A quick burst of high quality new tunes over the past week.
“Entitlement Crew” – The Hold Steady. The band just completed a four-night stretch at the Brooklyn Bowl and recorded this track, along with a B side, in advance of those shows. Franz Nicolay is back with the band, which is great news! And the song is pretty good!
“Passing Out” – Strand of Oaks. Tim Showalter scrapped an entire album of material before hunkering down to bang out this year’s Hard Love. That album is ranking highly on many Best Of lists, but I did not love it. Early 2018 will bring a new Strand of Oaks release that features both some revamped tracks from Hard Love along with some of the songs from the rejected album, including this one. Man, this is a great song, and it gets me back on the Strand of Oak bandwagon.
“Maria” – Lionlimb. This band is made up of members of Angel Olsen’s backing band. This sounds nothing like Olsen’s music. It sounds like Elliott Smith doing psychedelic, baroque, Beatle-esque pop. I dig.
“Over the Midnight” – Jonathan Wilson. Wilson has played a huge role in helping Father John Misty develop his sound. You can certainly hear some of that in this mesmerizing track.
“Listen the Snow is Falling” – Galaxie 500. I laughed last night when I saw videos from San Antonio of it snowing down there. We picked the right week to go! This time tomorrow we could have a couple inches on the ground for our first snowfall of the year. Just the excuse I need to pull out this beauty.
“Fairytale of New York” – The Pogues featuring Kirsty MacColl. An all-timer.