{"id":8425,"date":"2020-05-06T12:01:27","date_gmt":"2020-05-06T16:01:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/?p=8425"},"modified":"2020-05-06T12:01:29","modified_gmt":"2020-05-06T16:01:29","slug":"music-update-april-2020-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/2020\/05\/06\/music-update-april-2020-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Music update, April 2020."},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>A shorter-than-normal playlist this month as I think the\npandemic has played havoc with release schedules and has obviously kept many artists\nout of the studio, but there are still some strong singles in advance of albums\nalready planned for releases this summer and fall. As always, you can <a href=\"https:\/\/open.spotify.com\/playlist\/6JJMeSOvq2Qro3mDVzvNzX?si=shDqVNL_SWGJF1W-YCP42Q\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">access the playlist directly<\/a> if you can&#8217;t see the widget\nbelow.<\/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 April 2020 music update\" 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\/6JJMeSOvq2Qro3mDVzvNzX?si=Bltp_WHOR3Klo7KWZchh0A&#038;utm_source=oembed\"><\/iframe>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Iceage \u2013 Lockdown Blues<\/strong>. Yep, he&#8217;s saying &#8220;Covid\n19 lockdown blues\/the only way out is through.&#8221; There have been some\nregrettable songs written and released during the pandemic; this one is\nactually good.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Space Above, So Below \u2013 Golden<\/strong>. Space Above is former\nThe Naked &amp; Famous keyboardist Aaron Short&#8217;s new project, with So Below\n(singer Maddie North) contributing vocals on many of their songs so far, including\nthis darkly ethereal track.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Khruangbin \u2013 Time (You and I)<\/strong>. This new single from\nthe Texas-based funk\/jazz trio features extensive vocals from Laura Lee Ochoa,\na departure from their primarily instrumental work to date, and is the lead\nsingle from their third album <em>Mordechai<\/em>, due out next month.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Village of the Sun \u2013 TED. <\/strong>VotS is a new collaboration\nbetween Binker and Moses \u2013 as in Moses Boyd, whose <em>Dark Matter<\/em> is my\nfavorite album of the year so far \u2013 and Simon Ratcliffe of Basement Jaxx. This\ntrack takes its name and inspiration from a song called &#8220;Dreamship&#8221;\nby the Ted Moses Quintet, which I only know from googling.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Talk Show \u2013 Petrolhead<\/strong>. I&#8217;ve enjoyed Talk Show&#8217;s\nsnarling mix of classic post-punk sounds, more contemporary rock rhythms, and\njust a hint of the energy of dance music without heavy electronic elements.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>The Wants \u2013 Clearly a Crisis.<\/strong> The Wants are pure\npost-punk, influenced by Gang of Four and other icons of the earliest new wave\nbands, and it comes through most successfully on this track and\n&#8220;Motor&#8221; from their debut album <em>Container<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>bdrmm \u2013 Happy<\/strong>. A five-piece shoegaze band from Hull,\nbdrmm released their debut EP <em>If Not, When?<\/em> in October, and have\nreturned now with this subdued, swirling track that has some early Lush to it\nwith a more upbeat tempo.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Everything Everything \u2013 In Birdsong (Edit). <\/strong>Lead\nsinger Jonathan Higgs has described this song&#8217;s lyrics as an attempt to capture\nwhat it might have been like to be the world&#8217;s first self-aware human, although\nI find it more interesting for the highly textured keyboard layers below Higgs&#8217;\nfalsetto, crescendoing into a sort of wall of sound that seems almost tactile by\nthe end of the song.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Jake Bugg \u2013 Saviours of the City<\/strong>. Bugg seems to have\ncome back around to the Dylanesque sounds of his Mercury Prize-nominated self-titled\ndebut album, eight years later, with this second single ahead of his fourth\nalbum, which is due out later this year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>The Naked and Famous \u2013 Blinding Lights.<\/strong> TNAF&#8217;s cover\nof the Weeknd&#8217;s &#8220;Blinding Lights,&#8221; from his new album <em>After Hours<\/em>,\nbeats the original for me \u2013 not least because of Alisa Xayalith&#8217;s voice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Asylums \u2013 A Perfect Life in a Perfect World<\/strong>. The Southend\nrock quartet have produced a song that sounds like it could have been recorded\nand released in 1994, and I mean that as a high compliment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Ministry \u2013 Alert Level (Quarantine)<\/strong>. I&#8217;m not as big a\nMinistry fan as you might guess from my age and musical tastes, as I find a lot\nof Al Jourgensen&#8217;s work with the band after their shift from new wave to\nindustrial designed more to shock than to entertain. &#8220;Alert Level\n(Quarantine)&#8221; is still harsh and abrasive, but also has one of the best\nguitar riffs of any song in Ministry&#8217;s catalog.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Pure Reason Revolution \u2013 Ghosts &amp; Typhoons<\/strong>. I\ndon&#8217;t know how to categorize PRR&#8217;s music, with its peculiar mixture of\nprogressive rock, electronic, and extreme metal elements, often in songs that\nrun six to ten minutes in length, but their new album <em>Eupnea<\/em>, their\nfirst LP in a decade, has really grown on me this year thanks to songs like this\nand &#8220;Silent Genesis.&#8221;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Katatonia \u2013 The Winter of Our Passion<\/strong>. These Swedish\nprog-metallers started out as a death metal act but have shifted to clean\nvocals and doom sounds that sometimes incorporate metal aspects, but often\ndon&#8217;t \u2013 if you heard this without knowing who the artist was, I doubt you&#8217;d call\nit metal. It&#8217;s one of the most accessible things they&#8217;ve done but retains the sophistication\nof their most recent albums.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A shorter-than-normal playlist this month as I think the pandemic has played havoc with release schedules and has obviously kept many artists out of the studio, but there are still some strong singles in advance of albums already planned for releases this summer and fall. As always, you can access the playlist directly if you [&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":[1153,359,1127,852,787],"class_list":["post-8425","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-2020-in-music","tag-alternative","tag-jazz","tag-music","tag-progressive-metal","entry"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8425","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=8425"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8425\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8426,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8425\/revisions\/8426"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8425"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8425"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8425"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}