2012 In Fifty Songs
There are many things I am not good at doing. One of them is telling people how much I appreciate the posting links to videos and songs and whatnot in twitter and facebook posts, or just dropping me a line about something they’ve heard. What you all may not realize is that I make a point of listening to each and every piece of music I’m hepped to in those ways. No really, I do! I figure if someone is moved enough by a song or an artist to post about it that there’s probably something there worth my five minutes to listen to. I’ve heard a lot of music that didn’t click with me by doing that. The great thing is, I’ve also heard a lot that did move me.
What this is is a summary of 50 songs from 2012 that moved me enough to want to hear more. They’ve become representative of my favorite records and artists of 2012.
I could spend days telling you about the music so many of you have told me about this year (in what was a rich and amazing year for great tunes), but instead I’d like to show you. Better yet, I’ll let you listen to them!
I won’t use the same words and phrases you’re used to hearing from me to say how much I liked certain stuffs in 2012. Rather, I figured I’d get back to my roots and just do a music mix of my favorite songs and artists from the past year. Been about six or seven years since I’ve done this, but I’m pretty happy with the way things turned out. Additionally, thanks to Spotify, Turntable.fm, and Twitter I feel like I heard so much good music by so many great artists in 2012 that trying to pare things down to just 20 records would be an impossible chore.
So what’s all this then? Let me try to explain.
1. I broke the 50 tracks down into two separate mixes of 25 songs each. The mixes are interchangeable. I just separated things by how the flow goes. Each one is about 90 minutes. Each is crossfaded and normalized and one big mp3 file. The idea is, listen to all of it or come back to it, do whatever. That said, the object isn’t “Hey, how can I grab these songs?!?!” If you try, you’ll be stuck with the crossfaded bits and bytes from the beginning and end to each song. Instead of going to that trouble, throw some worthy artists some money, huh?
2. These go in order. That order has nothing to do with chronology or perceived quality. The order is: these mixes need to flow, one song into the next. Each one is autonomous. There should be a beginning, a middle, a few peaks, a few valleys, and then a wrap up. When you get to the end of one of the mixes, it should feel like you’re at the end, y’know?
3. Finally, thanks are in order: everyone who contributed to the “What are you listening to” 2012 thread at Quarter To Three, anyone who’s ever pm’d me or emailed me with a song or record or artist to listen to, anyone who’s ever posted a music video on my Facebook timeline, anyone who’s ever DJ’d in a room in Turntable, anyone who’s contributed a record to our Bitches Brew Spotify playlist….THANKS!!!!! This mix is as much all of you, and a tribute to all your good taste, not mine. I just manage to occasionally shut up long enough to listen when someone says that they like a song and then find the time to go see if I like that song, too.
These are the songs I liked off records I liked by artists I liked this year. They’re probably not the “best” of 2012; there’s probably not much crossover in the venn diagram of “stuff I really liked” and “stuff that sits on most critics’ lists”. I didn’t always choose the “best” song off a record I liked, either, necessarily. I picked songs in a lot of cases that I thought were representative of an album I liked a lot, and gave special consideration to songs that fit with a mix better, too. At any rate, I hope y’all will hear a few tunes you like, too!
“50 Smash Hits From 2012!”
Gangnam Style:
(Right click and “save as”…or just click to stream)
1. Japandroids “The Nights Of Wine And Roses”
2. Ty Segall and White Fence “Easy Ryder”
3. The Brian Jonestown Massacre “Viholliseni Maalla”
4. CaveofswordS “Ghryme”
5. Disappears “Replicate”
6. Weird Dreams “666.66″
7. A. C. Newman “I’m Not Talking”
8. The dB’s “Send Me Something Real”
9. Frank Ocean “Bad Religion”
10.Lee Fields “You’re The Kind Of Girl”
11.The Bamboos (Feat. Tim Rogers) “I Got Burned”
12.Rodriguez “Can’t Get Away”
13.The Dum Dum Girls”Season In Hell”
14.The Human Eyes “Born To Die”
15.Diiv “How Long Have You Known”
16.The Delta Spirit “California”
17.The Blakes “Narwhal”
18.Sharon Van Etten “Serpents”
19.The Cheatahs “The Swan”
20.I Was A King “Indiana”
21.The Mark Lanegan Blues Band “Leviathan”
22.The Cloud Nothings “Wasted Days”
23.Jack White “Hypocritical Kiss”
24.Euros Childs “These Dreams Of You”
25.George Harrison “All Things Must Pass (Demo)”
Call Me Maybe:
1. The Men “Open Your Heart”
2. Ex Cops “The Millionaire”
3. Lotus Plaza “Eveningness”
4. Sinead O’Connor “The Wolf Is Getting Married”
5. The Resonars “Sit Right Down”
6. Snake & Jet’s Amazing Bullit Band “Black Egg”
7. Randy Michael & The Well Dressed Lads “The Face”
8. Sleepy Kitty “Don’t You Start”
9. Toys That Kill “Stye”
10. Giuda “Number 10″
11.Nada Surf “Jules And Jim”
12.Tame Impala “Feels Like We Only Go Backwards”
13.The Allah Las “Don’t You Forget It”
14.Twelve Thousand Armies “Darling Let’s Breathe”
15.Nude Beach “Some Kinda Love”
16.Redd Kross “Stay Away From Downtown”
17.The Mountain Goats “Cry For Judas”
18.The Amazing “Flashlight”
19.Lightships “Silver And Gold”
20.The Royal Headache “Down The Lane”
21.Bob Mould “The Descent”
22.Richard Hawley “Down In The Woods”
23.Aimee Mann “Soon Enough”
24.Woods “Is It Honest?”
25.Spiritualized “So Long You Pretty Thing”
O Pitié Dracula! (Halloween Music Mix, 2012)
Of course you knew this was a-comin’. Of course you did.
Let me go one step beyond, so to say, though: of all the Halloween Music Mixes I’ve done, I’ve never thought of one as being as good as this one. Really. This one’s my favorite.
A few credits need to go out, especially to a turntable DJ named UncleJim who managed to turn me onto some fan-damn-tastic and great Halloween tunes. Not all of them fit the spirit (haha, Halloween puns) of this year’s mix, but at some point in some mix, I’ll absolutely make room for Rosemary Clooney’s “Wobblin Goblin” or Patsy Montana’s “Yodeling Ghost” (seriously, now you’re dying to find out what a song sung by Patsy Montana called “Yodeling Ghost” sounds like, aren’t you?)
Another thing: there’s only one repeat here from past mixes that I’m aware of: back in 2002 I made a CD-only mix that had a certain Bunnymen song on it. I’m pretty sure that’s the only time I used it. This year I planned to use Grant Lee Phillips’s acoustic, folky version of that song…but as I listened, it just didn’t fit or really work. I wanted Ian McCulloch’s over-the-falls vocal and Will Sergeant’s reverby guitar and missed them greatly. So. Original version is back, but probably a first for most folks reading this.
Now, there are two covers of songs I’ve used in the past. One is at least as good as the Donovan original that I’ve nicked previously (no spoilers, but seriously, if I told you what the cover was and you hadn’t heard it yet, you’d be all “That’s gonna suck, dude”; I’m here to tell you that not only does this unlikely cover work, but it kicks ass nine ways to Sunday). The other cover I have come to believe is far superior to the goofy, almost uncomfortably minstrel-show-sounding original. I’ve used that original, and even a Nina Simone cover, but honestly this is one blues number where the angry hippie from San Francisco does the angriest and most-frightening and unhinged version. Plus, I love Creedence….(more Halloween references for the win!)
For bonus points, this year’s mix also has a Holland/Dozier/Holland song (see if you can spot it!) as well as a Joe Meek production. We’re nothing at Popnarcotic.com if not a little bit aware of our hip forebears. Also, yes, I know that given the untimely demise of Broadcast’s lead singer that one particular track is a little…ookie. I prefer “eerie” here to “inappropriate”.
Enough of my yakking. Here’s the mix, all stitched together like a 71-minute podcast in 192 kb mp3 glory, with all tracks mixed and normalized to maintain fidelity and volume consistency. As ever, I strongly urge you to just listen at least once without checking the track list. It’s more fun that way.
Also this year a warning, since I’ve heard from some of you that you play these mixes in the car with kids or when handing out treats on the 31st: The very end of the very last song on the mix has pretty clear NSFW language; it’s a lyric that quotes a pretty famous movie, and it’s fleeting before the fadeout, but it’s there. Just fair warning–if kids or bosses or moms are actively listening, probably best to hit skip when the Lambs get all Silent.
Let’s get to some music!
O Pitié Dracula! (Halloween Music Mix, 2012)
Click Drac’s picture for the MP3….
or for the reading averse, here you go:
Track list?
Fine.
Fine. Don’t say I didn’t warn you about spoilers, though.
1. …
2. Billy Taylor “Wombie Zombie”
3. Cavemen “Vampirer”
4. Rockwell “Someone’s Watching Me”
5. Christine Pilzer “Dracula”
6. Superdrag “Do The Vampire”
7. The Gothic Archies “Scream And Run Away”
8. Lou Rawls “Season Of The Witch”
9. Jackie Morningstar “Rockin’ In The Graveyard”
10.Broadcast and The Focus Group “Seancing Song”
11.Portishead “Over”
12.Chet Baker “That Old Devil Moon”
13.The Moontrekkers “Night Of The Vampire”
14.R. Dean Taylor “There’s A Ghost In My House”
15.Echo & The Bunnymen, “The Killing Moon”
16.The Fall “I’m A Mummy”
17.The Soft Boys, “Strange”
18.The Chameleons U.K. “Swamp Thing”
19.The Tombstones “Black Cat”
20.Creedence Clearwater Revival “I Put A Spell On You”
21.Don Bishop “Nightmare”
22.The Greenskeepers “Lotion”
cHr15tmA5 dR0pZ–A Dubstep Christmas
Aw yeah, it’s that time of year! We the humble blog elves of Popnarcotic happily present you with the coolest thing ever: Dubstep Christmas, 2011! This was the year we fully embraced a music movement that isn’t at all fleeting or breathtakingly awful and yeah I’m talkin’ serious dr0pz yo. Without further ado, here’s the track list:
1. “Adeste Fidelis” –deadmau5 (27:29)
2. “God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen” (Extended) –DJW00t with do5ta4 n w00dy (41:13)
3. “Fairytale Of New York” –The Pogues (3:41)
Click me for download page!
More Halloween Music Mixes!
Just realized that when I migrated to WordPress in the winter of 2010, I never did bring over some Halloween music mixes. Let’s fix that.
For giggles, here’s the 2007 mix, Gravest Hits 2007.
Here’s the 2008 mix, Gravest Hits, 2008.
Here are the TWO mixes (yeah, not doing that ever again) from 2009:
I Seek To Eradicate These Things With A Shovel
and
In case you missed last year, here’s 2010′s mix:
Combined with this year’s mix (which you have to scroll down for) that’s about 7 1/2 hours worth of Halloween-themed music, with maybe just a couple of repeats. If you want track lists, just click on “October” of whatever year, 2007-2010. The link to the mix is dead (haven’t fixed them yet, and I have a ton of stuff to get done today, so they’ll stay unfixed for a while) on those months, but the track lists are there.
Enjoy and Happy Halloween! Be safe everyone!
Zombie Dance Party! (Halloween Music Mix, 2011)
Yep, that time of year again! There’s nothing I enjoy more than the good ol’ fashioned creepy fun of doing a Halloween music thing, and this year’s version is a corker. Every song in the mix is a new one for this annual endeavor, and if I can drop any veil of modesty for a sec…this sucker delivers. Before you ask….
“Wait, how can you do a Halloween music mix without….”
As always, there’s no Ozzy. A surprising dearth of Danzig. Not one tiny bit of Danny Elfman or Bauhaus. I’m not saying that I don’t dig those folks: I do. What I am saying is that there are going to be hundreds, if not thousands of music mixes out there that will have all those folks represented to the point of overexposure. Here at the ‘Narc, we have a crippling weakness for the road less traveled, and as such that’s what our mix does.
“But dude, what about….”
There are plenty of cool, great songs out there that fit but aren’t on this mix, and the reason might be that I’ve been doing these sorts of mixes for years now and this year I was determined for there not to be any repeat songs from previous years. As such, if you’re looking for something obvious that’s missing, it could be because I used it on another mix….or perhaps I’m just dense. Always looking for selections for next years mix!
“Couldn’t you just do a whole mix of kick ass metal/goth/garage/chiptunes for this?”
I could, but I’ve got better taste than that. As it is, we sort of dabble in a lot of genres here. Except chiptunes. Seriously, if your idea of inducing Halloween party behavior is to put on the original Castlevania theme, you’re either too geeky or too inundated with hopeless hipsters to be worth saving.
Without any more ado…
ZOMBIE DANCE PARTY! (Halloween Music Mix, 2011)
Track list:
1. “Do Not Adjust Your Set”
2. Ronnie Dawson, “Rockin’ In The Cemetery”
3. Otis Redding, “Trick Or Treat”
4. Tishamingo, “Devil’s Love Song”
5. The Grip Weeds, “Haunted”
6. Eyes, “When The Night Comes”
7. ELO, “Evil Woman”
8. Ariel Pink’s Haunted Grafitti, “Frigh Night (Nevermore)”
9. The Talking Heads, “Psycho Killer”
10.Patsy Cline “Walking After Midnight”
11.Donovan, “Season Of The Witch”
12.Ladytron, “Ghosts”
13.The Reverend Horton Heat, “The Halloween Dance”
14.The Boy Least Likely To, “Monsters”
15.Robyn Hitchcock & The Venus 3, “Ole! Tarantula”
16.Imelda May, “Psycho”
17.Band Of Horses, “Is There A Ghost?”
18.The Yardbirds, “Evil Hearted You”
19.Tegan And Sara, “Walking With A Ghost”
20. L7 “Pretend We’re Dead”
21.Tito & Tarantula, “After Dark”
22.The Cramps, “Rockin’ Bones”
23.James Carr, “The Dark End Of The Street”
24.Stephen Lynch, “A Month Dead”
The Ghost Of Christmas Past…
(2011 Edit: No, not really.)
(2011 Edit, part deux: If you’re disappointed beause you were really looking for a dubstep Christmas album…well, seriously? C’mon. We’re about 2 weeks from dub drops in Walmart TV ads. Let it go. Enjoy some Christmas music from years past.)
So this past year when I moved the blog to a new server because Blogger/Google decided it was time for them to make poor business decisions, I left behind an awful lot of files (which I do have backed up on a variety of external drives and whatnot, but still), some of which included a whole bunch of past Christmas mixes. Sort of gratifying that various folks out there have been requesting them, and so without any further ado, let’s go ahead and at least put up the last five shall we?
2005: “I Got Yer Wassail Right Here, Mac”
2006: “It’s Cliched To Be Cynical At Christmas”
2007: “The Christmas Sound Is All Around This Town”
2008: “Listen Up Ebenezer!”
2009: “Christmas Shoes”
2010: “There’s No Life Like The Snow Life”
2011: “I Still Believe In Santa Claus (Even If Nobody Else Does)”
I’ve got the CD from the 2004 mix floating around here somewhere, and I’ll do a little magic on it and get it uploaded too. In 2003 I had a whirlwind of activity hit me outta the blue (I ended up spending Christmas working in Connecticut, which was fun…but very unexpected), so that year I just sent out Christmas cards, no CD or mix. 2002′s mix, “Deck Us All With Boston Charlie” is lost to history now, although most of the songs on it have re-surfaced on one of the past 6 mixes. (And it better be lost to history, since the 2010 mix I just finished–yeah, I said it–has that year’s most prominent track repeated; a few of you 15 folks who got that CD in a Christmas Card or whatnot back then will be disappointed in that repeat…but heck, it’s been 8 years. Give a brotha a break!)
Looking over track lists (and you can find those in the archives, just head for December of whatever year), I’m pretty happy that I haven’t gotten too awfully repeat-happy. Over six years, I’ve got 120 different Christmas or winter-themed songs, very few of which suck, which is a pretty decent track record if I do say so myself…and I just did.
As I was putting together this year’s mix, I was again struck by just how many truly awful Christmas songs become available every holiday. Lots of established artists just mail it in for a quick cash-in with some dreadful, soulless readings of some Christmas chestnut. At least I can understand the financial reasons behind that in a purely cynical way. The holiday tunes that really exasperate me are the gajillion indie artists who think the way to do a Christmas song is to pick some heartfelt standard and re-render it slowed down and dripping with implied irony. I suppose something like that could work in a vacuum…but you stick awful, over-ironic crap like that on a holiday mix next to the Green Pajamas’ “Caroler’s Song” or something from Vince Guaraldi, or especially next to that certain Irish ditty that ends every Christmas mix I do by tradition and all that dripping hipster-ism just collapses in on itself.
So anyway, you’ve got a few hours to wait until I upload the Christmas mix for 2010. Grab one of these older ones and give it a spin. Thanks for reading, I hope your holiday season so far has been as enjoyable as mine!
(Edited to include 2011′s mix to this list for easy all purpose Christmas music grabbing.)
Just Another Mid-Summer Music Mix.
Last week I knew I was going to need some music for a thing, and that said music should be fairly obscure, hopefully fairly good, and finally sort of have a certain mass appeal-ishness to it. I also regret having a whole ton of music that I’ve been listening to over the last 8-12 months that I’ve not at least given a mild shout out to, so that was also a motivating factor.
The thing of it is, while I try to have some sort of over-arching theme to the mixes I do, the theme for this mix has changed about five or six times since I started it. Originally I was going to call it “Two Good Songs”, in deference to my ol’ Euclid Records compatriot Steve. (Back in the day you’d ask Steve if he’d heard a new record, and inevitably, regardless of the album, you were 75% likely to get the response “Yeah…two good songs.” It became something of his trademark for a while.) That idea was to collect really terrific songs from albums made up of songs not quite to the standard of the one on the mix. Then the theme was summer. And then it wasn’t, because it’s too bloody hot as it is. Then the theme was “Excuses to put Deanne Iovan’s “Everything” into a mix.” Then it was “People you might know from other stuff doing new stuff”.
I guess for now the theme is just “This is a mix of songs that I think I have done a haphazard job of representing how good they are.” Everything in the mix is of very recent vintage, like 2008 or later. I think these songs are really, really good. I hope you enjoy this mix, and it brings you as much enjoyment as it’s brought me to both make and listen to.
Without further introduction, here we go:
Two Years Out Of My Mind
(right click and “save as”…one large mp3 file as usual.)
1. “Artificial Fanfare (Music In My Head)” Happy Chichester 2. “Pizza-Eater” The Leeds 3. “Olympic Gardens” The Mystery Numbers 4. “Queen Of Moods” Jeffrey Novak 5. “Saturday” The Music Lovers 6. “Cherry Blossom” Sad Day For Puppets 7. “Everything” Deanne Iovan 8. “Those Were The Days” Elvyn 9. “The Kids” The Bomb 10.”Chemicals” The Comfies 11.”When I’m With You” Best Coast 12.”Begging You” Graham Day & The Gaolers 13.”The Kelly Rose” The Brought Low 14.”Soul School” Cornershop 15.”Alice Marble Gray” Califone 16.”Go Jetsetter” The Postmarks 17.”So Long (Maybe)” Nushu 18.”Golden Hips” Dragoon 19.”These Are the Days” Grand Atlantic20.”Kaleidoscope Eyes” Painted Hills
First off, don’t read too much into the title I picked here–I just used a lyric from the Music Lovers song because the timeframe for these songs was right; I’ve been fairly in my mind (and certainly not with the cool, sordid tale the dude in Music Lovers has!) over the last two years. I guess this mix is sort of like me compiling some odds and ends short stories from the past two years or so.
So who are these people?
Happy Chichester might be familiar to you. He was the bassist, backing vocalist, and one of the main creative forces behind The Royal Crescent Mob back in the day. Then they broke up and he had his own band, Howlin’ Maggie. This song is from his 2008 solo disc, which is really good (see also the cool video for “A Man Needs An Airplane” on youtube.)
The Leeds are a band that seems to be a collision of Anglo (singer Pandora Burgess) and Franc0 (the rest of the excellent, Rain Parade-y sounding band). This song is just totally aces, but the entire Leeds album is fantastic. This is one expensive-sounding production, so it baffles me that this disc is impossible to find outside of France. Ah well. Here’s a taste.
The Mystery Numbers is the new act for The Weather Machines’ (who are no more) frontman Jason Ward. He’s decamped from Portland back to Rapids City, SD, and making some truly genius music. Check out this site, where he’s got demos posted from the past few months; these are all very good and worth throwing the guy a few bucks to hear.
Jeffrey Novak is the leader of Cheap Time, a band that at one time also had his then-girlfriend, Jemina Pearl of the late and lamented Be Your Own Pet on bass. No word on a new Cheap Time album, or a new solo disc; I have a feeling the death of Jay Reatard earlier this year has hit the folks in this scene pretty hard.
If I ever manage to finish the top 20 list of greatest records of 2009, rest assured that The Music Lovers’ amazing album Masculin Feminine is going to be very high in the top ten. In the meantime, this disc has felt like my little secret, and I can’t contain how great a song “Saturday” is anymore. Best song about rehab and redemption ever? Oh, and you have GOT to see the incredible video for this song!
Sad Day For Puppets wins the award for “Worst Band Name In This Mix”, but boy did they put out a great album a year or so ago. They’re from Sweden, and manage to occasionally out-Pain the Pains Of Being Pure At Heart. Think C86, think Lush, think Flatmates, and bliss out.
Of all the tracks on this mix, I think Deanne Iovan’s “Everything” might be the one that gets me the most. I think it’ll get you too, if you happen to have a heart. Deanne is the former singer of Detroit’s legendary garage-soul genius band The Come Ons, but this is a total departure of the music she made in that group. This will just tear your soul to pieces and put it back together again. Deanne has a really cool blog, too, where right now she’s endeavoring to cover (and upload in mp3 form) every song from The White Album, doing a new song every 9 days (and sort of learning new instruments on the fly). It’s an incredibly neat undertaking, and worth checking out.
I’ve no idea who Elvyn is, but they’ve cooked up the best rewrite of Teenage Fanclub’s “God Knows It’s True” of all time, so good in fact that, along with the lyrical sentiment that “these are actually the good ol’ days”, (and yes, these are; if your life motto isn’t being in love with these times I feel kinda sorry for you.) I can’t hardly resist it.
You might not know who The Bomb are when the song “The Kids” starts up, but as soon as the vocals come in you’re gonna start figuring it out (and if the “whoooaaaah’s” on the chorus don’t do it, you didn’t listen to enough Chicago punk growing up.) Yep, The Bomb is Jeff Pezzati–Naked Raygun, Pegboy–on vocals, and a crew of Chicago punk mainstays filling out the band. If you dig the old school postpunk punk, The Bomb is, well, the bomb.
Dunno who The Comfies are, but they’ve got a couple of EP’s out that scratch that “remember when Spoon was interesting?” itch.
Best Coast is a boy-girl duo featuring a former actress doing songs that sound like odes to 1960′s girl-pop culture. Sound familiar? Yeah, but unlike Miss Deschanel’s project, Best Coast has a great fizzy, shoegazy sound and Bethany Cosentino doesn’t rely so much on autotuning here, preferring to let her earnest vocals sit buried in an echo-chamber mix that totally works. Here’s a story from ABC News (no, not kidding) on the group that recently aired.
Graham Day is to the UK what Greg Cartwright/Oblivian is to the US: an underground icon who shouldn’t be unknown, a guy who writes ingenious songs and who can out-sing damn near anyone you’ll hear on the radio. Graham is an old school member of the Medway Sound (think Billy Childish and all his gajillion bands) that seems newly resurgent with him, The Len Price 3, and The Stabilisers carrying the flag forward. The Gaolers are a bit of a trans-atlantic partnership, with the other members of the band being legendary Georgia garage band The Woggles.
The Brought Low deserve to be household names among all those who hold hard-rocking southern FM radio from the 70′s in high esteem. Sounding like nothing so much as Molly Hatchet with a Van Zant brother on lead vocals, this Florida three-piece just totally brings it. Oh, and just to be clear, their whole album from this year, 3 is utterly excellent.
Speaking of excellent, I’m gonna guess that if you’re reading this, you know who Cornershop is. I’m also gonna guess that a lot of folks reading this know “Brimful Of Asha” and not a whole lot else. The new Cornershop album, Judy Sucks A Lemon For Breakfast is a little uneven, but when it gets it right (like on “Soul School”) it sure sounds aces.
…and probably guessing that if you know me, you’re at least familiar with my Califone obsession. It might seem like the band has been in hibernation for a while, but not true: last year they recorded a bunch of songs for a film project called All My Friends Are Funeral Singers and the album that resulted by the same title is pretty awesome; it definitely is the most “song oriented” record Califone’s done, as you can hear by this song.
I haven’t much info on the band The Postmarks, other than I believe them to be from the UK. What I do know is that their album Memoirs At The End Of The World has one or two songs that just don’t work…and then about 5 or 6 tunes that sound like Ennio Morricone or Henry Mancini wrote them for films in the 1960′s. Totally worth checking out for those songs (especially “No One Said This Would Be Easy”, which sounds like what you’d get if Morricone did a Bond theme).
Nushu is a SoCal two piece consisting of Lisa Mychols and Hillary Burton, who write and perform everything here including handling all the instrumental chores. Their new album, Hula is one of the best discs of 2010, folks, and absolutely worth seeking out. The band veer from ’90′s indie chick pop (there are a lot of songs that sound like something Veruca Salt would’ve killed for), but also a lot of nods to some very classic wall of Spector 1960′s production and songwriting.
Dragoon probably needs little introduction to a lot of my friends: this is Tripp and Stanley from The Grifters, along with Bobby Matthews (DC hardcore legend of Trusty fame) on guitars and vocals. What’s fascinating here is that Dragoon sounds a LOT like The Grifters. In fact, the Dragoon record suggests to me that it came out of some alternate dimension that took that band down a different path after the Eureka IV ep than the one they actually took.
Grand Atlantic hail from Australia, and they’re a favorite of mine; their debut made my top 20 of 2006. This is a tune from their new record, which doesn’t hit quite the highs of the debut, but which still is worth checking out.
The Painted Hills feature folks from Beechwood Sparks and The Tyde. This, one of the first albums to appear on Ric Menck’s new Bird Songs label, sounds less Gram Parsons and more Paisley Underground than the band’s roots.
