Old Fellas New Music Episode 42 Notes

Episode 42

Rina Sawayama – This Hell

Lemon Twigs – Anytime of the Day

Arctic Monkeys – Body Paint

Blues Lawyer – Chance Encounters

Ethel Cain – American Teenager

Yo La Tengo –  Aselestine

Horace Andy – Watch Over Them

Brad Mehldau – Your Mother Should Know

Pony – Très Jolie


Bob’s notes

Lemon Twigs – “Anytime of the Day”   from the Everything Harmony  being released on May 5th

This is the second Lemon Twigs number to have aired on the podcast.  We played one from their previous album back in the Old Fellas “Jurassic” period.  The band are principally Brian and Michael  D’Addario.  Their music and sartorial style seems frozen in about 1972 but that’s not necessarily a bad thing.  “Anytime of Day” could have been lifted off a Todd Rundgren or Carpenters album.  Blogger Burning Wood elaborates:

https://burnwoodtonite.blogspot.com/2023/02/hello-its-them.html

Whenthehornblows concurs: https://whenthehornblows.com/content/2023/2/19/the-lemon-twigs-any-time-of-day

Blues Lawyer – “Chance Encounters” from All in Good Time

Although this podcast is about listening to new music and pithy penetrating conversation, sometimes we all learn something.  I picked Blues Lawyer because of their intriguing name.  Well… who knew there’s a whole story there?

https://killerguitarrigs.com/what-is-a-blues-lawyer/  As a semi-musician, I had never heard this term before.  Oakland-based Blues Lawyer are anything but “Blues Lawyers”.  Chance Encounters is wonderful punchy song with a great retro video 

.    Here’s the story behind the new album.  https://rockandrollglobe.com/indie-rock/blues-lawyer-and-the-art-of-patience/

Yo La Tengo –  “Aselestine”  from This Stupid World,

Critics’ faves Yo La Tengo have been kicking around for almost 40 years now.  They have released fifteen studio albums, six compilation albums, fifteen extended plays, twenty-two singles, two film score albums, four collaborative albums, and one album of cover songs.  Hoboken’s finest (not counting Frank Sinatra) have just released This Stupid World. Drummer Georgia Hubley takes lead vocals on “Aselestine”  

Pitchfork evaluates: 

On their liveliest album in at least a decade, indie rock’s most steadfast institution squares up against ubiquitous darkness.

To fully dig the manifold charms of This Stupid World, it’s best to take a single step back into Yo La Tengo’s 38 years-and-counting catalog. In July 2020, amid that first summer of extreme pandemic disorientation, the trio surprised devotees not only with a new Bandcamp page but also with a fresh album, captured at their Hoboken practice space just weeks earlier and offered up like a timely postcard from a friend you’ve missed—we’re OK, and we hope you’re OK, too.

 https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/yo-la-tengo-this-stupid-world/

Yo La Tengo rocking out in 2013 at the Pitchfork Festival  

Brad Mehldau – “Your Mother Should Know” from Your Mother Should Know: Brad Mehldau Plays the Beatles

Everybody artist at some point tackles a Beatles cover;  it’s inevitable. Bradford is an American jazz pianist, composer, and arranger.  As a jazz guy, he takes a fresh approach covering one of Paul McCartney’s minor songs.  Mehldau doesn’t, like many jazz guys, stretch the original tune in length or go off on fancy tangents.  The actual playing time is very close to the original track.  Here he playing live. 

Hey it’s the Burning Wood Blog again! 

 https://burnwoodtonite.blogspot.com/2023/02/your-mother-should-know.html

Tidal magazine provides insight.  


Paul’s Notes

Rina Sawayama – This Hell (Official Music Video)

Don’t know if I would call this a country song, but it certainly is a banger as the kids say. The lyrics are really interesting to, so I had no problem making this my first pick this week.

About the song – from Wikipedia

“This Hell” is a “glammy, country pop inspired” song which contains references to numerous country and western motifs such as cowboys and horseriding.[3] It was produced by Paul Epworth and Clarence Clarity, and written by Sawayama alongside Vic Jamieson, Epworth, and Lauren Aquilina.[10]

Sawayama has noted Dolly Parton and Kacey Musgraves as inspirations for “This Hell”, as well as Shania Twain, whom Sawayama has described as “The queen of country pop”.[11]

Sawayama wrote “This Hell” while reflecting about attacks against LGBT people, which are often motivated by religious beliefs, stating: “When the world tells us we don’t deserve love and protection, we have no choice but to give love and protection to each other”.[12] The song contains a guitar solo which was described as “over-the-top” by NPR.[3] The singer makes references to some gay icons such as Britney Spears, Princess Diana, and Whitney Houston,[10] and references Shania Twain’s “Man! I Feel Like a Woman!” with the beginning line, “Let’s go, girls”, as well as Paris Hilton‘s signature catchphrase “that’s hot”.[12] Sawayama stated: “I put in as many iconic pop culture moments as I can, but the song is more than that.” [13] Upon the song’s release, Sawayama posted to Twitter: “I wanted to write a western pop song that celebrated COMMUNITY and LOVE in a time where the world seemed hellish.”[11]

Arctic Monkeys – Body Paint

Another band that has been around for a long time that I didn’t know about. Body Paint, like all the songs on their latest album is so interesting, certainly a cut above the music I was hearing on the Top Lists this week. The Car is Arctic Monkeys’ seventh album.

 

a bit about the song – interesting notes here.

Musically the song has been described as a “lounge-y piano ballad”, and Beatlesque,[6] with “gorgeous string arrangements” reminiscent of Burt Bacharach and George Martin‘s work with said group.[2] The band has been said as being “in introspective lounge lizard mode over sparkling piano and slowed-down drums.”[7] Robin Murray of Clash, thought there was a “sense of Bowie‘s mid 70s peak in the arrangement”.

Ethel Cain – American Teenager

[Verse 1]

Grew up under yellow light on the street

Putting too much faith in the make-believe

And another high school football team

The neighbor’s brother came home in a box

But he wanted to go, so maybe it was his fault

Another red heart taken by the American dream

More and more I am choosing songs that I think we have played before, but I checked and we haven’t. We have (I forgot) played Arctic Monkeys beforte – different song.

I like everything about Ethel Cain. Bob thinks her last name comes from a Band Song – that is pretty interesting, but I couldn’t find anything on that.

A bit about Ethel Cain from Pitchfork.

“Growing up I was surrounded by visions of NASCAR, rock’n’roll, and being the one who would change everything,” Cain said in a statement. “They make you think it’s all achievable and that if nothing else, you should at least die trying. What they don’t tell you is that you need your neighbor more than your country needs you. I wrote this song as an expression of my frustration with all the things the ‘American Teenager’ is supposed to be but never had any real chance of becoming.”

Pitchfork

Horace Andy

Yet another long-time famous musician I hadn’t heard of before. Bob talks a lot about him during the podcast – I am adding a few notes, mainly for me so I can catch up. This for me would be a great album to pick up soon. I have included below an NPR episode featuring some discussion of his latest album. Plus I found – again from NPR – a great session including Horace Andy and a great group of musicians.

NPR’s favorite music of April, from broken-hearted R&B to paranoid post-punk

Horace Andy is a reggae legend and a beloved Massive Attack collaborator. On his new album Midnight Rocker, producer Adrian Sherwood sticks to the basics: a full band adorns Andy’s golden voice with rich arrangements, as he offers messages of care in an uncaring world. We open the best music of the month show with “Watch Over Them,” and it’s easy to get lost in Andy’s voice.

Today, right here, we get to peek into the decked-out living room of producer Adrian Sherwood’s home and watch masters of reggae playfully chill. We hear Horace Andy‘s gruff tenor tell stories with 55 years of experience, rasp and wear.

“You’ve got to live, live, live for today, for tomorrow might never come your way,” he pleads as he sings “Today Is Right Here,” a track on his 2022 album Midnight Rocker. And then the lines I love best, “My mama told me when I was a child, said all the best things take a little while. But mama was wrong, wrong, wrong, the best things in life come and they go in the blink of an eye.” All the while, a single snare drum and hi-hat keep the beat, and the band of bass, guitar, keyboard, sax, trumpet and cello warmly support the emotions pouring from Horace Andy.

Horace Andy: Tiny Desk (Home) Concert

NPR All Songs Considered

Pony – Très Jolie

a great way to finish off the show. One line from the reviews sets the song up nicely

“Spunky, sprightly, and positively infectious, ‘Très Jolie’ is basically the perfect song for a summer that hasn’t come yet.”

Far Out Magazine

PONY – “Très Jolie”

From their album “Velveteen” 

Out May 19th via Take This To Heart Records

Advertisement

Old Fellas new Music Episode 41

Episode 41 on Mixcloud

Episode 41

Big Joanie –  Confident Man

Orville Peck – The Curse of the Blackened Eye

Macie Stewart – Maya Please

Wet Leg – Ur Mom

Personal Trainer – Texas In the Kitchen

Portugal. The Man – What, Me Worry?

The No Ones – Phil Ochs is Dead

Fireboy DML, Ed Sheeran – Peru

Jah Wobble – Trinidadian Chinese New Year

Orville Peck 

Paul’s Notes:

Orville Peck is originally from South Africa and is now based in Canada. Last year he released his second album Bronco on April 8, 2022. Between South Africa and Canada, he moved to London to study acting at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art, and later starred in a play on the West End.[7]

Though he’s never revealed his identity, it is commonly accepted that Orville Peck is the alter ego of Daniel Pitout. Over the past 15-odd years, has gone from punk drummer to stage actor to the world’s most mysterious cowboy crooner. He’s a talented enough singer, but more importantly he is a calculated aesthete. Peck has committed to a cartoonish persona, turning his public life into an endless performance. 

Peck grew up in the badlands outside of Johannesburg. He was a lonely child, friendless and bullied, so he clung to old movies: Clint Eastwood spaghetti Westerns and The Lone Ranger, films about outsiders who turn into heroes, anonymous vigilantes who come out of nowhere and save the town and charm the girl and choose solitude anyway. At 15, Peck’s family moved from South Africa to Vancouver. Peck has said in interviews that he played in punk bands in his youth. Pitout, his suspected alter ego, was the drummer in the Vancouver band Nü Sensae, which achieved some recognition in the early 2010s but went on hiatus in 2014 after he decided to pursue an acting career in England. He entered a two-year acting program at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art and landed a role in a 2016 West End production of Peter Pan Goes Wrong

Wet Leg

Wet Leg a British band founded in 2019 has already been shortlisted for the 2022 Mercury Prize. Wet Leg has already won Best Alternative Music Album for their debut and Best Alternative Music Performance for “Chaise Longue”, and were nominated for Best New Artist at the 65th Annual Grammy Awards. Pretty amazing.

Here is a live performance by Wet Leg at Glastonbury in 2022.

From the Guardian 

Wet Leg seemed to come out of nowhere. Silly name. Lyrical double (and single) entendres. A Domino record deal off the back of a couple of tracks on SoundCloud. Within weeks, their June 2021 debut single Chaise Longue had flung the Isle of Wight duo from unknowns into the buzziest band around on just the basis of a few minutes of stupidly catchy guitar-pop.

That song hinted at how Rhian Teasdale and Hester Chambers could shove new wave, post-punk and incessant hooks into a raucous embrace. And yes, Chaise Longue set a high bar, with its Mean Girls reference and a bucolic music video (now watched more than 8.5m times). It was widely rated as one of the best songs of 2021. Could their first record make good on its promise? In April, their self-titled debut answered, conclusively, yes.

Peru

Peru: How Ed Sheeran helped Fireboy DML’s hit go global

BBC

When Fireboy DML was told to check his DMs, he had to be convinced Ed Sheeran’s message was real.

Ed had sent the Nigerian singer a note saying he was a fan and wanted to collaborate on a remix of his Afrobeats hit, Peru.

“He had apparently been listening to the song for weeks,” Fireboy tells Radio 1 Newsbeat, from his studio in Lagos, Nigeria.

“Not only had he heard the song, but he’d already recorded a verse for it too.”

‘Everything you do is for the culture’

The 25-year-old is aware of critics who say having such a big name on the track dilutes the song’s origin.

“People were saying Peru was already big. It was already good enough without him,” he says.

But he says the “only thing” on his mind when he got Ed Sheeran involved with the remix was how it was “going to be amazing for Afrobeats.”

“It’s the selfless mind-set that comes with being an Afrobeats artist. Everything you do is for the culture.”

In the song, Ed sings a couple of lines in Yoruba, a language predominantly used by millions of people across West Africa, especially in south western Nigeria.

“He did great,” says Fireboy, who’s real name is Adedamola Adefolahan.

Portugal. The man

How did they get their name?

The band’s name is based on the idea of David Bowie‘s “bigger than life” fame. They wanted the band to have a bigger-than-life feel but did not want to name it after one of their members. “A country is a group of people,” guitar player and vocalist John Gourley explains. “With Portugal, it just ended up being the first country that came to mind. The band’s name is ‘Portugal’. The period is stating that, and ‘The Man’ states that it’s just one person” (any one of the band members). The name has a more personal meaning as well: Portugal. The Man was going to be the name of a book that Gourley had planned to write about his father and his many adventures.[5][6][7]

A critical and commercial success, “Feel It Still” earned Portugal. The Man a Grammy Award for Best Pop Duo/Group Performance. Returning in 2020, the group turned in a pair of unlikely tracks: first, a cover of “Tomorrow” from the musical Annie for the children’s compilation At Home with the Kids in August, followed later that year by “Who’s Gonna Stop Me,” a collaboration with Weird Al Yankovic that honored Indigenous Peoples’ Day. A live studio recording from 2008 emerged in 2021, originally taking place after the tour for their third album and before the recording of their fourth; released as Oregon City Sessions it captured the live energy they had built up from playing stages worldwide.

Led by the single “Feel It Still,” [Live/Stripped Session] it was named in honor of the 1969 festival and the group’s attempt to “say something that mattered” in a context of sociopolitical unrest. A critical and commercial success, “Feel It Still” earned Portugal. The Man a Grammy Award for Best Pop Duo/Group Performance.

Bob’s Notes:

Big Joanie –  “Confident Man”  

from the album Back Home

Big Joanie is a British punk trio formed in London in 2013. Big Joanie was formed when by Stephanie Phillips in 2013,  posted online asking for bandmates with whom to start a black feminist punk band.  They signed with Thurston Moore of Sonic Youth. 2018 saw the release of their debut Sistahs.  Back Home, released in 2022 on the Kill Rock Stars label, contains the number, “Confident Man”.

https://www.thelineofbestfit.com/news/big-joanie-unveil-new-cut-confident-man

Rolling Stone magazine discusses:  https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/big-joanie-confident-man-1234596046/

Macie Stewart – Maya Please 

from the album  A Mouth Full of Glass  (bonus track)

Macie Stewart is a multi-instrumentalist and songwriter based in Chicago.  From what I can tell, they has had an amazingly diverse career.  Starting as a child prodigy on piano and violin, Stewart has played with both avant- garde jazz improvisational groups and toured with as back up musician with Japanese Breakfast, The Weather Station, Chance the Rapper and Jeff Tweedy.   “Maya Please” is a single form last summer.

Personal Trainer – Texas In the Kitchen 

from the album “Big Love Blanket”

Personal Trainer are a collective of musicians who hail from the Netherlands.  From what I can tell, this track is from their first full length album.  “Texas in the Kitchen” is a jaunty little number that would sound out of place on a mid-90’s Pavement lp.

There’s not a lot of info on these folks so I’ll post this article from Read Dork. 

Peter Buck/ Luke Haines 

– “Phil Ochs is Dead” from the album All the Kids Are Super Bummed OutThe No Ones  is a collaboration featuring Scott McCaughey, Frode Strømstad, Peter Buck and Arne Kjelsrud Mathisen, is a band that stretches from the southwest of Norway through Athens, Georgia to the northwest corner of the USA, consisting of members from I Was A King, The Minus 5, The Baseball Project and R.E.M.  This track features primarily REM’s Peter Buck and Luke Haines formely of the Auteurs.  Dangerous Minds elaborates:  

https://dangerousminds.net/  For the record, Phil Ochs is dead .  He tragically took his own life in 1975 at the age of 35. Just for the heck of it, I am including my favourite Phil Ochs song.   

Jah Wobble – “Trinidadian Chinese New Year”  from the album  Guanyin

Jah Wobble, is an English bass guitarist and singer. He was born John Joseph Wardle in London. He became known to a wider audience as the original bass player in Public Image Ltd in the late 1970s and early 1980s. He later left the band after two albums and has since enjoyed a lengthy and fruitful career exploring all sorts of genres of music.  Check out this lengthy discography.   https://www.allmusic.com/artist/jah-wobble-mn0000107259/discography

The track, “Trinidadian Chinese New Year”  continues Wobble’s exploration of Jamaican dub  and World Music.  It’s taken from 2021 album Guanyin   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jp3yxFKEoaY

Here’s a tidy little guide to his career.  https://thevinylfactory.com/features/jah-wobble-10-records/ 

Old Fellas New Music Episode 40

Episode 40 right here

Julian Taylor – Opening the Sky

Ty Segall – Saturday Pt. 2

Adam Baldwin – Causeway Road 

The Bros Landreth – Stay

SG Goodman – All My Love is Coming Back to Me

Laura Veirs – Eucalyptus

Days Of Lavender – People Who Care

Robyn Hitchcock – The Man Who Loves The Rain

The Dead South – People Are Strange

Bob’s notes

Ty Segall – Saturday Pt. 2 

Ty Segall is an American musician and producer. He is extremely prolific as exemplified by the sheer amount of his album, ep and single releases.  Check out his Discogs entry.  https://www.discogs.com/artist/1265284-Ty-Segall?limit=250&type=Releases&subtype=Albums&filter_anv=0&page=1  . I suppose he could be pigeonholed into the “garage-rock” genre but his latest lp, “Hello Hi” is anything but that.   Pitchfork Magazine explains: https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/ty-segall-hello-hi/

Here he is performing Saturday Pt. 2 live  

The Bros Landreth – Stay  – from 2022 lp Come Morning

The Bros. Landreth is a group from Winnipeg Manitoba.   Their debut album “Let It Lie” won the Juno Award for Roots & Traditional Album of the Year at the Juno Awards in 2015 so they have been around for a while.   In 2022, Bonnie Raitt released a cover of “Made Up Mind”, which appears on her album “Just Like That” Her recording of the song won a Grammy Award for Best Americana Performance at the 65th Annual Grammy Awards in 2022

Bonnie Raitt gave the guys a shoutout at the Grammys.  Stay is a soulful number with a nice kooky video.   

The whole album is solid. https://atthebarrier.com/2022/05/24/the-bros-landreth-come-morning-album-review/

Laura Veirs – Eucalyptus from the lp “Found Light”

Laura Veirs is an American singer-songwriter based out of Portland, Oregon.  She is known for her folk/alternative country records and live performances as well as her collaboration with Neko Case and k.d. lang on the case/lang/veirs project. Check this album out.  It’s a treasure.  https://www.allmusic.com/album/case-lang-veirs-mw0002925163

Veirs has been releasing music since 1999.  Her producer was usually her husband Tucker Martine.  However, in 2019, Martine and Veirs separated.  Found Light is considered by some as an album still dealing with the ending of that relationship.

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2022/jul/08/laura-veirs-found-light-review.  The featured track Eucalyptas seems to reflect this 

Robyn Hitchcock – The Man Who Loves The Rain from “Shufflemania”

Cult figure Robyn Hitchcock has been making music since the late 1970’s  first with The Soft Boys, then The Egyptians and for many many years as a solo artist.  He has released close to 30 solo albums.  Hitchcock’s  lyrics are often absurd in the best Lewis Carroll vein.  He has been both an acoustic performer and full out rock and roller.  “The Man Who Loves the Rain” shows he hasn’t lost a step. 

I’ve included 2 of my fave Hitchcock song from the past. 

Here he is on Letterman in 1980s. The quality of the video isn’t great but the performance is.  Watch for the broken string!

Robyn Hitchcock was a favourite of the late film director Jonathan Demme. They made a documentary in 1998 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Storefront_Hitchcock

The wonderful song “1974”  is taken from this movie…   This is probably my favourite Hitchcock song.  

Paul’s Notes

This guy is amazing, I love the song and his voice. I can’t believe that he was ready to pack things up (read below).

Another Covid artifact – he had a great video series – Cross Country Chin Up – pretty amazing, I have included a bit of this series with my notes.

Playing in Wolfville this April!!

Baldwin Cross-Country Chin Up IX

Hey gang. I’m gonna broadcast live on the World Wide Web this Friday night at 9pm ATLANTIC. You can find the program here, hit SET REMINDER to be notified. I hope you can join me for the Cross-Country Chin Up. Hope you’re all staying well.

Baldwin credits fellow singer/songwriter Martha Wainwright with “kinda setting me straight” in a long conversation over dinner when they chanced across each other on the same Québécois TV show and encouraging him not to give up.

After that cathartic encounter, he vowed to keep it honest and “write some songs about this part of the world” and the “unique kind of nuts” to be found in the darkest corners of the Atlantic Provinces. After that, the vivid rural character studies that would eventually make up “Concertos & Serenades” — stories of fishermen dabbling in fiery revenge and the cocaine trade, stoic miners drawing their last breaths underground in Springhill and the colourful regulars stopping by “Gerald Burgess RaceTrac Full Serve Autobody” for gas, a pack of smokes and some chit-chat — started spilling out of him.

Toronto Star 

Singer-songwriter Adam Baldwin has been a mainstay of the Atlantic Canada music scene for over a decade. Starting as a member of rock combo Gloryhound before joining Matt Mays & El Torpedo in 2009, Baldwin’s own music has continued to evolve since his award winning self-titled solo debut EP in 2013.

Julian Taylor – Opening the Sky

Another incredible voice and songwriter. I think we have featured Julian Taylor three times on our show and that is fine with me. This current song is getting lots of airplay on North Americana radio

The lyrics are really interesting on this song, good to give this one a second listen.

JULIAN TAYLOR PRESENTS BEYOND THE RESERVOIR

Story by Howard Druckman | Monday October 17th, 2022

(Full disclosure: My wife happens to be Julian Taylor’s Canadian publicist. So, after a brief introduction, it’ll be just Taylor talking about his album. And I’d be writing this story, this way,  regardless of who his publicist is. Some quotes have been edited for length and clarity.)

It looks like Julian Taylor is poised on the verge of broadening and deepening his international breakthrough of 2020.

That year, his album The Ridge earned more than five million plays on Spotify, praise from the press worldwide, and airplay from Canada and the U.S. to Australia and the U.K. Loaded with soulful Americana and country twang, The Ridge won Taylor the Solo Artist of the Year honour at the Canadian Folk Music Awards; was nominated for two JUNO Awards (Contemporary Folk Album and Indigenous Artist or Group of the Year); and made the Polaris Prize Long List of the 40 best albums in Canada. He also won Best Male Artist at the International Acoustic Music Awards.

https://www.socanmagazine.ca/features/julian-taylor-presents-beyond-the-reservoir/

The final track, “Opening the Sky,” hits fast-forward and imagines the end of life, both the final struggles of a body breaking down and the memories of the life that’s come before. But most urgent is the desire to make sure learnings are passed down to the next generation: “Always love beyond your own comprehension. / In a world that may not see you for all that you are, never forget you have so much power.” The flood of final words of advice and encouragement end with “find time to simply stay still.” When the words repeat, they become the last living moment of the narrator and also a reinforcement of his lasting presence despite death: “Time to simply stay … still.”

https://www.adventuresinamericana.com/the-music-distillery-blog/music-review-julian-taylor-beyond-the-reservoir

SG Goodman

S.G. Goodman’s Southern Storytelling

Again, yet another amazing voice! This time from Kentucky. Glad I found this one, I don’t know much about her, but I would be happy to see her in concert – this would be great! This is from a feature on her in Rolling Stone.

Prior to her solo career, Goodman was part of the band The Savage Radley.[7] Her debut album, Old Time Feeling, was co-produced by Jim James of My Morning Jacket.[5] The album has been described as Americana, folk, country, and rock.[8] She is signed to Verve Forecast Records. In 2021, she, as a solo artist, was inter alia part of the Newport Folk Festival in July.[9]

In June 2022, Goodman released her second album, Teeth Marks, on Verve Forecast.[10] She usually plays with her guitar tuned down a whole step, though some songs on the record were played in this tuning with a capo.[6] The fifth track on the album, “If You Were Someone I Loved” deals with the opioid crisis.[11] Because her debut album was released during the COVID-19 pandemic, Goodman did not headline a tour for the album. As such, her tour for Teeth Marks was her first solo tour.[12]

Kentucky farmer’s daughter writes songs so the world can hear what life is like where she grew up

WHEN S.G. GOODMAN was growing up, her farmer father would plant an annual crop of sweet corn for his three kids, which they later harvested by hand and sold for money to buy their school clothes.

The farm isn’t Goodman’s home anymore: “I live in a house where the backyard is too shaded by these maple trees so that I can’t really grow anything,” she says. But the Murray, Kentucky-based singer-songwriter, 31, maintains a deep connection to the place that shaped her on her debut album, Old Time Feeling. Produced by Goodman with bandmates S. Knox Montgomery and Matthew Rowan, plus fellow Kentuckian Jim James of My Morning Jacket, it’s at once earthy and otherworldly, relaying her personal experiences alongside razor-sharp social commentary about the South.

Rolling Stone

The Dead South – People Are Strange

This band is so incredibly good. I don’t know how I found them, but their music is really different. I didn’t expect to find a blue grass band in Saskatchewan, but happy to feature them. Truly a great band that deserves more exposure.

The Dead South on Bluegrass Purists, New Album ‘Sugar & Joy’ and Being Canada’s “Night Off” Band

The Dead South are arguably Canada’s best-known “bluegrass” band. Their video for “In Hell I’ll Be in Good Company” has been viewed over 150 million times on YouTube, and the band have toured across North America and Europe. They just released their new album, Sugar & Joy, and will be hitting the road hard to support it.

On the surface, the band look like a typical bluegrass ensemble: the members play banjo, cello, guitar and mandolin; they sing in four-part harmony; and their songs tell stories of hard times and broken hearts; and they won the Juno for Traditional Roots Album in 2018 for Illusion & Doubt. But despite what you might have heard, the Dead South aren’t bluegrass — at least, not according to purists.

“We don’t know how to define our sound,” lead singer, guitarist and mandolinist Nate Hilts tells Exclaim! “We’re definitely very inspired by bluegrass music — that’s what kind of started the band. The instrumentation that we brought in was to play a bluegrass style; however, our own personal forms came in, we just started playing music and this is what we came up with. We don’t really know what to identify it as, because it touches on a lot of different places.”

The group have been together since 2012, and although there has been some interchanging of musicians over the years, original members, Nate Hilts, Scott Pringle (mandolin/guitar), Danny Kenyon (cello) and Colton “Crawdaddy” Crawford (banjo), remain in the current lineup. The group recently embarked on their “Served Cold” tour, which Nate expects to last until January 2021, and will see the foursome performing their unique variety of traditional Canadian folk on stages in Germany, the UK, and even the birthplace of bluegrass music, Raleigh, NC.

Easy Listening for Jerks Pt. 1 and 2 (2022-present)

Days Of Lavender – People Who Care

The lead singer of Days of Lavender grew up here in Ottawa. Daniela has a magical voice and it is great to listen to them at the beginning of a very creative musical career – I hope!

🔮We’re a band that plays wholesome electronic music in Vancouver 

Days of Lavender is the Vancouver-based duo project of producer and bassist Stephen Clarke and singer/songwriter Daniela Mae. They mix their love of 80s synth pop, electronic, gospel and folk music to guide you on a meditative sci-fi ride you won’t want to get off. In the last year of playing together they have released 6 songs, played for private parties, public events and two BC music festivals. In March 2022, they started an event series in collaboration with DJ Chachøu called InnerSpace: A Cosmic Arts Journey, which showcases the work of local visual artists and includes wellness classes, dance performances, DJs and their own live music.

Old Fellas New Music Episode 38

Episode 38 

Julia Jacklin – I was Neon  

Arctic Monkeys – There’d Better Be a Mirrorball

Men I Trust – Billie Toppy

Michael Head & The Red Elastic Band – Grace and Eddie

OMBIIGIZI, Status/Non-Status, Zoon – Cherry Coke 

Sister Ray – Visions

The Handsome Family – Gold 

Lizzo – About Damn Time

Fontaines D.C. – Jackie Down the Line

Bob’s Notes

Arctic Monkeys – “There’d Better Be a Mirrorball”

The Arctic Monkeys are a band formed in Sheffield, England in 2002.  They are sometimes mentioned as one of the first bands who gained their initial buzz and popularity due to the internet.  As a result in 2006,  “Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not” became the fastest-selling debut album in UK history.  The band became a Brit. fave winning numerous awards but it wasn’t until 2013 that the band became more universally known with the release of its 2015’s album AM. The song featured here is taken from The Car, the seventh studio album. 

Lizzo – “About Damn Time”

Lizzo, is an American singer and rapper from Houston, Texas.  She attained immense popularity with the release of her third studio album, Cuz I Love You (2019), which peaked at number four on the US Billboard 200. About Damn Time” was lead single from the album Special released earlier this year. The song was nominated at the 2022 MTV Video Music Awards for Song of the Year, Best Pop Video, and Song of Summer. The song also received three nominations at the 65th Annual Grammy Awards for Record of the Year, Song of the Year and Best Pop Solo Performance.  Here she is performing “About Damn Time” on SNL. 

Fun fact- Lizzo is also a classically trained flautist.  Back in September, she caused the American right to get all huffy when she played James Madison’s silver flute.  

Michael Head & The Red Elastic Band – “Grace and Eddie”

Michael William Head is an English singer-songwriter and musician from Liverpool, England. He is most famous as the lead singer and songwriter for Shack, The Pale Fountains and Michael Head & The Strands. Some have described him as a lost genius and among the most gifted British songwriters of his generation.  In 2013 he formed Michael Head & The Red Elastic Band. In 2017, Michael Head & The Red Elastic Band released an album called Adiós Señor Pussycat. It reached No 1 in the UK independent album chart and No. 57 in the UK Albums Chart.  The new one, Dear Scott was released in June 2022.  The tile is apparently inspired by a note F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote to himself.

  

The album peaked at number 6 in the official UK chart, making it Michael Head’s highest-ever charting album.  Here’s a version performed live.  I don’t know who Grace and Eddie are.

Flash back to the early eighties! Michael Head in The Pale Fountains 

Sister Ray – “Visions”

Sister Ray is the stage name of Ella Coyes, a Métis singer-songwriter. They were born and raised in Sturgeon County, Alberta. Their debut full-length album Communion was released in May 2022.  Exclaim explains:

Also, though four years old, this interview provides excellent background to Sister Ray.

Here’s the strangely beguiling video.  

Paul’s Notes

Julia Jacklin – I was Neon

This is her third album Pre Pleasure – “Pre Pleasure is an easygoing album from a mind that rarely stops racing.

One of the songs from the album, not the one I am playing, is #94 on Pitchfork’s 100 Best Songs of 2022

The Australian songwriter’s empathetic, understated rock songs sift through a litany of relationships and beliefs, seeking a balance between thinking about life and actually living it.

“I Was Neon,” in which she wonders if a version of herself has been lost to time. “I quite like the person that I am/Am I gonna lose myself again?” she repeats, voice roiling with equal parts anxiety and excitement. If she could reach through the photograph and make contact with that incarnation of herself, what would she say?

It seems like many of the artists I am choosing are writing about being lost.

Julia Jacklin (born 30 August 1990) is a singer-songwriter from the Blue Mountains, Australia. Jacklin’s musical style has been described as indie pop, indie folk, and alternative country. from Wikipedia

Men I Trust – Billie Toppy

(singe 2022, last album Untourable Album 2021)

The information about this band is somewhat dreamy, and so is their music. It is interesting that the two founders of the band actually played with a rotating series of lead singers, settling on Emma Proulx, the face of the band some time in 2015.

From their dreamy Bandcamp article:

Mixing dreamy atmospheres, wistful extended chords, and funky, low-key dance grooves, Men I Trust was the brainchild of then-Laval University music students Dragos Chiriac and Jessy Caron. The Montreal, Canada D.I.Y. project made its full-length debut with Men I Trust in 2014. While the duo’s first two albums employed a variety of guest vocalists, singer Emmanuelle Proulx has been an official member since 2015. Their third studio album, 2019’s Oncle Jazz, was long-listed for 2020 Polaris Music Prize. Untourable Album followed in 2021 and was ultimately accompanied by a tour.

In June 2021, the band announced the release of their 4th album “The Untourable Album” along tour dates to support the release. Men I Trust posted on their social medias about the release and the tours, elaborating on their context:

Cherry Coke – OMBIIGIZI, Status/Non-Status, Zoon

Another song I like more every time I hear it. I think we have played Status/Non-status before, but Zoom is new to the show.

Zoon and Status/Non-Status have shared a new single, “Cherry Coke,” under their collaborative project, OMBIIGIZI. The track comes from their forthcoming debut album, Sewn Back Together, out February 10th via Arts & Crafts.

“Cherry Coke” is a dreamy, shoegazy tune with smooth instrumentals that allow OMBIIGIZI’s smooth vocals to take the lead. Lyrically, the song is about Zoon’s Daniel Monkman’s childhood.

“I used to get into a lot of fights at school when I was younger,” the band’s Daniel Monkman explains. “One of the schools was called ‘Happy Thought’ which ironically was filled with racist rural farmer type folk. I think as a type of punishment my Mom sent me to live with my Dad on the Rez, so he could show me how to be a ‘man.’ Although my Dad was a very complex human, he was very compassionate towards me, especially when I explained how the kids would tease me for being Ojibway. He’d always let me stay home with him and oftentimes we’d go to the Rez store for chips and pop; I’d get Cherry Coke or Vanilla Coke. The lyrics and song title are inspired by these memories of my childhood and of my father.”

Indie 88 FM

After quoting 88FM, I had to look them up. A very interesting station from Toronto. They are doing some interesting work featuring indie bands.

and the OMBIIGIZI video for Cherry Coke

Gold – The Handsome Family

I heard about this band last week when Bob played a Phoebe Bridgers cover of their song So Much Wine.

The Handsome Family is an American music duo consisting of husband and wife Brett and Rennie Sparks formed in Chicago, Illinois, and as of 2001 based in Albuquerque, New Mexico.[1] They are perhaps best known for their song “Far from Any Road” from the album Singing Bones, which was used as the main title theme for the first season of the 2014 crime drama True Detective. The band’s tenth album, Unseen, was released on September 16, 2016, the first new release on the band’s own label Milk & Scissors Music[2] and through long-time label Loose in Europe

(Wikipedia)

And, to top all this off, Rennie Sparks is an artist. She has done a wonderful series of dog paintings – I have included one here.

HOLLOW, their tenth studio record, is planned to be released in 2023 with live touring hopefully to follow.

Website

Jackie Down the Line – Fontaines D.C.

The Irish post-punk band’s most demanding and musically adventurous album is also its most open-hearted,  striking a perfect balance between tough and tender.

The year 2019 already feels like the distant past for most of us, but for Fontaines D.C., it really must seem like another lifetime—and that has less to do with the pandemic than their own skyrocketing success in spite of it. Pretty much everything that defined this band three years ago, when they dropped their debut LP, Dogrel, has already changed. Once the scrappy underdogs who ironically declared “I’m gonna be big!”, the Dublin-bred quintet have headlined arena shows for crowds of 10,000 in the UK, appeared on CNN, scored a Grammy nomination (outside the Alternative category ghetto, no less).

Pitchfork

Fontaines D.C. are an Irish post-punk band formed in Dublin in 2017.[1][2][3] The band consists of Grian Chatten (vocals), Carlos O’Connell (guitar), Conor Curley (guitar), Conor Deegan III (bass), and Tom Coll (drums).

The band’s debut album, Dogrel, was released on 12 April 2019 to widespread critical acclaim; it was listed as Album of the Year on the record store Rough Trade‘s website,[4] voted Album of the Year by presenters on BBC Radio 6 Music,[5] and was nominated for both the Mercury Prize and the Choice Music Prize.[6]

The band’s second studio album, A Hero’s Death, was written and recorded in the midst of extensive touring for their debut, and was released on 31 July 2020. A Hero’s Death was later nominated for Best Rock Album at the 2021 Grammy Awards. Their third album Skinty Fia, released in 2022, became the band’s first to reach number one on the UK Albums Chart and Irish Albums Chart.

Its title refers to an old Irish saying that drummer Tom Coll’s great-aunt used to say. The phrase “Skinty Fia” translates to “the damnation of the deer”. Both the title and the cover art allude to the extinct Irish elk, also known as the “giant deer”

Wikipedia

Old Fellas New Music Episode 37

This is our 37th episode and the music is staying interesting for sure

show 37 link: https://www.mixcloud.com/paul-mcguire3/old-fellas-new-music-episode-37-dec-16/

  1. Jim White and Mary Margaret O’Hara – And the Angels Sing (Rising Singles Club)
  2. Panda Bear, Sonic Boom – Edge of the Edge
  3. CMAT – Every Bottle (Is My Boyfriend)
  4. Cole Pulice – City in a City
  5. The Beths – “Expert In A Dying Field
  6. Weyes Blood – Grapevine
  7. Porridge Radio –   Birthday Party
  8. Ethel Cain – American Teenager
  9. Phoebe Bridgers – So Much Wine https://www.mixcloud.com/paul-mcguire3/old-fellas-new-music-episode-37-dec-16/

This is our 37th episode and the music remains always interesting. This show is a little bit longer – the tracks were mainly 5 minutes of more.

As always, I am including the notes we used to put together the show. Bob’s first, then mine.

Bob’s Notes

Jim White and Mary Margaret O’Hara – “And the Angels Sing”

First up is a sort of Christmasy tune from Mary Margaret O’Hara and Jim White.  Jim is an Australian drummer, songwriter, and producer.  He has worked with Warren Ellis in the Dirty Three and collaborated frequently with Nick Cave.

O’Hara is from Toronto and of course, is the sister of comedy legend Catherine O’Hara. O’Hara made a huge splash in 1988 with her album “Miss America”.  This song is their contribution to the Rising Singles Club. Rising is an annual festival that takes place in Melbourne Australia. 

MARY MARGARET O’HARA & JIM WHITE / RENA ANAKWE

The song they tackle was first recorded in 1939 by Benny Goodman. here are both versions:

CMAT – “Every Bottle (Is My Boyfriend)”

Ciara Mary-Alice Thompson is  known professionally as CMAT, is a singer, songwriter, and musician from Dublin, Ireland. Her debut album, If My Wife New I’d Be Dead, was released in February 2022 and entered the Irish Album Charts at number one.  The Guardian wrote of her music; “Her songs are mournful yet accessible, emotionally literate and cleverly crafted, but, crucially, with a huge sense of humour…” She is a little reminiscent of Jann Arden.

Porridge Radio –“ Birthday Party”

Porridge Radio are a British indie rock band formed in Brighton in 2015. The The Guardian listed them among their top 40 new artists of 2018. Birthday Party is a track taken from the 2022 album, Waterslide, Diving Board, Ladder to the Sky”.

The All Music Guide discusses : https://www.allmusic.com/album/waterslide-diving-board-ladder-to-the-sky-mw0003677449

here they are performing the song in Manchester. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2EVReNd0NAM

The Beths – “Expert In A Dying Field”

This is the third or fourth time The Beths have made an appearance on the podcast.  The Beths are a New Zealand powerpop group. Formed in 2014, the band consists of Elizabeth Stokes (vocals, rhythm guitar), Jonathan Pearce (lead guitar, vocals), Benjamin Sinclair (bass, vocals), and Tristan Deck.  This is the title track from their 2022 release.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-KACt6YhOyY

Both Rolling Stone Magazine and  Paste Magazine love them.   So do we….  https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-features/beths-expert-in-a-dying-field-1234584653/

https://www.pastemagazine.com/music/the-beths/expert-in-a-dying-field-album-review/

Phoebe Bridgers – “So Much Wine”

Phoebe  Bridgers is a Grammy nominated singer/ songwriter. Bridgers is also a member of the musical groups Boygenius (with Julien Baker and Lucy Dacus) and Better Oblivion Community Center (with Conor Oberst)

Here, Bridgers tackles The Handsome Family 2001 Xmas song, “Too Much Wine”.  Bridger’s version is a one-off single to benefit the Los Angeles LGBT Center.

https://pitchfork.com/news/phoebe-bridgers-covers-the-handsome-family-so-much-wine-listen

Here’s the original 

Paul’s Notes –

based on some of the reading I did for the show

Weyes Blood – Grapevine

her real name is Natalie Mering from California. Big article in the most recent Exclaim! Magazine.

Her first album 2011. She also did an interesting cover of Your No Good (Linda Ronstadt)  for the movie Minions: The Rise of Gru soundtrack.

had to put this in here

some of the recent writing

Weyes Blood Reflects on Life’s “Sublime Violence”

Songwriter Natalie Mering talks her new album ‘And in the Darkness, Hearts Aglow’ and why “California is a little bit like the canary in the coal mine”

By Kaelen Bell

Published Nov 17, 2022

Opening the door to Weyes Blood’s And in the Darkness, Hearts Aglow, you’ll encounter the king and queen of loneliness, angels and dueling flames, an Emotional Cowboy looking to kick the moon’s ass. It’s a wonderland of sorts, a world awash in deep purples and reds so bright they blur white. 

Possessed of a grounded warmth that pulls the cosmic swirl of 2019’s Titanic Rising somewhere closer to a slowly burning Earth, Natalie Mering’s latest opus dresses modern terrors — climate disaster, digital disconnection, apathy and fear for a future that may not come — in great swathes of velvet, silk and bloodied chainmail.

Exclaim

Video for Grapevine

Panda Bear, Sonic Boom – Edge of the Edge

Album Reset 2022

I think this is Pitchfork – interesting article, the guys are neighbours in Portugal – didn’t see them though

Panda Bear and Sonic Boom Wring Joy Out of Terrible Times on Their Collaborative Album Reset

When the Zoom window opens, giving me a peek into Noah Lennox’s basement studio in Lisbon, Portugal, the psych-pop pathfinder best known as Animal Collective’s (Animal Collective is an American experimental pop band formed in Baltimore, Maryland. Its members consist of Avey Tare (David Portner), Panda Bear (Noah Lennox), Geologist (Brian Weitz), and Deakin (Josh Dibb). The band’s work is characterized by an eclectic exploration of styles, including psychedelia, freak folk, noise, and electronica,[5] with the use of elements such as loops, drones, sampling, vocal harmonies, and sound collage, alongside complex production techniques.[6] AllMusic‘s Fred Thomas suggests that the group “defined the face of independent experimental rock during the 2000s and 2010s.”[7])Panda Bear and journeyman producer Pete Kember (aka Sonic Boom) sit in semi-darkness, a single mic stand casting a stark shadow on the wall behind them.

 Shot through with Beach Boys harmonies, sleigh bells, and toy-like synths, it’s infused with a naive, almost childlike spirit. “It’s one of those records that’s for children of all ages,” Kember says.

The two men clearly share a strong bond: After multiple work trips to Lennox’s adopted home of Lisbon, Kember—a lifelong resident of the English market town of Rugby—moved to Sintra, on the outskirts of the Portuguese capital, in 2018.

When you actually pay attention to the lyrics, they’re singing about the fact that they can’t get tea and they can’t get rice, and the police and the gangsters are indiscernable, but they do it in this really awesome way. I think we were trying to—”

Lennox interrupts him: “Make lemonade out of lemons.”

Video Go On from the album

Cole Pulice – Scry

Cole Pulice is a composer, saxophonist and electroacoustic musician from Oakland-via-Minneapolis. Following their debut album “Gloam” and two duo collaborations with Lynn Avery and Nat Harvie, Cole Pulice returns with their sophomore album “Scry”. 

It’s a record that, for me, resonates strongly with this sort of “between-ness:” it began in Minneapolis, and was finished in Oakland, bridging pre-pandemic life with the “new normal” of current times; being genderqueer and navigating the spaces between and outside of the masculine and feminine binary; wandering through a musical interchange station that is interconnects improvisation, “song,” and collage experiments . . . multidimensional yet woven together by similar aesthetic threads.

“To scry” defines the practice of foretelling the future through gazing into a crystal ball or other reflective surfaces.

Bandcamp

Ethel Cain – American Teenager

From what I could find, here earliest published material came out in 2019

From a Pitchfork interview – I am not sure how much I have learned about this musician, but I think we will hear more from her in the future…..singer, songwriter, and producer Hayden Anhedönia discusses her witchy alter ego Ethel Cain, her stifling Baptist upbringing, and her desire to soothe listeners even as she unsettles them.

Though Anhedönia was raised in a tight-knit Southern Baptist community—her dad was a deacon, and she and her mom sang in the choir—at this point, the 23-year-old’s relationship with religion is complicated. She left the church at 16, a few years after she was first ostracized for being gay, and a few years before she would come out as a transgender woman and start making harrowing music under the name Ethel Cain. She insists that her choice to live in a former place of worship—and to sometimes explore the nightmarish side of Christianity in her work—was made not out of spite but rather in the spirit of… 

Here is American Teenager – great song

Old Fellas New Music Episode 33 – notes

Welcome!

St Vincent –Candy Darling

Booter –  10/10

Divine Comedy – Don’t Look Down

Rostam – 4Runner

Maria McKee- Let Me Forget

Alyona Alyona – Дикі танці – Wild Dances

Father John Misty – Things It Would Have Been Helpful to Know Before the Revolution.

Dear Rouge – Small Talk

Local Natives ft Sylvan Esso – Dark Days

Alyona Savranenko was born in Ukraine. She holds two bachelor’s degrees, one of which comes from the Gregory Skovoroda Pedagogical State University of Pereiaslav. Before doing rap, she worked as a teacher at “Teremok” kindergarten of Baryshivka, Kyiv Oblast. Alyona then headed the kindergarten of the neighboring village of Dernivka.In total, Alyona worked for four years in kindergartens and left the job once she gained popularity.

Even though Russian rap music is very popular in Ukraine, Alyona Alyona chose to rap in her native language. (While both languages are spoken in the ex-Soviet state, Ukrainian has become more widely spoken since the 2013 Euromaidan protests.)

To her, it’s a celebration of her national culture: “I want to rap about everyday life, in my own language.”

From – EURO POP

By THE NEW YORK TIMES MAY 22, 2019

European music is more than just the glitz of Eurovision. Turn on your sound to hear 15 of the region’s most important acts, musically and socially, right now.

“We didn’t have any huge fresh names like her in rap music in Ukraine before,” said Ivan Dorn, a popular Ukrainian singer. Alyona Alyona’s early videos, some of which have several million views on YouTube, have a down-to-earth quality, showing her rapping in snow-covered, graffiti-filled landscapes, often dressed in tracksuits and sneakers.

(NYT)


St Vincent –Candy Darling

St Vincent –Candy Darling

St Vincent is the stage name of Ann Clark. She has been releasing albums to both popular and critical acclaim since 2007.  The track “Candy Darling” is from her  sixth album, 2021’s “Daddy’s Home”.  The song is an homage to Andy Warhol transgender “Superstar” Candy Darling who was immortalized in Lou Reed’s “Walk on the Wild Side” and the Velvet Underground’s “Candy Says”  Candy died tragically died at the age of 29 from lymphoma. To quote St Vincent,  “ ’Candy Darling’ was the last song I wrote for “Daddy’s Home.” I can’t explain it, but I felt like Candy was guiding me through writing it all, so it only made sense for me to send her home on that last uptown train with a bouquet of bodega roses.”

https://www.smh.com.au/culture/music/how-andy-warhol-s-darling-muse-inspired-st-vincent-s-next-move-20210608-p57z3f.html

The Velvet Underground  “Candy Says”  

   1969


Booter 10/10

Article in Exclaim!

8 Emerging Canadian Artists You Need to Hear in August 2022(Exclaim!)

Meet Exclaim!’s latest New Faves, including an East Coast heartbreaker and some scrappy power pop by way of Manitoba

On “Crushin’,” Booter’s Alannah Walker (one-half of indie-pop duo Cannon Bros.) sings hyperactive musings about continually falling for the straight girl, never catching that unattainable person’s eye. It’s a theme touched on throughout the quartet’s debut record, 10/10: “There are songs on this album that are clearly gay,” she says of the album, on which she writes queer lyrics openly for the first time. Joined by Tunic frontman David Schellenberg on bass, Hut Hut drummer Ian Ellis and guitarist Brendon Yarish, the Winnipeg-based project’s debut arrives September 9 through Midwest Debris

About (Manitoba Music)

On Booter’s debut album, Alannah Walker sings queer lyrics openly for the first time. Inspired by women writing love songs about women, the Winnipeg musician formerly known for her acclaimed duo Cannon Bros shares sarcastic slacker laments with a universality stretching far beyond the prairies. Joined by members of Tunic, Hut Hut, and Animal Teeth, 10/10 sets her stories of breakups, make-ups, and crushes on straight girls to the nostalgic strains of ’90s indie-rock. Drawing on the time-tested influences of Sloan, The Breeders, and Guided By Voices, each track is packed with hooks while maintaining the quartet’s homespun charms. Producer Cam Loepkky (The Weakerthans, Constantines) and mastering engineer Philip Shaw Bova (Kiwi Jr., Land of Talk) give 10/10 a vibrant boost with its dreamy synths and incandescent guitar solos bursting through Booter’s understated arrangements.

RELEASED Friday, September 9, 2022

Divine Comedy – Don’t Look Down

Divine Comedy – Don’t Look Down

The Divine Comedy are a band from Northern Ireland. Formed in 1989 and fronted by Neil Hannon. Hannon has been the only constant member of the group for all these years. The band has released 12 studio albums. Between 1996 and 1999,  nine singles released by the band made the top 40 in the UK.  “Don’t Look Down” comes from the album Promenade which was released in 1994.  By honest error, the Old Fellas New Music rule of no music older than 2015 has been broken!  Hopefully a severe penalty will be applied. However, here is Hannon performing the song in 2017.


Local Natives ft Sylvan Esso – Dark Days

Local Natives is an American indie rock band based  Los Angeles.  Their debut album, Gorilla Manor, was first released  February 16, 2010. The album received mostly positive reviews and debuted on the Billboard 200 and at No. 3 in the New Artist Chart.

Los Angeles band Local Natives have combined with Sylvan Esso on a new version of an older song, “Dark Days.  Sylvan Esso is an American electronic pop duo from Durham, North Carolina, formed in 2013. They took their name from characters in the video game Superbrothers: Sword & Sworcery.   https://floodmagazine.com/78111/listen-local-natives-share-dark-days-collaboration-with-sylvan-esso/

The collaboration first appeared on the Kimmel Show during the pandemic…  

Rostam – 4Runner

I love this song!

When Rostam Batmanglij was a kid growing up in Washington, D.C. — “must have been 13 or 14,” he figures — he used to ride around in his older brother’s car listening to a collection of Bruce Springsteen’s greatest hits. So it was probably inevitable that the musician and producer (and former Vampire Weekend member) would end up decades later with a song like “4Runner” from his mesmerizing new album.

A sexy-dreamy bop about two lovers’ road trip up the West Coast, “4Runner” carries some big Boss energy — the propulsive tempo, the images of “stolen plates” and a “blanket on the backseat,” the very “I’m on Fire” falsetto at the end of the tune. Asked if he hears it too, Rostam smiles and reveals that it wasn’t just that formative experience at play: Throughout the process of making his “Changephobia” LP, he was listening intermittently to the audiobook of Springsteen’s memoir, “Born to Run.”

Rostam’s craftiness and his analytical thinking — not to mention his interest in music history — are all over the meticulously rendered “Changephobia,” which mingles fuzzy rock, aquatic R&B and 1940s- and ’50s-style jazz. The album, his second solo disc, arrives after a few years in which he primarily wrote and produced for other acts such as Clairo, Maggie Rogers and Haim, with whom he earned a Grammy nomination for album of the year with 2020’s “Women in Music Pt. III.”


Dear Rouge releases new album, Spirit

By Jenna Melanson on April 8, 2022

Vancouver alt-rock duo Dear Rouge have shared their long-awaited third full-length album, Spirit, via Pheromone Records.

As the band wrote of the record,

“Spirit is the most vulnerable and raw side of Danielle’s inner thoughts, and the line being thrown from these questions and deep reckonings within oneself, urging you to grab hold and hang on for dear life.”

The band recorded Spirit secluded away from busy cityscapes. Drew and Danielle took up residence in a lakeside cabin shortly after the release of PHASES, their sophomore record. The duo found themselves spending their days alone together, and Spirit began to take form over the winter months.

“I had this epiphany,” Danielle shared, “that we needed to come back to ourselves and the joy and comfort we found in each other when we began writing music together.”

Maria McKee- Let Me Forget


Spotify

Maria McKee  is an American singer-songwriter. She is best known for her work with 80’s cow punks Lone Justice and her song “If Love Is a Red Dress (Hang Me in Rags)” from the film Pulp Fiction. Last year she recorded the album

La Vita Nuova which was met with generally favorable reviews from critics.

https://daily.bandcamp.com/features/maria-mckee-la-vita-nuova-feature

Father John Misty

Father John Misty – Things It Would Have Been Helpful to Know Before the Revolution.

Joshua Michael Tillman is better known by his stage name Father John Misty. The chosen song comes from the 2015 album “ Pure Comedy”.  Originally, Tillman included an 1800-word-long essay about its symbolism and meaning in the release announcement email to his fan club. “ Pure Comedy is the story of a species born with a half-formed brain. The species’ only hope for survival, finding itself on a cruel, unpredictable rock surrounded by other species who seem far more adept at this whole thing (and to whom they are delicious), is the reliance on other, slightly older, half-formed brains. This reliance takes on a few different names as their story unfolds, like “love,” “culture,” “family,” etc. Over time, and as their brains prove to be remarkably good at inventing meaning where there is none, the species becomes the purveyor of increasingly bizarre and sophisticated ironies. These ironies are designed to help cope with the species’ loathsome vulnerability and to try and reconcile how disproportionate their imagination is to the monotony of their existence”  Okay…. It is rather catchy though….  Pop Matters assesses….

https://www.popmatters.com/father-john-misty-things-it-would-have-been-helpful-to-know-before-the-revo-2495383263.html

Some lyrics...

It got too hot and so we overthrew the system
'Cause there's no place for human existence like right here
On this bright blue marble orbited by trash
Man, there's no beating that
It was no big thing to give up the way of life we had, oh
My social life is now quite a bit less hectic
The nightlife and the protests are pretty scarce
Now I mostly spend the long days walking through the city
Empty as a tomb
Sometimes I miss the top of the food chain
But what a perfect afternoon

Old Fellas New Music Episode 32

Our latest show

Our full playlist – 32 shows

This is our first show in about a month. Lots of things getting in the way of putting together a show, but we are back on Mixcloud Wednesday, October 26 at 4:00 pm.

Here are a few notes on this week’s music.

Week 32

Lenka Lichtenberg – What is this Place?

Kiwi Jr – Unspeakable Things

Alvvays – Very Online Guy

Dry Cleaning – Scratchcard Lanyard

Tanya Tagaq – Teeth Agape

Us Girls – So Typically Now

Peter Kwenders – Kilimanjaro

Jungle -Truth 

Rosalía & Tokischa – Linda

Lenka Lichtenberg – What is this Place?

Premiered Jun 26, 2022  The Czech poem ‘Chtěla jsem tě proklít, hořká zemi’ (I wanted to curse you, bitter land), here with English subtitles, was written by Anna Hana Friesová while she was imprisoned in the concentration camp Theresienstadt (1942-1945). The song is a part of the project ‘Thieves of Dreams‘. Truly beautifyl music – this video is not the track we are featuring, any song from this project would work.

ABOUT THE PROJECT ‘THIEVES of DREAMS,’ a “haunting set of musical gems” (The Bangkok Post, June 9, 2022)

This project is about women. Creative, strong, breaking social taboos, and in some ways… invisible. My maternal grandmother Anna Hana Friesova was a stunning, well-educated woman from an entirely assimilated Czech Jewish family: assimilation was fairly common; in her case, it was based on fears of pogroms witnessed by her husband. She was an accomplished artist both with a pen and a brush, and nobody took her seriously – I suspect not even herself: she never mentioned her art to me. Only when my mother recently passed, I discovered two worn notebooks among her possessions: poems Anna Hana wrote between the years 1940 and 1945, just before and during her two-and-a-half-year incarceration (1942-1945)  in the Terezin (Theresienstadt) concentration camp during WW2. I was stunned by the intensity of her words, the erudite vocabulary, the raw and often disturbing honesty. I find her words just as poignant today as they were eighty years ago. 

Even more shocking were the details of the poems. “These were her dreams and nightmares from inside the concentration camp, the stories she never told me when I was growing up,” Lenka added. “Most of us, if we’re lucky enough, have a brief window with our grandparents. That time isn’t typically spent listening to their traumatic stories.”

Lenka Lichtenberg decided to embark on an ambitious project, to bring her grandmother’s voice back to life in the best way she knew how: as a music project, spanning eight decades and three generations. Anna Hana’s poems rarely mentioned the horrors of the camp explicitly. Perhaps this was self-censorship in case her writing was discovered.

(Roots Music Canada)

Lenka co-founded, with Isabel Fryszberg, the Yiddish swing all-female group Sisters of Sheynville, with whom she performed across Canada, in the U.S. and Europe. The band won the Canadian Folk Music Award for Vocal Group of the Year in 2008 for its Sheynville Express disc. 

Kiwi Junior

Kiwi Jr – Unspeakable Things

Originally from Charlottetown, now based in Toronto these guys have not taken a misstep as demonstrated by this track lifted from their third album Chppoer. Pitchfork Magazine loved it.

https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/kiwi-jr-chopper/.   The video features goalie masks and several familiar faces!  

Rosalía & Tokischa – Linda

Great song. I can’t remember where I first heard this, but the track is full of great Dominican energy. This song introduces me to dembow and trap music – a new genre that is new to me. More below:

As Dominican dembow and trap continues to spread internationally, the rest of the industry would do well to pay attention to the label’s artful and off-the-wall concoctions. To better understand its place in the movement, check out some of the best Paulus Music releases below.(Guardian)

Dembow is a Dominican musical genre[1][2] that can be traced to a riddim that originated in Jamaican dancehall.[3] When Shabba Ranks released “Dem Bow” in 1990, it did not take long for the dembow genre to form. Riddims were built from the song and the sound became a popular part of reggaeton. From there it took off in Dominican Republic creating the sound UNDERWORLD (“Bajo Mundo” in Spanish). It hit the streets of New York and from there it made its way to all of Latin America. The Dominican Dembow sound keeps evolving and has been fusioned with Trap music since 2016 and it’s also fusioned with Bachata and Merengue from the Dominican Republic. Dembow artists are called “Dembowseros

Tanya Tagaq – Teeth Agape

I decided to play a Tanya Tagaq song after hearing here on the Strombo Show. I couldn’t play particular track – 2014, but this is great. Raw, dark energy. Polaris Prize winner in 2014.

More on Tanya Tagaq:

“I will never stop being surprised that people like my music,” Tanya Tagaq tells me seriously before roaring with laughter. “I can feed my children because people are freaks!”

Even down a bad phone line from her home in Canada, the singer is brilliant company; passionate, political and hilariously foul-mouthed – a world away from the earnest associations that spring to mind when she is described as an “Inuit throat-singer”. “When people hear that, they think my concerts are going to be ‘just darling’,” she agrees with another shout of laughter. (Guardian)

Instead, the 40-year-old wrests the indigenous female tradition – with origins in a vocal breathing game played when men were out hunting – into a medium for pure, unleashed emotion. Her ghostly chants, guttural growls, gasps and moans are enough to make Björk, her sometime collaborator, sound as demure as a choirgirl.

Her latest album, Animism (which fought off competition from Drake and Arcade Fire to win the Polaris prize (2014), Canada’s answer to the Mercury), fuses her musical roots with everything from punk to electronica: the result is sometimes haunting, sometimes orgiastic, and always extraordinary.

Us Girls – So Typically Now

U.S. Girls is a Toronto-based  American musician Meghan Remy.   

Pitchfork can explain the song better than I can. https://pitchfork.com/reviews/tracks/us-girls-so-typically-now/

Pierre Kwenders

Has Won The 2022 Polaris Music Prize For The Album ‘José Louis And The Paradox Of Love’’

This is Pierre Kwenders’ first Polaris Music Prize win. He is on a good deal now thanks to his Polaris win. Great music, hope to keep on hearing him.

More:

“This is crazy, I don’t even know what to think. This is for all the kids from the diaspora, the African diaspora, moving in Canada. Sometimes you feel like you don’t know what you’re running into, or what you’re coming into. But there is hope, there is a place to live and dream and be yourself. This album, especially, is about being yourself and telling your own story. José Louis And The Paradox Of Love is there for you, you know, if you feel you can connect, connect! Let’s talk! Let’s have fun! Let’s be ourselves! Let’s love each other, while we are alive. Bisou!” – Pierre Kwenders

Truth – Jungle

Jungle is a British duo founded in 2013 by producers Josh Lloyd-Watson and Tom McFarland.  They have released three albums. In 2014,  Jungle was shortlisted for the prestigious 2014 Mercury Prize in the U.K. Their second album was 2018’s For Ever through XL Recordings.  The track Truth, is found on their third album, Loving in Stereo, released in 2021.

The song manages to sound contemporary and 80’s synth pop at the same time.  https://acidstag.com/2021/07/jungle-truth/

This is the second time we have featured Alvvays. It makes sense, they continue to come up with catchy energetic songs. This track is from their third album.

More on Alvvays:

Alvvays (pronounced “always”) is a Canadian indie pop band formed in 2011, originating from Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island, and currently based in Toronto, Ontario. It consists of Molly Rankin (vocals and guitar), Kerri MacLellan (keyboards), Alec O’Hanley (guitars), Abbey Blackwell (bass), and Sheridan Riley (drums). Their self-titled debut album, released in 2014, topped the US college charts.[3] Their second studio album, Antisocialites, was released on September 8, 2017, and won the Juno Award for Alternative Album of the Year at the Juno Awards of 2018. Both albums were short-listed for the Polaris Music Prize. Their third album, Blue Rev, was released on October 7, 2022.

Dry Cleaning

Dry Cleaning are an English band that formed in 2018. They are unusual as they employ spoken word rather than sung vocals.  Their debut album New Long Leg was released in 2021

which contains the song Scratchcard Lanyard.  The words are odd, fun and fascinating.   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4SfOi6rIHeA&t=5s 

Can’t decipher the lyrics?  Check this out.

Old Fellas New Music Episode 31 Notes

This week’s poster

We are back again this week on Friday at 4:00 PM. Certainly hoping for fewer tech glitches, but all things considered, it was OK.

You can hear last week’s show here on Mixcloud https://www.mixcloud.com/paul-mcguire3/
This week we have another great setup.

The Beths – Knees Deep
Orville Peck, Shania Twain – Legends Never Die
Glorious Sons – Pink Motel
Blue Stones – Shakin’ Off the Dust
Blue Rodeo – When You Were Wild
Crystal Eyes – 2000 years
Rosie Tucker – Barbara Ann
Sudan Archives – Selfish Soul
Cheap Trick – So it Goes

Our latest show on Mixcloud

Here are some notes that will grow as we get closer to the show.
The Beths – Knees Deep

Beths  – Knees Deep

New Zealand indie rockers The Beths have already released 2 albums of snappy power pop.  Their latest is  Expert in a Dying Field,  from which Knees Deep is the lead-off single.

It’s a peppy,  tune about trying to summon personal courage. In the song’s video, various Beths blow off band practice to go bungee jumping.  It’s included here in a review of the song from Consequence Sound

In a press release, Beths leader Liz Stokes has this to say:    “I’m the kind of person who wants to go swimming but takes like 10 minutes to get all the way into the cold water, slowly and painfully. I hate this about myself and am kind of envious of people who can just jump straight in the deep end. In a shocking twist, this is also a metaphor?! For how I wish I was the kind of person who was”

Here’s a nice interview regarding their latest release.   https://greatdarkwonder.com/interview-blue-rodeo-many-a-mile/

Glorious Sons – Pink Motel

Kingston Ontario’s The Glorious Sons have achieved remarkable success scoring the Juno for top rock album 3 times and having 2 number 1 hits in the US Billboard Charts.

Pink Motel is the closing track on their 2019 release A War On Everything. The song has very early 70’s Stones vibe to it.  This is a clip of them performing the song at Queen’s University’s Richardson Stadium in hometown Kingston in 2019.


Orville Peck, Shania Twain – Legends Never Die

Orville Peck and Shania Twain

I don’t know anything about Orville Peck, but I will work on this. Everyone knows Shania Twain and her story is worth reading about. This is a woman with a great amount of courage and it is really great to see her in my ‘duets section’ for this week.

I am adding this track on Karen’s suggestion. She is coming to see them this week at Cityfolk here in Ottawa. This is a great duet, you really need to give it a listen.

Blue Stones – Shakin’ Off the Dust
Here is a band that I was only vaguely aware of before Cityfolk. This is a two-person band from Windsor and their music is powerful. The band consists of a drummer and a guitarist. I could have chosen any of their tracks, but I stuck to the show format and chose Shakin’ Off the Dust.

a little grainy, but taken live at CityFolk

I had to add the video for this track, a little strange

Blue Rodeo – When You Were Wild

What can one say about Blue Rodeo?  A Canadian institution since the mid-eighties, Blue Rodeo released their 16th studio album Many A Mile this year. 

When You Were Wild is a Greg Keelor number

Here’s a nice interview regarding their latest release.   https://greatdarkwonder.com/interview-blue-rodeo-many-a-mile/

Crystal Eyes – 2000 years

This track I heard this week off of CBC Radio 3 and I had to add this. I find this is the best way to choose tracks for this show. The song was immediately appealing, now I need to go back and find out a little about who these folks are.

Crystal Eyes

and a little bit about them

Alberta psych-rockers Crystal Eyes are back with a video for their new track, “Don’t Turn Around.”

Today’s release comes from their forthcoming sophomore record, The Sweetness Restored, out April 22nd via Bobo Integral. “Don’t Turn Around” is a brooding track with bold vocal lines, driven percussion, and pulsing synths. The accompanying video for the track comes packed with vintage clips of people parasailing at a picturesque beach.

and this great quote “Crystal Eyes describe the forthcoming album as a “feel-good self-help record for the age of existential dread.”

all from Indi 88 FM

Rosie Tucker – Barbara Ann

Rosie Tucker is an American musician from Los Angeles.  This track is taken from their third and latest album entitled Sucker Supreme.  The album was listed on Pitchfork’s list of “29 Great Records You May Have Missed: Spring 2021

The record opens with one of its finest moments, and “Barbara Ann.” Apparently the song is about Tucker’s grandmother and spending time inside the American monoculture of the Midwest.

The Alternative provides a nice review of the album. https://www.getalternative.com/album-review-rosie-tucker-sucker-supreme/

Sudan Archives – Selfish Soul

This music has a really unique sound. I did look up something about Sudan Archives and her music is influenced by Sudanese violin style.

Here is an excerpt from her website

Sudan Archives is a violinist and vocalist who writes, plays, and produces her own music. Drawing inspiration from Sudanese fiddlers, she is self-taught on the violin, and her unique songs also fold in elements of R&B, experimental electronic music, and beat-making. She signed to Stones Throw Records in 2017.

Sudan Archives grew up in Cincinnati where she “messed around with instruments in the house” and took up violin in the fourth grade, teaching herself how to play the instrument by ear. When she discovered the violin playing style of Northeast Africa her eyes opened to the possibilities of the instrument.

Here is an early video from 2016 when she was just starting out

Sudan Archives – Queen Kunta
In this live performance video, she flips Kendrick Lamar’s “King Kunta” with just her voice, a violin and a loop pedal.
Video and photo by Eric Coleman. Cameras: Mike Park, Dominic Macias, Chris Gutierrez and Eric Coleman. Editor: Laith Majali. Special Thanks to Red Gate Recorders.

Cheap  Trick – So it Goes

Cheap Trick is an American rock band from Rockford, Illinois, that originally formed in 1973. In 1978 Bob and his brother bought Cheap Trick’s third album, Heaven Tonight.  After that it was only a matter of time before they went and got the first two albums as well.  The band seemed to bridge the gap between new wave, power pop and grand stadium rock. They  exploded in popularity in 1979 with The Live at Budokan album.  Here’s the poster from when at their height, they played the Montreal Forum.  (Paul See attachment)

After more mainstream and less interesting releases in the 80’s their output became more sporadic. However this track come from their 20th lp  which became their first #1 record.

Also, a blog Bob follows Burning Wood loved it as well.  https://burnwoodtonite.blogspot.com/search?q=CHEAP+TRICK

Here’s a comparison- Cheap Trick 1977  

vs. Cheap Trick 2021   

You be the judge…

Here is the updated Spotify Playlist

Our Playlist is up to 31 shows now!

Old Fellas New Music Episode 30!!

Here is our show – just up on Mixcloud

Yes, we are back. We haven’t done a show since the New Year and things are calming down a bit on the academic scene, so why not start back up?

And here is our link: https://www.mixcloud.com/live/paul-mcguire3/

Our poster for this week. We will be LVE on Thursday at 4:00 PM EDT

Here are this week’s tracks:

  1. Britney Spears and Elton John: Hold Me Closer 
  2. Girl in Red – Serotonin
  3.  Rayland Baxter Casanova
  4. Eddie Vedder – Long Way
  5. Rami Randhawa & Prince Randhawa  Vair
  6. Susanna Hoffs/Aimee Mann – Name of the Game
  7. Wax Mannequin – People Can Change
  8. Manchester Orchestra – Telepath
  9.  Kaê Guajajara – Essa Rua é Minha

I will include a few of my notes right here and Bob will add his soon. Then I will update the post.

I am not sure what kind of show this is, but if we are doing popular culture, I have to lead with this song. Elton John has been by hero since grade 11 and he still continues to entertain and amaze. He did a great duo with Dua Lipa, so why not with the recently freed Britany Speers. My Peloton coach really likes Brittany so that works for me. No more to say.

Cody Rigsby – more popular culture for you all

Girl in Red – Serontin

Girl in Red is the indie pop music project of Norwegian singer-songwriter and record producer Marie Ulven Ringheim. Her debut studio album If I Could Make It Go Quiet was released on 30 April 2021.

Serotonin is the hormone that stabilizes our mood, feelings of well-being, and happiness. This hormone impacts your entire body. It enables brain cells and other nervous system cells to communicate with each other. Serotonin also helps with sleeping, eating, and digestion

 I’m running low on serotonin
Chemical imbalance got me twisting things
Stabilize with medicine
There’s no depth to these feelings
Dig deep, can’t hide
From the corners of my mind
I’m terrified of what’s inside

The video is lotsa fun. There are almost as many red balloons as Nena!    

Girl in Red

Rayland Baxter Casanova

Wide Awake 2018

Rayland Baxter

I don’t know anything about this guy, but I heard this song and immediately loved it. That is how it goes on this show (for me). That is how I found so much great music last year – now I have lots of their music which includes the first new additions to my collection in years – never stop collecting!

Baxter is a Nashville artist and has some great tunes. Here is a promo video from the same album. Song Hey Lorocco

Rayland Baxter – Hey Larocco (Official Video)

Here is a bit from the Wikipedia article on him. A close look will tell you this needs an update to 2022

Baxter began performing in 2010, when he was featured on the song Shanghai Cigarettes by country musician Caitlin Rose.[6] In 2012, Baxter released his debut full-length album, titled Feathers & Fishhooks (stylized as feathers & fishHooks), via ATO Records.[7][8] In 2013, Baxter released his first extended play, titled Ashkelon (stylized as ashkeLON) also via ATO Records. The title is named after the town Ashkelon in Israel.[9] On August 14, 2015, Baxter released his second studio album titled Imaginary Man.[10] In 2018, Baxter released his third full-length album titled Wide Awake.[11] In 2019, Baxter released Good Mmornin, an album of seven Mac Miller cover songs. The record was released the day before he played the Newport Folk Fest where he debuted several of the songs live for the first time.[12]

Eddie Vedder – Long Way

Eddie Vedder released  “Long Way.” in late 2021.  The song sees Vedder channelling his “inner Tom Petty” The song features Red Hot Chilli Peppers’ guitarist Josh Klinghoffer and drummer Chad Smith, alongside Hammond organ by Benmont Tench, of The Heartbreakers-fame. here he is doing it live in 2021.  

Eddie Vedder

Rami Randhawa & Prince Randhawa  Vair

I included this track because I really like this music. I hear lots of this on Frequencies and it has such great energy and wonderful videos!

Vair (Full Video ) Rami Randhawa & Prince Randhawa !! Western Penduz !! Sandeep Sharma| Ramaz Music
3,852,031 views May 28, 2019

There is an interesting story that led me to include them this week. If you search the pair on social media you will find some interesting material about the two Punjabi singers who also have a connection to Canada.
Their social media feud (2019) is of interest:

Punjabi singers flex muscles on social media, 1 held

MOHALI: Issuing threats and throwing challenges at each other on social media led to the arrest of renowned Punjabi singer Rami Randhawa here today while his brother Prince Randhawa and another Punjabi singer Elly Mangat have been booked for obscene acts and criminal intimidation.

Issuing threats and throwing challenges at each other on social media led to the arrest of renowned Punjabi singer Rami Randhawa here today while his brother Prince Randhawa and another Punjabi singer Elly Mangat have been booked for obscene acts and criminal intimidation.
Rami and Elly used abusive language on social media, including Instagram, Facebook and YouTube, and challenged each other. “As per their challenges, the groups of the two singers were all set to meet at Purab Apartments to settle scores with each other,” said DSP Ramandeep Singh.
Under preventive action, the Mohali police today conducted a search of Purab Apartments and nabbed Rami Randhawa. “His brother Prince Randhawa was not present there while Elly is said to be coming from Canada and is expected to reach here tomorrow,” said the DSP.
“We have already sent an alert to the airport authorities. We would nab him there,” he said, adding that Prince Randhawa, who usually sang with his brother Rami, was also at large. Raids are on to nab him, said the DSP.

In a follow-up story, it is suspected that all this was a publicity stunt
A police officer said that there seemed to be something fish ..

Read more at:
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/71093637.cms?utm_source=contentofinterest&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=cppst

Susanna Hoffs/Aimee Mann – Name of the Game

The Bangles’ Susanna Hoffs has teamed up with Aimee Mann for a new cover of Badfinger’s “Name of the Game.” The track  appears on Hoffs’  covers album, Bright Lights
Hoffs is no stranger to cover albums.  She and Matthew Sweet have done three wonderful cover albums.   
https://www.classicrockhistory.com/matthew-sweet-susanna-hoffs-under-the-covers-album-reviews/
 
Here is Hoff’s version and Badfinger’s



Wax Mannequin – People Can Change

Have a New Name 2018

I really don’t have much on the band, but I really like this song.

From my old stand-by Wikipedia doesn’t help here – again looks like a good opportunity for editing with new info:

Wax Mannequin is the stage name of Chris Adeney,[1] a Canadian indie rock singer-songwriter. His style has been described as “a hybrid of Bruce Cockburn and Frank Zappa“,[2] “Tom Waits and Type O Negative jamming on the early Beatles catalogue”,[3] and “Rheostatics via Savatage“.[4] Carl Wilson of The Globe and Mail noted that “crowds are often baffled whether to be awed, irritated or amused by Wax’s all-rockets-flaring, un-Canadian-like extravagant performances” (2004).[2]

Wax Mannequin Bandcamp Page – releases go back to June 2001

Beneath the unsettling imagery and musical left turns there is a steady questioning of life’s inherent strangeness and his own neuro-divergent experience.

Bandcamp Page

Manchester Orchestra – Telepath  from The Million Masks of God
 

Manchester Orchestra is an American indie rock band from Atlanta formed in 2004. They are named after the English city of Manchester, a city frequently viewed as rich in musical history (The Smiths, The Fall, The Buzzcocks, The Stone Roses, Joy Division, Oasis, New Order, Happy Mondays, Magazine) The group is composed of rhythm guitarist-singer-songwriter Andy Hull, lead guitarist Robert McDowell, bassist Andy been releasing albums every 3 years or so since 2006. Here is a great acoustic version. 
Manchester Orchestra – Telepath  from The Million Masks of God 2021
 

Manchester Orchestra

Kaê Guajajara – Essa Rua é Minha

Single 2020

kaekaekae Instagram

I picked this song off a CBC show. While I missed what the show was about, the music stuck with me.

From her website:

Weaving a line between ancestry and indigenous futurism, Kaê Guajajara has been breaking the silence and the chains imposed by racism and colonization, raising up cries of resistance that span and echo across half a millennium. Kaê’s music presents a great opportunity to raise awareness among non-indigenous people about who the true owners of this land are and where we are today

https://ifnotusthenwho.me/who/kae-guajajara/

Compelling song and part of a really interesting Latin American tradition of protest hip hop.

You can read more and see some great video material here –

“The Indigenous Voice Is the Voice of Today”:
A Music Video Playlist of Indigenous Latin American Hip-Hop

JAAS NEWEN “Inche Kay Che”

More from The Guardian on Brazilian protest which Kaê Guajajra is a part of:

When the president (Jair Bolsonaro)assumed office, the singer and composer Kaê Guajajara worried she was “going to die” as a result of his hostile actions and rhetoric. Kaê belongs to the Guajajara ethnicity, located in the Amazonian part of Maranhão state in north-eastern Brazil. Merging hip-hop, traditional instruments and elements from her mother tongue Ze’egete, Kaê makes music about the reality of urbanised Indigenous peoples and the erasing of Indigenous identities.

Old Fellas New Music Episode 24 Notes

This week’s show

Episode 24 – Wednesday, September 15 7:00 PM On Mixcloud and 8:00 PM on VoicEd Radio

Haska, Salif Keita – Madan 


Whitehorse – Strike Me Down

Whitehorse –Strike Me Down from 2021 album Strike Me Down

This is the second album from the Hamilton based duo this year.  From the early 2000’s,  Luke Doucet and Melissa McClelland were both recording and touring artists with numerous recordings under their belts. They married in 2006 and since have collaborated under the banner , Whitehorse.  Here are two versions of this week’s selected song.


Matt Mays – NYC Girls (Acoustic) 

Elvis Costello $ The Attractions & Nina Diaz – No Action

Salif Keita, Angelique Kidjo, MHD –  Itarafo 

St. Etienne – Pond House

Natalia Lafourcade – Tú Sí Sabes 

Lucy Dacus – Gone Gone Gone (edit) 

Claudia Sierra, Los Macorinos, Clayton – Voy  

Haska, Salif Keita – Madan 

Very hard to find much information on Haska, but Salif Keita is a legend in Africa and we feature him on two tracks for this show.

Haska – Madan (with Salif Keita) Visualiser

Taken from the website Inflyte

Blending their love of music from across the globe with progressive production, they kick off their catalogue with a massive statement.

Centred around the infectious vocals of Salif Keita, described as the ‘Golden Voice of Africa’, ‘Madan’ sees Haska weave together intricate rhythms, edgy synths and pulsating bass grooves to create an uplifting and inspiring modern classic.

 Inflyte website

The story of Salif Keita’s royal heritage is interested and is quotes here from Wikipedia

Salif Keita was born a traditional prince in the village of Djoliba.[1] He was born to the Keita royal family, who trace their lineage to Sundiata Keita, founder of the Mali Emp  ire. He was cast out by his family and ostracized by the community because of his albinism, a sign of bad luck in Mandinka culture.[2] He decided to pursue music in his teenage years, further distancing him from his family as that was against occupational prohibitions of his noble status.[3] In 1967, he left Djoliba for Bamako, where he joined the government-sponsored Super Rail Band de Bamako. In 1973 Keita joined the group, Les Ambassadeurs (du motel de Bamako). Keita and Les Ambassadeurs fled political unrest in Mali during the mid-1970s and subsequently changed the group’s name to “Les Ambassadeurs Internationaux”. The reputation of Les Ambassadeurs Internationaux grew internationally in the late-1970s, leading to Keita pursuing a solo career in the following years.

my dream is to see him live in Africa one sunny day!

Matt Mays – NYC Girls (Acoustic) 

Album Twice Upon a Hell of a Time

Love this acoustic version of an earlier song on Once Upon a Hell of a Time 2017

Twice Upon a Hell of a Time is the seventh studio album by Matt Mays, released on October 19, 2018.[1] It comprises acoustic rerecordings of the songs from his 2017 album Once Upon a Hell of a Time

 Yes, this may repeat those same thirteen songs, but as an acoustic offering, “Twice…” sees everything reimagined in a completely different context.  And instantly apparent upon the first listen is just how different these songs appear to be. “Once Upon a Hell of a Time … is a Saturday night record,” says Matt.  “This version is for the hangover on Sunday.”

With “NYC Girls,” for instance, the up-tempo beat is toned down significantly through a simple drum rhythm and piano, that accompany some multi-vocal harmonies to provide a choir-like rendition much more in the spirit of Sunday morning church.  “I think if a song has meaning and is played with heart it can be done in a million different styles, tempos, time signatures and colours,” offers Mays when asked about his willingness to take these original compositions and reconstruct them this way.

Great Dark Wonder Review

Elvis Costello $ The Attractions & Nina Diaz – No Action

this is such an amazing song!!

Ever the pioneer , Costello along with producer Sebastian Krys, have taken the classic 1978 album “This Years Model”, removed the vocals and invited artists from across the Spanish-speaking world to adapt the songs.  

From the Variety article

With Krys’ contact list, it wasn’t an insurmountable feat to sign up a guest list that includes Juanes, Luis Fonsi, Draco Rosa, Cami, La Santa Cecilia’s La Marisoul, Jesse & Joy, Morat, Jorge Drexler, Fito Páez, Gian Marco, Vega and others, representing Mexico, Colombia, Chile, Spain, Uruguay, Argentina, Peru, Puerto Rico and, yes, even the mainland U.S. Underneath all these star turns remains the thrilling work accomplished in the late ‘70s by as great a backing band as ever lived, the Attractions,

San Antonio singer Nina Diaz of the group Girl in a Coma  lends her vocals to the opening track, “No Action”

Salif Keita, Angelique Kidjo, MHD –  Itarafo

Album – un autre blanc 2018

Such a powerful collaboration, you can listen to it here

I actually didn’t write up any notes for this track, but I love to see the collaboration that is going on in a whole collection of albums by various new and established groups.

A littler note on MHD who is the young one on this great track.

stage name MHD, is a French rapper from Paris, who is known for blending trap music with music of West Africa; a genre he coined as “Afro Trap“.[1][2][3] He was previously part of the rap collective 1.9 Réseaux.

Born in Vendée to a family of West African extraction, MHD began his career as a rapper in Paris at the age of 18. He found success in the mid-2010s through material he published on social media (notably music videos on YouTube) and in 2016 released his debut album MHD, which sold more than 200,000 copies in 6 months.[4][5][6] He later received international recognition, and toured in Guinea[citation needed]EnglandSenegal and Morocco.[7] His second album, titled 19, was released in September 2018.

Wikipedia


St. Etienne – Pond House

Saint Etienne are an English band from London, formed in 1990. The band consists of Sarah Cracknell, Bob Stanley and Pete Wiggs. They created a buzz in the UK in the 90’s which really didn’t translate to this side of the Atlantic.

According to Wikipedia,  “their work has been described as uniting 1990s club culture with 1960s pop.”   Since the nineties they have consistently released new music.  Stanley and Wiggs also have been responsible for curating interesting compilations for UK reissue label Ace Records.

Pitchfork reviews Saint Etienne’s latest.  

On their 10th studio album, the UK electro-pop heroes look back on the end of the 20th century, when hooks and choruses dissolved into blissed-out loops and vibe became paramount.

Pitchfork Magazine

Tú Sí Sabes – Natalia Lafourcade with Los Macorinos

a bit of an interview with Natalia Lafourcade and Los Macorinos who I featured on my last two tracks. I wish these guys would put out their own album.

Lafourcade has made a career out of her search for new sounds to adorn her melodies. In each of her efforts, she demonstrates a deep love for melody in all its forms, exploring it every way she can, and garnering a huge following in the Spanish-speaking world. Throughout the years, she has evolved into one of Mexico’s best songwriters and singers, thanks to her deep knowledge of music history and her ability to craft picturesque songs.

You told me you wanted to collaborate with Los Macorinos, but what was it like to finally have them in the studio with you? You also have a duet with Omara Portuondo. How was that experience?

I have collaborated with so many awesome people, but then I had this idea of making every collaboration much more deep and focused. They have to bring something new to me. In this case, it was a completely new experience to have Los Macorinos with me in the studio. We reached a whole new level because it wasn’t a very comfortable choice to work with them. How was I to play with these gentlemen? They have so much more experience.

Natalia Lafourcade – Tú sí sabes quererme (en manos de Los Macorinos)


Lucy Dacus – Gone Gone Gone (edit)

Lucy Dacus – Gone Gone Gone  from 2021 album,  Home Video

Dacus is an American singer-songwriter She is also a member of boygenius with Phoebe Bridgers and Julien Baker.  Here’s a really nice live version of this selection. 

To quote Dacus From Pitchfork, “When I wrote this one, I didn’t like it so much because it had that campfire vibe, and I thought it was too twee. For a long time, I’ve tried to establish myself in people’s minds as Not Americana, because people go to such lengths to show girls with guitars as country adjacent. People have called me alt-country… Genre is dead, and yet, I make rock music. But I felt more comfortable doing whatever the song wanted this time around. So if it’s a campfire song, then let’s get people on the refrains, and let’s do it with acoustic guitars and make it super cozy. My favorite moment is the talking at the end. I like that it’s the exact center of the record because it feels like an intermission.”

On a final note,  we aren’t the only Old Fellas enjoying new music! From The Guardian

 

Claudia Sierra, Los Macorinos, Clayton- Voy

Another one of the many collaborations by Los Macorinos

Nostalgia Entre Amigos 2 – 2018

And that’s all I have, I actually could find no more information about this singer. Any leads? Please let us know.