“Halloween I & II” – Cloud Nothings
Happy Halloween!
“Dance Now” – Girl and Girl
If I had gone into a coma in 1983 or 1984, woken up this week, and this was the first song I heard, I bet I wouldn’t have realized I just slept through 40-ish years. All kinds of Eighties goodness in here. Another great Aussie band to add to our collection. If S and I ever make it Down Under, she’s going to be bummed that I just want to go to clubs and watch indie rock bands.
“Serial Killer” – Sunflower Bean
Maybe I have Eighties on the brain this morning, but I hear some big mid-80s vibes in this tune, too.
“Baseball Bat” – French Cassettes
Happy World Series week! Also good fall-times music.
“Positively 34th Street” – Japandroids
The J’s farewell album came out last week while we were away. I’ve spun it several times this week and enjoy it. Definitely not to the level of their legendary Celebration Rock, but not many albums are. I do like how the second half of the album softens their sound just a bit, notable on this track. It’s not acoustic, coffeehouse music by any measure, and it still has that big push that fuels so many of their songs. But it’s only played at 7 or 8 instead of 11, which suits their age well.
“Happy Again” – Phantogram
New Phantogram tracks will always get run from me. This one, about being optimistic and embracing the day, seems oddly out-of-touch with the world we live in. But maybe in a couple weeks things will be happier and clearer than they are at the moment…
“Why?” – Red Giant
Talk about hard to Google, this band took some work. Then I laughed when I got their bio because every site that has written about them clearly just uses the band submitted info, as they all reference how leader Dave Simpson is a guitar prodigy and YouTube celeb, including the same number for his YT follower count. Anyway, this song about being bullied and bouncing back, is solid. It sounds like if one of those turn-of-the-millennium bands like Seven Mary Three or Fuel or whoever tried to make a Buffalo Tom song.
“Purple Rain” – Prince
Man, sometimes I am a complete idiot. I spend an entire year on a special project where I play videos from the greatest year in pop music, and somehow skip right over one of my favorite songs ever made. Now, in my defense, when I pick a video each week I’m only looking at the space between numbers 30 and 40 in that weeks Billboard Top 40. Thus, I missed that “Purple Rain” debuted in the Hot 100 all the way up at #28 the week of October 6, the same week Hall & Oates’ “Out of Touch” popped into the Top 40 in its second week on the chart.
Thankfully this week I finally checked out the video of Sturgill Simpson performing “Purple Rain” – guitar work is fine, I just can’t get onboard with that voice – and decided to seek out Prince performances. This is the first one I watched. It is WILD. I could easily do a 3000-word breakdown of it. Instead I’ll just share it with you and remind you that you can read more of my thoughts on Prince’s best song here.