{"id":4505,"date":"2015-12-02T11:19:35","date_gmt":"2015-12-02T16:19:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/?p=4505"},"modified":"2015-12-02T11:19:46","modified_gmt":"2015-12-02T16:19:46","slug":"november-2015-music-update","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/2015\/12\/02\/november-2015-music-update\/","title":{"rendered":"November 2015 music update."},"content":{"rendered":"<p>November was a relatively light month for (good) new tracks, although we did get a few singles of note ahead of January\/February album releases, including the return of Wild Nothing and a second single from Savages. Not on this list but worth a mention \u2013 Mercury Rev released <em>The Light in You<\/em>, their first new album in seven years, in October. Like much of their work, it&#8217;s better enjoyed as a full album, without any huge standout singles, with the first two-thirds filled with spacey soundscapes before they conclude with a run of ebullient pop tracks. I don&#8217;t like it as much as I did <em><a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/gp\/product\/B005809A2G\/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&#038;camp=1789&#038;creative=390957&#038;creativeASIN=B005809A2G&#038;linkCode=as2&#038;tag=meadowpartyco-20&#038;linkId=HHL7TJANBLGVSJRP\">Deserter&#8217;s Songs<\/a><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/ir-na.amazon-adsystem.com\/e\/ir?t=meadowpartyco-20&#038;l=as2&#038;o=1&#038;a=B005809A2G\" width=\"1\" height=\"1\" border=\"0\" alt=\"\" style=\"border:none !important; margin:0px !important;\" \/><\/em> (which they just remastered a few years ago) or <em>All is Dream<\/em>, though.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/embed.spotify.com\/?uri=spotify%3Auser%3Akeithlaw1%3Aplaylist%3A7reY8SpacSBJlT5s4NhTMY\" width=\"300\" height=\"380\" frameborder=\"0\" allowtransparency=\"true\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><strong>Grimes \u2013 California.<\/strong> The first full track off Grimes&#8217; incredible <i>Art Angels<\/i> album and probably my favorite, although it&#8217;s hard to choose given how many outstanding, clever songs this album features. It&#8217;s the first year I can remember where the two best albums I&#8217;ve heard were both from solo female artists (the other is Courtney Barnett&#8217;s <em><a href=\"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/2015\/04\/02\/sometimes-i-sit-and-think-and-sometimes-i-just-sit\/\" target=\"_blank\">Sometimes I Sit and Think, and Sometimes I Just Sit<\/a><\/em>).<\/p>\n<p><strong>Wild Nothing \u2013 To Know You.<\/strong> A welcome return from Jack Tatum, who writes and records Wild Nothing&#8217;s albums himself (a la Tame Impala&#8217;s Kevin Parker). This first single from Wild Nothing&#8217;s third album, due out in February, returns to the psychedelic rock\/dream-pop fusion of <i>Nocturne<\/i>, with over allusions in the music and lyrics to Talk Talk&#8217;s &#8220;It&#8217;s My Life.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><strong>Hinds \u2013 Garden.<\/strong> Hinds, formerly known as Deers, will finally put out a proper album in January after a year-plus of hype, one that I hope will dispense with their earliest singles&#8217; production values (where it sounded like they recorded everything inside a phone booth located in a bathroom stall). The Spanish foursome has kept their slightly offkey vocal harmonies and punk-tinged folk style, music that verges on the slightly annoying but keeps you coming back because of the underlying melodies \u2026 and maybe because there&#8217;s something a bit charming in their entire approach.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Cloves \u2013 Everybody&#8217;s Son.<\/strong> The Australian teenager who records as Cloves released her <a href=\"http:\/\/amzn.to\/1XybsTF\" target=\"_blank\">debut EP <em>XIII<\/em><\/a> last month, featuring the two impressive singles she dropped over the summer (&#8220;Frail Love&#8221; and &#8220;Don&#8217;t You Wait&#8221;) as well as two new tracks, including this song, which drops the piano for an acoustic guitar but still has the stripped-down feel of her previous songs.<\/p>\n<p><strong>City Calm Down \u2013 Rabbit Run.<\/strong> Another Australian act, this Melbourne quartet appears to have listened to a lot of Echo and the Bunnymen with some New Order thrown in for good measure.<\/p>\n<p><strong>The Gills \u2013 Rubberband.<\/strong> Blues-punk from Pensacola by way of Nashville, the Gills have their self-titled debut due out in a few months, but you can grab this song and the single lemonade for free via <a href=\"http:\/\/noisetrade.com\/thegills\/the-gills\" target=\"_blank\">NoiseTrade<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Daughter \u2013 Numbers.<\/strong> Daughter&#8217;s second album drops in January, and this single features some wordplay on top of a gothic dream-pop (or perhaps nightmare-pop) track that isn&#8217;t so much catchy as it is insinuating.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Savages \u2013 T.I.W.Y.G.<\/strong> &#8220;This is what you get when you mess with love.&#8221; I wouldn&#8217;t mess with Jehnny Beth, though. She sounds pissed off.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Ten F\u00e9 \u2013 In the Air.<\/strong> A London duo whose name means &#8220;have faith,&#8221; Ten F&eacute; merge some very British sounds (Madchester, the Verve) with a sizable dose of American roots-rock on this five-minute track that grooves along at a much faster pace than you&#8217;d expect.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Chairlift \u2013 Romeo.<\/strong> I can&#8217;t wait for their album to drop next month. &#8220;Ch-Ching,&#8221; the first single, is one of the best songs of the year. &#8220;Romeo&#8221; has a similar feel, kind of somewhere west of Sleigh Bells&#8217; overt cacophony, stronger melodically and of course featuring Caroline Polachek&#8217;s lovely voice.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Floating Points \u2013 Peroration Six.<\/strong> A name drawn from math, with a great vocabulary word in the song&#8217;s title? I&#8217;m in. (A peroration is the conclusion of a speech, usually the kind used to whip up the crowd.) This is highly experimental music, dispensing with conventional song structures, totally instrumental, but grabbing the listener&#8217;s attention repeatedly with sharp changes in direction and the judicious use of silence. It reminds me a bit of These New Puritans, just without the vocals of the latter&#8217;s work.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Rare Monk \u2013 Warning Pulse.<\/strong> Yes, the intro sounds a bit like the Offspring&#8217;s &#8220;Self-Esteem,&#8221; but I promise it&#8217;s not the same song or genre. They describe themselves as &#8220;experimental,&#8221; but I don&#8217;t hear the experimentation \u2013 it&#8217;s conventional indie rock with some subtle layering in the guitar and keyboard lines, built more around textures than giant hooks.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Sunflower Bean \u2013 Wall Watcher.<\/strong> This odd Brooklyn trio \u2013 I should probably have a macro for that phrase \u2013 deliver music as strange as their personal style, with a sort of hepped-up stoner rock here on this short, almost poppy single that comes two months ahead of their debut album <i>Human Ceremony<\/i>.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Wolfmother \u2013 Victorious.<\/strong> The Aussie trio&#8217;s best track since &#8220;The Joker and the Thief,&#8221; although I know that&#8217;s not saying a whole lot. The Sabbath-esque riff at the 2:40 mark elevates this from a good album-rock track to a memorable one.<\/p>\n<p><strong>The Fratellis \u2013 Baby Don&#8217;t You Lie to Me!<\/strong> The Scotsmen behind &#8220;Chelsea Dagger&#8221; released their fourth album this summer, and while they&#8217;ve had a handful of catchy singles over the years since their signature song came out and became a sports-arena anthem, I think this is their best hook since their debut \u2013 both tracks have the feel of a rousing hard-drinking song, but approach it from different directions, with &#8220;Baby Don&#8217;t You Lie to Me!&#8221; like something from a bar scene in a lost episode of <i>Firefly<\/i>.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Freddie Gibbs, Black Thought \u2013 Extradite.<\/strong> The best hip-hop song of the year, off the best hip-hop album of the year, although the lyrics are way over the top (for example, I counted over 40 uses of &#8220;bitch&#8221; in the first half of the album alone). Gibbs&#8217; delivery is very old-school, with a deep voice like Rakim&#8217;s, a bit like Tupac with a head cold, and he rhymes fast and can be very clever when he&#8217;s not running over the same tired rap memes.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Krayzie Bone \u2013 Cloudy.<\/strong> Speaking of old-school, Bone-Thugs-N-Harmony founding member Krayzie Bone \u2013 who, per Wikipedia, has eight children, none of them with his wife \u2013 is back with his first proper solo album in a decade. I&#8217;m including the single primarily out of historical interest; his style and technique are still strong, but the song lacks a good hook to make you come back for a second listen.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>November was a relatively light month for (good) new tracks, although we did get a few singles of note ahead of January\/February album releases, including the return of Wild Nothing and a second single from Savages. Not on this list but worth a mention \u2013 Mercury Rev released The Light in You, their first new [&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":[803,359,852,261],"class_list":["post-4505","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-2015-in-music","tag-alternative","tag-music","tag-rap","entry"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4505","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=4505"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4505\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4507,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4505\/revisions\/4507"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4505"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4505"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4505"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}