{"id":10028,"date":"2023-10-31T08:00:00","date_gmt":"2023-10-31T12:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/?p=10028"},"modified":"2023-10-30T23:11:27","modified_gmt":"2023-10-31T03:11:27","slug":"music-update-october-2023","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/2023\/10\/31\/music-update-october-2023\/","title":{"rendered":"Music update, October 2023."},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>It\u2019s weird \u2013 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 <a href=\"https:\/\/open.spotify.com\/playlist\/5ORtcnOBoCf7D38UlYR6cB?si=297abd9e51c24969\">find here<\/a> if the Spotify widget doesn\u2019t work for you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-spotify wp-block-embed-spotify wp-embed-aspect-21-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<iframe title=\"Spotify Embed: Klaw&amp;apos;s October 2023 new music update\" style=\"border-radius: 12px\" width=\"100%\" height=\"352\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen allow=\"autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; fullscreen; picture-in-picture\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/open.spotify.com\/embed\/playlist\/5ORtcnOBoCf7D38UlYR6cB?si=7b835295339347b2&#038;utm_source=oembed\"><\/iframe>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Brittany Howard \u2013 What Now.<\/strong> 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 \u201cStay High\u201d and taking six other nominations. I\u2019ll take this over any song from her debut album <em>Jaime<\/em>, though. This thing fucking rocks, and also it funking rocks, like she slipped her hand through a wormhole and pulled this out of 1978.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>The Libertines \u2013 Run Run Run.<\/strong> 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, <em>All Quiet on the Eastern Esplanade<\/em>. It\u2019s a touch melodic for the louche lads, but hey, we all get a little softer in our old age, innit?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Creeper \u2013 Sacred Blasphemy. <\/strong>Creeper had my #2 album of 2020 with <em>Sex, Death, and the Infinite Void<\/em>, anover-the-top m\u00e9lange of glam rock, post-punk, new wave, and even some metal, and their follow-up, <em>Sanguivore<\/em>, is even more ambitious and experimental, the sort of album I\u2019m going to have sit with and listen to several times to fully digest. I don\u2019t know if it\u2019ll match the prior one for me, but I always respect artists trying to push out of their comfort zones, even if it doesn\u2019t work (with at least one track here where it definitely doesn\u2019t).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>The Joy Formidable \u2013 Share My Heat. <\/strong>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\u2019s the third new song this year from them, so I imagine a follow-up to 2021\u2019s <em>Into the Blue<\/em> is in the offing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Yard Act \u2013 Dream Job.<\/strong> Yard Act\u2019s debut album was <a href=\"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/2022\/12\/21\/top-22-albums-of-2022\/\">one of my favorites of 2022<\/a>, coming in at #3 on the year, and they\u2019re back with the first single from their next album, <em>Where\u2019s My Utopia?<\/em>, which is due out on March 1<sup>st<\/sup>. It\u2019s got the same sly vocals, sardonic lyrics, and post-punk stylings, but this time with more of a late 70s disco feel.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Bob Vylan \u2013 He\u2019s a Man.<\/strong> \u201cJust another day in the life of a big dumb man.\u201d 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>STONE \u2013 Am I Even a Man.<\/strong> Last year\u2019s EP <em>punkadonk <\/em>didn\u2019t slow down these British neo-punks, who\u2019ve continued churning out singles that adhere to their core punk ethos while expanding their horizons just a little \u2013 enough to make them more than just punk revivalists, at least.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Egyptian Blue \u2013 To Be Felt.<\/strong> I\u2019m a sucker for British post-punk bands, clearly, so here\u2019s another one; Egyptian Blue have been around for almost a decade but just released their debut album, <em>A Living Commodity<\/em>, 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\u2019s a fan of the original genre from the early 1980s (although, to be honest, I came to it later).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>English Teacher \u2013 Nearly Daffodils.<\/strong> There\u2019s a debut album coming \u2026 soon, it sounds like, from this Leeds quartet of post-punk upstarts, with this the second single teasing it after \u201cThe World\u2019s Biggest Paving Slab.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Folly Group \u2013 Big Ground.<\/strong> 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>milk. \u2013 London.<\/strong> This is the title track from the Dublin indie-pop band\u2019s latest EP, a four-track affair that also has the great \u201cI Think I Lost My Number Can I Have Yours?\u201d It\u2019s pretty sleek and catchy, definitely not the sound I associate with Dublin or Ireland\u2019s rock scenes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Griff \u2013 Into the Walls.<\/strong> More sultry, sophisticated pop from the 22-year-old Sarah Griffiths, who just released a three-track EP called <em>vert1go vol. 1<\/em>. She toured with Dua Lipa in 2022, and Taylor Swift bumped Griff\u2019s previous single \u201cVertigo,\u201d so I\u2019m expecting her to break out in a huge way very soon.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Girl Ray \u2013 Hurt So Bad.<\/strong> This song actually predates their 2023 album <em>Prestige<\/em> 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\u2019s a great example of their general sound and ability to craft a great synth hook.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Sampha \u2013 Suspended.<\/strong> <em>Lahai<\/em>, Sampha\u2019s long-awaited follow-up to his Mercury Prize-winning debut from 2017 just dropped to very positive reviews, featuring this track, \u201cSpirit 2.0,\u201d and \u201cOnly.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Black Pumas \u2013 More than a Love Song.<\/strong> Black Pumas earned a Grammy nomination for Best New Artist for their 2019 debut album <em>Black Pumas<\/em>; I enjoyed their psychedelic soul sound but thought the album lacked strong hooks. This song, from their just-released second album <em>Chronicles of a Diamond<\/em>, 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>NIJI &amp; Moses Boyd \u2013 Sounds of the City.<\/strong> This is the debut single from Niji Adeleye, a jazz pianist from London who has played in Harry Styles\u2019s backing band, with help from the superstar jazz drummer Moses Boyd. This track has no lyrics but his second single, \u201cLove Will Find It\u2019s [sic] Way,\u201d does have vocals from Adeleye.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Uriel Herman \u2013 MJ.<\/strong> Herman is an Israeli jazz pianist who just released his fourth album, <em>Different Eyes<\/em>, which also includes a cover of Nirvana\u2019s \u201cPolly\u201d that I found unrecognizable \u2013 not in a negative way, just in that it sounds nothing like the original. Neither did his earlier covers of \u201cSmells Like Teen Spirit\u201d or of David Bowie\u2019s \u201cThe Man Who Sold the World,\u201d though, so this is just how he rolls.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>HEALTH \u2013 Ashamed.<\/strong> This LA-based noise-rock trio\u2019s seventh album, <em>Rat Wars<\/em>, is due out on December 7<sup>th<\/sup>, and the video for this track \u2013 which has the subtitle \u201c(Of Being Born)\u201d there but not on streaming sites \u2013 was partially filmed at the DragonCon science fiction, fantasy, and gaming convention in Atlanta, which is awesome.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Black Honey \u2013 Lemonade.<\/strong> Black Honey skillfully melds power pop with the trashier sounds of bands that have tried to subvert indie\u2019s pop leanings, like the Pixies and Modest Mouse, but somehow also sound like early Smashing Pumpkins. I\u2019ve liked almost everything they\u2019ve ever released, to varying degrees, and this stand-alone track is up there.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Charly Bliss \u2013 I Need a New Boyfriend.<\/strong> Not quite as good as \u201cYou Don\u2019t Even Know Me Anymore,\u201d but I\u2019ll take this to mean that this power-pop band\u2019s third album, and first since 2019, is coming soon. Their guitarist, Spencer Fox, voiced Dash in the original <em>The Incredibles<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>TORRES \u2013 Collect.<\/strong> Mackenzie Scott\u2019s sixth album, <em>What an Enormous Room<\/em>, is due out in January; I admit I\u2019ve been pretty lukewarm on their music to date, but this song has a different vibe for me, darker, grimier, almost a little angry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Sundara Karma \u2013 Better Luck Next Time.<\/strong> This British band\u2019s third album is barely long enough to qualify, just nine songs and 30 minutes, but they do deliver the goods again \u2013 to me they\u2019ll probably always sound like descendants of U2. They\u2019re certainly better than whatever that Irish band is producing right now.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>A. Savage \u2013 David\u2019s Dead.<\/strong> That\u2019s Andrew Savage, lead singer\/guitarist of Parquet Courts, in case the voice wasn\u2019t a giveaway. His second solo album, <em>Several Songs About Fire<\/em>, features this track and \u201cElvis in the Army,\u201d with his jangle-pop style and laconic vocals on full display.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Slow Pulp \u2013 MUD. <\/strong><em>Yard<\/em> was a mixed bag for me, maybe more towards the side of \u2018disappointing,\u2019 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 \u201890s alt-rock while giving some texture to a languorous track.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Everything Everything \u2013 Cold Reactor. <\/strong>EE announced their seventh album, <em>Mountainhead<\/em>, will arrive on March 1<sup>st<\/sup>; this lead single has a lot of Jonathan Higgs\u2019s acrobatic vocals, but I was hoping for some more madness in the music.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Shed Seven feat. Rowetta \u2013 In Ecstasy. <\/strong>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, <em>A Matter of Time<\/em>, is due out some time next year. If you don\u2019t remember them from their \u201890s heyday, check out \u201cDolphin\u201d and \u201cGetting Better.\u201d Rowetta, by the way, was a member of the Happy Mondays for their peak years, and appeared as herself in <em>24 Hour Party People<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Wild Nothing \u2013 Dial Tone.<\/strong> This sounds like every other Wild Nothing song, which is to say it\u2019s good, but Jack Tatum is kind of stuck in neutral here. At least he\u2019s not <a href=\"https:\/\/www.reddit.com\/r\/indieheads\/comments\/478q88\/hello_jack_here_from_wild_nothing_ama\/d0b5g4i\/\">ripping off Talk Talk<\/a> songs any more.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Slate \u2013 St. Agatha.<\/strong> 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\u2019m basing this on a pretty small sample.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard \u2013 Chang\u2019e. <\/strong>Rocco Baldelli\u2019s second-favorite band (after Phish, I hear) released a double album of sorts this month. <em>The Silver Cord<\/em> has seven tracks of restrained length, all between 3:24 and 4:40, and then \u201cextended mixes\u201d of those same songs, ranging from 10:18 to 20:41. I prefer the short versions myself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Tortuga \u2013 Lilith.<\/strong> A stoner metal band from Poland? Sure. The band just released their third album, <em>Iterations<\/em>, on Friday, but this track is the first I\u2019ve heard from them. There\u2019s some definite influence from the New Orleans sludge-metal school as well as classic stoner metal sounds like Kyuss and Sleep.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Wayfarer \u2013 A High Plains Eulogy. <\/strong>The new Wayfarer album, <em>American Gothic<\/em>, 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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It\u2019s weird \u2013 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 [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[1328,359,609,167,1127,757,852],"class_list":["post-10028","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-2023-in-music","tag-alternative","tag-hip-hop","tag-indie","tag-jazz","tag-metal","tag-music","entry"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10028","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10028"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10028\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10030,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10028\/revisions\/10030"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10028"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10028"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10028"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}