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Music update, November 2016.

November was very strong both for new album releases and for singles that preview albums we will see in January and February of next year, but really, this was about the Tribe, y’all. If you can’t see the embedded player below, you can click here to get directly to the Spotify playlist.

A Tribe Called Quest – We The People… The Tribe’s return this month on We got it from Here… Thank You 4 Your Service was a welcome comeback from one of the towering lights of the Golden Age of Hip-Hop, tinged with sorrow from the March death of founding member Phife Dawg, who died near the end of the recording process. Q-Tip sounds as good as ever, and Jarobi White’s first appearance with the Tribe since the group’s debut album provides a low-register voice to balance Tip and Phife’s higher deliveries. The album is full of rage, true to the quartet’s Afro-centric roots but with an angry, cynical worldview they didn’t have or need on their earlier albums. This is the record of the year, and it is very much a document of our time.

Ten Fé – Overflow. This London duo does a modernized riff on classic, synth-heavy new wave, and this single, which I believe is their fifth so far, is perfect if you like the music of White Lies.

Japandroids – Near To The Wild Heart Of Life. I did not share the industry consensus on Japandroids’ 2012 album Celebration Rock, which I thought was too much noise and not enough rock. This first single ahead of their next album’s release on January 27th shows better production values and a tighter sense of melody than anything I heard off their last record.

Sundara Karma – The Night. Sundara Karma are a quartet from Reading – the one in England, not the one near me – that seem to fit in somewhere between late Britpop and the sort of traditional American arena-rock now exemplified by Kings of Leon. “The Night,” from their debut EP Loveblood, definitely leans more toward the American half of that formula, with a blues-rock underpinning and the sort of yearning sound I associate with KoL’s slower material.

Milky Chance – Cocoon. After 2015’s “Stolen Dance,” I sort of assumed we’d never hear anything decent from Milky Chance again; between that song’s novelty sound and their awful band name, they had one-hit wonder written all over them. “Cocoon” is actually a pretty good song, though – not quite as catchy as their first hit but catchy enough to be a hit on its own.

Sleigh Bells – I Can’t Stand You Anymore. Sleigh Bells, like Japandroids, tend to be too noise-oriented for me, often reminding me of the worst sound excesses of 1990s “industrial” music. Alexis Krauss has a great voice that I’ve always thought ill-fitting for the duo’s musical style, but when they pursue a more pop-oriented direction, as here or on their first hit, “Rill Rill,” her vocal combination of power and sweetness provides the perfect contrast.

Cloves – Better Now. Cloves is an auto-inclusion after her 2015 song “Frail Love,” which made my top ten tracks of the year. “Better Now” is the first release from her forthcoming full-length debut, still raw and very dark but with some textural contrast between the chorus and the nearly a capella verses.

Grace VanderWaal – I Don’t Know My Name. I don’t know how you could have missed her, but VanderWaal just won the most recent season of America’s Got Talent and released her debut EP, Perfectly Imperfect, on December 2nd. She wrote the music and lyrics for all five songs on the record. She’s twelve years old. Simon Cowell said she’s the next Taylor Swift and I don’t think that was usual TV hyperbole.

Hey Violet – Brand New Moves. Formerly known as Cherri Bomb, this LA-based quintet has gone from opening for the defunct alt-rock band Lostprophets to opening for the awful boy-band 5SOS, neither of makes much sense if you listen to their latest EP, their first recording under their new name. This is funk/soul-tinged pop music, definitely smarter musically than you’d expect from a group touring with a boy band, with lyrics inappropriate for the tween crowds I assume they were facing.

FREAK – Nowhere. English singer Connar Ridd records as FREAK and toured with Sundara Karma earlier this year. I saw a review that compared this track to Nirvana’s Nevermind, but FREAK is more Mudhoney than Nirvana, or if you’d like a more contemporary reference, it sounds a lot like the better tracks from Drenge’s self-titled debut.

Lapcat – She’s Bad. A Swiss-American electronica trio, Lapcat just released its third album, and this title track has the same hynoptic vibe of Portishead and early trip-hop stalwarts like Massive Attack or Tricky, but with a more accessible sound than either of those latter two acts brought.

Peter Doherty – Kolly Kibber. The Libertines’ ne’er-do-well singer/guitarist is not dead yet and appears to have a solo album in the works. There’s no mistaking Doherty’s voice or his style, although he tends to pack better punches than this song delivers.

Gone Is Gone – Gift. This ‘supergroup,’ featuring members of Mastodon, QotSA, and At the Drive-In, appeared on my May playlist with their strong, stoner-rock debut track “Violescent,” part of an eight-song EP, and they’re already back with a track from their first full-length album, Echolocation, due out January 6th.

Run The Jewels featuring BOOTS – 2100. I’m also on record as being something less than a fan of Run the Jewels’ profane lyrics, most of which are boasting about what great rappers they are (they’re not) or about their guns. If you haven’t heard RtJ before, you’ve at least heard one half of the duo, Killer Mike, who delivered the middle and by far the worst verse on Outkast’s 2002 hit “The Whole World.” RtJ’s third album is due out soon and I can at least say that this is the best song I’ve heard from the group, boosted by the presence of producer/singer BOOTS, who helped produced the group’s last album and whose track “I Run Roulette” appeared on one of my monthly playlists in 2015.

Black Map – Run Rabbit Run. Wikipedia identifies Black Map as “post-hardcore,” and what in the fuck is post-hardcore music? This isn’t hardcore, or anything like it; it’s hard rock, just this side of metal. It would fit on Octane, and it wouldn’t be out of place on Liquid Metal. There’s a bass-and-drum riff in the chorus here that feels derived from more extreme genres, but there’s an actual harmony in the vocals in the bridge, and a better sense of melody than you’d get from most post-whatever bands right now.

Pissed Jeans – The Bar Is Low. So, this is a bad name for a band, and I don’t love a lot of their songs because the lead singer often sounds like he’s gargling a pack of razor blades. You can actually understand what he’s saying and tolerate his voice on this track, though.

Sumerlands – The Seventh Seal. A reader recommended this group, which brings the big guitar sounds of NWOBHM and early ’80s metal but doesn’t have the same strong melodies of classic Maiden or Priest. This track was my favorite off their self-titled debut album, thanks to the memorable opening guitar riff.

Animals As Leaders – Backpfeifengesicht. More instrumental metal wizardry from Tosin Abasi & friends.

Hammerfall – Bring It!. Hammerfall hail from Gothenburg, home of a specific type of melodic death metal known, but they’re a throwback speed-metal band that just released its tenth album, Built to Last, at the start of November. If you remember the first two albums by German speed-metal titans Helloween, this song could easily be a leftover track from those recording sessions.

Kreator – Gods of Violence. I tweeted about this song a few weeks ago – Kreator’s core members are all nearing or just over 50, and they dropped one of the year’s best metal tracks. Kreator was probably the first extreme-metal band to which I was ever exposed, thanks to MTV’s Headbanger’s Ball, which would play the psychedelic videos for their early songs “Betrayer” and “Toxic Trace;” I also remember hearing “Some Pain Will Last” in college but lost track of the band after their 1990 album Coma of Souls as they evolved away from classic thrash metal. It appears that they’ve gone back to their classic sound, but better production values and some real songcraft make “Gods of Violence,” which incorporates some death-metal elements but is still undeniably thrash, as compelling as any of their 1980s tracks.

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→ November 2, 2016
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Music update, October 2016.

October was just a fair month for new releases, albums or singles, so I stretched in a few places here, like including a couple of singles from earlier in 2016. You can go directly to the Spotify playlist or play it in the widget here:

Black Honey – Hello Today. I first featured this pop-meets-shoegaze act on a playlist back in March, but they’re certainly starting to break out in the UK and I think some airplay here is imminent. This is my favorite kind of pop track – highly textured music that offsets the sunny vocals. The Guardian compared them to Lush, one of the best pop/shoegaze fusion acts ever, which is high praise.

White Lies – Come On. White Lies mine the same territory as Joy Division, Interpol, Editors, and I’m sure a thousand teenaged English bands writing depressing lyrics, although White Lies at least contrasts the downer vocals with bombastic keyboard lines and driving guitar lines. Their latest album, Friends, dropped in October and was hit or miss; “Come On,” “Take It Out on Me,” and “Don’t Want to Feel It All” were my favorite tracks.

Regina Spektor – Grand Hotel. Either you’re going to love these lyrics like I do or find them too precious. I think Spektor’s at her best when she’s telling stories set to music, like this peculiar story of a hotel sitting atop a gate to the underworld.

Sneaks – Tough Luck. Sneaks is DC native Eva Moolchan, who makes very sparse, very weird music with terse lyrics over a bass line and a drum machine, reminding me of ’70s new wave artists like Television who had come and gone about twenty years before Moolchan was out of diapers.

Underworld – Ova Nova (Radio Edit). All the praise heaped on Daft Punk for their derivative, commercial Random Access Memories would have been better served to Underworld for their nearly thirty years of producing smarter if less radio-friendly electronic music. This edited version of a five and a half minute track from their critically-acclaimed March album Barbara Barbara, We Face a Shining Future is just perfect – if I have a complaint about Underworld’s music it’s that their songs tend to wear their welcome out because they’re all so long.

Jagwar Ma – Slipping. This Australian band’s latest album, Every Now and Then, came out three weeks ago and remains on my to-do list, although I think this is the third track from the album I’ve included on a playlist this year (“O B 1,” “Give Me a Reason”).

Aquilo – You Won’t Know Where You Stand. A duo from Lancashire making electronic pop with vocals that sound heavily influenced by blue-eyed soul.

Temples – Certainty. The English band behind the 2013 hit “Shelter Song” will release its second album, Volcano, in March of 2017. This psychedelic-pop track is the first single and wouldn’t have been out of place in 1969.

Trashcan Sinatras – Let Me Inside (Or Let Me Out). One of my favorite bands of the 1990s put out a new album earlier this year, and it had a couple of uptempo highlights along with their usual slower, folkier stuff that never did as much for me. When the Trashcans hit on a melody, though, it seemed to elevate the band’s usual wordplay to another level entirely. I opened a recent chat with a line from their first hit, “Obscurity Knocks:” “I feel like a veteran of/oh I like your poetry/but I hate your poems.”

Little Monarch – No Matter What. Electro-soul? There’s a definitely ’70s Motown vibe beneath this electronic pop trio’s sound, despite their girl-group name, with a truly memorable keyboard riff following each chorus.

Sad13 – <2. That’s Sadie Dupuis of Speedy Ortiz, making similar music here as a solo act. Her debut album under the Sad13 album is due out on Veterans’ Day, and apparently she’s now based in Philly, so maybe I’ll run into her at Re-Animator or Elixr.

Hippo Campus – Boyish. This rousing alt-pop band from St. Paul will release its debut album, Landmark, in February of 2017. This is my favorite of their singles to date, a little rougher around the edges and less overtly poppy.

Sløtface – Empire Records. Formerly known as “Slutface,” an ironic name given the feminist bent of their songs, this Norwegian band does ’90s-style post-riot grrrl punk-pop as well as most of the American bands that tried to capitalize on the sudden commercial appeal of the Pacific Northwest, something they even parody when the singer says she’ll “play bass for Sonic Death Monkey.”

Pussy Riot – Make America Great Again. There’s been a whole slate of anti-Trump songs from rock artists lately, including an album of thirty of them, but most of the ones I’ve heard have been kind of … well, dumb. They’re condescending, almost pedantic, and unlikely to convince anyone who’s already decided to vote for Der Amerikanfuhrer. Then this Russian trio, who are really better known for getting arrested than for making good music, puts out a quirky, almost endearingly amateurish song that just sticks to the main points and follows it up with Trump’s main slogan.

NOFX – It Ain’t Lonely at the Bottom. This obnoxious punk-pop act has been offending people for over thirty years, since their first single “Thalidomide Child,” making this surprisingly tame song a little out of character. But it’s catchy.

Animals As Leaders – Arithmophobia. Highly technical, virtuosic instrumental metal. I bow before Tosin Abasi.

Testament – The Pale King. Aside from making heavier music than they once did, Testament’s sound hasn’t changed all that much over the last 25 years, and they still have the lack of clear, compelling melodies that kept them from breaking out like the Big Four of eighties thrash did. The riffing is the big appeal for me, in their classic tracks and in several standouts from last month’s release, Brotherhood of the Snake, but I know it’s a narrow appeal.

Metallica – Atlas, Rise!. Do we like this song? I actually think I like this song, even though I think it’s become uncool to like new Metallica songs (and I’m on record as saying I think their best work stopped after 1988’s …And Justice for All). It’s not a great Metallica song, per se, but it’s a good old-style thrash track that manages to justify its six-minute length.

Anciients – Following the Voice. This Canadian metal act bridges several subgenres – there are elements of thrash, progressive metal, and melodic death metal here – in a six-plus minute opus off their sophomore album, Voice of the Void. Recommended for Mastodon fans.

Dark Tranquillity – Atoma. The title track from this Gothenburg act’s latest album, due out this Friday, is straight-up melodic death metal out of that city’s school of rock, but with a strangely upbeat vibe to much of the album that it’s almost ‘bright’ compared to the rest of the genre.

Liquorworks – Then To Hell With You. I figured if I was going to put a seven-minute experimental (and instrumental) metal track on the playlist, it probably belonged at the end, because the audience for this stuff might total about twelve of us. It’s darkly atmospheric, with that low-tuned guitar riffing sometimes called “djent” that just sounds like heavy guitar work to me.

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→ October 2, 2016
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Music update, September 2016.

Just a not-very-subtle reminder that you can preorder my upcoming book, Smart Baseball, on amazon. Also, please sign up for my more-or-less weekly email newsletter, the latest issue of which went out yesterday.

September turned out to be a huge month for new tracks, from some of my favorite alternative acts to some major names in metal, and I struggled to pare this playlist to twenty songs. It’s good to get to be selective, though. Spotify users can link to the playlist directly.

Everything Everything – I Believe It Now. A one-off single from the group, who placed two songs very high on my top 100 of 2013 and whose third album, Get to Heaven, finally appeared in the U.S. earlier this year. Their music doesn’t really sound like anybody else’s, although in this case they’ve toned down some of the lyrical insanity of their prior singles.

Wild Beasts – Big Cat. Another English band that, like Everything Everything and alt-J, makes artful, unexpected music that’s definitely rock(ish) but defies many conventions of structure and sound within the genre. Wild Beasts’ album Boy King is one of the best albums of 2016, more melodic than their previous album, 2014’s acclaimed Present Tense. This track is one of among my favorites, not least for the line “big cat top of the food chain” in the chorus.

Van William – Revolution (feat. First Aid Kit). Friend of the dish Van Pierszalowski – no relation to A.J. Pierzynski – has released his second single under the Van William moniker, separate from his main work with WATERS, and it’s a very strong, hooky folk-rock track very much in the vein of the previous single “Fourth of July.”

Grimes – Medieval Warfare. This track from the Suicide Squad soundtrack, written from the perspective of character Harley Quinn, isn’t quite up to the caliber of Art Angels, especially since she sings so much of it in that little-girl voice that killed “Oblivion” for me.

Mt. Si – Oh. That’s Sarah Chernoff of Superhumanoids on vocals for her new project, named after a mountain in Washington state. It’s more ethereal – even spacey – than her work with Superhumanoids, but her voice carries the day whatever the music. Mt. Si’s debut EP, Limits, dropped back in February.

D.A.R.K. – The Moon. Featuring the Cranberries’ lead singer and the Smiths’ bassist, D.A.R.K. released their first album, Science Agrees, last month, an understated, bass-heavy record of gothic-electronic tracks like this one, which I thought had the best hook on the record.

Dagny – Ultraviolet. This Norwegian pop singer’s “Backbeat” made my top 100 last year and has been a steady favorite of my daughter’s since the song came out; I haven’t loved Dagny’s singles this year to that extent but she definitely has a ‘sound’ that I think deserves a wider audience here than it’s gotten so far.

The Radio Dept. – Swedish Guns. Sometimes I’m putting together these lists and come across a song by an act I’ve never heard of, so I assume they’re relatively new, only to find out that, as in the case of the Swedish duo The Radio Dept., they’ve been recording for over a decade. Their fourth album, Running Out of Love, comes out later this month, and this lead single is sort of a stoner/electronic track, like dream-pop without much pop.

Little Green Cars – The Song They Play Every Night. This Irish quintet had my favorite song of 2013, “Harper Lee,” but the rest of their debut album lacked the soaring hooks of that Mamas-and-Papas-inflected track. This song, from their March album Ephemera, is subtler but no less beautiful for its understatement, while still harkening back to the earliest days of folk music from the ’60s.

Preoccupations – Stimulation. The band formerly known as Viet Cong is back under a new, less-controversial name, although they still sound a lot like early Interpol and the early ’80s post-punks who influenced that band. Preoccupations is an intense, unsettling record where there’s almost too much going on to grasp it all at once – but I think, given the band’s and album’s name, that may have been their intent.

Nick Murphy – Fear Less. Another name-changer, as Murphy previously recorded under the (stupid) name Chet Faker. The slow build here from ambient electronica to drum-and-bass chaos is made more potent by the lack of a real resolution, a la Mercury Rev’s “Hercules” from All is Dream.

Lucius – Pulling Teeth. Lucius’s sophomore album Good Grief came out in March, with a pair of strong singles in “Born Again Teen” and “Almost Makes Me Wish For Rain,” but the Brooklyn band is releasing a two-song, 10″ single with two songs that didn’t make the cut, including this track about the writer’s block they encountered while writing the album.

La Sera – Queens. The main project from Katy Goodman, the former bassist of the Vivian Girls, La Sera put out an album in March that didn’t feature any standout songs for me, but this title track from their new five-song EP is one of their best … as is the EP’s closer, a bass-heavy cover of Zeppelin’s “Whole Lotta Love.”

Mona – In the Middle. This Ohio band hasn’t released anything since 2013’s “Goons (Baby I Need It All),” but this title track from a forthcoming EP sounds like they’re aiming for more mainstream airplay without losing that slightly grating edge that’s always populated their music.

Opeth – Sorceress. These guys used to be a metal band, I swear. I know their post-metal dive into prog-rock is incredibly divisive, but they’ve produced some brilliant moments across their last two albums with nary a trace of their extreme-metal roots. This song, though, goes even further back than their ’70s progressive roots, to late ’60s/early ’70s psychelic rock, married with Sabbath-esque doom metal riffing and drum work.

Ghost B.C – Square Hammer. The best track among the five new songs on the deluxe edition of their 2015 album Meliora, featuring the Grammy-winning “Cirice,” which I mention mostly because a black-metal band won a Grammy and its singer accepted the award in corpse paint.

Alcest – Je suis d’ailleurs. I wasn’t familiar with Alcest before this record, probably because their 2013 album Shelter saw them abandon metal for straight shoegaze, where prior to that they’d been dubbed a ‘blackgaze’ band that merged black metal with shoegaze, much as the critically acclaimed (and unlistenable) Deafheaven have since done. This song finds Alcest returning to their previous blend of post-rock walls of sound and heavy but not too extreme metal, sort of like My Bloody Valentine as a post-metal act.

Testament – Brotherhood of the Snake. In a fourteen-month span from September 2015 to November 2016, the five biggest thrash bands ever (Metallica, Megadeth, Slayer, Anthrax, Testament) will release new albums, making me wonder if I’ve slipped into a wormhole back to high school. Unlike those other bands, though, Testament never broke through the way the Big Four did; they had the chops, but not the hooks. Today, though, they might be the best of the five, because their sound has evolved, incorporating heavier sounds like black metal and the regrettably-named “groove metal” into their traditional thrash, which gives Chuck Billy & company more shot at creating memorable hooks. I’m cautiously optimistic.

Insomnium – Winter’s Gate, Pt. 4. I really liked this Finnish melodic death metal band’s 2014 album Shadows of a Dying Sun, but their newest album, Winter’s Gate, is a single 40-minute track that I found a little hard to get my head around. On Spotify the track is broken into more digestible chunks, and this particular one stands out as something akin to a single. Insomnium mixes clean and growled vocals well, and aren’t afraid to use some less metal instrumentation, all of which is in evidence here.

Dark Tranquillity – The Pitiless. One of the forefathers of the melodic death metal movement and its Gothenburg scene, DT will release their eleventh album, Atoma, on November 4th, their first without founding bass player Martin Henriksson. Where fellow Gothenburg acts have disappeared for two decades (At the Gates), devolved into hackneyed thrash/death territory (Arch Enemy), or just plain suck (In Flames), Dark Tranquility have expanded their sound as much as the limits of melodic death metal might allow, evident here on this very heavy track, which is highlighted by some pedal-point guitar riffing between the growled verses.

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→ September 2, 2016
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Music update, August 2016.

First, some non-music links – my thoughts on the Yoan Moncada promotion for Insiders, and my review of the coop murder-mystery boardgame Mysterium for Paste.

August was pretty fertile for new releases – I ended up cutting a few songs from the list this time around – with a number of singles out previewing albums due to drop in the next six weeks. I feel like overall this is the worst year for strong albums in a while, but it’s at least a solid-average year for great tracks. We still have time for something to grab me as the clear album of the year, though, so I’m trying to keep a positive attitude and take it one playlist at a time. Spotify users can use this direct link to the playlist if the widget doesn’t show up.

Swet Shop Boys – Tiger Hologram. If the voice with the British accent sounds familiar, that’s Riz Ahmed, the actor who played Naz on HBO’s The Night Of, paired here with Heems (ex-Das Racist) over a beat that was the best bit of new music I heard all month. The New Yorker profiled the duo ahead of the release of their debut album, Cashmere, in October.

Dinosaur Jr. – Goin Down. This is my favorite track right now from their new album, Give a Glimpse of What Yer Not, mostly because it just rocks and that’s when I’ve tended to like their music and not find myself bothered by J Mascis’s vocals.

Dawes – When The Tequila Runs Out. This song is just goofy-fun, more upbeat than stuff I’ve heard before from the brothers Goldsmith, who’ve also been working with Van Pierszalowski on his new project under the name Van William.

Atomic Tom – Someone to Love. Atomic Tom is new to me, even though they’ve been around for a decade and released albums in 2010 and 2015, with the latter, ERA, including this incredibly infectious 1980s-style pop gem.

The Naked And Famous – Laid Low. Never has this New Zealand quintet sounded more like CHVRCHES than they do here – and that’s a compliment. Now I’m going to ruin the song for you by pointing out that the two notes in the chorus where she sings “Taaaaake me” are the same two notes of “Tell me” from the chorus of “Always on My Mind.”

Christine and the Queens – Tilted (Live From Spotify London). I don’t think I’ve ever included a live track on one of these playlists, but I didn’t highlight “Tilted” when it came out last year and the song has grown on me, especially with this strong live performance. I still don’t think the French language is well-suited for rapping, though.

Kate Nash – Good Summer. I’ve got mixed feelings on this pop song from Nash, who peaked commercially and critically with her debut album and UK hit “Foundations;” I still love her voice and her ear for melody, but these lyrics are such a step down, as if she’s dumbing it down for the sake of sales.

Tall Heights – Spirit Cold. This song was first released as a single last summer, with a video out over the winter, but there’s a new push behind it with their August release of a new album, Neptune; I’ve seen them called “prog folk” but I think that’s misleading. This song is more atmospheric, driven by the two singers’ harmonies and Paul Wright’s cello, with some influence from the late ’90s quietcore movement evident as well.

Jagwar Ma – Give Me a Reason (Radio Edit). This Australian outfit, now based in the UK, go full-Madchester with this second single from their album Every Now and Then, due out October 14th. I hear Soup Dragons, Charlatans UK, even a little Happy Mondays here, so needless to say it’s my favorite song by Jagwar Ma yet.

Coast Modern – The Way It Was. I’m not a big Cage the Elephant fan, so saying this sounds just like a CtE – boy, that’s an unfortunate acronym – track doesn’t explain its inclusion, but in this case I found the chorus stuck in my head for a while after my first listen.

Midnight Faces – Heavenly Bodies. Another not-new artist I hadn’t heard before, this trio started out in Grand Rapids where one of its members was in a band (Saxon Shore) with Father John Misty. “Heavenly Bodies” is dream-pop with a better tempo and that moaning guitar riff earworm that was enough to land it on my playlist.

American Football – I’ve Been So Lost for So Long. Apparently this is a big deal; I don’t remember American Football from their late-1990s activity, after which they were on hiatus for sixteen years. Nothing says “emo” like “If you find me/Please remind me/Why I woke up today.”

Softer Still – Bliss. A quartet from Surrey whose sound reminds me a ton of Real Estate and a little bit of the Sundays (without Harriet, though, so it’s not quite the same).

The Head And The Heart – Rhythm & Blues. This Seattle folk-rock act’s third album, Signs of Light, drops next Friday. I think “Shake” is still my favorite song of theirs, but this would be a strong second; they’re better when they rock a little more like Okkervil River.

Bloods – Bring My Walls Down. Modern punk with sweet, layered female vocals. It works.

Dinosaur Pile-Up – Nothing Personal. This British rock act put out their third album, Eleven Eleven, last October outside of the U.S., but it’s just appearing here for the first time. I know they don’t call themselves a metal band, but the dropped tuning and riffing here are strongly reminiscent of classic (pre-thrash) metal.

Prophets Of Rage – The Party’s Over. As with their previous single, Prophets of Rage’s riffs are stronger than their rhymes. I get the political motivation behind the group, especially in light of the upcoming election, but I wish we were getting more vintage work from Chuck D and B Real.

Sabaton – Shiroyama. This song is such an unabashed throwback to 1980s thrash that I love it in spite of all of its anachronisms – or perhaps because of them.

Metallica – Hardwired. Obligatory. The lyrics are dumb, the drum work is amateurish, but I do like the early 1980s speed-metal riffing.

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→ August 3, 2016
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Music update, July 2016.

I don’t know if this was a weak month for new music or if I was just too busy to find as much of it as I normally do; either way this is a shorter-than-normal playlist, but anything I didn’t discover in July will just have to come find me in August. If the embedded panel doesn’t work you can access the Spotify playlist directly instead.

The Naked And Famous – Higher. I’ve liked most of the Naked & Famous’ output to date, including this anthemic new single, but they also seem to me like CHVRCHES without the charisma of Lauren Mayberry. N&F’s lead singer Alisa Xayalith does her job, and the group’s lyrics typically bring a few clever flourishes, but for whatever reason her voice doesn’t compel you to listen. “Higher” is their most radio-friendly track since “Young Blood,” though, and I’m hopeful they’ll get some crossover airplay.

Jagwar Ma – O B 1. Jagwar Ma is among the leading lights of Australian indie pop, with drawn-out takes on spacey psycheledic pop music. Their first hit “Save Me” appeared in 2011, followed by a full-length album in 2013. This track appears to be the first ahead of their second album, and it’s just as weird and spaced-out as their work to date, almost defying you to grab hold of its twisted melody.

ELEL – When She Walks. ELEL – again with the all caps, although I suppose Elel might look odd – is a pop octet (yep) from Nashville led by Ben Elkins, with a sort of roots-rock element to its instrumentation and arrangements. I kind of liked their debut single last year, “40 Watt,” but this is much catchier and the instrumental bridges elevate the song well above your standard alt-pop track.

Biffy Clyro – Howl. Biffy Clyro is a band name you could only get away with if you were from Scotland, but this trio is, so it’s all good. Once an experimental rock act, they’ve gone indie-pop as they’ve gotten older, with this track reminiscent of another Scottish power-pop act, Teenage Fanclub. Their seventh album, Ellipsis, is due in September.

Local Natives – Fountain Of Youth. Good Local Natives have a little more tension, almost a yearning, the way “Heavy Feet” stood out from the overall mellow Hummingbird album. This song, like “Past Lives” earlier this year, has me cautiously optimistic about their upcoming album Sunlit Youth.

HUNGER – Amused. HUNGER (stylized in all capitals because reasons) is an Austrian electronic pop trio about to release its second album, which is a deep throwback to the post-new wave synthpop era – mid-period Depeche Mode, for example. They also really remind me of Cause & Effect, a band I don’t even know that well.

Jeff Beck – Right Now. Jeff Beck’s guitar work, both technical proficiency and his ability to craft compelling riffs, is incredible for someone in his ’70s, and while the vocals of Rosie Bones are a distraction here I’m still buying in to hear Beck’s fretwork.

Wild Beasts – Tough Guy. Wild Beasts are huge critical darlings in the U.K. but are probably too strange and artsy to find much of a following here; if you’re a fan of alt-J or Everything Everything, then you’d probably enjoy their work, which has a heavy electronic component and plays around with song structures. It’s also very distinctly British, which I consider a positive but others may not.

Zhu – Palm of My Hand. Stephen Zhu had one of my favorite songs of last year with “Hold Up Wait a Minute,” an inspired collaboration with Bone Thugs N’ Harmony and Trombone Shorty, but the California-based DJ and producer’s output is so all over the place I haven’t found another song I’ve liked from him until this almost completely instrumental electronic track, which starts with a melodic guitar solo before spacing out with a mournful piano riff, mostly over a throbbing drum-and-bass line. Zhu’s debut album, Generationwhy, came out last Friday.

Of Montreal – it’s different for girls. These guys are delightfully bizarre; their sound doesn’t always come together for me, but when it does they make some of the most unique alternative pop music out there. Lead singer Kevin Barnes’ lyrics don’t always rhyme, and they cover topics not typically found in pop music. His delivery is over-enunciated and effeminate. The song structures vary from track to track and often fall apart mid-song, like Barnes forgot where he started and didn’t bother to go back to it. This song, which is like a psychedelic reimagining of a vintage Blur track, is the lead single ahead of their album Innocence Reaches, due out August 12th.

Prophets Of Rage – Prophets Of Rage. Prophets of Rage are a supergroup that could easily end up a disaster – the three musicians from Rage Against the Machine together with Chuck D (Public Enemy) and B Real (Cypress Hill). On the plus side, either one of those guys would represent an upgrade over Zack de la Rocha. On the minus side, this could end up some cliche-ridden rap-rock. This lead single, bearing the band’s title, is probably a 55: above average, better than I’d feared, not as good as it might have been 20 years ago.

Pixies – Um Chagga Lagga.

pixies

Nani – I Am Volcano. This LA-based quartet, featuring a singer born in Bosnia and raised in Canada, just dropped this lead single in June, a manic punk rush powered by lead singer Nina’s tumbling, vaguely poetic lyrics.

Descendents – Beyond The Music. The Descendents are pretty much an automatic inclusion on these lists; they’re older but they haven’t grown up musically, just in their lyrics (like “No Fat Burger,” an ode to fighting high cholesterol). Their new album Hypercaffium Spazzinate features twenty-one mostly short, mostly similar tracks, but there are a half-dozen with melodies just a bit better than the rest, including this one, “Without Love,” and “On Paper.”

JEFF The Brotherhood – Idiot. I saw JEFF (grr) the Brotherhood in Tempe in 2012 with Nick Piecoro. They were … adequate. Kind of loud, not very hooky, but “Idiot” definitely brings the hook without materially changing their heavy guitar/drum sound (think Drenge, Royal Blood, and all these other rock duos mining the same formula).

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→ July 1, 2016
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Music update, June 2016.

I ended up with over 30 songs on the rough draft of this playlist, but cut most of them after a few additional listens – many were from bands worth mentioning, like Sigur Ros or Two Door Cinema Club, but I couldn’t justify including the songs on their own merits. So here are 21 new tracks for June, 20 of them currently on the Spotify playlist with one I’m hoping will return to the streaming service shortly. You can access the Spotify playlist directly as well.

Van William – Fourth of July. Van Pierszalowski, lead singer of WATERS, hardcore Dodgers fan, and serious coffee snob (I say that as a compliment), has a new side project under the name Van William with a different sound than his main band boasts. This is the first single, and there’s a second one I’ve heard via their publicists, both of which are definitely more personal and sunnier than WATERS’ stuff. This song has disappeared from Spotify for the moment, but I’m leaving it on the playlist for what I assume will be a quick return. It was my favorite new track of June, and I’m not only saying that because I’ve met Van (for coffee, of course) and talked Dodgers prospects with him.

CHVRCHES featuring Hayley Williams – Bury It. This is a reworked version of a great track from CHVRCHES’ 2015 album Every Open Eye, with Paramore singer Hayley Williams singing the second verse and sharing duties on the chorus. I’m not a Paramore fan, but Williams’ staccato style works perfectly with the hesitating lyrics in her verse. I think this might be the song that launches CHVRCHES fully into the pop mainstream.

Broods – Heartlines. Broods’ second album, Conscious came out a week ago, and there’s a big shift in sound from their debut, with more songs like “Heartlines” and “Free” that feature electronic sounds and quicker tempos. These are the two best songs on the album, but there are still darker, more … uh, brooding songs here, including “Freak of Nature” (featuring Tove Lo) and “All of Your Glory” that are more reminiscent of their debut.

Dagny featuring BØRNS – Fool’s Gold. Norwegian singer Dagny appeared on my top 100 songs of 2015 with “Backbeat,” and this track has a similar feel, showcasing her lower vocal registers in particular, here in collaboration with Michigan-born singer/songwriter BØRNS, who seems like he should be the Norwegian part of the pairing.

Bat For Lashes – Sunday Love. Natasha Khan, who records solo material as Bat for Lashes, just released a new concept album last week called The Bride, about a woman whose fiancé is killed on the way to the church for their wedding – a classic summer listen, really. The album is uneven, although I think Khan is such a risk-taker musically that this is inevitable for her. This particular track is my favorite, trending toward the electropop style she showed on “All Your Gold” from her last BfL album.

Ladyhawke – A Love Song. Ladyhawke is a singer-songwriter from New Zealand and generally an interesting person, diagnosed with Asperger’s syndrom in her 20s and speaking openly about performing drunk to cover her anxiety. Anyway, this is a great summer pop song regardless of her biography. Her third album, Wild Things, came out on June 9th.

Drowners – Another Go. Drowners’ second album, On Desire, just came out last month, and it’s more of the same jangly post-Britpop as they brought on their self-titled debut. I preferred “Pick Up the Pace” from this album, but “Another Go” would be my choice for a second single over the one they actually released, “Human Remains.”

The Kents – The Stakes. This fairly new Canadian indie-pop quartet just released its debut five-song EP Waking on June 1st, and while I may be succumbing to a bit of availability bias, I thought I heard some real Tragically Hip influence here.

Alexandra Savior – Shades. Savior, a singer-songwriter from LA, has become Arctic Monkeys lead singer/songwriter Alex Turner’s writing partner of late, even co-writing “Miracle Aligner” on the latest album from Turner’s side project The Last Shadow Puppets. Her own debut album remains in the works, but this is the first true single Savior has released herself, with her only previous appearance on wax in a song called “Risk” that popped up in HBO’s series True Detective.

Phantogram – You Don’t Get Me High Anymore. Phantogram is so hit or miss, with “Blackout Days” one of the best songs of the decade so far, especially with Sarah Barthel’s voice so front and center. That’s the same reason I didn’t like their Big Grams collaboration with Big Boi; if she’s the best thing about Phantogram, then relegating her to the chorus behind some of Big Boi’s worst raps ever isn’t going to produce anything worthy. This new track is the lead single from their upcoming album, Three, due out September 16th, and it’s much closer to “Blackout Days” territory.

Phoria – Everything Beta. This Brighton trio’s ambitious spacey alt-rock sound is not terribly conducive to the short single format, but they’re worth listening to even with all of the Radiohead comparisons piled on top of them (and Radiohead comps don’t do anyone any favors).

Bear’s Den – Auld Wives. This British duo gets a lot of comps to folk-rock acts included the dreaded Mumford & Sons, but I hear more mid-1980s “sophisti-pop,” a terribly-named subgenre that encompassed groups like Roxy Music, ABC, and Level 42, in this track from their upcoming album, their first since the departure of one of the three founding members.

The Stone Roses – Beautiful Thing. The second single from the unlikely reformation of the likely lads has more great guitar work from John Squire, yet once again Ian Brown seems to have lost his teeth as a vocalist and lyricist. Brown’s best work on his own and with the Roses was always sneering, sometimes angry and sometimes just derisive, but the two new songs this year are both a little too shiny-happy-people to recapture the magic of old Stone Roses matieral.

SULK – Black Infinity (Upside Down). Now these guys sound a hell of a lot like the early Stone Roses, pre-Second Coming, all the way through SULK’s second album, the self-released No Illusions. I highly recommend this song and “The Only Faith is Love” if you’re an old-time Madchester fan like me.

Jeff Beck – Live In The Dark. Speaking of great guitar work, legendary guitarist Jeff Beck turned 72 last week and has a new solo album, Loud Hailer, due out this month. Vocal duties fall to singer Rosie Bones, but this is entirely about Beck’s fretwork, and he sounds as good as ever.

Wye Oak – If You Should See. This indie duo’s fifth album, Tween, is due out in August, and features a more guitar-driven sound than the minimalist electronica of 2014’s Shriek. The songs are all tracks that didn’t make the cut for that album or its predecessor, Civilian, so the eight songs might be a mixed bag musically.

Troup – Mercury and Gold. Big-time throwback sounds from Alex Troup, formerly frontman for British pop-punk act Crashland, and producer Evan Beigel, with thisi raw-edged guitar track that reminds me of lots of unapologetic rock acts of the ’70s, not least because Troup has a Mick Jagger sneer to his singing.

The Wans – Run Baby Run. Hard rock, borderline metal, with a strong melody, from a Nashville power trio off their upcoming EP of the same title, the follow-up to their 2014 debut album He Said She Said.

Descendents – Victim Of Me. I assumed these guys were defunct, but the pioneering punks, nearing their 40th anniversary as a band, will put out, Hypercaffium Spazzinate their first album in twelve years, at the end of July. The song is 96 seconds long, so I see age hasn’t changed Milo and the boys at all.

Gone Is Gone – Starlight. The debut, self-titled EP from this supergroup, featuring members of Mastodon, QotSA, and At the Drive-In, drops next Friday. It’s heavy, but not metal; funereal, but not stoner.

Monument – Hair of the Dog. I haven’t heard any act so happily anachronistic as Monument in ages; the music is very late-80s speed metal, and the singer is doing his best Bruce Dickinson impression. I don’t even know if I like the song or if I just enjoy the surfeit of nostalgia within it.

Banks & Steelz – Giant. This new project from RZA (of Wu-Tang Clan, although I feel like that’s superfluous) and Paul Banks (of Interpol) is the umpteenth attempt to merge alt-rock and hip-hop, most of which have, to my ears, been somewhere between unfortunate failures and painful trainwrecks. The duo’s first single, “Love & War,” wasn’t any better, but this second release is a lot more on the mark, primarily because RZA just takes over – this song is about him, delivering a vintage performance worthy of classic Wu-Tang material, dropping some comic rhymes early before turning political with a full spectrum of progressive talking points in the final verse.

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→ June 2, 2016
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Music update, May 2016.

Twenty-four songs this month because I couldn’t bear to cut any of these – some are just that good, others are important because of who recorded them, all are worth your time.

Radiohead – Burn the Witch. Yep, the boys are back, looking more like the killers in a Rob Zombie splatter film than like a post-rock band, but the lead track from A Moon-Shaped Pool is one of their best songs in years, maybe my favorite since Amnesiac. I didn’t find much of interest on the rest of the album, though, as Radiohead seems to favor atmospheric sounds that I find a bit soporific.

Wire – Numbered. It was a big month for new tunes from the old guard, with post-rock icons Wire releasing their fifteenth album, Nocturnal Koreans just as April ended. I found several tracks here worth including, but chose “Numbered” for its lyrical and stylistic callbacks to the band’s best-known song, “3 Girl Rhumba.”

CHVRCHES – Warning Call. Not necessarily their best work, but this song, from the soundtrack to a video game called Mirror’s Edge Catalyst, is a new CHVRCHES song and it would take a lot for me to exclude a new CHVRCHES song from a new music playlist.

Local Natives – Past Lives. To borrow a favorite malaprop of my daughter’s, I was “so-and-so” on Local Natives even through Hummingbird, although “Heavy Feet” did make my year-end list in 2014. “Past Lives” is just so much bigger and more ambitious than what I’ve heard from them before, and the music actually accentuates Kelcey Ayer’s vocals, as opposed to their sparser previous work that placed too much weight on his vocals and left them sounding whiny. I heard this song at least a half-dozen times before I realized it was under four minutes; it has the feel of a long, broad epic six-minute track.

The Stone Roses – All for One. The music is there, with a strong riff from John Squire, but Ian Brown’s lyrics are awfully tame for someone who never held his tongue before.

Glass Animals – Life Itself. Glass Animals do some seriously weird stuff with their percussion lines, often in a very good way (like “Pools”), but their songwriting takes a big step forward with this lead single from their upcoming second album, How to Be a Human Being.

Lucius – Almost Makes Me Wish for Rain. Another pop gem from the quintet’s second full-length album, this song has a summery, anthemic feel, and lyrics that seem like a rebuttal to a certain Garbage song.

Wolf Parade – Automatic. Never a big Wolf Parade fan but I’m including this song from their comeback EP because Nick Piecoro will cut me if I don’t.

The Faint – Young & Realistic. The Faint have always had some new-wave stylings, but this song could have opened for Blondie and Duran Duran in 1982.

The Big Pink – Hightimes. I doubt they’ll ever recapture the peak of “Dominos,” their first hit and a key sample in a Nicki Minaj song (the first time her name has ever appeared on this blog and I hope the last as well), but this has a similar feel and tempo, just without some of the bombast that made “Dominos” a sort of guilty fun.

Speedy Ortiz – Death Note. This track didn’t make SO’s 2015 album Foil Deer – it’ll appear instead on an upcoming EP called Foiled Again – but I think it’s my favorite song by the Massachusetts band yet. Those riffs are seriously heavy.

Leagues – Dance With Me. Leagues had a minor hit a couple of years ago, around when I started writing up music posts more regularly, with “Spotlight,” a very bright indie-pop that featured a solid contrast between the tension in the music behind the verses and the big peaks in the chorus. This is a little more straightforward, slower tempo but more in line with the rest of Leagues’ first album.

The Aces – Stuck. This is so much poppier than stuff I usually include on the list, but my daughter, who told me this morning that she liked the song on the radio (it was Black Sabbath’s “War Pigs”), absoutely loves it, and it’s very catchy. But I don’t understand how this all-girl quartet can keep the name when it already belongs to a popular blues band that existed for about two decades last century.

The Pass – Silent Treatment. This Louisville quartet is about to release its first album, Canyons, next Friday on indie label SonaBlast Records. This lead single is another straight-up synthpop song, perhaps a bit poppier than what I usually include here, but, hey, it’s finally summer, so forgive me for throwing some more sunshine on this month’s playlist.

Monica Heldal – Coulda Been Sound. This Norwegian singer-songwriter sounds sort of like an elf, or perhaps Kat Edmonson, over a track here that would have fit in perfectly on Ben Howard’s Every Kingdom album.

Drowners – Pick Up The Pace. Drowners had a couple of minor hits in 2013-14 with “Long Hair” and “Luv, hold me down,” and this song is in just the same vein, a bit of jangly indie-pop from a band named for a Suede song but clearly inspired by ’80s alternative sounds.

Wild Beasts – Get My Bang. Wild Beasts earned huge critical acclaim for their Mercury-Prize nominated 2014 album Present Tense, featuring the memorable line “Don’t confuse me with someone who gives a fuck.” This song, from their upcoming album Boy King, has a much stronger funk influence than anything on that last album, which I thought was a better academic record than a listening one.

Leapling – Alabaster Snow. If Death Cab for Cutie adopted some noise-rock effects on their guitars, you might get this song.

Elwell – Let the Rain Come In. Just hang with the dirge-like opening here – the song’s centerpiece is the part-folk, part-electronic chorus, a change of direction for Minneapolis guitarist Andy Elwell on his upcoming seventh album.

Everything Everything – To The Blade. This song isn’t new – the album, Get to Heaven, actually came out in 2015 in the UK, and was finally released in the US this February, but because of the gap in release dates and its unavailability last year on Spotify I never included anything after the lead single “Regret” on my playlists. The sprawling 18-song record doesn’t have the highs of the previous disc, Arc, and certainly could have used a little editing, but has several strong singles, including this one, which has this utterly frenetic chorus that recalls their most original work from their last two albums.

Thrice – Death From Above. Featuring friend of the dish Riley Breckenridge, Thrice just released their ninth full-length album, To Be Everywhere is to Be Nowhere, last week, and this is the third track from the record I’ve included on a playlist here because it’s all pretty fucking great. The vibe is remniscent of classic hardcore, but dialed down to a stoner tempo that gives the heavy riffs on the chorus more time to fill your ears.

Gone Is Gone – Violescent. This supergroup features members of Mastodon, Queens of the Stone Age, and At the Drive-In, with a sound that you might get if you threw all those groups in a blender. It’s more accessible and less heavy than Mastodon’s progressive metal sounds, a little quicker and richer than the stoner vibe of QotSA. The chorus is a hell of an earworm, too.

Death Angel – The Moth. I’ve got two tracks this month from 1980s thrash icons who’ve put out new records, the first from Death Angel, whose first album, The Ultra-Violence, was recorded while the band members were still teenagers. Their eighth album, The Evil Divide, came out last week, and the band’s core sound remains very true to their original Bay Area thrash roots.

Destruction – Under Attack. One of the pioneers of European thrash in the 1980s, Destruction has been recording pretty frequently (if without much notice) since 1998, and like Death Angel haven’t varied their sound much either: If you like classic thrash sounds, you’ll like most of their latest album, Under Attack, although I found it a mixed bag. The first half of the album is stronger than the back half, sticking to the formula that made Destruction one of the most important thrash acts of the 1980s, while the second half has some changes in direction that just don’t work (“Stand Up for What You Deliver” is cringeworthy) before they return to the formula in the closer “Thrash Attack.”

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→ May 2, 2016
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Music update, April 2016.

Good month for new tracks, with a slew of big alternative album releases coming up this month and next. I was disappointed by the new Last Shadow Puppets record, though, so I have nothing new from them here.

DMA’S – Too Soon. Apparently the British press has compared these guys to Oasis – although I suspect their goal was just to get Liam and/or Noel to say “piss shit bollocks” or something – but while I agree the DMA’s harken back to Britpop, I’m hearing far more Cast or Blur than Oasis. The song is too sunny and melodic for Oasis to be more than a lazy comp, even with the little nod to Nirvana’s “Come As You Are” coming right out of the chorus.

Hundred Waters – Forgive Me For Giving Up. Hundred Waters had my favorite album of 2014, The Moon Rang Like a Bell, for their strange mixture of ethereal vocals and sparse electronic backdrops. This one-off single would be somewhere in the middle of the pack compared to tracks from that album, although it’s far better than the atrocious remix of “Show Me Love” that appeared in March.

The Hearts – Lovers Drug. Not to be confused with HAERTS, this Welsh act has a heavy Stone Roses vibe to the vocals and the guitar sound, although the riffs aren’t quite so big and the song is ultimately more Britpop than Madchester – although that works just fine for me.

The Kills – Heart Of A Dog. I thought “Doing It to Death” was better but hold out hope that their next album, due out June 3rd, will be more like that track or even their seminal “Sour Cherry.”

The Coral – Fear Machine. The longrunning British alt-rock act celebrate their 20th anniversary this year with the album Distance Inbetween, a very solid record that brings in a lot of the vaguely eastern percussion patterns of a Band of Skulls, but with less of the latter group’s bombast and powerful riffs.

A. Sinclair – Let It Go. Aaron Sinclair’s group is back with a new record, Get Out of the City, another hookfest full of their uptempo roots-rock sound, due out next Friday.

KONGOS – Take It From Me. The South African group’s hit “Come With Me Now” shouldn’t make them a one-hit wonder given the strength of this lead single from their second album, Egomaniac, due out on June 10th. The Brothers K still incorporate the South African musical style called kwaito into their sound, giving them a distinctive edge in a sea of sameness on alternative radio.

The Temper Trap – Fall Together. More great pop music from Australia, which has been a fountain of great indie-pop for several years now. This is their best song since their first big hit, “Sweet Disposition,” maybe better since I always found the earlier song a little cloying, whereas this track’s soaring chorus hits just the right note of sweetness.

Frightened Rabbit – Get Out. The Scottish group’s latest album is too quietcore for me, lacking strong hooks or any sort of urgency, but this song’s drum fill and amped-up chorus provides some much-needed contrast to the yearning, tame verses, something lacking from the rest of the record.

Lust For Youth – Better Looking Brother. Lust for Youth can’t seem to decide which classic New Wave band they wish to imitate; their new album’s first track, “Stardom,” is a dead-on Smiths impersonation, but I prefer this seven-minute track, which sounds like a deep cut from a New Order’s Brotherhood.

Fort Frances – Days Get Heavy. The vocals are a little precious, but the big chorus is the song’ salvation. This Chicago indie act is giving away a free mp3 if you sign up for their mailing list.

ELEL – Animal. ELEL’s “40 Watt” made one of my playlists last winter and was a late cut from my top 100 for the year, but I like this new single from Nashville octet, plus is that Tim Lincecum in the back row of this band picture?

Cellars – I’m Feeling. Allene Norton records as Cellars and if you’re of a certain age, you’ll flash back to a lot of ’80s synthpop, some good (Men Without Hats, early Tears for Fears) and some not so good (Suzie Q’s “Two of Hearts”).

Black Honey – On Your Time. The British group’s debut EP, Headspin, came out last week, with this and “All My Pride” (on my last playlist) my two favorite tracks, driven by lead singer Izzy B. Phillips’ charismatic delivery.

White Lung – Below. The Canadian punk-pop act’s highly anticipated (by me, at least) album Paradise drops this Friday. The singles released in advance of the album have all been tighter and more melodic than their previous work, which was already solid.

Stone Cold Fox – Firing Squad. These Brooklyn indie-rockers take their name from the famous line in Footloose: “If you ask me, Ren is a stone cold fox.” Anyway, “Firing Squad” combines a rich, crunchy guitar line with a meandering, aimless vocal line gives the overall song a psychedelic quality not immediately apparent from either element.

Car Seat Headrest – Fill in the Blank. I love the opening gimmick, where a young woman announces the group but stumbles as if she’s just reading the name of an unfamiliar group off an index card. TO be fair, it’s a terrible name, and the group – originally a solo project by Leesburg, Virginia native Will Toledo (shout-out to King Street Coffee!) but now a four-piece – will release its first formal, studio-recorded album on May 20th. Also I like this song.

Porches – Braid. Porches are creepy, but the good kind of creepy, not like Gary Glitter creepy. The electronic drumbeat is hypnotic, and the bass line swirls even when it’s rudely shoved to the background by the vocals (who asked you to sing anyway? I was zoning out).

Band of Horses – Casual Party. BOH’s first album since 2012 is scheduled to drop next month; “Is There a Ghost?” ranks among my favorite songs of the decade so far, so I’m rather looking forward to this record.

Unknown Mortal Orchestra – Shakedown Street. Another track from the forthcoming Grateful Dead tribute album.

Thrice – Black Honey. Hi, Riley!

Gojira – Stranded. Gojira cross a lot of metal subgenres, occasionally veering into death metal territory, sometimes descending into groove metal, but here they go very old-school, with a song that derives just as much from classic Testament or Megadeth as it does from Pantera. The vocals are shouted, but not growled or screamed, making it a bit more accessible than, say, Amon Amarth’s melodic death metal, but it’s still an aggressive sound that at least brought me back to the golden age of thrash.

Native Daughters – Two Princes. This Denver technical-metal outfit does instrumental stuff that draws on about four decades of metal sounds, with a heavy doom influence to the big drum line here, symphonic inspirations for the keyboard and lead guitar, and thrash riffs to the rhythm guitar.

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→ April 5, 2016
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March 2016 music update.

Well, March turned out to be a tough month for me to blog much, but it was a great month for new music – I originally had over 30 tracks on this playlist and had to fight just to get it down to 23, including the four metal tracks at the end, which is the most I’ve ever included on one of these updates. We even got surprise (to me, at least) tracks from Broods, Royal Blood, and Corinne Bailey Rae. The April list may be a big shorter because I added some songs here that came out last Friday, but I didn’t want to wait another month to put them on a list.

Bob Mould – The End of Things. The former Husker Du lead singer is back with his best solo effort since Black Sheets of Rain, showing some of the same old ferocity that characterized his best power-pop work from two decades ago.

Royal Blood – Where Are You Now. Royal Blood had my #1 song of 2014, “Out of the Black,” and their sound hasn’t changed at all on this single from the critically-panned HBO series Vinyl.

The Kills – Doing It To Death. My list of the top 100 songs of the first decade of the 2000s missed the Kills’ 2008 song “Sour Cherry,” which I didn’t hear for the first time until about a year ago. Anyway, this is the sultry lead single from their album Ash & Ice, due out June 3rd.

The Struts – Kiss This. So my friend Pete, whom I’ve known since the sixth grade, and I have long had a huge overlap in our musical tastes, and we’ve both stayed into music into our dotage, so when we talk we nearly always end up chatting about what we’ve heard lately. I had dinner with Pete and another friend from high school on Friday night, and I mentioned some of the bands on this month’s playlist. When I mentioned the Struts without a ton of enthusiasm, because I like this song but recognize it’s kind of cliched and familiar, he shrugged his shoulders and said, “yeah.” That’s about right.

Bleached – Sour Candy. Bleached, now a trio, seems like they might be on the verge of a breakout with the first two singles from their sophomore album Welcome the Worms, which just came out on Friday. Their sense of melody is more in the front of things on this record, so it’s less hard-edged although still punk-influenced.

The Last Shadow Puppets – Aviation. I’m a little concerned this LSP album isn’t going to live up to expectations, as Alex Turner’s incredible ability to craft sharp hooks hasn’t been evident enough on the first three singles. “Miracle Aligner,” the third, is probably the worst LSP song I’ve heard. This song is somewhere in the middle; the sound is right, but where’s the big catchy melody?

Jake Bugg – Gimme The Love. This seems more like the Jake Bugg of Shangri-La, with clever, fast-sung lyrics and a solid riff, although it doesn’t quite rock like “What Doesn’t Kill You” or hypnotize like “Lighning Bolt.” His third album drops on June 17th.

Broods – Free. This brother/sister duo had one of my favorite albums of 2014, and they’re incorporating more electronic sounds into their sophomore album, expected later this year. This lead single has the electronic drum beat behind Georgia Nott’s voice, but she’s showcased as well as ever here – and that’s key, since her voice is by far their strongest asset.

Corinne Bailey Rae – Stop Where You Are. Bailey Rae is releasing her first album of new music in six years, The Heart Speaks in Whispers, on May 13th, only her third album overall and second since the overdose of her first husband, Jason Rae, in 2008. (She has since remarried.) The Grammy-winning singer’s voice remains in top form on this lead single, so while I’ve never loved the smooth-jazz style of her music, I could listen to her sing all day.

Ten Fé – Elodie. This British duo has released several singles of meditative, dreamy indie-pop that reminds me a bit of The War on Drugs if you dialed down the Dylan a bit.

The Boxer Rebellion – Big Ideas. I like the Boxer Rebellion’s sound, but their music often seems to lack big hooks, outside of their outstanding 2013 single “Diamonds.” This song isn’t quite as catchy but does offer some early U2 nods in the chorus.

HÆLOS – Separate Lives. This London trio’s sound reminds me of the mid/early 1990s trip-hop scene if you crossed it with some of the vocal styles of more classic R&B; the contrast between the sparseness of the verses and the lush textures of the chorus is the song’s greatest appeal even without a single huge hook.

The War On Drugs – Touch of Grey. Speaking of TWOD, the amazing thing about this cover of the Grateful Dead’s only pop hit is that vocalist/guitarist Adam Granduciel manages to make it sound like it was always a War on Drugs song and not something written by a band with its own distinctive sound.

D.A.R.K. – Curvy. This is a bad band name. Comprising Cranberries lead singer Dolores O’Riordan and Smiths bassist Andy Rourke, the group will release its debut album, Science Agrees, in late May, and this lead single sounds less like either of their original acts than it does like a New Order track.

Black Honey – All My Pride. Psychedelic power-pop. I actually know nothing about the group other than this song.

Autolux – Brainwasher. I mean, I knew Autolux was weird, but this song sounds like someone falling down a flight of stairs, and the new album is called Pussy’s Dead, so it’s as if they’re trying to prove they’re even weirder than we thought.

Mourn – Storyteller. Hinds get all the indie love right now, but they’re not the only important band coming out of Barcelona, as Mourn – three girls and one guy, as opposed to Hinds’ all-female roster – have a similar dissonant, jangly, post-punk sound, but with better musicianship. I do like Hinds, but there’s almost a sense that they’re still learning to play and write music, whereas Mourn are much further along as musicians.

White Lung – Kiss Me When I Bleed. This Canadian punk quartet also looks primed for a breakout this year, between the strength of this single and the January release “Hungry.” It’s heavy, fast, and very catchy.

Thrice – Blood On The Sand. That is indeed Riley Breckenridge of the Productive Outs podcast on drums; the post-punk icons’ ninth album is due out later this year.

Anup Sastry – Enigma. A progressive-metal drummer who’s part of Monuments and has also been a member Skyharbor and Intervals, Sastry has released a five-track EP of instrumental “groove metal” or djent or whatever you want to call it. I happen to like this style when it’s not ruined by aggro vocals.

Voivod – Post Society. Voivod hasn’t been the same band for me since the 2005 death of founding guitarist Denis “Piggy” d’Amour, given how critical his songwriting was to their peak albums Nothingface and Dimension Hatross, but this six-minute track from the February EP of the same title offers a strong facsimile of their late ’80s transitional sound as they were moving from straight thrash to the progressive metal sound of Nothingface.

Prong – Cut And Dry. Prong’s 1990 major-label debut, Beg to Differ, remains one of the best metal albums I’ve ever heard, an accessible hybrid of thrash and hardcore styles that brings out the best elements of both genres. They went into a steady decline from there, and their output since their 2003 return has been generally disappointing, but as with the Voivod track above, “Cut and Dry” at least brings back some memories of Prong’s early-1990s peak.

Amon Amarth featuring Doro Pesch – A Dream That Cannot Be. This isn’t actually my favorite track from Amon Amarth’s Viking-themed death metal album Jomsviking, but it’s the only track on the album to feature former Warlock vocalist Doro Pesch.

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February 2016 music update.

I wrote up my thoughts on the Ian Desmond contract for Insiders. I also have a recap of this year’s new boardgame offerings at Toyfair over at Paste.

Not a great month for new music, although we did get the School of Seven Bells album, a comeback from Lush, an amazing new single from FKA Twigs, and two extreme metal tracks worth including.

The Jezabels – Come Alive. An Australian act that’s been around since 2007, the Jezabels create serious drama with the steady crescendo and bombastic finish to “Come Alive,” the lead single from their just-released third album Synthia. Unfortunately, the group just had to cancel their 2016 tour as their keyboardist undergoes urgent treatment for ovarian cancer, which does not sound good at all.

Lush – Out of Control. I loved Lush’s music back in the mid-1990s, especially when they transitioned from shoegaze to more straight-up Britpop with “Ladykillers” and “Single Girl” before disbanding. They reformed last year and have gone back to the sound that first put them on the map in the early 1990s, with the sort of shimmering, fuzzy guitar lines that got them lumped in with Ride, Swervedriver, and MBV. Lush was always a little more pop-informed than those other acts – perhaps a function of having a lead singer with a pretty voice that didn’t pair well with the waves of distortion that characterize true shoegaze.

FKA twigs – Good to Love. I was not a fan of FKA Twigs’ first full-length album, with praise that seemed more about who she was than about the quality of her music, but this is a remarkable song, showing off her voice and her vocal restraint, in a sparsely arranged ballad that’s radiates emotion.

Grace Mitchell – White Iverson. I’d never heard of Mitchell or this song before last week, and I’m only half pleased about this, because I went back and heard the original song, by yet another white pseudo-rapper appropriating black culture for profit, and it is truly atrocious. Mitchell’s cover turns it into a sinuous trip-hop track that suffers only for the ridiculousness of its lyrics.

Animal Collective – Golden Gal. Animal Collective got a little less weird on their new album, Painting With, which is why 1) I’ve listed two of its songs on monthly playlists and 2) you’re hearing their songs on the radio a little more than ever. Weird and experimental is great, but I’m not going to want to listen to it repeatedly if there isn’t some kind of hook.

Clairity – Don’t Panic. Another cover, this of one of the better yet less-known songs from Coldplay’s debut album, Parachutes. (For those of you rolling your eyes because you think of Coldplay as the atrocious pop band they are now, I promise, they weren’t always like this.) I love the new arrangement, but can’t fathom Claire Wilkinson’s bizarre pronunciation of the long ‘o’ sound throughout the track.

Bleached – Wednesday Night Melody. I always get a little Joan Jett vibe out of this trio, with big, simple riffs, although Jett’s stuff didn’t have the surfer vibe that informs a lot of Bleached’s music.

Bear Hands – 2 AM. You know, they’re right: Nothing good happens past 2 a.m.

Astronautalis – Papillion. And right on cue, here’s a white rapper, although the appeal of this song is the spacey music rather than the rhyming, where Astronautalis boasts good rhythm but generic lyrics.

Wild Nothing – Life of Pause. I’m a little disappointed in Wild Nothing’s latest album after the huge success of Nocturne, as he seems to be taking fewer risks and chasing more ’70s soft-rock sounds (when he isn’t ripping off Talk Talk as he did on the first single). This was probably my second-favorite track on the record.

Minor Victories – A Hundred Ropes. Is it a supergroup if the members come from groups that aren’t very popular in their own right? With members from Editors, Mogwai, and Slowdive, the band’s lead single sounds … well, a lot like what you’d get if you mixed Editors, Mogwai, and Slowdive. It’s good, though.

Spirit Animal – World War IV (To the Floor). If you’ve heard “Regular World,” which is way too douchebro for me to tolerate for more than a few seconds, put it out of your minds and listen to the rest of their EP, which is far less sneering and childish and brings some better riffs that bring in a few elements of funk to a hard-rock foundation.

Run River North – Pretender. The Korean-American sextet seems to have ditched the soft folk-rock style of their debut album for electric guitars and angry lyrics, perhaps not to the better, as the strongest appeal of their debut album was the harmonies that brought one or both of the two female members into the vocals.

Kero Kero Bonito – Lipslap. Their 2015 song “Picture This” should have been a huge crossover pop hit, but never caught on, so it appears the group has now gone back to their previous style, a little harder-edged J-pop with lead singer Sarah Midori Perry rapping in Japanese and English.

White Lung – Hungry. The lead single from this punk band’s upcoming album Paradise marks a big step forward in songwriting from their previous efforts, which resembled early punk rock in their semi-controlled anarchy. This is still hard-edged, but it’s also a pop song with a clearly identifiable hook, and puts Paradise on the list of albums to look forward to this spring.

School Of Seven Bells – This Is Our Time. The emotional closer to SVIIB, which I reviewed here last week.

Omnium Gatherum – Skyline. It’s been a while since I included any metal tracks on a monthly playlist, but this time we have two. This Finnish melodic death metal band employs growled vocals, but the tempo isn’t as extreme as straight-up death metal and you can pick out individual guitar lines (sometimes rather intricate) and even understand the occasional word or two. Their newest album, Grey Heavens, is a good example of the Finnish flavor of MDM, with fretwork that wouldn’t be out of place in more commercial songs.

Entombed A.D. – The Winner Has Lost. The progenitors of the death-n-roll subgenre are back, sort of, with their second album under their slightly revised name. (Hey, anything’s better than Anderson Bruford Wakeman Howe.) The newish band’s sound is definitely a little heavier and less bluesy than Wolverine Blues, but the tradeoff is substantially better production values and cleaner guitar riffs, similar to what they brought on 2014’s Back to the Front.

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