{"id":9272,"date":"2021-12-02T08:00:00","date_gmt":"2021-12-02T13:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/?p=9272"},"modified":"2021-12-01T21:39:25","modified_gmt":"2021-12-02T02:39:25","slug":"music-update-november-2021","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/2021\/12\/02\/music-update-november-2021\/","title":{"rendered":"Music update, November 2021."},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>I lowered the bar a little bit this month to make the playlist a more suitable length, as it seemed like the tide of new releases finally slowed up a bit as we approach the end of the year. I&#8217;ll post best of 2021 album and song lists later this month, probably the week of the 13<sup>th<\/sup> but possibly the week after that, depending on how busy I am with prospect calls. As always, you can <a href=\"https:\/\/open.spotify.com\/playlist\/5jAcJrPgi1A93gk0XdqUAW?si=e0c8be1cdda94a7c\">find the playlist here<\/a> if you can&#8217;t see the Spotify widget below.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-spotify wp-block-embed-spotify wp-embed-aspect-21-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<iframe title=\"Spotify Embed: Klaw&amp;apos;s November 2021 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\/5jAcJrPgi1A93gk0XdqUAW?si=f16fef8505b746de&#038;utm_source=oembed\"><\/iframe>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Charli XCX featuring Christine and the Queens &amp; Caroline Polachek \u2013 New Shapes.<\/strong> This is hands-down one of the best pop songs I&#8217;ve heard this year. I&#8217;m not a big Charli XCX fan, but she chose the right collaborators on this track, and each of them gets a distinctive verse to show off their vocal skills.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Bruno Mars and Anderson .Paak \u2013 Fly As Me.<\/strong> I didn&#8217;t love the <em>Silk Sonic<\/em> album as much as I expected to, but this song is a perfect mix of &#8217;70s funk and &#8217;80s R&amp;B. Paak sure sounds a lot like Skee-Lo on that second verse, though.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Foals \u2013 Wake Me Up.<\/strong> These guys are good for one solid banger every album, but singer\/guitarist Yannis Philippakis has promised that the next LP will be more rave-influenced like this track is, so gird your loins.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>CHVRCHES \u2013 Screaming.<\/strong> The &#8220;director&#8217;s cut&#8221; of <em>Screen Violence<\/em> adds three more tracks and runs nearly an hour; this is the best of the additional songs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>The War on Drugs \u2013 Harmonia&#8217;s Dream.<\/strong> <em>I Don&#8217;t Live Here Anymore<\/em> is my favorite TWoD album, and it seems like the critical consensus is that it&#8217;s their best. I still think the songs are too long, but that&#8217;s just who they are. There&#8217;s just more <em>here<\/em> this time around: stronger melodies, more energy, more prominent drum and bass lines, even some better lead guitar work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Chime School \u2013 Radical Leisure.<\/strong> Chime School is San Francisco musician Andy Pastalaniec, mixing jangle-pop sounds of the 1980s and some elements of Britpop. It&#8217;s sunny and bright and takes me back a few decades every time he opens a verse with &#8220;Tell me what it&#8217;s like\u2026&#8221;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Potty Mouth \u2013 Not Going Anywhere.<\/strong> An ironic song title for a band that just announced they&#8217;re breaking up. At least they&#8217;re going out with a few bangers on this final EP.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Gang of Youths \u2013 tend the garden.<\/strong> I&#8217;ve never heard a band remind me so much of U2 without explicitly sounding like U2. There&#8217;s a little something in the singer&#8217;s laconic delivery that reminds me of Bono&#8217;s quieter moments, but otherwise I can&#8217;t pinpoint a specific connection. I&#8217;m a fan based on their last few singles.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>English Teacher \u2013 Good Grief. <\/strong>This Leeds quartet is rather unapologetically English, with that certain style of sing-talked vocals and witty lyrics by lead singer Lily Fontaine. I&#8217;m kind of a sucker for bands like this when the lyrics are strong.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>The Wombats \u2013 Everything I Love Is Going to Die. <\/strong>A bit morbid, I suppose, but this is how Matthew Murphy rolls.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Bob Vylan \u2013 GDP.<\/strong> I am not a fan of this kind of artist name, riffing on a more famous musician but changing one letter or sound, but this rap song with metal riffs behind the rhyming is actually pretty strong, and I can&#8217;t argue with the sentiment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Frank Turner \u2013 Miranda.<\/strong> This song is based on the true story of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/music\/2021\/nov\/25\/frank-turner-on-reconciling-with-his-trans-parent-miranda-is-a-really-nice-person-my-dad-wasnt\">Turner&#8217;s parent Miranda<\/a>, who came out as transgender at the age of 72.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Bloc Party \u2013 Traps.<\/strong> They&#8217;re back \u2013 the band&#8217;s sixth album, <em>Alpha Games<\/em>, their first since 2016, is due out in April. &#8220;Banquet&#8221; is a forever track for me, so anything they do in that vein is right up my alley.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Yard Act \u2013 Payday.<\/strong> Yard Act are another of those post-punk sing-talk British bands I just can&#8217;t seem to get enough of. It doesn&#8217;t hurt when the song beneath the lyrics has a solid groove to it, and the chorus has me shouting along. &#8220;We all make the same sound when we&#8217;re mowed down&#8221; is grim, but rather well sums up our dystopian experience.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Robert Plant &amp; Alison Krauss \u2013 It Don&#8217;t Bother Me. <\/strong>Plant and Krauss&#8217;s second album together, <em>Raise the Roof<\/em>, came out this month \u2026 and it&#8217;s kind of tame. I was hoping for more of Krauss&#8217;s bluegrass roots to show through, but it&#8217;s a muted affair throughout.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Cate Le Bon \u2013 Moderation.<\/strong> I&#8217;m contractually obligated to put a Welsh artist on the playlist whenever possible. Le Bon&#8217;s sixth album, <em>Pompeii<\/em>, comes out on February 4<sup>th<\/sup>. Wikipedia calls her music &#8220;baroque pop;&#8221; I hear a lot of Roxy Music here.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Aeon Station \u2013 Fade. <\/strong>Aeon Station is three-fourths of the indie band the Wrens,butall I hear here is Arcade Fire, in a positive way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>IDLES \u2013 The Wheel.<\/strong> Critics love IDLES; I don&#8217;t entirely get it. I don&#8217;t hear the hooks or the energy I want from a punk band. This song, however, has all of that. I&#8217;m in by the end of the first measure.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Tony Iommi \u2013 Scent of Dark.<\/strong> The iconic metal guitarist returns with this menacing, instrumental doom track that always sounds like it&#8217;s about to turn into a vocal track, like there&#8217;s a verse just around the next beat, but instead it sludges forward with Iommi&#8217;s trademark detuned riffing. Not bad for a 73-year-old who&#8217;s been playing with prosthetic fingertips for a half-century. Iommi&#8217;s former band, Jethro Tull, also released a new song this past week, and Ian Anderson&#8217;s voice hasn&#8217;t held up as well as Iommi&#8217;s fret hand.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Porcupine Tree \u2013 Harridan.<\/strong> I assumed Porcupine Tree was done, at least as a recording act, but their eleventh album <em>Closure\/Continuation<\/em> comes on next June. It&#8217;ll be the prog-rock band&#8217;s first record in 12 years. I mostly know of them through their association with Opeth; he co-produced <em>Blackwater Park<\/em>, which I would probably rank as the best metal album of all time, certainly the best extreme metal album, as well as <em>Deliverance <\/em>and<em> Damnation<\/em>, all of which showed Opeth moving in a more progressive musical direction.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Animals as Leaders \u2013 The Problem of Other Minds. <\/strong>This instrumental trio&#8217;s album <em>The Joy of Motion<\/em> made <a href=\"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/2014\/12\/11\/top-14-albums-of-2014\/\">my top albums of 2014 list<\/a>, but they&#8217;ve only released one album in the intervening seven years. This track and its B-side Monomyth (are B-sides even really a thing any more? The term seems like an anachronism) are the first from the band&#8217;s <em>Parrhesia<\/em>, due out on March 25<sup>th<\/sup>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Cynic \u2013 In a Multiverse Where Atoms Sing.<\/strong> Another band I assumed was through, with co-founder Sean Reinert and longtime bassist Sean Malone dying in 2020, although Reinert had left Cynic in 2015. Anyway, Cynic just released <em>Ascension Codes<\/em>, its first album in seven years, last week. It&#8217;s just their fourth album in over 30 years under the name, with singer-guitarist Paul Masvidal the only remaining founding member.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Mastodon \u2013 Sickle and Peace. <\/strong><em>Hushed and Grim <\/em>cameout early in November and it&#8217;s a mammoth record, running almost an hour and a half, with some incredible guitar work and huge changes in style and tone. I almost went with &#8220;Gobblers of Dregs,&#8221; but that track is eight and a half minutes long, and I prefer the guitar riff in this song anyway.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Toundra \u2013 El Odio, Parte II. <\/strong>One more instrumental metal track to wrap things up this month, this one another monster track from this Spanish metal act, whose sixth album <em>Hex<\/em> comes out on January 14<sup>th<\/sup>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I lowered the bar a little bit this month to make the playlist a more suitable length, as it seemed like the tide of new releases finally slowed up a bit as we approach the end of the year. I&#8217;ll post best of 2021 album and song lists later this month, probably the week of [&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":[1219,359,167,757,852,787],"class_list":["post-9272","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-2021-in-music","tag-alternative","tag-indie","tag-metal","tag-music","tag-progressive-metal","entry"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9272","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=9272"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9272\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9275,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9272\/revisions\/9275"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9272"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9272"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9272"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}