A friend of mine recommended the NPR Music podcast All Songs Considered a few weeks ago, and it's introduced me to a bunch of artists I'd never heard of before and probably wouldn't have heard of otherwise.
My current obsession is Hop Along:
There are similarities to a bunch of my other favourite bands in there (I can almost hear the Aimee Mann cover of some songs), but it's the vocals that really get me with Hop Along; I always loved Cerys Matthews' voice, even if Catatonia's songs weren't the most inventive on the planet (personally, I think they were let down by the choice of singles from International Velvet - it's a much more interesting album than Mulder And Scully suggested), and Frances Quinlan has a similar raspy quality.
On a more aggressive, bluesy end of the spectrum, there's Plastic Hamburgers from Fantastic Negrito:
I don't really know what to say about this song except that I love it and I'll fight you if you don't.
I'be been a bit all over the place musically of late, but largely just digging up lots of Queen and ELO on Spotify. One album I keep coming back to, though, is Standing Stones by Marian Call. It's a folky/pop concept album about the stages of life. I genuinely think it's a kind of masterpiece, and fully expect everyone else will hate it.
Khruangbin have been getting a lot of play on 6Music recently. I like what I've heard, and you've just reminded me that I was going to check their other stuff out. Apparently, their first album has completely different influences without being standard western rock or one of its derivatives.
OK. Have checked out both of the albums and they're not radically different.
Also, after listening to two full albums worth of this group I mentally started to picture where I'd most likely hear this. Turns out that I (subconsciously at least) think that Khruangbin are a really good fit for the lobby of a nice boutique hotel.
There's loads I need to post in here, not sure how much my taste in music is shared by the rest of you though
I see I've already posted Turnstile and last year's Night Flight Orchestra, have this year's NFO
Shame
Then some Slaves
Dream Wife
And lastly (for now) Deafhaven
New IDLES out at the end of the week (last year's album was awesome and the tracks they've released from the new one so far have all been equally as good if not better) so I'll no doubt be back with that and a few more choice selections from the year so far
I had subscribed to the 46-30 podcast a while ago but hadn't listened to any of it before the other weekend when I was doing some DIY/painting. It has become my favourite music show.
James Yorkston (of singer songwriter James Yorkston fame) and Stephen Marshall (Triassic Tusk Records/known record collector & DJ) play each other a selection of songs over the course of about an hour. There's a little bit of chat about the records the selection of which is too eclectic for me to do any sort of justice to concisely.
Metric's new album (see above) is brilliant. I've been a big fan since Fantasies in 2009, but I've always been drawn to their older albums more than the newer stuff - the last couple drifted more to electronica than rock, although they always had keyboards somewhere in the mix.
This feels like the first one that really nails that balance, though. And although I wouldn't call it "experimental" (there's just too much confidence in the decisions - the band knows exactly what they're doing), it reminds me a lot of Old World Underground or even Grow Up And Blow Away, when they were pushing in different directions even from song to song.
It's going to take something truly spectacular to unseat Underline the Black as my song of the year.
Metric's new album (see above) is brilliant. I've been a big fan since Fantasies in 2009, but I've always been drawn to their older albums more than the newer stuff - the last couple drifted more to electronica than rock, although they always had keyboards somewhere in the mix.
This feels like the first one that really nails that balance, though. And although I wouldn't call it "experimental" (there's just too much confidence in the decisions - the band knows exactly what they're doing), it reminds me a lot of Old World Underground or even Grow Up And Blow Away, when they were pushing in different directions even from song to song.
It's going to take something truly spectacular to unseat Underline the Black as my song of the year.
Metric are, indeed, terrific and this album is super gr8. Gold Guns Girls though still has it for me as a fave song.
This year is the 20th anniversary of Rafi's Revenge. Asian Dub Foundation remain one of the most blistering acts I've seen live (and the political messages they hammered in the late 90s are as relevant now as they've ever been). They're still touring I see, so I need to drag my 42 year old arse to see them at some point.
I've been listening to "Real Areas Of Investigation" a lot at the gym. A tune and no mistake. But Free Satpal Ram, live, at the time. Holy shit.
The second part of San Fermin's The Cormorant came out yesterday, which I'm very excited about. The first installment took a while to grow on me, but I think I'm in a more receptive mindset for the second as a result. Part of the slow burn is undoubtedly the change of female vocalist after Charlene Kaye left the band, but it's led to a bit more of the competing harmonies that defined the first album.
(Personally I think Jackrabbit is still their best album overall, though I have a lot of fondness for the experimentalism of their self-titled debut.)
If you have any interest in utterly weird, non-sequitur mashups of 90s music, cartoon theme songs and advertising jingles, or if you're familiar with the previous entries in Neil Cicierega's Mouth series, then you need to listen to his new installment: Mouth Dreams
This is a weird, chilled-out record from a Glasgow-based band, which uses a lot of detuned instruments to make something that is simultaneously unsettling and comfortable in a way I can't quite understand, let alone explain. It reminds me of late-stage Blur's more experimental moments.
I've also been listening to this one a lot over the weekend, which is a lockdown album that's kind of all over the place tonally, but held together by a common thread of optimism in the face of unending isolation.
Turnstiles new album is out and I think it's on par with 2018s Time & Space, though I'll have to see how it does on repeat listenings (I still listen to Time & Space)
It's certainly a contender for my album of the year , though there's a few that are battling that one out, this ones probably the "easiest" to listen to.
The Journey score isn't just one of my favourite soundtracks, it's one of my favourite albums, and the 10th-anniversary re-orchestration Traveler is wonderful.
Of you're looking for a singer with a Braggian distain for the Tories who sings about stuff that matters then I'd recommend Grace Petrie. New album out today. Best thing to come out of a Leicester since… er… Englebert Humperdinck?
There's a new Kishi Bashi album coming out later this year; three tracks have been released so far and every single one has surprised the hell out of me in the best possible way.
He's always had a bit of eccentricity, mixing genres and arrangements in ways that are often surprising, but after a relatively "normal" pop album - 2019's Omoiyari - I was expecting a return to the expansive orchestral stuff.
Instead, we've got a bright, bouncy, 70s disco and funk-themed thing coming down and I'm loving it.
