Arriving two years after a serious bike accident that left Florist’s Emily Sprague in a neck brace and unable to use her left arm, The Birds Outside Sang is comprised of 11 mini-masterpieces that find beauty in patience and a comforting fragility in weighty concepts. Her style of songwriting may belong from a long lineage of artists combining introspection and storytelling Bright Eyes among them—but Florist stand out like blood on snow. Beginning with Sprague singing over minimal keyboard loops (many of the songs were written with one hand before she could play guitar again), the album gradually incorporates more and more instrumentation, subtly emphasizing the same sense of growth implicit within each song. Chilly drones, warm guitars and hushed cymbals lend it a sensory intimacy, while the lyrics express abstract emotion in vivid imagery, whether it’s of tree bark or getting your head stuck in a banister. It’s as unique and accomplished as you could hope for from a debut full-length.
This Los Angeles. outfit’s first four albums faithfully recreated the folksy, confessional vibe of Seventies Laurel Canyon singer-songwriters like Jackson Browne, but with the band’s former guitarist Blake Mills producing, the studio now becomes Dawes‘ playground. “As If By Design” is overrun with wild bar room piano and mariachi horns, while on several tracks Taylor Goldsmith’s vocals are filtered with heavy electronics and the drums and guitars are processed to a digital crunch that recalls the more adventurous side of the Black Keys. Goldsmith’s lyrics are still thoughtful and earnest (“I’m asking you for help/How do you fall in love with anything?” he sings on the title track), but he’s also looser and more playful on cuts like the lead single, “When the Tequila Runs Out” (“We’ll be drinkin’ champagne”). With this bold left turn into sonic experimentation, Dawes proves that you can be faithful to your roots and sound and still branch out.
We’re All Gonna Die certainly comes out swinging with big guitars, chunky grooves and what seems to be a concerted effort to mix things up from their usual wistful balladry and thoughtful mid-tempo.
But what’s most surprising about the album is just how well Taylor Goldsmith’s intricate lyrics fit into the aggressive music, especially on the circus-like “No Reason At All” and the crunching “One Of Us.” And on “RollTide,” the band slips back into balladry like it’s a velvet glove, just in case the new direction doesn’t take off.
These Windy City bros aren’t just a great power pop band, they’re one of the best rock bands going, period. They work in a bit more layered jangle and production ambition than most on this list, but not so much that it strangles the pals-on-a-summer-road trip vibe that takes them from Beach Boys vistas to dive bar bathrooms.
Our last run was an awesome tour of Europe where we returned to Madrid and stopped in Barcelona for the first time in Spain played a truly joyous sold out show in Paris, where we also performed live on the French TV show Album De La Semaine, had a blast running around the UK, Almost collapsed in Bristol and played a massive London show at Scala, hit a beautifully intimate gig in Brussels for the first time and finally wrapped up with a great run around the Netherlands.
Last but certainly not least, maybe number one, The last leg of 2016 “DOWN IN HEAVEN” tour. We’re looking at going to, Detroit, Cleveland, Toronto, Burlington, Portland (ME), Cambridge, Philly, New York, Richmond, Atlanta, Nashville!. We’re adding a couple treats into the set. And we wrap up in Chicago with all our wonderful brothers and sisters of the windy city.
A limited-edition peach vinyl re-pressing of Down In Heaven will be available in record shops early next year. But, if you come party with us now you won’t have to wait cause we’ll have them on the road! This is what they look like. But you know they’ll look even better on your record player. When it comes to the catchiest songs of this year, Twin Peaks “Walk To The One You Love” is easily high on the list. The opening track to their third album Down InHeaven is effortlessly buoyant and made to stick around. Vibrantly-textured production and bold arrangements bolster other album highlights including “Holding Roses” and “You Don’t,” two not quite-carefree odes to love that isn’t all that romantic.
On his awesomely gnarled 17th solo album, On Post Pop Depression and a worthy addition to the 22 album legacy spawned with the immortal trilogy of The Stooges, Fun House and Raw Power Iggy Pop deliberately uses the strength of his sound to summon something more than temporary wrath … for one last time. Whether announced or not, every legendary artist will have a final album. spanning massively influential solo outings including 1977’s opening 1-2 combo of The Idiot and Lust For Life, and 1990’s gold-certified Brick By Brick.
Here he plays the low-rent elder statesman, “America’s greatest living poet/Was ogling you all night,” he sings modestly on “Gardenia,” addressing a girl “much taller and stronger” than he, with an “hourglass ass” and a “powerful back.” (What woman wouldn’t be flattered?) His sinewy visions are shaped by producer Josh Homme and Dean Fertita (bunkmates in Queens of the Stone Age), and Matt Helders, the hip-hop-snappy drummer with the Arctic Monkeys. Over nine songs and 42 minutes – old-school LP length – they juggle tight and loose, conjuring a ravaged cadaver in a sharp funeral suit.
The former Stooges frontman and Josh Homme teamed up to rage at the dying of the light, funneling the power of its members’ pedigrees and boasting a high-volume homage to Pop’s past. “To really make a real album, you really have to put everything into it,” Pop commented. He scrapes up every last bit of his power, infusing songs like the bone-dry “American Valhalla” and bruised sunset “Paraguay” with a timeless snarl.
General consensus has it that the hardships of life on the road is far from the most compelling of subject matters for an album. Singer Songwriter MC Taylor – the North Carolina-based songwriter, singer and guitarist operating with a rotating cast of collaborators under the Hiss Golden Messenger guise – delivers compelling evidence to the contrary on Heart Like A Levee, by some distance HGM’s finest record so far.
M.C. Taylor’s sixth album as Hiss Golden Messenger is arguably his best. While 2013’s Haw served as the band’s initial breakthrough and 2014’s Lateness of Dancers brought about late night revelry (featuring SylvanEsso Amelia Meath and Reggie Pace from No BS! Brass Band) on Letterman ,
Heart Like A Levee serves as a deeper incarnation of those predecessors. The album is steeped in the duality of leaving one of his greatest loves in life—his family—only to venture off into the world to embrace his other love—music—and exemplified in the gutting title track and “Cracked Windshield.” Yet, Heart Like A Levee reconciles with a singular musicality. Multi-instrumentalists and brothers Phil and Brad Cook have finally perfected the Hiss Golden Messenger sound by balancing the meandering guitar noodling and reverberating Wurlitzers worthy of a jam band breakdown with Taylor’s acoustic Americana foundation
After taking some time away from each other to concentrate on solo projects, the members of Los Angeles band Warpaint released their albumback in September with a new album, Heads Up.
“I feel really proud of what we made—almost surprised and shocked,” bassist Jenny Lee Lindberg . “When we were making it, I was like, ‘I wonder what this is going to sound like? How’s this going to come together?’ I love the way that it came together so nicely. I feel so proud of it, and like it’s an evolution of our band. It sounds like a mature version of Warpaint.”
Heads Up is Warpaint’s third full-length album and first since 2014’s self titled album. Late last year, Lindberg released Right On. After a solo record under the name jennylee. In addition, guitarist/singer Theresa Wayman formed Boss with Sarah Jones and Guro Gikling and put out a single called “I’m Down With That.” Another member of Warpaint, Emily Kokal, appeared on songs by SaulWilliams and Paul Bergmann.
Warpaint played a handful of European festival dates during the August period. When the hazy LA rockers released ‘New Song’ in early August, it was a complete surprise: Warpaint does pop. There’s more where that came from on third album ‘Heads Up – ‘By Your Side’, ‘So Good’ – but they still remain true to the moody atmosphere of their previous work elsewhere.
Though some of the music on Skeleton Tree predates the tragic death of Nick Cave’s 15-year-old son last year, that event inevitably hangs over and defines the album. Over eight songs, Cave crafts a harrowing, raw portrait of the span and directions of that kind of grief: There is the gaping dread of “Jesus Alone” and “Anthrocene,” there are somber meditations in “I Need You” and “Skeleton Tree,” occasionally gesturing at the possibility of hope. To call the album “haunting” almost minimizes it. There’s a gravity here beyond your average piece of pop music; even in a year as full of death as 2016, you can’t slot this into a narrative. Skeleton Tree is an intimate glimpse at an unimaginable chapter in a person’s life, made all the more powerful for its depiction of how they are trying to process it and continue living after the fact.
Some albums are hard to distance from the events surrounding them. With Skeleton Tree, it’s impossible to overlook the tragic death of Nick Cave’s son midway through the recording process.
It would be inaccurate to say that this is an album about 17-year-old Arthur, as most of it was written before he tragically fell from a cliff in Brighton, but it’s such a major event that it’s hard not to think about it through every note of these eight tracks. Cave’s work is dark and morbid at the best of times, and perhaps there’s an element of “seek and ye shall find” in finding prophecy in his latest work, but it’s particularly chilling that the first line of the album is “you fell from the sky”, and one of the last is “I called out right across the sky”.
The album is beautifully stripped-down and tender, with highlights including the funereal ‘Girl In Amber’, and the ghostly humming and scratchy drumming of ‘Anthrocene’. ‘I Need You’ perhaps hit me hardest of all the songs on the album, where Cave sounds a helpless, broken man as he repeats simple, almost childlike words like “nothing really matters” and “I’ll miss you when you’re gone”.
It’s an absolutely gripping and essential listen, if not always a comfortable one. For Cave to have finished this album at all is a huge credit to him. For him to channel his grief into possibly the best work I’ve ever heard from him is really something else.
Grief hangs over Psychopomp like a dark cloud, but as the year goes on, what stands out on Michelle Zauner’s debut full-length as Japanese Breakfast are the intense moments of euphoric happiness that play out on the sidelines: the joyous high of “Everybody Wants To Love You,” “Heft”‘s glorious fuck-you to the encroaching darkness, the resolute power in the album’s closing lines, “But in the night, I am someone else.” More than a depiction of loss, Psychopomp stands as a testament to finding your strongest self in situations of monumental sadness, taking comfort in the unpredictable and unknown
Soaring vocals and dreamy instrumentals, this album has so much heart. This band knows how to translate sugary pop, rock, and folksy music into a glowing, lofi dreamscape. There is a fun blend of hooky-ness and surreal, often amusing lyricism that keeps the whole album vibrant and exciting.
“at once cosmically huge and acutely personal, Zauner captures grief for the perversely intimate yet overwhelming pain it is. Long may she keep at this music thing.” -Pitchfork ,
“a stunning debut” -Rolling Stone
“overwhelmingly colorful and joyous; while her words betray grief and frustration, she turns the pain into power.” -NPR
“Psychopomp is exemplary, finding joy in sadness and despair in the brightest of lights…It’s an immaculately crafted debut, and you should listen” -Stereogum
Crying take two deeply uncool genres of music — video game music and ’80s arena-rock — and play them both like they’re the coolest thing in the world. And they do it with enough conviction to convert even the most hardened cynic. There’s no trace of irony or pretension to be found on Beyond The Fleeting Gales, just an explosion of riffage lifted to the heavens by Elaiza Santos’ sugar-sweet vocal melodies. It’s like injecting pure fun directly into your ear canals, a welcome beacon of optimism in a decidedly dark time
This album is just full of Simply wonderful. Infectious, fun, yet introspective at the same time. There’s something amazing when combining Crying’s powerful music with the calm vocal delivery. Very unique. It’s so amazing! The poppy, yet relaxing sound, mixed with upbeat and exciting melodies/drum beats. I love the energy and happiness of this album. Wool in the Wash is so relaxing, but There Was a Door is just so interesting? I haven’t heard music like this since that created in the 80s
For over 20 years, Chicago Americana troupe Wilco has been a band of depth and intricacy. Singer-songwriter JeffTweedy has served up his personal insights on the mic as a revolving backing band of ace multi-instrumentalists dressed them in the Alt-country repose of A.M. and Being There, the ‘70s pop sheen of Summerteeth, and the minor symphonies of Yankee Hotel Foxtrot. By 2007’s Sky Blue Sky, the band settled on what would be its first stable lineup: JeffTweedy and his former Uncle Tupelo bassist buddy John Stirratt, experimental drummer and percussionist Glenn Kotche, guitar god Nels Cline, knob twiddler Mikael Jorgensen, and alt-country session hand Pat Sansone. The lineup honored Wilco’s commitment both to country and to pushing the envelope of this genre, but 2009’s Wilco (The Album) and 2011’s The Whole Love, the pair of full lengths that followed Sky Blue Sky, maybe fizzed when they ought to have popped.
Last summer’s surprise free release Star Wars was an attempt to redirect the band’s energy. At just over 33 minutes long, it’s the shortest Wilco studio album.
The songs were two- and three-minute pop-rock confections that pulled off the difficult feat of sounding both thoughtfully arranged and off the cuff. This month’s Schmilco seeks to extend the streak, revisiting the wiry energy of Star Wars over a dozen quiet acoustic tunes. Most of the new album’s songs were conceived around the same time as Star Wars, but Tweedy made the peculiar decision to split the fertile sessions in two: “The alternative to making two records would have been to spend another year really honing everything, all of it, getting it all right for that kind of release.”
The irony of the Star Wars/Schmilco project is that the decision not to whittle everything down to a single body of work is its saving grace.
If the major strength of Star Wars was getting Wilco, a band whose finest albums are also their busiest, to strip down, Schmilco’s is figuring out how to stash six players into the quiet of a backyard jam. “Normal American Kids,” introduced at a live show earlier this year as a solo Jeff Tweedy cut, gets a studio version that sneaks sweet, meandering electric guitar from Nels into the background. A few songs later “Nope” crams stuttering bits of riffs into the margins, the lead guitar coughing and spitting over the tune like Blur ax-man Graham Coxon did on “Coffee & TV.” “Nope” slowly unravels as it trips along, its personnel expanding to no less than three guitarists and two drummers. (Tweedy’s son Spencer lends Kotche a hand on Schmilco’s drums.) Between these extremes is a tapestry of shaggy guitar shuffles like the laconic “Happiness,” the demented, atonal “Common Sense,” and the muted punk blast of “Locator.”
Schmilco’s subtle intricacies provide cover for a series of vignettes of dreamers in various degrees of resignation. From the song titles — “Nope,” “Cry All Day,” “Someone to Lose,” “Shrug and Destroy” — down to the lyrics, Schmilco bleeds sadness. The deceptively titled “Happiness” opens on a devastating observation: “My mother always says I’m great, and it always makes me sad / I don’t think she’s being nice, I really think she believes that.” Album closer “We Aren’t the World (Safety Girl)” devilishly subverts the chorus of the star-studded ‘80s charity single “We Are the World” into a dart about settling: “We aren’t the world / We aren’t the children / But you’re my safety girl.” As a lyricist, Tweedy loves his abstractions. (“I am an American aquarium drinker / I assassin down the avenue”?) So Schmilco’s snap focus on dejected character studies, like the hopeless barfly of “Quarters,” who sweeps the place for quarters to play music on the jukebox, is jarring, but like the elegant arrangements that swirl and sputter underfoot, it feels like the work of a tightly wound unit taking chances. Wilco’s willingness to embrace risk and change at a point in its career where peers often retreat into comfort and self-parody suggests there could be another couple of decades of life left in this 22-year-old enterprise.
Despite playing the game for over two decades, the 49-year-old singer-songwriter has hardly ever sounded so intimate as he does on Schmilco, grappling with the never-ending angst of knowing that you never really can escape yourself. On album standout “If I Ever Was a Child”, he vividly paints this feeling, singing: “I slump behind my brain/ A haunted stain never fades/ I hunt for the kind of pain I can take.” The Chicago rockers add some color to each of the album’s 12 tracks by stripping things down to its core essentials.
The Fat Angel Sings 