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Q's Compilations
Vol #143 – April to
May 2022
Happy summer everyone. This mix had to come about fairly quickly since I didn’t even get mixing the tracks together until the last weekend of May, but sometimes these are the most fulfilling ones to compile. As usual, these are mostly new songs with a few 2021 stragglers still coming to my attention, and a couple of older tunes thrown in for specific reasons. It has been a busy couple of months, with a trip to California to see Del Amitri, who I also saw in Philadelphia and a show here in New York, a holiday in New Orleans that we’d talked about taking for years, a couple of weddings in the Boston area, and I even managed to catch covid as well eventually (aside from a fever one day and a residual cough for a while, it was fine, and I’m grateful to have been vaccinated and boosted). I’ll turn 40 in a couple of weeks which for some reason is almost comforting at this point.
01) Pet Fox - Checked Out: The trio of Theo Hartlett (Ovlov), Morgan Luzzi (Ovlov), and Jesse Weiss (ex-Palehound, Grass Is Green) have already released a couple of albums and EPs, and are set to release their first album on Exploding in Sound Records in June called A Face In Your Life.
02) Oso Oso - Describe You: I was a big fan of Oso Oso’s 2019 record, Basking in the Glow, so was delighted when this record, Sore Thumb, seemed to come out of nowhere back in March. It didn’t grab me quite as much on first listen and I didn’t think about it for a month or so, but I’ve kept coming back to it for most of May. Recorded in early 2021, tragedy struck when guitarist Tavish Maloney died a month after the sessions, leaving the album in limbo for some time.
03) The Stroppies - Up to My Elbows: Aussie quartet The Stroppies put out their latest album, Levity, at the start of May. Australia excels at jangle-pop and maybe The Stroppies are the best they have right now. Whilst this is a fairly straightforward indie-rocker, the record jumps around a little bit and rewards multiple listens.
04) Lawn – Down: New Orleans’ Lawn are releasing a new EP in July called Bigger Sprout via Born Yesterday Records. I’m a subscriber to the label’s bandcamp page which is a great way to hear new bands I otherwise probably wouldn’t, now I not only have this EP to look forward to but a couple of albums in the back catalogue to discover.
05) Lou Barlow - Only Fading: The latest release from Lou Barlow sees him fronting a 4-piece band for the first time, with Western Mass trio Eat Fire Spring as the backing band. So far they have just released two songs via bandcamp but hopefully there’s an album to come.
06) Don McGlashan - Go Back In: New Zealand’s finest songwriter, Don McGlashan (The Mutton Birds, Blam Blam Blam), is not the most prolific writer in the world, Bright November Morning is his fourth solo record since 2006 and was released in February. McGlashan’s style is effortless as usual and rarely gets out of second gear, but when the middle lane is this comforting sometimes you never want to leave.
07) Nina Nastasia - Just Stay in Bed: Riderless Horse will be Nina Nastasia’s seventh album but first since 2010’s Outlaster, and she has been dearly missed. The record deals with her disfunctional and abusive relationship with long term partner and manager Kennan Gudjonsson, who committed suicide in 2020, the day after they broke up.
08) Mark Lanegan - The River Rise: Mark Lanegan sadly died in February of this year at the age of 57, perhaps a big surprise that he lived as long as he did. I never really got into Screaming Trees all that much at the time but always liked his solo work, and then Bubblegum came out in 2004 and I was hooked ever since. His death hit me pretty hard and led me read his memoir, Sing Backwards and Weep that came out in 2020. It’s a gripping book, and he does a great job of just hitting home how intense his drug addiction was, like a real-life Naked Lunch at times. This is from his second solo album, Whiskey for the Holy Ghost, which took three years to complete and was released in 1994, but almost never was, as he mentions in the memoir, Lanegan was seconds away from tossing all the master tapes into a nearby river in frustration, only to be stopped by producer Mike Johnson at the last second.
09) Rex - Ride Home: 90s Brooklyn act Rex were not quite your typical slowcore band of the time, though large chunks of C are as classic slowcore as you can get, there are smatterings of folk, chamber music, a little grunge, and on this tune, what could have been a 90s alternative hit
10) Sidney Gish - Sin Triangle: I had tickets to see Beach Bunny in May but singer Lili Trifilio came down with covid so the show got pushed to August, I mention this because one of the openers (Wednesday, see Q#131 for Handsome Man) got replaced with Sidney Gish, whose 2017 album No Dogs Allowed is a delightful bedroom pop record.
11) Horse Jumper of Love - I Poured Sugar In Your Shoes: Boston trio Horse Jumper of Love are releasing their third record, Natural Part via Run for Cover Records on the 17th of June. The band have been flying the slowcore flag since their self-titled debut in 2016, and this is probably their most high-tempo song to date and I can’t wait to hear what the rest of the album is like.
12) Spacemoth - Pipe and Pistol: Spacemoth is the moniker for bay area musician/producer Maryam Qudus, who is releasing her debut album, No Past No Future on the 22nd of July. There have been two singles released so far and if the record is as full of classic synths and pop beats like this track then it should be a triumph.
13) Pop Zeus - If You Were Mine Tonight: Mikey Hodges was the first musician I had the courage to say hi to at a gig to say I was a fan of his music and saw Pop Zeus a number of times between. The self-titled Pop Zeus album from 2012 was tragically his only full length album before getting hit by a car in late 2014. Somehow, I only just found out that twosyllable records compiled his unreleased demos and pressed them to vinyl called This Doesn’t Feel Like Home, so I immediately bought a copy. 100% of the proceeds from this record go to the Michael T Hodges Instrument Endowment Fund which supplies instruments to students in Lebanon, IN, so please do pick up a copy if you like what you hear.
14) The Holydrug Couple - Time Bazaar: Chilean heavyweights The Holydrug Couple have released a couple of soundtracks, singles and demos in the last couple of years but not a full record since 2018’s Hyper Super Mega. This tune just came out as a digital single at the beginning of April and sounds like it could have been on the last record, which continues the bands path from Pink Floyd style psych-rock to almost John Carpenter-esque synth heavy pieces.
15)
The Smile - Thin Thing: The Smile consist of Thom Yorke and Jonny Greenwood of Radiohead
plus Tom Skinner from Sons of Kermet. Their debut album, A
Light for Attracting Attention is very good and while one could
criticise that it basically sounds like Radiohead, for me that’s not a bad
thing at all, I almost wish this was a Radiohead album.
16) Just Mustard - I Am You: Ireland’s Just Mustard released their second album on the 27th of May, Heart Under, this track was first released back in November. The record is pretty dark and abrasive for the most part, reminds me a lot of FACS (see Q#141 and Q#139).
17) 50 Foot Wave - Staring Into the Sun: Kristen Hersh’s power-trio side project 50 Foot Wave have released a number of Eps since 2005 debut Golden Ocean, but Black Pearl was released in April and is finally the band’s second full-length. The record is missing a few BPM compared to the debut but it hits just as hard.
18) Cloakroom - Lost Meaning: I saw Cloakroom in San Francisco in 2016 and they’ve released two records since then, with the most recent being Dissolution Wave which came out in January and is a bit of a space-rock concept record which this track opens. The record has a lot more delicate moments than this song would suggest, but I felt like I wanted something heavy at this part of the mix
19) Somerset Thrower - Harbor (Virteous Humor): I was going through the showlistings in New York and noticed that his band was opening for a powerpop act I really like (Supercrush) and that usually is enough for me to check someone out. This single came out in February and you can see why they are sharing the stage with Supercrush. The band are from New York and have two full length record I still need to listen to, 2020’s Paint My Memory and 2018’s Godspeed.
20) Kiwi Jr - Night Vision: Torontonians Kiwi Jr sound like they got bored of the constant Pavement comparisons with this lead single for their third album, Chopper, which is coming out in August via SubPop. For the record, I enjoyed their first two albums very much!
21) Erasers - You See: This duo from Perth, Australia, just released their third album, Constant Connection, on Fire Talk Records. You almost get surprised when there are vocals given how much the record has a classic, wavey ambient quality to it, like it should be a movie soundtrack, but when the vocals do come in and out they elevate the material.
As
always, Peace and Love - Q
