New year, new music, and hey look, Slowdive’s first track since 1995’s Pygmalion is out today!
First single from Diet Cig LP due out in April
(jangley pop punk)
Also first single off of the upcoming new Pile album
(post-hardcore?)
Really dig that Diet Cig song. It takes me immediately back to my beloved Spinanes. I miss that band.
Happy to see that Desperate Journalist will return with a new album this year. New song:
Excited for this, coming March 31st…
Really digging that new Slowdive track. I’m the idiot who flew across the pond when MBV came back, when Lush came back, and when Swervedriver put out a new album. I sense my wife begrudgingly approving another shoegaze sojourn when this album drops.
I get some of those but I feel like Swervedriver tour the US a lot they played twice here in one year not that long ago.
Hope you’ve been keeping up with the Shoegaze revival, there’s a ton of good young bands out there doing it right now.
Yep! This!
There’s nothing even slightly Pavement-ish about Spiral Stairs new songs. He seems to be borrowing heavily from late-70’s/early 80’s David Bowie of all things. Looking forward to the album.
Holy shit. That song is fantastic. I too await this record with great impatience now!
This is an absolutely fantastic song.
New Lazerhawk dropped about a week back, but I’m only just now getting to it after spending most of my free listening time prepping for the back-to-back Mega Colossus and Anti-Flag+Reel Big Fish concerts I attended this weekend. It’s good shit!
New Mark Eitzel record is out, his first in four and a half years. Bernard Butler arranges, plays all the instruments, and produced. It’s a bloody marvelous collaboration, too. Eitzel’s solo material has always been very intimate and somewhat minimalist. Bernard Butler does “minimalist” about as well as Phil Spector…but amazingly they make a tremendous partnership.
Eitzel’s feels freed up to write some of his strongest and most adventurous material in over a decade because of an obvious trust in Butler. For his party, Barney puts on a master class on the application of large scale production/arrangement in service of small form character sketches and intimately personal songs. This sounds, then, like the great sequel to MERCURY that American Music Club never made.
Aigh, gotta give that one a listen!
There’s a new track from The New Pornographers out today called High Ticket Attractions. Album is due April 7th. I’m gonna try to get tix for their April 26th show in NYC.
Seattle/NYC folkie Julie Byrne sounds more like an Onion writer’s spoof of a spiritual singer-songwriter than an actual talking person, but her new album is quite lovely.
I haven’t liked much of Eitzel’s recent work, but this is excellent. Working with Butler agrees with him.
Excited for a new Real Estate album!
Rian Johnson posts John Darnielle’s take on Star Wars.
New Bats album out today on the streaming services and it is glorious.
So there’s going to be a new Blondie album in the spring, and based on the live tracks (apparently they were previewing live versions of the songs on their last tour) and this video…I’m kiiiiiinda really looking forward to it.
Also: Debbie Harry is 70 years old and is still cooler than any of us.
New Blondie?! That’s nuts. Catchy song. I might even call it fun.
Thanks for that new Bats album, charmers! Really good stuff.
Today I had an hour to kill at the NYU bookstore so I wandered around enjoying a listen to Wildly Idle (Humble Before the Void) by Hand Habits aka Meg Duffy aka Kevin Morby’s guitarist. Along with that Julie Byrne record, it’s been a good year so far for sensitive singer-songwriter women baring their souls. Unfortunately, I got headphone-hair and went to a meeting and when I got out and saw my reflection in the mirror with a ridiculous vertical cowlick, I wished I hadn’t listened to Hand Habits before that meeting. So listen carefully.
Oh, and HEY, speaking of fun, as Blondie was, don’t miss Love if Possible, the new one from Shintaro Sakamoto!