In this video, the Orkestra Obsolete covers New Order’s “Blue Monday” on older instruments. This version tries to imagine what the song would have sounded like in 1933, using only instruments available at the time— for example, writes the BBC, the theremin, musical saw, harmonium and prepared piano. Open Culture has more details. Via @tvfordinner@social.lol
Men I Trust has a new video for a track called “Ring of Past.” The video consists of clips from the 1979 National Film Board of Canada vignette Love on Wheels and the way the footage is cut reveals a budding teenage love story. Watching the skating action made me seriously pine for the days of roller rinks and adolescent hang outs.
The recent piece on the new wave of American shoegaze in Stereogum was nothing if not exhaustive. Spanning obscure sub-genres and scenes, it shone a light on some of the mostly heavier U.S. based bands carrying on the tradition of outfits like Catherine Wheel and Ringo Deathstarr. The piece demanded a desire to dig deep and attention span to match that ambition. I spent some time this week going through the bands. It was not time wasted. Though I didn’t come out of the exercise with a lot of new favorite music, I did benefit from hearing how the upcoming crop of bands was bending old sounds.
I generally don’t do year-end lists, but I like to share a couple of my favorites things from the past year. In this interstitial time between Christmas and New Year’s, I get a chance to reflect back on what I’ve enjoyed, while having very few demands on my time.
I used to have a well-worn VHS cassette of Sonic Youth’s tour video, 1991: The Year Punk Broke. It featured a just-experiencing-stardom phase of Nirvana, but that wasn’t the reason I watched it over and over. I was more interested in the Sonic Youth and Dinosaur Jr. performances that were recorded at these giant European music festivals. Until Lollapalooza sprang forth from the mind of Perry Farrell, we didn’t have bands like Sonic Youth playing huge outdoor venues in North America.1
Pure Holiday by Ice Choir Though I deeply value the religious rituals and recognitions of the Christmas season, one of my favorite Christmas songs is totally secular. “It’s Different Now” by Ice Choir is all Hallmark, unoffensive generic “toys and candy canes” sentiment. The song is guaranteed to warm even the hearts of the newest of new atheists. It’s almost as if Clark Griswold’s speech — on the meaning of an agnostic Christmas — at the end of the Vacation movie set during the holiday season was made into a song.
Perhaps the definitive cover of My Bloody Valentine’s “When You Sleep,” from their seminal album, Loveless, is Memoryhouse’s version from their 2010 Yours Truly live session. The song was breathlessly passed around the internet and gained Memoryhouse a fair amount of attention. When I saw Memoryhouse play live, I asked the band’s Even Abeele if they were ever going to record a studio version of the cover. He told me they were setup to do just that, in New York, with James Iha from the Smashing Pumpkins, no less. Unfortunately, someone contributing to the session got in a car accident on the way to record. What a missed opportunity.
This year has been rich with new music. I’ve been compiling a playlist of Now Sounds all year long, and wanted to share some with you all. The problem with doing that is that everyone is using a different music service for streaming. Well, okay, most people are using Spotify, but don’t even get me started on that company. Bandcamp is a universal service through which anyone can access streaming music and then has the option to buy that music, either through physical merchandise or digital tracks.
This week’s Friday Night Video is a bit of a departure from other recent entries in the series. There’s no electroclash or spunky cover reworkings. It’s a new track from Welcome Wagon. Welcome Wagon are label mates of Sufjan Stevens and purveyors of a similar religiously-tinged folky aesthetic. With lyrics taken mostly from the gospel of Matthew and featuring comforting additions like “God holds your hand,” the song centers around the passage in Matthew in which Jesus assures us that God knows how to give good gifts to His children. The text comes a chapter after Jesus tells his followers not to be anxious about anything, that God will provide for our needs. The title of the track specifically references the verse in Matthew that implores us to pray.
I feel blessed to have come across a clean recording of Chvrches' version of Prince’s messianic “I Would Die 4 You.” I was blown away the first time I heard this cover years ago on Soundcloud. It’s such a perfect rendition of a groundbreaking song. There is no video of the actual in-studio performance of this track, so the YouTuber who posted this substituted a montage of concert footage. It is heavily centered on front woman Lauren Mayberry (I barely saw the dudes in the band), but it’s a nice collection of clips and syncs up pretty well with the audio.
Men I Trust return with a new single to accompany their tour of the states. This one surprised me by beginning with a Factory Records sound and progressing into a chugging, propulsive post-punk ripper. A new wave guitar line comes up about a minute and a half into the track. Keyboard flourishes show up later on to add a bit more to the era-specific sounds. The video features lead singer Emma Proulx swinging in front of an intentionally crummy video backdrop with some haunting vibes.
Frank Yang commemorates the 20th anniversary of Ladytron’s Light & Magic LP in a post on Space Echo. Completely unaware of the significance of the date, I was listening to the album the other day. My favorite song remains the track in the pole position, “True Mathematics.” I’m excited to see a newly produced video for the song. I’m even happier that the video version of the song is different from the album version and has a bit more punch. The vocals are still in Bulgarian, which gives them a certain edge.
Last week, Frosted Echoes featured a Breeders cover as the Friday Night Video and this week, we’re following closely behind with a song by the band Helium. “Pat’s Trick” is the opening track off the debut record from the band. It has the buzziness of “Cannonball” and that mid-nineties Big Muff grunginess. Indie rockers during this period had no problems mimicking the catchy chorus technique of their major label cousins and this track showcases that dynamic.
If you look back at the music I’ve shared on this blog, you wouldn’t doubt my devotion to nostalgic 80s retro-inspired sounds. Bring on the sports cars, sunglasses, synthesizers, and neon signs. Lately, though, I’ve been wishing for a 90s resurgence. Let’s have some flannel and baby doll dresses. In that spirit, I wanted to share this dead-on, straight cover of “Cannonball” by the Breeders performed by Courtney Barnett. Barnett has been on my radar for a while, but now I have a reason to check out her stuff. She and her band nail this track. It’s hard to believe that it is just the three of them because the sound feels so full.
Bandcamp has a review of the debut album by Marci, AKA Marta Cikojevic, who plays keyboards in the band TOPS.
→ The Churchhill Garden - Always There
The first thing that hits you from Swiss outfit The Churchhill Garden’s “Always There” are the reverb(y) guitars. Before too long, though, you find yourself entranced by the saccharine sweetness of American lead singer Krissy Vanderwoude’s vocals, which bring to mind Velocity Girl’s Sarah Shannon. As Vanderwoude sings about “kindness, patience and grace,” it’s marvelous to get a little twee go along with the richness of her honeyed tone.
Pitchfork reviews the new Alvvays track, “Pharmacist,” which is their first in 5 years. The band sounds like they’ve developed a fascination with shoegaze, with enough glide guitar to make Kevin Shields jealous.
The concept of the Finest Hour playlist is to distill a favorite band's discography into an hour of music (or as close to an hour as reasonably possible). It's a bit of a challenge trying to do a "greatest hits" style playlist within the time constraints and with the right sequencing. The idea was taken from Adam Wood. Swedish indie band The Radio Dept. has always been mysterious and mercurial.
The concept of the Finest Hour playlist is to distill a favorite band’s discography into an hour of music (or as close to an hour as reasonably possible). It’s a bit of a challenge trying to do a “greatest hits” style playlist within the time constraints and with the right sequencing. The idea was taken from Adam Wood.
In a recent newsletter, Adam Wood proposed something called “Finest Hour.” The project was to create an hour-long playlist from a favorite artist. He placed special emphasis on the process of track selection and sequencing. I was intrigued by the idea. This exercise might have been more fun in the days of cassette tapes, when you truly would be limited by the constraints of the physical medium itself. The project would take a lot longer, but the challenge itself would be more rewarding.
Grace Ives' new album, Janky Star, caught me a bit by surprise. I became immediately attached to the title of the album and recognized it’s almost complete disregard for musical conventions. It’s difficult to put this one neatly into a musical genre. It bounces a bit all over the place and practically dares you to try to classify it.
I posted a video from Atlanta’s Bailey Crone, AKA Bathe Alone, just a few months ago. I had to share the video from one of her more recent singles, though, because it’s one of my favorite songs this year. “Decades and Dreams,” which was written after Crone practically kidnapped her best friend and took her to a Beach House show seven hours away, sounds wistful and mature. The video is just fun and sweet.
Ever since she showed up in the band TOPS, I’ve thought Marta Cikojevic looked like a 70’s icon. Had she been alive at the time, she could have played Kristen Shepard of “Who Shot J.R.?” fame on Dallas. If that didn’t work out, she might have been one of Charley’s Angels. So it was no surprise when Cikojevic unleashed a solo project under the name Marci and it sounded like a record that would have been in rotation at Studio 54.
→ Hammock (ft. Lumenette) - I’m A Sensory Explosion
Lumenette is a new musical project from Christine Byrd (Hammock contributor and wife of musician Mark Byrd). “I’m a Sensory Explosion” is the first Hammock single to credit Lumenette as a cowriter. The song is a beautiful, elegiac exploration of opening your senses to the sometimes overwhelming weight of the natural world. The textures of the song are soothingly familiar to long-time Hammock devotees and Christine’s vocals add a traditional 4AD/shoegaze sound. The track is perhaps best listened to on a cloudy, rainy day.
🎵 It has been too long since I last listened to Hammock and the journey back into their soundscapes has been revelatory.
Stray Fossa is a band that Apple Music kept pushing on me until I realized that I really liked them. Combining hushed tones and gentle atmospherics with chillwave sensibilities, they appeal perfectly to mid-life me. At this period in my existence, I'm looking backward and forward in equal measure. Music that contains a sense of restrained nostalgia with a nod to retro-futurism speaks to where my mind finds itself. I can imagine walking through an urban landscape with ear buds in, going from classic architecture to the most modern of skyscrapers and beholding all with a fascination brought about by realizing harmony in contradiction.
The 1980s was a decade that started with an album called The Age of Plastic. The band that released the album, the Buggles, captured the spirit of the age by announcing “Video Killed The Radio Star” in a nod to the rise of MTV (Music Television). They had their fingers on the pulse of the American music scene that was springing up in the wake of disco and the long tail of the rise of punk. Plastic was an appropriate metaphor for an embrace of everything synthetic. Synthesizers captured the popular imagination and even stole some thunder from the guitar.
Things are heating up here in NC, and it’s about time to spin one of my favorite summer records: Washed Out’s Paracosm.
I love how Hollie Cook is able to blend reggae and dream pop vibes on “Full Moon Baby.” I enjoyed Cook’s first album, Vessel of Love when it came out in 2018, but there’s something unique about this track.
This is how you do crossover. It feels like the way forward when even pioneering genres are beginning to retread the same ground over and over again. Almost no stone has been left unturned in even some of my favorite musical styles. I’ll always enjoy the familiar, but I’m eager to hear new ways to blend styles and create something that speaks of novelty.
🎵 I’ve had this song stuck in my head all week, so I added to my mini-review. You can’t beat a well-executed cover that retains the strengths of the original and builds on them.
Captured Tracks recording artist Scout Gillett covers the standout Broadcast track “Come On Let’s Go” on her newest covers EP, One To Ten. I liked the original version of this song, despite the fact that I am always feeling like I’m going to get Broadcast mixed up with Stereolab (it’s the same sixties space age bachelor pad vibe). It’s an interesting choice for for Gillett, who also covers Brenda Lee’s “I’m Sorry” on the EP – which sounds completely fitting for her retro country-pop feel.
Captured Tracks recording artist Scout Gillett covers the standout Broadcast track “Come On Let’s Go” on her newest covers EP, One To Ten. I liked the original version of this song, despite the fact that I am always feeling like I’m going to get Broadcast mixed up with Stereolab (it’s the same sixties space age bachelor pad vibe). It’s an interesting choice for for Gillett, who also covers Brenda Lee’s “I’m Sorry” on the EP — which sounds completely fitting for her retro country-pop feel.
Sometimes Apple Music inspires me by algorithmically playing fitting sequential songs after a self-made playlist. This happened recently when I had been listening to some tracks I had stuck together and it followed them up with a Chromeo and then a Cut Copy song. I never would have thought to put the two together, but the combo worked really well. I could imagine myself DJ’ing — spinning those tracks back to back to get people moving. That was the inspiration for this playlist, Dance Music For Introverts. It’s a bit of a misnomer, since some of it is just straight up dance music, but it works.
People tend to think of Morrissey as an overwrought melancholic (and not without some reason). I've seen multiple late-night talk show hosts and comedians poke fun at his persona, satirizing the sadness of his music. It’s not all rainy days and Mondays in Morrissey’s catalog, though. “Now My Heart Is Full” represents a period in his life where the Mozzer actually became content. He had moved to the sunshine of L.
People tend to think of Morrissey as an overwrought melancholic (and not without some reason). I’ve seen multiple late-night talk show hosts and comedians poke fun at his persona, satirizing the sadness of his music. It’s not all rainy days and Mondays in Morrissey’s catalog, though. “Now My Heart Is Full” represents a period in his life where the Mozzer actually became content. He had moved to the sunshine of L.A. and away from the gray skies of London. Life was bright, settled and even domestic.
This cover of a Paul Simon song by The Bangles achieved more popularity than the original. The clips show the band fake playing live in front of walls of tube TV’s setup to look futuristic, interspersed with scenes from the film Less Than Zero. Most of the movie clips involve Andrew McCarthy and Jamie Gertz making out, though we do get to see Robert Downey Jr. and his cocaine-fueled antics.
This cover of a Paul Simon song by The Bangles achieved more popularity than the original. The clips show the band fake playing live in front of walls of tube TV’s setup to look futuristic, interspersed with scenes from the film Less Than Zero. Most of the movie clips involve Andrew McCarthy and Jamie Gertz making out, though we do get to see Robert Downey Jr. and his cocaine-fueled antics. For a while there, it looked like Downey Jr. would end up like his character Julien in the movie. Thank goodness he got clean and flipped the script.
People associate Ministry with their signature industrial/metal sound, but they have a dark past in the world of 80's new wave synth pop. Ministry mastermind Al Jourgenson, or “Uncle Al” as he is affectionately known (probably as much for his crazy, constantly revised stories about his past as for his status as elder statesman and progenitor of the industrial genre of music) tried to erase this era of the band. Their first album, 1983’s With Sympathy was recorded for Arista Records who, according to Uncle Al, was constantly forcing him to compromise his artistic vision. When Ministry moved to Sire Records for their second album, 1986’s Twitch, Jourgenson disclaimed the first record and told fans to burn it.
Frank Yang, of the late Chromewaves.net, has a new blog called Space Echo, where he does what he couldn’t really do on his previous music blog: feature older music. With Chromewaves, he was writing about new music coming out. He hustled to stay on top of the latest noises, but eventually burned out and shut the blog in 2013.1 This gave Yang the freedom to check out what he had been missing in the decades before he started really taking in music and then writing about it.
I know, I know, I just wrote about Brothertiger covers of 80s tunes last week in the newsletter. I have to tell you, though, that when I saw Brothertiger had covered brother/sister duo Sophie and Peter Johnston’s “Torn Open,” one of my favorite songs, I was more than pleasantly surprised. While going through my New Music playlist from Apple Music on Friday, like I usually do, I spotted the familiar song title. I literally got goosebumps before I even heard the track.
Yumi Zouma has a new full-length, Present Tense, coming out March 18th on Polyvinyl. As is the fashion now, they are releasing singles before the album drops, and “In The Eyes Of Our Love” is the third such single from the upcoming record. For this song, Yumi Zouma ditches their normally breezy, understated yet catchy, “this band could only come from New Zealand” sound. It comes across as something more like traditional indie pop a la The Pains of Being Pure At Heart. For reference, check out the Pains “Summer Of Dreams,” a b-side from their Days Of Abandon LP, or really, many of their other tracks. Yumi Zouma calls this the introduction to the Present Tense era, so it’s evident that their change in sound is intentional.
Barrie is another band that was recommended to me by the Apple Music algorithm. I immediately checked out their back catalog and noticed that they had a video for the song, "Darjeeling," that I had discovered. I was particularly drawn to the video because it is set mostly at The Crane Estate. The Crane Estate is a sprawling piece of property in Ipswich, MA, where a young Cornelius Crane (AKA, Chevy Chase) spent his childhood summers.
Last week, I wrote about some musical favorites from 2021. This week, I’m posting the video from one of my favorite songs that isn’t from last year, but that I discovered last year. I think this one surfaced due to the Apple Music recommendation algorithm, which has gotten really good. I ask Siri to play a song on the diminutive but fairly powerful HomePod Mini, then, once the song is done, the device magically plays other music that I like. The hit to miss ratio is high these days, and I’m finding out about a lot of bands that sound similar to the ones I already enjoy.1 Since several music blogs that I used to follow have now become celebrity gossip sites (ahem, cough, Stereogum, Consequence), I need a sonic buddy in the form of a solid recommendation engine.
For this Friday Night Video, Spectres comes your way with some powerful, muscular post-punk. At first, I thought this was a fan-made video with the traditional fuzzy retro found footage. It wasn’t until the band was shown in the same style that I realized it was a legit official video for the song. This one has been in heavy rotation as part of my The Noise That I Loved Best 2021 playlist.
Last week I featured an important song in the Japanese city pop genre and made the comparison to sophisti-pop, which came from the UK. This week I wanted to feature some sophisti-pop for comparison, but didn't want to go straight at it. So what we have here is Hoops covering Prefab Sprout (one of the more influential bands in sophisti-pop) staple "Cars and Girls."
The song for this video is from 1984, but the video was shot just recently. Originally not a huge seller, "Plastic Love" by Mariya Takeuchi has been growing in popularity over the last 40 years. It fits in with the 80's Japanese genre, city pop, and has come to be a defining piece of that style of music. Jason Morehead describes city pop as "a slick blend of jazz, pop, and funk that emerged during Japan’s economic boom in the ’80s and celebrated an upscale, cosmopolitan lifestyle." I like to think of city pop as the cousin of sophisti-pop, which arose in the UK around the same time period, has the same elements of new wave, pop, jazz and soul and matches the polished to a sheen production.
Work Drugs bring their smooth yacht rock to this video of a girl wandering around a city. There are trips to the zoo, rides on public transport and shopping excursions. The full city tour culminates in a pleasant snow as the subject walks around with headphones on. She's in her own world with so many people around. It's the perfect picture of how everyone being lost in their heads makes a city so open to unimpeded ambulatory exploration. Pedestrians are just going about their business.
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.
“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.