In my last music post commenter Fats Durston recommended the Weakerthans “Plea From a Cat Named Virtue,” and it is totally awesome. Thanks, bro!
“I’m tired of this piece of string.”
The Pains of Being Pure at Heart sometimes do a The Smiths thing, but here I would say it’s more about The Only Ones. Or a combo? His voice is very like Peter Perett’s.
Sometimes I feel like bustin’ loose with Chuck Brown, Godfather of Go-Go.
Car Seat Headrest’s releae from earlier this year is still rocking me all the time, and further proves that literally anything can be a band name. Like, anything. (Plus fan-made video!) I feel that the outro is very early Brian Eno. Best quote “last week I took acid and mushrooms/I did not transcend, I felt like a walking piece of shit/in a stupid-looking jacket.” #relatable
What about y’all? You always have amazing suggestions and I listen to them all.
UPDATE: German punk band Slime’s “Viva La Muerte” is about the conquest of the Americas and it is so good.
Although maybe this anti-fascist song is more appropriate to the moment:
{ 24 comments }
Bill Benzon 08.22.17 at 1:41 am
A bit old, but way fierce:
https://youtu.be/r_l0SACOcx8
Mr. P 08.22.17 at 2:01 am
For your consideration: Thug Nation. #resist
hix 08.22.17 at 2:07 am
Pur Abenteuerland
otpup 08.22.17 at 2:38 am
I was really taken with the new LCD Soundsystem release:
Anarcissie 08.22.17 at 2:39 am
Well, I recommended Klaus Nomi: ‘Total Eclipse’ with a Youtube link, but it didn’t take.
Belle Waring 08.22.17 at 2:43 am
hix: dat hair tho
Nick Fryer 08.22.17 at 2:45 am
This week has been almost wholly eaten by Grumbling Fur’s album of last year, Furfour. Proper pop music.
otpup 08.22.17 at 2:56 am
Pains of etc., reminds me of
https://youtu.be/hfpli2VQtZU
b9n10nt 08.22.17 at 3:52 am
1. Not this week but this month discovered Ani de Franco’s latest. Really like 5 of the songs, but everything of hers speaks to me of a relaxed, mature (I suppose) professional creativity.
2. And Aimee Mann’s latest (the album is titled “mental illness” and its often serious and disturbing and deeply touching and compassionate. It’s an album that feels like its sitting right in the pocket of America’s decades long funk.
3. And Oumou Sangaré’s new album. Don’t know the language but the music is just…inspired: energetically, rhythmically, the musicianship, the production (vocals float assertively over these huge jams…discretion and abandon, all in one!
So yeah…new music.
As for old call backs…Duran Duran “Save a Prayer”, Tears for Fears “Pale Shleter”…give me quirky loungy new wave pop, I guess. I used to obsess over the hypnotic vibe of The Motel’s “Suddenly Last Summer” and “Only the Lonely”. So now I’m doing the masculine equivalent?
No better age to be born into, amirite?
James Grimmer 08.22.17 at 4:27 am
@5 re Anarcissie. For me, these songs, and the posts and comments elsewhere, do take. Yours did at any rate on Klaus Nomi. It began a stream of links across a range of friends.
At any rate, one has to hear “Total Eclipse” as it’s sung not to be in complete love with it https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W4eTdwkripA
The rest of Klaus Normi is very funny too. Anyway, here’s the chorus: “Total eclipse/It’s a total eclipse/It’s a total eclipse of the sun/Can’t come to grips with the total eclipse/Just a slip of the lips and you’re done.”
I just want to add one classic, perhaps very different, band from the same time, the Cramps, especially their song “Human Fly.” This is perhaps everyone’s favorite song by the Cramps, but what a great song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9TR6QuOj-Gw
“I’m a human fly/I spell it F-L-Y/I say bzz bzz bzz/and it’s just because/I’m a human fly . . . and I don’t know why/I got 96 tears/and 96 eyes
Hell, consciousness, let alone philosophy, begins with a mixture of wonder and bewilderment and eros and questions and observations that nearly make sense . . . etc. Nomi came up, and then the Cramps came up, as a friend and I spoke of an unexpected divorce he was experiencing. These songs . . .
James Grimmer 08.22.17 at 5:02 am
Postscript: I have been listening to covers. Most aren’t worth having been done. Why not just go back to the original? Here’s a Cramp’s one of “Heartbreat Hotel.” It’s live and funny, and unexpected, and while I’ve mentioned them, I might as well give a nod to this one.
Neville Morley 08.22.17 at 5:39 am
Revisiting Brockdorff Klang Labor’s Die Fälschung der Welt, whose combination of politics, erudite literary and philosophical references (Debord! Christa Wolf!) and early 1980s synth pop could have been tailor-made for my tastes.
Belle Waring 08.22.17 at 6:12 am
I had been meaning to listen to the new LCD Soundsystem and it’s indeed awesome.
Jim Buck 08.22.17 at 12:10 pm
One of Many 08.22.17 at 3:27 pm
I’m in love with Vashti Bunyan.
Yan 08.22.17 at 3:38 pm
Oh, I’d completely forgotten about the existence of Pains of Being Pure at Heart, thanks for the reminder! Must re-listen to them. They mostly remind me of shoe-gazer and its roots and spinoffs: Ride, Jesus and Mary Chain, Ride, Galaxie 500, Smashing Pumpkins.
I like Carseat Headrest, but find it hard to get back into that alienated teenager mindframe to appreciate it properly. “Friends” is fantastic. “Destroyed By Hippie Powers” is also a delight.
Mount Eerie’s “A Crow Looked At Me” is really good, but almost unlistenably sad, every song is a brutal and honest meditation on the recent death of his wife.
The new Magnetic Fields is fun and funny, if a bit of a trifle. Here’s “Why I’m Not A Teenager” (Answer: “tthey piss on your dreams/Then they muzzle your screams”):
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AOiIgM-0cbM&w=560&h=315%5D
The new Broken Social Scene is good, a real return to the feel and spirit of their first record, but no standout tracks really. Idles’ “Brutalism” is refreshingly straight punk, does exactly what it says on the tin.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LYq34dmjpco&w=560&h=315%5D
The only relatively recent album I truly love is Angel Olsen’s “My Woman” from 2016:
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-mIA1r2ZELU&w=560&h=315%5D
One of Many 08.22.17 at 3:57 pm
Earlierthan the Weakerthans (but still Canadian powerpop): Underwhelmed – Sloan
Jim Fett 08.22.17 at 8:21 pm
Not new, but always good:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=YrHLkICxOZk
And:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=BASstPMu5H4
novakant 08.22.17 at 9:56 pm
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tPyiZI_WrXw
been a bit nostalgic lately…
Jason Weidner 08.23.17 at 1:44 am
I’m a D.C. native and got the chance to see Chuck Brown on more than one occasion. In my high school marching band, we did a soul and go go medley that included a bit of “go go swing,” including the Harlem Nocturne bit (better known as the theme song for the tv show Mike Hammer).
Jason Weidner 08.23.17 at 1:47 am
Icastico 08.23.17 at 3:19 am
The Tony Allen tribute to Art Blakey.
And Lubomyr Melnyk’s brilliant piano work. http://lubomyrmelnyk.bandcamp.com/album/rivers-and-streams
Thomas Lumley 08.23.17 at 7:53 am
Sudan Archives (via this)
And the new Pink Martini album
Jeffrey Davis 08.24.17 at 6:04 pm
Pee Wee Russell
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