{"id":9765,"date":"2023-02-07T10:54:08","date_gmt":"2023-02-07T15:54:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/?p=9765"},"modified":"2023-02-07T13:33:51","modified_gmt":"2023-02-07T18:33:51","slug":"music-update-january-2023","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/2023\/02\/07\/music-update-january-2023\/","title":{"rendered":"Music update, January 2023."},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Sorry this is a bit late, but I\u2019ve been writing a few thousand words a day for my regular job. January turned out to be a fertile month for new single and even album releases, more so than usual (I think), so I\u2019ve got a little catching up to do. If you can\u2019t see the widget below, you can access <a href=\"https:\/\/open.spotify.com\/playlist\/2ZitmAtD1uLR04Cfa50YkO?si=a2bbbed3b293496a\">this month\u2019s Spotify playlist here<\/a>.<\/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 January 2023 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\/2ZitmAtD1uLR04Cfa50YkO?si=6319f4c36d8c4ebe&#038;utm_source=oembed\"><\/iframe>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Young Fathers \u2013 Rice.<\/strong> <em>Heavy Heavy<\/em> just dropped on Friday, so I haven\u2019t had a chance to dive into it yet, but the reviews are ebullient, and I\u2019ve loved two of the three lead singles. I don\u2019t even know how you can categorize their music, other than that it\u2019s mad and often brilliant.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Belle and Sebastian \u2013 I Don\u2019t Know What You See in Me.<\/strong> A Scottish bent to the playlist, at least at the start. Belle &amp; Sebastian returned with their second album inside of a year with <em>Late Developers<\/em>, which is poppier than last year\u2019s <em>A Bit of Previous<\/em> and more consistently upbeat. I also loved \u201cSo in the Moment\u201d and nearly put that on the playlist instead.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>M\u00e5neskin feat. Tom Morello \u2013 Gossip. <\/strong>I know M\u00e5neskin aren\u2019t very admired by critics, but this track, with Morello on guitar, is an absolute banger and was stuck in my head for more than a week after I first heard it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>The Clockworks \u2013 Blood on the Mind. <\/strong>This Irish quartet signed with Alan McGee\u2019s Creation Records, the label that signed Oasis back in the early 1990s, in 2019, releasing a bunch of singles and one EP since then but still no proper album. They\u2019re often described in the British press as punk or post-punk but this tack isn\u2019t as hard-edged as those genres, with the high energy of punk but a better groove in the bass and drums.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>The Lottery Winners \u2013 Worry.<\/strong> These guys can\u2019t miss, at least when it comes to crafting big pop hooks. Their second album, <em>Anxiety Replacement Therapy<\/em>, is due out on April 28<sup>th<\/sup>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>The Rills \u2013 Falling Apart. <\/strong>ThisLincolnshire band just missed my top 100 from last year with \u201cLandslide,\u201d but I\u2019m going to guess this one will end up on my top 100 for 2023, as it has an even better hook and is the kind of English indie-rock that, for whatever reason, just speaks to me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>The Empty Page \u2013 Dry Ice.<\/strong> This post-punk duo from Manchester released their first album, <em>Unfolding<\/em>, back in 2016, but their follow-up has been delayed several times since then and is due out sometime this year. \u201cDry Ice\u201d is the first single from it, released in November, with the next single due out March 3rd.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Etta Marcus \u2013 Smile for the Camera.<\/strong> Marcus is a 21-year-old singer\/songwriter from London who gets compared to Lana del Rey and who I think would appeal to fans of Phoebe Bridgers and Lucy Dacus, except I\u2019m not a fan of any of those three singers but I love this song from Marcus.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Arlo Parks \u2013 Weightless.<\/strong> Auto-include whenever Parks puts out a new single. There\u2019s a slight shift here with an electronic element in the backing music here, the first single ahead of her sophomore album, <em>My Soft Machine<\/em>, due out May 26<sup>th<\/sup>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Bree Runway w\/Stormzy \u2013 Pick Your Poison.<\/strong> This came from Runway\u2019s five-track December EP <em>WOAH WHAT A BLUR!<\/em>, mostly written by Stormzy, and it\u2019s a very sweet and soulful ballad about heartbreak, a big departure from her usual sound.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Obey Robots \u2013 Porcupine.<\/strong> This song showed up on my Spotify Release Radar because it\u2019s tagged as a collaboration with Ned\u2019s Atomic Dustbin, but it\u2019s actually a new project from Ned\u2019s guitarist Gareth \u201cRat\u201d Pring along with singer Laura Kidd. There\u2019s a definite Ned\u2019s vibe to the guitar work here, though.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>White Reaper \u2013 Pink Slip.<\/strong> Another January album release, <em>Asking for a Ride <\/em>is the fourth full-length from these Kentucky garage-punk-pop stalwarts, although it\u2019s just 29:21 long so isn\u2019t that almost an EP? Anyway, I don\u2019t think they\u2019ve ever released a single I didn\u2019t like.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Screaming Females \u2013 Brass Bell. <\/strong>Apparently I should know this group already, as Wikipedia tells me <em>Spin <\/em>named their singer\/guitarist Melissa Paternoster the 77<sup>th<\/sup> greatest guitarist of all time back in 2012, which\u2026 seems aggressive? Anyway, not knowing them is on me, and this song has a great guitar hook and an earworm in the chorus.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>shame \u2013 Six-Pack. <\/strong>shame&#8217;s third album, <em>Food for Worms<\/em>, comes out on February 24<sup>th<\/sup>, with this track and last year\u2019s \u201cFingers of Steel,\u201d this one in a more experimental vein with a frenetic energy that carries it through some of the discord in the guitars.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>The New Pornographers \u2013 Really Really Light.<\/strong> This song is \u2026 fine. Not peak NP, not <em>Twin Cinema <\/em>or even <em>Brill Bruisers<\/em>, but it\u2019s a perfectly cromulent New Pornographers song.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Black Honey \u2013 Up Against It.<\/strong> <em>A Fistful of Peaches<\/em>, Black Honey\u2019s third album, is due out on March 17<sup>th<\/sup>, with this the fourth single ahead of its release (\u201cCharlie Bronson,\u201d \u201cOut of My Mind,\u201d \u201cHeavy\u201d), further indicating their shift to a darker sound than they started out with on the <em>All My Pride<\/em> EP and their self-titled debut album.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Rival Sons \u2013 Nobody Wants to Die.<\/strong> Have you seen that Chevy Silverado commercial with what sounds like a blatant Led Zeppelin ripoff for its music? I assumed it was Greta van Fleet, but it was actually a track from Rival Sons from about a decade ago. This is their newest track, and it\u2019s in that same blues-rock vein but nowhere near as derivative.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Tribulation \u2013 Axis Mundi.<\/strong> Melodic death metal that\u2019s actually just traditional heavy metal with death-metal vocals \u2013 this track, and really a lot of Tribulation\u2019s music, derives far more from early British heavy metal and doom bands like Sabbath and Maiden than from death-metal forebears like Death or At the Gates.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Sorry this is a bit late, but I\u2019ve been writing a few thousand words a day for my regular job. January turned out to be a fertile month for new single and even album releases, more so than usual (I think), so I\u2019ve got a little catching up to do. If you can\u2019t see the [&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":[1328,167,979,852],"class_list":["post-9765","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-2023-in-music","tag-indie","tag-melodic-death-metal","tag-music","entry"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9765","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=9765"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9765\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9768,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9765\/revisions\/9768"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9765"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9765"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9765"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}