A recent track from Flying Needle, “Sweet Bliss” makes a strong impression in its concise runtime — combining relevant social commentary with a compelling structural rise, from quaint guitar distortion to playful synth arpeggios and enthused vocal culmination. “There’s gotta be a little bit more to life than this,” the lyrics observe, following depictions of “getting high off the fumes,” and toxic plumes. The one-minute turn invigorates with the “burning down the highway,” sequence, adding effervescent synths to the steady guitar work and societal lyrical observations.
Flying Needle, the project of Timothy M. Griffiths, first grabbed our ears with the track “Durham St.” in July, and the similarly successful “Sweet Bliss” has us fully anticipating whatever’s next.
Griffiths elaborates on the track:
“Queer people in America are caught between two poles in political culture: outright fascism and rainbow capitalism. “Sweet Bliss” is a snappy, punkish glam rock song, employing gallows humor to describe what it’s like to be a main character in American political culture.”
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This and other tracks featured this month can be streamed on the updating Obscure Sound’s ‘Emerging Singles’ Spotify playlist.