a siren gasping for oxygen on the shoreline. The dark, foamy waves slap against the rocks, and within “Overboard,” a somber meditation about discovering true inner peace, the production rises and falls in much the same fashion as the open air sea during an unexpectedly ruthless storm. Jay Bird floods the lungs with luxuriantly crafted mixes of house, alternative and straight-ahead pop music, containing a stifling and quite evocative hook that’ll worm its way right into your brain.

“The Horns are Fake” by Fionn

Alanna and Brianne Finn-Morris twiddled and stitch their voices together in a cataclysmic and ghoulishly playful harmony that is altogether mesmerizing. Their womanly roar is even more monstrous as they aim to shatter toxic masculinity, crooking around a glorious and gritty folk-rock chorus that hits the heart with a savage full-blunt force. Within that same hellscape, they confront their own uses of “horns,” a facade or accessory to fool others, with a bold honesty, peeling their skin away in the process.

“Belong” by Pawl

When you get bitten by the love bug, you’ll know it. Cold sweats, weak knees, night terrors, the symptoms of feeling like you belong to someone rip through your body. They’re metaphorical, of course, but that rush has sent electro-pop upstart Pawl into an emotional, soul-wrenching whirlwind. “I need you more than physically,” he coos, the arrangement tipping over him and pulling him asunder. The big horns shock through the otherwise synthetic composition, and it’s never been more clear how truly critical we, as humans, need that kind of heart-to-heart intimacy.

“I Can’t Be You” by Chersea

The pain cricks her neck. Chersea’s backbone is completely exposed, and the air stings each chipped disc like metallic stabs. The sluggish crawl echoes the slow demise of her heart, gutted from her ribs and crushed to bits on the ground. From the sterling and golden waltz structure to the mounting of emotions, “I Can’t Be You” is also splattered with fuzzy headed vocal hallucinations and rhythmically unnerving drums, which work in tandem with glistening but bristled strings. It’s classic torch singing in the vein of Adele, Amy Winehouse and Lana Del Rey but ripened with even more shrewdness.

“Complicity” by Cèlia Pallí

In 2018, complicity has a decidedly disastrous and negative connotation. But for Cèlia Pallí, of Spanish heritage, it’s of a completely soul-burning and well-perceived intent. Smoldering around the edges, and slinking along between the sheets of some fleeting appointment that lingers on her cheeks for days, she vows to be an “accomplice to you,” she sings. Pallí gently shifts between chest and head voice in a provocative sweep that rouses all five senses.

“Deep River City” by Tobias the Owl, featuring Laura Veirs

It’s easy to become trapped inside our own heads. This life is a strange one, indeed, and on his new album, A Safe Harbor for Wayward Echoes, Tobias the Owl scratches far below the surface of humanity in how we learn to cope, come to terms with our impact on the world and what comes next once we’re buried six-feet beneath the earth’s crust. “Deep River City” plays on our qualms about our purpose in this world, and paired with mighty vocalist Laura Veirs, the song carries with it a heavy despondency on what it exactly means to fulfill a destiny. The guitars flow as one, and Tobias the Owl’s voice is especially spiritual in nature.

Photo Credit: Jim Bennett (middle)

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