I continue to clean out the holding pen of music that is overflowing with both new tracks and classics I rediscovered while trolling the archives of my old music podcast.
“Alright” – Sam Fender
The life cycle of albums can be strange. These days many bands will drop multiple singles well before releasing the full album. Streaming messes up how singles are handled once the public has their hands on the LP so you might as well trickle them out slowly when you have the chance. My only real radio experience is with SiriusXM, and they often play only the first single and ignore the others. Weird. Anyway, Fender wrote this song early in the process for Seventeen Going Under but it did not make the final album cut. And despite that album going to number one in England and it spinning off a couple pretty successful singles here in the States, he’s already dipping into the B-sides, releasing this as a single earlier this week.
“Ricochet” – Preoccupations
There is no better current practitioner of post punk than Preoccupations.
“Didn’t It Rain Last Night” – First Rodeo
Exactly the kind of twangy music I can handle. I wish we would have run into these guys when we visited Nashville instead of the more traditional country artists we heard. The title of this song also seems like one of those funny websites/Twitter accounts like “Did Duke Lose?” Because, more often than not the last two months, the answer to their question has been “Hell no.”
“Sweetness and Light” – Lush
Now we jump into the archive tracks. Lush was a band that I absolutely loved for a brief time in the mid-90s. Long enough to buy at least three of their albums? This was their first-ever single, released as an EP in October 1990 and then was the first track on their debut album a month later. My life improved greatly when I discovered it four years later. You can draw a straight line from this track to other songs/bands I’ve played for you over the years. Lush probably has a few better songs, but this is one of the five best of their career.
“Come Out, Come Down, Fade Out, Be Gone” – 120 Days
Listeners to my pod will recall I included more electronic music back then than I do now. Not sure why that is. Maybe the sources I got my music from back then were more inclusive of electronica? I don’t think it’s because of some big taste change on my part, because if a song like this came out today I would still play the hell out of it. Anyway, this is from 2006.
“At the Stars” – Better Than Ezra
One of the all time great Driving on a Warm Summer Night With the Windows Down songs. 1998? I swore it was older than that.
“Ceremony” – Radiohead covering New Order
One of those musical moments that blew people’s minds. First off, the idea of a webcast was pretty damn groundbreaking in 2007. And then for Radiohead to rip up this classic pretty much finished the job on anyone whose brain was still intact.
“Deadbeat Summer” – Neon Indian
It’s been so hot this summer it’s tough not to be a deadbeat.