Sara Swenson, Shotgun Wedding Singer, Swallowtails, and more local music videos
Illustrated by Katelyn Betz
As we spring into summer, it’s necessary to make sure that you’re up-to-date with all the best in local music, both sonically and visually, so that you can be sure to have the freshest tunes coming out your speakers and off whatever screen you use for viewing. In this latest Cine Local, there’s soul, indie pop, rock ‘n’ roll, and more. Someone even sings to a baby. What more could you ask for?
The Freedom Affair, “The Chain”
How do you improve upon a classic? The trio of Paula Saunders, Seyko Groves, and Shon Ruffin on vocals is a good start. Add in horns. Have Chris Hazelton do his thing on the organ. Keep the guitar and bass work the same. Let it cook. Groove. Play it on repeat like, fifteen times. Go buy a bunch of Fleetwood Mac and Freedom Affair LPs. Live your best life.
Virga, “Night Scene with Coyote”
Virga’s recent EP, The Perfect Freedom of Single Necessity, is anchored by “Night Scene with Coyote,” a prairie goth piece of music which sounds as though the trio of Faith Maddox, Deegan Poores, and Billy Orr accidentally put on a 45 of Concrete Blonde’s “Bloodletting” at 33rpm and got really inspired. The track lets the dark, death rock vibes breathe with open spaces, and the ominous visualizer created by Brogan Scott takes the ominous nature of the song shine through.
Virga’s The Perfect Freedom of Single Necessity is available on Bandcamp.
The Swallowtails, “Perspective”
Another year where a local artists didn’t win the NPR Tiny Desk Contest, but it’s certainly not for lack of trying on the part of the Swallowtails. Serving as both their entry into the contest, and a music video for the band’s first new single in nearly a year, “Perspective” is an ode to the band itself, as well as the title track to the band’s next LP. The addition of Alyssa Murray on keys and vocals and John O’Keefe on bass to the duo of Rachel Lovelace and Miki P only lifts the song higher, while still showcasing the interplay between the Swallowtails’ core duo.
The studio version of “Perspective” is available on Bandcamp.
They’re Theirs, “Weird Christians”
Chase Horseman has sadly left KC for NYC, but they left us with this gem of a goodbye present on their way out of town. A compilation of TV preachers plays behind an utterly catchy denunciation against organized religion and contemporary Christianity, with a stellar earworm of “If I’m lost/ Then I don’t/ Wanna be found” repeatedly entreating a singalong.
Shotgun Wedding Singer, “I Think You Should Leave”
A pop-punk rocker with one of those choruses that makes you want to pogo in your living room, “I Think You Should Leave” shows Shotgun Wedding Singer firing on all cylinders. A man in a horse mask behaves like Bojack Horseman, with a side helping of absurdity not wholy different than the show with which the song shares its name. Have to say, though, said masked man getting hammered on Michelob Ultra is maybe the funniest detail in the whole video from Rylee Dulaney and Matt Jack.
You stream Shotgun Wedding Singer Presents: An Introduction to Bridge Burning on Spotify.
Suzannah Johannes, “Tum” (live, to a baby)
Every year, Fally Afani from I Heart Local Music has a local musician or band play a song for a baby to kick off springtime in Lawrence. They are all beautiful and adorable, musically and visually, and this latest installment is no exception. Additionally, I have seen this baby in person and can attest that Theda is just as cute in real life as she is in this video for Suzannah Johannes’ “Tum.” Said baby was learning how to roll over at the time, and you can occasionally see some hands roll her back to the blanket as she makes for the grass. Like we said: ADORABLE AS HECK.
Behind the scenes fact from Johannes: The quilt is made from her Grandma’s dresses from when she was a little girl.
The studio version of “Tum” is available on Kansas City: Hanz Bronze Boulevard, which you can get on Bandcamp.
Sara Swenson, “Your Town”
We’re big fans of singer-songwriter Sara Swenson here at the Pitch, and we fully expected to fall in love with her new single, “Your Town,” before we’d even heard a single note. What we didn’t expect was drying our eyes every 15 seconds on this tour through some of our favorite Kansas City venues, and a background chorus made up of some of our favorite people. Knuckleheads, Record Bar, and Stockyards Brewery. Bob Walkenhorst, Mark Manning, Vi Tran, Brandon and Christena Graves, and on and on. Then there’s the song, which just makes us want to hug every single person we know next time we see them out and celebrate the musical community of Kansas City, much as the song is “one that celebrates community, diversity, and the idea that the town belongs to all of us.”
Sara Swenson’s Taller is streaming everywhere.
Prince Brendan, “Here Lies Kathy”
The third single from Prince Brendan’s forthcoming album, Love Songs for Sickly Girls, is a rather jauntier affair than the songs which preceded it, but the lyrics are no less introspective and dark. As the accompanying press release notes, the video “mirrors the song’s wintery emotional terrain” in its black-and-white visuals, shot in a cemetery, but it’s the Hammond organ and glockenspiel around which the song is built that make this feel like a celebration of life, rather than a funeral dirge.
Are you a local musician with a new music video to share? Email nicholas.spacek@gmail.com.
