{"id":9951,"date":"2023-08-18T08:00:00","date_gmt":"2023-08-18T12:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/?p=9951"},"modified":"2023-08-17T20:49:06","modified_gmt":"2023-08-18T00:49:06","slug":"music-update-july-2023","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/2023\/08\/18\/music-update-july-2023\/","title":{"rendered":"Music update, July 2023."},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>So this playlist has been done for two weeks, but I took PTO right after the deadline to go to Gen Con, rest and recharge, and do some family stuff, and I barely wrote a word while I was off other than my huge Gen Con wrapup. I\u2019m pushing this one out because my August playlist is already at 19 songs and we have two Fridays left. Therefore, enjoy this list of songs released between 18 and roughly 50 days ago. As always, you can <a href=\"https:\/\/open.spotify.com\/playlist\/5oygGswz0Qv2DTgForhC3j?si=9dcb4bc3a3484926\">click here<\/a> if you can\u2019t 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 July 2023 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\/5oygGswz0Qv2DTgForhC3j?si=733b60fec5d84f8f&#038;utm_source=oembed\"><\/iframe>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>The Dinner Party \u2013 Sinner.<\/strong> This indie-rock quintet from London seems like they should be based in L.A. in the early 1980s, or maybe Brooklyn in the early aughts, like a blend of Sparks and Lucius.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Charly Bliss \u2013 You Don\u2019t Even Know Me Anymore. <\/strong>CB\u2019s first new track in three years, with their sophomore album <em>Young Enough <\/em>already four years old, is welcome news. I haven\u2019t seen word yet of a new LP from this grunge-pop quartet.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Miles Kane \u2013 Wonder.<\/strong> Kane is half of the Last Shadow Puppets (with Alex Turner) and was the lead singer of the Rascals, but he\u2019s recorded under his own name since the latter group broke up in 2009. There\u2019s some Stone Roses to the guitar work here on this new single, released ahead of his latest album <em>One Man Band<\/em>, out August 4<sup>th<\/sup>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Brad \u2013 Hey Now What\u2019s the Problem.<\/strong> A funkier track from Brad\u2019s final album, <em>In the Moment that You\u2019re Born<\/em>, which features the last vocals from Shawn Smith. Smith died in April of 2019, and you know his work \u2013 he was also the lead singer for the band Pigeonhead, whose \u201cBattle Flag\u201d earned one of the great all-time remixes from the Lo-Fidelity All Stars.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Sampha \u2013 Spirit 2.0.<\/strong> Mercury Prize winner Sampha has one of the most distinctive voices in music right now \u2013 in a good way \u2013 and often elevates otherwise uninteresting material, but here he\u2019s got a quick, frenetic track with vocals seem off-balance in a way that keeps your ear tuned in.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Metric \u2013 Just the Once. <\/strong>Not their best, far from their worst. I\u2019m okay with Metric dialing it back just to write a fun dance-pop song every now and then.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Courting \u2013 Flex.<\/strong> Wikipedia calls them \u201cart punk,\u201d maybe because they have proper British accents. This is definitely poppier than that, but smarter than pop-punk. They feel like a band on the come, maybe one full album away from the big leagues. Also, I think that\u2019s a \u201cMr. Brightside\u201d reference.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>The Front Bottoms \u2013 Emotional. <\/strong>Maybe the best call-and-response of the year, although the peculiar nasal thing they do near the chorus is offputting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Yard Act \u2013 The Trench Coat Museum. <\/strong>Yard Act\u2019s debut LP <em>The Overload<\/em> was my #3 album of 2022, although since it came out early in the year it\u2019s been more like seventeen months since we last had new music from this extremely English art-punk band.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Royal Blood \u2013 Pull Me Through. <\/strong>Don\u2019t let the piano intro fool you, there\u2019s some crunchy bass-through-an-octave pedal work coming not too long after.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Tame Impala \u2013 Journey to the Real World. <\/strong>I mean, there are catchier songs on the <em>Barbie <\/em>soundtrack, but the mere fact that they picked Tame Impala to join a roster of explicitly pop acts is itself a reason to recommend the album. (Also, that stupid \u201cPink\u201d song is still in my head.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Bob Vylan \u2013 Dream Big. <\/strong>Grime rap combined with punk? I definitely hear a lot of Bad Brains in here, although I\u2019m not very familiar with grime as a genre.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>beabadoobee \u2013 the way things go.<\/strong> It\u2019s a little twee, but it\u2019s pretty catchy, and beabadoobee\u2019s voice does lend itself well to this sort of light chamber-pop. I just don\u2019t want to encourage too much of this.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Baby Queen \u2013 We Can Be Anything.<\/strong> Baby Queen is a 25-year-old singer from South Africa whose debut album, <em>Quarter Life Crisis <\/em>(get it? ugh), comes out on October 6<sup>th<\/sup>. It\u2019s sort of avant-pop, with some clear Grimes influence in here.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>BLOXX \u2013 Weight in Gold. <\/strong>So events have overtaken my playlist as BLOXX\u2019s EP <em>Modern Day<\/em> is out, and its title track is on my in-progress August list. It\u2019s upbeat, punk-tinged indie rock, kind of if Neon Trees were less overtly poppy with better lyrics, especially with a little more new wave influence on the EP\u2019s five tracks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Jungle \u2013 Back on 74. <\/strong><em>Volcano<\/em>, the fifth LP from this British neo-soul duo, came out last Friday, and so far everything I\u2019ve heard is \u2026 just fine. I haven\u2019t caught a breakout single like \u201cBusy Earnin,\u201d \u201cHappy Man,\u201d or \u201cThe Truth,\u201d just some very 70s sounds without the big hooks I\u2019m used to from these guys.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Slowdive \u2013 Skin in the Game. <\/strong>The second single released ahead of next month\u2019s <em>Everything Is Alive<\/em>, Slowdive\u2019s second album since they returned from a 19-year hiatus in 2014. I also feel obligated to mention that I was in Commissary, a barbershop and caf\u00e9 in Indianapolis, and the barista was playing <em>Souvlaki <\/em>in its entirety.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Romy \u2013 The Sea. <\/strong><em>Mid Air<\/em>, the first solo album from the xx\u2019s Romy Madley Croft, is due out September 8<sup>th<\/sup>, and I think it\u2019s more pop-adjacent than her main band\u2019s music or that of bandmate Jamie xx, whose debut album featured some guest vocals from Romy on \u201cLoud Places.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Lathe of Heaven \u2013 Ekpyrosis. <\/strong>You\u2019d think this was some sort of extreme metal track from its name, which refers to the Greek Stoics\u2019 belief that the universe would be destroyed and reborn every 36,000 years, but this is a NYC post-punk band that sounds like Killing Joke or early Ceremony, named after an Ursula K. Le Guin novel.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Horrendous \u2013 Preterition Hymn. <\/strong>I almost feel like I have to apologize when I include tracks with death growls, but man that big, swirling guitar riff that opens this song is something else. Horrendous\u2019s first album in five years, <em>Ontological Mysterium<\/em>, is out today, August 18<sup>th<\/sup>, and the songs released ahead of it show a return to the musical ambition of their first two albums, even with some flourishes like the acoustic passage at the close of this song.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>So this playlist has been done for two weeks, but I took PTO right after the deadline to go to Gen Con, rest and recharge, and do some family stuff, and I barely wrote a word while I was off other than my huge Gen Con wrapup. I\u2019m pushing this one out because my August [&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":[1328,359,167,979,852,261],"class_list":["post-9951","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-2023-in-music","tag-alternative","tag-indie","tag-melodic-death-metal","tag-music","tag-rap","entry"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9951","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=9951"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9951\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9952,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9951\/revisions\/9952"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9951"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9951"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9951"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}