{"id":4643,"date":"2016-01-31T21:47:43","date_gmt":"2016-02-01T02:47:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/?p=4643"},"modified":"2016-01-31T21:47:43","modified_gmt":"2016-02-01T02:47:43","slug":"january-2016-music-update","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/2016\/01\/31\/january-2016-music-update\/","title":{"rendered":"January 2016 music update."},"content":{"rendered":"<p>My <a href=\"http:\/\/klaw.me\/1Vz3oNf\" target=\"_blank\">analysis of Arizona&#8217;s trade for Jean Segura<\/a> is up for Insiders.<\/p>\n<p>It was a huge month for new music, but it wasn&#8217;t all good \u2013 we got very disappointing albums from St. Lucia, Wet, Bloc Party, and Megadeth, among others, but some excellent albums from With Lions, Savages, Daughter, Hinds, Chairlift, and more, plus a few surprise singles from Bob Mould, the Last Shadow Puppets, Cullen Omori (ex-Smith Westerns), and HAERTS. And I haven&#8217;t even gotten to the latest from Suede, Dream Theater, or Tricky. I&#8217;ve got some work to do, but in the meantime, here are 22 songs to keep your ears busy.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/embed.spotify.com\/?uri=spotify%3Auser%3Akeithlaw1%3Aplaylist%3A7IL23SSAhVYFmK4XUBuoCS\" width=\"300\" height=\"380\" frameborder=\"0\" allowtransparency=\"true\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><strong>With Lions \u2013 Down We Go.<\/strong> This Tennessee-based blues-rock trio first released this song via Soundcloud last year, but it just appeared on Spotify with the release of their newest album, the grooving, hypnotic <em>Fast Luck<\/em> (<a href=\"http:\/\/amzn.to\/1Q5jytA\" target=\"_blank\">amazon<\/a> &bull; <a href=\"https:\/\/geo.itunes.apple.com\/us\/album\/fast-luck\/id1070309505?at=11l9Rw&#038;mt=1&#038;app=music\">iTunes<\/a>).<\/p>\n<p><strong>Yeasayer \u2013 I Am Chemistry.<\/strong> Yep, same band that gave us the 2010 hit &#8220;O.N.E.&#8221; but nothing quite so catchy since then, at least not until this track, which sort of sounds like Yeasayer trying to impersonate Imagine Dragons or A Silent Film \u2026 but with positive results, although I&#8217;m a sucker for a song full of scientific references to poisons, from sarin to acrylonitrile to oleander.<\/p>\n<p><strong>School Of Seven Bells \u2013 Ablaze.<\/strong> SVIIB&#8217;s fourth and final album, just titled <em>SVIIB<\/em>, is due out February 26th, and the advance singles are incredibly promising. It&#8217;s their final album because Benjamin Curtis, who made up half the group, passed away in December 2013 at age 35 of T-cell lymphoblastic lymphoma. He had previously been in the Secret Machines with his brother Brandon. I&#8217;ve always found vocalist Alejandra Deheza&#8217;s voice to be haunting and melancholy, and the context of this record will only make it more so.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Bob Mould \u2013 Voices in My Head.<\/strong> Does Bob Mould just wake up in the morning and spit out six great melodies while brushing his teeth? &#8220;Voices in My Head&#8221; would fit in just fine on <em>Black Sheets of Rain<\/em>, and that&#8217;s high praise indeed. There are some artists whose sounds should never change, and Mould is high on that list.<\/p>\n<p><strong>The Last Shadow Puppets \u2013 Bad Habits.<\/strong> TLSP appeared to be a one-time side project for Arctic Monkeys&#8217; lead singer\/songwriter Alex Turner, with one great album, 2008&#8217;s <em>The Age of the Understatement<\/em>, serving as a deliberately anachronistic homage to a lost era of pop music. This lead single from their second album, due out April 1st, seems to herald a big shift in direction towards a more abrasive, harder sound. It&#8217;s very insistent, but it&#8217;s not as catchy as the better songs from their debut. In Alex we trust, though.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Courtney Barnett \u2013 Three Packs a Day.<\/strong> Anything by Barnett, the best lyricist in contemporary music, is an automatic add to my playlists. This is kind of midrange for her, not as dirgey as &#8220;Depreston,&#8221; not as rousing as &#8220;Pedestrian at Best.&#8221; Of course, I adore her ode to umami, &#8220;That MSG tastes good to me\/I disagree with all your warnings.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><strong>Chairlift \u2013 Moth to the Flame.<\/strong> I haven&#8217;t spent enough time with <em>Moth<\/em> (<a href=\"http:\/\/amzn.to\/1SlySJb\" target=\"_blank\">amazon<\/a> &bull; <a href=\"https:\/\/geo.itunes.apple.com\/us\/album\/moth\/id1068532138?at=11l9Rw&#038;mt=1&#038;app=music\">iTunes<\/a>), the duo&#8217;s first LP since 2012, but have loved several of the lead singles, including &#8220;Ch-Ching,&#8221; which made my top 10 songs of 2015, and &#8220;Romeo.&#8221; This is another very strong synth-pop single, so much smarter than what passes for pop music these days, boosted by Caroline Polachek&#8217;s lovely, acrobatic vocals.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Cullen Omori \u2013 Cinnamon.<\/strong> I actually did not know that the Smith Westerns had broken up (they did in 2014) until I got a press release about lead singer Omori&#8217;s first solo album, <em>New Misery<\/em>, which comes out on March 18th. This lead single isn&#8217;t SW material \u2013 it&#8217;s brighter, almost jangle-pop, heavy on reverb, and more memorable than anything SW produced.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Porches \u2013 Be Apart.<\/strong> Porches (the nom de tune of Aaron Maine) usually delivers dark, synth-heavy music, like someone who just listened to a little too much Bauhaus as a kid, so this song seems almost bright and sunny compared to some of their other stuff, but it still has that hint of shadow to keep things from getting too chummy.<\/p>\n<p><strong>White Denim \u2013 Holda You (I&#8217;m Pyscho).<\/strong> A surprisingly taut, concise track from these jazz-rock experimentalists, whose next album, <em>Stiff<\/em>, is due out in late March.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Savages \u2013 Adore.<\/strong> Savages&#8217; first album, the amazing <em><a href=\"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/2013\/08\/13\/savages-silence-yourself\/\" target=\"_blank\">Silence Yourself<\/a><\/em>, was full of short, potent, angry post-punk tracks, and flopped whenever the quartet tried to change the tempo; their second album, <em>Adore Life<\/em> (<a href=\"http:\/\/amzn.to\/1P7gHk9\" target=\"_blank\">amazon<\/a> &bull; <a href=\"https:\/\/geo.itunes.apple.com\/us\/album\/adore-life\/id1048053274?at=11l9Rw&#038;mt=1&#038;app=music\">iTunes<\/a>), which came out on January 22nd, features longer tracks and more successful ventures into slower material. Of course, they&#8217;re still at their best when they sound pissed off, but I&#8217;m not sure that formula would have lasted more than two albums before wearing out. I owe this LP a review, but my early opinion is very positive.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Wild Nothing \u2013 Reichpop.<\/strong> References to Hitler&#8217;s era are in now, don&#8217;t you know? (Phil Anselmo can really go fuck himself, by the way.) I&#8217;m not sure what to make of Wild Nothing&#8217;s new material; lead single &#8220;To Know You&#8221; wasn&#8217;t shy about, er, borrowing from Talk Talk&#8217;s &#8220;It&#8217;s My Life,&#8221; and now we get this lush single that sounds for all the world like a lost Oingo Boingo track. These are great influences to have, but has Jack Tatum lost the originality that made <em>Nocturne<\/em> such a great album?<\/p>\n<p><strong>Sunflower Bean \u2013 Easier Said.<\/strong> I liked &#8220;Wall Watcher&#8221; a bit more, primarily because it had such a weird chorus, but this is probably the more radio-friendly track.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Hinds \u2013 Castigadas En El Granero.<\/strong> This quartet of Barcelona teen girls has been getting hype for what seems like two full years now, so it&#8217;s almost anticlimactic to hear an actual full-length album from the band, but <em>Leave Me Alone<\/em> (<a href=\"http:\/\/amzn.to\/1SvygyF\" target=\"_blank\">amazon<\/a> &bull; <a href=\"https:\/\/geo.itunes.apple.com\/us\/album\/leave-me-alone\/id1034946108?at=11l9Rw&#038;mt=1&#038;app=music\">iTunes<\/a>) did indeed drop early in January. It&#8217;s just what you&#8217;d expect if you heard any of their EPs and singles, but perhaps a little toned-down. Their first few singles were joyously cacophanous, like they&#8217;d just picked up guitars and started strumming at random and were shouting out vocals on top of each other in this endearing, messy style. That&#8217;s lost a bit now that the ladies have better production at their disposal, but you can still get glimpses of that style in earlier singles like &#8220;Bamboo&#8221; and &#8220;Garden,&#8221; included on the album, as well as this track.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Lucius \u2013 Madness.<\/strong> This five-member band from Brooklyn really is the ne plus ultra of hipster bands, and I&#8217;ll admit it&#8217;s turned me off a lot of their music. (Just look at <a href=\"http:\/\/rukkus.com\/blog\/lucius-concert-review-the-parish-austin\/\" target=\"_blank\">this picture of the group<\/a> and tell me you think it&#8217;s a band and not some new company pretending to sell you bean-to-bar chocolate out of a disused warehouse.) The chorus on this song is very, very strong, though.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Lemaitre featuring Mark Johns \u2013 Stepping Stone.<\/strong> I&#8217;ve been singing Lemaitre&#8217;s praises around these parts for about two years now, and this collaboration with Mark Johns \u2013 who is a female singer from Singapore named Naomie who normally records for Skrillex&#8217;s imprint OWSLA \u2013 might be their most commercially-ready single yet. <\/p>\n<p><strong>Mass Gothic \u2013 Every Night You&#8217;ve Got to Save Me.<\/strong> Noel Heroux \u2013 why not just record under that name, which is great, instead of the pseudonym Mass Gothic? \u2013 used to be in Hooray for Earth, which definitely appeared on one of my 2014 playlists, but broke that band up to start a new solo project as Mass Gothic. This track is certainly unexpected \u2013 it feels like it fell out of the late 1950s, but with some more modern instrumentation, driven by a huge, hooky chorus.<\/p>\n<p><strong>The Joy Formidable \u2013 The Last Thing On My Mind.<\/strong> This Welsh outfit&#8217;s third full-length album, <em>Hitch<\/em>, dedicated entirely to the Will Smith\/Kevin James movie (I just made that up), will be out on March 26th. I&#8217;ve liked their sound more than their songs in the past, as they&#8217;ve struggled to come up with good enough melodies to bring me back to any of their songs, so this track, with its sultry chorus, is easily my favorite to date.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Nevermen \u2013 Dark Ear.<\/strong> Supergroups are always groups but seldom super; Nevermen, which comprises Mike Patton (Faith No More), Tunde Adebimpe (TV on the Radio), and rapper\/producer Doseone, is indeed less than the sum of its parts. &#8220;Dark Ear&#8221; shows what could have been, with the layered and almost competing lyrics, huge guitars, sonic shifts, and just a general sense of seismic unease throughout, but much of the album feels like unfinished experimentation.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Diiv \u2013 Is the Is Are.<\/strong> Every DIIV song sounds the same to me. But they&#8217;re mostly okay, so here&#8217;s the title track from their upcoming second LP, due out on Friday.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Boss Selection \u2013 Flip and Rewind (feat. Rashida Jones).<\/strong> Included primarily because that&#8217;s Ann Perkins on vocals.<\/p>\n<p><strong>HAERTS \u2013 Eva.<\/strong> Well, this was definitely the surprise release of the month: a three-song EP that still isn&#8217;t even mentioned on HAERTS&#8217; official site, led by this nearly eight-minute epic that serves as a wonderful showcase for Nini Fabi&#8217;s voice and an introduction to HAERTS&#8217; entire sound. I generally dislike songs of this length outside of the metal genre, where you get actual movements or time signature changes to keep things moving, but I didn&#8217;t even realize how long I&#8217;d been listening to &#8220;Eva&#8221; until it was well past the six-minute mark.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>My analysis of Arizona&#8217;s trade for Jean Segura is up for Insiders. It was a huge month for new music, but it wasn&#8217;t all good \u2013 we got very disappointing albums from St. Lucia, Wet, Bloc Party, and Megadeth, among others, but some excellent albums from With Lions, Savages, Daughter, Hinds, Chairlift, and more, plus [&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":[876,359,852],"class_list":["post-4643","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-2016-in-music","tag-alternative","tag-music","entry"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4643","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=4643"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4643\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4645,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4643\/revisions\/4645"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4643"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4643"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4643"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}