Q's Compilations
Vol #137 – April to
May 2021
I’m finishing these notes up at my usual time of around 1am, feeling grateful to be three-weeks past my second vaccination, but still a little apprehensive/anxious about vaccine hesitancy permeating society; just today I was walking Jackson and heard someone proudly proclaim “I will NEVER take that vaccine”, and with people like that around, I worry we’ll never quite get to the numbers we need to make this go away, and that’s without even thinking about the horrific situation in other parts of the world where covid is still raging out of control. I see achieving “herd immunity” a bit like climate change, getting a good chunk of the way there is in principle pretty easy, but getting to net zero carbon emissions / minimal covid cases in the world, is quite difficult. For climate change, we could decarbonise our grids by ramping up our only source of massive carbon-free energy, nuclear energy, for covid, we have great vaccines, the big problem in the way… people who don’t trust what the science is telling us. The cover for this month’s mix is of Indian Point, the nuclear power plant recently closed thanks to Governor Cuomo’s idiocy and corruption towards the fossil fuel industry (in this case, natural gas). Indian Point was providing a massive amount of carbon free energy for decades and it is impossible to see how the state will reach its climate change goals without it (please read more about this here: http://www.nuclearny.org/indian-point/). Anyway, everything on this latest mix is either brand new, from last year that I had missed out on at the time, and one ancient track all the way back from 2018. I hope you can enjoy it.
01) Remember Sports - Pinky Ring: Formerly known as just Sports, the Philly quartet released their fourth album, Like a Stone, in April. This track opens the record and seemed like a typical Q-comp opener! They last appeared on Q#128.
02) Momma – Biohazard: My buddy Felix probably sends me more music recommendations than anyone I know, sometimes so many at once I can’t keep up! He hit a home-run with this LA trio’s second album, Two of Me, which came out in June 2020 and would certainly have been one of my favourite albums if I’d heard it.
03) Hannah Jadagu - Think Too Much: Recently signed to Sub Pop, who just released her EP What Is Going On, this NYC resident is originally from Mesquite, Texas, and produces some lovely bedroom pop. This is the kind of song that’s perfect to walk around in a daydream on a sunny day in Prospect Park.
04) Hurry - It's Dangerous: Hurry’s latest album (their sixth, I think) is called Fake Ideas and will come out in June, this is the lead single from the album (I’ve pre-ordered it). I saw the band opening for Nada Surf a few years ago and have loved their jangle-indie since, somewhat fittingly, every time I play their records, without fail Emily asks “Is this Nada Surf?”.
05) JayWood - Some Days: Winnipeg, Manitoba, the city of greats such as Crash Test Dummies (I do actually love CTD unashamedly) and Captured Tracks’ latest signing, JayWood, who just put out his EP, Some Days, when I first heard the noodley guitar intro and that drum shuffle I knew it would be a winner.
06) Molly Burch – Control: I remember falling in love with Molly Burch’s debut album Please be Mine in 2017 but seeing her perform that year, she had the voice but an awkward lack of confidence, when I saw her a year and another album later, she was transformed. Now about to release her third album (I won’t apologise for ignoring a christmas album), Romantic Images is being released by Captured Tracks in July and based on the two singles so far, it should be excellent.
07) Squirrel Flower - Hurt a Fly: Of all the albums released last year that I didn’t hear until now, Squirrel Flower’s I Was Born Swimming might be the one I feel like I missed out on the most (I realise I’ve said similar about Momma above), thankfully Ella Williams has been prolific enough to have another record coming out this year, Planet (i), coming out on the 25th of June and this is the lead single from it which cropped up in my press releases. I’ve since bought I Was Born Swimming and pre-ordered Planet (i)
08) Dusted - Little More Time: You wouldn’t know it from the Dusted tracks I’ve used from time to time, but Brian Borcherdt is a founding member of one of my favourite acts of the last fifteen years, Holy Fuck. Whilst his main band is an electronic but fairly organic dance act, his solo output is a brand of much more sombre, traditional songwriting. This is the lead single from his upcoming record, III, (which you might guess, is his third album), the one striking thing about this song is the vocals are much more confident, I’m not saying he’s channelling Jeff Buckley or anything here, but there’s definitely a step up in the delivery.
09) Fog Lake – Jitterbug: It can be a little hard to keep on top of Fog Lake’s discography, especially since I bought all thirteen of his releases on bandcamp earlier in the year, but his latest album, Tragedy Reel, came out in April this year and is another fine addition of his bedroom-slowcore.
10) Silver Synthetic - In the Beginning: There’s something about this self-titled debut record that seems perfect for ushering summer into our lives. The whole album is like a cool summer breeze, occasions I tend to reach for a Luna album. The record came out in April, following an EP the previous October.
11) The Natvral - Why Don't You Come Out Anymore: Kip Bermen had a great run as The Pains of Being Pure at Heart from 2007 to 2019, and it was a shame when they disbanded, but his new project The Natvral is certainly different enough to justify a rebranding. This song opens new album Tethers and has strong Dylan/Petty vibes.
12) Julianna Hatfield - Moutful of Blood: Blood is set to be Julianna Hatfield’s nineteenth studio album on the 14th of May, which was recorded mostly at home due to the pandemic, this is the lead single from the album.
13) Pet Fox - Imagine Why: Pet Fox have been kicking around for a few years now, releasing a couple of full length albums but having signed to Exploding In Sound Records, they’ll hopefully get on more people’s radars. Their new three-song EP, More than Anything is excellent and hopefully a new album won’t be too far away. The band consists of Theo Hartlett (Ovlov), Morgan Luzzi (Ovlov), and Jesse Weiss (ex-Palehound, Grass Is Green), if you know those bands already then you won’t be surprised at how Pet Fox sound.
14) Blessed - Structure: One of my favourite albums of 2019 was Salt by this Vancouver quartet, and their four-track follow-up, iii, was released in February.
15) Squid – Pamphlets: It’s always heartening to hear a British band seemingly step-up and do something really great, I thought we’d already gotten the outstanding British record for the year in the bag already with Black Country New Road, but Bright Green Field by Squid might have taken the lead. Records that are hard to sum up are always going to pique my interest, it’s really all over the place and if anything, this might be the most normal song on the album.
16) La Cienca Simple – Distancia: I can never go too long without using a band from Chile on a Q Comp (this act first appeared on Q#119 in April/May 2018), this Santiago-based post-rock squintet have released three records, and this track opens the most recent (2018’s III V VII).
17) Mia Joy - Ye Old Man: I’ll pretty much buy anything that Fire Talk Records put out (indeed, I’m not a monthly subscriber), Spirit Tamer was released on the 7th May and is a very chill record.
18) Moontype – Ferry: I remember bookmarking this song back in December and falling in love with it pretty instantly, but it’s easy to lose track of bandcamp pages that are single tracks when an album is coming out (with the same song on) months later, so when I listened to Bodies of Water in April it almost took me by surprise when this song appeared late on the record. One of the reasons for that perhaps is that this song is a bit of an oddity on a mostly indie-pop record with a few more BPM than this tune would suggest, but there’s something really whimsical about this song that I can’t escape
19) Cory Hanson - Another Story from the Center of the Earth: Cory Hanson is the main-man of LA psyche rock band Wand (who have appeared many times over the years on this series), but for his solo records he tames things down a few notches to a mostly acoustic and at times country vibe. There’s some great pedal steel throughout the record that really elevates it, and this song has some serious Neil Young Everybody Knows This is Nowhere nods, including the raging guitar solos.
I’m
pretty happy with this mix overall and I hope you’ve found something new and
enjoyable as well, we’ll be back in June/July. In the meantime, I hope you’re
able to get vaccinated if you aren’t already and who knows, maybe we’ll be able
to see each other at a show or three before the year is out.
As
always, Peace and Love - Q
