Music update, October 2023.

It’s weird – ten days ago this list was horribly short, maybe nine songs, and not for a lack of effort, but the last Friday of the month brought a torrent of new stuff, and suddenly the list was approaching 35 tracks. I settled on 31, which you can see below or find here if the Spotify widget doesn’t work for you.

Brittany Howard – What Now. Howard was the lead singer/guitarist for the Alabama Shakes, then released a solo album when they broke up, winning a Grammy for the track “Stay High” and taking six other nominations. I’ll take this over any song from her debut album Jaime, though. This thing fucking rocks, and also it funking rocks, like she slipped her hand through a wormhole and pulled this out of 1978.

The Libertines – Run Run Run. Apparently Pete Doherty has been clean for nearly four years now, which has the side benefit of giving us new Libertines music, with this song teasing the March release of their fourth album and first in nine years, All Quiet on the Eastern Esplanade. It’s a touch melodic for the louche lads, but hey, we all get a little softer in our old age, innit?

Creeper – Sacred Blasphemy. Creeper had my #2 album of 2020 with Sex, Death, and the Infinite Void, anover-the-top mélange of glam rock, post-punk, new wave, and even some metal, and their follow-up, Sanguivore, is even more ambitious and experimental, the sort of album I’m going to have sit with and listen to several times to fully digest. I don’t know if it’ll match the prior one for me, but I always respect artists trying to push out of their comfort zones, even if it doesn’t work (with at least one track here where it definitely doesn’t).

The Joy Formidable – Share My Heat. The full-length version of this song is 15 minutes, so I give you the radio edit instead, which has the pounding guitar riff that makes this my favorite song yet from this Welsh rock trio. It’s the third new song this year from them, so I imagine a follow-up to 2021’s Into the Blue is in the offing.

Yard Act – Dream Job. Yard Act’s debut album was one of my favorites of 2022, coming in at #3 on the year, and they’re back with the first single from their next album, Where’s My Utopia?, which is due out on March 1^st. It’s got the same sly vocals, sardonic lyrics, and post-punk stylings, but this time with more of a late 70s disco feel.

Bob Vylan – He’s a Man. “Just another day in the life of a big dumb man.” This duo, who blend punk, grime, and hip-hop, among other genres, have such a great knack for satire, as on this send-up of toxic masculinity and the Tory-voting couch potato.

STONE – Am I Even a Man. Last year’s EP punkadonk didn’t slow down these British neo-punks, who’ve continued churning out singles that adhere to their core punk ethos while expanding their horizons just a little – enough to make them more than just punk revivalists, at least.

Egyptian Blue – To Be Felt. I’m a sucker for British post-punk bands, clearly, so here’s another one; Egyptian Blue have been around for almost a decade but just released their debut album, A Living Commodity, this past month, which is when they crossed my radar. They keep it to straightforward post-punk, rather than trying to do too uch to stand out, which I appreciate as someone who’s a fan of the original genre from the early 1980s (although, to be honest, I came to it later).

English Teacher – Nearly Daffodils. There’s a debut album coming … soon, it sounds like, from this Leeds quartet of post-punk upstarts, with this the second single teasing it after “The World’s Biggest Paving Slab.”

Folly Group – Big Ground. This London quartet sounds a lot like early Everything Everything to me in the best possible way, perhaps with less production but the same chaotic energy.

milk. – London. This is the title track from the Dublin indie-pop band’s latest EP, a four-track affair that also has the great “I Think I Lost My Number Can I Have Yours?” It’s pretty sleek and catchy, definitely not the sound I associate with Dublin or Ireland’s rock scenes.

Griff – Into the Walls. More sultry, sophisticated pop from the 22-year-old Sarah Griffiths, who just released a three-track EP called vert1go vol. 1. She toured with Dua Lipa in 2022, and Taylor Swift bumped Griff’s previous single “Vertigo,” so I’m expecting her to break out in a huge way very soon.

Girl Ray – Hurt So Bad. This song actually predates their 2023 album Prestige but ended up missing the cut for the album, so this British electro-pop trio released it as a one-off single this month. It’s a great example of their general sound and ability to craft a great synth hook.

Sampha – Suspended. Lahai, Sampha’s long-awaited follow-up to his Mercury Prize-winning debut from 2017 just dropped to very positive reviews, featuring this track, “Spirit 2.0,” and “Only.”

Black Pumas – More than a Love Song. Black Pumas earned a Grammy nomination for Best New Artist for their 2019 debut album Black Pumas; I enjoyed their psychedelic soul sound but thought the album lacked strong hooks. This song, from their just-released second album Chronicles of a Diamond, has two giant hooks, the vocals in the chorus and the fuzzed-out guitar riff that follows it, and has me far more interested in their new album than I was two weeks ago.

NIJI & Moses Boyd – Sounds of the City. This is the debut single from Niji Adeleye, a jazz pianist from London who has played in Harry Styles’s backing band, with help from the superstar jazz drummer Moses Boyd. This track has no lyrics but his second single, “Love Will Find It’s [sic] Way,” does have vocals from Adeleye.

Uriel Herman – MJ. Herman is an Israeli jazz pianist who just released his fourth album, Different Eyes, which also includes a cover of Nirvana’s “Polly” that I found unrecognizable – not in a negative way, just in that it sounds nothing like the original. Neither did his earlier covers of “Smells Like Teen Spirit” or of David Bowie’s “The Man Who Sold the World,” though, so this is just how he rolls.

HEALTH – Ashamed. This LA-based noise-rock trio’s seventh album, Rat Wars, is due out on December 7^th, and the video for this track – which has the subtitle “(Of Being Born)” there but not on streaming sites – was partially filmed at the DragonCon science fiction, fantasy, and gaming convention in Atlanta, which is awesome.

Black Honey – Lemonade. Black Honey skillfully melds power pop with the trashier sounds of bands that have tried to subvert indie’s pop leanings, like the Pixies and Modest Mouse, but somehow also sound like early Smashing Pumpkins. I’ve liked almost everything they’ve ever released, to varying degrees, and this stand-alone track is up there.

Charly Bliss – I Need a New Boyfriend. Not quite as good as “You Don’t Even Know Me Anymore,” but I’ll take this to mean that this power-pop band’s third album, and first since 2019, is coming soon. Their guitarist, Spencer Fox, voiced Dash in the original The Incredibles.

TORRES – Collect. Mackenzie Scott’s sixth album, What an Enormous Room, is due out in January; I admit I’ve been pretty lukewarm on their music to date, but this song has a different vibe for me, darker, grimier, almost a little angry.

Sundara Karma – Better Luck Next Time. This British band’s third album is barely long enough to qualify, just nine songs and 30 minutes, but they do deliver the goods again – to me they’ll probably always sound like descendants of U2. They’re certainly better than whatever that Irish band is producing right now.

A. Savage – David’s Dead. That’s Andrew Savage, lead singer/guitarist of Parquet Courts, in case the voice wasn’t a giveaway. His second solo album, Several Songs About Fire, features this track and “Elvis in the Army,” with his jangle-pop style and laconic vocals on full display.

Slow Pulp – MUD. Yard was a mixed bag for me, maybe more towards the side of ‘disappointing,’ although I suppose my complaint that the songs are kind of sluggish would be an example of me forgetting to read the label. Anyway, I do like the way the big guitars come in on the chorus here, very ‘90s alt-rock while giving some texture to a languorous track.

Everything Everything – Cold Reactor. EE announced their seventh album, Mountainhead, will arrive on March 1^st; this lead single has a lot of Jonathan Higgs’s acrobatic vocals, but I was hoping for some more madness in the music.

Shed Seven feat. Rowetta – In Ecstasy. So I had no idea Shed Seven were still together, although the minor Britpop band re-formed in 2007 for live shows and eventually put out a proper album in 2017. Their sixth album, A Matter of Time, is due out some time next year. If you don’t remember them from their ‘90s heyday, check out “Dolphin” and “Getting Better.” Rowetta, by the way, was a member of the Happy Mondays for their peak years, and appeared as herself in 24 Hour Party People.

Wild Nothing – Dial Tone. This sounds like every other Wild Nothing song, which is to say it’s good, but Jack Tatum is kind of stuck in neutral here. At least he’s not ripping off Talk Talk songs any more.

Slate – St. Agatha. Another Welsh band, this Cardiff act sounds like Fontaines D.C. suddenly fell in love with classic shoegaze. This is just their second single so far, so I’m basing this on a pretty small sample.

King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard – Chang’e. Rocco Baldelli’s second-favorite band (after Phish, I hear) released a double album of sorts this month. The Silver Cord has seven tracks of restrained length, all between 3:24 and 4:40, and then “extended mixes” of those same songs, ranging from 10:18 to 20:41. I prefer the short versions myself.

Tortuga – Lilith. A stoner metal band from Poland? Sure. The band just released their third album, Iterations, on Friday, but this track is the first I’ve heard from them. There’s some definite influence from the New Orleans sludge-metal school as well as classic stoner metal sounds like Kyuss and Sleep.

Wayfarer – A High Plains Eulogy. The new Wayfarer album, American Gothic, is an incredible work of technical death metal, although I found the growled vocals too much to take. This track has clean vocals, so you can appreciate the intricate fretwork without the distraction of a Cookie Monster imitator.