5 Charms 08.25

Collections of Colonies of Bees - Celebrities (Milwaukee, WI; 2025)

It's a tricky sin, but I love it man!

Collections of Colonies of Bees is a super-group of sorts, with members collected from other projects going all the way back to post-rock band Pele in 1997. Singer Marielle Allschwang has several of her own bands including Lomira, Hello Death, and The Visitations. All of the members were involved with super-super group Altos; most of them were members of Volcano Choir. There is a certain style that all of these groups share--an unforeseen turn of melody, a layering of vocals, an tension between guitars and drums. It's hard to define, but there's no mistaking guitarist Chris Rosenau's influence on all of this music--his melodies pushing and pulling the songs in unexpected directions. Celebrities continues the trajectory of 2018's Hawaii (which added Allschwang to the previously instrumental line-up), with poppier arrangements and even more reliance on vocals. Guitar/synth player Daniel Spack sings on all of the songs here, sometimes doubling Allschwang's melodies, sometimes countering them. There are several lyrical references to dancing, and the propulsive drumming of Ben Derickson points the band in an almost disco-like direction. "Get Lit," "Tricky Sin," and "Strangers" are immediately recognizable as Bees songs, with the intricate vocal/drum/guitar interplay. "I Was a Dancer (he was a natural)" is a stand-out, a weird indie pop song that allows Allschwang's vocals and violin lots of room to help lead the song from ballad to dance-jam. It's hard to say what this music is, exactly, it's post-rock filtered through alternative pop--weird music for adults who care about music. For a surreal time, you can pick up $40 tix for a Bees/Altos show on a boat in the Milwaukee River!

Bees are:
Marielle Allschwang: vocal, violin
Ben Derickson: drum, percussion, synth
Chris Rosenau: guitar, other
Matt Skemp: bass, synth
Daniel Spack: guitar, synth, vocal

miscellaneous owl - the cloud chamber (Madison, WI; 2025)

Old scars, old sounds like the church bells ringing
Echolocation for the places I'm forgetting

It's a new year, that means another reliably great new album by singer/songwriter/multi-instrumentalist miscellaneous owl (aka Madison musician Huan-Hua Chye). Chye writes a new album every February for Album Writing Month, but you really have to forget about that with her music. These songs don't feel like a 28-day challenge project and they aren't half-finished. With 70+ releases on her Bandcamp, miscellaneous owl has become a songwriting machine capable of creating an album of beautiful indie bedroom pop gems every single year. 2025's the cloud chamber is an exquisite mix of lo-fi sounds, from her softly picked electric guitar and tender vocals to a well-placed theremin line. Highlights include the "full band" (Chye plays all instruments on the record) "The Invisible City," with some really nice drum work, the heartbreaking, acoustic guitar-based "Mercury," and pop tune "In Clover," which is reminiscent of her actual full band, Gentle Brontosaurus. Each song is a melancholy story that brings you down for a little bit before lifting you up into the chorus. The power of miscellaneous owl is to create these 3-minute worlds where you want to live for a little while, brewing tea, weeding the flowerbeds, and considering the maps of their landscape.

miscellaneous owl is:
Huan-Hua Chye

Cookie Bug - The Unreleased Cookie Bug Fiasco (Oshkosh, WI; 2025)

He's in the kitchen, swearing at silverware
Setting the food on the floor

What were you doing in 1993? That was the year I taught myself guitar on my dad's rusty and out of tune 12-string, using a book of folk hymns we sang at summer camp to pick out basic chords. The first song I wrote, probably late that year, consisted of strumming G and Em and singing about a girl who didn't love me. Evidently, long-time Oshkosh songwriter/producer/instrumentalist Stephen McCabe was, at that very moment, writing "Beautician," an art-punk masterpiece full of the energy and confidence of youth. Do the 15 lo-fi indie rock tunes that make up this record contain the seeds of a dozen bands in the Oshkosh music scene for decades to come? Probably. Did McCabe enter the music space fully formed, an avatar of damaged amps, janky time signatures, and ear-worm guitar melodies? Seems like it. Many of these tunes could be released today by brainy, post-genre acts like Shoobie, The Nile Club, Combat Naps, Interlay, Social Caterpillar, or Gauss, which is to say this collection of songs is youthful, but not childish, and full of the passion of a band discovering the creative power of making music together. "Beautician" and "Chin-up" is a crazy way to open the collection, two near-perfect indie rock songs, meandering, dirty, angry, confused, and joyful. "Shut up. No." has the dual vocal lines that modern-day Redshift Headlights does so well; in "Ornament, Orb," you can hear every Stephen McCabe vocal melody yet to come; "Gorka Legaretta" is a short story by way of punk rock, the blueprint for so much of McCabe's work as a songwriter; "Ring Inside" is one of those midwest-emo adjacent songs that so many Oshkosh bands of a certain era were known for--sludgy, driving, living in the tension between pop and post-punk forms. Cookie Bug is reuniting after 30 years and playing some shows, including a "final show" on September 12 at Oshkosh dive bar Reptile Palace. Go check 'em out!

Hemma - Abalone Sky (Eau Claire, WI; 2025)

I met my higher power
In a meditation outright
She told me you're gonna be just fine

There is an intensity to the quiet songwriter scene in the Eau Claire/Minneapolis area--powerful women leaning into their sadness, artists like Anna Vogelzang, Humbird, Her Crooked Heart, Voulouse, Anna Tivel, LASKA, and Hemma, who care about words and melodies and building songs they can hand you like a Lake Superior agate. "I find it pays to be lonely, on the edge of 29" sings Hannah Hebl, the songwriter behind Hemma's Abalone Sky, before going on to describe the process of remembering a song and using it to create her own "Lullaby". This is a record full of delicately sung acoustic songs with just a touch of piano, drums, and Hebl's trembling voice. It's not exactly country/folk music--it's closer to the acoustic dream pop/slowcore folk of The Innocence Mission. Each song is a little spiritual epiphany, touching on longing, hope, love, and, title of the closing track, "Grief." Spend time with this one, friends, Hebl has so many good things to say, and cradles the melodies in spacious production of S. Carey. I can't imagine these songs anywhere else but a warm, dark theater, but if and when Hemma goes out on tour to support this album, go and meet her in the darkness.

The Hallelujah Ward - Everybody Swoons (Milwaukee, WI; 2025)

I have nothing to say
that won’t make you cry

The most fun part of Listening to A lot of Music and Thinking about Music is when you stumble on something new and unexpected. Everybody Swoons was like that for me. Opening track "Your Uncertain Shadow" starts right off with a swirling electric guitar that you can almost feel stacking on top of itself. Sure enough, Waldoch's vocals come in and start Jenga-ing all over the place. The song teeters on the edge of noise for a couple of verses before the jagged guitars surface and Waldoch's voice crackles with abandon. And then it's over. And then it begins again on the next song. And it's like that the whole way through! Intricate pop breakdowns. Howling vocals. Droning synths. I'm a sucker for the deteriorating guitars on "Nobody's Ghost," the sizzling dance beats on "Manageable Oblivion" and "Crown," the religious imagery, the cascading reverb. The acoustic guitar comes out on "The Ring of Brightest Angels, Around Heaven," but this is spacey post-punk, a reaction to overproduced studio rock music. Or maybe it's just beautiful songs? Either way, you should pick this record up. It'll make you swoon, just like the title claims.

The Hallelujah Ward is:
Mark Waldoch: Vocals/Guitar
Dan Didier: Drums/Synth
Paul Hancock: Bass