Music Review // Lady Queen Paradise "You are everything"

https://ladyqueenparadise.bandcamp.com/album/you-are-everything

Have you ever listened to a piece of music and just had it feel like it punched you directly in the guts?  That's how I feel about Lady Queen Paradise, as listening to "You are everything" had that affect on me.  It's not that this music is heavy, because of that gut-punch as being something a hardcore band might create, but rather it just feels so familiar but new at the same time.   This sound is just this perfect combination of all of the genres that I love, with bits of my favorite artists sprinkled in and I probably don't even realize it fully.

What is primarily lead by the vocals, guitars come in to set the tone in various ways as well.   This album has a lot of sound for those people out there who listen to artists such as Mazzy Star and Cowboy Junkies and not just for the songs you know from the radio.  It's partly that era of music- that "alternative rock" that came with grunge- but at the same time, it also feels post grunge in the sense that it has a more modern twist.   However, if you told me that Lady Queen Paradise was opening for Juliana Hatfield in 1997 I'd be inclined to believe you.

At the same time as all of this can take me back to the past, it also feels set very much in the present and in a way which can be some sort of genre with -gaze added at the end of it.  These guitars do come through quite dreamy at times, so even to think of this as dreampop but with a dark edge would be accurate.   While it musically reminds me of a band such as Husbands, it also just has that overall feeling I get from listening to Slothrust so I feel they needed to be noted in here as well.

While "Only friend" has this layer of drama, "Because the bells" feels like driving and taking the long way home, but overall this is just powerful.  The music is there and it's this whole other part of the music you have to fully digest only after hearing these powerful vocals come through in so many different ranges.   There is quite a bit to unpack within these songs, but every time I hear something I didn't hear before it feels like another give and this is an album which keeps on giving.