Jer Coons is a pop artist from the green mountains of Vermont. His songs draw comparisons to John Mayer, Jason Mraz, and Damien Rice (although, as Jer would claim, you do not need Zoloft to enjoy his music). His debut album Speak drops September 29th through RED Distribution.
Michael Jackson / Baby Be Mine Talk about soul. What Quincy and Michael did with this track has forever shaped the way I look at pop music. I put this song on, turn it up loud and inevitably end up dancing around like an absolute idiot for its entire duration. It MAKES you move. I’d tell you to pick this album up, too, but I’m pretty sure the world got the memo.
Bell X1’s US debut Flock earned the band incredible reviews earlier this year and the Irish trio are now primed to take on America with their most ambitious album to date. Landing somewhere a ‘little bit electronic, a little bit Bacharach and a little bit New Orleans Funeral March’, Blue Lights On The Runway, is a coherent and intriguing record from start to finish. Recalling Eno-era Talking Heads, Sigur Ros, and XTC on jagged, the album contains the vintage synth-laden Broken Umbrella, the syncopated How Your Heart Is Wired, fuzzed out hard rocker Breast Fed, the electrifying The Great Defector, and the ballad, Light Catches Your Face.
Talking Heads / Heaven I think it’s the lack of sentimentality in what’s actually quite a sentimental song that I really like, a bit like a cat wearily singing about the end of the world. Set in the manic and wiry confines of Fear of Music, it’s a ballad, and the stripped down live version works beautifully on Stop Making Sense. This is Voxtrot’s cover of the song.
Land of Talk feature Elizabeth Powell, a former punk who got her start playing her own anti-rock anthems on the local scene of Guelph, Ontario, during her mid-teens. Upon her college years, with stints playing with the Aaron Riches Nuclear Family Band and the Valentines behind her, Powell set her sights on a solo career in the late ’90s. Gigs in and around Ontario and Quebec eventually led to the formation of Land of Talk in 2005 with Bucky Wheaton and Chris McCarron.
Bon Iver / Re:Stacks This song changed my course, emotionally. I can’t tell you how, but it levelled me. Everyone I have played it for, or who has heard it, has had same to similar reactions. This is a song I will listen to well into my twilight years.
Cocoon is a two-piece French band formed in 2006 by Mark Daumail and Morgane Imbeaud. ‘I wanted it to be a male-female duet. A duo like the The White Stripes are in rock — we wanted to be the equivalent in folk music’, Daumail says. Their songs are entirely sung in English. ‘French artists singing in English isn’t something new. It goes back to groups like Les Thugs and Syd Matters’.
Bon Iver / Flume This is the best song of the last two years, hands down. The vocals, the sound, and the lyrics: ‘Sky is womb and she’s the moon’. Sheer genius!
Back in the day, Australian singer-songwriter Alex Lloyd was the frontman for the awesome blues rock band, Mother Hubbard, who released one amazing album and then imploded. Since then, he’s reinvented himself as a mellow, melodic, and beautifully introspective solo artist, with a new album — Good In The Face Of A Stranger — to be released on November 1 through Inertia Distribution.
The Good The Bad and The Queen / Green Fields I love this track. In saying that though, I’m usually always blown away with anything Damon Albarn does. He seems to have his finger on the pulse and I admire his constant recreation of himself, not to take anything away from Tony Allen, Paul Simonon and Simon Tong making a very interesting, collaborative sound.
My Secret Playlist is a music discovery website and weekly email publication. We invite our favourite bands and musicians to give us the rundown on their eight favourite songs right now. These are their words on the music that inspires them.
