Friday Friday Friday
Fantastical Friday Fuckery
Holy fucking shit we get records from Mitski and Black Country, New Road today and those are just the records I'm most excited about. Let's dive in and see what else is coming.
Lots of people are jumping ship from Spotify this week after some Joe Rogan fuckery and heightened awareness of how little they pay artists. I'm not sure if I'm going to be able to jump ship, but I am trying out Napster, which is at least a little interesting. That said...
It's Bandcamp Friday! That means that Bandcamp isn't taking their cut of purchases today and all your money spent goes directly to the artist. Go buy a vinyl, hoodie, flexidisc, or whatever the fuck your heart desires and support working musicians.
The Playlist
We're opening with Black Country, New Road who has uh... lost their vocalist right before releasing their debut LP. God fucking dammit. It's such a promising record and it kills me that they won't get to tour this shit.
The fuzz that Lucy Dacus puts on her voice for high energy parts really brings me joy, so of course I adore Kissing Lessons. Oh, and now we get the B-side of K.Flay's new record. We saw Inside Voices released as an EP last year and now we finally get Outside Voices to finish up the set. It's highly likely this will end up on AOTY lists, so get to know it early.
And now we've got the grunge-pop stylings of crush as they tease out what I assume is a new record on bckwards 36. I really love the genre of grunge-pop and no it's not just shoegaze reinvented fuck you how dare you.
Seeing ACAB by Supa Bwe, DINO 7K, redveil, and Chance the Rapper made me really happy. I'm not familiar with the rest of these guys, but hearing Chance say ACAB after his recent wife guy and Christianity shit has warmed my heart a little.
If they pandemic doesn't pan out they gon Easy E me.
Chance The Rapper - ACAB
Holy fuck holy fuck holy fuck The Devil Wears Prada is back with a goddamn vengeance. It's a self-produced single that shows us the metalcore giants at their absolute highest heights. Lots of Architects vibes here, but with unmistakably Prada digital elements. Honestly, I'd love to see them do an Abbey Road session similar to what Architects just did.
And now we have to talk about the fact that I included a re-imagining on the playlist. I don't like including shit like this, cause I want to highlight stuff that's new new, but... Spanish Love Songs has outdone themselves by re-imagining some songs off of 2020's Brave Faces Everyone in a way that feels fresh and energizing even though they dialed all the energy back.
I guess while I'm doing re-imaginings, here's Bright Eyes doing their 2000 track Haligh, Haligh, A Lie, Haligh with fucking Phoebe Goddamn Bridgers, which I'm such a sucker for, so you get two re-imaginings this week and okay, we'll go back to new music now, sorry.
Sacred Bones artist Marissa Nadler is here with her follow-up EP to last year's record The Path of the Clouds. I can't wait to dig deep into this indie-folk record that will undoubtedly please anyone who loves Nadler's brand of dreamy folk music and wants more of what we saw last year on her 9th studio record.
It's hard for me to believe that this is only Hippo Campus' third LP, given how much music they've put out recently. I guess that's what you get when you release half the records as singles prior to the LP coming out. Anyway, this is great for the indie power pop crowd and I'll be crossing my fingers that this goddamn pandemic ends so that I can finally see them live.
I don't know much about Korean-Canadian artist Luna Li besides that she's prepping to release her first LP, but this dreamy track featuring indie-grunge artist beabadoobee is enough to put her well on my radar. Very excited to keep track of this one. The grunge fuzz on the low guitar parts paired with the dreamy arpeggiated guitar lines? Fuck. Shout out to the rosé references in the track, as this is roséwave at its best.
Animal Collective's new (final?) single from their new LP keeps grabbing my attention with small moments of staggering genius. Lots of production candy here. The ramp up that opens illuminati hotties new single is disorienting, until you realize that she's doing that shit throughout the entire track, making it feel like a rollercoaster. It'd be nauseating if it were less expertly done. Huge props to Sarah for self-producing something that's this daring and that lands this well.
We're not going to talk about how I've got another reimagined track on here in Madi Diaz and Waxahatchee redoing Diaz's Resentment, since I said we were going to focus on new music. Remember when I said that? Simpler times. Diaz originally wrote this song for Kesha's 2019 record where it was performed with Sturgill Simpson and Brian Wilson, so hearing it reprised here by a new slice of vocal talent is really refreshing.
Okay, bear with me, but does anyone remember Bungie's third-person melee combat oriented video game Oni? Cause that's what this new Bring Me The Horizon track reminds me of. The same type of electronic, driving score that makes you just want to roundhouse kick a mutated villain right in the goddamn sucker. FUCK. Also, have I ever heard an instrumental track from BMTH before? This is fucking cool.
The new Softcult record is out today and I've been waiting for this one. It's like gothic dreamy indie-pop but with massive wall-of-sound guitars and energy that feels like the best live show you've ever been to. I really hope they get to tour this.
Breaks and Swells are a bit of an oddball. Hailing from Seattle, WA, they don't really conform to a single genre cleanly, but this is kinda R&B and reggae and funk inspired anti-cop anthem shit that feels like one of those expressions of joy in the face of hardship. This is festival shit.
Hahaha, remember me talking about reworkings? Apparently it's a theme this week, so here's Tegan and Sara reworking their 2004 album Still Jealous and the lead single from that.
HOLY FUCKING FUCKING FUCK RED HOT CHILI PEPPERS ARE BACK WITH JOHN FRUCIANTE AND THE RECORD'S PRODUCED BY RICK RUBEN HOLY FUCKING FUCK IT'S STADIUM ARCADIUM 2 Y'ALL.
You thought that after that Kamasi Washington track that I was done with jazz for the week, didn't you? Fuck you, here's Walter Smith III, Matthew Stevens, Kris Davis, Dave Holland, and Terri Lyne Carrington with something a bit slower and smoother than what you'll get from Kamasi. No less interesting, but absolutely a different corner of the jazz world than what I frequently include in this newsletter. A friend of mine would refer to this as elevator music and like... he's not wrong, but that's a bit reductionary.
And now we get Circa Survive's new EP: A Dream Above. I've been waiting for this one after all the singles they've been teasing us with. The track I've chosen to highlight is a bit of an oddball, since it's centered around a solid groove that doesn't exactly feel like the Circa Survive that I think we all expect. Really cool shit.
A collab between electronic duo IC3PEAK and hardcore rapper Kim Dracula wasn't something that I thought I needed today, but here we are. There's some K.Flay adjacent vibes here, but really it's just kinda moody dark shit that makes your skin crawl.
Chicago rapper Saba is back today with a full new record! I've featured a track featuring 6LACK and Smino. It's Saba's signature vibe of midwest rap that's chill while being technically proficient and it really makes me happy to hear stuff like this. Don't miss the closing seven minute long epic that features Black Thought and Eryn Allen Kane.
It's important to meet music where it's at, so if you're going to go into Saba's record today, I highly recommend reading this statement that he put out via Twitter. I'm trying to be careful to not speak on this record a lot without having time to digest it and I recommend you honor his stated wish and do the same. Lets meet this one where he wants us to meet it.
Okay, I'll talk about Mitski. She's not really an artist that I've ever found sticky, so I've had trouble getting as excited for this record as seemingly literally everyone else on trans Twitter, but that's okay. I don't have to be 100% aligned with everyone to recognize that this release is massive and is going to be important to a lot of queer kids. That's enough sometimes.
Knuckle Puck is one of my favorite pop-punk artists working and we get that demonstrated really well today on their new EP Disposable Life. Minneapolis artist Zaq Baker's brand of piano-forward pop feels like it's the next chapter of Ben Folds' career in all the best ways. Really stoked to sit down with this album.
We've got a new record from 2 Chainz, which is pretty cool. There's an unfortunate collab with Lil Baby on here, but otherwise I'm pretty fuckin stoked for this record. Tai'Aysha and Saweetie have a certified radio rap hit with One Night Ting and I hope it gets what its owed.
Kublai Khan TX and Terror's Scott Vogel have teamed up on the new single from Kublai Khan TX's new record and it's a match made in hardcore heaven. The back and forth trading of lines is reallllllly satisfying to my mind.
Really stoked to listen through Bastille's new record. He's one of those that I never really caught on to, but I think this might be the one for me. I really like the energy we get on Nova Twins new single and I'm annoyingly liking this new Korn album.
Lol, ignore the fact that I included worship artist Joshua Micah and focus on the fact that I will always include Owl City because I am hopeless as fuck. This is the most explicitly Christian I think I've ever heard Adam Young be on a record, which is really interesting to me. I hope it leads to a full Christmas record from him, but maybe that's too hopeful.
The next band is probably someone you've never heard, but they're Iowa-based pop-rock act treesreach! I have friends who will stan these guys until your ears fall off, so I couldn't resist throwing them on this playlist.
Let's put some respect on Labrinth for absolutely destroying the music direction of this season of Euphoria. Every episode leaves me feeling completely devastated and there's no small amount of credit that he's due for making that possible. Utterly magnificent work.
Dr. Dre has a bunch of new tracks ahead of headlining the Superbowl, so here's a collab with Eminem, cause sure why not. I'm not really sure what that screamed bridge was, but I enjoyed it.
The ambient doom of Absent in Body comes to us via the members of Neurosis, Amenra, and Sepultura. Really fun shit that just floats you down a river of noise. This leads us right into Backxwash's horrorcore collab with Death Grips' Andy Morin.
Alright, that's all I've got to say today, so enjoy your Bandcamp Friday and go buy some music.