I guess it’s official: I’m destined to immediately fall — and fall hard — for new tracks that merge a nineteen-nineties guitar fuzziness with early twenty-first century indie-rock yearning. Waxahatchee is undoubtedly the standard bearer for the sound, but Try … Continue reading This Week’s Model — Try the Pie, “Last of You”
Rhian Teasdale and Hester Chambers make a nifty racket together. Hailing from the Isle of Wight, the longtime friends decided to form the band Wet Leg just a couple years ago and quickly got down to the business of crafting … Continue reading The New Releases Shelf — Wet Leg
This series of posts covers my long, beloved history interacting with the medium of radio, including the music that flowed through the airwaves. As I’ve been lucky to do several times over the past years, I spent my Sunday night … Continue reading Radio Days — Then and Now: May 15, 2022
197. The Bongos, Beat Hotel (1985) RCA Records thought this new band they signed held some promise of crossing over. There were already some little inklings that the Bongos had the makings of mass appeal. Two of the singles from … Continue reading College Countdown: CMJ Top 1000, 1979 – 1989 — #197 to #195
The opening plinking tones, the gently kneaded sample of Hugh Masekela’s version of the R&B song “Stop,” the easygoing urgency of Black Thought’s rapping: there’s so much about “No Gold Teeth” that commands attention. Presented as an introduction to a … Continue reading This Week’s Model — Black Thought and Danger Mouse, “No Gold Teeth”
200. Los Lobos, By the Light of the Moon (1987) “We were trying to take it somewhere else — a step further or something, just to not repeat what we’d done,” David Hidalgo, guitarist and vocalist of Los Lobos, later … Continue reading College Countdown: CMJ Top 1000, 1979 – 1989 — #200 to #198
This is exactly the sort of breezy melancholy I’m looking for in my summer jams. Set against a shuffling indie-rock rhythm and lithe synth and guitars, the track expresses that sense of stasis that twentysomething scufflers have been humming about … Continue reading This Week’s Model — Sunflower Bean, “In Flight”
ROKIA KONÉ AND JACKNIFE LEE, Bamanan (Real World) — You don’t have to understand the language Rokia Koné sings in on Bamanan to feel the power of her words. A gifted performer from Mali, Koné expresses herself with resonant intensity, the … Continue reading Medium Rotation — Bamanan; Angel in Real Time; Squeeze
203. JoBoxers, Like Gangbusters (1983) Subway Sect was a band that spun like a revolving door. Their first single, released in 1978, featured them playing with fervor and fury. By the early nineteen-eighties, their sound shifts entirely to lounge-tinged pop … Continue reading College Countdown: CMJ Top 1000, 1979 – 1989 — #203 to #201
Yeah, that’s the stuff. We, the new album from Arcade Fire, is scheduled for release in May. Continue reading This Week’s Model — Arcade Fire, “Unconditional I (Lookout Kid)”
Coffee for Two 