It’s like really good new music overload lately! Holy crap. Waxahatchee especially, but I had meant to check out Greta Van Fleet after hearing on of their songs on Shameless.
And new Superchunk? Aw yiss.
Speaking of Aw yiss: new Leisure Society record very soon.
But…also…Leisure Society co-leader Christian Hardy (he’s the engaging bloke who plays keys and other instruments and provides angelic harmonies to Nick Hemming’s lead vocals, as well as writes a lot of material for them) has a trio of EPs coming out.
It’s him and the rest of the Leisure Society sans Hemming in a band called Pop Crisis. The project and songs were apparently inspired by the sudden death of Hardy’s uncle last year.
This is a first… just got an unreleased album from VMP, my monthly record club. Plus it’s one I’m dying to hear… City Music by Kevin Morby. I’m halfway through and so far it’s outstanding.
They’re pretty damn consistent, but my favorite Saint Etienne album is So Tough from 1993.
The album is littered with little snippets of movie dialogue, including a Billy Liar quote (“A man can lose himself in London… lose himself… Lose Himself in LON-DON!”) from the start of You’re In a Bad Way. Of course, I didn’t know what Billy Liar was until years later when you recommended the movie to me! (I still screen it for my NYU kidz almost every year.) Unfortunately the quote isn’t included in this video.
Debut Foxbase Alpha and their third album Tiger Bay are also great.
If you want to sample later stuff, try Tales from Turnpike House from 2006.
ORRRRR, you could just go for the chronologically arranged and really quite excellent best-of comp called London Conversations! That one kicks off with their cover of Only Love Can Break Your Heart which was the defining song for me during my junior year in college and made me a lifelong fan.
So Tough is so, so great, but my favorite record from that period is probably Good Humor as the most consistently high-quality album experience. From the 2000s, I absolutely second Tales from Turnpike House. It’s probably my favorite Saint Etienne album of all of their albums, though 2012’s Words and Music is also excellent.
One of the further joys of Saint Etienne fandom is tracking down all of the fan club-only albums and soundtracks and mix-tape albums they’ve issued over the years, but that’s probably for another day.
How cool is Frode Strømstad? I mean he’s got his own band in Norway (I Was A King), and they do English language songs, but despite putting out some great records, they can’t even get them licensed for release on Spotify or iTunes or anything else. C’est la vie.
But…5 years ago, Frode got Norman Blake of Teenage Fanclub to produce a song, and Blake ended up producing and playing on the album and still tries to bring Frode’s band along on on European Teenage Fanclub tours as the opening act whenever he can.
And then a few years later, Frode asks Robyn Hitchcock to sing on a song, and Hitch ends up producing the album and enlisting IWAK as his backing band in the studio and on the road.
And now Frode apparently asked Peter Buck of REM and Scott McCaughey of the Minus 5/Young Fresh Fellows/Baseball Project to come and play on a song with him, and Peter and Scott dug Frode’s songs so much they ended up forming a side project band called The No Ones, and the No Ones are touring, opening for The Minus Five (which is a busy night for McCaughey).
Oh damn. I have to try and sneak this in here, because I didn’t do it last year.
Punky Meadows released his first solo album. Most of you probably won’t know who in the hell this guy even is (formerly of 1970’s glam act Angel). Here’s a track from the album.
I bought the album, and while I do like it, I don’t love it. He’s playing it very safe with the songwriting. Nothing anywhere close to the imagination Angel had back in the day. If you listened to the track I posted there, you know what to expect from the rest of the album. Not bad, but feels like he’s shooting for AOR stuff, 80’s style. His guitar solos are first-rate however, and I think even better than the work he did in the 70’s.
Also, the cover art is laughably bad. Looks like something Spinal Tap would have come up with.
French Baroque/Breakcore/Triphop/Black-Metal genius Igorrr dropped his latest, Savage Sinusoid this week, and I am already absolutely in love. You’d think the seemingly random genre mashup wouldn’t work in the slightest, but I’ve been completely hooked since 2008’s Moisissure and have been eagerly awaiting this new one.
Like what you’re hearing? Come on over to the Metal thread. . . where I also just dropped 10 local North Carolinian-area metal bands (plus one from Richmond, VA) on everyone’s heads to deafening silence ;-)
