Ian Ureta

A tenured media critic known working as a ghost writer, freelance critic for publications in the US and former lead writer of Atop The Treehouse. Reviews music, film and TV shows for media aggregators.

“Love Is Everywhere” Lands Exactly as It Should; Gentle, Hopeful, and Quietly Profound

Intercontinen7al has always been less of a band and more of a science experiment that accidentally produced real songs. Their entire premise of “what if musicians from every continent tried to make something together without ever standing in the same room?” began as a lockdown hobby and somehow escalated into a four-year, globe-spanning collaboration involving

“Love Is Everywhere” Lands Exactly as It Should; Gentle, Hopeful, and Quietly Profound Read More »

“Sweet Melodies” Isn’t Asking for Closure or Catharsis; It Takes Them

“Sweet Melodies” is ViperSnatch’s first single in over a year, and it crashes through the silence like someone finally losing patience with being polite about their heartbreak. It’s a breakup song, yes, but not the “staring quietly at rain” kind; more like the kind where you slam the door so hard the drywall flinches. Written

“Sweet Melodies” Isn’t Asking for Closure or Catharsis; It Takes Them Read More »

“Game of Love” Feels Like Michellar Letting Herself Have Fun in Public

There’s a delightful absurdity in how “Game of Love” even exists. On paper, it sounds like the setup for a logistical disaster: Michellar recording in San Francisco, Rad Datsun chiming in from Minneapolis and then just to keep things interesting, the whole thing being fed across the world to a Romanian producer named Marius Alexandru,

“Game of Love” Feels Like Michellar Letting Herself Have Fun in Public Read More »

Mark Anthony Bartolo Leans Into Restraint on “Up Brown”

“Up Brown” is one of those songs that doesn’t politely knock on your door so much as slip in through the emotional cat flap you forgot you even had. It’s atmospheric indie-pop at its most deceptively delicate: a soft, melancholic little ghost drifting through warm guitar textures and whispered refrains, quietly rearranging the furniture in

Mark Anthony Bartolo Leans Into Restraint on “Up Brown” Read More »

“Shout!” Has Fully Committed to Being a Feel-Good, Brass-Punching, Melody-Wielding Groove Machine

“Shout!” is the kind of song that feels like it escaped from a parallel universe where the pandemic didn’t crush everyone’s soul; it merely mildly inconvenienced a group of overachieving musicians who decided to respond by becoming even funkier. What’s immediately obvious is that d’Z the artist behind the composition, arrangement, and production of “Shout!”

“Shout!” Has Fully Committed to Being a Feel-Good, Brass-Punching, Melody-Wielding Groove Machine Read More »

21 Grammi, the New Album From Giuseppe Cucè, Completely Disarmed Me

I’ll be honest: I understand only a bit of Italian; just enough to recognize when someone is talking about love, death, food, or all three simultaneously, which is about 90% of Italian music anyway. And yet 21 Grammi, the new album from Giuseppe Cucè, completely disarmed me. It’s one of those records that bypasses language,

21 Grammi, the New Album From Giuseppe Cucè, Completely Disarmed Me Read More »

With Go Tell the Bees, Bastion’s Wake Doesn’t Just Level Up; They Arrive

On my last deep-dive on Bastion’s Wake, you’ll remember his central argument: that the band’s debut showed a lot of potential. It was a blueprint, a proof-of-concept; the sound of musicians circling the perimeter of something bigger, stranger, and more emotionally ambitious than their own early confidence could fully articulate. Go Tell the Bees, their

With Go Tell the Bees, Bastion’s Wake Doesn’t Just Level Up; They Arrive Read More »

Love It All Has Become Something Larger Than Its Components: A Person

Bailey Grey enters the indie arena with Love It All, a 15-track debut that behaves less like an introduction and more like someone finally deciding to live with the lights on. It’s a near-hour of emotional overabundance; the kind of debut that refuses to politely occupy a corner of your listening queue and instead sprawls

Love It All Has Become Something Larger Than Its Components: A Person Read More »

Across Six Songs, Weiss Pokes at the Weird, Tender Machinery of Adulthood

There’s something refreshingly unpretentious about Shani Weiss’s All About Life. It’s not trying to reinvent folk-rock or redefine singer-songwriter introspection. Instead, it’s quietly confident; the sound of an artist who knows that small truths hit harder than grand statements when they’re sung with sincerity. Across six songs, Weiss pokes at the weird, tender machinery of

Across Six Songs, Weiss Pokes at the Weird, Tender Machinery of Adulthood Read More »