{"id":7480,"date":"2019-03-04T08:00:51","date_gmt":"2019-03-04T13:00:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/?p=7480"},"modified":"2019-03-03T22:42:23","modified_gmt":"2019-03-04T03:42:23","slug":"music-update-february-2019","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/2019\/03\/04\/music-update-february-2019\/","title":{"rendered":"Music update, February 2019."},"content":{"rendered":"<p>February is short enough as it is, and I delivered my last music update a bit late due to the prospect rankings, so I held off on this one until we got one more spate of new releases on March 1st, so the post would at least get to an hour&#8217;s worth of new music (without counting the ten-minute track near the end, because that&#8217;s cheating). As always, you can <a href=\"https:\/\/open.spotify.com\/user\/keithlaw1\/playlist\/1r1VS6IU6uQVEvzdpmGHEd?si=hiK_MQzdSJy28IDEpBwiRw\" target=\"_blank\">access the Spotify playlist here<\/a> if you can&#8217;t see the widget below.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/open.spotify.com\/embed\/user\/keithlaw1\/playlist\/1r1VS6IU6uQVEvzdpmGHEd\" width=\"300\" height=\"380\" frameborder=\"0\" allowtransparency=\"true\" allow=\"encrypted-media\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><strong>The Amazons \u2013 Mother<\/strong>. The Amazons&#8217; self-titled debut album hit the British top ten in 2017; I thought &#8220;Black Magic&#8221; was outstanding, powered by a huge, muscular guitar riff, but the rest of the album was tepid by comparison and didn&#8217;t carry that sound forward. This new single is also driven by a rich, heavy guitar riff.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Foals \u2013 On the Luna<\/strong>. Foals put out two singles from their upcoming album, <em>Everything Not Saved Will Be Lost \u2013 Part 1<\/em>, in the last month; this one is tremendous, peak Foals, heavy and dark and still catchy and danceable, like the lead single &#8220;Exits,&#8221; although the third single &#8220;Sunday&#8221; is gloomier and slower, so not quite my cup of tea.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Ten F\u00e9 \u2013 Here Again<\/strong>. More melodic, &#8217;70s-influenced, slightly soft rock from the London-based quintet, who&#8217;ll drop their second album, <em>Future Perfect, Present Tense<\/em>, this Friday.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Sundara Karma \u2013 Little Smart Houses<\/strong>. That little record-skip stop in the verses is \u2026 an acquired taste? Affected? The chorus is great, though, a great harbinger for the English art-rockers&#8217; second album, <em>Ulfilas&#8217; Alphabet<\/em>, which just came out on Friday.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Metric \u2013 Risk<\/strong>. I love Emily Haines&#8217; voice, but Metric&#8217;s music as a whole has been a mixed bag for me, and some of their strongest melodies have paired with their weakest lyrics \u2013 and it seems like Haines&#8217; voice is more natural when the vocals are more like another instrument as opposed to a way to tell a story or recite a poem to music. Perhaps that&#8217;s just me, but I&#8217;ll put &#8220;Risk&#8221; in the yes column.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Little Simz \u2013 Offence<\/strong>. Little Simz, a British rapper of Nigerian descent, just released her third album, <em>GREY Area<\/em>, her first new music since she toured with Gorillaz after their <em>Humans<\/em> album came out. &#8220;Offence&#8221; was the lead single and first appeared back in September, with &#8220;Boss&#8221; (not quite as good) and &#8220;Selfish&#8221; (good, but with some problematic lyrics) following as singles before the album dropped.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Hatchie \u2013 Without a Blush<\/strong>. Hatchie has barely missed since she started putting out singles late in 2017, and she just announced her debut album, <em>Keepsake<\/em>, will come out on June 21st. I keep seeing references to her as &#8220;dream pop&#8221; and to her speaking of Mazzy Star, the Cocteau Twins, and My Bloody Valentine as major influences, but she crafts stronger melodies than any of those three and I still hear reminders everywhere in her music of the earliest stuff from the Cranberries.<\/p>\n<p><strong>The Mowgli&#8217;s \u2013 Talk About It<\/strong>. This is the fourth song by this six-piece American alternative act that I&#8217;ve included on a monthly playlist, and definitely the best since the first single I heard by the group, 2013&#8217;s &#8220;San Francisco&#8221; \u2013 similarly upbeat and catchy and cute without being cloying.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Sunflower Bean \u2013 Fear City<\/strong>. I think I&#8217;ve now included all four songs from Sunflower Bean&#8217;s new EP <em>King of the Dudes<\/em>, since they&#8217;re all great. They&#8217;ve become one of my favorite bands going between this and last year&#8217;s album <em>Twentytwo in Blue<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Man of Moon \u2013 Skin<\/strong>. Scottish duo who appear to have listened to every New Order song ever recorded have put out a song that sounds a lot like vintage New Order.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Reignwolf \u2013 Black and Red<\/strong>. I felt like Reignwolf was a &#8216;buzz&#8217; band a few years ago, but had never panned out; they were indeed hyped by the music press around 2013-14, and are just now getting around to releasing an actual album, <em>Hear Me Out<\/em>, which came out on March 1st, six years after their first single appeared. Fronted by Canadian guitarist Jordan Cook, Reignwolf does blues-heavy rock, with dramatic tonal shifts throughout this slithering lead single.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Ex Hex \u2013 Rainbow Shiner<\/strong>. Ex Hex, led by former Helium founder Mary Timony, released their debut album <em>Rips<\/em> in 2014 but then largely vanished until they put out a few singles last fall and this winter, all ahead of their upcoming second album <em>It&#8217;s Real<\/em>, due out March 22nd.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Tim Bowness and Pete Hammill \u2013 It&#8217;s the World<\/strong>. That&#8217;s Pete Hammill of Van der Graaf Generator, a band formed six years before I was born, joining Bowness, an English experimental musician who has been part of the rather obscure, long-running duo No-Man. (They had a top 40 dance track in the U.S. in 1994, &#8220;Taking It Like a Man,&#8221; of which I have zero memory.) I&#8217;m mostly drawn to that doom-metal guitar riff that seems stylistically out of place but that perfectly fits the song&#8217;s atmosphere.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Wheel \u2013 Tyrant<\/strong>. Yes, the song is ten minutes long; the Finnish progressive quartet&#8217;s debut album, <em>Moving Backwards<\/em>, just dropped, and has seven songs running a total of 48 minutes, with three tracks clocking in at nine-plus.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Saint Vitus \u2013 12 Years in the Tomb<\/strong>. Saint Vitus is one of the most influential bands in both American metal and within the doom metal subgenre, forming in 1979 and taking their name from a Black Sabbath song, but they were never terribly popular and haven&#8217;t released anything new since 2012, so this song&#8217;s appearance was a surprise. Even more surprising is the return of original lead singer Scott Reagers, whose last appearance on wax with Saint Vitus came in 1995.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Alexisonfire \u2013 Familiar Drugs<\/strong>. Presented more out of newsworthiness than any endorsement of the song, which I think is just fair. This is the Canadian post-hardcore\/extreme metal band&#8217;s first release of any new material since 2010.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Children of Bodom \u2013 Platitudes and Barren Words<\/strong>. These Finnish melodic death metal stalwarts release their latest album, <em>Hexed<\/em>, this upcoming Friday, and continue to show they can still dance on the edge of mainstream rock without falling into the abyss (as with In Flames, whose latest album has a bunch of great riffs and embarrassing vocals and choruses).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>February is short enough as it is, and I delivered my last music update a bit late due to the prospect rankings, so I held off on this one until we got one more spate of new releases on March 1st, so the post would at least get to an hour&#8217;s worth of new music [&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":[1085,359,1096,979,757,852,261],"class_list":["post-7480","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-2019-in-music","tag-alternative","tag-doom-metal","tag-melodic-death-metal","tag-metal","tag-music","tag-rap","entry"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7480","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=7480"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7480\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7482,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7480\/revisions\/7482"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7480"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7480"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7480"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}