Now Hear This: #004 – Oromet, Morning Eagle, Noddery & C.B. Blues

Now Hear This! This week’s offerings range from funereal doom to shoegaze to alt-rock to dream-pop. This collection of under-the-radar and largely unnoticed new releases will, hopefully, titillate your ears and trigger an emotional response.

We’ll bring you a new post each week, songs from which will regularly be added to our accompanying “Now Hear This” Spotify playlist.

Oromet – Oromet

Sacramento, California, known as “The City of Trees” and the “Farm-to-Fork” headquarters of the U.S., as well as breweries and a burgeoning frisson of hipness, doesn’t seem like a hotbed of doom metal. Apparently, it is, at least to some extent. Enter Oromet, the atmospheric doom project of Dan Aguilar (guitars, vocals) and Patrick Hills (drums, bass, synths, backing vocals).

Oromet’s self-titled debut album encompasses three songs, spanning over 40 minutes. The band’s name was borrowed from Tolkien and refers to the hilltop on which the Tower of Tar-Minastir rested. Although all three tracks are mesmerizing, for some reason, “Alpenglow” captures Oromet’s mythical sonic structure.

At once elegiac and permeated with thick layers of misty, ringing guitars, along with undulating, orchestral palls, Oromet’s complex compositions radiate brooding absorption with secret ideas and dark resolves.

Morning Eagle – “War of Roses”

Indie-rock/shoegaze artist Morning Eagle recently dropped a new single, “War of Roses,” an amalgamation of hazy shoegaze tinted with dollops of grunge granularity.

The intro, with its tight, thwacking percussion and fuzzy guitars, rolls into a dreamy rhythm highlighted by a humming bassline as almost disinterested vocals imbue the lyrics with casual, emotional anguish, as if numb from devastating sadness.

“I feel nothing when you’re near / it’s real / leave the roses just right here / where I sleep / so I can’t breathe / I don’t want to dream / fall away from me.”

Noddery – “Strides”

Made up of Paige Hanson (vocals), Sean Thapa (bass), Aidan Supranowitz (drums), Jackson Williams (guitar), and Jasper Smith (guitar), all of whom are students at UMass, Noddery’s new single, “Strides,” blends edgy alt-rock with whiffs of pop hues, resulting in an angular, melodic sound.

The name Noddery, according to Hanson, was taken from Supranowitz’s ‘noddery’ scale – based on how much a listener nods their head to a song, thus revealing how good a song is.

Supranowitz’s polyrhythmic drumming gives the verses an asymmetrical beat, followed by flowing back into a straight-ahead four-beat rhythm on the chorus, akin to sonic cleansing. Hanson’s vocals, beguiling and quasi-Siren-like, infuse the lyrics with a sense of imminence.

C.B. Blues – Introducing … C.B. Blues

Dream-pop outfit C.B. Blues will release their album, Introducing … C.B. Blues, on July 25. The only track currently available is “Oh, Diane.”

There’s very little info on the band except for the following, which is taken from their Bandcamp page: all songs written and performed by C. Brodnick, along with Gregory Chipkin (drums) and Henry Meade (keyboards). Austin Loman provides guitars on “Rider,” while the arrangement for “Landline” is from Connor Theriot.

“Oh, Diane” features gentle, jangly guitars riding crunching percussion and a walking bassline as soft, velvety vocals, vaguely reminiscent of America, imbue the lyrics with silky tones and charming flavours, decorated by croaking harmonies.

If the rest of the album is as half as flavorsome as “Oh, Diane,” Introducing … C.B. Blues promises to be topnotch.