A few weeks ago, I blogged about Quebec artist MUNYA and her upcoming album, Voyage to Mars. MUNYA just released a new track off the album, the disco-inflected “Voyage” and filmed a video to go with it. In the video, lots of construction is going on, but the viewer is never really given a total picture of what is being built. It’s almost as if she’s creating something that can never be completed. The lyrics repeated over and over in the chorus may speak something to this.
I had never heard of Dave Depper before this week, but I’m glad to make his musical acquantance via a new cover of Air’s Moon Safari album.
I realize that I posted a video from Colatura not long ago, but the second single off of their debut is as winsome as the first and it seemed like an opportunity wasted not to share it.
“Some days, crowded spaces feel lonely, some days they feel okay.” It may not be the most profound lyric ever written, but it carries with it some truth that all of us have felt.
This week's Friday Night Video is a bit older but it's one that reminds me of how Jack Tatum can step outside of the usual Roxy Music joins the Cure playing Fleetwood Mac sound. I haven't heard anything from Tatum in a while, and, while this isn't a particularly representative sample of his work, it feels good to boost Wild Nothing anyway. When I first listened to this tune, I thought Talking Heads, and I wasn't the only one.
Rick Astley and the Blossoms have been on a nostalgia trip lately. They’re not reminiscing about old Astley tunes, though. They’ve dug into the Smiths catalog for what amounts to the creation of a tribute band to the Morrissey/Marr collaboration. The Guardian has details on the collaborative effort, which is appropriately reverent. I love this cover of “Well I Wonder,” a sort of deep cut from Meat Is Murder and what is one of my favorite songs by the Smiths.
“In Camera” is just one of the many Balearic, breezy Yumi Zouma songs worthy of the single/video treatment. Boy, does it get it. This story of a square (by retro standards) boy who goes to a girl’s house for a date and gets treated to a dance routine is well choreographed. The dance itself involves a little Flashdance, a little Steve Martin King Tut and just a splash of Chris Farley as a Chipendale’s dancer.
It may be just a bit too early for posts about Christmas. Frankly, it seems like it’s too early for Halloween decorations, but some of my neighbors started working on their haunting displays back in September.1 Despite our distance from the “happiest time of the year,” though, I had to post this because I’ve been enjoying this cover song.
This was a pleasant surprise in my Apple New Music Mix last week. I haven't heard any Black Marble in a while (I enjoyed some tracks on 2016's It's Immaterial). "Somewhere" starts off with some pretty standard synth swells, and proceeds along like a synthstramental for about a minute and half before kicking into an upbeat new wave/post-punk bopper. The video is fun, with a kid getting to hang and dance with the cool adults.
Greg's Guitar Lessons covers "Start Without Me" by Pedro The Lion. As far as I know, this is the only song T.W. Walsh wrote for the band and it's nearly universally agreed upon as one of their best.
Duett channels the sounds of the 1980's on their pastel-infused album Leisure.
Duett has been around for a while, but just came to my attention via Bandcamp's Instagram account last week. I was drawn in by the stylized artwork and colorful pastels on the album cover of their newest offering, Leisure. The contents of the album sound exactly like you would expect from looking at the cover. Over-the-top synths bathe the listener in the color palette of the 1980's. The aesthetic is so completely intact, that the opening track, "Gallery," sounds like it was pulled from an 80's film about Wall Street.
This one came up out of the blue last week, just as I had posted “Pink and Blue” as a Friday Night Video. Colatura is from Brooklyn and they correctly guessed that people would want to watch a guy in a half gorilla suite skating around what is presumably NYC.
The smooth and slightly smoky voice of Saint Sinner pairs well with the instrumentals from Tycho. It's a welcome change to hear vocals on the (normally instrumental) Tycho tracks and this is one song where they really pull it off in a very cohesive way. I've always thought Scott Hansen from Tycho had a certain genius for making electronic music sound particularly organic and that is very evident here.
🎵 Japanese Breakfast does a gorgeous cover of Sufjan Stevens’ “Romulus.”
🎵 Angel Olsen’s atmospheric 80’s cover EP, Aisles just dropped. If you buy it via Bandcamp today, all of her proceeds from the digital sales go to International Refugee Assistance Project. “Forever Young” gives me goosebumps.
Tonight we have Japanese band Pictured Resort covering Craft Spells’ ‘After The Moment.’ The original is probably my favorite song in the Craft Spells catalog. Pictured Resort honor the song with this straightforward cover and look like they are having fun while doing it. It reminds me of a time when jangle pop was having a bit of a revival with the new bands on Captured Tracks and chillwave was also in its ascendancy.
New songs from Film School set the stage for their soon-to-be-released album.
Film School just dropped a single for "Isla," from their upcoming album We Weren't Here (9/24). Their Bandcamp page describes the song as "is perfect, washed out, glimmering pool side hazy ease." In other words, just right for summer. The track is a departure from their typical sound, and brings to mind Fleetwood Mac and Roxy Music as filtered through Wild Nothing.
Following the previous post, I’m risking turning this into a Sharon Von Etten fan blog, which would be weird, since I haven’t even heard most of her work. I did come across this cover of one of Daniel Johnston’s best songs, “Some Things Last A Long Time,” though, and found it unique enough to want to share.
It may be partly the haircuts (hey Linda Ronstadt), but something feels so authentically 70’s about this collaboration between Angel Olsen and Sharon Van Etten. Despite the video featuring the two artists sitting alone in rooms playing acoustic guitar, this song has a fleshed out band that augments the pair well. The song plays with country instincts the way many in the 70’s did (think Fleetwood Mac), without giving in to the cornier trappings of the genre. If the YouTube comments are any indication, the harmonies between Olsen and Van Etten are the realization of the dreams of many fans.
Nandi Bushell always puts on a great performance. She started with videos of herself playing a particular song with a single instrument and wowed a lot of heavyweight rockers (like Tom Morello and Dave Grohl). She recently branched out into covering all the parts of songs like “Under the Bridge” by Red Hot Chili Peppers and “Where is My Mind” by Pixies using a looper and recording each instrument independently in sequence. With the latter recording, she does a sublime job with the vocals that bookend the song and allows her instrumental loops to buttress the main vocal part. Her more-than-apparent enthusiasm for rock music is always infectious and her craft is inspiring.
If you’ve ever heard J. Mascis perform Dinosaur Jr. songs solo on acoustic guitar, he goes about it in what could be described as a lazy way. He’s sloppy, which is part of who he is, or his brand, if you will. As one music critic once said of his cover of the Cure’s “Just Like Heaven,” when he says, “‘I must have been asleep for days,’ you really believe him.” A recently released live album actually has him singing “blah, blah, blah,” on one of the songs when he forgets the words. Though he’s a much revered guitar player, his acoustic guitar playing is rough on live recordings.
Have you ever thought about how hypnosis so closely resembles guided meditation? Especially the beginning of hypnosis, called induction, which is designed to put you into a state of relaxation in which you are more susceptible to suggestion. The watching of the breath, the attention on sensations in the body that focus and settle your mind are integral to both beginning hypnosis and to mindfulness meditation.
The header of the Bandcamp page for Prepare My Glider features a shoegaze staple: an overstuffed pedalboard. True to their name, they offer plenty of Shieldsian glide guitar and dreamy vocal harmonies that float beautifully above the noise.
After her bass player left a former band she was in to join a band he said was going to be “Jimmy Fallon big,” Michelle Zauner from Japanese Breakfast wrote a song about it. The bass player eventually rejoined Zauner in Japanese Breakfast and got his wish. The band just played their latest single, “Be Sweet” on the Tonight Show. I had this song on heavy rotation prior the performance and now I think I like it even more.
There is a theory that black metal flourished in Norway because there was never a counter-reformation in Scandinavia. Philosophy Professor Justin E. H. Smith touches on this in his piece on Weird Catholic Twitter.
New Order with Florida sun drenched, blissed out vocals.
🎵 Millionyoung - Less
If Morrissey had been enamored with Brazil, the Smiths might have made a song like Rio De Janeiro by Always You (formerly Ablebody). 🎵
I remember hearing Widowspeak years ago, when their album Almanac came out and not getting too attached to it. When Apple Music recommended a song from their new EP, I gave the band another try in the flow of a new music playlist. I quickly reversed the direction of the playlist and returned to revisit the track. I listened to “Romeo and Juliet” about a dozen times today.
As I listen to the new Noble Oak record, I’m happy to see that Bandcamp has opened their vinyl pressing service to the wider community. 🎵
I honestly couldn’t think why someone would try to record a cover of this song because the original is so nearly perfect but this really works. Pedal steel augments the desert noir atmosphere.
🎵 Muzz - Fade Into You
Today I got this shirt from my loving wife as a Christmas present. The Local 506 is where, in 1993, I saw my first rock show. The headlining act was a local math rock band from the Merge Records stable, Polvo. Proceeds from the t-shirt go to help the club reopen when the pandemic is over.
Subsonic Eye is a Singapore-based band coming out with their third full length, Nature of Things, in January. If you hadn’t read that, though, their mid-fi production, perfectly angled guitars and complex time signatures might lead you to believe they came out of the nineties Chapel Hill indie rock scene.
This Friday night, those of us in the US are probably election fatigued. Let’s spend some time with a duo from the other side of the world. Egoism hail from Sydney, Australia and stand firmly in a global line of brilliant dream pop. They just dropped the On Our Minds EP today, which they affectionately refer to as their shoegaze release. Most of the tracks have more of an indie pop sound, though, with subtle hints of gauzy textures. However, my favorite track, ‘Never Leave,’ has a little of Depreciation Guild in the last minute, sounding a bit like shoegaze flirting with chiptune.
One of the casualties of the COVID-19 crisis this year was a Tennis show in May that was to be held at the Haw River Ballroom. Tennis, like many other bands, had to cancel their tour across the US. I’m assured by the ticket vendor that the show will still happen, in 2021, albeit at the spartan Cat’s Cradle in Chapel Hill, instead of the lush ballroom in Saxapahaw. We will have to see if that comes to fruition.
I just downloaded a game on Apple Arcade called the Survivalists. I literally would have had no idea how to play this game (even with the little tutorial tips) without my 8-yr-old. He immediately picked up on the system and how to collect different elements and make things from them. He just started telling me how to play it, having never touched the game in his life. No doubt, playing games with similar mechanisms like Minecraft and Terraria prepared him, but it still amazed me. Within a short time of actually playing the game, he had an empire of monkeys doing his work for him as I tired myself hacking down trees with what looked like a piece of flint.
🎵 Softer Still - Turtle Bay: This song and video aren’t new. I first heard the track while on a beach trip in 2018, when it showed up on my Apple New Music playlist. Maybe it was the sand between my toes, but it seemed just the right time to be listening to a song about escaping to an island paradise. However, the vinyl record was just released for the accompanying album, Nuances, so this seemed like a perfect video with which to close out this summer.
🎵Bat for Lashes - Daniel: With the current popularity of the Cobra Kai series, it seems like an appropriate time to revisit Natasha Khan’s 2009 emotional tribute to the Karate Kid himself, Daniel LaRusso. I’m posting the live version from The Late Show here because I find the official video to be kind of creepy. Also, although Khan has reworked the arrangements for this song a few times, most of the live versions, including this one, feature the Seventeen Seconds guitar sounds much more prominently in the mix.
🎵 Soccer Mommy - Who’s Going to Drive You Home?: Until now, I’ve been largely immune to the hype surrounding Soccer Mommy. Then I heard this cover of the Cars off of the new Soccer Mommy and Friends singles series.
🎵 Men I Trust - Tailwhip: I don’t usually have FOMO, nor do I spend a lot of time on regret. I do wish I had gone to this show at the Cat’s Cradle, though.
When Wilco’s incredibly critically acclaimed album Yankee Hotel Foxtrot came out, I remember reading a review of it on Amazon. To paraphrase the review, it said this is an amazing album, but you have to get it on compact disc. It assured the aspiring listener that on the CD, you could hear things that you wouldn’t hear on the MP3’s. Not long after that, I went to my friend’s record store, CD Alley, in Chapel Hill.
📺 Pickathon - Khruangbin: This show (recorded last year) was scorching. The band played their back catalog as well as a a medley of covers that included Warren G/Nate Dogg, Dre, Spandau Ballet and Chris Isaak plus a later tribute to Dick Dale. Mind blowing.
🎵 The passing of Richard Swift was a tragedy and the musical legacy he left behind, not just through his own compositions, but through the production of the music of others, is an important one. I once wrote that Damian Jurado’s bright and beautiful “A.M. AM” (you might recognize the song if you watched Wild Wild Country on Netflix) had more of Swift in it than it did Jurado.
One band that recorded with Swift was Pure Bathing Culture. As a remembrance of his work, they have just released a new EP, Carrido, that was created in Swift’s studio, National Freedom. In addition to recording the EP there, they also covered my favorite Swift song, “Would You?” from his Ground Trouble Jaw EP. It’s an exquisite version, with all of the shimmering softness we’ve come to expect from Pure Bathing Culture. Take a listen below.
Friday Night Videos: Bad Habit
This is a short one, and I’d rather some new full-length music from the Ice Choir, but the lo-fi beats and animated video make this enjoyable.
🎵 Brothertiger - Fundamentals, Vol. 1: This EP is a departure from the normal sound of Brothertiger and not just because it eschews vocals in favor of completely instrumental tracks. The band is typically very good at crafting some of the catchier glo-fi songs you are likely to hear but Fundamentals takes the direction of organic sounding electronic soundscapes. The EP is described as “a collection of instrumentals improvised through livestreaming.” Think along the lines of Tycho. I’ve had this as heavy rotation working music and will probably keep it there until it starts getting played incessantly between segments on NPR.
One of my favorite albums this year has been TOPS I Feel Alive. I know I’ve been down on music algorithms in the past, but this was one recommended by Apple Music in my New Music Playlist and I was instantly smitten. I think I played the title track around 100x the first couple of days after I heard it and a delivery of Coke bottle clear vinyl was not long behind that.
Fun video for an indie rock classic.
Bad Brains at the 9:30 Club in 1983. Image by Malco23 courtesy of Wikimedia Commons. I’m not normally a huge fan of recorded live music. Very few of my most treasured albums were recorded in a live context. The majority of the time, I find live recordings to be inferior versions of their studio-recorded counterparts. Right now, though, I’m mostly home bound, unable to attend gatherings where music would be played.
[youtube youtu.be/JaYTNsS_m…] Token “groovy chick” included.
Hoops new EP, English Breakfast, takes what is probably Coldplay’s best song and adds a bit of trip-hop to it. The vocals are smothered and the beat rules the song. For the b-side, they cover “Reflections After Jane” by the Clientele. English Breakfast by Hoops Happy Bandcamp Day, everyone. For a few more hours, Bandcamp is waiving all of their fees to help artists in the time of COVID-19, when touring is impossible.
Jeremy D. Larsen, writing for Pitchfork, uses the riotous 1913 Paris debut performance of Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring to illustrate the difficulty our brains have in enjoying new music. The performance, to perhaps understate the effect, took its audience outside of their sonic comfort zones. Many members of the audience could not fathom this new music; their brains—figuratively, but to a certain extent, literally—broke. A brawl ensued, vegetables were thrown, and 40 people were ejected from the theater.
After putting out a successful album in 2018, an illness left Gia Margaret without the ability to sing for about a year. To cope, she made an ambient album. The first video from the album is for a song called ‘Body.’ Something about the juxtaposition of the gentleness of the track and the samples from Alan Watts with the roaring excitement of a monster truck rally strikes a chord. [youtube youtu.
When Austin Kleon started making zines out of a single piece of paper, and then kept on making them, I knew at some point, I would have to try my hand at it. Despite what those who mean well keep suggesting, not everyone has a lot more time on their hands because of the COVID-19 restrictions. I have gained a bit of time in dropping my commute to and from the office, though. This has opened up some space for creativity and craft.
In love with the cut and paste zine culture of the early nineties, I made my first zine with a typewriter and some photo copiers in 1993 or 1994. With ideas borrowed from some other zines and some amateurish writing, I put together a few issues and dropped them in the found materials spaces at local record stores. Hoping to connect with a kindred spirit or two, I included my mailing address on the back of each copy.
The hand-crafted zines of the era felt right at home with the musical scenes that were emerging at the time. The DIY aesthetic was blooming and cut and paste collages encapsulated that aesthetic perfectly. Some of the pillars of the indie rock scene adorned their album covers with surrealist mixed media collages.
After his months-in-the-planning shoot for a new song got cancelled, due to COVID-19, Ernest Greene from Washed Out fan-sourced the video. He compiled clips sent in from over 1200 fans to comprise the video for “Too Late.” Both the song and the video come across as authentic Washed Out. This is Greene in default glo-fi mode and, after a lot of experimentation on the last record, it’s probably a welcome return to form.
Most of the time, dream pop isn’t known for being particularly challenging. Still, Noble Oak’s new single, “Just A Game” and the accompanying in-studio performance video is probably some of the most accessible dream pop to come out in recent memory. If terrestrial radio was just a little bit less terrible, I could imagine this sounding perfect coming over the air waves on a warm summer day. With just the right amount of hazy tenderness, the track wraps the listener in a comforting sense of wistful melancholy.
🎵 It’s hard to believe that the Mogwai that just put out the house music inspired Reverso EP are the same Slint disciples that recorded Young Team in 1997.
The vinyl industry didn’t need another piece of bad news, after the delay of Record Store Day, and the fire at one of the two lacquer manufacturing plants. The latest blow is that Amazon will stop stocking records in order to retain shelf space for more critical products during the Coronavirus pandemic. “We are seeing increased online shopping, and as a result some products such as household staples and medical supplies are out of stock,” Amazon said in a statement to third-party sellers this week (via Variety ).
I’m not sure I’ve ever heard a song firmly in the classic shoegaze genre start out with such a lofi stripped down demo feel. One might even suggest the beginning of the song feels sort of haunting. The intro serves as a stark contrast to the blast of fuzz and reverb that adorn the wandering guitars when the song kicks in, though. Laveda has a full-length record coming out in the early part of this year and “Ghost” is a strong enticement to wait for its release.
Good times, great oldies.
Dinosaur Jr. - Green Mind Us old dudes are suckers for reissues of our favorite records. I’ve owned Green Mind by Dinosaur Jr. on cassette, compact disc and vinyl. Still, when I saw another colored vinyl version newly available for sale, I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t tempted to make a purchase. It’s especially hard to resist that kind of acquisition when you believe that, after the apocalypse, the only currency worth anything will be vinyl records.
🎵 YSSY - The Mandolorian: This synthwave version of the Mandolorian theme song is gorgeous and cinematic.
I saw my first show at a club in 1993, at the venerable Local 506, on Franklin St. in Chapel Hill. The venue is still there, nestled snugly between two Indian restaurants. Now I typically go to see a band there every couple of years or so. At that initial show, I saw Polvo, with the classic lineup of Ash Bowie, Dave Brylawski, Steve Popson and Eddie Watkins. My first rock show was supposed to be seeing Mudhoney the previous year, at the 9:30 Club in DC, where my cousin worked.
Folks, I would really like to checkout The Mandolorian. However, that would require two things: That I setup a Disney+ subscription. This shouldn’t be too hard. That I stop watching the new Tennis video on repeat. That one is going to be tougher. The husband and wife duo that comprise Tennis wrote this song while living on a boat, anchored in a fisherman’s cove, armed only with an acoustic guitar and a drum sequencer.
🎵 Frankie Cosmos - Jesse: A conservative estimate would be that I’ve listened to this song somewhere around a million times in the past year.
I didn’t know, however, that the force behind Frankie Cosmos, Greta Kline, is the daughter of married couple Kevin Kline and Phoebe Cates. There is something so gratifying about the child of two film celebrities making music this wonderfully understated.
RIYL K Records, Teenbeat Records
🎵 The patron saints of indie pop, The Pains of Being Pure at Heart, have broken up. I can’t pretend that I’m not bummed out by this news. I enjoyed all of their records, right up to, and including, the full-length cover of Tom Petty’s Full Moon Fever. I had hoped they would have a couple more albums in them before unplugging the guitar cables for good. A more derivative band I don’t think I can honestly name, but what was it that was said about great artists stealing? The Pains combined their many influences into a sound that you don’t hear much anymore.
Kip Berman, the band’s principal, made the announcement via Instagram.
Since the rotating cast of characters ended up in so many other great bands, it was cool to see Kip call them out in “what are they up to now?” style.
🎵 DIIV - Blankenship: This track, from the just released Deceiver album, is powerfully propulsive in the way the best songs by DIIV tend to be. There are explosive/angular bits that bring to mind Sonic Youth in the middle of some of their tuffest gnarls. With Deceiver, DIIV may not be as big as Nirvana, like singer/songwriter Zachary Taylor Cole predicted they would be by their third album, but they are still growing and continuing to stay interesting.
🎵 Hammock - Circular As Our Way: I’ve been sick recently, and this new cut, from the forthcoming Hammock album Silencia, has been soothing. If it were possible to encapsulate the entire magnificence of the dawn of creation in song, it would probably sound something like this track.
We have lost some legends in these last few weeks.
I didn’t spend formative years reading tomes like The Trouser Press Guide To 90’s Rock, the Spin Alternative Record Guide and such only to end up with algorithms making my playlists. However, the (human) Apple Music Editors who made this playlist have my undying affection.
🎵 April Showers - Abandon Ship: As far as I can tell, Glasgow’s April Showers only had one single. Their sound, while similar to contemporaries such as Sophie and Peter Johnson, also points the way to the aesthetic of later Glaswegian indie poppers Belle and Sebastian.
Getting ahold of this single seems like a crate digging expedition for some 80’s pop folklorist, but at least you can enjoy the song on YouTube.
🎵 Treatment - Solitary: Without any new sounds from bands like Roman a Clef and the Ice Choir in years, I have been starved for more good modern sophistipop. Thankfully, Treatment is coming to the rescue, with a full release in October and a single called ‘Solitary’ to whet the appetite.
via Fadeawayradiate
“I asked a painter why the roads are colored black. He said ‘Steve, it’s because people leave and no highway will bring them back.’”
~ Silver Jews, “Random Rules”
RIP Dave Berman
🎵 Ryan Porter - Force for Good: On Ryan Porter, bassist Miles Mosley, who plays with Porter, nails it.
Ryan’s music seeks to bring out the brightness in life. It’s pleasant, sultry. I’ve never heard anybody write instrumental like music that before. Ryan Porter writes luxurious music. It makes you feel better about your day.
Though I prefer his previous effort, The Optimist, on Force for Good Porter displays the same qualities that make his brand of jazz a unique offering.
🎵 Sambassadeur - Foot of Afrikka: This song, which evokes imagery of the burning sun of Africa, goes as well with summer as walking bare foot in freshly cut grass while drinking a glass of lemonade. Sambassadeur’s Swedish indie pop has a kind of gentle forcefulness to it. On this track, the clean guitar tones breeze things along, eventually giving way to a jazzy saxophone part that serves as a fitting outro.
RIYL Belle and Sebastian, Camera Obscura, etc.
🎵 Sebadoh - Sunshine: I’m still deciding how I feel about the majority of the new Sebadoh album, Celebrate The Void. Sebadoh and I have a long history and it has been about 27 years since I heard that the bassist who got kicked out of Dinosaur Jr. had his own band. At the time I nearly flipped my lid. In the fall of 1994, I went to see Sebadoh and Dinosaur Jr.
🎵 Sonic Youth’s new Battery Park live album demonstrates much of why I usually don’t get into live show recordings. The songs just come across as inferior, sloppier versions of their better sounding studio recorded counterparts.
🎵Sleater-Kinney - Hurry on Home: This summer seems to be rushing in with a burst of music characterized by youthful energy, even when the performers themselves don’t necessarily fit the youthful profile. Sleater-Kinney has returned from dormancy, like the aughts never happened, with a new track fits right in with the wave of high-octane indie rock. It is jolting. Though it’s over-too-soon, the track unwraps a dense package of sounds in its less than 3 minutes of life.
The cover of the single, while ridiculous and not even completely safe for work, feels like an homage to Carrie Browstein’s other life as a comedian, stubbornly refusing to take herself too seriously.
🎵 Pure Bathing Culture - All Night: The latest record by Pure Bathing Culture, Night Pass, is becoming my favorite of their three releases. This song illustrates why, with huge hooks and some serious guitar shredding near the end. The video has all the hallmarks of a full-fidelity 80’s video.
🎵 Keep Shelly in Athens - Don’t Fear The Reaper: The hushed, dreampop atmospherics of this cover differentiate it from the bold dynamics of the original. There’s less of a sense of urgency and more of a quiet resignation. Keep Shelly also left out the cowbell.
(RIYL Mint Julep, dreampop)
🎵 Rhian Sheehan - The Absence of You: This song has such a powerfully dramatic widescreen cinematic feel. The organic nature of the official video is beautiful, but I’d still love for some genius director to use this in a heavy European period piece.
(RIYL Hammock, contemporary classical)
🎵 Kisses - Bermuda: It’s been a while since I’ve listened to Kisses, but back in 2010, this song was on constant repeat. It’s a strong slice of indie yacht rock that should be accorded classic status. This live version retains the breezy charm of the original studio version.
Kisses - Bermuda (live at the Big Show on KEXP)
“Our names are so similar. Where is your family from?”
Mariana Timony interviews indie rock legend Mary Timony and has to admit to the rocker that she changed her name after becoming obsessed with one of Timony’s solo records.
In his review of the new AirPods, Federico Viticci quotes from The Cure deep cut, “To Wish Impossible Things.” Didn’t expect that.
Most of the Record Store Day exclusives recently have not been my cup of tea. However, this year, one release in particular caught my eye after the tragic death of Richard Swift. Death Cab For Cutie’s Ben Gibbard will pay tribute to friend and collaborator Richard Swift with a new 7-inch split single featuring two unreleased tracks recorded by the pair. The A-side is an unreleased demo of “Me and Magdalena” which Gibbard wrote for The Monkees’ 2016 album Good Times!
🎵 Writing for Bandcamp Daily, Jes Skolnik describes the music of Barcelona’s Fatamorgana by relating the genre’s of punk and techno. The minimal synth music created by a band whose members come from punk backgrounds certainly invites thought about the spare economics that can be a major component of both genres.
My friend Chris Berry’s joke about “the punk-to-techno pipeline” is something I think about a lot, as someone who used to hide in a bathroom in between the hardcore matinee show and the rave night that happened in the same space because they were underage and wanted to go to both. While they might seem like polar opposites instrumentally, they share a lot of musical history and a lot of commonality —there’s something both primal and communal about both styles, the core rhythm often being less essential than the surrounding filigree, and it’s possible to do a lot with a few resources.
The simplicity of the songs on Fatamorgana’s Terra Alta lends the record a sort of hypnotic quality. The music invokes EDM progenitors Kraftwerk while also calling to mind the feminine iciness of Ladytron.
🎵 Wild Nothing - Partners in Motion (live): There aren’t a lot of dream pop bands that feature saxophone as prominently as Wild Nothing does in this song. The sax is allowed to take up even more space on the live version. The unusual instrumental arrangement with some interesting time signatures makes the song sound a bit like a cross between prog rock and sophistipop. The track is great on the record and takes on new life in this version. In other news, Wild Nothing just released an incredible new song called “Blue Wings” last week. I spent Friday night listening to it over and over again. The elements, both musical and thematic, resonate strongly with me right now.
🎵 Stone Roses - I Wanna Be Adored: I probably saw this video when it first came out, but it’s taken me years to rediscover the song. I love to play the bass part, which is hypnotic in its simplicity and enhanced by the guitar part carefully winding around it.
🎵 Men I Trust - Say, Can You Hear: I had heard of Men I Trust before but never checked them out. That’s a shame, because they create the kind of Factory Records inspired sounds to which I am drawn. This song is fantastic, but I have no idea what the guy in the video is doing.
🎵 Softer Still - Turtle Bay: Softer Still may be my new favorite band. Their debut record, Nuances, is set to drop on 11/2, but the first single + video is here already. With the video, we don’t get any cheap surrealism that pervades so many music videos these days. Instead, it’s just tastefully lit shots of the band playing their irresistible jangle-pop.
I can’t remember the last time I’ve been so eager for a debut full-length.
🎵 Yumi Zouma - EP III: It may seem strange, but Yumi Zouma sounds different on the shorter EP format than they do on their full lengths. It seems strange, that is, until you discover that the New Zealand based, but geographically spread out band, colocates when recording albums and collaborates remotely on the EP’s. The process of virtual collaboration gives the EP’s a certain breezy detachment that has its own charm.
🎵 Stars - Heart: There is an apocryphal story about a couple that wanted to play “their song,” Stars “Elevator Love Letter,” when they got married. They wanted to play it from a record, but unfortunately, the album was never available on vinyl. Not to be deterred by manufacturing logistics, the couple had a copy pressed onto a 7” single at Jack White’s Third Man Records in Nashville, TN, giving them the ability to play the record at their wedding.
The second Stars album is now out on vinyl, for the first time, 15 years after its original debut. Far from being stale or dated, it sounds immediate.
🎵 Tortoise - Tortoise: This classic post-rock album is full of wandering music.
🎵 Jorge Elbrecht - Wash Away With The Rain: Borrowing from the Johnny Marr jangle guitar template and adding some 4AD atmosphere is a winning formula on this track. The following song on the album, “Rainbow Skies,” sounds like an outtake from Odyssey and Oracle, if the master tape had been sitting in someone’s car on a Texas summer afternoon. The one after that, “Oceans Alive,” a nice slice of lo-fi baroque chamber-pop. When “I Thee Wed” came on, I honestly thought I had unintentionally queued up The Future Bible Heroes. There are some heavily influenced stylistic experiments on Here Lies and you don’t always know what the next track is going to bring.
🎵 Pure Bathing Culture - Hats: I immediately had the sense that Pure Bathing Culture covering the Blue Nile was a perfect pairing when I first heard the way the songs were rendered. This record is the tasteful black and white movie amidst the gaudy technicolor landscape of contemporary music.
🎵 Wild Nothing - Letting Go: Wild Nothing is one of my favorite bands and I don’t care who knows it. It made my day yesterday to hear they have a new record coming out and that the first stop on their fall tour will be the Cat’s Cradle.
🎵 Weezer - Africa: Just in time to remind us that mainstream social media can actually be a force for good, a campaign waged for months on Twitter convinced Weezer to cover not one, but two Toto songs. They are both amazing.