{"id":8676,"date":"2020-10-03T12:40:27","date_gmt":"2020-10-03T16:40:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/?p=8676"},"modified":"2020-10-03T12:40:29","modified_gmt":"2020-10-03T16:40:29","slug":"music-update-september-2020","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/2020\/10\/03\/music-update-september-2020\/","title":{"rendered":"Music update, September 2020."},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Whew, that was the most loaded month of the year for new music, perhaps as bands and labels have accepted that we&#8217;re not getting back to anything like &#8220;normal&#8221; until 2021, at the least. There&#8217;s over 90 minutes of new music here, including four metal tracks at the end (more than I usually have, but it was a better month on that front as well). If you can&#8217;t see the Spotify widget below you can <a href=\"https:\/\/open.spotify.com\/playlist\/7HG5qR9HyRN5VqWXYMdxGj?si=eES7l3DPTLap2eQaksSXmw\">access the playlist here<\/a>.<\/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 September 2020 new 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\/7HG5qR9HyRN5VqWXYMdxGj?si=abj7CGWZRpmDmyYRFfIzYQ&#038;utm_source=oembed\"><\/iframe>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>SAULT \u2013 Free.<\/strong> Do we still not know who SAULT are? The just-released <em>Untitled (Rise)<\/em> is the band&#8217;s fourth album in thirteen months, and once again is full of funk and soul tracks laced with strongly political lyrics. They&#8217;ve put out so much music I have a hard time keeping up with specific tracks, but this track might be my favorite so far, and the album is their best yet.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Public Enemy featuring Nas, Rapsody, Black Thought, ?uestlove, YG, and Jahi \u2013 Fight the Power: Remix 2020. <\/strong>This should be terrible, but it&#8217;s not, probably because Chuck D wisely gives up the mic to several other MCs, most of them younger and better rappers than he is right now. The message is what you&#8217;d expect, but it hits harder because of the voices delivering it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Prince \u2013 I Need a Man. <\/strong>Prince&#8217;s estate released this previously unheard song, which he wrote for the Hookers and later wanted to use for Vanity 6, as part of their mammoth remaster\/reissue of <em>Sign O&#8217; The Times<\/em>. Prince released very few tracks this good after his name change and the end of his contract with Warner Bros. I hope there&#8217;s more, since we all know Prince recorded about a billion songs he never released during his lifetime.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Ghost of Vroom 2 \u2013 Rona Pollona.<\/strong> That&#8217;s Mike Doughty, and this is the closest thing to a Soul Coughing song he&#8217;s made since that seminal quartet broke up after <em>El Oso<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Arab Strap \u2013 The Turning of Our Bones.<\/strong> I thought Arab Strap was more of a quiet, indie-folk sort of band, but this new track, their first since their last album dropped in 2005, is dark, electronic, and, more in keeping with their prior output, about sex.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Zeal &amp; Ardor \u2013 Vigil<\/strong>. Z&amp;A put out two songs in early September, this and &#8220;I Can&#8217;t Breathe,&#8221; both directly aimed at the scourge of police killing unarmed Black Americans with stripped-down backing music with fewer metal elements to it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Everything Everything \u2013 Big Climb<\/strong>. <em>RE-ANIMATOR<\/em> dropped on September 11<sup>th<\/sup>, although by that point I&#8217;d already heard half the album from various singles and early releases. This is the best of the remaining tracks, with their normal frenetic combination of fast-sung lyrics and heavy synth work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Black Honey \u2013 Run For Cover<\/strong>. This is Black Honey&#8217;s second new single this year, after &#8220;Beaches,&#8221; so I assume there&#8217;s a new album coming soon. I loved their self-titled debut, which was full of great power-pop hooks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Porridge Radio \u2013 7 Seconds<\/strong>. This new-new-wave track has an intense feeling of desperation to it that elevates it to something more than just another very catchy rock song with a good synth line.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Sunflower Bean \u2013 Moment in the Sun<\/strong>. I&#8217;ve been on Sunflower Bean&#8217;s wavelength pretty much from the start and loved their 2019 EP <em>King of the Dudes<\/em>, so this one-off single, which has a summery vibe that feels like the soundtrack to a walk on the beach, is right in my wheelhouse.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Cut Copy \u2013 Like Breaking Glass<\/strong>. This track is very obviously Cut Copy, but also reminds me quite a bit of St. Lucia&#8217;s first album or his song &#8220;Dancing on Glass,&#8221; which I assume is some sort of subliminal connection in my brain because of their similar titles. Anyway, this is a perfectly adequate Cut Copy song, not &#8220;Need You Know&#8221; or &#8220;Black Rainbows&#8221; but good enough for my purposes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Django Django \u2013 Spirals<\/strong>. The Djangos&#8217; first new track since they released an album and an EP back in 2018 is more of the same, as &#8220;Spirals&#8221; could easily have fit on <em>Marble Skies <\/em>or<em> Born Under Saturn<\/em> as one of either album&#8217;s singles.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Of Monsters and Men \u2013 Visitor<\/strong>. Unlike most good OM&amp;M songs, this one is driven more by its music than by Nana&#8217;s vocals, which are understated here.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Sprints \u2013 The Cheek<\/strong>. The driving bass line at the start of this track reminds me of Romeo Void&#8217;s &#8220;Never Say Never,&#8221; of early Killing Joke, even a bit of Joy Division, but with the strident vocals of Karla Chubb. The Dublin quartet have said contemporary Irish punk band Fontaines DC are an inspiration, and you can hear that influence here as well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Bartees Strange \u2013 Mustang<\/strong>. A reader recommendation from last month, Bartees Strange is a Next Big Thing, a huge fan of the National who sounds quite a bit like the Hold Steady on this track from his debut album, <em>Live Forever<\/em>, which just came out on October 2.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>The Aubreys \u2013 Smoke Bomb<\/strong>. That&#8217;s Finn Wolfhard&#8217;s new band, since Calpurnia broke up last November.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Courting \u2013 David Byrne&#8217;s Badside<\/strong>. This new Liverpudlian post-punk quartet look like they&#8217;re barely out of middle school, let alone old enough to know who David Byrne is, although the lyrics have nothing to do with him and are instead an indictment of what the band call &#8220;pub culture.&#8221;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Mourn \u2013 Men<\/strong>. As much press as the Spanish band Hinds gets, Mourn is just better. Both bands comprise only women, but Mourn&#8217;s three members are superior musicians and have shown musical and lyrical growth over their three albums. This is their second single of 2020, so I presume there&#8217;s another LP in the works.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>LA WITCH \u2013 True Believers<\/strong>. This is a holdover from last month that I somehow forgot to put on the August playlist, but LA WITCH&#8217;s sophomore album <em>Play With Fire<\/em> would be in my top ten for the year so far.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Pallbearer \u2013 The Quicksand of Existing<\/strong>. Is this Pallbearer&#8217;s most uptempo song? The American doom stalwarts will release their newest album <em>Forgotten Days<\/em> on October 23<sup>rd<\/sup>, and this muscular track is dark and gothic but it&#8217;s got more in common with Kyuss\/QotSA than true doom metal \u2013 and now it&#8217;s my favorite Pallbearer track.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Carcass \u2013 The Long and Winding Bier Road<\/strong>. Carcass&#8217; new album has been pushed back, probably to 2021, so instead they&#8217;re releasing an EP, <em>Despicable<\/em>, of tracks that didn&#8217;t make the latest album.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Dark Tranquility \u2013 Phantom Days<\/strong>. One of the pioneers of the Gothenburg melodic death metal sound, Dark Tranquility will release their eleventh LP, <em>Moment<\/em>, in November. The guitar work and melody here are both superb if you can deal with the death growls.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Vio-Lence \u2013 California \u00dcber Alles<\/strong>. Yes, it&#8217;s a cover of the Dead Kennedys song, but also interesting that it&#8217;s the first new material Vio-Lence, one of the more significant Bay Area thrash acts of the late &#8217;80s, have released since 1993.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Napalm Death \u2013 Amoral. <\/strong>I have talked about Napalm Death more than I&#8217;ve ever listened to their music, really, as their early stuff, which practically defined the genre of grindcore, was way too extreme for me. Their sound has evolved over the last thirty-plus years, and their sixteenth album, <em>Throes of Joy in the Jaws of Defeatism<\/em>, sees them working across a range of metal genres and even going into no-wave\/post-punk territory, although you&#8217;ll always have to deal with Barney Greenway&#8217;s vocals.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Whew, that was the most loaded month of the year for new music, perhaps as bands and labels have accepted that we&#8217;re not getting back to anything like &#8220;normal&#8221; until 2021, at the least. There&#8217;s over 90 minutes of new music here, including four metal tracks at the end (more than I usually have, but [&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":[1153,359,1191,979,757,852,261],"class_list":["post-8676","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-2020-in-music","tag-alternative","tag-hip-hop-2","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\/8676","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=8676"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8676\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8677,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8676\/revisions\/8677"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8676"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8676"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8676"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}