Mean Everything To Nothing is the second album from Atlanta’s Manchester Orchestra. It’s everything you want a rock record to be: raw, urgent, emotional, and 100 percent authentic: ‘There is nothing fake about this record’, says frontman and lyricist, Andy Hull. ‘There’s not one fake sound on it. We recorded it live because we wanted it to sound like a band, and I think it does: live and loud!’
Neil Young / Revolution Blues From On The Beach, this song totally wraps your body in its groove. And the lyrics are stellar: ‘I hear that Laurel Canyon is filled with famous stars but I hate them worse than leppers and I’ll kill them in their cars’.
Acrylics was formed by Jason Klauber and Molly Shea in 2008 and evolved into a trio. Their debut album All of the Fire was produced by Chris Taylor of Grizzly Bear at his church-studio in Brooklyn, Terrible Studios.
Bobbie Gentry / Reunion Most famous for her hits, Ode to Billie Joe, and the unstoppable Mississippi Delta, Bobbie Gentry is a sultry-voiced country singer who wrote and produced her own music in a time when it was rare for both women and country singers. Gentry talk-sings the part of a young girl at a large family reunion in this track off her Delta Sweetie album. We first heard it the day after Halloween while driving back to New York from upstate and it made our ride. Starting off with a seductively sparse hand-clap rhythmic figure, Gentry’s Mississippian belle rap, ‘mama can I huh’ enters next. More and more voices and sounds enter the party until we reach a cacophonous fever-pitch. The result sounds like a Charles Mingus arrangement of I Want Candy in a southern baptist church. The song quickly fades back to a whisper before the three minute mark.
Sweden-based El Perro Del Mar, known informally as Sarah Assbring, has recently released her third full-length album, Love Is Not Pop (The Control Group) and supported Peter Bjorn and John on their North American tour.
Joy Division / New Dawn Fades I fell into a dark Joy Division crack last Summer. Usually that’s a very good sign that I’m not feeling so good. Still, I think I managed to pick something good out of it for the first time. New Dawn Fades is one of those moments where Ian Curtis’ lyrics hurt so much, you don’t know where to turn. It’s like this slow build-up to heartbreak. The ending of this song, where he’s singing, ‘It was me waiting for me, hoping for something for more. Me seeing me this time, hoping for something else,’ breaks my heart anew every time I hear it.
Depart From Me is the latest full-length album from underground/indie-rap legend Cage, aka Chris Palko. Cage’s music is truly reflective of a reality far stranger than fiction. On Depart From Me Cage illuminates the struggles he’s faced upon entering a world that continues to be a source of loss and confusion. He’s helped along in this task with production by El-P, F. Sean (Hatebreed), the late Camu Tao and Aesop Rock.
Deftones / My Own Summer This song reminds me of what it feels like to be on all my favorite drugs that I quit doing and the sadness that comes from failed romances that will never be again. I’m referring to the drugs, not the women.
Effortlessly combining symphonic chamber pop with the most raw, visceral and expert melodic acrobatics, Loch Lommond employs the distinct use of harmonic vocals, mandolin, theremin, bass clarinet, and all manner of exclamatory percussion minutia to foil the even more distinct and arresting voice of lead singer and multi-instrumentalist Ritchie Young. Luring the listener with the unique range and power of his voice, Young is able to switch from high-pitched fragility to alto thunder in the turn of a phrase, yet he knows the power of restraint intuitively, saving vocal tornadoes for emotional apexes buoyed by string swells and moving arrangements.
Love / Alone Again Or I really like Love’s Alone Again, Or. There is an awesome trumpet solo in it and the string arrangements are beautiful. Also, it has been used in a couple of great movies, one of which is Bottle Rocket. The rest of the album is great, too.
Liverpool based four-piece, Screaming Lights, signed to Anti- Records (Tom Waits, Neko Case, Bob Mould) in January, making them the first new UK band the label has ever signed. Having previously toured with the Mystery Jets and Late Of the Pier, the band play the Secret Garden Party in July.
Ulrich Schnauss / On My Own I have it on right now, and it’s new to me, and it’s brilliant.
Brooklyn’s French Kicks, who have been creating music together for nearly a decade, have recently released their fourth album, Swimming. With each record, the band reinvent and refine themselves, constantly exploring new territories. Their latest effort is no exception. Allowed more artistic freedom by producing and mixing the record entirely themselves, Swimming features some of the quartet’s most melodic recordings to date.
Neil Young / Comes A Time Another one I just like and have been strumming around the house lately. Very sentimental, but I like ‘this old world keeps spinning round, its a wonder tall trees ain’t laying down’ Centrifugal force?
Amaya Laucirica was born into the rural solitude of Millicent, South Australia. She discovered music was more than a mere distraction, subsequently moving to Melbourne to expand her musical prospects where she recorded a rough five track demo CD. This was to become the basis for her debut album, Sugar Lights. The recordings gained the interest of several notables, including Mick Harvey, who offered assistance with arrangements, and Peter J. Moore, who mastered the album in Canada. Moore has previously produced the Cowboy Junkies, Neko Case and Emmylou Harris.
The Chills / Pink Frost I was reading about this song somewhere and downloaded it, as you do these days. I fell in love with that lo-fi dark rhythmic sound. It kinda has an up drum beat but the lyrics are so dark. I went out and bought the record — Kaleidoscope World — on vinyl, which is a collection of their early singles. It was the first for me of the Flying Nun bunch, and I’ve had a curiosity for New Zealand pop music ever since.
Psychedelic yet direct, raging but tuneful, All the Saints’ debut LP Fire On Corridor X bulldozes preconceptions at volume. Named after a section of the I-22 highway connecting the trio’s native Alabama to Mississippi, the cryptic title track is a hypnotic mind-meld of their primary influences, welding a Loop-sized space-groove to The Gun Club’s lyrical bite.
The Wipers / Youth of America Greg Sage is the man! The use of open space on this track is beautiful. A ten and a half minute punk song that gets put through the Sage psychedelic blender. This the cover of the song by The Humanoids.
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.
