The Smiley Smile Message Board

Because it ain't 2014 anymore.

Apparently over his disillusionment with songs and albums as forms--or whatever sentiments I had perceived as predictably but tediously pretentious back around the Age of Adz--Sufjan Stevens has announced a new album that Pitchfork says is being billed as his return to folk roots... It's out in March. The teaser has a pretty little snippet, anyway.

http://pitchfork.com/news/58019-sufjan-stevens-announces-new-album-carrie-lowell/

I've always been impressed by his talent and underwhelmed by the results. Here's hoping...

Yep, the new Sufjan is on my recently-made wish list, along with these other ones:
Ryley Walker - Primrose Green
Brian Wilson - No Pier Pressure
Panda Bear - Meets the Grim Reaper
Bob Dylan - Shadows in the Night

And these possible ones:
Maston - TBA
Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds - TBA

Plus all the forthcoming copyright releases, a new Bob Bootleg Series, Roxy Music reissues, etc.

Should be a good year.

I just listened to Belle and Sebastian's new album 'Girls In Peacetime Want To Dance' and it doesn't disappoint. I was surprised at how dance beat dominated it is. There's a couple of songs that go full-on Pet Shop Boys and don't really work much for me, but there's a some really good tracks on here also. For the most part the precious twee Belle and Sebastian of old is MIA in favor of sweeping full bodied arrangements. Some of this stuff reminds me of Roxy Music's dance period. Personally, I like it when artists change things up from album to album, and this album is quite unlike any that the group have made before. If you don't want to wait until it gets released on 1/20/15, the whole thing is streaming on NPR right now.

http://www.npr.org/2015/01/11/376089901/first-listen-belle-and-sebastian-girls-in-peacetime-want-to-dance?utm_source=facebook.com&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=nprmusic&utm_term=music&utm_content=20150111

Favorites for me: Perfect Couples (great hook!), The Everlasting Muse, The Party Line, Today This Army's For Peace

What I'm most excited for this year are B&S, B Wilson, Of Montreal, Dylan, and the two I mentioned in that earlier post (Ronson, Trainor). But as often is the case, it's the ones I don't know of yet that are really exciting.

Gonna be a new Rundgren album this year too, I believe.

I haven't paid enough attention to write something remotely interesting or insightful yet (as if I ever were), but I had the Trainor and Ronson albums running in the background at work today. Unfortunately I was busy enough that I couldn't really pay much attention. (What is it with work, always interfering with listening to music? And don't even get me started on its impact to my drinking.)

Meghan Trainor's album, Title (same title as the previously released EP and a tune on both) is underwhelming. I know I'm way too old and the wrong gender to be the target market, especially after what happened with "All About That Bass," but I was energized by her stuff last year. It was nowhere near groundbreaking, but rather a fun synthesis of obvious reference points that really worked. Whatever you think of it, at some level you have to acknowledge that kind of mass appeal: she can't be doing everything wrong!

But the album makes it feel like she's a one-trick pony. Sing-rapped verses or bridges, girl-group or doo-wop inflected refrains, maybe a more hip-hop style on the bridge/breakdown. Enough double entendres or flat-out naughty bits to get the attention of tweens. Even some of her melodic intervals in the hooks are either similar or the same (but I want to say that tentatively, pending further review...don't want to damn her for self-plagiarism by mistake). Not that some of those new tunes aren't good or fun. At this point, if I were a ranking man--which I'm not--it'd be in the 5-6 range out of 10.

I'm less prepared to speak about Ronson, so I won't.

I guess the thing that turns me off about stuff like Meghan Trainor is, my 9 1/2 year old daughter has a bunch of her stuff. Something about that fact makes it impossible for me to really like it, especially on a level where I'd put it on my ipod. I mean, it's one thing for me to get my kids to like my music, it's another for them (especially when it comes to girl pop) to get me to like something they like. It makes me feel kinda creepy and inappropriate, which I know makes no sense. Sure, it's kinda catchy; but of the 3 songs I've heard of hers, it's hard to tell them apart.

The 'all about that bass' tune is pure hooks nailed right on the HEAD.  A hit song through and through.  I can't believe it wasn't the top song of 2014.  Mass appeal and then some.  ALL age groups...both sexes.   Her 'Lips are Sealed' follow-up is good...but it's a 2014 tune too and it's hard to follow up PERFECTION...Just as Brian had trouble following 'Good Vibrations'.

As for 2015?  It's WAY too early to even begin to discuss.  My gawd!!!  We're not even 2 weeks IN.  The best stuff hasn't even been written yet...let alone recorded or released.

I'm with the Captain.  Let's drink...and to hell with work. :hat

Why?  Because it's all about that booze, 'bout that booze...no triple  ...  [sec]

"All About The Bass" or whatever it's called is one of the worst things I've ever heard. Like, I don't know if I've ever heard a more obnoxious vocal on anything. Just... what's the deal, man? :'(

I heard her sing some other song which I recognized from a commercial and it was worlds more pleasant than that song. What the fuck r u DOING TO ME, WORLD

imo

Runners, you need a blog. :lol

Different ears.  Different reaction.  To me...she was a breath of FRESH air because she didn't sound like all the other chicklettes all sounding like they came off some mass production line...

And the song was just plain FUN.  A fun song about gettin' lucky.  And it used real instruments too.

And...people paid money to own it.   That Runners doesn't dig it may be all the blessing it requires. ;)

Anyway enough about that...it's still being played in HIGH rotation for something like the 8th month and THAT is way too long and far too much over-exposure.  I'm pretty sure that folks who like it must be more than just a little tired of it by now.  Radio is stupid.

I'm gonna go make that drink now...a triple.  [no sec]

Wow! I hadn't read about that, but I just checked TR Connection forums and apparently the album 'Global' has already been delivered to his label and scheduled for an early April release. Not much else is known except that at least some of it continues in the dance/electronica vein of his last couple of releases. Looking forward to it for sure.

It's not a year-end summary or best-of, it's a real-time thing. If there's music being released, hey, may as well listen to and talk about it.

First new B.C Camplight album since 2007 is out this month - http://m.spin.com/articles/bc-camplight-you-shouldve-gone-to-school-stream/

Well...I've got the new Cat Stevens album coming from Amazon...so I'll have something to talk about soon.  New Neil Diamond lp too.

Sure Brian's new album will be a treat, but one I'm also looking forward to is Sam Beam/Iron and Wine:  http://www.ironandwine.com/home-m?frontpage=true

Really Sam without his band.  This is an archive release of more of the stuff he recorded at his house (late 90's/early2000's) on 4-Track cassette and drew from for his first album, The Creek Drank the Cradle and EP, The Sea & the Rhythm.  Actually, all the songs Sam did with Calexico on In the Reins EP came from this same period (though newly recorded in 2005).  Folks have been bitchin' at him for years to put more of these out.  He has created Black Cricket Recording Co. to release concerts and other rare recordings.  This will be out on 24 February.

I heard about that new I&W album as well, and am anxious to hear it. But honestly, I prefer his more fully arranged work. I might be the only person on earth who feels that way, from what I can tell.

Brian's album
Ryan Adams' monthly singles/anything else he may do
Noel Gallagher's new album in early March
Daniel Johns' album should he actually finish it
Brand New's new album (if they actually finish it), although my interest in them has went waaaay down in the last six years since their last album

THAT'S IT THUS FAR :'(

The Sleater-Kinney reunion album!
http://www.npr.org/2015/01/11/376085344/first-listen-sleater-kinney-no-cities-to-love

I know it was available in 2014 as a single, but "Feel Right" by Mark Ronson feat. Mystikal (released in 2015 on Ronson's album) has fully permeated my being. I sit through boring-ass meetings at work grooving to the beat. And I mean physically: my fingers or feet are tapping it, my lips are almost mouthing the words. The track is one of my favorite tracks in forfuckingever. And Mystikal just kills it. It's so great. So great. So great. My obsession at the moment.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8TuYWAaslug

Forgot to mention this one earlier, here's another album I've been looking forward to in 2015, comes out in 4 days:
(http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/a/ac/Viet_Cong_self_titled_album_cover.jpg)

I heard their single, "Continental Shelf", and I'm excited to hear the rest - which you can do now on NPR, if you are so inclined. Stream the album: www.npr.org/2015/01/11/375894264/first-listen-viet-cong-viet-cong. They're said to be inspired by the late 70's/early 80's band This Heat, if that means anything to you.

Also, if these are of interest to anyone:

Ryley Walker's new single from his forthcoming album (both of the same name) was released not long ago. It's similar to his last lush folk album, although this one seems a bit lighter in tone. You can check that out here: https://soundcloud.com/deadoceans/ryley-walker-primrose-green

Nick Cave released a new recording of Leonard Cohen's "Avalanche" a few days ago. Probably means nothing to most people, but it was the first song on his first album with the Bad Seeds back in 1984. It's interesting to compare the two to see where he started and where he is now (hint: it's two very different places). You can hear that here: http://music-mix.ew.com/2015/01/09/hear-nick-caves-new-cover-of-leonard-cohens-avalanche-for-black-sails-exclusive/ (it's the first video).

There's another Leonard Cohen cover on the excellent new album by the Chemistry Experiment : https://chemistryexperiment.bandcamp.com/album/gongs-played-by-voice (https://chemistryexperiment.bandcamp.com/album/gongs-played-by-voice)

Sitting here typing away as I listen to the 'new' Yusuf [Cat Stevens] album.  Not until the 4th song...You Are My Sunshine...yes the one we all know...does Yusuf even sound remotely like Cat.  So far the album is well done.  Sounds good.  But if you played me any of the first 3 songs, told me that I knew the artist really, Really  WELL...that I owned at least 6 or 7 of his albums and had to GUESS who it is...I never would have got it.  No chance.

It's not that his voice went through the HUGE change that Brian's did...but the whole style of phrasing he employed in the 60s and 70s is almost all gone.  It's as if he hasn't been exercising it much.  It's weak.  True but weak.

I started listening to the Panda Bear album the other day, but time constraints kept me to just a few of the first songs. I'll get back to it. Probably.

(Work is being an asshole. If it didn't pay my bills, I'd punch it in the face. Well, if it didn't pay my bills and if it had a face, I'd punch it in the face.)

You can hear another song from Bob's upcoming album on NPR: http://www.npr.org/blogs/allsongs/2015/01/19/377744951/song-premiere-bob-dylan-stay-with-me. I like it.



Also, Tame Impala is supposed to release a new album this year.

kljlk

Of Montreal's 'Aureate Gloom' turned out a terrible disappointment after their last excellent album.

Some cool news though:
New Paul Weller album 'Saturns Pattern' on May 11th. The single White Sky is already on You Tube for your consideration. I will always buy a new Weller release, but this song is uninspired Black Keys Distorto-Rock.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vARCtbWH-cE

Even more exciting, I just discovered that a new Blur album 'The Magic Whip' comes out April 27th.  The album is a full-blown reunion with Damon Albarn, Graham Coxon, and producer Stephen Street (their first together in 16 years). The single 'Go Out' is on You Tube now. It's kind of a low-key return, but I like it well enough with Coxon contributing some fine guitar noise to an otherwise simple song. 2015 is shaping up very nicely.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sp1ks7PTzng

I bought this album recently and finally listened to it. They go for this big, kaleidoscopic, early 80s post-punk thing and I think it's great. If you like that sort of thing, check it out.


Also, new Kendrick Lamar album comes out next week. I didn't buy his last album, but I'mma try to get this one - seems really good. Here's some songs from that:

"i" - funky, 70s-type thing going on:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8aShfolR6w8

"The Blacker the Berry" - some serious commentary on racism, and his own hypocrisy in the matter (no, it's not that he's a racist):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6AhXSoKa8xw

I really liked the new Yusuf LP! Only listened to it once or twice, though. Thanks for the reminder, I'll put it on later tonight.

WOW.... :

(http://i.imgur.com/La2gCaF.png)

I've had it on quietly in the background at work this week a few times, but haven't been able to get a feel for it yet based on that: too quiet an album to be on quietly while I'm doing whatever dumb sh*t I'm doing for money. One of these days I need to listen at home, ideally before next week when I get BW and get obsessed with that.

I heard a stream of it, it's really pretty but I can't decide if I need more than 3 Stevens albums in my collection. I'm economizing anyway so'll defer the decision till I've got more disposable income.

2/3 through the album playing loudly at home, I'll say it's really refreshing. I thought All Delighted People and The Age of Adz were bloated, pretentious, even tedious work. My bias to pop brevity is a part of this, but I've always had a hard time with Sufjan, even in the state-albums. Too much. Trying too hard with too few ideas, dragging them out, oooh now it's on an oboe, whoop-dee-doo. (OK, this is me being a dick.)

Really, though, he's one of those few guys who I think is so gifted but somehow never satisfies me. Not that he has to, or should. I'm just saying, it's frustrating for me to be left mostly cold by someone who I can see could be making stuff I love.

And this time around, I'll say this: it's a lot closer to my preference of what a Sufjan album should be. I may never be a fan of his whisper-singing. But these are good songs, some really great lyrics in spots. And he's showing a lot more confidence by going back to this minimal approach. It's refreshing from a guy who last time around talked about being "beyond songs as a format" or some such thing. Well worth the ten bucks or whatever.

Beat the Champ, by the Mountain Goats
Every room held a handful of names over the years: the place peaked at seven people before letting them go one at a time until it was left with two. But when it was the rec room, that room downstairs and to the left, so easily and often converted into a wrestling ring, the squared circle, that's when I liked it best.

The beat-up sofa along the near wall was the middle and top ropes from which our acrobatic tag team moves obliterated the opponent, a snowmobile suit stuffed with clothes, a large teddy bear's head popping out of the collar.

Had we performed such olympian feats thirty years later, evidence to disprove our prowess would be online for anyone's reference. Because we didn't own so much as a VHS camcorder, you'll have to take my word for it.

Our roles varied dramatically; our loyalties were divided. While firmly in AWA territory, by this time the WWF was rising to dominance and Ted Turner brought us the South on standard cable. One match we were the Road Warriors, the next day the Midnight Express … or the Rock and Roll Express. The Powers of Pain. Some pair of the Four Horsemen or a couple of Von Erichs. Personal favorites Superfly Snuka and the Tonga Kid.

What mattered most was diving from those "ropes," graceful and powerful as we saw us, perfectly executing crippling tag-team maneuvers, sometimes literally tearing the head off the poor dummy trying his best to stand in for a British Bulldog, Roddy Piper, or Paul Orndorff.

The stories we enacted, however predictable as they were recycled yet again, well, they were good stories. It wasn't much different from the ones at the church I fled to catch All-Star Wrestling (AWA) or All American Wrestling (WWF). And besides, there was always (in both cases) that small voice asking, "what if it is real?" So I dug in. Just as I can recite basketball players from decades long gone or liner notes from late '80s pop metal cassettes, in those days I was a wrestling encyclopedia. AWA, NWA, WCW, WWF, Mid-South, if it was regularly televised in Minnesota, I absorbed it. I bought magazines. I followed story lines. And I created my own, playing out elaborate tournaments either in the rec room or with GI Joe action figures--not dolls!--in the ring my dad made of plywood and felt, ribbon for ropes.

Wrestling rings, whether on TV filled with professionals or in the rec room filled with brothers and a stuffed snowmobile suit, were a relatively safe place to explore the epic struggles between good and evil, the blurred lines between them, the circumstances that dictate one's place in history. And that kind of exuberance they make possible, I'm not sure you know that kind of exuberance.

I could have told you that the Mountain Goats' John Darnielle knows it: anyone who has witnessed him live--and it feels like some sort of religious witness as he smiles even delivering disturbing lyrics of broken homes--could have told you. But I didn't know he knew it with respect to pro wrestling until he announced his new album, Beat the Champ. While I didn't know, I wasn't surprised. It was easy to imagine Darnielle in my role, only earlier and in the southwest rather than the midwest. A different cast of heroes and heels, but the same stories. Swap out Zeus for Jupiter, Hermes for Mercury.

Where we part company is that I'm the sort of hack who lacks the creativity or empathy to do anything but treat himself as his favorite subject. Darnielle has mined that territory well, too: in "The Legend of Chavo Guerrero" he sings of finding Guerrero as the strong, just role model he lacked in his own young life. But elsewhere Darnielle's protagonists are the wrestlers themselves.

"I personally will stab you in the eye with a foreign object," Darnielle the heel sings over low saxes in "Foreign Object." "Sink my teeth into your scalp, take a nice big bite. Save nothing for the cameras, play the angles all night." The singer has "learned to love this kind of atmosphere," found purpose and even delight in his role--the role of cheater, booed nightly by, well, everyone.

"Heel Turn 2" comes from a former hero turned heel who knows he isn't going to earn your child's love. He celebrates the fact. "Let all the trash rain down from way up in the rafters. I'm walking out of here in one piece, don't care what comes after. Drive the wedge, torch the bridge." It's not so far from the f*** it, burn-it-down mentality of Tallahassee's "No Children." But the drive of the guitar, bass, and drums fade into a solo piano, echo laden, ruminating here and there on the verse's melody. What have I gotten myself into? And how will I get out? "I don't want to die in here."

The album often sounds a lot like the albums the Mountain Goats have been releasing almost every year since joining 4AD more than a decade ago. (So much for the label's output representing "the new albums."). But if the core remains the acoustic rock trio or piano ballad, Beat the Champ takes enough liberties to keep one's attention. It subtly steps out: soft organs behind the Craig Finn-like sing-speak of "Stabbed to Death Outside San Juan;" the baritone wind section driving "Foreign Object;" the jazzy changes from the piano trio of "Fire Editorial;" the double-kick drum of "Werewolf Gimmick;" or the rare background vocals of "Luna."

For its variety, the album lacks an obvious musical centerpiece. "The Legend of Chavo Guerrero" may be the closest thing, but there is no "No Children," no "This Year," not even a "Heretic Pride." (Then again, was there a "No Children" on Tallahassee on the first few listens? [Probably. It is pretty damn catchy…])

No matter. As always, Darnielle's vocabulary and wit are his strengths. Moon in June is again not uttered. What is, is "two hundred dollar take-all purse / half-nelson to suplex, reverse / worried look on face of the ringside nurse," in "Choked Out." But the wrestling theme, it isn't a joke. Darnielle explores the people watching … and the people wrestling. "Southwestern Territory," the beautiful opener that features harmonizing, fluttering clarinets complementing the piano-based instrumentation, is anything but schtick:

"Flew home from Texas last night, slept on the flight. Worked like a dog all day, born to chase cars away. Die on the road someday. I try to remember what life was like long ago, but it's gone, you know? Climb the turnbuckle high. Take two falls out of three. Black out for local TV."

Beat the Champ wasn't written for kids like I was thirty years ago. Wrestling itself was written for me then. Beat the Champ was written for people who made it possible to be a kid like I was thirty years ago. For people I would thank if John Darnielle hadn't done so better than I ever could.

The Dylan album has been floating my boat since its release. Beautifully sung and sensitive arrangements. Briefly replaced in my listening schedule byRon Sexsmith's Carousel now both have made way for NPP. Bob and Brian in the same year coming up with the goods, heaven! All I need is a quality new album by Townshend or The Who and the holy triumvirate will have delivered. Check out Bob's version of Lucky Old Sun. Outstanding.

Wrote about Earl Sweatshirt's new album:
http://s3.excoboard.com/therecordroom/29211/1325401

And about Courtney Barnett's new album:
http://s3.excoboard.com/therecordroom/29211/1325693

Here's something I've really been diggin' lately but that I bet none of you has ever heard of. 'Harmony' - a new album by local Danish artist Vinnie Who.

(http://static.gaffa.com/images/2015/03/13/c96391757446_142627180637_coverstor2.jpeg)

It's his third album. The two former ones were very different and in a kind of glitzy & decadent Disco-vein and not bad either. (here's his breakthrough hit in these parts, 'Remedy': https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=faPJa5vmFCM)

But for this third album the sound has been changed completely. Out goes disco, in goes a very mellow, winsome and sometimes quasi-psychadelic collection of sounds harking back to the earlier part of the 70s. I hear a bit of Space Oddity-era Bowie, some George Harrison with a profound use of slide guitar, the occasional touch of Fleetwood Mac etc.

It's all very cozy and warm-sounding; some tunes are better than others but overall I was indeed very pleasantly surprised. Recently, there was a thread at the Hoffman board about music that's perfect to fall asleep to in the sense that it's comforting and wellserved as a rite of passage between being awake and dreaming, - if I wasn't a longtime lurker there I would no doubt throw this album in with all the other recommendations in the thread.

I love the sound he's achieved on all songs. There are even a few tracks that remind me a bit of the overlooked 'Blue Marble' album by Gary Usher's Sagittarius. (probably purely unintentional!)

Here are a few samples off 'Harmony'

Seven
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5yTyp9A0Mkg

Only Dreaming
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A3YT3BLC4eY

Definately a grower! Highly recommended.
 

Thanks for the tip. I love this guy. I've listened to all three of his albums and he just keeps getting better and better. I look forward to whatever he does in the future.


Also been listening to the new Blur album The Magic Whip which is excellent. There's a couple clunkers, but Lonesome Street is primo 90's style Blur and Go Out, There Are Too Many Of Us, Ghost Ship, I Thought I Was A Spaceman, and I Broadcast are all worthy additions to their canon.

I don't think I've seen them mentioned here, but the UK band The Darkness have a new album out in early June (their 4th album). 

I've been a fan since they started in 2003.  I was lucky enough to attend just their 2nd ever US show in 2003 in Baltimore.  The radio station I used to work for was the first station in the US to play The Darkness in late 2003, fews before I Believe in a Thing Called Love became a hit. 

Anyone here digging the new Faith No More album? As with most of their stuff it took some time to grow on me, but now I think it's just as good as anything else they've done. I'd probably rank it just below King for a Day and Angel Dust, and above Album of the Year and The Real Thing. Great album. So glad they're back.

I have been having a swell time in 2015. New albums by Björk, Sufjan Stevens, Bob Dylan, Ryley Walker, Panda Bear, Django Django, Brian Wilson, a collaboration between Franz Ferdinand & Sparks, Sleater-Kinney, new album with Chance the Rapper, Viet Cong, and Willis Earl Beal. Plus, my two favorites so far To Pimp a Butterfly by Kendrick Lamar and Sometimes I Sit and Think, and I Sometimes I Just Sit by Courtney Barnett. Then, there's going to be a new album by Frank Ocean sometime next month.

This is a good year.

I've enjoyed Modest Mouse's newest and Springtime Carnivore's debut albums, as well as the little bits of the upcoming Tame Impala album.

I'm sure I'm in the minority here, but I'm really looking forward to Iron Maiden's first new album in five years, and their first double album, to be released Sept 4. 

Also, my favorite band of the 2000s, Ghost, is releasing their third full length on Aug 23rd. 

I'm right there with you. Haven't been writing much about new music lately because I'm lazy and nobody much seems to like new music, but the good stuff does keep coming. I agree with you on Barnett, especially, but also Bjork, Wilson, and to a lesser extent, Stevens, Dylan and Lamar. I really love that Barnett album. Some you didn't name that I like a lot are Asaf Avidan, Mountain Goats, increasingly Earl Sweatshirt, Kacey Musgraves, Mark Ronson, Your Old Droog, and the Staves.

There's a new Vince Staples album out today that I'm looking forward to hearing, too.

Wilco, Star Wars
"Dad rock" was a term I first heard applied to Wilco sometime in the late '00s, and it struck me as funny considering how I came to know them--like many people, with Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, with its stick-it-to-the-label backstory and surprisingly knob-twiddling approach from what I vaguely knew as an alt-country band. But I had to admit as I considered Sky Blue Sky in 2007, dad rock was fair.

Wilco (previously always roster-shuffling) settled on a lineup and settled into what sounded like adulthood. Dad rock. These past few albums have been really solid. Professional, which sounds a little bit like an insult but isn't meant as one. But, you know, we get older. Maybe seven minutes of feedback is neither fun nor funny anymore, and rather than waking up drunk and pissing away a concert, we ought to, you know, try. The results have been a showcase for frontman Jeff Tweedy's always solid and sometimes inspired songwriting, at turns confessional and funny.

Did someone say funny?

Star Wars is dad rock in the funny sense. This is the dad who mows the lawn wearing a Hawaiian shirt, athletic shorts, black socks, and sandals. This is the dad who tells jokes to your friends. Who you ask to drop you off at school a couple blocks away but takes you right to the front door (and yells one last bit of humiliation out the window as you leave).

This is dad rock that just doesn't give a sh*t. Much of the polish of recent albums is absent; these songs sound like they were recorded with very little fuss and in short order.

"EKG," the opener, is a dissonant minute and sixteen seconds you cannot dance to. One sees where this album is coming from…

Which isn't to say the album is noisy, or "experimental" (which in pop music more or less is a synonym of "noisy," a dull repetition of long-since tired cliches). It's just a little off-kilter, not taking itself too seriously. Thus "Random Name Generator," a cool-riff based tune with both fuzz guitar and lead vocal in octaves (a Tweedy trademark found elsewhere here as well, such as in "Pickled Ginger") and just the right amount of phaser. You need just the right amount of phaser.

I change my name every once in a while
a miracle every once in a while
I create; I am a flame
a flame creator, a random name generator

Got that?

On first listen, "A Joke Explained" brought to mind Dylan's Basement Tapes, loping along loosely. "More…" most certainly does not share that vibe, but it is another almost shambolic tune, feeling it might fall head over heels (or worse, heels over head). "Where Do I Begin" treats an electric guitar as acoustic, the primary backing as it strums accompaniment to Tweedy's exploration of "us" and "me." It closes blurring the line with a backward drum part and harmony-lead guitars.

"Cold Slope," "King of You," and "Taste the Ceiling," to name a few, stand out as particularly strong songs that pull it all together, the right balance of good lyrics, strong melodies, interesting arrangements (made more interesting by the mix of hard-panned guitars, highlighting their interplay), and clever little production quirks.

There's a tick-tock of percussion beneath the soft-synth chords and relaxed vocal of the closer, "Magnetized." "Everyone wastes my time," Tweedy sings as it ticks away. These verses call to mind "I Am Trying to Break Your Heart," from YHF where near-nonsense lyrics seem chosen as much for sound as meaning. Here he sings:

Orchestrate the shell, pink refrigerator drone
Carrying the shadows almost bone.
Everyone wastes my time.

But the song expands into a gorgeous, fuller arrangement that calls to mind the Beatles (an under appreciated influence on Tweedy all along). Its imagery becomes focused as the music expands: "I sleep underneath a picture that I keep of you next to me. I realize we're magnetized." It's a majestic conclusion to this surprisingly good Wilco album. These old dads have got something left after all.

The new Bird and the Bee album Recreational Love is just a perfect Pop album. At just  10 three minutes-or-so songs,The phrase "all-killer no-filler" comes to mind. They pick up right where they left off 5 years ago with their album of Hall & Oates covers and hit the ground running. The rock edge of earlier outings is gone, and all that remains is pleasuring ear-candy. If you prize sweet hooky melodies, this is the one. It's so hard to sound this easy- it's really an accomplishment. In a year with plenty of good stuff coming out, this might just be my favorite so far(yeah, it's better than NPP).
Listen to the whole album  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W_Fi--AULbc

I bought that the other day, as well--the day after Wilco dropped (at which time I also got the new Tame Impala). I haven't really given it a good listen yet, but I do like Inara George in general. From what I've heard so far, I like it. Not my favorite of the year, but I'm sure I'll like it.

Nice! I really like "Please Take Me Home".

So, what do you think of his album? I've been listening to it and enjoying it.
It totally does not need to be 2 CDs and that's annoying.

WHERE THE F*** IS IT, FRANK OCEAN

You know, I surprised myself by not really giving it a shot yet. I've skimmed some songs here and there, but haven't listened in full, straight through, much less bought it yet. I'm sure I'll get to it sometime this year, though. I like his voice a lot and his lyrics sometimes, so I'm sure I'll at least end up buying a few songs. The criticism of length, that's one I have with a lot of rap. The whole bazillion songs with skits and linking tracks is something I rarely like in any genre, but I think Prince Paul made it something a little too popular with rappers / hip hop producers, for my taste. Generally speaking, I like my albums 30-45 minutes long. Concise and solid straight through.

Well, that's not what I meant exactly, but I do have that criticism as well. Like, seriously De La Soul... is that all really necessary? However, there aren't any skits on the Vince Staples album, thankfully. Actually, the album is only about 60 minutes long, which leaves about 100 minutes of free space left over on the CDs.  I watched an interview where he disparaged bonus tracks as a scheme to make a quick $5 on a "deluxe edition", but that's basically the same thing he's done by selling you 2 CDs when all you actually need is 1. This probably won't affect you much because I know you're likely to just buy the songs you like and move on, but I like getting the whole albums and it irked me.

I see why you could get that impression, but actually most of the music I buy is in the form of full albums. I just checked and 12 of 305 songs I have bought this year that were released this year were not bought as part of albums, the other 293 were as parts of the albums on which they appeared. And actually several of those 12--six, to be specific--aren't available as parts of albums, or weren't when I bought them.

It's just that there was a time when I'd only buy full albums, as if that were the form in which the gods bequeathed music unto the world, as if songs on their own were a deviance. And I've since changed my mind to say a song here and there is fine, there's no need for an artist or listener to think in terms of albums, necessarily.

On Your Own Love Again, by Jessica Pratt

What is this, some old unearthed, reissued late '60s or early '70s Bay Area singer songwriter? While both the cover art and music itself suggest that could be the case, this is a contemporary artist and a new recording. Its nine songs pass in not much more than 30 minutes, gone before you feel you've quite grabbed onto the melodies or ideas, leaving a pleasant feeling in which you're not quite confident.

Pratt accompanies her unique voice--think a huskier Joanna Newsom, maybe, minus the yelps and squeaks--on acoustic guitar through songs that feel more folk than pop, but not folk of the repetitiously strummed-three-chord variety. Structurally Joni Mitchell keeps coming to mind as songs turn left when you expected right, Pratt picking her way through sometimes unexpected arpeggios (the dissonance in "I've Got a Feeling" for example).

There fuller arrangements than guitar-and-voice … but not many, and not always immediately obvious. Sometimes its only a few bars into an electric piano or some such subservient supplement that it's noticeable at all. Her own vocal harmony overdubs stand out more immediately.

Hers is an interesting voice, Pratt's. It has an affectation now and then of cuteness, maybe coyness. There is almost a touch of an accent that almost borders on English and decidedly is not native to Pratt's California: one suspects an act. But for whatever turnoff a faux-sprite could cause, Pratt's voice has some scratch to it now and again, especially when she explores the low end of her range (an unusual move for a female pop singer), as in "Greycedes" and the lovely "Jacqueline in the Background." That song also finds (presumably digital) "tape speed" affecting the pitch of the entire performance, a disconcerting finale to a pretty piece of music.

Those songs are two of the better on the album. "Game That I Play" is another one. "People's faces blend together like a watercolor you can't remember in time, dah-doo, day-doo." The song ebbs slowly, takes patience. Chords last measures. Lines sink in through elongated oohs and ahhs. You may find yourself not paying attention as the song washes you slowly. Poppier and more immediate is "Back, Baby," an uptempo tune rare for its prominent strummed guitar.

The most immediately singable and maybe memorable song, "Strange Melody," is also the least enjoyable to these ears. It calls to mind hippies thinking they're onto something deep and mystical as they babble their way through a minor key. Different strokes, but its the subtler songs that feel more substantive. Those songs, with a guitar not always entirely in tune and a voice struggling to be heard, earn repeated listens.

New Joanna Newsom in October.

http://www.dragcity.com/products/divers (http://www.dragcity.com/products/divers)

That's great. I really liked her past two albums. Those were so different from each other, I wonder what direction this will take.

Not sure this has been noted in this thread, but Lana Del Rey has another new album reportedly coming out this fall. (I say "another" because she just had one in '14.) Album or not, she has been putting out plenty of tracks lately, including this new "High By the Beach." The link is to the Pitchfork story, which talks about the album and links to the clip of the song.

http://pitchfork.com/news/60726-lana-del-rey-shares-high-by-the-beach/

Well, you can find out by clicking the link below:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=31&v=ky9Ro9pP2gc (https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=31&v=ky9Ro9pP2gc)

Well la-di-goshdarn-da, wouldja look at that... Thanks, Schmubbly. Interesting song. Great piano in there. (And as for styles, I'd say it's splitting the difference.)

I thought it was okay at first, but it's really grown on me with each listen. I really like that piano, too. I would love to figure out how someone goes about writing something like that. So happy to have this in a couple months.

That's my experience with Joanna Newsom in general: wherever I end up with any particular piece, each one inevitably requires some time and breathing room to come to the conclusion.

Kacey Musgraves, Pageant Material
If you watched the Food Network in the '00s, you almost certainly saw "Good Eats," one of its staples in that mostly pre-game show era of the network's dramatic rise. Host Alton Brown broke down the science of foods, recipes, nutrition, and the like, usually with charming homemade props and costumed characters.

There is a point. Bear with me.

One of Brown's most often-repeated maxims was never to buy a kitchen tool that could only do one thing, a "unitasker." Do you really need a panini maker taking up a cupboard shelf, or mightn't you use a couple of cast iron pans?

Music--like all art, I suppose--delights me because of its multitasking nature. It does not have a purpose, a function; rather, it has every purpose, every function. In fact, exactly that which makes a song so great at A makes it terrible at B. That's why the listener is so important: it takes the experience of the listener to make it successful at A (and for that matter, terrible at B). The most beautiful ballad in the world is an atrocious failure to the club kids who just want to dance to a throbbing, bass-heavy beat.

It's this long-winded preamble that sets the stage for this: Kacey Musgraves is the kind of songwriter who won't blow your mind with innovative forms. Hers is not an unfamiliar art. But her second major-label album, Pageant Material, is a second example of her preternatural skill for working subtle nuances within well established frameworks. Those who seek a blunt, powerful hammer will miss the beauty of Musgraves's work.

Maybe it's countrypolitan, maybe it's just pop, this shiny, clean production that's country mostly in its affectations and its down-home populism. It's country by a stoned Southern girl in a bedazzled miniskirt surrounded by neon-lined plastic cacti.

Pageant Material hasn't felt like a phenomenon in the way its predecessor, Same Trailer, Different Park, did--possibly because the novelty of a young, photogenic, pot-smoking, gay-friendly country musician who appealed to an NPR crowd has worn off. But it was a Number One on the country album charts and its singles have generally matched the success of her previous releases, "Follow Your Arrow" notwithstanding.

It does reaffirm Musgraves's--not to dismiss her various co-writers, most often Luke Laird, Shane McAnally, and Josh Osborne--gift for crafting melodies, chord structures, and catchy (and sometimes kitschy) phrases.

"Fine," the gorgeous, languid waltz of a narrator who's anything but, shows each of these gifts. The verses laze through two chords: an E-flat and a B-flat embellished with its sixth. The overlying melody is based two notes: the tonic of the E-flat chord and the third of the B-flat chord. E-flat, D, E-flat, D. The pattern moves to the four-chord, if one can call something so fully expected motion. Time barely moves in our narrator's depressed world, her lover away:

I picked those tomatoes we grew off the vine
They look out the window just killing* time
I reach for the phone just to make sure it's on.
I'm fine.

I put on my makeup for no one at all
My heels on the hardwood, they go down the hall
I open the wardrobe, put my face in your clothes.
And I'm fine.

Piano, acoustic bass, and acoustic guitar compose much of the musical backdrop. But even this simplicity belies the subtlety of the expanding arrangement: an electric guitar, the ghostly pedal steel, strings … and suddenly we've reached a larger refrain. We cover more ground, musically speaking. And Musgraves harmonizes with herself, her voice not a powerhouse, but on.

I try to sleep but just lie here awake
I stopped counting sheep, now I just count the days
til you're back in this bed that I remake every time.
And if they ask, I'll say I'm fine.

The second time the refrain comes around, its fuller still, though the same basic framework. These touches, these are part of what makes Musgraves great. Her sense of the drama of music, the use of music to complement the narrative, is sublime.

Her sense of humor permeates the record. It's corny, making it another of those "it's successful unless you were wanting it to be something else" touchstones. In the right mood, though, what's not to love about:

Hoe your own row and raise your own babies
Smoke your own smoke and grow your own daisies
Mend your own fences and own your own crazy
Mind your own biscuits and life will be gravy.

"Biscuits" isn't newfound wisdom, for god's sake: it's wordplay on homespun cliches from a clever twentysomething. (Well, it's wisdom, too. Just not newfound wisdom.) And it's fun. Bounce along! It's fun!

That sense of fun runs through maybe half of the album (contrasted by sentimental ballads): "Family is Family," "Pageant Material," "This Town," and "Cup of Tea" each exhibit that kind of breezy, almost superficial spirit--but a spirit that is overlaid with both musical and lyrical craftsmanship. Yes, that word again--because Musgraves is one of the best craftsmen (craftswomen?) in popular music, country or otherwise.

Someday she might make a major statement, a record heavier on ideas and lighter on the almost gamesmanship her puzzle-piece songs so often seem to be today. But it doesn't matter if she doesn't. If her work continues along the lines it has followed thus far, she'll still leave a legacy in popular music that warrants not only praise--because who cares about that?--but more importantly, that warrants repeated listening.


This word, "killing" is unclear. I actually think I hear "kidding," but that doesn't seem right. Online lyric resources say "in," as in "just in time." But I hear multiple syllables and I swear it's kicked off with a K.

The past couple days I've been listening to Lindi Ortega's Faded Gloryville. she's been around a while, though I only just heard of her with this release. It's a rootsy (rockabilly, country, maybe soul?) sound and she's got a voice a little like Emmylou Harris. I'll probably write about it later, but for now, if that kind of thing seems up your alley, check it out.

Lindi Ortega, Faded Gloryville
Radio can still deliver pleasant surprises every now and again. The drive home, the passive acceptance of the sound someone else planned. That’s how I heard one of my favorite singles of the ‘00s, the Noisettes’ “Never Forget You.” And this week it’s how I heard Lindi Ortega, whose new album Faded Gloryville was given a positive review and caught my attention.

The album was described as country, which I’m not sure I quite buy, though it’s not not country, either. There’s rockabilly and what I might just call a rootsy brand of rock and roll as much as there is country. Whatever the genre or subgenre into which you want to shelve it, it’s a fresh and exciting sound for someone neither new to the music scene nor innovating in the slightest.

Ortega’s persona is the key. Her narrators throughout seem to be the kind of girls parents in the 1950s must have associated with this newfangled rock and roll: smoking cigarettes (and more), drinking liquor, and—gasp!—no doubt going all the way.

After a slow (literally: slow tempos) start, it’s the second half of the album that really heats up. The smouldering “When You Ain’t Home” opens what would be Side Two, but, sexy as it is, things only get better from there. The side’s—and the album’s—highlight is what one hopes will be a hit single, “I Ain’t the Girl.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1X2hBMmlLrM

The piano and punchy percussion punctuate this acoustic guitar-founded folk-pop send-off. Ortega relieves herself of the suit-and-tie, shined shoes kind of guy for whom, as the title says plainly, she ain’t the girl. She likes guys with long hair, tattoos, and trucks with rusty parts.

She also likes weed and cigarettes, whisky and rum, or so she sings in the raucously fun “Run-Down Neighborhood.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9JEYSHCE0PM

It’s a pair of down-on-their-luck lovers sharing whatever it is each of them has on hand as they “get messed up together in this run-down neighborhood” where they “ain’t got much to do, but sure got plenty of time.” You probably won’t want to use it to teach your kids how to share, but it is one of the most catchy, fun songs in the bunch.

Ortega has more a grip on ballads, too. “Someday Soon” shuffles along in a slow 12/8 beneath her voice, reminiscent of an Emmylou Harris/Gram Parsons duet. In fact, Ortega often calls to mind Harris with her genre blurring rasp and mastery of moods.

The Muscle Shoals sound—literally, in some cases, with several songs recorded there—grounds the album in a gutsy, fleshy environment miles away from the clean polish of, say, Kacey Musgraves’s Pageant Material. Her cover of the Bee Gees’ “To Love Somebody” is downright funky.

Faded Gloryville is a chance to sweat away the last weeks of summer with a seductive country-rock singer-songwriter your mother would prefer you didn’t get to know.

Here's some random stuff that's already been released and some stuff I'm looking forward to (basically anything I haven't actually bought yet):

Algiers - "Black Eunuch (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZiBlH8YZyIA)"
Already been released. This is dark, gritty, aggressive soul music.

Deerhunter - "Snakeskin (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CG6jk5Q90DA)"
This one's coming in October. When I listen to this song, I play it at least twice in a row. What a killer groove.

Girl Band - "Paul (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D4SmyqO5DUU)"
September 25th for this one. If you like post-punk, this could be for you. If you're not taken with the song, the music video's still pretty good.

Royal Headache - "High (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=31xk1Z96CrI)"
This one was released this week. I cannot deny myself that melody. I'm not entirely sold on their other songs, but I love this one.

Destroyer - "Dream Lover (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uB-KT2f71lg)"
Being released on the 28th. The music has bit of the E Street Band sound to it, but I find this guy much more tolerable than Bruce.

Wand - "The Unexplored Map (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nVycl5TC14c)"
This one was released a while ago. If Tame Impala isn't heavy enough for you...

Uncle Acid - "Waiting for Blood (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mbwk228vtkg)"
This one's out on September 4th. If Wand wasn't heavy enough for you...

C. Duncan - "Garden (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MC-q1ldXNSY)"
This one's already out there. This one's got a bit of the 60's sound thing going on, but with rich, multi-layered vocals. Not entirely in love with his other songs.

Ezra Furman - "Restless Year (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NDOenFQazrA)"
Already released. Feel-good-have-fun-time-music. A bit of the Velvet Underground's Loaded.

Protomartyr - "Why Does It Shake (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JC7M9ztfS4U)"
Coming in October. This is some more post-punk-y stuff. I dunno, I dig it.

METZ - "The Swimmer (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fqbbPzmvuoE)"
This one's out. This is basically what I would call punk music, but a bit more experimental.

Mbongwana Star - "Malukayi (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OJCwfjl_sXc)"
You can find this somewhere probably. I want to like this, but those vocals make no sense to my Western ears.

Anyway, there's some stuff I don't think has been mentioned here yet. Maybe you'll like some of it.

Always glad to have someone recommend things I haven't heard, and that's the case with several of these.

Feels to me like they've got a sound, but not a song.


I've never liked Deerhunter. Like, at all. Maybe it's the almost-Bo-Diddly beat, but this is all right! What a creepy video...

Not sure about the Loaded comp, but this is pretty good, as you said, as "feel-good-fun-time" music.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NDEdhNnO-28

Okay I kinda hate this song. But I like the guitars and production. I've figured it out. Mind's made up. That's the ticket.

The new Beach House album is gorgeous.

Did you hear that on MPR this morning? (I did.) I liked it. Made note to check out in more detail after work.

Yes.  :police:

I didn't know they still made videos!

I think they probably make more videos now than they did during MTV's heyday. Fewer gigantic / epic ones, but with filming and editing cheaper and easier and youtube and such for distribution, everyone makes them. (I pretty much never watch them, though. I still like listening to music, myself. And when I was a teen watching MTV, the visuals were mostly to see what scantily clad performers would be gracing the screens of Poison's or Whitesnake's latest hits...)

Bought "Julia" when I got home, by the way. I enjoy it. Very Elvis Costello. Not sure about the guitar tone, myself, but that+chimes is kind of a cool touch.

 :lol  I hear ya.  I actually didn't have MTV growing up -- and can remember staying up late to watch something called Friday Night Videos.  LOL.  We thought videos were the coolest thing ever.  

Alternate video for "Julia"  : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bDE7_bdL_rQ

When I hear "Julia", I get the urge to say something snarky like "just what the world wanted: the new Airborne Toxic Event", but then I'm not 100% confident on the comparison. It's a group of guys dressed in business casual and that one mystery female band member that you're not really sure what she does, but she's attractive so it's okay. "Oh, you're going to play acoustic rhythm on this one? Well, that would be three guitars for this song. I'm already playing rhythm on electric.... No, that's fine." It's that same kind of bombastic, faux-literary, plastic-romance thing. So... anyway, I'm giving "Julia" a no. Deal with it, losers.

Here is something I like that was just released:
Destroyer - "Girl in a Sling" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GcWD_CroKhc)

Our own BillyC has an album out with his band, Fear2Stop.  ;D You can get it on Amazon here: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B014AA935S/ref=dm_ws_sp_ps_dp

*Couldn't find a link

Heh. Sassy. I like a good melody so I like it. Don't much care what they look like or about their pretentions. (Haven't actually seen them.) Catchy pop song, good enough for me.

I can never get past the fact that their guitars aren't plugged in.

That doesn't usually bother me in videos, but it drives me insane in "live performance" situations.

I listened to most of Miley Cyrus's new album, largely done with the Flaming Lips. Most of it isn't very good. Some of it isn't all that bad. I'll probably scan it again and it's not impossible that there will be a song or two I'll buy. Go team Disney...

That said, she is so, so dull. Nothing is so tedious as someone being "shocking." To quote Jason Robards' character in "Magnolia" as he lies in his deathbed: "It's all so goshdarn boring."

I didn't realise how small a release that album was at first, initially leading me to believe it was to be her career-killing artistic opus (blehh). Turns out it was a heartfelt little side project that came about as a result of her humongous amount of free time and ability as a pop superstar to do literally anything (https://instagram.com/p/63G-fUQzJh/). Which is still nice.

I don't find it to be as weird (or anywhere near as shocking) as I think it wants to be, and it isn't particularly good either, but there are a few bright spots and on the whole it's a nice-sounding album. Nothing I'd call abysmal and nothing great, but "Karen Don't Be Sad" is probably the best track and "Pablow the Blowfish" is a nice sentiment.

I think you're right on about all of that. "Karen" was the one that struck me as not bad, by the way. Sounded like Miley singing a Lips song, which isn't the worst thing in the world to be.

I haven't really been interested in any archival releases this year, but as we're entering the last quarter of the year and thus the holiday season, there's some stuff coming about. Well, two so far. But, still. The first of those two things is the 4 CD box set of the Matrix tapes for the Velvet Underground, which are basically pristine concert recordings of the Velvet Underground in 1969 that haven't been fully available previously. The other is the 1965/1966 Bob Dylan Bootleg Series that's coming out, and it has an 18 CD version. Which I will be purchasing. Because it's Bob Dylan in 1965 and 66.

Here's another new album I'm looking forward to:
(http://cstrecords.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/CST115_cover_1400px.jpg) (https://soundcloud.com/constellation-records/ought-beautiful-blue-sky)
(Click      the      cover       for       a         song)

It's been a great year for post-punk-ish kinda stuff.

I didn't realize this was on the way. I'll have to look into it.

The VU thing is of only passing interest to me for some reason. I think that in general, my interest in different mixes or live show recordings is just waning. There was a time in late/post college when that was absolutely my thing: Zappa in particular, but plenty of other bands/ As time goes on, I guess I just don't have the interest to wade into what, if anything, makes March 23 different than March 21 for this or that song.

Well, this is a little bit different than just another live VU release to investigate minutiae. These are the only high-quality live recordings of the Velvet Underground in existence. I believe that a sampler of the material to get record company interest leaked online, and fans were able to hear some of it, but all the songs faded out after a minute or two. Some of it was released last year on a deluxe the Velvet Underground, but now we're getting all of it. This is by far the best sounding recordings you can get for this band (and it ain't shabby performance-wise either, which you'll know if you've listened to Live 1969), and there's four CDs worth of this stuff. So, I'm excited for it.

Has anyone else listened to this and if so, thoughts?

(http://www.brooklynvegan.com/img/bp/st-catherine.jpg)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=leu2STVH8Iw

I just listened to the new Beach House album "Depression Cherry". It's gorgeous. This is the last track: "Days of Candy"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lhJpXouayE4

I listened to about half of it. Honestly, I thought it was boring. I think people spend too much time trying to recreate the sounds of earlier eras ... but usually they're lacking the most important part, which is the material. That's how I felt here. I'd just lump it in with some High Llamas, some Beachwood Sparks, and dozens of other bands. You'll never be better than classic bands at being those bands: find something else to do. Not to say you can't pick and choose bits (as if you could avoid it).

There don't seem to be a lot of fans of heavy music, but here it goes. 

This weekend, I got to listen to new highly anticipated releases from the old guard and new guard of heavy metal. 

First - Ghost's third album Meliora (rel Aug 21).  Another great collection of progressive retro metal.  These guys are like BOC's first five albums, with a little bit of early Genesis, Mercyful Fate, Black Sabbath, and even Beach Boys thrown in. 

Next - Iron Maiden's 16th album - The Book of Souls (rel Sept 4).  These guys keep pushing themselves as songwriters.  Their 1st double album has 11 songs over 92 minutes.   Epic progressive heavy metal.  There's a lot going on with this album, so it will require many listens throughout the fall. 

This Friday, former Pink Floyd guitarist David Gilmour, releases his 4th solo record - Rattle That Lock.  I heard the title track, and it sounds good.  I'm hoping for an extensive US Tour in 2016, but I'm not counting on it. 

While I've moved away from heavier music, I absolutely hope you'll speak up for whatever you're hearing and liking. The last thing we need is to paint ourselves into the boring corners of sameness.

Will do Capt. 

Thanks. 

The new Pugwash is pretty good. Think Beatles/ELO/Power Pop:

http://www.amazon.com/Intimately-Friends-Translucent-Includes-Download/dp/B00XWSL8DA

I had the same reaction, actually. Never a big fan of what I'd heard before, but I quite liked that one.
They released another new song from the album. I don't think it's as good, but I like it after a couple of listens.
This is the link (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UCVWrqxyt3Y)


On an unrelated-to-Deerhunter note, the band U.S. Girls is one I'm becoming increasingly interested in. I wasn't too keen on the style or her voice at first, but it is growing me.
This is also a link, but not the same link as the other one (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LoTehhwo7Iw)

This isn't a new release yet, but it's an impending one. You might have heard this before, but I don't think I did. If I did, I forgot. I'm kind of an idiot, so that's possible.

Ryan Adams releases 1989 on Monday. If that album title sounds familiar, it's because it was a #1 album last year, when Taylor Swift released it: Adams is releasing a cover of the entire album. The track "Bad Blood" was debuted on Beats 1. http://pitchfork.com/news/61239-ryan-adams-covers-taylor-swifts-bad-blood/

Yeah, I saw that back around the time it was first mentioned (I'm really on top of things this year), and watched the Instagram (or whatever) post that he put up with a clip of "Welcome to New York". He described the album to be in the style of the Smiths, but it more or less just sounded like Bruce Springsteen. So, that was disappointing. Still, I think there are probably good songs on that album that will be more palatable to people who aren't readily inclined to listen to pop music.

Smiths? Ha, I definitely didn't get that impression listening to "Bad Blood."

I haven't been a Ryan Adams fan over the years, so it's more a curiosity than real object of interest for me. I really like the idea, though. Contemporaneous covers are great to help people hear music and establish a songbook, as opposed to having music be so persona-driven.

I might be getting that Deerhunter album.

The US Girls song (and video) is pretty good.

Yesterday I bought the new Lana Del Rey album, Honeymoon. However, I have only listened to a few songs, and thus can't really speak to it. I guess that makes this post a waste of all our time. Oh well.

I bought two new albums this week.  Ben Folds' new chamber pop album So There which has some great songs on it.  I also bought Darlene Love's new album produced by Steve Van Zandt, which is a lot of fun with some solid new songs by the likes of Bruce Springsteen and Elvis Costello plus an explosive cover of "River Deep, Mountain High".  Both are well-worth checking out. 

I've become increasingly obsessed with the Beach House album Depression Cherry which I mentioned earlier in the thread, it's probably my favorite album of the year and I hope it gets some Grammy attention, at least in the alternative categories.  Victoria Legrand's voice is unreal in the best way.

Maybe I'll have to give this another shot. My sole listening left me with almost no impression at all. Not unpleasant, but totally inconsequential. Nothing stood out to me, and once it was done, I couldn't sing a single line. But if you think it's that good, I'll listen again to see whether--as is entirely possible--I just wasn't in the mood, or was missing something, or some other such circumstance. (Though, to be fair, I've never liked Beach House from their initial Myspace-and-blog buzz onward. So maybe they're just not my thing.)

Yeah, I'm not overwhelmed, either. I'm more or less of a casual fan of Ducktails. More of a fan of Real Estate. Although I do like the song "Heaven's Room." Overall it's a chill album I guess.
What era/classic bands do you think they were trying to sound like? Just wondering.

I listened to Depression Cherry a little bit ago. I like it, but I feel like I'll have to give it some more listens before I truly appreciate it as much as the rest of everyone has :P.

Just got Dr. Dre's Compton.

Amusingly enough, while the new 1989 was released today, Father John Misty also released a version of "Blank Space" today, saying something like he was "reinterpreting that classic Ryan Adams album, 1989." Heh. I sampled a few of Adams's versions and decided to buy the album. I like the sound of it a lot more than any Adams I've heard before. Very (intentionally, per his Beats 1 interview) Nebraska-like vibe.

I also pre-ordered Joanna Newsom's album, which has two tracks for immediate download. Looking forward to that. The new song has programmed beats--that's new for Newsom.

Are we talking about "Leaving the City"? I think it was released earlier this morning. The YouTube link if anyone wants to hear it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=keke7BGzJPI (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=keke7BGzJPI). I thought the drums on this song didn't exactly fit with the rest of what was going on, but I didn't realize they were programmed. Maybe that explains why I came away with that impression.

I saw that Father John Misty thing today, but I'm not really a fan of his. He's doing the songs in a pretty obvious Lou Reed style. He released a cover of "Welcome to New York" today, too.

I don't know what to make of FJM. I wasn't big on Fleet Foxes, and I haven't been big on his solo stuff. Yet "Bored in the USA' was clever and in spots funny, I'll give him that. And he's a talented guy. As for this, yes, it's obviously a VU schtick--and schtick being the key word. Comedy in music troubles people sometimes, I think, because we want our artists to be artists, to take it as seriously as the people who collect and memorize and analyze do.

I'll listen again to the J Newsom tune, but on my one listen the drums didn't sound real to me. Whether programmed or not, it is definitely not typical of her previous sounds.

I'm going to retract my "programmed" comment. I think they're real drums. I think it's just the unusual beat--the kind of beat I could imagine being programmed, a mechanized but slightly herky jerky--with the very artificial sounding distorted guitar brought me to that comment. But it was a leap that I now think was wrong.

It is really out of her historical turf, though, which was my larger point. Beautiful song. I'm excited for the new album, having liked both songs.

I want to add to this, too. While the things I heard first reminded me very much of Nebraska, there are some fuller-band arrangements going on, as well, such as in "Style." I'm just listening to this album for the first time straight through in full, and I have to say, I am surprised at how good it is.

Well, it's not necessarily the humor that drives me away. There are some lines of his like "I'm no doctor, but that monkey might be right" that I think are good. I don't really care for what I've heard by him, but I think I'm mainly put off by his Father John Misty persona/personality. Like, "save me, president Jesus" is such obvious pandering to the hip, faux-intelligent kids that I can't believe anyone falls for it. Plus, I have so much respect and love for Lou Reed that I really dislike his appropriation of his music/vocal style.

In general, I would agree that humor does drive people away. I was thinking a little while ago about what a curious case Frank Zappa was. He gave America exactly what they wanted with his smutty, over the top, sexual jokes and was eventually shunned as a result. No point in bringing this up, really. Just thought it was an interesting result.

One of the most unique cases in pop music history, without question. And honestly, the more sophomoric he got, the less I cared. Yet to answer his album-title question, yes.

That's the thing, though, the fact that it's such obvious pandering is the joke itself. It's not poor writing, but most of his humor is meta-humor.

This is something that I also find really interesting. I love humor in music and it can come in so many forms from clever lyrics to satire to musical jokes. I think Luther's right, it's like a compulsion for people to take musicians as serious artists and dislike their attempts at levity because music fans take music as such serious art. In college, my friends and I were obsessed with an indie band who had very funny songs. They were playing a bar in an arty area just off campus and I went to buy tickets in advance a few weeks and the guy behind the bar started asking me all these questions. He said, "So, what's their deal? They're like funny or something? But they're a real band?" Like there was no possibility of a group of people writing songs that were musically valid and could make you laugh.

As for Father John Misty, I really like his stuff. I'm with thatjacob in that I always took it as a meta thing. Like Portlandia; satirizing hipsters while very much acknowledging their own hipsterdom.

My latest purchase is by Stanley Brinks (nee Andre Herman Dune) and the Wave Pictures' My Ass. You may recall my basking in their 2014 "Orange Juice." Or you may not. Anyway, I'm on my first listen to this gloriously titled (yes, I'm that immature that I find it funny) album. Comments will have to come later, but I anticipate typical AHD/SB style of highly formulaic (meaning within formal structures, not meaning by-the-numbers. there's a difference) songs with clever lyrics from an outsider character. Many will bore me. Some will delight me. There will be clarinet and/or sax playing what sounds to me like klezmer.

'nother new Beach House album next Friday.

That was quick. Unfortunately for me, I've never really liked a Beach House album. Maybe this time I'll get lucky.

A few days ago, Eleanor Friedberger released a new single, "False Alphabet City." She is one of the siblings (along with brother Matt) who compose Fiery Furnaces, one of my favorite bands of the past 10 years or so, but also releases solo material that, like this, is a lot more straight-ahead than FF's lunacy. I really liked her "Stare at the Sun" a few years ago, and this song to me is a worthy successor to that. It's a very '70s NYC, bouncy stroll of a tune.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-haAAUEAfGw

Not sure whether an album is to follow, but one would hope so.

They did a pretty cool thing on their website.  Instead of releasing a single, they ask you to pick three songs of theirs that you like the most and they pick a single for you.

Bought and am listening to the new Deerhunter album, Fading Frontier. Thanks to Bubbly Waves for the tip: he pointed out the leadoff single, "Snakeskin," a while back. I would've seen it was released and ignored this album entirely otherwise.

I won't pretend to be an expert on their earlier music, as I was only familiar with it in passing in the past. It seemed badly produced, sometimes meandering, a little noisier than I like. What little I came across was enough to convince me not to bother with the rest. This album is really more up my alley: good pop, slightly off kilter, cool arrangements, well produced.

In hugely important, breaking news, I've begun whittling down to my annual best-of-year playlist. It'll follow my typical rules: one song per artist unless there is some really spectacular reason to make an exception; about traditional double-album length; cohesive running order (not thematic or anything, but just sounding good together, nice flow). Obviously the year isn't yet over and there is plenty left to hear, but it does take a while to get through everything (my 2015 folder shows 399 songs and about 24 hours of music).

As I progress, I'll post my working list mostly to call for additional suggestions. Inevitably, early the following year, I hear something I'd have wanted to include had I heard it.

I'll probably end up making one as well, although it's more likely I'll just make an album list.

Anyway, I realize I'm the only fan around these parts, but this album is so great.
(http://static.stereogum.com/uploads/2015/10/Protomartyr_LP2-560x560.jpg)
I love you, Protomartyr, and your new album, The Agent Intellect.

An album list might be tough for me this year unless I had the strong understanding myself that "best of the year" doesn't mean "great." There are a few albums I've liked, but not all that many that is even call, start to finish, really good.

I've only acquired three full length albums that have been released in CY 2015. 

Brian Wilson - NPP - Very very good

Ghost - Meliora - Great

Iron Maiden - The Book of Souls - Only listened twice.  Still getting a feel for it.  Lots of long songs, so there's a lot to take in. 

That's interesting. Personally, I think there have been a good amount albums from this year I would certainly call "really good."
But, since you say that, I would be interested to actually see what would make your list when the time comes.

It's funny (or is it?) that while I was going through tunes for my playlist, I was truly struggling to pick from a lot of albums--which would imply that there were a lot of really good albums, right? Yet when I look at them one at a time, I struggle to call any of them all that good. Maybe it's just the perennial problem of comparing the flawed reality of in-the-moment work coming in real time to the great albums of the past. There are probably only two real measures of greatness: perfect immediacy, and time. Nothing struck me, album-wise, in the former camp. So it's up to the latter.

These are some roughly ordered favorites, though.

Courtney Barnett, Sometimes I Sit...
The Mountain Goats, Beat the Champ (a grower)
Asaf Avidan, Gold Shadow
Wilco, Star Wars
Kacey Musgraves, Pageant Material
Earl Sweatshirt, I Don't Like...
The Bird and the Bee, Recreational Love
Lady Lamb the Beekeeper, After (which really was a grower)
Your Old Droog, Kinison
Brian Wilson, NPP

I guess my pessimism was, in 10 years, will I be thinking that any of this fit among the best of the '10s? I guess anything's possible, but they haven't struck me that way yet. (There are also those newer or not-yet-released albums I'm not even bothering to try to assess.)

I bought and have been enjoying Be Small, from Here We Go Magic. Give it a try.

Also listened to the new Majical Cloudz, but only bought "Are You Alone?" Even that is only interesting, not necessarily something I think to be especially good. We'll see.

The new Joanna Newsom is out today. I've downloaded and will be listening today. Ice been anticipating this one for a while.

Well, "Dope Cloud" just came on KEXP, and I enjoyed it. I'll have to check out the rest of the album :).

Also, this came out a while ago but I just heard about it/this band. I listened to it all the way through the other day and I really like it. Not in love with it yet, but it's been a while since an album has captured my attention this much on the first listen.
(http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/61MhzXSb5mL._SY355_.jpg)

I have listened about half a dozen times, three of which while on a road trip with no distractions. Beautiful album, great arrangements. I look forward to continuing to listen, because there will be more to find within it.

I, unfortunately, have not yet been able to listen to Deerhunter's or Joanna's new albums.
Just some monetary issues, but no one wants to hear about that.

Really looking forward to Divers, though.

(http://www.brooklynvegan.com/img/bp/many-moons.jpg)

More Real Estate side projects!
Being the lead singer, Martin Courtney alone doesn't sound all that different from the band. But that doesn't bother me, because I love Real Estate. This release is quite nice, being a few songs in.

I get some early-70s vocals vibes, which is another plus for me. This is more summery music despite being released in October. But I'm a fan so far.

So Car Seat Headrest is becoming a big deal. I've had the potential to see him twice this year and haven't made it to either of them. All for free, too! Maybe next time...

Not sure if I love his music yet, but I kind of like the lo-fi, chill vibe to it. And his lyrics are kind of weird and hilarious.

Here's a Pitchfork review for you all:
http://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/21121-teens-of-style/

I sort of take this back. I'm listening to this again and I love how "Reprise" returns back to my favorite track on the album. The opening track and "Church" are quite good, too. At the moment, it's good background music for the assignment that I'm writing, so...

I've picked up a few things recently, which I'll list to keep myself from ranting in the "Paris" Sandbox thread.

Grimes, Art Angels. I'd never listened to her before but am just finishing up my first listen to this album. I had no idea: she's talented! A lot of dance, but with really strong pop elements and a lot of creativity in arrangements and production. This is an artist in a genre I don't spend a lot of time with.

Carla Morrison, Amor Supremo. It's in Spanish, so I have no real idea what's being sung, but her voice is great. Not sure about the production, which is a little melodramatic for me.

Laura Stevenson, Cocksure. I bought two songs after reading an interesting review somewhere or other. The best of it is good rock music, relatively raw but tuneful.

BORNS, Dopamine. Another "couple songs" purchase, a bright and shiny production. Good singer, nice high register. Some big-rawk combined with some R&B or disco.

One of these days I'm going to talk about Joanna Newsom's album, which is far and away what I've been listening to the most lately.

Yay, new David Bowie (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kszLwBaC4Sw&ab_channel=DavidBowieVEVO).

David gets weird.

And this is the single?!! Watching this video reminds me of another famous David. The Twin Peaks mastermind couldn't have done it any better. Not particularly interesting musically, kinda repetitious. Of course the same could be said of Station To Station, and many hold that up as a masterpiece. Still looking forward to January release.

I was just stopping by the site to make note of that song (and video). Wow. I'm not sure I love it, but I'm ... well, I'm kind of sure I love it. I think I disagree with krabklaw about how interesting the song is musically. It is repetitious, no question, but it also mutates several times despite the repetitious parts (which themselves both evoke religious fervor and tie together sections.) The drumming in the first section is just fantastic, jittery and uncomfortable. The middle, more vocal-solo heavy parts, were out of left field for me. Really cool. Probably a bit long for my taste, but not painfully so. Looking forward to listening again.

Joanna Newsom, Divers

Joanna Newsom, forgive me.

“I’m not in any way, shape, or form singing fairy tales or nursery rhymes,” she is quoted as saying in Steven Hyden’s October 21, 2015, Grantland feature. Hyden describes Newsom’s aversion to the adjectives so often ascribed to her, each typically some variant or synonym of elfin. Her image—which she seems, understandably enough, to disdain—is that of an almost otherworldly sprite, some oracle-minstrel spinning riddles on that pitched loom of hers.

The October 30, 2015, New York Times “Popcast” goes further, with Melissa Marturano of the “feminist fan project” blog “Blessing All the Birds” guesting with Ben Ratliff. Marturano rejects what seems like every adjective used to describe Newsom as sexist, as part of “[a] world where people want to suppress the weird in women, the unconventional in women.”

Newsom is, of course, not an elf. She is a working musician who writes songs. She plays harp and keyboard instruments. She sings. She produces and arranges. All of this is work. Craft. Maybe some small measure is inspiration, if you’re someone who believes in such a thing, but these albums—she’s on her fourth full-length with Divers—don’t come from rising smoke, from shaken bones, or read entrails.

But forgive me, Joanna Newsom. Whatever your intentions, I do hear nursery rhymes and fairy tales. If I didn’t, I probably wouldn’t bother listening anymore.

Belaboring compositions renders finely wrought, if over-thought, results. Anyone with musical intelligence, half a vocabulary, and sufficient patience (or self-indulgence) can deliver a work of complexity not half as dazzling as it is tedious. What has set Newsom’s work apart from that sort of exercise is that she has consistently tapped the magic of fairy tales and nursery rhymes. Of folk art.

Newsom’s work is unique in the modern (and past) pop world. It’s natural for writers to stretch for adjectives, and the less familiar the subject, the more desperate those attempts. But—Ms. Marturano—is “childlike” really the wrong word for Newsom’s voice? Is it sexist and belittling? At times, childlike is exactly the word I’d use, not to describe Newsom’s obviously mature lyrics, but literally her voice. When a voice sounds like something like a child’s voice, especially when delivered with innocent inflections (as is sometimes the case), that is childlike. Neither is this an adjective reserved for women: Brian Wilson has been described as childlike as frequently as Newsom, though for different reasons, and over a far longer span of time.

When Marturano, having worked through “emotionally and musically intelligent,” “talented,” and “brave” as descriptors of Newsom’s voice, lands on “the technical term ‘soprano.’” What I hear here are meaningless acrobatics intended to avoid the relatively accurate words in which unfortunately Marturano finds fault. Her voice sounds “talented?” This is nonsensical. “Intelligent” and “brave” do not exclude the unspoken “childlike.” And “soprano?” Soprano is a musical range. It’s a terrible description of a voice’s character, timbre, inflection. It’s a range of notes, period. Newsom does not sound like Montserrat Caballe.

But that’s more than sufficient time spent on criticizing the metacriticism. Newsom’s music, especially Divers, is itself, stands on its own, and deserves attention for what it is. Because some part of what an album is inevitably requires the listener’s experience, and so Marturano’s angle is, for her, fine. For me, it would be a limiting, even depressing one.

For me, the folk experience of Newsom includes some of what is feeling such pushback this time around. Good luck performing with a harp and not calling to mind a medieval world—itself magical to our modern fantasies, not just the sh*t of an impoverished people in feudal society, but a world of dragons and knights. Is that what she is? Is she medieval, a minstrel of magic? Obviously not, or at least not just. There’s harp, sure. (There’s also an internal photo spread of Newsom, parrot perched on her shoulder, beneath what appears to be an explosive night sky, light clothes draped over her. There are images of mist-drenched flowers and finger-branched trees. Pardon those of us who see a fantastic world implied.) But there’s Mini-Moog and Juno. Drum kits. Guitars and bass guitars.

In other words, it’s complicated. But let’s not be so reductive as to find fault based on our understandings of others’ implications and motivations.

Newsom straddles, or rather hops between, worlds in “Leaving the City.” It begins with sounds calling to mind some Renaissance music, the harp plucking melodies (and piano striking them beneath) not quite fugal but certainly contrapuntal. This is medieval. This is otherworldly. But what I’d insist were distorted guitars if the credits named no such instrument on the song pierce that peace before Newsom begins a jagged four-note descension, repeating through lyrics replete with the internal rhymes and soundplay that may be her greatest genius.

Elsewhere is a simpler pleasure. The opener, “Anecdotes,” begins the album with two verses of beautiful melody, sparsely accompanied. It builds through subsequent sections, unrushed, a composition and arrangement worth special mention. Newsom’s melodies demand particular attention, so often spread across measures, more complex and elongated than the predictably topped I-IV-V of pop. But demanding needn’t be unpleasant; two minutes into the song, the word “dew” is stretched across a restrained resolution of sorts, a shifting musical ground beneath.

“Waltz of the 101st Lightborne” is another example of Newsom’s ability to perform what seems like a familiar folk song, but full of the surprises of an intricate arrangement. In this, she calls to mind her one-time collaborator Van Dyke Parks. There have been reports of something like tension, or dissatisfaction, between them in their partnership, which seems possibly because each is superfluous to the other. Parks said to me in a 2008 email “I respect her unique qualities as a songwriter. I think she should do her own arranging, because her ideas are quite specific.”

Which is, of course, precisely what she has gone on to do. On Divers, Newsom arranged all of the harp, keyboards, and vocals, which is the bulk of the music. (She also produced the album.) Strings, percussion, and horns were generally arranged by others including such notables as composer Nico Muhly.

The result is a sound that is uniquely Newsom, outside of genre or time. Harpsichord or harp, piano or electric piano, marxophone or mellotron, strings or Moog. Disparate elements arrive and depart, occasionally jarring (such as the aforementioned, guitar-like scream in “Leaving the City”) but usually unnoticed upon the first few listens.

Numerous listens are essential, too, to absorb the lyrics. In fact, the booklet is essential to absorb the lyrics. I won’t discuss them because frankly I don’t know where to begin or, begun, where to stop. Each song deserves an article, as Newsom’s poetry is technically impressive throughout and aesthetically pleasing besides. She is one of the best lyricists of her time and does not need me to point out this or that phrase.

Divers seems like a majestic culmination of elements—melody, atmosphere, arranging, playing, writing, singing—a career pinnacle. Except, its creator young with an open future, it is instead just her latest album. May listeners hear and understand this rare example of quality for what it is, without undue distraction of the implications of what someone else may be thinking when he listens. The music is complicated. Listening to it needn’t be.

Two totally different 2015-related things.

1. Anyone listen to or have thoughts to share on the new Adele (other than that, for some, at least, the music industry still moves product)?

2. An FYI for the twee pop fans (Apples (in Stereo), the Bicycles, etc.), if you haven't heard Alpaca Sports, you might want to give them a try. Their 2015 short album / long EP, When You Need Me the Most, is awfully sugary sweet. It's well done stuff, very pretty and fun.

"Just Like Them:" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rRRaOP5rsv4&feature=iv&src_vid=ADMlqr8gBp4&annotation_id=annotation_3294235601

I wanted to put in a good word or two for the quite fine new Joe Jackson album Fast Forward. This one really sneaked up on me, as I didn't hear about it until it came out a few weeks back. Being a long-time fan of Jackson from 'Look Sharp' onward, I am so happy to be able to easily recommend a listen to this album. Standing at 16 tracks tall, it's a robust ambitious project, but it doesn't sacrifice quantity for quality, as I think that all the tracks earn their place here. There's enough familiarity in the sound to be welcoming to old fans; there's some Pop, some Jazz, some Rock.  Thankfully though, Jackson gives us a few new twists and sounds that he hasn't tried before. 'The Blue Time' dips into Exotica, and 'So You Say' is a Bossa Nova track with very different production.  Horns and strings are brought into the picture when needed. Jackson is working with the broadest of pallets here, and the album is all the better for it; it's never boring or repetitive. Joe Jackson's voice has held up great and can be just as biting as ever when called upon to do so. Production is also top-notch; the sound and mix are as good as you would hope for with a Jackson release. My favorite track is King Of The City, which is like a  sleek slow-motion version of 'Steppin' Out' in it's romantic evocation of  the city at night. I also really love  the funky-but-not-too funky 'Junkie Diva'.  the Steely-Dan-ish 'Satellite', the uncharacteristically chipper 'A Little Smile', and the pounding 'Neon Rain'. This album can take it's place alongside Joe Jackson's best, and that's really saying something.


King Of The City     https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gau0w4gauKk
Junkie Diva    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pc4aW7oJG6k
Satellite    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qewQ6WuOgTw
A Little Smile   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H0nqSm0FmhU
So You Say   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7qwwwmqPbyY

Underwhelmed by the Adele. A lot of songwriting by committee (not always bad, of course, but it can be) and an almost desperate need to give the people what they want. I cannot stand the single -- which everyone else loves, I guess -- so maybe I'm not the target demo. Really liked 21, though.

Have you listened to fellow Elefant Records artists Fitness Forever? They're terriffic! Melodies are just as cute, but way more sophisticated musically.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xeXGMa6xu7k

The last thing I know of that I'm looking forward to this year is Sunn 0)))'s record.

I completely agree. Was wondering whether I was the only person (among people who aren't immediately averse to mainstream pop) who was almost entirely ambivalent. She's a really good singer and I have liked some of what she's done before, but wow, did I ever not care about this album. Each song, I couldn't wait for it to end, not because it was bad, exactly. Just entirely uninteresting.

I was disappointed with the Tobias Jesso Jr co-write. :(

Ok, Joanna Newsom, I'm intrigued, sell her to me. For some reason I'm reluctant to take the plunge. It often happens with artists I've not yet heard. Maybe it's an age thing, I tend to stay in my comfort zone these days until pushed.

Do you like Kate Bush?

Yes, I have a couple of her albums, I don't like every track but there's enough to keep me interested.

I'm not going to sell her to you beyond what I wrote about Divers. But hopefully that suffices in promoting my feelings on her. She's among the 10 or so best contemporary pop musicians.

With all this talk of Joanna Newsom, I decided to revisit her album Ys, with orchestral arrangements (and accordion) by Van Dyke Parks. Oh yes. Highly recommended.

In all likelihood it was the captain (once again) who originally pointed me in its direction. :=)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cJ1yFhjRnNc

What a wonderful year this has been.

I have bought and greatly enjoyed:
Sometimes I Sit and Think and Sometimes I Just Sit by Courtney Barnett (great lyrics with a 90s, slacker feel)
Calling Out by EZTV (extremely listenable power pop)
Asunder, Sweet and Other Distress by Godspeed You! Black Emperor (instrumental music dredged up from a dark place)
To Pimp a Butterfly by Kendrick Lamar (what could I possibly say about this album at this point)
The Agent Intellect by Protomartyr (great songwriting that's taking post-punk in a compelling direction)
Viet Cong by fka Viet Cong (keepin' the 80s post-punk alive -- don't change your name, guys)
Summertime '06 by Vince Staples (interesting production and thoughtful, intelligent lyrics)
Star Wars by Wilco (s'good stuff)


I have also bought and need to give more time to:
Divers by Joanna Newsom
Vulnicura by Bjork
Choose Your Weapon by Hiatus Kaiyote
Shadows in the Night by Bob Dylan


I have mixed feelings about these albums:
Poison Season by Destroyer (some of the songs just aren't very good)
Universal Themes by Sun Kil Moon (this is an album I enjoy more when I'm listening to it than when I'm remembering it)
Surf by Donnie Trumpet & the Social Experiment (pretty much the same as Poison Season)


I don't have good feelings about this album:
No Pier Pressure by Brian Wilson (sorry, Brian :()


Lastly, albums I still wanna buy:
Have You in My Wilderness by Julia Holter
The Epic by Kamasi Washington
This Is the Sonics by The Sonics
Sun Coming Down by Ought
Holding Hands with Jamie by Girl Band
Half Free by U.S. Girls
Fading Frontier by Deerhunter
plus some others I'm less convinced of...

Excellent year!

I've become rather well acquainted with:
Panda Bear Meets the Grim Reaper - Kinda spotty but it gets much better the more I listen, along with the two EPs that came out around it (favourite song: "Mr. Noah")
Surf by Donnie Trumpet at the Social Experiment - This has also grown on me a lot, really good-spirited stuff even if there's not much in the way of fully realized songs (favourite song: "Sunday Candy" or maybe "Pass the Vibes")
To Pimp a Butterfly by Kendrick Lamar - ditto (favourite song: "For Sale", just gorgeous)
No Pier Pressure by Brian Wilson - Feelings are still mixed; I think Brian may have surrounded himself with too many people and lost the directness that made his best work so affecting, but there are good tracks (favourite song: "I'm Feeling Sad" or "One Kind of Love")
Natalie Prass - Can only be the best-sounding album of the year, although I find the songs slightly lacking for some reason (favourite song: "Bird of Prey")
Goon by Tobias Jesso Jr. - Very flawed (the lo-fi touches come off as gimmicky) but the guy shows a lot of talent and he clearly knows his way around a song, so I'm excited for whatever's next (favourite song: "How Could You Babe")
Another One by Mac Demarco - Hadn't even heard of Mac before this thing, was pleasantly surprised by his style before getting sick of it then coming back round to liking it again (favourite song: "No Other Heart") (Salad Days is a rather fab album btw)

I enjoyed and intend on becoming better acquainted with:
The Great Pretenders by Mini Mansions ("Any Emotions" might be the best Brian track of the year)
The Epic by Kamasi Washington
Recreational Love by the Bird and the Bee
The Desired Effect by Brandon Flowers ("Still Want You" is an excellent song)
Star Wars by Wilco ("Random Name Generator" is even better)

I listened to maybe once and should probably give more time to:
Have You in My Wilderness by Julia Holter
But You Caint Use My Phone by Erykah Badu
Poison Season by Destroyer
Choose Your Weapon by Hiatus Kaiyote
Calling Out by EZTV
Sometimes I Sit and Think and Sometimes I Just Sit by Courtney Barnett
Divers by Joanna Newsom

Luther’s 2015
Not every year can be 1966. As the statistical probabilities would predict, this one wasn’t. But what it lacked at the top, it made up for in depth and breadth. There wasn’t from what I could hear a single classic album—though these things tend to evolve over time—but there were probably 10 or 15 songs I hated to leave off my annual playlist, which already was pushing my self-imposed limit of double-album length at 34 songs and well over two hours.

Sticklers for true classics, real greatness, may prefer to stick with their existing collections, rehashing whether this remix or that reissue edges the last one. I’m a proud supporter of the good as well as the great, and in fact find greatness in the good. Living with music is the best way to love it, gradually settling into the nooks and crannies that are easily ignored upon first listen or coming across the perfect coincidence of sound and life: the break-up, the hook-up, the nap, the drive.

My favorite albums were, alphabetically by artist:
Asaf Avidan, Gold Shadow
Courtney Barnett, Sometimes I Sit and Think, and Sometimes I Just Sit
Kendrick Lamar, To Pimp a Butterfly
The Mountain Goats, Beat the Champ
Kacey Musgraves, Pageant Material
Joanna Newsom, Divers
Mark Ronson, Uptown Special
Sufjan Stevens, Carrie and Lowell
Meghan Trainor, Title
Brian Wilson, No Pier Pressure

I also liked the albums by Lindi Ortega, Ryan Adams, Jason Isbell, Lady Lamb the Beekeeper, The Bird and the Bee, Deerhunter, Grimes, Of Montreal, Earl Sweatshirt, and Vince Staples. No doubt I’m leaving some out, but at a certain point trying to be exhaustive is tedious.

My playlist follows the same rules as every year since 2012: roughly double-album length, one song per artist, with fit playing a key role in inclusion. It’s not the best 34 songs, it’s the best 34-song playlist I could make. I’ve grouped them into the rough “sides” I hear when I listen. If you’ve got the music, or can spend the time making your own playlist so you can listen in sequence without breaks, I recommend it.

1. “Crack in the Pearl, Pt. II,” Mark Ronson (feat. Stevie Wonder and Jeff Bhasker)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PpP3rfusyzg

2. “Jenny,” The Bird and the Bee
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vX97nPjel-U

3. “Walkashame,” Meghan Trainor
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JDjIDaQlFPo

4. “Can’t Feel My Face,” The Weeknd
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KEI4qSrkPAs

5. “Holy Ghost,” BORNS
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QCeoI3S-by8

6. “FourFiveSeconds,” Rihanna, Kanye West, and Paul McCartney
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kt0g4dWxEBo

7. “Are You Alone?” Majical Cloudz
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vfPUHmNugY8

…..

8. “Blackstar,” David Bowie
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kszLwBaC4Sw

9. “Anecdotes,” Joanna Newsom
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CjBGuX3dp5M

…..

10. “If It Takes a Lifetime,” Jason Isbell
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lmVNswlLDgc

11. “Blank Space,” Ryan Adams
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sndW_dDy-s8

12. “Run-Down Neighborhood,” Lindi Ortega
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9JEYSHCE0PM

13. “Get the Point,” My Morning Jacket
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XIs-UA1M7q8

14. “Fine,” Kacey Musgraves
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OzeQMs3B4c0

…..

15. “Julia,” Fast Romantics
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NDEdhNnO-28

16. “Torch Song,” Laura Stevenson
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tmBchlBfp-s

17. “Snakeskin,” Deerhunter
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CG6jk5Q90DA

18. “Girls in the Early Morning,” Here We Go Magic
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t5HOe96oHao

…..

19. “Elevator Operator,” Courtney Barnett
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ApG_MtN5M9g

20. “Betsy on the Roof,” Julia Holter
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sr2GYsynCFg

21. “Random Name Generator,” Wilco
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2r82YRkLAQA

22. “Southwestern Territory,” The Mountain Goats
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mCqoVN5d1V4

…..

23. “Baltimore,” Prince (feat. Eryn Allen Kane)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cieZB0Ab7xk

24. “King Kunta,” Kendrick Lamar
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hRK7PVJFbS8

25. “Wool,” Earl Sweatshirt (feat. Vince Staples)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pdpym_4f7mo

26. “High by the Beach,” Lana Del Rey
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QnxpHIl5Ynw

27. “Loca,” Vince Staples
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PkaTnmL3KWs

…..

28. “Life in the Vivid Dream,” Grimes
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9UoIJnCO-Ew

29. “Ode to My Thalamus,” Asaf Avidan
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cM994kgp6IE

30. “The Everlasting Muse,” Belle & Sebastian
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bJ6CUGveJVI

31. “Milk Duds,” Lady Lamb the Beekeeper
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B1H8rBw2aD4

32. “Estocadas,” Of Montreal
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ia07pBxPcb0

33. “Saturday Night on Hollywood Boulevard,” Brian Wilson (feat. Nate Ruess)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=83vBf6DgieI

…..

34. “Is It You?” Natalie Prass
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kl3yVWnP8AY

Richard Hawley, Hollow Meadows, give it a listen, this guy is consistently excellent. I would think any BW aficionado will appreciate the songwriting and production. While your at it, Lowedges and Coles Corner are unrecognized classics. As Richard would say 'lets ballad!'.

It came out in late summer / early fall, but I just listened to the self titled album by Hollywood Vampires. 

It's basically an Alice Cooper album, produced by Bob Ezrin.  Alice was a member of a group of musicians who hung out at the Rainbow in the 1970s, called the "Hollywood Vampires."  This group of hard drinkers included John Lennon, Harry Nilsson, and Keith Moon among others. 

Johnny Depp, yes the actor, persuading Alice to start a group called the Hollywood Vampires.  A few shows with guest artists were played, and they call cut an album.

The guest list is very impressive - Paul McCartney, Joe Walsh, Christopher Lee, Joe Perry, Dennis Dunaway & Neal Smith from the original Alice Cooper Group, Robbie Krieger, Slash, Zak Starkey, Brian Johnson among others. 

The story behind the album and the roster however, is more compelling than the album itself. 

The album starts off with a spoken word intro from Christopher Lee, than goes into a killer song called Raise the Dead.  This is easily the highlight of the album. 

The rest of the album is made up of mostly covers.  Songs by The Doors, Led Zeppelin, The Who, John Lennon, Hendrix, and Badfinger are done pretty well.  But, as is often the issue with cover albums, they pale in comparison to the originals. 

Alice even covers himself in a way with a mash up of School's Out and Pink Floyd's Another Brick in the Wall Part 2.  Alice has actually been doing this in concert for a few years now. 

While the album is a fun listen, it falls into the usual covers album trappings, and as a result, will be see a lot of repeat spins. 

This would've probably made a better live CD/DVD. 

I agree with this. Mac's a funny guy, too. The interviews I've watched are pretty humorous. And then there's this: https://www.instagram.com/macdemarco/?hl=en
He also put out a free instrumental album called Some Other Ones: https://makeoutvideotape.bandcamp.com/album/some-other-ones

Amazing.
I did catch his Youtube account, which is unsurprisingly more of the exact same: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QbiZnqiCUL0 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QbiZnqiCUL0)
Haven't listened to Some Other Ones yet, but I most certainly shall.

Listened to another Xmas present over the weekend. 

Roger Waters - The Wall

It's the soundtrack of the film about his 2010-2012 Wall tour. 

All in all, it's just another version of The Wall.  But, it's a good version.  Roger sings better than he has in over 20 years.  His band does a great version of the Floyd classic.  IMO, this is much better than the star studded Berlin 1990 version. 

My only gripe was that it didn't feel at all like a live music.  The audience is way way down in the mix.  To be point where it almost sounds like a studio album with some crowd noise between songs. 

So, if you're a big fan of Roger Waters or The Wall, this is worth getting.  If you're a casual Floyd fan, you're better off sticking to the original album. 

Getting caught up on 2015 releases.

I finally listened to David Gilmour's 4th solo album - Rattle That Lock - over the weekend. 

One thing is guaranteed with a David Gilmour solo album, it will be a pleasant listening experience.  You'll get his pristine vocals and you'll hear him bend some notes on his Fender. 

I don't think this album is quite on the same level as his excellent On An Island album from 2006, but it's a good album. 

Gilmour throws in a little surprises like some jazz with The Girl in the Yellow Dress.  Or even the disco/funk of Today. 

A Boat Lies Waiting is a bit of a tribute to Richard Wright, and features David Crosby and Graham Nash on vocals.  The opener Five AM, the title track, Beauty, and In Amy Tongue are also highlights. 

It's also a treat to hear the great lead vocals of the 69 year old Gilmour.  That's one thing that the Pink Floyd swansong of the previous year could've used. 

2015 was a great music year for me, with plenty of my old music heroes releasing new albums:

Brian Wilson- No Pier Pressure (had some really great tracks that made for his most satisfying solo release ever outside of BWPS)
Todd Rundgren- Global (an accessible rock/pop electronic album that was his most consistent since Liars)
Todd Rundgren, Nikolaisen, Lindstrom- Runddans (not a Todd solo project, but Todd returning to a prog format with two Electronica artiists- cool album)
Paul Weller- Saturn's Patterns (OK album like his last couple of OK albums- nothing truly great on here)
Blur- The Magic Whip (Not really consistent album, but still has lots of great stuff, and it's just really wonderful to have the whole band together again)
Sarah Cracknell- Red Kite (Saint Etienne singer delivers Plenty of good stuff on this retro album to tide us over until Saint Etienne returns)
Belle & Sebastian-Girls In Peacetime Want To Dance (wildly inconsistent album that descends into dance music doldrums, but still comes up with some great tune. 'Perfect Couples' is my favorite of the year)
The Zombies- Still Got That Hunger (pretty good album that gets a bit too Rock at times)
Joe Jackson- Fast Forward (excellent focused album- he hasn't lost a step)
Jeff Lynne's Electric Light Orchestra- Alone In the Universe  (not close to perfect, but it sounds like an ELO album, not a solo project, and that's enough for me)
Ben Folds- So There (has a couple of clunkers, but the album was recorded with a full orchestra and features a 20 minute concerto. I'm a sucker for these kind of projects so Ben gets a hallpass)
Squeeze- Cradle To the Grave (Fine new album that seemingly came out of the blue. They've been away too long)

Also there was (cuz ya gotta listen to some more recent artists, right?):
The Bird and The Bee- Recreational Love (great album that's so smooth and easy to listen to- no bad cuts)
Mini Mansions- The Great Pretenders (great band- seems they can do it all)
Neon Indian- VEGA INTL. Night School (interesting Electronica artist finally made a consistent album)
Vinnie Who- Harmony (discovered this album thanks to someone on this board- really good stuff, modern day Glam)
Tame Impala- Currents (sleek modern sound that works most of the time. not as unique as earlier albums but still good)

I doubt that 2016 can top that, or that another year ever will again for me, but we shall see. Blackstar has kicked things off on a high and a low note. New Suede and High Llamas albums are up next.

One I forgot to mention was the fourth LP released by The Darkness - The Last of Our Kind. 

IMO, this album is a HUGE improvement over their comeback album Hot Cakes (2012). 

I think The Last of Our Kind is their best album since their classic 2003 debut Permission to Land. 

These guys were written off here in the States as a one-hit wonder back in 2004, and they're one of the best pure proper hard rock bands of this millennium.