“Wolf Lie Down” – The Fresh & Onlys. Man, I hate bands that hold their music back from streaming services. This song was released as a single back in June but F&O didn’t allow it to stream until recently. This kicks ass and is a perfect summer song. Oh well, at least we get to enjoy it now.
“Emotion” – Curls. Christopher Owens once had a band named Curls. Then they broke up and he started a new band called Girls. Then he went solo. Now he has a new band called…Curls. Hmmm. Not that any of that matters, because this is just a good song.
“Every Day’s the Weekend” – Alex Lahey. Another fantastic female artist from Australia. Lahey is way poppier than Courtney Barnett, but she still has some of Barnett’s conversational style to her lyrics. Her debut album I Love You Like A Brother is really, really good.
“What Can I Do If the Fire Goes Out?” – Gang of Youths. Here’s my latest musical obsession. Writer Steven Hyden tweeted earlier this week that he missed their album Go Farther In Lightness when it came out earlier this year, but had been digging it of late. He described them as “The National on steroids.” I took a listen and was hooked. Yep, there’s a lot of The National in their sound. There’s also some of the grandiosity of Arcade Fire. You can hear a little early Springsteen in there as well. The entire album is a magnificent monster of a listen. It hit the threshold of me enjoying it enough to buy the entire thing, burn it to disk, and pop it in the vehicle CD player, which only happens a few times each year.
“Thriller” – Michael Jackson. Funny how this is always thought of as a Halloween song. I mean, everything about it screams Halloween, obviously. But I always remember the video being released right before Christmas, 1983 and think of the holiday season. But that’s just my weird, music memory brain at work.