Some new bands I like

    For a while recently I'd been digging back in time to see what older bands I'd overlooked. e.g. it turns out Big Star really resonates with me, and in the last post on this blog I listed a bunch of 90s bands that I thought deserved your attention.

    But, now I'm performing with a few bands, so my attention naturally returned to the cool stuff that bands in my area and around my country are doing. I'm excited that everyone seems to listen to everything: even the shoegaze kids listen to Orchid, and a good few punks have a favorite Pinegrove song.

    Here's a couple bands with new albums that I've really enjoyed.

Abel - 'Dizzy Spell' (2024)

    From Ohio is Abel. Here you'll hear the fuzzy shoegaze guitar, with vocals that waver between a detached slacker rock sound and a more punchy emo sound. The production is layered very nicely.

Cosmoline - 'Inventions' (2024)

    Cosmoline is a band from New Jersey that knows how to rock. The energy and the tempo hardly relent on this album that falls just short of 30 minutes. There's some modulations that remind me of bands like Pia Fraus, and upbeat thrashing reminding me of fellow noise-rocker Kraus. If you're looking to jam out, this is the one. It's been a long time since I was so excited about an album on first listen.

Dagwood - 'Pollyanna Visions' (2024)

    This band from Connecticut was on my radar when I was in high school, but I never did see them live. Somehow I stumbled upon them again recently, and their recent music is fun, thoughtful power pop. Their live set is extremely tight, you can tell how long they've played together. I'm glad to have finally seen them after the release of this great EP.

22º Halo - '22º Halo' (2019)

    Alright, it's not a new album, and they're probably the most popular band on this list, but I'm still happy there's a band out there that sounds like Idaho. (Although, Idaho is still around with a new album of their own!) This album has any 90s alternative rock sound you could think of, the folky slowcore, the heavy shoegaze, yet maintains an impressive cohesion. Hoping to catch them next month.

Some album recommendations

 

 Hi, just here to talk about some albums I've discovered this year that really hit!

Glide was a band from Australia in the 90s, and I really enjoy their style. Borrows from power pop, shoegaze, jangle pop—all the good stuff, impressively all at once. Really tight songwriting and some surprising chords you might expect in a Radiohead song a few years later. All the albums are great, but I recommend Open Up & Croon (1995) for the most shoegaze influence and Disappear Here (1996) for a more alt-rock sound, though I adore both. If you're jonesing for more, try the posthumous Last (1999), which has a favorite of mine in "Pull in Your Claws," a demo that singer William Arthur produced in his garage before his unfortunate passing.

Lowgold was a British band that I found via the Slowdive drummer Simon Scott being a member for a time. I picked their album Welcome to Winners (2003) to listen to on a commute the other day and it blew me away. Pretty chords, slow-ish tempos, and simple vocal melodies to drive it home. It reminds me of an all-time favorite, The Gloria Record EP A Lull in Traffic (2000). I guess some britpop influence is present in both, maybe an avenue for me to find similarly slow-and-dreamy bands like these.

The band Riverside had an album called One (1992) that I've adored lately. I couldn't believe they're not British! Certainly could have passed for one of the many Scottish dreamy-jangle pop bands of the time. Instead, Riverside was from Philadelphia. Maybe I'll get to see them someday. A simple album that does everything right, even if it doesn't innovate a ton. You'll like it.

Finally, I discovered Kleenex Girl Wonder some months ago via a bandmate and I instantly loved it. I heard a track from Ponyoak (1999) that I immediately put on repeat for a while, and eventually I listened to the album in full and came to appreciate its diversity. He seems to come from the midwest Guided by Voices scene, and sounds the part, but his witty lyricism and edgy, nonstop vocal delivery are truly unique. There's some trivia about this album-- it's a breakup album, half of it about an imagined breakup while he was still in the relationship, and half of it written after that relationship had actually ended. Read more here, it's fun to guess which tracks came from which circumstance.

If anyone reads this, I hope you enjoy one of these albums, have a good day! □

Copeland - "Love Affair"

 

 

 

Copeland - Eat, Sleep, Repeat (2006)

I saw in the Copeland documentary (here on YouTube, by Kyle Brammer) that Aaron Marsh often writes songs by inserting himself into others' situations (His quote: "[I try to] write from this person's perspective, assuming I was going through the same thing"). The Copeland song "Love Affair" is a nice example where he plays both parts of a conflict in one song.

The verses are musically dramatic, matching the outpouring of questions from the person who's been wronged, feeling insufficient. Then the chorus gives the answer from the one who had the affair: the musical arrangement is now subdued as this person avoids the questions, just pleading for freedom. The long coda gives the feeling that they're sitting silently in their own reflection, a palpable heaviness. Finally, Marsh gives some words about the topic from an ambiguous perspective, seemingly removed from the previous call-and-response. (Is it Marsh himself reflecting on the topic in general? Is it a newfound perspective on love from one of the two previous characters?)

This is just a genuine heartbreaker of a tune! It's a sad thing that i relate to this song so directly through some rough life events, but I'm glad to have this newfound appreciation for this marvelous tune. ◻

Prawn - 'False Institutions' (2009)

Prawn - 'False Institutions' (2009)

*free here*

1) Nightmares

2) Thousand Grains of Sand

3) Courage Kills Men

4) Arctic Foxes

5) Family Tree

There are quite a few bands that are blurring the line between vocal post-rock and emo music. The first one that comes to mind is Moving Mountains for me, but it could be The Appleseed Cast, Empire! Empire! (I Was a Lonely Estate), or a number of other bands for you. Forgive me if I make too many comparisons, but it's hard not to do that here for me.

Prawn is one of those emo/post-rock bands, and they're from New Jersey. They released this for free on their Bandcamp, and have since put up another free demo and a full-length. But what makes Prawn different to me is that they don't take a minute or two to build up to anything. Their momentum stays strong for even a whole song. Instead of slow portions of soft singing and clean guitar, they insert interludes of distorted guitar or drums. Essentially, this band captures you from the start and keeps your attention without letting you take a break with a soft section.

But I have to forewarn you: if strong lyrics are what you're looking for, Prawn may not be for you. However, while the lyrics may not be a strength of the band, the vocals are. That should be apparent by the end of the first track, "Nightmare". After a guitar progression that was surprisingly fantastic to me when I first heard it, the vocals come in and fill the sound with a mixture of more raw emo music and more refined and coordinate post-rock.

The thing about Prawn is that they aren't very intricate, but they certainly do an exceptional job with seemingly basic elements. The album is free, and definitely worth a listen.

Aurore Rien - 'Telesthesia' (2001)

Aurore Rien - 'Telesthesia' (2001)

1) Hindsight 20/20

2) Hearts Murmur Under Halogen Lights

3) Breakaway, Sydney

4) Sunsets, I Have Seen Too Many Without You

Aurore Rien was a post-rock band that I believe was from Wisconsin. Two of the members went on to form Wisconsin-based ambient music project Lights Out Asia, which leads me to believe that Aurore Rien was from the same state. At any rate, these are the unsung heroes of vocal post-rock (a bit oxi-moronic, but you get what I mean). They released a full-length album called 'Sedative for the Celestial Blue' in 1999, and then this EP in 2001.

"Hindsight 20/20" has always been my favorite song by this band. It's relatively long, as are all the songs on this EP (they're all about 8 or 9 minutes). There are a lot of sections with repeating phrases, and the first track on this album uses that most effectively in my opinion. There is a repeated guitar phrases that gets gradually more intense until it ends at 2:35. Later, there is a portion where the singer repeats a phrase that I understand to be "Let's stay here tonight". At the part where the guitar becomes distorted, the vocals become more reverberated, which helps to create quite a chilling atmosphere.

The rest of the album includes similarly repetitive musical phrases, but there's a subtle build and change with each time. The vocals are used more as an instrument than as a way to express lyrics or words. It's almost like a compromise between the original Bark Psychosis-esque "post-rock" and the then-new sound of bands like Explosions in the Sky. The track "Breakaway, Sydney" also includes a sample of a speech made by John L. Lewis, a former Head of the Union Mine Workers. The speech was made before the U.S. Congress in 1947.

Aurore Rien is a somehow forgotten band that exemplified the turning point for post-rock music by combing sounds of the mid-1990's to the new sounds of the early 2000's. This album is a really great one, and I would highly recommend it.

RIYL: Bark Psychosis, Jeniferever, Explosions in the Sky

Sleep Patterns - 'Parmi Les Rois' (2008)

Sleep Patterns - 'Parmi Les Rois' (2008)

*free here*

1) Colonies

2) Feeny

3) Christopher Talkin'

4) Sweat Fortress

5) The Useful Sound

6) Tell That Joke You Know

7) Revolutions

Sleep Patterns was a real screamo/post-hardcore band from Northwest Indiana/Southwest Michigan, the area where Merchant Ships and Midwest Pen Pals were formed and played. In fact, I found out about this band because Merchant Ships has a song called "Sleep Patterns", which includes a story that apparently was written by one of the members of the band Sleep Patterns. As it turned out, the band is ridiculously refreshing in a sea of emo/screamo revival bands.

The album opens with a clean guitar riff that is chilling to the bone. The guitar tone makes it very atmospheric, it's quite hard to describe, so you can listen for yourself! But this band was ultra-legitimate. You can hear in the singer's voice that he means everything he says very passionately. The vocals on this album are what really separate this from other bands like it. There are some controlled voice cracks along the way that make it more dynamic.

The album is 25 minutes long; it's only an EP and as far as I can tell it's their only release. To make the album even more legitimate, the band broke up due to their lead singer/bassist having nervous breakdowns. As much as that's a bummer, it makes the album even more emotionally dynamic to me. Oh, and did I mention that the album is free? All the more reason for you to give a listen to this amazing EP.

RIYL: Pianos Become the Teeth, My Heart to Joy, (old) mewithoutYou

The Steve Spiegl Big Band - 'Perspectives' (1982)

The Steve Spiegl Big Band - 'Perspectives' (1982)

1) Hot

2) The Sphynx's Lair

3) Mirage

4) Bacchanalia

5) Spanish Steps

6) Parfait

7) Willie

8) Together Again

9) A Day in the Life

10) The Late Great Planet Earth

This is a relatively old big band jazz album that sounds like Gordon Goodwin's Big Phat Band could have recorded it. Like the Big Phat Band, the Steve Spiegl Big Band is from California and they perform awesome swing and modern jazz music. Sorry if I compare the two bands too much, I'm not too familiar with modern big bands.

But I am familiar with this album. I first heard "A Day in the Life", which (fortunately or unfortunately) is not a Beatles cover. Rather, it's a really intricate piece that shows off all sections, from the trombone intro to the saxophone/flute riff that comes in later. The rhythm section is extremely tight, and even though that's expected from a studio recording, the groove is still really great.

After hearing just that one song, I had to hear the rest of the album. And after hearing it, it's a really great album and I was surprised that almost 30 years had gone by and there is such little recognition of this band. So I took the liberty of putting the entire album on YouTube. Check out "A Day in the Life" if you wanna be impressed!

Basically, this big band is not big enough in my opinion. But I'm not exaggerating how great the album is. While there are (relatively) a lot of ballads on it, there are also swing songs, songs with a Latin feel, and a cool sound in all of the songs. So listen to this album, it's a hidden gem of modern big band jazz music.