Ahoy, Cleveland!
We’re back with a new batch of new Northeast Ohio music to check out this month, in our 30-song playlist, Cleveland Current.
Tune in to the playlist here, and catch up with three featured musical groups below.
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Chayla Hope, “Midnight Drive”
Backed by a full band, Chayla Hope will debut a new single “JDWA” at Roar Along the Shore, a concert on the Goodtime III on Wednesday, Aug. 7. The concert benefits Brite Winter music festival — and it’s not Hope’s first time playing it. She previously performed at Roar Along the Shore while fronting her former band Seafair, years ago.
This time around, you’ll hear plenty of new solo music from the pop musician, including her last single, the addictively angsty “Midnight Drive.”
It’s just one single of a batch of new songs released since Hope’s debut solo record Damn, Feelings in 2022 — and they will all build up to her sophomore album Mess of a Woman. The upcoming album is slated to arrive in February, with even more single releases leading up to it.
The new album's title was inspired by a hateful comment Hope received on social media.
“Somebody was like, ‘What a voice,’ which was very nice, and then, ‘What a tattooed mess of a woman,’” Hope says. “I was like, ‘They have no idea what they just did for me.’ Everything kind of came together. I’ve been told so many times that I can’t do something, and this album proved it to myself without me even realizing I was proving it to other people.”
Beyond Roar Along the Shore, catch Hope performing a unique concert with Contemporary Youth Orchestra later this year.
Post Saga, Circles
A two-month band break in early 2023 led Post Saga to write some of its most pop-driven songs yet, featured in the new EP Circles, released in late July.
“I really missed being onstage,” recounts frontwoman Danna O’Connor. “So we got together, and I think it was kind of the kick in the ass that we needed to write because, at that point, we hadn’t written any new songs in two years, which is a lot for bands.”
O’Connor put pen to paper and wrote two out of the five songs on the band’s latest EP, becoming more involved in the band’s songwriting process compared to prior releases. The group’s sound changed with last year’s membership shifts; Post Saga went from a five-piece to a seven-piece group, with saxophone and trumpet added to the mix.
“When you start adding horns, you start adding that instrumentation to other songs that didn’t have horns, and then all of a sudden you have horns on everything,” O’Connor says.
You can catch Post Saga at a DIY pre-tour kickoff in Hudson (Aug. 3), an Amy Winehouse tribute show at the Beachland Ballroom (Aug. 6), Westside Bowl in Youngstown (Aug. 10) and at the Grog Shop (Aug. 16). (Find the band’s full concert schedule on Post Saga’s website.)
Wave Rowanne, Technotic
Rowanne Atallah and Donald Malloy, aka Wave Magnetik, first met in 2021 at a New York wedding band gig — and soon formed a band of their own.
“She was the main singer in the wedding band, and I was just kind of filling in. And when we got to the show, we started talking,” Malloy says. “We found out that we both liked electronic dance music, and it was just like, ‘Hey, well, I'm working on a record right now. Want to sing on it?’”
It didn’t take long for them to start collaborating on their own project in Cleveland, named Wave Rowanne. The duo showcases its sonic backgrounds — Malloy’s, in jazz and spiritual music, and Atallah’s in international and Middle Eastern music. The resulting music is a mix of Arabic, English, French and Spanish-influenced dance music, which you can hear on the band’s April EP Technotic.
“We tap into different cultures, that’s kind of our specialty,” Atallah says. “The idea of Wave Rowanne is just to make people move. That’s the most important — and just feel the love. No matter where you come from, what international background you come from, we’re always going to touch you.”
Wave Rowanne will perform at Roar Along the Shore (Aug. 7), and will also play at Shooters (Aug. 24) and the Ohio Pawpaw Festival in Albany (Sept. 13-15).
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