{"id":6803,"date":"2018-08-01T11:02:41","date_gmt":"2018-08-01T15:02:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/?p=6803"},"modified":"2018-08-01T11:02:41","modified_gmt":"2018-08-01T15:02:41","slug":"music-update-july-2018","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/2018\/08\/01\/music-update-july-2018\/","title":{"rendered":"Music update, July 2018."},"content":{"rendered":"<p>July seemed like a weaker month for new music than we&#8217;ve had in a while, but it&#8217;s possible that after my vacation and around some trips I missed some good new releases, too. If you can&#8217;t see the widget below, you can access the <a href=\"https:\/\/open.spotify.com\/user\/keithlaw1\/playlist\/3wnRDzAmZVD5w8LNso6J8i?si=9FIYLmACRqKyL5Ys6iI_2Q\" target=\"_blank\">Spotify playlist here<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/open.spotify.com\/embed\/user\/keithlaw1\/playlist\/3wnRDzAmZVD5w8LNso6J8i\" width=\"300\" height=\"380\" frameborder=\"0\" allowtransparency=\"true\" allow=\"encrypted-media\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><strong>TVAM &#8212; These Are Not Your Memories.<\/strong> Joe Oxley, the producer\/musician who records as TVAM, is new to me, although he&#8217;s released a few singles going back to 2015. This track, from his forthcoming debut album <em>Psychic Data<\/em>, is shoegazey and atmospheric, but with a clear, defined hook, and some bravado to it that&#8217;s generally absent in shoegaze music and its spiritual descendants. <\/p>\n<p><strong>Spirit Animal &#8212; The Truth.<\/strong> Another artist with whom I was unfamiliar before this song, Spirit Animal, a four-piece act from Brooklyn, produce guitar-driven rock that calls back to classic rock but with hints of funk and metal mixed in. This track has a wonderfully dark riff behind the verses, then shifts to a soaring and funk-tinged mode for the chorus. <\/p>\n<p><strong>Slash &#8212; Driving Rain (feat. Myles Kennedy &#038; The Conspirators).<\/strong> Slash has been churning out memorable, heavy guitar riffs for thirty years now, but because his style of music hasn&#8217;t been cool since the late &#8217;80s, he&#8217;s never really gotten the respect of other similarly talented guitarists. He has a clearly defined sound, evident here even through the fairly generic vocals \u2013 if you like Slash&#8217;s work, you&#8217;d probably pick this out (no pun intended) as his doing right away. It&#8217;s not &#8220;Slither&#8221; or <em>Appetite<\/em>-level work, but it&#8217;s more than just a nostalgia trip.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Greta Van Fleet &#8212; When The Curtain Falls.<\/strong> GVF get lots of praise for their Led Zeppelin-derived sound, but I&#8217;ve found them more akin to Kingdom Come, imitators rather than spiritual descendants, especially with the lead singer&#8217;s falsetto sounding too much like Lenny Wolf. (I&#8217;ll admit to a strange fondness for Kingdom Come&#8217;s one hit single, &#8220;Get It On,&#8221; though.) This is the best track I&#8217;ve heard from GVF so far, powered by a memorable guitar riff.<\/p>\n<p><strong>The Twilight Sad &#8212; I\/m Not Here [Missing Face].<\/strong> I could have sworn I included a Twilight Sad song on a playlist a few years ago but can&#8217;t find it. This Scottish (as if you couldn&#8217;t tell) duo seem to have drunk deeply from the spirit of Joy Division, early Smiths, Editors, and others in the tradition of depressing new wave-inflected music \u2026 but with more energy than they&#8217;ve shown in previous singles. <\/p>\n<p><strong>Death Cab for Cutie &#8212; I Dreamt We Spoke Again.<\/strong> DCFC&#8217;s ninth album, <em>Thank You for Today<\/em>, drops on August 17th; it&#8217;s their first album without guitarist Chris Walla since 1997. This is the second single and lead track, not as immediate as &#8220;Gold Rush&#8221; but very much in line with their peak output from the first decade of the 2000s.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Maisie Peters &#8212; Best I&#8217;ll Ever Sing.<\/strong> The now 18-year-old singer\/songwriter behind last year&#8217;s &#8220;The Place We Were Made&#8221; is back with another track, this one driven by piano rather than guitar, once again showcases her sense of melody and adorable voice.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Interpol &#8212; Number 10.<\/strong> That&#8217;s now two promising singles ahead of Interpol&#8217;s forthcoming album <em>Marauder<\/em>, due out August 24th. <\/p>\n<p><strong>The Golden Age of TV &#8212; Television.<\/strong> TGATV, a five-piece indie-rock act from Leeds, has released three singles so far, this the strongest (and most rock-tinged) to date. There&#8217;s an anthemic vibe that feels like it was written to open a concert, with the lights coming on just as Bea Fletcher&#8217;s vocals kick in.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Cut Chemist &#8212; Work My Mind.<\/strong> Cut Chemist, formerly one of the DJs in the rap collective Jurassic 5, reunites with Chali 2Na here for the best track of CC&#8217;s latest album.<\/p>\n<p><strong>The Internet &#8212; Roll (Burbank Funk).<\/strong> The Internet, who may win any competition for the least google-able band name on the planet, earned a Grammy nod for their 2015 album <em>Ego Death<\/em> in the &#8216;urban contemporary&#8217; category; I&#8217;m not sure what that term encompasses or excludes, but this song sounds like a modern twist on P-Funk to me and I&#8217;m good with that.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Jungle &#8212; Heavy, California.<\/strong> This English soul music collective, who had a hit in 2014 with &#8220;Busy Earnin'&#8221; and made my May playlist with &#8220;Happy Man,&#8221; will drop their second album, <em>For Ever<\/em>, on September 14th. They&#8217;ve released two other tracks from the album, &#8220;Cherry&#8221; and &#8220;House in L.A.,&#8221; but both are more downtempo and not my speed.<\/p>\n<p><strong>St. Lucia \u2013 Walking Away.<\/strong> It seems like St. Lucia&#8217;s sound is evolving further, this time in a more positive direction than their disappointing last album (aside from its lead single, &#8220;Dancing on Glass&#8221;), between this and &#8220;A Brighter Love.&#8221; The B side to that latter song, &#8220;Paradise is Waiting,&#8221; isn&#8217;t bad either, although the faux-gospel chorus is a little hackneyed for me.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Alkaline Trio &#8212; Blackbird.<\/strong> The Chicago punk trio veered off into more alternative territory with some of their early 2000s releases \u2013 &#8220;Help Me&#8221; is probably my favorite song of theirs, off 2008&#8217;s <em>Agony &#038; Irony<\/em> \u2013 but they returned to their roots with their 2013 album <em>My Shame Is True<\/em>. &#8220;Blackbird&#8221; is more of the same, the lead single from their upcoming album <em>Is This Thing Cursed?<\/em>, due out on August 31st.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Mudhoney &#8212; Paranoid Core.<\/strong> Never change, Mark Arm. Never change. <\/p>\n<p><strong>Horrendous &#8212; Soothsayer.<\/strong> This Philly-based quartet is producing by far the most interesting and sophisticated music of any American death metal band going \u2013 it&#8217;s technically proficient, musically progressive, and apparently the lyrics are pretty smart too, not that I can understand a word they&#8217;re screaming. Their 2015 album <em>Anareta<\/em> was <em>Decibel<\/em>&#8216;s top LP of that year, and <em>Ecdysis<\/em> was the same magazine&#8217;s #3 album of 2014. <em>Idol<\/em> is due out on September 28th. <\/p>\n<p><strong>Omnium Gatherum &#8212; Gods Go First.<\/strong> Omnium Gatherum are Finnish but hew closely to the Gothenburg school of melodic death metal, with progressive and thrash elements along with strong musicianship. Their eighth album, <em>The Burning Cold<\/em>, comes out August 31st.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>July seemed like a weaker month for new music than we&#8217;ve had in a while, but it&#8217;s possible that after my vacation and around some trips I missed some good new releases, too. If you can&#8217;t see the widget below, you can access the Spotify playlist here. TVAM &#8212; These Are Not Your Memories. Joe [&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":[1029,359,757,852,261],"class_list":["post-6803","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-2018-music","tag-alternative","tag-metal","tag-music","tag-rap","entry"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6803","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=6803"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6803\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6804,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6803\/revisions\/6804"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6803"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6803"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6803"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}