{"id":5532,"date":"2017-03-01T20:05:25","date_gmt":"2017-03-02T01:05:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/?p=5532"},"modified":"2017-03-01T20:05:25","modified_gmt":"2017-03-02T01:05:25","slug":"music-update-february-2017","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/2017\/03\/01\/music-update-february-2017\/","title":{"rendered":"Music update, February 2017."},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Big month for new tracks, enough that I started out with 30 songs here and couldn&#8217;t cut any lower than 24 without taking out something I liked. I&#8217;ve got five metal tracks and two rap songs at the end, but before that we have returns from a bunch of my favorite artists, several appearing in new projects. <\/p>\n<p>If you can&#8217;t see the Spotify widget below you can <a href=\"https:\/\/open.spotify.com\/user\/keithlaw1\/playlist\/5OBrKIwjw9irvJFd7oSImK\" target=\"_blank\">go directly to the playlist<\/a> here.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/embed.spotify.com\/?uri=spotify%3Auser%3Akeithlaw1%3Aplaylist%3A5OBrKIwjw9irvJFd7oSImK\" width=\"300\" height=\"380\" frameborder=\"0\" allowtransparency=\"true\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><strong>WATERS \u2013 Hiccups.<\/strong> Friend of the dish Van Pierzalowski returns with the first new single from WATERS in almost a year and a half, and true to form it&#8217;s an upbeat indie-pop track with a big hook, definitely something to be sung by ten thousand people in an arena with the volume turned up to 11. (Because it&#8217;s one louder than 10.) WATERS&#8217; third album, <em>Something More!<\/em>, is due out May 19th.<\/p>\n<p><strong>MisterWives \u2013 Machine.<\/strong> This NYC indie-pop outfit appears to be channeling Shakira with this funky, swirling, brass-heavy, stomp-along track that feels lush and intricate below the vocals. I think there&#8217;s real crossover potential here. The lyrics are a bit of a weak spot here, though, like rhymes from a teenager&#8217;s Poetry notebook: &#8220;Maybe I&#8217;m a dying breed\/But I believe in individuality.&#8221; Yeah, no one else believes in that any more, it&#8217;s just you.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Johnossi \u2013 Hands.<\/strong> I heard this track, with lyrics about police profiling of African-Americans, and assumed Johnossi was an American singer of color \u2026 only to find out it&#8217;s a Norwegian duo singing rather well about an issue that I associated mostly with the United States. It should be a hit if for no other reason than the closing couplet &#8220;fuck them haters, we don&#8217;t care\/put your hands up in the air.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><strong>White Reaper \u2013 Judy French.<\/strong> White Reaper rocks your lame ass. Their second album, <em>The World&#8217;s Best American Band<\/em>, is due out April 7th. <\/p>\n<p><strong>Love Thy Brother featuring Ariel Beesley \u2013 Love Me Better.<\/strong> This actually came out last year, and I just whiffed on it because on first listen I couldn&#8217;t get past the singer&#8217;s weird pronunciations. The Montreal duo, actually brothers, teamed up with model\/singer Beesley for a very catchy electronic track with an undeniable groove behind the verses, although I think when the music drops behind the choruses the song loses some momentum.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Ten F\u00e9 \u2013 In the Air.<\/strong> I think I&#8217;ve exhausted songs worth sharing from Ten F\u00e9&#8217;s debut album, called <em>Hit the Light<\/em>, which has been my favorite new record of 2017 to date. (It&#8217;ll be surpassed shortly, with some big releases coming up this month and next.) Most of the songs I&#8217;ve liked from Ten F\u00e9 have had heavy new wave influences, but this one is just a straight pop song, something you might have heard on the radio as easily in 1980 as today.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Beach Slang \u2013 Bored Teenagers.<\/strong> These Philly punks supposedly broke up during a concert last year, then got back together and fired some members \u2026 I don&#8217;t know, I&#8217;m just here for the music. I do think it&#8217;s important that bands with &#8220;Beach&#8221; in their name deliver on that promise by playing punk or garage or even surf rock, as opposed to Beach House, who are basically just false advertising.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Bleached \u2013 Can You Deal?.<\/strong> They&#8217;ve doubled their membership over the last two years, adding a bassist and a drummer, and are about to release a new EP, with this punk-pop tune as the title track. It&#8217;s a bit of a slow starter, but when they hit the gas in around the midpoint it finally sounds more like a Bleached song.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Future Islands \u2013 Ran.<\/strong> I suppose they&#8217;ll never top <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=GK4lD3Uf8_o\" target=\"_blank\">their performance of &#8220;Seasons&#8221; on Letterman<\/a>, but this is a good fascimile of that track, with the same pronounced bass line and &#8217;70s soft-rock feel over a contemporary drum beat.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Depeche Mode \u2013 Where&#8217;s the Revolution.<\/strong> I&#8217;m a longtime DM fan, especially of their more goth-rock late &#8217;80s heyday (think &#8220;Never Let Me Down Again,&#8221; not &#8220;Just Can&#8217;t Get Enough&#8221;), so any new single from them would make my list, but this felt a little soft for a lead single, like we got an album track instead of the song to make you want to run out and get the album.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Coast Modern \u2013 Comb My Hair.<\/strong> This LA duo reminds me a lot of WATERS and a little of Best Coast, with a dash of post-<em>Pinkerton<\/em> Weezer thrown in, which, uh, waters down the sound a bit. They could do with a little more complexity here, but from the handful of singles Coast Modern has put out to date I think it&#8217;s clear they have the ability to craft some solid hooks in the California indie vein.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Space Above \u2013 Let It Still.<\/strong> Space Above are a side project for The Naked &#038; Famous keyboardist Aaron Short to do more experimental keyboard-driven songs, but there&#8217;s still a clear melody at work on this mesmerizing, textured single. The group&#8217;s debut album, <em>Still<\/em>, dropped on February 17th.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Strand of Oaks \u2013 Radio Kids.<\/strong> Timothy Showalter, who records as Strand of Oaks, seems to be at his best when writing nostalgic tunes about being a kid and listening to music. This psychedelic rock track, from his newest record <em>Hard Love<\/em>. reminds me of &#8220;Goshen &#8217;97,&#8221; the best song off his previous album.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Mew \u2013 85 Videos.<\/strong> This Danish group, whose singer calls their music &#8220;indie stadium,&#8221; is about to release its seventh album in late April, with &#8220;85 Videos&#8221; the lead single. The band has dropped the progressive trappings of its early career in favor of a more dream-pop approach with immaculate production and great technical skills, but without forsaking a good melody that wouldn&#8217;t be out of place in &#8217;85.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Sarah Chernoff \u2013 Warm Nights.<\/strong> This solo debut from the lead singer of Superhumanoids shows off Chernoff&#8217;s incredible voice in a different milieu, over a bass-heavy, almost jazzy groove that&#8217;s evocative of a dark club or some sort of intimate venue for a concert. I&#8217;ll list just about anything she does on these updates.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Ride \u2013 Home Is A Feeling.<\/strong> Shoegaze has come back around again. Slowdive is back, Ride is back, Lush is back \u2026 I&#8217;m waiting for the Swervedriver\/Catherine Wheel double bill. Ride hasn&#8217;t released a proper album since 1996, but have put out two singles in the last month \u2013 this and &#8220;Charm Assault&#8221; \u2013 presaging an album due out this summer.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Aristophanes \u2013 Humans Become Machines.<\/strong> Aristophanes (born Pan Wei-Ju) was introduced to the west on Grimes&#8217; <em>Art Angels<\/em> album, where the Taiwanese rapper took the lead on the track &#8220;Scream.&#8221; It&#8217;s definitely disorienting to hear a high-pitched female voice rapping in Chinese, but Grimes produced this track, which is good enough for me. <\/p>\n<p><strong>Joey Bada$$ \u2013 Victory.<\/strong> The lead single from Bada$$&#8217;s upcoming second album is an ode to the NBA, which doesn&#8217;t do much for me itself, but his flow really stands out to me, even above other more popular &#8220;alternative&#8221; rappers like Kendrick Lamar or J. Cole. <\/p>\n<p><strong>CyHi The Prynce \u2013 Nu Africa.<\/strong> I&#8217;m not trying to change the world, I&#8217;m not looking for a nu Africa \u2026 wait, that&#8217;s the wrong song. CyHi, a frequent collaborator with Kanye West, is playing wordgames here as he tries to squeeze a slew of African country names into the lyrics (I counted 22), but there&#8217;s also a very old-school Native Tongues sort of Afrocentrism here, with an argument that black Americans should do more to help develop the &#8220;motherland.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><strong>King Woman \u2013 Shame.<\/strong> You don&#8217;t see many women singing on doom metal tracks, but this is Kristina Esfandiari&#8217;s band and she is the dominant presence on this song, although I wish her vocals were produced more towards the front of the mix. It&#8217;s like Diamanda Galas doing guest vocals for Pallbearer.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Sleep \u2013 The Clarity.<\/strong> I didn&#8217;t realize this seminal stoner-rock act, best known for the single-track 2003 album <em>Dopesmoker<\/em>, had recorded any new material since that record, but this song first appeared on a compilation in 2014 and showed up on Spotify this week. It&#8217;s a nearly ten-minute dirge of vintage stoner metal, veering towards doom.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Ignea \u2013 Petrichor.<\/strong> A female-fronted symphonic\/folk metal band from Ukraine, formerly known as Parallax, Ignea just released their debut album under this name, although several of these songs (including this one) have appeared previously. Their sound is fascinating, and also taught me a new word: the OED defines &#8220;petrichor&#8221; as &#8220;a pleasant smell that frequently accompanies the first rain after a long period of warm, dry weather.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><strong>Havok \u2013 Intention to Deceive.<\/strong> Havok are an old-school thrash outfit that draws heavily on 1980s influences like Overkill and Vio-lence, the latter of whom could easily have recorded this song \u2013 which has very timely lyrics about authorities distracting the public with trivial controversies while greater ones go unreported.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Mastodon \u2013 Show Yourself.<\/strong> This might be the poppiest song I&#8217;ve ever heard from Mastodon, and I don&#8217;t mean that as an insult. It&#8217;s the shortest track from the band&#8217;s upcoming album, <em>Emperor of Sand<\/em>, which comes out at the end of the month, and still has progressive\/technical elements but rides on a strong vocal hook that introduces the song.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Big month for new tracks, enough that I started out with 30 songs here and couldn&#8217;t cut any lower than 24 without taking out something I liked. I&#8217;ve got five metal tracks and two rap songs at the end, but before that we have returns from a bunch of my favorite artists, several appearing in [&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":[913,359,757,852,357,261,919],"class_list":["post-5532","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-2017-in-music","tag-alternative","tag-metal","tag-music","tag-new-wave","tag-rap","tag-shoegaze","entry"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5532","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=5532"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5532\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5533,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5532\/revisions\/5533"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5532"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5532"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5532"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}