Buzzy guitars, a relentless beat, keening vocals racing through intricate lyrics, an irresistible hook that somehow gives was to another hook and maybe yet another hook, a squalling guitar solo, a false ending, and it’s all over in just over … Continue reading This Week’s Model — The Beths, “I’m Not Getting Excited”
Now this is the sort midlife pining for past glories that speaks to a sad sack such as myself. Christian Lee Hutson has been kicking around as a singer-songwriter for a few years now, but his star took a turn towards … Continue reading This Week’s Model — Christian Lee Hutson, “Get the Old Band Back Together”
“Just Like Kids,” the new single from Hinds, is sunny, shiny, and beautifully bratty at the same time. With a punk-cool underpinning and a touch of the pop-turned-inside-out wild invention Wayne Coyne employed during the heyday of the Flaming Lips, Hinds directly addresses the condescending nonsense they regularly endure as a rock band populated exclusively by women. Making music is their job and their art, but that doesn’t stop unduly confident fools from stepping forward as unwanted consultants. “Can I tell you something about you and your band?/ Cause I’m sure you’d love to listen to my advice,” the song opens, and … Continue reading This Week’s Model — Hinds, “Just Like Kids”
Gleaming and pretty and just a touch odd, “If You’re Too Shy (Let Me Know),” the new single from U.K. band the 1975, invites admiring comparisons to the particular brand of nineteen-eighties music, practiced by the likes of Tears for … Continue reading This Week’s Model — The 1975, “If You’re Too Shy (Let Me Know)”
“Brooklyn,” the new single from U.K. singer-songwriter Katie Malco, starts out slow and relatively spare. Against her prowling guitar and a steady, stealthy drum beat, Malco start sharing memories of time spent with a friend, against the many backdrops of … Continue reading This Week’s Model — Katie Malco, “Brooklyn”
In this time of disconcerting norm erosion, when the user’s manual for global society is being rewritten on the fly, at least we have Randy Newman to see us through. A sardonic chronicler of human failings for over a half-century, … Continue reading This Week’s Model — Randy Newman, “Stay Away”
In the photo, team members for the Chicago-based organization My Block, My Hood, My City are with a truck newly loaded with more than fifty boxes of supplies that will be taken to elderly residents as part of their Senior … Continue reading This Week’s Model — Mavis Staples, “All In It Together”
I think this bloke says it best: Stephen William Bragg has spent the last forty years, give or take, surveying a tumultuous world and making sense of what he sees through the grounded poetry of his lyrics, often accompanied by a trusty acoustic guitar. Politically astute, socially empathetic, and a whip-smart thinker, Bragg has a way of getting straight to the core of a problem and finding the emotional poignancy that resides there. As we all keep our distance for the greater good, Bragg expresses the melancholy that arises from all the missed events and commemorations. Like the bulk of … Continue reading This Week’s Model — Billy Bragg, “Can’t Be There Today”
I became a devotee of singer-songwriter Margaret Glaspy shortly after the release of her debut album, Emotions and Math. As often as I returned to the studio recorded etched into that record’s grooves, my regular urge to once again hear … Continue reading This Week’s Model — Margaret Glaspy, “Devotion”
Now that Margo Price has moved on from Third Man Records, it’s evidently time for her to make some music that sounds like it would have been snugly at home on Jack White’s Nashville-based label. For the lead single from … Continue reading This Week’s Model — Margo Price, “Twinkle Twinkle”
