Episode 65
Pet Shop Boys – The schlager hit parade
John Cale – How We See the Light
Valley – When You Know Someone
Fiona Apple – Shemeika
The Goalie’s Anxiety at the Penalty Kick – Hole Underneath the Surface of the Swimming Pool
Keleb Hikele – All Day
Shellac – Chick New Wave
Future Islands – The Tower
Pet Shop Boys – “The Schlager Hit parade” – Nonetheless
The Pet Shop Boys of course are one of the most successful UK pop duos of the last 40 years. Neil Tennant and Chris Lowe are back in 2024 with a brand new album Nonetheless. Here’s a great contemporary interview which brings us all up to speed on all things Pet Shoppy: https://thequietus.com/interviews/pet-shop-boys-interview-neil-tennant-chris-lowe-nonetheless/
The song I selected to play is ”The Schlager Hit Parade”. Roughly translated from German, schlager means hit. Essentially, it’s European popular music revolving around love, feelings, relationships, and feelings. Here’s a more expanded explanation. https://singa.com/blog/what-is-schlager-music/
If schlager has intrigued you, here’s almost two hours of the real stuff! Bitte! :
If not, listen to this wonderful PSB track instead:
Valley – “When You Know Someone” single
Oakville’s Valley have released a really nice new song which gives hints of the musical direction of their upcoming album which should be released later this year. Now a trio, the bands sounds a little more organic on “When You Know Someone” https://www.universalmusic.ca/press-releases/valley-reintroduce-themselves-with-brand-new-song-when-you-know-someone/
Here they perform the tune at the Iconic RC Harris water treatment plant, in Toronto’s east end. This site has been used in multiple movies and TV shows.
The Goalie’s Anxiety at the Penalty Kick – “Hole Underneath the Surface of the Swimming Pool” – The Iliad and the Odyssey and the Goalie’s Anxiety at the Penalty Kick
The Goalie’s Anxiety at the Penalty Kick is a sextet from Philadelphia who have so far released 2 lps. This might be a lazy comparison, but fans of Arcade Fire and Broken Social Scene would enjoy these folks.
The group’s name obviously comes from Wim Wenders 1972 film classic.
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John Cale – How We See the Light
My notes are a little sparse this week, but there is interesting material below from Wikipedia, Stereogum and Pitchfork.
Cale is announcing another full-length album, which is called POPtical Illusion and will be released in June.
Unlike MERCY, this one forgoes a star-studded cast in favor of a more insular approach, though the songs were written around the same time. Cale produced POPtical Illusion with Nita Scott at his LA studio. Today, he’s sharing the album’s lead single “How We See The Light,”
Composer and Velvet Underground co-founder John Cale has announced his new album Poptical Illusion with a video for his new song “How We See the Light.” The record arrives June 14 (via Double Six/Domino). The single challenges the anger running through the rest of the record with a bit of longing and reflection, captured in its Pepi Ginsberg–directed music video featuring papier-mâché heads. Watch it below.
Poptical Illusion was co-produced by Cale and his longtime artistic partner Nita Scott in his Los Angeles studio. Across its 13-track runtime, the album finds Cale playing synthesizers, organs, pianos, and more.
Poptical Illusion is Cale’s second album within a year, arriving closely on the heels of 2023’s Mercy. That record, which included the singles “Night Crawling” and the Weyes Blood–starring “Story of Blood,” featured contributions from Animal Collective, Sylvan Esso, Laurel Halo, Tei Shi, and Actress.
Fiona Apple – Shameika
Fiona Apple McAfee-Maggart (born September 13, 1977) is an American singer-songwriter. She released five albums from 1996 to 2020, all of which reached the top 20 on the U.S. Billboard 200 chart.[7] Apple has received numerous awards and nominations, including three Grammy Awards, two MTV Video Music Awards, and a Billboard Music Award.
The youngest daughter of the actor Brandon Maggart, Apple was born in New York City and was raised alternating between her mother’s home in New York and her father’s in Los Angeles. Classically trained on piano as a child, she began composing her own songs when she was eight years old. Her debut album, Tidal, containing songs written when she was in her teens, was released in 1996 and received a Grammy Award for Best Female Rock Vocal Performance for the single “Criminal“. She followed with When the Pawn… (1999), produced by Jon Brion, which was also critically and commercially successful and was certified Platinum.
Fiona’s “Shameika” is a clattering piano ballad that draws on her childhood experiences with bullies at the private Episcopal school St. Hilda’s & St. Hugh’s in West Harlem. More specifically, the song centers on an incident in the third grade, when the cool girls made fun of Fiona for trying to sit with them at lunch. Shameika, then a fourth grader, saw the cruel rejection play out, and intervened. She told Fiona not to give credence to the mean girls. Those words of encouragement impacted Fiona for life. “Shameika said I had potential” is the lightbulb refrain of Fiona’s song, and a defining moment of Fetch the Bolt Cutters, lucidly expressing one of the album’s great themes: The things we endure as kids matter. The titular character of “Shameika” is more than namesake and inspiration. She’s foundational.
Keleb Hikele – All Day
Kaleb Hikele is a Canadian singer-songwriter, folk rocker and prolific recording artist. His 12th independent studio album, My Mind Is Like a Radio, was written and recorded all within one spring season. Kaleb, best known for his work as The Sun Harmonic, performed and engineered the entirety of the new record at his home studio in Toronto’s east end. The latest album was recorded in a retro style, a-song-a-day studio sessions, then mixed in Mono sound, harking back to vinyl in his record collection.
Kaleb, a classically trained pianist turned songwriter, first released three solo albums in his last years of highschool, as private indie releases burned onto CD and sold side stage in his small town of St. Thomas, Ontario. He moved away from home to the biggest city in the country and dreamt of a new stage name. Kaleb Hikele debuted The Sun Harmonic moniker in 2009 and released three solo albums in the next two years – self-titled, Chemistry and Season.
Future Islands – The Tower
from Stereogum
The great Baltimore art-pop ensemble Future Islands released As Long As You Are, their most recent album, deep in the pandemic days of 2020, but they didn’t let that slow them down. Singer Samuel T. Herring has continued to collaborate widely, appearing on recent records from artists like Algiers, R.A.P. Ferreira, and billy woods and Kenny Segal. Just last month, Herring teamed up with Baltimore fixture Height Keech to release The Fall Collection, a new album from his rap alter-ego Hemlock Ernst. Now, Future Islands have announced their next album, which is set to arrive early next year.
The new Future Islands album is called People Who Aren’t There Anymore
Shellac – “Chick New Wave” – To All Trains
Shellac is a group that formed in in 1992 and have sporadically released albums since then. Their music is challenging and can be abrasive. To All Trains is a welcome return. https://pitchfork.com/news/shellac-announce-first-new-album-in-a-decade/
The group is probably most well known for Steve Albini. However, Albini died from a heart attack at his home in Chicago, on May 7, 2024, at the age of 61. In some circles, Steve Albini is a legend.
https://pitchfork.com/features/afterword/remembering-steve-albini/
Here’s Shellac live with Chick new wave and Dude Incredible
Taylor Swift – Florida!!! (with Florence and the Machine)
What else can one say about Taylor Swift? Apparently she is very popular. Taylor Swift recently released a new album, The Tortured Poets Department. She is touring up a storm, playing to hundreds of people! I chose “Florida!!!” because it features Florence AND the Machine. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m6hi8iuajzE
Graeme O’Neil takes a listen
Whole-Hearted 
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