📺 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.
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.
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.