{"id":10411,"date":"2024-10-02T08:00:00","date_gmt":"2024-10-02T12:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/?p=10411"},"modified":"2024-10-01T14:40:37","modified_gmt":"2024-10-01T18:40:37","slug":"music-update-september-2024","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/2024\/10\/02\/music-update-september-2024\/","title":{"rendered":"Music update, September 2024."},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Another month where I thought things started slow but by the turning of the calendar I found myself with 30+ songs saved and had to cut down to the ones I considered the best or most interesting. We also had a few albums come out on the final Friday that I\u2019m still working through, so some tracks may bleed into October\u2019s playlist. As always, if you can\u2019t see the widget below you <a href=\"https:\/\/open.spotify.com\/playlist\/4XSp0nojpomC62PHs8AYmH?si=31e822526b3f4259\">can access the playlist here<\/a>.<\/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 September 2024 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\/4XSp0nojpomC62PHs8AYmH?si=54bf0a239c5648c9&#038;utm_source=oembed\"><\/iframe>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Michael Kiwanuka \u2013 Lowdown (part i).<\/strong> Kiwanuka\u2019s follow-up to his Mercury Prize-winning album <em>KIWANUKA<\/em>, called <em>Small Changes<\/em>, comes out on November 15<sup>th<\/sup>. This single, his second this year, is a lo-fi, bluesy track that recalls Jimi Hendrix\u2019s version of \u201cHey Joe.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>clipping. \u2013 Run It. <\/strong>The first true new track from Daveed Diggs &amp; company this year, not counting their wide release of 2020\u2019s \u201cTipsy,\u201d \u201cRun It\u201d has Diggs\u2019s rapping front and center again, as in the best tracks from their last full-length album, <em>Visions of Bodies Being Burned<\/em>. The noise-rap trio are working on a new LP, possibly for next year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Ezra Collective feat. Olivia Dean \u2013 No One\u2019s Watching Me. <\/strong>Ezra Collective won the Mercury Prize last year for their 2022 album <em>Where I\u2019m Meant to Be<\/em>, an album I hadn\u2019t heard before but didn\u2019t find that catchy. This spring, they started releasing singles from their new album, <em>Dance, No One\u2019s Watching<\/em>, which just came out on Friday, and they\u2019ve pretty much all been bangers. There\u2019s definitely more emphasis here on melody, and they go well beyond modern jazz into 1970s soul, funk, Afrobeat, and more. It\u2019s almost a full hour of music across 19 tracks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>flowerovlove \u2013 erase u.<\/strong> This 18-year-old bedroom pop artist had one of my top 20 songs of last year with her song \u201cNext Best Exit,\u201d and this song is another sunny pop gem in a similar vein. Her latest EP, <em>ache in my tooth<\/em>, comes out October 11<sup>th<\/sup>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>FKA Twigs \u2013 Eusexua.<\/strong> FKA Twigs\u2019 third album, also called <em>Eusexua<\/em>, is due out on January 24<sup>th<\/sup>, which will be her first full-length LP since 2019\u2019s <em>Magdalene<\/em>. In interviews, she\u2019s promised a greater techno influence, and that\u2019s certainly evident here in the backing music, but it\u2019s not a techno song, or even much of a dance track, and her feathery vocals are by far the most prominent part.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Divorce \u2013 All My Freaks.<\/strong> This Nottingham quartet are suddenly everywhere, with this track getting quite a bit of media coverage for a band that won\u2019t release its first album until March. It\u2019s undeniably catchy, though, in a sort of alt-pop way. Also, the bassist\/singer is a former actress named Tiger Cohen-Towell, which might be the most English name I\u2019ve ever heard in my life. P.G. Wodehouse would have rejected it as too much.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Sl\u00f8tface \u2013 Leading Man.<\/strong> Sl\u00f8tface\u2019s first album as a solo project for singer Haley Shea, called <em>Film Buff<\/em>, came out on Friday, but their sound is pretty similar to what it was before the other three band members departed: it\u2019s witty punk-pop with strong hooks and a ton of cultural references. I\u2019m glad she didn\u2019t retool their sound.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Japandroids \u2013 All Bets Are Off. <\/strong>I just could not get into <em>Celebration Rock<\/em>, Japandroids\u2019 big breakthrough album, but liked their 2017 follow-up <em>Near to the Wild Heart of Life<\/em>, and now I\u2019m enjoying all of the singles from their upcoming album, <em>Fate &amp; Alcohol<\/em>, except that they\u2019ve announced this is their swan song. Good stuff.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Sunflower Bean \u2013 Lucky Number.<\/strong> Sunflower Bean\u2019s new EP, <em>Shake<\/em>, has five songs that are mostly heavier guitar-driven stuff than what they\u2019d been releasing, although I think if you go back to their first album and songs like \u201cWall Watcher\u201d you can hear the seeds of this sound in there. \u201cMoment in the Sun\u201d is a great pop single, but I don\u2019t think it\u2019s representative of the band\u2019s typical output.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>High Vis \u2013 Drop Me Out. <\/strong>This British punk band\u2019s third album <em>Guided Tour<\/em> will come out on October 18<sup>th<\/sup>, and this is the third single from the record, but this was actually the first track of theirs I\u2019ve heard. There\u2019s at least some melody lurking here beneath the shouted vocals, which at least superficially nod to singer Graham Sayle\u2019s working-class roots.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Lambrini Girls \u2013 Company Culture.<\/strong> Then there\u2019s Lambrini Girls, a straight-up punk duo from Brighton with very progressive politics and a great ear for melody even within the strict confines of the genre. They\u2019re coming to the U.S. for just three dates, all in NYC, in early December.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Oceanator \u2013 Lullaby. <\/strong>I wasn\u2019t familiar with Elise Okusami, who released her newest album <em>Everything is Love and Death<\/em> on August 30<sup>th<\/sup>, until hearing this and \u201cGet Out\u201d over the past month. This track opens like a melodic death metal song, but then veers back into more accessible hard rock territory, and you can hear metal influences throughout the album even though at no point would I call her music \u2018metal.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Pale Waves \u2013 Glasgow.<\/strong> I\u2019ve never been a big fan of Pale Waves, who seemed to have better publicists than tracks, but this one from the Manchester pop\/rock quartet has one of their best hooks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Franz Ferdinand \u2013 Audacious. <\/strong>Franz Ferdinand peaked with their first three albums, but in the last fifteen years they\u2019ve released just two albums \u2013 neither particularly good \u2013 and a couple of singles from a greatest-hits record, so when I say this is the best song they\u2019ve released since 2009, that\u2019s sort of damning with faint praise. It\u2019s still clearly an FF song but with a song structure and tonal shifts drawn more from 1990s Britpop than their 1970s\/early 1980s-influenced early work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Blossoms \u2013 I Like Your Look. <\/strong>Blossoms\u2019 last album was very Lord Huron\/Head and the Heart\/Ryan Adams, but this new album, <em>Gary<\/em>, is a big leap for them, a more ambitious medley of sounds that draws on new wave, notably the New York scene (I can\u2019t hear anything but Blondie on this song);&nbsp; and 1970s soul (\u201cWhat Can I Say After I\u2019m Sorry\u201d), without totally abandoning their previous sound (\u201cPerfect Me,\u201d the title track). I liked a couple of songs off <em>Ribbon Around the Bomb<\/em>, but this is a welcome swing for the fences, even if they don\u2019t all connect.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Atlas Genius \u2013 End of the Tunnel.<\/strong> My daughter alerted me to this new album from the Australian quartet, whose last full-length came out in 2015. The best track on the LP is \u201cElegant Strangers,\u201d which they released as a single in 2021, and it also includes the one-off tracks from the late 2010s \u201c63 Days\u201d and \u201cCan\u2019t Be Alone Tonight\u201d; this is the second-best song on the album after \u201cElegant Strangers.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Temples \u2013 Day of Conquest.<\/strong> This track didn\u2019t make the cut for 2014\u2019s <em>Sun Structures<\/em>, so it\u2019s on their upcoming EP of B-sides <em>Other Structures<\/em>, due out October 4<sup>th<\/sup>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Foxing \u2013 Barking. <\/strong>Foxing\u2019s new self-titled album was also self-produced and self-released, and it is the sound of a band being completely liberated from any label expectations. Opener \u201cSecret History\u201d starts out so quietly you might be tempted to turn up the volume, which would be a mistake around the two-minute mark when the death metal screaming starts up (is this Deafheaven?). \u201cHell 99\u201d has guitarist Eric Hudson screaming \u201cFuck!\u201d repeatedly in the heaviest track on the record. It feels like a window into someone cracking up, an album full of existential dread, angst, repressed anger finding any outlet to release the pressure. It\u2019s a marvel and it\u2019s also, at times, very hard to listen to. I included \u201cBarking\u201d here because it\u2019s one of the most accessible tracks on the record, and in some way the most recognizable to fans of <em>Nearer My God <\/em>or <em>Draw Down the Moon<\/em>. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.stereogum.com\/2277822\/foxing-self-titled-album\/interviews\/qa\/\">Foxing\u2019s interview with Stereogum<\/a> is worthwhile reading if you\u2019re a fan of the band.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Razorlight \u2013 Zombie Love.<\/strong> Razorlight were one of the original \u201clandfill indie\u201d bands, as Andrew Harrison coined the term in 2008 right before the release of their third album, which underperformed and put them into a decade-long hiatus.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Hinds \u2013 Mala Vist. <\/strong>Hinds\u2019 fourth album, <em>Viva Hinds<\/em>, came out last month, their first new music since half the band quit in 2023, and it\u2019s their best album yet.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Katie Gavin \u2013 Inconsolable. <\/strong>I couldn\u2019t believe this was Gavin (also of MUNA), as it\u2019s a straight-up country song and features Sara and Sean Watkins of bluegrass icons Nickel Creek. Gavin\u2019s solo debut <em>What a Relief<\/em> comes out October 25<sup>th<\/sup> and all three singles to date have been outstanding.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>The Aces \u2013 The Magic.<\/strong> The Aces return with a slightly funky pop track ahead of their upcoming, fourth album. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.com\/news\/entertainment-arts-65819217\">This 2023 BBC profile of the Utah-born members\u2019 journey<\/a>, with three coming out as queer and all four leaving the Mormon church, explains a lot of the opening up of their sound since their second album came out right as the pandemic hit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>The Cure \u2013 Alone. <\/strong>The <em>Guardian<\/em> called this song \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/music\/2024\/sep\/26\/the-cure-alone-review\">majestically wreathed in misery and despair<\/a>,\u201d and if I just told you that phrase and asked you to name the band, The Cure would probably be in your first three guesses, right? \u201cAlone\u201d is a clear attempt to bring the band back to its <em>Disintegration<\/em> peak, and is the first single from their first album since 2008, <em>Songs from a Lost World<\/em>, due out November 1<sup>st<\/sup>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Wolfgang Press \u2013 Take It Backwards.<\/strong> Wolfgang Press were part of the latter wave of the post-punk movement in the 1980s, but really peaked with their 1991 album <em>Queer<\/em>, when they ditched most of their funereal goth vibes and went for a dance\/funk sound that was unlike almost anything else of that moment because they still ultimately sounded like Wolfgang Press. Their cover of \u201cMama Told Me (Not to Come)\u201d was a modest hit in the U.S., and was followed by the one-off single \u201cA Girl Like You,\u201d which was their biggest hit, but after their next album flopped in 1995 they appeared to be done. They\u2019re back now with their first new album in 29 years, <em>A 2<sup>nd<\/sup> Shape<\/em>, which came out on Friday; the members are probably about 65 years old at this point, so I\u2019m fascinated to give it a spin.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Flotsam &amp; Jetsam \u2013 The Head of the Snake.<\/strong> <em>I Am the Weapon<\/em>, the fifteenth album from these thrash stalwarts, is more of the same, and I mean that in the best possible way. They still have two members from their 1980s peak, singer Eric Knutson and guitarist Michael Gilbert, so the core sound hasn\u2019t changed much, and I admit I\u2019m just happy to hear anyone still producing that particular strain of thrash.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Opeth \u2013 <\/strong><strong>\u00a73. <\/strong>Opeth\u2019s new album <em>The Last Will and Testament <\/em>will come out on November 22<sup>nd<\/sup>, and is the first Opeth record to include death-metal elements since 2008\u2019s <em>Watershed<\/em> \u2026 but this song is straight prog-metal in line with their last four albums, so it\u2019s clear the death growls and such won\u2019t be present everywhere on the album. I love all Opeth, notably <em>Blackwater Park<\/em>, which is a progressive death metal album through and through, but sometimes their musicianship can get clouded out by the growled vocals. <em>Blackwater Park <\/em>is especially strong for its long instrumental passages, often comprising several movements, so that when the vocals return there\u2019s a real tonal shift and a clear demarcation between sections. I\u2019m hopeful based on the first two tracks that <em>The Last Will and Testament<\/em> will be the same.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Another month where I thought things started slow but by the turning of the calendar I found myself with 30+ songs saved and had to cut down to the ones I considered the best or most interesting. We also had a few albums come out on the final Friday that I\u2019m still working through, so [&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":[1374,359,1191,167,1127,757,852,787,1114],"class_list":["post-10411","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-2024-in-music","tag-alternative","tag-hip-hop-2","tag-indie","tag-jazz","tag-metal","tag-music","tag-progressive-metal","tag-thrash","entry"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10411","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=10411"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10411\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10412,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10411\/revisions\/10412"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10411"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10411"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10411"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}