The Sounding Board
A weekly column where New Music Tuesdays live on. Conversation is encouraged in the comments.
Every Tuesday, the Sounding Board is a space for a short-ish review of a recent-ish release and conversations about new-to-you music. I’ll get things started with a write-up about a newer, likely under-heard album, and invite you to share your music musings in the comments.
I did not expect this column to have such an entomological bent, but with roach-like persistence, bugs have become a frequent Sounding Board presence.
This year started with the quirky and catchy Bugs Forever by Gumshoes. Hornet Disaster by Weatherday, released in spring, stands among the best albums reviewed this year in this space. The Bug Club’s cutesy coed indie pop songs wormed their way into my heavy rotation over the summer. Just this weekend, “Flies” by Cheekface, a standout track from the band’s extremely fun but under-the-radar album Middle Spoon, was the aural caffeine I needed to get out and shoot photos of the sunrise.1 All of that ensures that any forthcoming year-end wrap-up will feature a veritable swarm.
Maybe there’s a deeper reason I’m drawn to bug-named projects like a moth to flame. Are world events driving it, like some singular version of the theory that public preoccupation with zombies or vampires is tied to economic trends? Perhaps a cocaine-sniffing Austrian would tell me it all goes back to a love for the Beatles passed down to me by my parents. It’s distinctly possible my personal unconsciousness has ants. I haven’t checked it for crumbs in ages.2 Of course, there could be no hivemind at work. It could just be a creepy-crawly coincidence that arthropods and nematodes have inspired so much good music in 2025.
Whether the trend is real or imagined, it’s been extended because I’ve now spent hours orbiting the slightly alien world of Bug Teeth’s Microphagia.3 While it’s a grief-stricken planet, it’s also a pleasant, often weightless place that nevertheless has enough gravity to keep listeners from totally floating away over the course of its 10 songs.
Microphagia is the long-gestating debut album for Bug Teeth, who hail from Leeds, England. Bug Teeth began the better part of a decade ago as a solo project for front-person PJ Johnson. The band is now a quintet consisting of Sonny Mitchell (guitar, cello), George Orton (drums, sampler), Alex Calder (synthesizer), and Adam Bentham (bass). Johnson’s voice is often the single most attention-grabbing element on any given Bug Teeth album, and the death of their mother gives Microphagia its grieving core. Still, there’s a sense of complexity and collaboration in the music that marks it as a true group project.
Years of tinkering and growth have yielded an album that slooshes with perplexing viscosity between the borders of bedroom pop, shoegaze, electronic ambience and smooth jazz. Bug Teeth’s music is decidedly more interesting than it is immediate. Ethereal, somnolent, spacy, hazy and warm are the LP’s watchwords. Cocteau Twins and Brian Eno are clear influences. Modern-day Beth Orton4 and the heavy-lidded moments on yeule albums are two reasonable comparators.
Once, as a boy, I went swimming in a relative’s heated pool that had been allowed to warm up well past conventional swimming temperatures. It was still cooler than a standard hot tub, but the water was easily in excess of 90 degrees. Even as I treaded water, I could feel my muscles loosening, the warm water persuading my body to relax. It was surreal to be in the middle of a tranquil expanse of warmth while also being aware that danger waited if I stopped expending effort and let myself sink. It was an odd, but not unpleasant, sensation.
Listening to Microphagia reminds me so much of that experience. Its near-narcotic buoyancy is nearly a dare to give up on active, thoughtful listening, but Bug Teeth are good about tossing an occasional life preserver. The shoegaze crunch and subterranean bass that infiltrate the last 90 seconds of “Ammonite,” the group vocals that breathe energetic life into “Warp & Weft II,” and the way the Western vista of “Collections” subsumes complex plucking sounds that could have easily been a short detour all provide ample surface-level thrills. It’s more than enough encouragement to kick through the more album’s more formless and anodyne stretches.
About the writer
Ben Hohenstatt
Ben Hohenstatt is an Alaska-based dog owner who moonlights as a music writer and photographer.
For more information, consult your local library or with parental permission visit his website.
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The Sounding Board
A weekly column where New Music Tuesdays live on. Conversation is encouraged in the comments.
The Sounding Board
A weekly column where New Music Tuesdays live on. Conversation is encouraged in the comments.
The Sounding Board
A weekly column where New Music Tuesdays live on. Conversation is encouraged in the comments.
The Sounding Board
A weekly column where New Music Tuesdays live on. Conversation is encouraged in the comments.
The Sounding Board
A weekly column where New Music Tuesdays live on. Conversation is encouraged in the comments.
Department of
Conversation
What Did We Watch?
Hardcore – Schrader is always interesting but this one didn’t fully grab me. The “innocent forced into a dark world” vibes kinda reminded me of The Wicker Man, oddly, but I didn’t find George C. Scott’s protagonist all that compelling and the tone veers awkwardly between goofy and horrifying in a way that didn’t fully work for me. Scott donning a Porno Disguise as part of his investigation was admittedly pretty funny though. Still, pretty interesting and I can see how it would have hit a lot harder when it originally came out, but it hasn’t held up anywhere near as well as Blue Collar in my eyes.
The Kids In The Hall, Season Four, Episode Thirteen
I think I accidentally jumped ahead to season five last week. Tubi has had this weird, annoying error lately where I click ‘play next’ and it plays the first episode, and I must have hit the wrong season trying to get back where I was.
“Don’t you know that if you swear in front of a pregnant lady, the baby will grow up swearing?! It happened to me…”
“Look at them. Don’t they know that I have no idea what I’m talking about?”
Having Dave Foley just say ‘blah blah blah’ under his narration is great.
“Having no sex appeal must be hard for you too.”
This sketch was great.
“Please don’t kill yourself.”
“Tarzan make joke.”
“Oh yeah.”
“Cheetah would have laugh.”
“Don’t say ‘the Kids In The Hall have lost their edge’, say ‘the Kids In The Hall have lost their edge for a great deal of money, and that’s okay’.”
“They call me Fingers. I don’t play the piano.”
“The only thing you’re good for is fucking!”
Frasier, “It Takes Two to Tangle” – Martin attempts to date two women at once, thinking he can avoid Frasier’s mistakes. One of the women is a philanthropist who could, with one stroke of the pen, donate enough to save Frasier and Niles’s high school, which is about to go under. Naturally everything goes asunder. The eighth season slump continues, as it’s not more funny to watch Martin act like a moron than it is to watch Frasier. I would even say it’s a bit out of character. Barbara Babcock doesn’t have a lot to do as the rich girlfriend. John Michael Higgins has more to work with as her son, who is obsessed with stopping her from making too many unworthy donations. And there’s a cute gag that Daphne has already lost “9 pounds and 12 ounces,” of course referring to Jane Leeves’s baby.
Lot of stuff while I was away with family and whatnot!
Letterkenny Christmas Special from Season 5 which I somehow hadn’t seen and was really funny, especially Wayne’s increasingly disgusted/horrified reactions to the Coach’s memories of his wife.
Always Sunny’s “The Gang Squashes Their Beefs” Thanksgiving episode that of course ends as chaotically as possible. The awkward applause breaks here for the horrible confessions are so funny.
Dredd (2012) – Raid ripoff or not, flaws and all, this still fucks and I love the weird filmic qualities of the Slo-Mo drug that feel like Garland slipping some philosophy into the shoot ’em up action: what’s the difference between a distortion of reality and your own perception of it, especially in cinema? I gotta read more Dredd comics too.
A slime tutorial (a Broadway musical shot by a usually shaky handheld camera) of How To Succeed In Show Business Without Really Trying with Daniel Radcliffe as J. Pierrepont Finch. I had my issues with the production, including an overly dark set, and Radcliffe isn’t the strongest singer. Still, the dancing is pretty incredible, and he embodies Sondheim’s “actor who can sing,” gleefully throwing himself into the role and hoofing it as hard as anyone. Me and a friend talked about how his sheer enthusiasm for whatever he does is Radcliffe’s most endearing quality as an actor post-Potter.
Robert Morse wasn’t a very good singer in the movie of the original. It’s a part written for such people, I would say.
Agreed, he has more of a full voice than Radcliffe, however. (I also like how Morse leans into his body’s weirdness, like moving absurdly close to people.)
The Lowdown, “Old Indian Trick” and “Tulsa Turnaround”
Technically, I watched “Old Indian Trick” on Thanksgiving morning (eerily appropriate choice, as it turns out), but I forgot to write it up earlier. But “Tulsa Turnaround” really was yesterday, so I haven’t completely turned our comment section into a house of lies.
The last few episodes have been especially strong and gripping, with Lee’s headlong rush into doing the right (and splashiest) thing lead–predictably, to everyone but him–to horrible consequences. I like the show’s matter-of-fact look at how evil launders itself into politics through money: Donald Washberg isn’t deliberately, virulently racist (though he’s happy enough to participate in cutesy, fun-for-the-whole-family reenactments like the Land Race), but for the right payoff, he’ll get into bed with someone more involved with the rancid underbelly of his folksy “back to basics” movement, and that person’s involved with someone still worse, someone who oils the wheels with blood as well as money. And so it goes. The show’s promos understandably like to use “behind every great fortune is a great crime,” but while that’s literally true here, it’s also Lee’s starting point, a Southwestern Gothic look at the corruption of the Washbergs. The series then gets deeper–without ever completely giving up its breezy, funny, exciting charms–and takes on the whole country as the great fortune.
The X-Files, “Sanguinarium”
A fun, gory, but ultimately featherlight episode. Amazed they got away with the showing that still-bubbling acid-burned face. I liked a little bit of the mini-jokes about Mulder and plastic surgery, but the ones that played on his natural curiosity–using the pencil to check the line of his nose–were better than the ones that implied actual (if temporary) concern.
I like when The X-Files does horror, but I think I prefer when its horror has at least a whiff of science fiction to it: it makes the balance of skill-sets between Mulder and Scully more equal and gives them both something to do. It’s opening up new fields of what’s possible and understandable. The fantasy episodes close that potential off. Fantasy can still have a sense of wonder, but its worlds rarely have a sense of progressive understanding; the genre (when handled in a more routine way) doesn’t feel like as good a fit for these kinds of investigations.
RIP Graham Greene, heartbreaking performance. Also Paul Sparks, who I’m super used to as Mickey Doyle in Boardwalk Empire, getting to use those eyes to very scary effect. (As you say, Washburn doesn’t get exactly what he’s doing, he just knows something’s wrong there.) I also wish we got a little more Blake Nelson even if that’s the idea, or maybe I want a movie with him as a good-natured gay cowboy.
Sisu: Road to Revenge – Even 25% capacity Fury Road has some pleasures. The ridiculousness that overtook the original now feel more intentional (or maybe I was just more prepared). While John Wick nodded vigorously at Buster Keaton, these movies are the actual pairing of his stoic stunting with outrageous modern violence.
“these movies are the actual pairing of his stoic stunting with outrageous modern violence” — have you been sneaking peaks at the forthcoming Top Five? Similar arguments made. Perhaps I will give this a go, I don’t know why certain ultraviolence annoys me while good old fashioned Equalizing is just the thing, maybe this is closer to the latter.
What Did We Listen To?
”Redesign Your Logo”, Lemon Demon
Style and Form
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HXk-0_rETJ8&list=RDHXk-0_rETJ8&start_radio=1
This has the flipside to my usual layman’s perspective – it sounds very simple, but it’s actually absurdly complicated. It’s a psychedelic horror in the form of a pop song that pulls a lot of moves, tiny and big, to unsettle the listener; its basis was to take fragments of sentences from a pitch for changing Pepsi’s logo, and it captures the absurdity and horror of that document and its disconnection from real human behaviour and thinking.
Melody and Harmony
The melody is as simple as can be, being just one step up from spoken word, but the harmony is completely insane. It begins with the fact that it’s built around going through A, B, C, then D – literally just going higher up in the chords – and then it futzes with this by changing the exact chords into their minor or seventh variants, seemingly at random, across the different verses. It increases in intensity over the course of a verse, and while it’s not wrong, it doesn’t sound at all like how a human would make a song.
Arrangement
Like all Lemon Demon songs, this is heavily synthesised with an electric guitar in there. Neil Cic goes all out with the special effects here, and he keeps a simple four-note riff throughout almost the whole thing, to both steady and unsteady us. I deeply enjoy the little explosions of synth sound he layers in, seemingly at random, and he also uses two separate background vocals across the song; a stuttering synth-like repetition of what he’s ‘singing’ that comes in form the second verse onward, and female vocals in the outro.
Intro
This immediately establishes that four-note riff and the steady beat behind it. It’s actually longer than I usually remember it – eight measures when I mentally tag it as four, for some reason.
Verse
Already, this is insane. It’s literally just A, B, C, D, with the C measure split in half and finishing off with C minor – presumably, to break up the monotony to the listener. The second half of the verse seems to do the same thing over, but it splits up the A Major measure to include its minor version, splits up the B measure to include its seventh version, swaps out C for c minor entirely, and throws in a b minor before the D major! That last one in particular gives it the feeling of the end of a blues verse, but in the most deranged expression possible.
The song will then never repeat this exact iteration of chords, nor will it repeat any other – in fact, the final iteration of the verse ends with G Major and F Major! And yet, I never heard all those chords, let alone their variations – it just sounded like the same thing over and over. I suspect this conveys a sense of disintegration – one that’s reflected in the way the final verse seems to literally fall apart, dropping the eternal four-note riff and then pulling it back in almost at random late in the verse.
Instrumental Verse
Technically, this is supposed to sound like another verse, though as I said, none of the verses are identical. The audible difference is that it has a guitar solo instead of vocals, and unlike everything else in the song, it’s stuttering and even panicked as opposed to unsettlingly steady – it sounds like it’s being restrained more than anything else. The solo is characterised by initial sharp bursts before shifting to little melodies imitating the four-note riff.
Bridge
This is a short section that finally drops the verse structure (such as it is) to expand upon the intro – bringing those exploding synth sounds into the forefront to make these universe-expanding swirls of simple sound that carry over into the last verse.
Second Bridge
This expands the bridge even further, introducing more chords and seeming to finally explode into panic as the guitar comes back, totally out of control.
Outro
This is really another variation on the verse, but the narrator has pulled the mask off, openly demanding our money; everything does come together here, with all the previous musical elements coming as one, including the guitar, and the four-note riff starts throwing in little trills at the end of sections.
Final Thoughts
I always have a strong taste for pop songs that are secretly horror stories – it feels like an underserved genre. The big lesson here is how music and technique is actually extremely obvious when you look under the hood – everything I learned here seems extremely obvious now that I know it.
Kiss On The Bottom, Paul McCartney
A goof-off from McCartney, right down to the title. He’s not a great jazz pianist, weirdly enough, but it’s alright.
Zuma, Neil Young & Crazy Horse
A pretty good return to form after I didn’t care for the last one.
I always pegged McCartney as more of a music hall/blues piano player.
Really detailed analysis of “Redesign Your Logo,” based on how this song intends to make you feel a certain way. As you point out, any analysis using music theory is multi-layered, addressing music (what the notes are) and technique (how these notes are played).
This song illustrates the importance of how notes sound when played on a specific musical instrument. Indeed, it would be much harder to play this song on guitar, or on piano. If you did, it would sound considerably different.
Because what is doing much of the heavy lifting in this song is a sequencer, which allows you to program, on an electric keyboard/synthesizer, a pattern/riff made out of individual notes, sounding one after another, and then you can move it up or down the keyboard.
So if you were to play the following notes on a keyboard: C, E, G, then you have a C major chord. If you move it up to D, F, A, you have a D minor chord. And so on.
The change in tonality within the repetition of the pattern/riff fits with lyrics depicting the damaged/limited imagination of a corporate salesperson.
The song’s horror story recalls the minimalist punk rock of Suicide*, but expands it, by making the harmonic/structural elements more complex. There are moments where it sounds as if the pattern/riff becomes glitchy (or, you could say, gets more dissonant) which is weirdly intriguing.
*I’ve heard people say this song by Suicide has really freaked them out: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8_dXp0eF8s0
So is that Lemon Demon shitpost accurate?
1001 Albums, etc.:
Michael Jackson – Thriller: a pretty undeniable pop classic, and since I believe this is the only album on the list to feature a cameo from Vincent Price I am powerless to resist its charms. “Human Nature” in particular is just a great song.
The Birthday Party – Junkyard: there was a band that sounded a bit like this at one of the music festivals I went to recently and somehow I immediately pegged them as Birthday Party fans even though I’d never really listened to them before. Pleased to find out that I was correct! This is admirably abrasive, never going to be my favourite style of music but I dug how full-on it was.
Venom – Black Metal: hmm, obviously picked for its influence / creating a new subgenre but this mostly sounded like either lesser Maiden or lesser Motorhead to me, depending on the song. The Motorhead end of their sound is pretty cool, but there’s plenty of other metal I’d rather listen to.
Bruce Springsteen – Nebraska: I do love a lo-fi solo album, the intimate four-track sound here is very appealing. I don’t think I’ll ever be the biggest Springsteen fan but this was an enjoyable listen overall, I liked it more than “Darkness on the Edge of Town” but not as much as “Born to Run”.
Associates – Sulk: don’t think I’ve ever really heard these before, it’s a fun, maximalist sound that falls somewhere between Bowie and Japan, maybe? The theatrical vocals took a while to grow on me but they won me over eventually, there are some fun ideas here.
I’ve also been spending some time with 2025 music now that the album-of-the-year lists have started emerging. The Quietus list is great fun, as usual (and my girlfriend’s band made #80! SHOULD BE HIGHER) – really enjoyed the aya, Decius and Caroline albums so far.
—
Blank Check, Tragedy of Macbeth – this isn’t the worst Coen-related film but it’s probably the one I’m least interested in. Still a pretty interesting discussion though.
Fuck yeah Junkyard! If you do wind up hankering for more abrasion I cannot recommend Live 81-82 enough, the sound is beefier (particularly the bass) and Cave sounds fantastic.
Continuing my musical beat! I am twenty years too late to the cult but am listening to The Last Five Years, a musical/song cycle of a relationship from the two different perspectives. Your mileage may vary on the likeability of the characters – it is virtually autofiction, to the extent that Jason Robert Brown was sued by his ex-wife over the material. However, the male stand-in is meant to be a deeply flawed creature and it’s a good depiction of how a needy, insecure person on either side – and a more confident, arrogant one – can wear down the relationship. More importantly, the songs are witty and painfully emotional, especially “The Next Ten Minutes”, whose violin and piano made me burst into tears while walking and listening, and “Nobody Needs to Know.” The latter is somewhere between Springsteen and Sondheim, “Brilliant Disguise” by someone who has already given up on the relationship and hates himself for it.
Poor Creature – All Smiles Tonight
This album was similar to this week’s Sounding Board pick, but less synthetic and even more ethereal. I wound up connected with Bug Teeth a little more, but I’ll need to spend more time with this to see if anything sticks.
Sharp Pins – Balloon Balloon Balloon
Fans of Guided By Voices ’90s output have to give this a shot. It’s 21 short songs with a lot of garage rock and British Invasion influence. I was very charmed by it, although like all albums that attempt this kind of structure, sometimes you feel a little winded listening to it.
Julian Glander & Friends – Boys Go to Jupiter (Film OST)
Over the long weekend, I watched Boys Go to Jupiter. It’s very strange and was animated in Blender, which leads to some pretty wild style choices. The stakes and rules of its world are never really explained, but it really captures the indolence caked into early adolescence in a way that not much media does. It also has an awesome soundtrack that’s freely available on Bandcamp. “Winter Citrus” and “Beverages Have Different Flavors” were my favorite tracks. The former is euphoric bedroom pop that would honestly fit in on a Bug Teeth album. The latter is basically a chip tune lullaby.
I liked the last Sharp Pins album quite a bit, need to check this one out.