{"id":10463,"date":"2024-11-01T07:54:00","date_gmt":"2024-11-01T11:54:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/?p=10463"},"modified":"2024-10-31T19:59:49","modified_gmt":"2024-10-31T23:59:49","slug":"music-update-october-2024","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/2024\/11\/01\/music-update-october-2024\/","title":{"rendered":"Music update, October 2024."},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>After all of that \u2013 by which I mean all the new tracks I listened to in the past month \u2013 October was one of the weakest months of the year for good new music. We did get two very strong albums that I\u2019ve already featured on previous playlists in Katie Gavin\u2019s <em>What a Relief<\/em> and Japandroids\u2019 swan song <em>Fate &amp; Alcohol<\/em>, and I\u2019ve got a few left to work through. In the meantime, here are 24 songs that made the cut; as always, you can <a href=\"https:\/\/open.spotify.com\/playlist\/4igbIlfto6rkoPfp0IybKA?si=0dd7e5559644406b\">access the playlist here<\/a> if you can\u2019t see the widget below.<\/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: October 2024\" 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\/4igbIlfto6rkoPfp0IybKA?si=2dad767e3bca4c53&#038;utm_source=oembed\"><\/iframe>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Waxahatchee \u2013 Much Ado About Nothing.<\/strong> A brand-new track from Katie Crutchfield just seven months after she released her latest album <em>Tigers Blood <\/em>\u2026 and this might be better than anything on the LP, which is really saying something.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Humdrum \u2013 There and Back Again.<\/strong> This is about as perfect a jangle-pop track as you\u2019re going to find in this decade. Holy cow. I haven\u2019t gotten to their debut album, <em>Every Heaven<\/em>, yet, but it\u2019s next up in my queue.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Royel Otis \u2013 If Our Love Is Dead.<\/strong> The algorithms have been trying to convince me to like Royel Otis for a year, at least, but I just haven\u2019t liked any of their songs all that much, or even remembered them. This track has a great little hook in the chorus, though. This indie pop due is huge in their native Australia, earning 8 ARIA nominations for their debut album <em>PRATTS &amp; PAIN<\/em>; this song comes off the deluxe edition, retitled <em>PRATTS &amp; PAIN \u2013 It Ain\u2019t Over Til It Ends<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>The Tubs \u2013 Freak Mode.<\/strong> The Tubs are led by the former guitarist from Joanna Gruesome; <em>Pitchfork<\/em>\u2019s review of their 2023 debut album <em>Dead Meat<\/em> referred to the \u201cchiming sound of 80s college rock,\u201d and it definitely has a lot of that sound \u2013 jangle-pop is back, baby \u2013 but this song has an incredible urgency to it that goes beyond those college-radio staples that didn\u2019t stick except for their nostalgia value. It reminds me a little of The Dead Milkmen\u2019s \u201cPunk Rock Girl,\u201d but more melodic and less annoying.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Momma \u2013 Ohio All the Time.<\/strong> Momma broke out a little in 2022 with \u201cSpeeding \u201972,\u201d which made <a href=\"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/2022\/12\/22\/top-100-songs-of-2022\/\">my top 20 of that year<\/a>, but it\u2019s just been a few scattered singles since then. This new track is pretty solid, with a great hook in the chorus and a similar contrast between the sweet-sounding vocals and the \u201870s-style distortion of the crunchy guitars.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>The Smile \u2013 Eyes &amp; Mouth.<\/strong> The Smile\u2019s third album, <em>Cutouts<\/em>, includes some tracks recorded during the sessions for their last LP, but the sound is so different \u2013 the three tracks I\u2019ve heard so far are all way jazzier funkier, with much clearer influence from drummer Tom Skinner of Sons of Kemet and less of the mopey sound that Radiohead critics deride.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Black Doldrums \u2013 Hideaway. <\/strong>Darkwave trio Black Doldrums released their second album, <em>In Limerence<\/em>, in October, highlighted by this Bauhaus-y track driven by a twangy guitar line that almost begs for resolution.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Crows \u2013 Every Day of Every Year.<\/strong> I\u2019m a huge Crows fan, as they come in somewhere between post-punk and hard rock; they should do a double bill with Kid Kapichi, who I unfortunately missed on their U.S. tour because I was out of town. Crows\u2019 third album, <em>Reason Enough<\/em>, came out at the very end of September.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Kid Kapichi \u2013 Newsnight.<\/strong> Speaking of these lads, they released this track in October, one of four new songs on the deluxe version of this spring\u2019s <em>There Goes the Neighbourhood<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>The Murder Capital \u2013 Can\u2019t Pretend to Know.<\/strong> Sitting somewhere between punk and post-punk, this Irish group are more true to their style than their more ambitious and expansive countrymates Fontaines D.C. This track comes from the ongoing sessions for their third album, release date unknown.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Corker \u2013 Distant Dawn.<\/strong> Corker hail from Cincinnati, and this track sounds like a mash-up of Preoccupations and very early Killing Joke, complete with vocals that sound like they were recorded through a string connected to a coffee can.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Anxious \u2013 Counting Sheep.<\/strong> Anxious\u2019s debut album <em>Little Green House<\/em> was one of my favorites of 2022, but then they dropped completely out of sight for almost two years. I was thinking about how they\u2019d vanished a couple of weeks ago, only for this song to show up on my Spotify Release Radar a few days later. Serendipity, I suppose. Anyway, Anxious gets labelled as emo but they\u2019re sharper and more interesting than just a revival of that subgenre. Their second album is due some time next year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Sl\u00f8tface \u2013 Quiet on Set.<\/strong> Sl\u00f8tface\u2019s latest album, <em>Film Buff<\/em>, is their first as a de facto solo project for vocalist Haley Shea, and the good news is that it\u2019s on par with their previous two releases. If there\u2019s a downside, it\u2019s that there\u2019s nothing new here, either; it\u2019s really catchy pop-punk with witty lyrics.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>La S\u00e9curit\u00e9 \u2013 Detour.<\/strong> This Montr\u00e9al-based \u201cart punk\u201d group released its debut album, <em>Stay Safe!<\/em>, in 2023, and returned last month with this throbbing, dissonant, and very dance-heavy track.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>The Cure \u2013 A Fragile Thing.<\/strong> I read somewhere that Robert Smith wanted to go back to the <em>Disintegration<\/em> era of The Cure on this comeback album, and on this track, at least, he has succeeded. I think that\u2019s their best record, so I may be biased in my opinion here.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Pastel \u2013 Leave a Light On (Velvet Storm).<\/strong> The last time I included a Pastel song, one of you commented that it was a blatant ripoff of The Verve; I don\u2019t exactly hear that, but I get the criticism, and I think it\u2019s as pronounced a similarity this time \u2013 although I hear more Primal Scream on this track.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>The Horrors \u2013 The Silence that Remains.<\/strong> It\u2019s a little ponderous, maybe a little pretentious, but Faris Badwan has earned at least some benefit of the doubt at this point. The Horrors\u2019 sixth album and their first in nearly six years, <em>Night Life<\/em>, is due out in March.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Mindy Smith \u2013 Quiet Town. <\/strong>Mindy and I met in second grade in 1979, and we happen to share a birthday, although I\u2019m a year younger than she is (I was the youngest person in my class). This is the title track from her latest album, her first one in 12 years, which also features \u201cJericho\u201d and \u201cThe Hour of My Departure\u201d (the latter with Daniel Tashian). I believe we are the only two members of our high school graduating class to have our own Wikipedia pages.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Lucius \u2013 Old Tape (feat. Adam Granduciel).<\/strong> A one-off single, for now, featuring the lead singer\/guitarist of The War on Drugs; I saw both artists in September at the Mann in Philly, at which point Lucius\u2019s Jess Wolfe was something like 11 months pregnant.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>The Wombats \u2013 Sorry I\u2019m Late, I DIidn\u2019t Want to Come.<\/strong> This is mid as Wombats songs go, mostly because I think they\u2019re capable of much catchier tracks, but I\u2019ll take a mid Wombats song over a lot of other bands\u2019 singles.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Orla Gartland \u2013 Backseat Driver. <\/strong>I wasn\u2019t familiar with Gartland, an Irish singer-songwriter who released her debut album <em>Woman on the Internet <\/em>(great title) in 2021, until I heard this song, off her new album <em>Everybody Needs a Hero<\/em>. It\u2019s a bouncy slice of indie-pop, slyly nodding at teen popstars but with lyrics that belie her age (she\u2019s a ripe old 29).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>WOOZE \u2013 Fantastic Fever.<\/strong> WOOZE is half of a defunct band first called Movie and then called Screaming Peaches; they put out a handful of songs, including the ridiculously fun \u201cMr. Fist,\u201d then split up. WOOZE\u2019s sound is more trashy glam-rock, although there\u2019s still a danceable beat to all of their tracks. This is the best of the three singles I\u2019ve heard from them this year, over \u201cSabre Tooth Spider\u201d and \u201cWeapons of Mass Seduction.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Goat \u2013 Goatbrain. <\/strong>One of you suggested I check out the latest album from this anonymous Swedish fusion group, also called <em>Goat<\/em>; it was a solid tip, as I do like a lot of what they\u2019re doing, blending sounds from various global music styles into a pretty cohesive whole, although the vocalists aren\u2019t very strong and it holds the album back.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Blood Incantation \u2013 The Stargate [Tablet II].<\/strong> Blood Incantation\u2019s latest album <em>Absolute Elsewhere<\/em> is the most highly acclaimed metal album of 2024, and it is an impressive work of musicianship, comprising two songs, each in three \u201ctablets,\u201d running a total of 43 minutes and running the gamut from spacey 1970s prog-rock to <em>Spiritual Healing<\/em>-era Death. That latter bit means parts of the album are just unlistenable; the combination of blast beats and death growls just turns into noise to me, and I\u2019m really here for the guitarwork anyway. This is the one track out of the six that is largely free of that nonsense, and despite running just five minutes, it gives you an idea of the stylistic range of the album.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>After all of that \u2013 by which I mean all the new tracks I listened to in the past month \u2013 October was one of the weakest months of the year for good new music. We did get two very strong albums that I\u2019ve already featured on previous playlists in Katie Gavin\u2019s What a Relief [&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":[1374,359,167,757,852,787],"class_list":["post-10463","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-2024-in-music","tag-alternative","tag-indie","tag-metal","tag-music","tag-progressive-metal","entry"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10463","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=10463"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10463\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10464,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10463\/revisions\/10464"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10463"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10463"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10463"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}