Tag Archives: favorite bands

Ends in Two: Favorite songs and albums of 2022 (Part V)

Posted on by
Reply

By May I was back into the groove of full-time day job work again. Five days a week and hovering right around forty hours, it was definitely not as stressful as the Former Day Job, and I just had to get used to the more physical demands of standing for most of my shift. And getting home at a reasonable hour with time to spare was just what I needed. It wouldn’t be long before I started using some of my past experience to slide into a few extra responsibilities.

Musicwise, I’d started flagging a bit as I wasn’t always able to connect with my daily schedule of listening to KEXP, but I made up for it by keeping an eye on the weekly new releases and sampling new bands.

Belle and Sebastian, A Bit of Previous, released 6 May. I’ve witnessed this band’s evolution since the late 90s and they’ve gone from the bedroom-pop twee (they were the band first given that term, I believe) to quirky modern rock to windy Smiths-style British alternapop. Their latest finds them at home sounding confident and strong.

Warpaint, Radiate Like This, released 6 May. So happy that this band is back after such a long hiatus!! Their sound is still a bit weird and slightly spooky, but also just as infectious as it’s always been. Another band worth checking out their entire catalog.

Dubstar, Two, released 6 May. I’ve loved this band ever since the US version of Goodbye came out in 1997 (the one with their megahit “Stars”), and I’m quite happy that not only did they get back together in 2018, they’re still going strong! The new record is one of my favorites of the year, and I love that they included a cover of my all-time favorite REM song on it!

The Smile, A Light for Attracting Attention, released 13 May. Sounding a lot like the quieter moments of OK Computer and the less-manic moments of Amnesiac, Thom and Jonny’s full album finds them writing some of their best introspective and adventurous music.

Florence + the Machine, Dance Fever, released 13 May. I’m still not sure what to make of this album as it’s definitely more leftfield than her usual (and that’s saying a lot, considering) but it’s a curious and entertaining listen.

Various Artists, For the Birds: The Birdsong Project Vol I, released 20 May. The first of five multi-disc volumes for an extremely curious and expansive project from National Audubon Society featuring spoken-word poetry and music about our avian friends. Interspersed with writers are musicians such as Beck, Nick Cave, UNKLE, Karen O, Beach House, and more.

Liam Gallagher, C’MON YOU KNOW, released 27 May. The younger brother’s turn in the spotlight doesn’t quite have the bombast as his earlier solo works (most likely due to pandemic reasons keeping recording at a minimum) but it actually works in his favor here; you’re not focused on the grandiosity and instead on the guitar groove and the tight songwriting. Our Boy has come a long way since his former band’s days.

Wilco, Cruel Country, released 27 May. Long labeled as purveyors of alt-country — much to their chagrin — they turn the tables this time out and completely embrace it with nearly all live takes of full-on twang alternafolk, and the end result is an amazing collection of high lonesome melodies and lovely tunes.

jennylee, Heart Tax, released 27 May. Not only do we get a new Warpaint album this month, we get a solo album from its bassist! This one’s much darker and more sedate than her band’s release, meandering and moody and contemplative. An album to listen to late at night.

*

Tomorrow we hit the halfway point of the year with tunes from June!

Ends in Two: Favorite songs and albums of 2022 (Part I)

Posted on by
Reply

As promised, I’m about to go through my music library to check out what came out this past year and shake the dustbunnies out of my brain to remind myself how many great songs and albums came out in 2022. Like the last couple of pandemic years, the music scene has kind of been all over the place — not necessarily in a bad way, but it’s definitely shaken things up to the point where the unexpected is the norm. Let’s take a listen…

The Smile, “You Will Never Work in Television Again” single, released 5 January. Radiohead members Thom Yorke and Jonny Greenwood joined up with their drummer friend Tom Skinner from Sons of Kemet as a creative outlet during the pandemic and surprised everyone with a decidedly punkish sound that might be Radiohead at its most frantic. They’d eventually release a full album later in the year.

The Weeknd, Dawn FM, released 7 January. His latest is kind of…weird? Yet really fun and funky? And features in-between smooth-jazz-DJ voice-overs by…Jim Carrey? I’m still not entirely sure what he was trying to say with this record, but it’s a great listen nonetheless. “Sacrifice” in particular is my favorite off the album.

Cat Power, Covers, released 14 January. Chan Marshall has been known to record unique and fascinating covers of other people’s music, and this latest batch is full of gems. Her take on Frank Ocean’s “Bad Religion” got quite a bit of airplay on KEXP at the beginning of the year and it’s a wonderful take on an already quirky track.

Miles Kane, Change the Show, released 21 January. Kane, also known as part of the supergroup The Last Shadow Puppets, takes the classic British soul swing sound and tweaks it with humor and maybe a bit of strangeness and the result is earwormy fun.

Kids On a Crime Spree, Fall in Love Not in Line, released 21 January. I’ve been intrigued by Slumberland Records these days for several reasons: much of their roster is super-local (one or two coming from my own neighborhood!), and much of that same roster often records in a semi lo-fi way, providing a very loose ‘bedroom recording’ feel that reminds me of…well, my own band The Flying Bohemians, actually! Extra props for this particular Oakland band for naming themselves after a newspaper story headline about problem youths in Foster City on the peninsula…which became the inspiration for the movie Over the Edge.

Yard Act, The Overload, released 21 January. This goofy punk band from Leeds provided probably my first favorite track of the year with the title song from their debut album. I kind of see them as what The Fall would sound like if they played twice as fast and Mark E Smith hadn’t been so damn grumpy all the time, but they have a really fun and hilarious charm all their own. The whole album’s well worth checking out.

The Smile, “The Smoke” single, released 27 January. The band followed up with another new single leaning ever so slightly more towards Radiohead but remaining unique to their own style. This one definitely showcases Greenwood’s penchant for increasingly complex riffs and musical phrases and Yorke’s unnatural ability to easily shoehorn vocals within them.

Paul Draper, Cult Leader Tactics, released 28 January. The second solo album from the ex-lead singer of Mansun continues his foray into tension-filled alternative rock, this time featuring friend and Porcupine Tree singer Steven Wilson on the lead single “Omega Man”. Props to Draper for filming this video in the exclusion zone in Chernobyl to really drive the theme of isolation home.

https://youtu.be/B6gZ8cS-KNM

The Beatles, Get Back: The Rooftop Performance, released 28 January. Tying in with the utterly amazing Peter Jackson miniseries, this release finally provides fans with the full rooftop show that ended up being the band’s final live show (of sorts). We got to see it on the (very!) big screen on IMAX and it was so much fun!

Our Lady Peace, Spiritual Machines II, released 28 January. A sequel to an underrated and fascinating record about Ray Kurzweil’s book about artificial intelligence, The Age of Spiritual Machines, this one revisits the predictions he’d made in the book to see what has come to pass and what has not.

**

Next Up: February tunage!

Ending in Two

Posted on by
Reply

Yeah, I know…I’ve gone on record multiple times that years ending in two are awesome years in music. And 2022 saw a lot of great releases! But I think it’s me this time out that didn’t do my due diligence and connect as deeply with it all as I should have. It’s not that it didn’t interest me, as a lot of it did. It’s that I didn’t allow myself to resonate with it.

I’ve been using variations of the word ‘resonance’ a lot lately, in two different ways. Musically, it means “the quality in a sound of being deep, full, and reverberating.” Emotionally, it means “the ability to evoke or suggest images, memories, and emotions.” Both are important to me: things that hit me in the heart not just emotionally but creatively.

And I haven’t been letting myself do either of them over the past couple of years. Maybe it’s partly the pandemic’s fault for holding back or blocking so many musicians out there. Maybe it’s partly my own fault for not making a strong enough attempt to make that connection in the first place. Maybe it’s also partly my own fault for focusing on the acquiring (yay for being a discography completist!) and less on the music itself. Maybe it’s that I listen to KEXP so frequently that I don’t give myself enough time to relisten to what I already have in my collection. Maybe it’s that my Day Job doesn’t allow me the ability to listen to my collection while working. Maybe it’s just too many real world distractions. It could be a lot of things.

I think what I’ll be doing in the next couple of weeks is do a monthly overview of 2022 to reconnect myself with this year’s releases and posting them here. There were a lot of great songs and albums out there that I loved but for some reason never completely connected to. And I’d like to see what I might have forgotten. Maybe I’ll reconnect with them this time around.

Let’s start with what has resonated with me: “Golden Air” by Sun’s Signature — the first new music from Elizabeth Fraser in many years. I absolutely adore the EP it’s from and I think that’s a good place to start!

Stay tuned for more!

Mixtape: Untitled I

Posted on by
Reply

What to name a mixtape you truly enjoy, but can’t come up with a decent one? By this time I had Walk in Silence, Listen in Silence, The Last Home Year, Cimmerian Candlelight, and so on…names for themed series. But what about a chaotic mix that was essentially my favorite indie tunes at that point in time?

And so the Untitled series was born. Cheeky, but it worked.

This is a mix of songs I’d heard on Amherst College’s WAMH, WMDK out of Peterborough, recent 120 Minutes episodes, with a sprinkle of deep cuts, records borrowed from Chris, and to top it off, promo singles he and I had “borrowed” from the local radio station that they were obviously never going to play. The original mix features versions taped from the radio or off the TV speaker as well as actual source material.

Like Listen in Silence II, it was a mix primarily made as a catch-all for songs I liked but didn’t necessarily have in my collection. This would explain the strong beginning and the somewhat meandering end…but yet it works and still stands up so many years later. Also like LiS II, it was a mix to be listened to while mowing the cemeteries for my summer DPW job. Since my favorite college radio station was off the air for the season, this was my mix to fill that gap.

[Missing from the Spotify mix due to unavailability: The Feelies’ “Away” (after “Makes No Sense at All”) and Robyn Hitchcock & the Egyptians’ “Swirling” (after “Charlotte Anne”).]

RIP Mimi Walker

Posted on by
Reply

You may not know her by name, but she was one half (or one third, depending on the lineup) of the slowcore band Low. They started out in the mid-90s and created a wonderfully unique style of alternative rock that wasn’t the meandering (and often quiet-to-loud) post-rock of bands like Slint or Godspeed You Black Emperor, but neither were they the delicate quiet twee of bands like Belle & Sebastian either. They were a bit of both, shifted sideways into something beautiful yet haunting. Mimi was the drummer and the wife of the band’s guitarist Alan Sparhawk.

I’d heard of the band during my HMV years, having seen some of their early releases pass by my receiving desk, but it wasn’t until 2001’s Things We Lost in the Fire that I finally understood just how wonderful they are.

Mimi passed away from ovarian cancer the other day, and will be greatly missed by many. This particular song, one of my favorites from the band, was on my mind when I heard the news.

…and here are a few other Low tracks featuring Mimi on vocals (solo or with Alan) that have also become favorites of mine over the years:

(This last song is one of my all-time favorite takes on a Christmas song.)

Coming Soon: A Listen to the Beatles’ Revolver: Super Deluxe Edition

Posted on by
Reply

When I have the time (and when Jules isn’t darting hither and yon and causing all kinds of chaos), I’ll finally have a sit-down-and-listen to the new Revolver box set! This album has long been my number one favorite Beatles record (with The Beatles coming an extremely close second) ever since I bought it sometime in the early 80s so yes, I am extremely familiar with it, inside and out. I’ve listened to it in headphones to recognize the quirks, semi-hidden sounds and edits. I play it every spring when I sit down to do my taxes. I’m slowly learning more of the songs on guitar.

So yeah…hearing this album with a completely new stereo mix is going to be interesting.

A bit on the new Cure songs

Posted on by
Reply

So The Cure, one of my favorite bands from the 80s and a huge influence not just my songwriting but my fiction writing as well, have finally slipped out a few new tracks! Well, sort of, at any rate. They’re in the midst of a tour and they’ve been playing what seem to be new songs, quite possibly from an upcoming album called Songs of a Lost World (at least that’s the current rumor).

This isn’t the first time they’d test out new songs live before recording them. A lot of bands do that, actually. Let’s give them a listen, yes?

I joked with my friend Chris, who shares my longtime love for the band, that these two new songs passed right by me because I swear they had a song called “Endsong” already. [Well, “End” is on Wish and “Plainsong” is on Disintegration, so my brain probably smooshed the two together.] Still…I like what I hear so far. It’s similar to their track “Homesick” in that it has the slow and extended opening before arriving at the main lyrics, which don’t seem to have a chorus. Very much a Disintegration/Wish vibe going here.

“It Can Never Be the Same”, on the other hand, reminds me a lot of 00s-era Cure, a mix between The Cure and 4:13 Dream. It’s got the patented dark dreaminess but with a tighter and more orchestral sheen. But it also hints at the construction of repetition that made Disintegration so mesmerizing.

What to make of these two tracks that may or may not be a part of a VERY long time in coming future album? It certainly shows that Robert Smith hasn’t rested on his laurels since 2008. Between the numerous tours and guest spots on albums and soundtracks, he’s kept busy. And that classic Cure sound hasn’t gone away, either…their best songs have either been the irresistible pop of songs like “Friday I’m in Love” or “Close to Me” at one end of the spectrum and the epic gloom of “Homesick” and “All Cats Are Grey” at the other. I’m glad to see they’ve still got it.

a simple song

Posted on by
Reply

One of my favorite Sparks songs is “My Baby’s Taking Me Home”, in which said title is the near-entirety of its lyrics, barring a short spoken word passage near the end. The Mael brothers comment on it in The Sparks Brothers documentary, where the dynamics of the song are purely in its construction rather than its lyrics. Because of this, they find it one of their all-time favorite songs to play live.

Back in the 80s and early 90s I wrote a handful of Flying Bohemians songs that were similar in construction, and they were always my favorite to play because of that. One song, “She Sang to Me”, had three lines that were repeated in different ways while Chris and I played its three chords in various ways — fingerpicking, muted, augmented, and so on — until it sounded like a wondrous release of sound.

I don’t often hear that many songs like this, but when I do, quite often they’re my favorites of the band’s entire discography.

Revisiting

Posted on by
Reply

I’ve been thinking about revisiting some discographies lately, mainly the ones of bands I used to listen to obsessively back in my youth. One of the inspirations for this was the reissue of REM’s Chronic Town EP a few weeks ago, their first release on the IRS label.

I’ve always been an early-era fan of the band up to and including 1988’s Green, and it’s been ages since I’ve listened to those first albums other than hearing the occasional single on the radio (usually “The One I Love” or “It’s the End of the World As We Know It”, but occasionally I’ll hear “Superman” as well). Me and my high school friends were big fans of the band and taped each other’s copies of their albums into our own collections. But I haven’t listened to Lifes Rich Pageant in ages, and I used to play that one a ton in my college years.

So how is this different from any other time I obsess over 80s alternative rock? Well, instead of slinking back into the memory banks to relive those times or attempting to work on the Walk in Silence book, this is just…for fun, just like before.

I think part of it is tied into what I was talking about in the previous post, in which I find myself so constantly wrapped up in New Releases every week that few songs are actually sticking in my head. Which leads to the question: how is it that these REM songs (and Smiths songs, and Love and Rockets songs, and so on) stick like Gorilla Glue where the new songs don’t?

I think it’s partly because I’m not allowing those new songs to anchor themselves in the first place. It’s like I’ve forgotten how to do that somehow. The focus has gone from the music to the procurement of it. Which of course feeds into my obsessive tendencies, but doesn’t really move me emotionally, does it?

I’ve been trying to figure out how to change that these last few months. How do I let these songs into my psyche when I’ve forgotten how to do that? What do they have to anchor to? Moments in time, memories in the making? So many of those songs are fleeting, great to listen to but never quite moving me emotionally. Produced too clean, given airplay to a station that smothers us with its constant repetition. Caught in a race with millions of other songs, all trying to enter my subconscious at the same time.

It’s time to revisit how I made them stick in the first place. Allowing the song to percolate and simmer for a while in my mind, to allow it to latch onto a moment in my life. Keeping myself from getting constantly distracted by yet another song that sneaks up behind it. Allow the song to become a part of my own personal and private world rather than chasing after several songs at once as they go by.

WIS Presents: The Boston Years XVI

Posted on by
Reply

For a year that was chock full of great and often influential albums, it kind of…ended with a thud. Granted, new and important albums were rarely ever released that late in Q4 (as I’ve mentioned many times), so it’s kind of expected. If I recall, the fall semester ended on perhaps not a high note but at least a better one than previous. I headed home for the Christmas break, not entirely happy that my grades still weren’t that great, and not being able to hang out with my high school gang all that much — everyone was home with family and we’d only be able to meet up maybe once or twice in the weeks we were in the same place. Instead of doing any New Year’s Eve partying, I chose to stick at home listening to the end of year countdown on WMDK. I didn’t even have a year-end mixtape this time out.

What was my mood then? I seem to remember being irritable. In retrospect, I’m sure it was set off by multiple things: being stuck at home in the small town again, out of touch with both my college friends and the Misfits gang, hardly any money in my pocket, and quite possibly some rocky moments going on with my relationship with T. There was definitely a sense of I don’t know what I want, but I know I don’t want THIS that I had no answer for.

Well, at least it was a new year coming up.

The Neighborhoods, Hoodwinked, released 1 December 1990. A classic local band known for being sort of like Boston’s answer to The Replacements, their boozy guitar driven rockers were always favorites with the locals. The title song got significant airplay on pretty much all the Boston rock stations.

Echo & the Bunnymen, Reverberation, released 1 December 1990. After longtime vocalist Ian McCulloch left the band to start a solo career, the rest of the band soldiered on with a new singer. Alas, the new sound fell flat with the loyal fanbase and the bored critics. That’s not to say it’s a bad album per se…they just updated their sound to fit the groovy Britpop sound a bit and there’s some great singles here worth listening to.

Danielle Dax, Blast the Human Flower, released 8 December 1990. Dax’s last album to date also came and went, her longtime fans being frustrated by its glossy sheen and insertion of dance beats on some of its songs. It just wasn’t…weird enough, I guess? Although her cover of The Beatles’ “Tomorrow Never Knows” (perhaps riding Candy Flip’s coattails) is worth the price. She’d pretty much disappear from the music scene after this record.

Soho, Goddess, released 8 December 1990. Known for that song that samples “How Soon Is Now” (with the blessing of Johnny Marr at that), this British dance-soul duo may not have translated well on American shores, but “Hippychick” certainly got stuck in everyone’s head for a few months there.

Enigma, MCMXC AD, released 10 December 1990. You could possibly pinpoint the start of the 90s’ emergence of new-agey world-music-as-pop with this one album. The big single “Sadeness” mixes Gregorian chants with dance beats and soothing synths, kicking off so many other bands, produces and DJ collectives putting out similar grooves.

Think Tree, eight/thirteen, released 30 December 1990. After nearly a year after dropping the weird yet exciting “Hire a Bird” single, this strange Boston quintet dropped a mini-album of some of their best songs they’d honed live. It sold incredibly well locally, even despite the long wait. Alas it would take them considerably longer to record and release a follow-up and by that time, their local fame had passed.

*

Looking back at 1990, that year, like most beginnings of decades, was one of transition. I remember my history teacher, Reverend Coffee, telling us that important changes in history usually don’t take place at its start but actually a few years in. I thought this was kind of an interesting way to look at it: after all, calendar time is just an arbitrary number to keep things somewhat in order, right? So maybe it wasn’t 1990 that was going to be a huge change, but maybe in the next year or so. Maybe we’d get past this sense of ‘waiting for things to be over with’ and start something new.

At least that’s what I was hoping for when I returned back to college in January. Fingers crossed.