{"id":8279,"date":"2020-03-06T08:59:02","date_gmt":"2020-03-06T13:59:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/?p=8279"},"modified":"2020-03-06T08:59:07","modified_gmt":"2020-03-06T13:59:07","slug":"music-update-february-2020","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/2020\/03\/06\/music-update-february-2020\/","title":{"rendered":"Music update, February 2020."},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>February was absolutely loaded with great new music, including two albums that I think will end up on a lot of best-of-2020 lists and a bunch of new singles from artists I really like, including one I haven&#8217;t even thought about in 20 years. This post is a bit short because I have some non-work things to deal with today\/this weekend but the playlist (<a href=\"https:\/\/open.spotify.com\/playlist\/44sDcM9zFHkFIy02OAYmnv?si=ESao_kZuQVaPqBS6iq8n9Q\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" aria-label=\"here on Spotify (opens in a new tab)\">here on Spotify<\/a>) is 90 minutes and 23 songs long.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed-spotify wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-spotify wp-embed-aspect-9-16 wp-has-aspect-ratio\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<iframe title=\"Spotify Embed: Klaw&amp;apos;s February 2020 new music playlist\" style=\"border-radius: 12px\" width=\"100%\" height=\"352\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen allow=\"autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; fullscreen; picture-in-picture\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/open.spotify.com\/embed\/playlist\/44sDcM9zFHkFIy02OAYmnv?si=jC7Hf3-mQQ63FcpxQ97B4w&#038;utm_source=oembed\"><\/iframe>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Grimes \u2013 Delete Forever<\/strong>. Grimes \u2013 or c, or whatever\nname Elon Musk told her to use this week \u2013 may be a bit out there at the\nmoment, but <em>Miss Anthopocene<\/em>, her first album since 2015&#8217;s stellar <em>Art\nAngels<\/em>, is ambitious and smart and manages to be compelling even with a lot\nof tonal shifts from her prior work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Waxahatchee \u2013 Lilacs<\/strong>. This is about as close to\ncountry music as I ever get. Katie Crutchfield&#8217;s upcoming album <em>Saint Cloud<\/em>\nis apparently about her decision to get sober. This is one of the best songs\nshe&#8217;s ever done.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Tame Impala \u2013 Breathe Deeper<\/strong>. I need to listen to it\nsome more but I think <em>Slow Rush<\/em> might be my favorite Tame Impala album.\nKevin Parker really can&#8217;t help himself with the six-minute songs, though.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Soul Asylum \u2013 Got It Pretty Good<\/strong>. I really liked Soul\nAsylum up to and including <em>Grave Dancers Union<\/em>, but they went off the\nrails right after &#8220;Runaway Train&#8221; (which I never liked) became a hit.\nIt&#8217;s been 28 years since that album came out, Dave Pirner is about to turn 56,\nand this song absolutely rocks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>The Mysterines \u2013 Love&#8217;s Not Enough<\/strong>. This Wirral,\nEngland rock trio is my sleeper pick for 2020, almost entirely because of Lia Metcalfe&#8217;s\nvocals.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>San Cisco \u2013 Reasons<\/strong>. I was wondering just a few weeks\nago if we were going to hear from this Australian indie-pop trio, and here they\nare with a great track that would fit right in on pop radio in just about any\nof the last four decades.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit \u2013 Be Afraid<\/strong>. Is this\nIsbell&#8217;s first appearance on my playlists? I believe it is. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Lauren Ruth Ward \u2013 Water Sign<\/strong>. There&#8217;s something\nvaguely menacing about Ward&#8217;s vocals on many of her songs, but it plays up even\nmore over the doom-like guitars here.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Wild Nothing \u2013 The World is a Hungry Place<\/strong>. This is\nthe best song they&#8217;ve done since 2012&#8217;s <em>Nocturne<\/em>, and also a return to\nthe mood of that album. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Chromatics \u2013 TOY<\/strong>. This was a surprise single, since\nChromatics just released their first album in seven years back in October, and\nthis track wasn&#8217;t on it. There&#8217;s a serious MGMT vibe to the music under Ruth\nRadelet&#8217;s typical whispery vocals.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Working Men&#8217;s Club \u2013 White Rooms and People<\/strong>. The vocals\nhere are definitely an acquired taste, but the build from the funk guitar work\nin the verse to the synth-heavy new-wavey chorus is intoxicating.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Talk Show \u2013 Stress<\/strong>. The London post-punk quartet&#8217;s debut\nEP, <em>These People<\/em>, is due out at the end of this month.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Purity Ring \u2013 stardew<\/strong>. The Canadian duo&#8217;s first new\nsong in three years has a more upbeat melody than much of their music, which I\nthink better suits Megan James&#8217; often childlike vocal style.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Disclosure feat. Eko Roosevelt \u2013 Tondo<\/strong>. It&#8217;s a new\nsong from the Grammy-winning duo, but it&#8217;s barely more than a remix of\nCameroonian musician Roosevelt&#8217;s &#8220;Tondoho Mba,&#8221; which was released\nlast year on a compilation by the French DJ Guts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Christine and the Queens \u2013 I disappear in your arms<\/strong>. Less\nthan two years after her acclaimed album <em>Chris, <\/em>Christine put out an\nunexpected five-song EP, <em>La Vita Nuova<\/em>, featuring this track, yet\nanother pop banger with a sinister keyboard line behind a great vocal melody.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Jackie Venson \u2013 Make Me Feel<\/strong>. I found it impossible\nnot to compare this song to the Janelle Mon\u00e1e track of the same name, and think\nhow Venson shows the musical ambition I wanted Mon\u00e1e to bring to her last\nrecord. I will say the whispered &#8220;walk with him&#8221; part at the end is\nkind of creepy, though.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Glass Animals \u2013 Your Love (D\u00e9j\u00e0 Vu)<\/strong>. I either love\nGlass Animals tracks (&#8220;Life Itself&#8221;) or hate them\n(&#8220;Gooey&#8221;), but their percussion sounds are always interesting. This\ntrack is in the former category.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>MICH \u2013 Ceiling Duty<\/strong>. I know next to nothing about\nthis band other than that they&#8217;re from Amsterdam, there are four of them, and\nthis song sounds like shoegaze meets jangly college rock from the early 1990s.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Do Nothing \u2013 Fits<\/strong>. They&#8217;re not quite punk, not really\npost-punk, definitely sneering, yet still give us a nod to melody in the\nchorus.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Sl\u00f8tface \u2013 Passport<\/strong>. <em>Sorry for the late reply<\/em>\nis a bit more uneven than their debut but still has a few pop-punk standout\ntracks like this one.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Throwing Muses \u2013 Dark Blue<\/strong>. A bit of an obligatory\ninclusion, although I&#8217;m impressed that Kristen Hersh is still churning out\nmusic this dark nearly 40 years into her career.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Aktor \u2013 Bad Mirror<\/strong>. Very New Wave of British Heavy\nMetal here, although the rest of the album (<em>Placebo<\/em>) can veer into harsher\nterritory.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Toundra \u2013 VI. Akt<\/strong>. Toundra&#8217;s instrumental,\nprogressive metal is usually interesting but they&#8217;re asking a lot with their\nnew album, <em>Das Cabinet des Dr. Caligari<\/em>, a series of six ten-minute\ntracks that often slow the tempo down well beyond what we expect of this style\nof music.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>February was absolutely loaded with great new music, including two albums that I think will end up on a lot of best-of-2020 lists and a bunch of new singles from artists I really like, including one I haven&#8217;t even thought about in 20 years. This post is a bit short because I have some non-work [&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":[1153,359,757,852,787],"class_list":["post-8279","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-2020-in-music","tag-alternative","tag-metal","tag-music","tag-progressive-metal","entry"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8279","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=8279"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8279\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8280,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8279\/revisions\/8280"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8279"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8279"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8279"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}