Q's Compilations
Vol #138 – June to
July 2021
Greetings and happy, hope everyone is staying healthy and doing well… Anyway, most of this mix as usual is all brand-new, and I’ve gotten over the line thanks to a couple of friends and having to completely rebuild my itunes library from scratch, a clean start has ultimately been quite liberating. While I still had all my files intact, and my ipod classic still going strong after 12 years, it was nice to throw together what I considered essential and then adding anything recent, or things that I didn’t give enough time of day originally. After running an “if I need to add something I have to delete something first” operation for a number of years to the ipod being full, it’s exciting to have a bit of space for a while (and yes I still use my ipod classic a lot!).
01) All Dogs - That Kind of Girl: A beneficiary of my fresh-itunes-start, I thought this was a new record I just didn’t get round to listening, but Kicking Every Day is the band’s only album which came out in 2015. I was trying to figure out how I had this but going through my gig-history it all made sense, they opened for Superchunk when I saw them in 2015. The band is fronted by Maryn Jones who I also like a lot as her pseudonym, Yowler.
02) Guided By Voices - Trust Them Now: Earthman Blues, the zillionth GBV album released since you started reading this sentence (ok it was released at the end of April). There’s nothing new I can write about Bob Pollard and whoever is in his band, the man is a machine.
03) Snarls - Walk in the Woods: I closed Q#136 with Burst, the title track of their record released in March 2020 and I had a hard time picking between that song and this one, so much that I couldn’t get it out of my head recently so here it is. This is the kind of song I love to listen to while walking around the city on a nice day.
04) Bad Bad Hats - Detroit Basketball: Back in normal times, I saw Bad Bad Hats open for The Beths and enjoyed them a lot, but their between-song demeanour really kept them in my thoughts, and now they’ve just signed to one of my favourite labels, Don Giovanni Records. This is the first single from Walkman, that will come out in September.
05) Smile Machine - Pretty Today: Jordyn Blakely has been a mainstay in Brooklyn for some time now as the drummer in many a band you’ll have seen at a DIY venue (Stove, Night Manager, Butter the Children, etc), this is at least to my knowledge the first time she’s fronted a band. Bye for Now is Smile Machine’s debut EP that came out on the 16th of July and this song and every song is like being in a warm, fuzzy 90s-alt-rock-inspired hug.
06) Bennio Qwerty - The Spell: I could say that this song is on the mix as a result of my itunes reshuffle, but Bennio Qwerty are one of the bands I think about the most who released the least amount of music and seemingly disappeared without a trace. In a list of bands I would put back together, Bennio Qwerty would be up there.
07) Fuzz - The Returning: On a recent trip to Portland (Oregon), it transpired that there was something out on Record Store Day that I felt strongly enough to endure waiting in line over an hour for on holiday (Nada Surf’s Cycle Through EP). Having made everyone else wait for this nonsense, I felt like I should buy a few more things to make it seem more worthwhile, one purchase was the latest Fuzz record, which came out last year.
08) Hovvdy - True Love: A welcome return to Hovvdy, who last appeared on Q#119 back in April/May 2018. This song is the title-track to their new album which comes out in October. There’s something unashamedly radio-friendly about this song, maybe it’s the backing vocals, feels like it should be a low-key summer hit.
09) Bleachers - Stop Making This Hurt: I was struggling to put this mix together for a while, landing a good 20 minutes short when I ran out of steam/influence, but thanks to Adrianna for sending this song, it really tied the mix together (tracks 8-13 almost immediately all fell in place shortly after). Despite Jack Antonoff being one of the most in-demand pop producers over the last decade, and Bleachers themselves being popular, I’d never heard of him or them until now. Their third album, Take the Sadness Out of Saturday Night, comes out on the 30th of July (hopefully I’ve finished these notes by then…), but you probably already know that. Anyway, intensely catchy and the type of unabashed pop that I very rarely have or make time for in my life.
10) Vundabar - Out of It: One of the records that passed me by in 2020 was Vundabar’s Either Light, which had the misfortune of coming out in the middle of March when something else was dominating everyone’s thoughts. Anyway, they released two new songs in May which I like but I’m mostly grateful that it made me go back and listen the Either Light (which this song opens).
11) Lucy Dacus - Hot & Heavy: I bought tickets to see Bright Eyes for a show in June 2020, which fairly swiftly got rescheduled to July 31st 2021, even as the numbers were going down in May and even early June, I was still wondering if the show would happen since there was no news aside from the original rescheduled date… but towards the end of June they announced yes, the show will go ahead, it’ll be my first concert since March 2020… I’m sure it’ll be great. Oh yeah, why am I mentioning this now, Lucy Dacus is opening the show! One of the indie-darlings of 2021, she just released new album Home Video in June on Matador Records.
12) Riddy Arman - Half a Heart Keychain: Montana-based singer-songwriter Riddy Arman’s debut album (self-titled) comes out in September and this is the lead-single and if you like this you’ll probably like the 9-track/29-minute offering.
13) Dark Tea - Highway Mile: Dark Tea’s second-self-titled album (for clarity, the band’s second album, both albums are self-titled) was released in April and it’s a low-key delightful album, the kind of record you listen to and maybe move on to other things for a few weeks but before you know it you keep coming back for more.
14) Courtney Barnett - Rae Street: like every man and his dog, I loved (and still play) 2015’s Sometimes I Sit and Think, and Sometimes I Just Sit, and enjoyed 2018’s Tell Me How You Really Feel without ever going back to it. I’m looking forward to new album, Things Take Time, Take Time, which comes out in November. This song opens the album and I got tickets to see her at Radio City in February, which has the, dare I say, even greater benefit of featuring Julia Jacklin as opener.
15) Del Amitri - I'm So Scared of Dying: It’s a failure of mine to be able to put into adequate words the feeling of your favourite band releasing their first album in almost 20 years, is it an excellent album or am I just unable to be objective about such things? I think I’m a pretty rational person, and I love Fatal Mistakes, with this song perhaps being my favourite, there’s an unabashed Neil Young Everybody Knows This is Knowhere vide to this song. I do have tickets to see them on tour in the UK in October but I fear the UK government’s decision to fully re-open the country will result in that not happening, guess I can’t do anything but wait.
16) The Connells - Really Great: Speaking of bands who haven’t released anything in a while, I’ve always had a soft spot for their album Ring which came out in 1993 (casual music fans of the era may remember the minor-hit song 74-75 reached the heady heights of 36 in the UK singles chart). Anyway, this track opens Steadman’s Wake, which is due out in September, their first album since 2001’s Old School Dropouts.
17) The New Pornographers - Sing Me Spanish Techno: I try never to re-use songs and I know I used Twin Cinema at some point in 2005… it’s my favourite album from the band and they just announced an anniversary tour that rolls into Webster Hall in December, hence another track from the record. They’re also doing another night where they’re playing Mass Romantic but while that’s a good record, it’s just not as satisfying overall.
18) The Ganjas – Revelate: I try to be reasonable with my vinyl-purchasing, it takes up far too much room for an NYC apartment, but I have my (all-too-frequent) weak moments, and if I find an album on Blow Your Mind Records then it’s hard to resist and I managed to come across both Loose (where this track appears) and Daybreak recently. Chilean psyche rock has gotten a lot of praise over the last decade (and it deserves even more!), but we wouldn’t have some of the great bands of today were it now for The Ganjas who have been doing it for over 20 years at this point.
19) Caution - Supplemental Supplement: I’m a digital subscriber to Born Yesterday Records on bandcamp and it’s an excellent way to make you listen to a bunch of new releases as they get delivered to you instantly on release. Caution are a duo from Baltimore and this self-titled EP was released in February of this year, I was randomly flicking through my bandcamp library and this song just jumped out.
20) FCKR JR - Next Best Friends: Another Born Yesterday Records random-listen, FCKR JR are a quartet from Chicago and this album (I’m Sorry Mom and Dad) came out in August 2019. The band is fronted by former Geronimo! bassist and keyboard player Ben Grigg (Geronimo! featured way back on Q#96 seven years ago).
21) Karate – Gasoline: This track opens Karate’s self-titled debut album from 1996, sometimes you come across an old band that really begs belief that you weren’t already a huge fan for decades. Sadly Karate had to disband in 2005 after six albums due to frontman Geoff Farina developing hearing problems after playing almost 700 shows.
22) Bnny – Sure: Another Chicago act, Bnny is signed to Fire Talk Records and debut album Everything is getting released on the 20th of August. This is the third pre-release single from the album and has a lullaby-like quality that I love putting towards the end of a mix.
23) Yvette - B61: Eight long years after the release of debut album PROCESS, Yvette finally return in September with How the Garden Grows, B61 opens the album and maintains the industrial sound that made Process so great, but there’s a bit more control and refinement, at least on this one song, I can’t wait to hear the whole thing later in the year.
I
hope there were things to enjoy on the mix, this one took a while to come
together but once the songs started flowing it snowballed pretty quickly.
As always, Peace and Love - Q
