Holy Golden is truly a band for the modern age. They’re a multimedia experience that can only be understood completely if you have an internet connection. 

Holy Golden’s art pop experiment brings together aspects of dream pop and garage rock to form a lo-fi sound that accompanies the aesthetic of their visual art experiments. From photo stories to short films and music videos, Holy Golden has created a rich tapestry of varied work, with their music gluing it all together.

I was flipping through a photo story on their website, called “Otherworld,” as I was listening to the session. The photos exhibit sensible composition, with the lead singer usually in the center of the frame in different rooms and exterior locations. But there is a slight blur to them, causing a haunting, almost Lynchian effect that insists upon gloomier undertones. It’s like they’re tinged with nostalgia, but the memories themselves have become less clear and their halcyon glow is fading. The music fits perfectly with the experience. 

The songs have deceptively simple structures that reveal themselves to be multilayered, and they all end in different places than they started in. Despite the glimmer of its exterior, Holy Golden’s music is very honest and personal, another deceiving aspect of the band. Their otherworldliness is only the vehicle for their examination of youth, memories, and the human condition.  

There’s a lot of content out there, a lot of information. It can get overwhelming. A lot of it doesn’t make sense. If you can collect your thoughts for a minute and focus again on just one thing at a time, go ahead and check out their website. Holy Golden would be grateful. They said it themselves: “You could be anywhere on the internet right now, and you’re with us.”

“If you don’t wanna feel things, music’s probably not where you should be.”

Matthew McNeal makes this observation during this session. It’s a nice place to start, because McNeal’s music has everything to do with feeling. His voice is expressive and slides between shouts, whispers, and all the side roads in between. Because of this, I feel like I would be able to understand and unpack the emotions in the songs even if he was singing in a language I didn’t understand. McNeal’s voice is doing something an entire orchestra would be envious of. 

The most interesting thing about Matthew McNeal is that the soul of his music is markedly different from the vessel it’s carried in. Start listening and you’ll hear strong blues/rock and folk tendencies, possibly inspired by his being from Texas. But listen closer and you’ll hear the guitar work doing something completely different. He has a unique playing style that is more indie rock than folk, and that’s why it is so fun to listen to. Since he’s the only one playing guitar, he has to do a lot more than just play chords and sing. The guitar is constantly shifting voices and roles, from lead to bass to rhythm and beyond. Put it all together and you get a forward thinking songwriter who intends to keep guitar music alive in the electronic age.

Cobi is the solo project of Cobi Mike, a musician spawned from the now-defunct Boston band Gentlemen Hall. Now in charge of his own band, Cobi is finding a sound that fits into the modern canon of pop-rock music perfectly. Cobi’s songs are a mixture of paying homage to his musical influences and an urge to push music forward, resulting in a progressive, futuristic blues sound. If Daft Punk had ever run into Jimi Hendrix somewhere around town, just walking down the street, they might have talked about Cobi’s music. His brand of modern soul music is carved from a clear vision; though the songs have the feeling of classic blues and its improvisational grooves, they’re actually delicately structured songs that rely on precise timing and a sense of urgency that pushes the songs forward. In a time when pop music is playing the revivalist and intertwining the ghosts of music past with Korg’s and drum machines, Cobi is filling in the spaces others haven’t yet been to in full. Some have described the band as having close sonic ties to Hozier, but Cobi draws more from his personal inspirations, like Jimmy Page, than other artists in his genre might think to do. The final song in this session deals with true love that isn’t meant to last, something shared among all things living or not: the inevitable end, closure, decay. Cobi’s magic is in taking a topic like this and making it something worth rocking out to.

Blue Dream is a psych rock band from Chicago. It’s also the name of a popular sativa strain of marijuana, an association one has to assume the listener might make. If you’re willing to test your imagination and stretch your definitions, a description of one Blue Dream could describe the other. Blue Dream induces a “calm euphoria,” a feeling of intensity that is delivered in a laid-back fashion. See?

This isn’t psych rock that wants you to stare at the wall and see shapes, but rather music that wants you to run around and tell people about aliens. It wants you to tune in and drop out just as much as Timothy Leary would have wanted yet still remains wrapped in an energetic noise rock exterior. The frantic pacing and distorted guitars echo bands like Sonic Youth, while some chord progressions, melodies, and the vocal style reflect classic rock bands like Deep Purple. 

This session begins with an extended piano intro from a friend of the band. It goes on for a good portion of the session but builds dramatically throughout and serves as a starting point for comparison before the high of Blue Dream kicks in. The final song stops and starts, comes back and revives itself in different forms. It’s a journey that won’t make a lot of sense in the moment but it will once the haze clears up a little bit.

For Benjamin Cartel, there’s always a larger idea beyond the surface of the song. The ideas are transformed into a single symbol, like a teacup, or spread out over the course of each lyrical experiment-and the words in his songs are the most important part. 

Benjamin is a singer/songwriter and multi-instrumentalist from New York. After parting ways with his band, Benjamin returned to his roots as a solo artist. Though he’s got a band with him here in this session, the core of each song radiates from Ben’s vocal performance. He plays guitar and drums in this session, and I think if he had more arms he’d been playing all the instruments at the same time. 

Parts of this session really reminded me of Wilco. I heard them not only in the folk-rock structure of the songs and the Nels Cline-like riffing on the lead guitar, but also in Benjamin’s ability to treat sad topics with sympathy and optimism. That wry treatment, which borders on the blissful, screams Jeff Tweedy all over. When the group switched from the folk-rock setup to the full-on garage rock sound, it recalled to me my favorite songs by Mason Jennings, another prolific and influential songwriter, who moves between quiet, acoustic whispers and rollicking rock ballads. But all these influences don’t mean that Cartel doesn’t have his own way of doing things-he does, and he tells his stories with skill, passion, and a lexicon unique to his music.

On the day Griffin Robillard came to Davenport to record a Daytrotter session, the weather was terrible. Icy rain was falling all afternoon, glazing over the roads, and visibility was at a minimum. Driving conditions couldn’t have gotten much worse. Despite this, Griffin showed up and played us some songs. The songs themselves were patient and took their time in getting their points across. There is no nervous rush in his music, instead there’s a relaxed coolness. His music is a type of folk that brings together aspects of Midwest life and big city life. There are melodic tendencies that veer straight towards John Denver’s heart, but lyrical themes that conjure the cool darkness of Nick Cave.

The guitars are bright and jangly, while the vocals are wet with reverb. These tonal aspects differ from a lot of folk music, which often comes across warm and insulated, as if you were hearing it played live by the fireside. Acoustic music and folk music have become nearly synonymous, but while a “stripped down” aesthetic comes with both of those, Griffin’s songs feel like fully fleshed out ideas.