Twenty-seven songs on this month’s playlist, which is a lot, but they’re almost all from artists I’ve listed somewhere here before. As always, you can access the Spotify playlist here if you can’t see the widget below.
Everything Everything – Breadwinner. This is one of four tracks on the British art-rockers’ recent EP, A Deeper Sea, one left on the cutting room floor from their 2017 album A Fever Dream. The EP opens with “The Mariana,” a slow, melancholy meditation on societal ideas of masculinity and the high suicide rates for young males.
DMA’S – For Now. Huge, soaring guitars, mixing electric and acoustic, with a memorable hook in the chorus … yeah, I’m all in. Take all my money.
Post Animal – Ralphie. A fun, bouncy rock track from a new band from Chicago that includes one of the actors from Stranger Things, Joe Keery.
Gang Of Four – Lucky. Gang of Four have always been overtly political, but their forthcoming EP, Complicit, is about as direct an attack as they’ve ever brought on a sitting politician. The EP’s cover is a photo of Ivanka Trump, and the EP’s title is repeated in Russian.
Sunflower Bean – Oh No, Bye Bye. The Brooklyn trio released their second album, Twentytwo in Blue, last week, and it’s filled with sunny, folk-tinged indie rock and great melodies; it feels to me like the album a band makes before they release the album that takes over the world.
The Men – Rose on Top of the World. This is very acoustic War on Drugs-ish, kind of surprising given The Men’s history of harder, punk-tinged songs.
Ride – Keep It Surreal. The second track from the shoegazers’ new EP, Tomorrow’s Shore, which also includes “Pulsar.”
Courtney Barnett – Need A Little Time. The second single in advance of the Australian singer/songwriter’s second solo album Tell Me How You Really Feel.
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The Decemberists – Once In My Life. Never a huge fan of the Decemberists, in part because Colin Meloy’s delivery always teeters on the brink of twee-pop, but it’s weird that they paired one of their best melodies ever with some of their weakest lyrics (a pale imitation of “Please Please Please Let Me Get What I Want”).
Preoccupations – Disarray. This Canadian band’s latest album, cleverly titled New Material, came out on March 23rd; their sound, from reverbed guitars to production that dampens the vocals, gives everything they do a gloomy tinge while harkening back to everyone from Joy Division to Lotion to Mercury Rev. “Decompose” is another great track from the album, with an offbeat percussion line that keeps you off balance for the entire song.
Speedy Ortiz – Lean In When I Suffer. The noise-pop quartet led by Sadie Dupuis will release its third album, Twerp Verse, on April 27th.
Prides – Say It Again. These Scottish pop-rockers first showed up on my radar with 2015’s “The Seeds You Sow,” but they haven’t quite hit that level of hook in anything since … until this song, definitely my favorite track since that debut. Their better songs have reminded me of better Bastille stuff with a little early Coldplay (before they became just pop nonsense).
Artificial Pleasure – On a Saturday Night. It’s a bit slower than their first hit “I’ll Make It Worth Your While” or the track that made my top 100 from last year, “Wound Up Tight,” but I like the glam-rock stylings here even as they get away from the dance floor, with a song that sounds inspired by ’70s new wave (or even Bowie, apparently a hero of theirs) without coming off as derivative.
Young Fathers – Fee Fi. The 2014 Mercury Prize winners released their third album, Cocoa Sugar, on March 9th; as with their previous two, their tracks feature a lot of world-music percussion with less rapping than is typical of that genre.
Snail Mail – Pristine. Snail Mail is Lindsey Jordan, a Baltimorebased singer-songwriter, and her sound is sparse and also reminds me of Lotion – really, I don’t think I’ve mentioned that group in years, now they’re here twice in one playlist – whose voice and sound is way beyond her 18 years. She should tour with Speedy Ortiz.
Belly – Stars Align. That little opening guitar riff feels like a secret message to Belly fans from the ’90s that everything’s OK, Tanya’s here, although what comes after doesn’t have the same energy as King or Star, and I get the sense that Dove, their first album in 23 years, will be Belly-ish, but mellower.
The Districts – Nighttime Girls. The Districts feel like a mixture of Preoccupations (see above) and the Hold Steady, with the former’s general sound and style (including echoing vocals) with the dry delivery of the latter.
The Horrors – Fire Escape. The Horrors’ new single includes this song and “Water Drop,” with one of the keyboard loops repeated throughout both songs; this track has more of an identity, like an actual single rather than a B-side or deleted scene. I love the heavy guitar/drum break around the 1:10 mark that introduces the vocals.
Starcrawler – Different Angles. This LA glam-rock act released its debut album, produced by Ryan Adams, in January, with a good sound but not enough good hooks to sustain a full record. This was my favorite track, which, like most on the album, comes in well under three minutes.
Turbowolf – Cheap Magic. I wasn’t familiar with this Bristol psychedelic hard-rock act before a few months ago, but this is the second great, heavy rock track from them (think INHEAVEN) in the last 90 days, this one a collaboration with Death from Above’s Sebastien Grainger.
Underoath – Rapture. Underoath is, or perhaps was, a Christian hard-rock band, although it seems like their faith or stance on it is at least no longer the core feature of their music. This would have been considered metal when I was in high school, somewhere between glam rock and thrash (death metal existed, but had almost no audience or mainstream awareness at the time), and earned some nostalgia points with me.
Bicurious – Sleep. Bicurious describe themselves on their Bandcamp page as “a confused, loud, instrumental and experimental duo based in Dublin.” There’s some jazz in here, a little heavy rock, and what sounds like a good bit of two-hand tapping (or maybe even a Chapman stick?). It’s not boring, though.
Melvins – Stop Moving to Florida. King Buzzo is back – although I think I’m nominating him for “aging rocker most likely to go milkshake duck” – with a song that gives you two minutes of conventional grunge and then turns into abject silliness for the rest of its run time.
At The Gates – To Drink from the Night Itself. Pioneers of the Gothenberg sound, At the Gates will release an album with this as the title track in May, their first record without founding guitarist Anders Björler.
Memoriam – Weaponised Fear. I’m pretty sure Memoriam was supposed to be a one-off project, a tribute to the late drummer Martin Kearns, who played in the legendary British extreme metal act Bolt Thrower along with two members of Memoriam. They’re back now with a new album, The Silent Vigil, that continues the first album’s doom-influenced thrash with more growled vocals, not too far away from the sound on Bolt Thrower’s final studio album, Those Once Loyal.
Barren Earth – Further Down. Barren Earth is a Finnish supergroup that features Kreator guitarist Sami Yli-Sirniö, producing progressive death metal that incorporates symphonic, technical, and even folk elements.