Q#121 - August to September 2018

Please note that the zip file has a password: QCOMPS.BLOGSPOT  

Download mix from http://www.mediafire.com/file/y5sgaugadtjjdyu/Q121.zip/file

Q's Compilations

Vol #121 – August to September 2018

Greetings. Apologies for the latest I have ever been in releasing a mix (and I think, late for only the second time in 15 years)… Summer is over but it has been a pretty good one! There’s no theme or a whole lot of thought put into this, just mostly brand new tracks that I’ve stitched together. Hope you enjoy.

01) Ron Gallo – It’s All Gonna Be Ok: Ron Gallo’s third album, Stardust Birthday Party, is going to be released on the 5^th of October and this is the lead single. If it’s half as good as Heavy Meta then we’re in for a treat.

02) The Beths – Great No One: New Zealand quartet The Beths may have released the catchiest record this year (Future Me Hates Me), which also blends two of my favourite opposites, sad lyrics but bright, upbeat music!

03) Bad Moves – Spirit FM: Washington DC’s Bad Moves just released their debut album, Tell No One, via Don Giovanni Records (which you may have been able to guess by listening to this track). If you want no-frills power-pop (as I often do!) then look no further.

04) Billy & Dolly – Everything is Off: I’m such a sucker for jangle guitars and arpeggios like this; I’m sure there are hundreds of songs that are note for note the same, but there’s something to be said for winning formulas. I don’t know a whole lot about this San Francisco duo other than they used to be in another band together called The Monolith.

05) Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever – Talking Straight: It’s hard for Australian jangle-pop bands to steer clear of comparisons to the Go-Betweens but let’s not act like it isn’t a good thing anyway (and this song is about as Go-Betweens as it gets). The band released their debut album, Hope Downs, on Sub Pop in June and is filled with catchy tunes like this one.

06) Deeper – Trust is Yours: My buddy Felix sent me a song by this Chicago four-piece, which in turn led me to Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever (previous track) as they were playing together at the Bowery (I decided not to go, however).

07) Weeping Icon – Jail Billz: Rough Trade had a 75% off end of summer sale on some records, one of which was Weeping Icon, who I had seen last year opening for Yvette. I’m trying to cut down on impulse purchases these days but my recollection of their unrelenting psych-noise from that show made me feel confident.

08) Nothing – Blue Line Baby: Dance on the Blacktop is Nothing’s third album, it sounds like a continuation of their previous album, 2016’s Tired of Tomorrow, with it’s heavy-shoegaze sound and loud-quiet-loud pattern. As I said earlier, there’s something to be said for winning formulas.

09) The Spirit of the Beehive – Hypnic Jerks: I can’t quite remember how I came about this Philly band originally, but I’d seen the name a bunch of times without actually listening to them. Thankfully I rectified that recently by giving their latest record a try (this is the title track), which is their third album and a wonderful mix of influences.

10) Big Bliss – Constants: I was impressed with Big Bliss when I first saw them years ago at Cake Shop (RIP) and after a few singles and an EP, they’re about to release their debut full-length, At Middle Distance.

11) Anna Calvi – Don’t Beat the Girl Out of My Boy: The years between Anna Calvi albums can be hard at times, but Hunter was released at the end of August (five years after the release of One Breath), and it really is a triumph. Managing to become more pop-oriented and arty at the same time (perhaps at the expense of some jaw-dropping guitar playing), I suspect it will be my favourite record of the year.

12) Mint Field – Ciudad Satellite: Keen listeners may remember this Mexican psych-pop band from Q#112 (“of course!” I hear you cry), and they have since released their excellent debut album, Pasar de las Luces. Having missed their live shows last year I was determined not to make the same mistake again and saw them at Baby’s All Right, which I’m sure will end up being one of my favourites of the year. I promptly ordered the record from Innovative Leisure and if you can find a more gorgeous sounding album this year then please let me know.

13) TV On the Radio – Family Tree: Dear Science turned ten years old this year, and the band just played it in full at Knockdown Centre to celebrate. It was a good show, but it does seem like they can only get their live sound right about 50% of the times I’ve seen them. Anyway, it’s clearly a phenomenal record (and not even their best!), and you can’t fall in love with a record again if you never stopped in the first place, but it has seemed like a treat revisiting it.

14) Shannon Shaw – Broke My Own: Releasing a solo album (Shannon in Nashville) outside of your main band (when you are the front person) often screams “these songs weren’t good enough for the band but I wanted to put them out anyway”, but Shannon Shaw has managed to sound distinct enough from her day job to fully warrant the decision, in fact, I probably enjoy it far more than anything Shannon and the Clams have released to date. I caught her debut solo show at Coney Island on a scorching day last month, which for the most part was under-rehearsed and lost some of the magic in this production, but it was still very good.

15) Molly Burch – Wild: Molly Burch’s second record, First Flower, will be released by Captured Tracks on the 5^th of October and is a little brighter than her so-relaxed-it-was-horizontal debut Please Be Mine.

16)The Mountain Goats – Song for Ted Sallis: John Darnielle doesn’t release as many Eps these days as he used to but having confessed that in the press-release for Hex of Infinite Binding, it seems like we might be able to enjoy a resurgence of the format in the Mountain Goats discography.

17) Adrianne Lenker – Symbol: Big Thief’s Adrianne Lenker is doing her best to fill the Mark Kozelek void in my life since he hasn’t been able to write a coherent song in years. This beautiful finger-picked song doesn’t really stray from what Big Thief do but Capacity was one of my favourite albums of last year.

18) Ricky Lewis – See You in the Morning: This is the title-track to Ricky Lewis’ debut album that just came out. I loved this song to begin with, then something bothered me about it, which was that I couldn’t place who I was getting it mixed up with, then I realised that it sounds exactly like Withered Hand, then I liked it again having gotten over that mental hurdle.

19) The Babe Rainbow – Supermoon: Another Aussie band graces this mix with this effortlessly groovy psych-pop from their record Double Rainbow (there’s a lot of rainbows going on here).

20) Thou – In the Kingdom of Meaning: Baton Rouge sludge/doom-greats Thou have had a very productive year, putting out three excellent Eps and a full-length record, Magus. This song showcases everything great about the record in just under ten minutes (but really, check out the album, you can’t have too much of a good thing).

As always, Peace and Love - Q

Please note that the zip file has a password: QCOMPS.BLOGSPOT  

Download mix from http://www.mediafire.com/file/y5sgaugadtjjdyu/Q121.zip/file

Q#111 December 2016 – January 2017

Please note that the zip file has a password: QCOMPS.BLOGSPOT

Download mix from: http://www.mediafire.com/file/4n55vn2n5kyn246/Q%23111.zip

Q’s Compilations

Volume #111 December 2016 to January 2017

Here we are, 2017. A common theme throughout last year was the feeling that this year had to be better than 2016, but with an unstable 5-year old in the White House we’ll just have to see how this plays out. As usual, the first mix of the year is a collection of my favourite releases of the previous 12 months, so let’s get to it.

01) The Men – Dreamer: The Men’s sixth album, Devil Music, was self-released via their own “We Are The Men” label, rather than their typical home of Sacred Bones. The record is raw and unrelenting, which is a nice change of pace from the band’s last couple of albums which focused more on sounding like Neil Young and Bruce Springsteen.

02) Big Ups - Contain Myself: A staple on the local Brooklyn scene of the last few years, Big Ups were always a high energy shot in the arm when they played live and 2014’s Eighteen Hours of Static was a post-hardcore triumph. However, Before a Million Verses sees the band go up a couple of gears in terms of songwriting and craft, the Slint comparisons are unavoidable but they do it brilliantly.  

03) Jesu & Sun Kil Moon – Carondelet: Kozelek’s output rate doesn’t seem like dropping anytime soon, and there is even a second collaborative album set for release this year called 30 Seconds to the Decline of Planet Earth. Let’s stay on track though, with 2016’s self-titled release, which was a sprawling, diverse record, although Kozelek’s stream-of-consciousness vocals shows no sign of slowing down. It was nice to hear him backed by some chugging guitars.

04) Nothing - The Dead Are Dumb: Nothing made our 2014 list with Guilty of Everything, and while the chunky guitars are still common two years later, it’s when the band tackle a more classic shoegaze sound on Tired of Tomorrow where they really excel; tracks like The Dead Are Dumb, Everyone is Happy and Our Plague have all the floating qualities of Slowdive (with whom they had a brief run-in then make-up over twitter). It’s hard not to get caught up in guitarist/singer Domenic Palermo’s life in the music and lyrics, he was attacked and left with a fractured skull, his father died and then found out the label they were on was being bankrolled by Martin Shkreli. This all makes for a rather downbeat record, but Vertigo Flowers, A.C.D and Curse of the Sun pack enough hooks and punch across the album to stop you falling too far down. “Isn’t it quite the same, And isn’t it such a shame, Too heavy for the lightness, But weightless in the rain, All our words are wasted”

05) Radiohead – Identikit: I got a little nostalgic for this one - The closest I can imagine to living through Beatle-mania was being in Oxford just before OK Computer was released, there was a local build-up that I have never experienced at any time or place since (even though in reality they’ve always been left well alone when I’ve seen them walking the streets of Oxford). Who knows what we would have done if it was terrible. Radiohead’s legacy these days would remain untarnished if they released a 45-minute fart over Thom Yorke beat-boxing, though even after the somewhat tepid King of Limbs, the fervour of 1998 seemed as distant as it should, did the world even need another Radiohead album? For a band with nothing to prove to anyone, they certainly did anyway. A Moon Shaped Pool may be their darkest release yet. Jonny Greenwood’s string arrangements add an extra dimension and the band know when to drench songs in layers or let the arrangements breathe, leaving you hanging on every note. For a record that dips into the archives of unreleased tracks multiple times, it has a more natural flow than any album since Kid A and while some bands benefit from honing their skills on staying on track (more on that later), no band benefits more from pushing themselves into new territory, even after all this time.

06) Holy Fuck – Shivering: The Toronto group’s first album in 5 years, Congrats takes their signature sound and makes you feel as if you’re in the room watching them play. Speaking of which, if you get the chance to see them live, don’t pass it up.

07) A Tribe Called Quest - We the People: Their first album in 18 years, We Got It From Here…Thanks You 4 Your Service, was released shortly after Phife Dawg’s death. My only criticism is that it feels a little long, but the material is among their best and as you can imagine, they have plenty to say about current events.

08) David Bowie – Lazarus: There’s pretty much nothing that can be said about the loss of David Bowie, and what a swansong. Hard to think it’s over a year since he died. “This way or no way, You know I'll be free, Just like that bluebird, Now, ain't that just like me?”

09) La Sera - Too Little Too Late: Yet another of my Free Williamsburg reviews - Few musicians step out from the shadows of a band to produce better work on their own, but when Katy Goodman formed La Sera in 2010 while Vivian Girls (2007-2014) were still active, she has managed just that. Music for Listening to Music to is the band’s fourth album, and the first with with guitarist (and husband) Todd Wisenbaker officially on-board (though he was a major player on 2014’s Hour of the Dawn). Produced by Ryan Adams, the record bops between country twang and Johnny Marr/Peter Buck-influenced arpeggios, while Adams has also coaxed a much more confident vocal performance out of Goodman which you always felt was bubbling under the surface on previous records. Wisenbaker produces an understated guitar masterclass throughout which is worthy of celebration alone. “When it's too little too late, That's when it starts to make the most sense, sense to me, When I look back on my life, That's when I start to cry, my failures come to be, It kills me “

10) The Jigsaw Seen - Let There Be Reverb: I’d honestly just assumed that The Jigsaw Seen had broken up years ago, having fallen in love with My Name Is Tom years ago on the Children of Nuggets boxset, but they never went away. Old Man Reverb is a lovely collection of songs and now I’m playing catchup on the band’s discography.

11) The Posies - Squirrel vs Snake: One of my favourite songwriting duos returned this year with Solid States, their first album in six years. Off the back of drummer Darius Minwalla’s tragic death, some of the subject matters are understandably morose, but there is a lot of positivity too.

12) Fly Ashtray – Mulligan: Fly Ashtray may be New York’s most underappreciated band, and new album We Buy Everything You Have is another stellar set of jangle-infused tunes that frequently stray from songwriting templates.

13) Teenage Fanclub - Thin Air: Teenage Fanclub albums aren’t terribly frequent but you can always bet on them to deliver a gorgeous collection of power-pop tunes a couple of times a decade. I might have cooled on Here from the initial euphoria of a new fannies album, but it’s still another great addition to one of the best discographies around. “And I've been meaning to take a chance on something, I'm a greenfield site for sore eyes, and sore eyes,

Are just needing the light, the shapes and the shadows, Of the space we share, Before it slips into thin air”

14) Robbie Fulks - Aunt Peg's New Old Man: A couple of years ago a friend told me “you’re in America now, you’re going to a country show!” and took me to see Robbie Fulks, I now try and see him every time he plays. Last album, Upland Stories is a bit more downbeat than normal but he does still sneak in some humourous tracks like this one. “She liked just fiddeling, No doubt, Liked his help on the railroad route, And the rest I don't want to think about, Aunt Peg's new old man”

15) Preoccupations – Stimulation: The band formerly known as Viet Cong, Pre-Occupations changed their name this year after catching flack for some time. I think it’s a bit silly for bands to change names, and the list of groups who would have to change their name due to possibly “offending” anyone would be quite long. One thing that hasn’t changed, however, is the band’s sound.

16) Fear of Men – Sane: I’m just going to copy what I wrote for Free Williamsburg… After the band’s wonderful 2014 debut, Loom, it would have been easy for the Brighton trio to simply rehash the formula of bright guitars and swaying harmonies backing Jessica Weiss’ longing vocals. Rather than accentuate their poppy tendencies, Fall Forever takes a daring step back, focusing on mood and texture, with barely a conventional guitar chord in sight. Fall Forever doesn’t get out of second gear and all the better for it, with sparse drumming and more emphasis on Weiss’ lyrics, who has skipped the metaphors and isn’t afraid to tell us what a terrible year she has had. Everything is laid bare and would fall completely flat in lesser hands, but Fear of Men have made depression sound beautiful, and that is worth clinging to.

17) Springtime Carnivore - Rough Magic: Another of my Free Williamsburg picks… If there is a more vivid break-up album in 2016 then I didn’t hear it, though despite the sometimes bleak lyrics, there is plenty of optimism to be found in the cracks. I was a big fan of the self-titled debut from 2014 and as with that record, Greta Morgan recorded most of the instruments herself, but Midnight Room benefits greatly from pushing her voice way up in the mix. Providing my favourite vocal performance on record this year, her range is astounding as well as choosing when to deliver a restrained croon or belting it out. The record is mostly front-loaded with the upbeat tracks before sending you off on a lullaby, something we discussed in an interview when the album was released (“I only realized recently that the reason I love closing records with a slow song is because of “Goodnight” by The Beatles, which is the perfect closer to on The White Album. I’ve always been a fan of a lullaby goodbye.”). “I couldn't wait, I took the bait, Of a broken fantasy, For a while I was walking tall, Now I'm falling to my knees”

18) Katy Goodman & Greta Morgan - Pay to Cum: Cover albums are hard to pull off, you really have to make the songs your own and both Katy Goodman and Greta Morgan manage that perfectly on Take It It’s Yours, it’s a collection of punk and new wave classics but the tracks are slowed down and the vocals bring out a hidden quality of the lyrics. This is a Bad Brains tune of course.

19) Nada Surf - Victory's Yours: Probably my favourite album of the year, and one I also picked for Free Williamsburg’s round-up Nada Surf should be considered one of New York’s greatest bands, which is a claim only strengthened with the release of You Know Who You Are, their seventh original studio album. Twenty years after their debut High/Low and subsequent surprise hit, Popular, the band have only improved over time (can you say that about any other band who are ever considered a one-hit-wonder early on?). With the addition of cult-guitar hero Doug Gillard as an official member, the now four-piece effortlessly crafted a power-pop record of love, loss, and trying to get by in bleak times; something pertinent in 2016. Matthew Caws has clearly listened to himself, as the chorus in Believe You’re Mine consist of the lines “one day, I’ll love somebody else, one day, I’ll be good to myself”, and as reported in the New York Times, he recently re-married. To hear these songs and see Caws come through the other side gives hope in what seems like a broken year, it has certainly been one of my most listened-to records in some time and I don’t know where I’d be without it. Musically the band don’t veer too far from a template they have near perfected over the course of their career, but sometimes you need that reassuring embrace of an old friend, or a favourite band… Nada Surf have almost single-handedly saved 2016. “Some days just won't start, I wake up and it falls apart, Spend my time trying to figure you out but, I never get very far, I think I'm walking out of this fight, There's a spark and it's just within my sight”

I hope you enjoyed the mix as usual, and I hope your 2016 wasn’t terrible either. Regardless of how it was, here’s to a better 2017. The picture is of me trying to ignore people making out at a concert for when Other Music sadly closed, and for some reason I felt like it sort of summed the whole sad year up.

Peace and love

Q