Happy Monday all! Please enjoy songs from a new rock band, UV-TV, some smooth rap tracks from the one and only, the decades-long prolific Curren$y, another good song that sounds just like all their other stuff by Lord Huron, a new rapper, Anoyd, I’ve recently discovered that has some bars man, a Post Malone-type ballad by Always Never, and even a little R&B by Jorja Smith.
That’s all I got! Have a great week.
The message of this band's first track on their first album of a decades long career of classic albums, legacies, inhibitors and other drugs, is as clear as moonshine: we're gonna rock and fucking roll. Ladies and gentlemen, allow them to introduce themselves: The Allman Brothers Band.
Now that both Allmans have passed, I've dug more into their albums, and I had forgotten how IN YOUR FACE this first track is. There's so much swagger there while also teasing the listener that THIS IS JUST THE FIRST TRACK. These guys are legends. And if you think it's all swashbuckling rock, please see Exhibit B, the beautiful acoustic ballad, "Little Martha."
I thought we'd just continue to rock this whole mixtape. I went for a run other day and had Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever's "Write Back" blasting through the headphones, and the pounding guitar solos deliver some serious punch. What a song.
Jank is my newest discovery, a band that harkens a bit to the grungy, distorted sound of the 90s. I get hints of The Used, a bit of The Deftones, and some great melodies. Their new album has been spinning on repeat all week.
Lord Huron's new album is pretty darn good and listenable, though I can't say it's great. Something about the rock songs sounds just a smidgen of forced, but I still put my favorite songs from the album with a rock hint on here for you to judge on your own. Again, I think it's pretty good, I'm just not in love with it.
Anyways, have a good week!
Happy President's Day all! Hopefully two or three of you have the day off or are playing hooky.
There's a ton of "new" music that I'm pretty excited to share with you. New is in quotation marks because this first song, "Grace," by Future Generations is from 2016, but goodness, I LOVE this song. What initially sounds like some futuristic EDM track abruptly shreds into a distorted guitar and a lonely wail "over something small like me."
Future Generations formed at Fordham University and look to be releasing the follow-up to their 2016 debut (a good but not great album, one that screams with their potential but sometimes get lost in repetitiveness) this year. If "Grace" has anything to do with it, these guys got a lot of promise for their sophomore album!
My wife and I saw Lord Huron a handful of months back at The Independent, an intimate venue akin to The Black Cat (to all my DC peoples out there!) in San Francisco. They played two or three nights in a row, and they played a couple new tracks. One song instantly grabbed me, it's soul-filled, bluesy, and retro sound reverberating throughout the hushed audience. The slow, plodding bass line hooked me, and the lyrics were so simple and beautiful: "If we can't stay together / What's the point of life?"
Ladies and gentlemen, "Wait By the River" by Lord Huron.
Enjoy the remaining stuff, a hodge podge of sounds, and check back next week for more!
The most universal subject in music: love. Musicians have found millions of ways to sing about it, be it through heartbreak, infatuation, dating, lust, longing, marriage, the list goes on. I get it though, it's easier to talk straight from the heart. When done wholeheartedly, it rings true and leads the mind to make decisions both right and wrong, but ultimately ending (in what most of us hope) in something forever. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. This is a mixtape of all sorts of these emotions, and the lyrical powers that communication provides us to get love off our chest.
Lord Huron "Love Like Ghosts:"
Yes I know that love is like ghosts
A few have seen it but everybody talks
Spirits follow where I go
They sing all day and they haunt me in the night...
What ain't living can never really die
You don't want me baby please don't lie
but if you're leaving I gotta know why
Brett Dennen's "I Ain't Gonna Lose You:"
You can put a stick in my spokes
I can be the butt of your jokes
I can be the laughing stock
I can be the hoax
But I ain't gonna lose you...
They can come and tear my house down
They can run me out of town
They can tie me up call me a clown
But I ain't gonna lose you
I can't stand the thought of another man
No, I ain't gonna lose you
Angus Stone's "Wooden Chair:"
In another place
In another time
In another face
In another line
In another heart
In another world
In another girl
We were feeling fine
We were in love
Gemma Hayes' "Joy:"
I can take on anything
I can take it all
I can take on anything
as long as I can see you
Bombay Bicycle Club's "Eyes Off You:"
And I bathed in the light you gave
But it's dark in another way
Yes, you gave me the light today
But it's dark in another way...
I can't take my eyes off you.
John Mayer's "In Your Atmosphere:"
Wherever I go
Whatever I do
I wonder where I am in my relationship to you
Wherever you go
Wherever you are
I watch your life play out in pictures from afar
Wherever I go
Whatever I do
I wonder where I am in my relationship to you
Wherever you go
Wherever you are
I watch that pretty life play out in pictures from afar
Father John Misty's "I Went To The Store One Day:"
For love to find us of all people
I never thought it'd be so simple
2012 starts and ends with Frank Ocean. Channel Orange is an album that I will play until the day I die. It’s beauty - naked and fragile at times yet full bodied and confident in others - is unlike any other album to compare to in the past decade. Ocean’s falsetto on “Thinkin Bout You” wails in sincerity. His epic “Pyramids” runs a wild gamut of funk, R&B, hip-hop, and electronic elements. I always find it an amazing accomplishment to have a song that’s over 6 minutes (this being 9:53) that I can listen to constantly.
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