(THIS POST ORIGINALLY APPEARS ON THE TWIN CITIES BLOG NEWEST INDUSTRY)
Bad Suns, Pattern Is Movement, Big Scary, Snowmine, & MaLLy...
Well hello again, MP3 junkies! Welcome to Songs Of The Week #88!
For those of you who are new to the SOTW column, here's the story: TCDroogsma and MinneSarah are both fans of The Current's Song Of The Day podcast. They're also both opinionated and have access to computers. Seeing an opportunity to let them indulge in their MP3 habit and put them to work writing reviews we created the Songs Of The Week column. Over a year later later and here we are.
Unfortunately, this week MinneSarah took the week off due to what could kindly be called "Current-based fatigue." Trust us, her words were considerably more harsh.
As always, we strongly suggest that you follow this link and subscribe to the podcast yourself. It's free and it's fun for the whole family!
To that end, once you've given each song a spin or two, feel free to cast a vote for your favorite song of the week in the poll to the right side of the page. The artist who accrues the most votes wins the validation that comes from winning an anonymous internet poll, arguably the loftiest height to which a modern musician can aspire.
So... Droogsy... thoughts?
01. Bad Suns - Cardiac Arrest (from the album Transpose)
TCDroogsma:
The Bad Suns is a band coming out of southern California that seems to have a real soft spot for early 2000's British music. "Cardiac Arrest" bounces around nicely due to some solid work of the rhythm section, while lead singer Christo Bowman's elastic voice sounds as if he learned to use it by singing along to The Kooks, Kaiser Chiefs, etc... As somebody who was a huge fan of that type of band, this isn't a bad thing.
However, much like the collected work of The Kooks & Kaiser Chiefs, "Cardiac Arrest," though pleasant enough in the moment, is not particularly memorable. Despite his claim of "high voltage when we kiss," it's a low-stakes love song (he starts that same chorus by claiming, "I'll try my best..." Gripping.) "Cardiac Arrest" is a fine, trivial spring single. Not a bad little number, but nothing special.
Final Score: 2.5/5
02. Pattern Is Movement - River (from the album Pattern Is Movement)
TCDroogsma:
Heading into this week I only knew two songs from Pattern Is Movement and they were both covers. Bjork's "Enjoy" and The Smiths' immortal "I Want The One I Can't Have." I'm not familiar with the original "Enjoy," but their take on Moz's yearning was certainly curious enough to make me excited to hear some of their original work.
"River" rides a slinky, streaming verse of falsetto & synths that recalls Dirty Projectors before collapsing into a chorus of... well... more synths & falsettos. Frankly, it's the same kind of song structure that has made millions of dollars for everybody from The Beatles to New Found Glory. Pattern Is Movement puts their own Philly-white-boy-indie-soul twist on it. That seems like a mouthful on paper, but they pull it off admirably the first couple times. The song loses all its steam at the end when they decide to just crash the chorus into the ground and neglect to rebuild it, but up until then PTM makes an interesting racket.
Final Score: 2.5/5
03. Big Scary - Twin Rivers (from the album Not Art)
TCDroogsma:
"Gonna have to wake up, I don't wanna have to wake up, get up, get changed, game face, I don't want to have to wake up again this morning..."
That's how we're greeted by Big Scary on "Twin Rivers." Suffice it to say, hearing that as I listened to the song while walking to work at 5:45 in the morning all week may have given those lyrics some extra weight. Big Scary wraps those lyrics around some big, shuffling drums & strings that give lend those melancholy sentiments some color. The rest of the song features some lovely boy/girl vocals, and clattering piano, and a chorus that's big in the same way a Travis chorus is big. They don't go full Chris Martin, and that suits them. The whole song takes its cue from those first lyrics and provides enough small glimpses of beauty to remind you that life can be so much more than the daily grind.
Final Score: 4/5
04. Snowmine - Columbus (from the album Dialects)
TCDroogsma:
Snowmine is a five-piece coming out of Brooklyn with a crowd-funded new album, Dialects. Just based on that information (and the picture above), you can probably gather what the band sounds like.
"Columbus" is rich in keys, strings, gospel-esque harmonies, and a great chorus. There's not much going on in this song that you haven't heard before, but Snowmine seems to be doing it as well as anybody. Their great trick on "Columbus" is giving all of their ideas space to breathe. It takes a lot of parts that are easy to dismiss on their own and deploys each with brutal efficiency. The result is a song that, as you listen, is captivating, and yet leaves almost nothing behind when it ends.
Final Score: 3/5
05. MaLLy - A Long Day (from the album The Colors Of Black)
TCDroogsma:
I feel like I"m cheating a bit here with "A Long Day." When it was released as an SOTD track I spent a week with it and, despite the fact that I'm a MaLLy fan, I wasn't too high on it. I thought the piano was a bit too saccharine while MaLLy's "life is tough" take struck me as a bit too constructed.
However, since then I've picked up the song's parent album The Colors Of Black. Given proper context on the album, "A Long Day" stands up as a highlight. The album is an angry affair, with MaLLy's ire directed almost entirely at the struggle a young, black man faces in America. By the time we get to "A Long Day," it's clear that MaLLy's not depressed, merely exhausted. "A Long Day" is the sound of a man who's upset with the world around him, and equally upset with the fact that, despite his best efforts, he's nearly powerless to change it.
Final Score: 4/5
Well there you have it, MP3 junkies! Another week's worth of songs downloaded, reviewed, & filed away!
As always, please keep in mind that neither Newest Industry nor our contributors are in any way affiliated with the artists above, The Current, or MPR. We're just music fans with laptops and a bit too much time on our hands.
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