Jesus, that’s awful.
You’ve turned this discussion into a real emotional roller coaster for me, trig.
Sorry!
And thanks for turning me on to Light Heat years ago. Embarrassingly enough, I only realized that it was Quentin Stolzfus’s post-Mazarin band about a year ago when I was trying to place why the voice sounded so familiar…
You know what band I keep forgetting to grab everyone by the collar and yell into their faces “THIS IS GREAT!!!”?
The Lees of Memory.
I’m not sold on that as a great band name, but the main Lee of Memory is John Davis, who was one of main songwriters in Superdrag. (Come on, you know you get nostalgic for “Sucked Out”). I was never a huge Superdrag fan, but appreciated them for what they do.
But back to the Lees of Memory. It’s John Davis and some like-minded bandmates who are centered in Nashville. And a few years ago after a single album, they abandoned the streaming music grind, turning instead to PledgeMusic and Bandcamp. Which means you can’t stream any of their excellent newer material on Spotify or Apple Music or Google Play.
So yeah, you have a couple of barriers of entry to The Lees Of Memory.
But with that said…yeah, they’re probably worth it.
The two most recent albums on Bandcamp are fantastic. 2016’s Unnecessary Evil is a straight up rock record: 10 tracks, no waiting, get your ya ya’s out.
2017’s The Blinding White of Nothing At All is a sprawling, wonderful 24-track album that draws effortlessly on pretty much every era of rock and roll from the last 40 years. It isn’t as immediately fetching as Unnecessary Evil, but it has more staying power.
Dig:
And then Superdig:
Oh…and they’re already working on final mixing of a new album. Which is a crazy on the heels of a double set.
Cool! I’ll check 'em out.
Btw, I caught you listening to MIEN on Spotify the other day and really liked what I heard. (I’m Tired of) Western Shouting was a stand-out.
So, like any professor on the cusp of summer break, I’m currently floating on Cloud 9 and all the more-so for having just invested in new ELAC speakers, a custom maple U-Turn turntable with Blue Ortofan cartridge, and a Mofi pre-amp. The hi-fi geeks over at the Vinyl Me Please forums helped me put it together on my budget. Holy crap, do those guys go deep down the rabbit hole of warm-sounding vacuum tubes and crazy-expensive McIntosh or Sutherland gear.
Anyway, I got the speakers yesterday but haven’t hooked them up yet since I’m waiting for the table and preamp which should arrive today. What I can tell you is that the speakers smell great. Can’t wait to get home from work later today, unbox, hook up my new gear, and put the needle on the record. Still deciding which one goes first but I’m leaning toward the first album by The Amazing called Gentle Stream.
SQUEE! (Emotional roller coaster is peaking once more.)
RIP Scott Hutchison. So very, very sad.
Very sorry to read about that today. Neither my gf nor I listened to much of their work, but given our experience in the really scary parts of depression, and how this sounds like it went down based on the band’s tweets, etc., we’re both pretty low today. Blargh :(
In an enormous and terrible segue, an old friend of mine plays horns for a cool Tennessee act called LUTHI, who dropped their debut album, Stranger, today. I think it’s pretty excellent funky, R&B-tinged pop. I’m not super well-versed in this genre to make reasonable comparisons, but it feels like there’s little bits of Cut Copy and Animal Collective mixed in there, I think.
Gahd-dammit. RIP.
Ugh. Just awful. John Richards on KEXP did a lovely show this morning dedicated to him. He interspersed Frightened Rabbit tracks with songs like Don’t Give Up by Gabriel/Bush and Love is Stronger than Death by The The. Lump-in-throat time.
We’ve got new albums from The Sea and Cake, Beach House, Jon Hopkins, Eternal Summers, and Pinkshinyultrablast. Not bad!
Also Mark Kozelek but he might be losing me… getting harder to distinguish between honest introspection and plain ol’ self indulgence. There is such a thing as too prolific!
And that Beach House (with Sonic Boom, btw!) is so good. I’ve always liked them alright, but this might finally be the album that converts me into a cultist.
On the other side, I found the Eternal Summers album pretty disappointing.
New Orbital album this year, here’s a track
Excellent! Orbital never disappoints. The album’s a long way off, sadly.
Glenn Branca has passed away from throat cancer.
Who? (He’s not the guy who gave up Bobby Thomson’s home run; that’s Ralph Branca).
Glenn was the guy at the center of the No Wave noise symphony movement in New York in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Thurston Moore of Sonic Youth went through his band for a time. And Branca was hugely influential on that signature, de-tuned guitar sound that the Youth would become noted for, and an icon in the post-punk math rock scene.
I had (still have/ somewhere?) a CD of one of his guitar symphonies. From what I recall, he had a bunch of players usually hitting custom-tuned guitar strings with hammers, like a hammered dulcimer. Made for a humming, buzzing, nebulously shifting sound that wasn’t unpleasant and certainly was unique–especially in the 80s, I would think.
Mitski!
I love that! I love her!
I saw one of his performances with a dozen or so guitars over a decade ago. It was quite an experience. A little painful even with earplugs.
His soundtrack for Peter Greenaway’s The Belly of an Architect is striking music, though.
The new Courtney Barnett sounds great so far.
This Stephen Malkmus album cover is a lifestyle worth aspiring to.
Also have to check out Ryley Walker and Parquet Courts.
Plus it seems Wolfgang Voigt’s GAS project is officially back in full swing pumping out the head-banging gauzy textures with new album Rausch.
I like the new Malkmus in controlled doses, but man it’s hard for me to really embrace his music completely at this point. It’s like listening to a dude doing JFK impressions in December, 1963. That’s probably one of those “It’s not him, it’s me” things.
Surprised at how much I like the Parquet Courts new one!