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What have you been listening to this week?
What have you been listening to this week? You don't need to do a 6000 word review if you don't want to, but please write something! If you've just picked up some music, please update on that as well, we'd love to see your hauls :)
Feel free to give recs or discuss anything about each others' listening habits.
You can make a chart if you use last.fm:
http://www.tapmusic.net/lastfm/
Remember that linking directly to your image will update with your future listening, make sure to reupload to somewhere like imgur if you'd like it to remain what you have at the time of posting.
Listened to a, shall we say, eclectic, mix of music this week. An odd combo of real songs and YouTube edits. Here's some of my highlights:
Manifeste - Tigran Hamasyan
This album has been kicking my ass all week. Such incredible compositions and riffs. I like to call it aggressive jazz. Jazz and metal heads can especially appreciate this.
In other news I just secured my tickets to see SatchVai Band Ft Joe Satriani & Steve Vai with Animals As Leaders in April. Saying I am stoked is a massive understatement.
Matt Garstka has been dropping drum playthroughs for the Manifeste songs on which he played on his YouTube channel. I’m so glad those cats crossed paths - seriously incredible stuff coming out of their minds!
Been listening to Springsteen’s cover of A Rainy Night in Soho off the forthcoming Shane MacGowan tribute album. Highly recommend.
Enjoying the backcatalog of Polysics, the indie Devo-derviced Japanese group. Their devotion to ridiculous, catchy, thukpt intros has me captivated song after song.
https://youtu.be/N0q0W9uJzIA
Karnivool - In Verses
The first Karnivool album in 13 years. It’s wonderful if you’re in to prog. I’ve also been listening to Wheel - Charismatic Leaders. I recently saw them live in Milwaukee and they were amazing!
I've been getting into folk and bluegrass, both of which I had listened to a bit before. There's a few songs and bands I keep coming back to, here's my current go-to pieces:
Poor Man's Poison - Give & Take: Poor Man's Poison got some traction with Hell's Coming With Me and Feed The Machine, both of which I've seen used in shorts in the last 5 years. The band's track list feels like a bluegrass take on the same themes as Rise Against and similar punk rock bands, and Give & Take is just the one that's caught my ear for now. Feed The Machine is still an earworm, but all of their songs are good.
The Dead South - Broken Cowboy: This one pulls at my heartstrings, I've always enjoyed acoustic songs that tell a story. Many of The Dead South's songs are irreverent or satirical (see Banjo Odyssey, for example), but Broken Cowboy stands out in their repertoire to me. The first time I really paid attention to it was at the end of 2019 when I had failed to graduate college (I finished the next semester) and my long-term girlfriend was leaving me. Listening to this song no longer drops me into the same pit of depression I was feeling, but it still evokes a melancholy that contrasts Dead South's more upbeat songs nicely.
The Oh Hellos - Dear Wormwood: It's been a while since I read Dear Wormwood by C.S. Lewis, but I remember enough that this song definitely fits its namesake. The entire album has Christian themes without being explicit, and Dear Wormwood ends triumphantly enough to shake the melancholy of Broken Cowboy.
If anyone has similar albums or artists in these veins, please feel free to share!
On heavy repeat lately:
Now, Now - Saved
KC Rae (Now, Now vocalist) - Think I'm Gonna Die
Been very emotionally connected to music lately. Lots of stuff making me tear up, feeling things super deeply in my body. Also been listening to a lot of my favorites (Manchester Orchestra, David Bazan, Aurora, etc)
Frizzy P and Mr Cole! islands; garden etc.
Sometimes she has a real Lauryn Hill flow, which works well with the trip hop sensibilities.
outside of this, Damien Jurado, one of my favs spanning decades, is on a tear releasing new and reworked material. the last one he put out isn’t the best, but the singles and eps before that have all been pretty great and all over his range. after richard swift passed, i wasn’t sure he’d be able to keep that great psych influenced sound, but he evolved like normal and cranked out a lot of gold.