{"id":6899,"date":"2018-09-02T22:33:56","date_gmt":"2018-09-03T02:33:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/?p=6899"},"modified":"2018-09-03T11:08:41","modified_gmt":"2018-09-03T15:08:41","slug":"music-update-august-2018","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/2018\/09\/02\/music-update-august-2018\/","title":{"rendered":"Music update, August 2018."},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I believe this is the longest monthly playlist of new music I\u2019ve ever posted, running 30 songs and just shy of two hours, thanks in large part to a huge spate of new album releases in the last four weeks. Even at that I could have included more tracks and have more songs and albums I still want to check out, but the calendar had other ideas so I decided to call it a day and post this before October loomed. You can <a href=\"https:\/\/open.spotify.com\/user\/keithlaw1\/playlist\/1kjS40eQm8j5QW7zpGrINd?si=g8UtjcqFQvSYe2nIWwzB-Q\" target=\"_blank\">access the playlist directly here<\/a> if you can\u2019t see the widget below.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/open.spotify.com\/embed\/user\/keithlaw1\/playlist\/1kjS40eQm8j5QW7zpGrINd\" width=\"300\" height=\"380\" frameborder=\"0\" allowtransparency=\"true\" allow=\"encrypted-media\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><strong>The Wombats \u2014 Bee-Sting<\/strong>. The Wombats put out a new album in February, a solid record but a little bit of a letdown after the amazing <em>Glitterburg<\/em>, so the appearance of this new single last week was both a big surprise and a huge boost to a month already replete with great new songs. <\/p>\n<p><strong>Thrice \u2014 Only Us<\/strong>. Thrice, featuring friend of the dish Riley Breckenridge on drums, will release its new album <em>Palms<\/em> on the 14th, with this the second very strong single already to appear from the record.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Art Brut \u2014 Wham! Bang! Pow! Let&#8217;s Rock Out!<\/strong>. I remember a reader (Bill S., I believe) recommending Art Brut to me about a decade ago, but at the time I found their sound a little too out there, almost deliberately non-musical in certain ways, including the vocals. This song seems written to address everything I didn\u2019t like about their earlier stuff, and has a sort of Wombats\/Arctic Monkeys vibe to the lyrics and music.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Nation of Language \u2014 Reality<\/strong>. This Brooklyn-based quartet appear to have fallen asleep in 1982 and just woken up without recognizing anything has changed in the world of music &#8211; and, as someone who came of age during that synth-heavy era of New Wave, I love it.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Broods \u2014 Peach<\/strong>. I adore Georgia Nott\u2019s voice, so hearing her get autotuned up in the pre-chorus here is a bummer, but the hook in the chorus itself is tremendous and we do get to hear her sultry voice in its natural environment during the verses.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Ten F\u00e9 \u2014 Not Tonight<\/strong>. Ten F\u00e9\u2019s album <em>Hit the Light<\/em> was <a href=\u201chttps:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/2018\/01\/02\/top-17-albums-of-2017\/\u201d target=\u201c_blank\u201d> my #10 record of 2017<\/a>, and they\u2019re back now with more of the same \u201870s soft-rock sound just slightly updated with the technology of contemporary music.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Black Honey \u2014 Midnight<\/strong>. I might be the biggest Black Honey fan going; I think I\u2019ve liked every single they\u2019ve released so far over the last three years, and now we get their first full-length album, called <em>Black Honey<\/em>, on the 21st. This is on the poppier end for the group, but I\u2019ve liked their stuff more when they keep this upbeat tempo.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Eric B. &#038; Rakim \u2014 I Know You Got Soul ( The Double Trouble Remix )<\/strong>. I waffled a little on including this track; it\u2019s a circa 1988 remix of the song I\u2019ve named the greatest rap song of all time, and it\u2019s not as if you could improve on perfection. But the remix is by Norman Cook, better known as Fatboy Slim, and Danny Poku, better known as D-Mob (\u201cWe Call It Acieed\u201d), and backs up Rakim\u2019s vocals with the music of the Jackson Five\u2019s \u201cABC,\u201d with Kool &#038; the Gang\u2019s \u201cFunky Stuff\u201d in the interludes. It works shockingly well.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Wild Nothing \u2014 Shallow Water<\/strong>. If you wanted Wild Nothing to revisit the sound of <em>Nocturne<\/em>, this track is for you.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Spirit Animal \u2014 World War IV<\/strong>. Spirit Animal\u2019s album <em>Born Yesterday<\/em> is a strange mix of bold, almost bombastic rockers like this one and \u201cThe Truth,\u201d and songs that seem like Twenty-One Pilots impressions. (I was going to say \u201cbad Twenty-One Pilots impressions, but that seemed redundant.) If these guys stick to big, macho riffs in traditional rock sounds, they could be huge.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Foxing \u2014 Nearer My God<\/strong>. These St. Louis indie-rockers released their latest album, with this the title track and the best song I\u2019ve heard from the record, on August 10th. Conor Murphy\u2019s vocals really shine here as he hits notes I couldn\u2019t hit if I took a football to the groin.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Drenge \u2014 Outside<\/strong>. I loved this British duo\u2019s debut album, which took forever to show up in tHe U.S. even though they\u2019d found some success in England, but thought they changed their sound too much for their follow-up record. This sounds more like their first LP &#8211; straight-up guitar and drum heavy rock with a little British snarl to it.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Alkaline Trio \u2014 Demon and Division<\/strong>. Alkaline Trio\u2019s album <em>Is This Thing Cursed?<\/em> just dropped on Friday, the 31st, so I haven\u2019t gotten into it yet, but this song, released a few weeks earlier as a single, is another strong power-pop (don\u2019t call it \u201cemo!\u201d) single from Skiba &#038; co.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Death Cab for Cutie \u2014 Northern Lights<\/strong>. <em>Thank You for Today<\/em> dropped on August 17th, with \u201cGold Rush\u201d still my favorite off the record but this upbeat \u201cSoul Meets Body\u201d-ish track among my favorites from the rest.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Allie X \u2014 Science<\/strong>. Alexandra Hughes, who records as Allie X, covers a wide range within electronic indie-pop, but she has a knack for sweetly dark melodies, like this one  on the third single from her upcoming album <em>Super Sunset<\/em>. If you like Sia\u2019s music and vocal style, Allie X is the better version, without the commercial trappings or the wig.<\/p>\n<p><strong>St. Lucia \u2014 Bigger<\/strong>. I\u2019m optimistic about St. Lucia\u2019s upcoming third album, <em>Hyperion<\/em>, which is due out on the 21st, given how bouncy and fun the three singles have been &#8211; maybe not as impactful as the singles from his debut, but I think stronger than most of the material on 2016\u2019s <em>Matter<\/em> other than \u201cDancing on Glass.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><strong>YONAKA \u2014 Teach Me To Fight<\/strong>. I loved this British quartet with a feisty-voiced female lead singer\u2019s track \u201cWouldn\u2019t Wanna Be Ya\u201d when it came out last year, and they\u2019ve had a few singles in a similar post-punk, snarling vein, including this one, where Theresa Jarvis drops what should be an anthem for young feminists.<\/p>\n<p><strong>CLOVES &#8212; Hit Me Hard<\/strong>. CLOVES\u2019s voice stunned me when I first heard her on \u201cFrail Love,\u201d a top ten song for me in 2015, but she was never going to find an audience just doing vocals and piano ballads, so a move into more pop territory was probably inevitable. I\u2019m just glad she\u2019s doing so with solid hooks and without surrendering any of her vocal power or the endearing way she articulates certain sounds.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Sarah Chernoff \u2014 You&#8217;re Free<\/strong>. Chernoff was the lead singer for the Superhumanoids, a sadly underappreciated dream-pop\/electronica band that crafted gorgeous, textured music behind Chernoff\u2019s soaring vocals. Her debut solo album was much more mellow, more in the style of torch songs than pop, but this new track splits the difference and I think provides the perfect platform for her vocal operatics. (I saw Superhumanoids live on their last tour, and met the band after the show. I can vouch for her singing prowess &#8211; this is exactly how she sounds in concert.) <\/p>\n<p><strong>Arkells \u2014 Relentless<\/strong>. These Canadian indie-rockers will drop their new album on October 19th, and this feels like it should be their breakout single here in the U.S., a danceable rock tune that\u2019s easier than the preceding single \u201cPeople\u2019s Champ.\u201d I just don\u2019t understand why they used the keyboards from \u201cLa Macarena\u201d in the background (sorry, you\u2019ll never unhear this).<\/p>\n<p><strong>The Kooks \u2014 Kids<\/strong>. We got two new singles from the Kooks this month, this and \u201cChicken Bone,\u201d with their new album, <em>Let\u2019s Go Sunshine<\/em>, appearing on the 31st. I don\u2019t think their sound has changed much at all, but I\u2019m fine with that \u2014 Britpop itself may be dead but it\u2019s not necessarily out of it as long as the Kooks are around.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Interpol \u2014 If You Really Love Nothing<\/strong>. Yet another album that appeared at the end of August (the 24th) that I still need to listen to, <em>Marauder<\/em> is Interpol\u2019s sixth and so far has at least given us more hooks on its singles than <em>El Pintor<\/em> had on the final record.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Cullen Omori \u2014 Happiness Reigns<\/strong>. Omori, formerly of the Smith Westerns, just released his second solo album, <em>The Diet<\/em>, which I have seen compared to early Oasis but to me sounds a lot more like the aforementioned Kooks with a little Wild Nothing thrown in. This was my favorite track off the album.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Ovlov \u2014 The Best of You<\/strong>. Stoner rock with a Pinback vibe, most notable on this two-minute track off their latest album, <em>TRU<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p><strong>The Skull \u2014 Ravenswood<\/strong>. More doom metal from three former members of Trouble, still rocking the same Sabbath-ish vibe but with a crunchier, less metal guitar sound.<\/p>\n<p><strong>High On Fire \u2014 Electric Messiah<\/strong>. Sleep returned from a 19-year hiatus this spring with a new record, <em>The Sciences<\/em>, but front man Matt Pike didn\u2019t ditch his primary band, High on Fire, whose music is hard and fast like \u201880s thrash or speed metal but with some stoner or sludge metal elements. This is the title track from their upcoming eighth album, due out October 5th.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Riverside \u2014 Vale of Tears<\/strong>. Polish progressive rock with a lot of Opeth to their sound with some shredding in the instrumental sections. Their new album <em>Wasteland<\/em>, their first since the death of founding guitarist Piotr Grudzi?ski, will drop on September 28th.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Voivod \u2014 Obsolete Beings<\/strong>. I\u2019ve spelled out my concerns about Voivod\u2019s new output before \u2014 it\u2019s hard to accept anything without the late Denis D\u2019Amour\u2019s songwriting or guitar work as \u2018real\u2019 Voivod, and their forthcoming album <em>The Wake<\/em> (September 21st) will be their first record since 2006\u2019s <em>Katorz<\/em> to exclude founding bassist Jean-Yves Th\u00e9riault. But damn does this sound like peak Voivod circa <em>Dimension Hatr\u00f6ss<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Omnium Gatherum \u2014 Refining Fire<\/strong>. Add one more album to the list of those that came out on August 31st that I need to listen to, <em>Burning Cold<\/em>, the latest record from this Finnish melodic death metal act. I did also like \u201cRest in Your Heart\u201d from the same album, the music of which wouldn\u2019t have been out of place on a pop-metal album in the late 80s with its huge synth lines and downtempo power-chord riffing.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Horrendous &#8212; The Idolater<\/strong>. I\u2019ve been a big proponent of Horrendous, a Philly-based technical\/progressive death metal band, even with their guttural, indecipherable vocals, because their music is intricate, experimental, and utterly fascinating. Their second album, 2014\u2019s <em>Ecdysis<\/em>, was like nothing I\u2019d ever heard before, and their follow-up, <em>Anareta<\/em>, wasn\u2019t far behind. The first two tracks from their fourth album, <em>Idol<\/em>, which drops September 28th, are both absolute beasts of technical work, but this song feels like their songwriting has become more sophisticated since their last album. I could do without the blast beat, though.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I believe this is the longest monthly playlist of new music I\u2019ve ever posted, running 30 songs and just shy of two hours, thanks in large part to a huge spate of new album releases in the last four weeks. Even at that I could have included more tracks and have more songs and albums [&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":[1029,359,609,979,757,852,787,261],"class_list":["post-6899","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-2018-music","tag-alternative","tag-hip-hop","tag-melodic-death-metal","tag-metal","tag-music","tag-progressive-metal","tag-rap","entry"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6899","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=6899"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6899\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6905,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6899\/revisions\/6905"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6899"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6899"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6899"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}