{"id":9966,"date":"2023-09-03T08:00:00","date_gmt":"2023-09-03T12:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/?p=9966"},"modified":"2023-09-02T17:51:44","modified_gmt":"2023-09-02T21:51:44","slug":"music-update-august-2023","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/2023\/09\/03\/music-update-august-2023\/","title":{"rendered":"Music update, August 2023."},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Back on schedule as I crawl out of my writing hole (by which I mean a place where I have not done much writing). August saw quite a few album releases of note, including Blur, Genesis Owusu, Burna Boy, Ratboys, Be Your Own Pet, Slowdive, Noname, and more, but I think it was a little lighter on singles. Friday saw another big batch of albums and singles, but since that was the first day of September I\u2019ve pushed all of those songs to a new playlist for that month. As always, you <a href=\"https:\/\/open.spotify.com\/playlist\/25IpamABTT98IMAfJZNUBn?si=ee687181d1f24af3\">can access the playlist here<\/a> if you can\u2019t see the 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 August 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\/25IpamABTT98IMAfJZNUBn?si=82cdf65ae6484012&#038;utm_source=oembed\"><\/iframe>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Speedy Ortiz \u2013 Ghostwriter.<\/strong> Sadie Dupuis &amp; company released their fourth album, <em>Rabbit Rabbit<\/em>, on her own label on Friday, and the album seems to have a slightly harder edge to the music without losing the off-kilter melodies and perhaps even amping up some of the harmonies in the choruses across the record.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Cory Wong feat. Dodie \u2013 Call Me Wild.<\/strong> I\u2019m pretty clearly a Cory Wong fan, although I\u2019m very late to the party. He does funk guitar so effortlessly, unsurprising for someone who grew up in Minneapolis, and you can also hear a ton of Primus (one of his stated influences) on this new album, <em>The Lucky One<\/em>, which has more famous guest appearances than <em>Asteroid City<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>BLOXX \u2013 Modern Day.<\/strong> I think this is the best song of the smattering BLOXX has released since their one full-length LP, <em>Lie Out Loud<\/em>, came out three years ago, and really deserves a lot more attention than it\u2019s received \u2013 this is the pinnacle of this sort of indie-pop, and why a song like this gets overlooked while garbage like Imagine Dragons gets played to death is just beyond my limited comprehension.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>The Julies \u2013 My Heaven is a Dance Floor.<\/strong> So this is an interesting one \u2013 the Julies released two EPs in 1994 and 1996, and then \u2026 nothing for twenty-seven years, until they released two singles as well as an EP of lost mixes from their earlier work. That\u2019s probably why this band sounds so good to me, as they\u2019re still channeling that early \u201890s alternative vibe, with elements of shoegaze (Ride) and dream-pop (Cocteau Twins).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Slowdive \u2013 the slab.<\/strong> Speaking of shoegaze, Slowdive returned on Friday with their second album since they reunited in 2014, the follow-up to 2017\u2019s self-titled LP, and it\u2019s a mix of some classic shoegaze like this pulsating track, \u201ckisses,\u201d and \u201calife,\u201d and some slower songs like \u201cskin in the game.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Seablite \u2013 Melancholy Molly.<\/strong> If you played this for me and told me it was a lost track from Lush\u2019s 1992 album <em>Spooky<\/em>, I\u2019d believe you. It\u2019s a spot-on rendition of that strand of early shoegaze with female vocalists, going for airy or dreamy vocals over highly textured guitars and keyboards that made it hard to pick out individual instruments. Seablite\u2019s second album, <em>Lemon Lights<\/em>, is due out on the 29<sup>th<\/sup>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Jorja Smith \u2013 GO GO GO.<\/strong> Smith continues to carve out her own musical path, moving away from R&amp;B and smooth jazz here with an acoustic guitar backing that wouldn\u2019t be out of place on pop radio. She\u2019ll release the long-overdue follow-up to <em>Lost &amp; Found<\/em>, which made my <a href=\"https:\/\/klaw.me\/2CmFbcl\">top 18 albums of 2018<\/a>, on September 29<sup>th<\/sup> with <em>Falling or Flying<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Noname feat. Common &amp; Ayoni<\/strong> \u2013 Noname retired from the music industry briefly in 2020, resurfaced last year, and then came back with this surprise sophomore album <em>Sundial<\/em> last month \u2013 and it\u2019s one of the best albums of the year, easily, with strong beats and the kind of smart, well-delivered rhymes we heard on her first album. However, she chose to platform Jay Electronica, a rapper who has a history of antisemitic commentary, even within his songs, with frequent reference to the \u201cRothschilds,\u201d a popular dogwhistle among antisemites. Even in his contribution here to \u201cBalloon,\u201d he says he needs to \u201csaw the Roth\u2019 family in half to get my clout back\u201d and makes several references to Louis Farrakhan and the Nation of Islam. Noname\u2019s response to the controversy <a href=\"https:\/\/ew.com\/music\/noname-wont-apologize-jay-electronica-antisemitic-verse-balloons\/\">was extremely disappointing<\/a>, as she took no responsibility, threatened to scrap the album (after she scrapped a previous one, <em>Factory Baby<\/em>) and then deleted her Twitter account entirely rather than deal with the backlash she created. The real lesson is that you shouldn\u2019t platform an antisemite, and if you do so unknowingly, be accountable for your actions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Danger Mouse with Jemini the Gifted One \u2013 Brooklyn Bazquiat.<\/strong> These two artists worked together on Danger Mouse\u2019s 2003 album <em>Ghetto Pop Life<\/em>, then recorded a second album <em>Born Again <\/em>the following year, but that latter LP never saw the light of day until last week. Nineteen years have seen the music scene evolve to the point where this record sounds like a throwback to the alternative hip-hop movement of the 1990s and early 2000s, and it holds up exceptionally well as an example of that style of music.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Jungle \u2013 Us Against the World.<\/strong> <em>Volcano<\/em> dropped last month and I think it\u2019s my least favorite Jungle album, with fewer standout singles than most of their LPs and some nods to more current trends in electronic music that my older ears find kind of annoying. \u201cCandle Flame,\u201d which was on my March playlist, is the best song on the album, and a huge reason why is the guest vocals from rapper Erick the Architect.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Girl Ray \u2013 Tell Me.<\/strong> <em>Prestige<\/em>, the third album from this London-based electropop trio, came out on August 4<sup>th<\/sup>, and it\u2019s full of catchy, danceable tracks like this one.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>San Cisco \u2013 Under the Light.<\/strong> A subtle but still very catchy single from this Australian band, whose first hit single \u201cAwkward\u201d came out eleven years ago. I\u2019m thrilled they\u2019ve still got it, but jesus does that make me feel old.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Genesis Owusu \u2013 Stay Blessed.<\/strong> Owusu\u2019s second album, <em>STRUGGLER<\/em>, came out last month, and the Ghanaian-Australian singer has taken a short story he wrote about a character called the Roach, based on the same existential authors who inspired Chris Cornell thirty-plus years ago, and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nme.com\/reviews\/album\/genesis-owusu-struggler-review-album-3483418\">loosely turned it into a concept album<\/a> that spans all sorts of genres, with an electronic bass line opening the album on \u201cLeaving the Light,\u201d some R&amp;B\/funk on \u201cTied Up!\u201d and garage-rock inspirations on \u201cFreak Boy.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>The Kills \u2013 New York.<\/strong> I assumed the Kills had hung it up, with no new music from the duo since 2016\u2019s <em>Ash &amp; Ice<\/em>, which had the single \u201cDoing It to Death,\u201d but they released this two-sided single in August and another track on Friday in advance of the October 27<sup>th<\/sup> release of their sixth album, <em>God Games<\/em>. This track is no \u201cSour Cherry\u201d but otherwise fits in with their better stuff.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Kula Shaker \u2013 Waves.<\/strong> I didn\u2019t realize these Britpop stars, who were either twenty years ahead of their time in incorporating Indian music into mainstream rock or guilty of some sort of cultural appropriation for the same thing, had put out a new album last year, which was itself their first album since 2016. This new track, ahead of an untitled seventh album, is full of the same peace and love and good happiness stuff lyrics as their other stuff but has one of the best hooks they\u2019ve found since the 1990s.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>English Teacher \u2013 The World\u2019s Biggest Paving Slab.<\/strong> It takes some stones \u2013 pun intended \u2013 to write a song called \u201cThe World\u2019s Biggest Paving Slab\u201d and then have that phrase in the very first line, but English Teacher, who\u2019ve gone from very credible post-punk to something harder to pin down, with lyrics that would fit on an Arctic Monkeys album, wry delivery, and elements of dream-pop and indie rock along with those post-punk leanings.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>The Hives \u2013 Two Kinds of Trouble.<\/strong> <em>The Death of Randy Fitzsimmons<\/em>, the Hives\u2019 first album in eleven years, dropped on August 11<sup>th<\/sup>, and to their great credit, they haven\u2019t changed much of anything. This is good-time garage rock, and they\u2019re not sorry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>The Linda Lindas \u2013 Resolution\/Revolution.<\/strong> I know there was a big novelty factor around this quartet when they first showed up in the 2019 film <em>Moxie<\/em>, with all the band members at the time aged 15 or younger, but they\u2019re just a good punk-pop band now and everyone, myself included, should probably just stop talking about how young they are except to say that it\u2019s astonishing how good and how polished they are for their ages.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Public Image Ltd \u2013 End of the World.<\/strong> PiL released their eleventh album, <em>End of World<\/em>, in August, a very inconsistent affair highlighted by this track, which has Lu Edmonds (the guitarist from <em>Happy <\/em>and <em>9<\/em>, perhaps their two best albums) delivering a searing guitar riff over which Lydon can caterwaul to his heart\u2019s content.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Horrendous \u2013 Aurora Neoterica. <\/strong>An instrumental track off <em>Ontological Mysterium<\/em> that highlights a lot of what I like about this metal band, with ambitious and weird guitar riffs and some highly technical fretwork. The album as a whole is better than 2018\u2019s <em>Idol<\/em> and probably on par with <em>Ecdysis<\/em>, although I still found it uneven and I don\u2019t need to hear the death-metal screeching without the music to sort of drown it out. Anyway, this track feels more like something you might have heard from peak Rush, and it\u2019s good to hear this band stretch out a little bit away from the trappings of their main genre.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Back on schedule as I crawl out of my writing hole (by which I mean a place where I have not done much writing). August saw quite a few album releases of note, including Blur, Genesis Owusu, Burna Boy, Ratboys, Be Your Own Pet, Slowdive, Noname, and more, but I think it was a little [&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":[1328,359,167,852,261],"class_list":["post-9966","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-2023-in-music","tag-alternative","tag-indie","tag-music","tag-rap","entry"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9966","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=9966"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9966\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9969,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9966\/revisions\/9969"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9966"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9966"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9966"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}