Monday Mixtape, Vol. 146

Harry Styles is this generation’s Justin Timberlake, but he may just be more talented. He’d still have to have an album on par with JT’s FutureSex / LoveSounds, but the potential is there. I love his new track, I thoroughly enjoyed his debut album, and maybe if you heard a few mixtapes ago, I even found some One Direction tracks I liked!

Quiet Hounds was a band that - waaaayyyy back in 2012 - I was totally obsessed with due to their album Megaphona. They haven’t lived up to any of my expectations as nothing they’ve released has touched what I thought was their best song, “Calling All Gamma Rays,” but they just released a new album that I’m digging. I’ve put two new tracks and two classics on this week’s mixtape to enjoy!

Phantogram and Will Joseph Cook have new tracks for you to snag, and I have been on a huge Third Eye Blind kick as of late, and in particular, I keep listening to the second tracks of their first two albums, “Narcolepsy” and “Wounded,” two of my favorite tracks Third Eye Blind has ever made.

Come to think of it, “Wounded” is my fave song by them. It has everything I love: great lyrics and a story which feels genuine, a great build up, some orchestral elements, harmonics!, great vocals, great guitar licks, awesome use of reverb (the climax of the buildup “WOOOOOoooo ooo ooo ooo”), I mean what else can you ask for?

And “Narcolepsy” is similar in that it has a slow start which leads to a great buildup but an even better transition into a super bouncy and rhythmic track, but I really love the lyrics of “Narcolepsy” and the part where I sing along with Jenkins, building up from a whisper to an excited chant to a yell into a SCREAM for the whole the third verse:

I read dead Russian authors, volumes at a time
I write everything down except what's on my mind
Cause my greatest fear is that sucking sound
And then I know that I'll never get back out
And there's a bone in my hand that connects to a drink
In a crowded room where the glasses clink
And I'll buy you a beer and we'll drink it deep
BECAUSE THAT KEEPS ME FROM FALLING ASLEEP!!!!

And I can feel this Narcolepsy slide………….

Top 25 Albums of 2012

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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