(THIS POST ORIGINALLY APPEARS ON THE TWIN CITIES BLOG NEWEST INDUSTRY)
Wild Ones, Lyla Foy, Katie Herzig, Dean Wareham, Buildings, Little Barrie, Phox, Eagulls, Future Islands, & Sonny Knight & The Lakers...
Well hello again, MP3 junkies! Welcome to Songs Of The Week #89 & #90!
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, MinneSarah is continuing her sabbatical this week. Without his co-reviewer, TCDroogsma got lazy and took a week off. Fortunately, taking a week off from reviewing songs didn't mean taking a week off from listening to the songs. He's back this week & making up for lost time with a double-dose of reviews.
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. Wild Ones - Golden Twin (from the album Keep It Safe)
TCDroogsma:
Golden Twin is, as far as I can tell, a five piece out of Portland that consists of four different versions of the same guy and a woman. They play exactly the type of synth-pop you would expect from looking at that picture above. The woman goes by the name Danielle Sullivan and she sings adorably in the same style that keeps Caroline Smith in sundresses. There's some girl-group-style harmonies and a guitar solo to remind you that this a "rock" band, though, in actuality, it's basically just a canvas for Sullivan's vague pining. I don't really know what "Golden Twin" is about lyrically, but I doubt that's really the point. Golden Twin isn't trying to re-invent the wheel and, to that end, they're succeeding wildly.
Final Score: 2/5
02. Lyla Foy - Feather Tongue (from the album Mirrors The Sky)
TCDroogsma:
Lyla Foy entered the indie-pop world under the name WALL. For reasons I don't really know, she's back now and using her own name (which The Current's SOTD gurus tagged as "Lyla Fox." Nice work, team).
"Feather Tongue" is yet another slice of synth-heavy indie pop, which puts it right in The Current's wheelhouse. Foy constructs a nice, atmospheric world that plays to her strengths as a singer. The hooks here don't grab you by the headphones as much as they envelope you like a blanket. While that's pleasant enough, it also leaves you without much to hold onto. "Feather Tongue" drifts along without ever demanding you sit up and take notice. It's three and a half minutes drift by like a dream and, like a dream, it's nearly impossible to remember even moments after it's finished.
Final Score: 2.5/5
03. Katie Herzig - Walk Through Walls (from the album Walk Through Walls)
TCDroogsma:
Katie Herzig is a singer-songwriter out of Ft. Collins, Colorado. "Walk Through Walls" is a lushly produced slice of synth-pop that glides by like a dream on the strength of some casual hooks and heartbreak. To quote the legendary Morrissey, "Stop me if you think that you've heard this one before..."
Final Score: 2/5
04. Dean Wareham - Holding Pattern (from the album Dean Wareham)
TCDroogsma:
To a certain sect of music fans, Dean Wareham is a bit of a legend. That sect? Early 30's white dudes who grew up on Galaxie 500 & Luna videos on 120 Minutes and now spend their time writing music blogs that nobody reads.
And yet, I was still a little disappointed by "Holding Pattern." From what I've read, Wareham's self-titled album (his first credited simply to "Dean Wareham") is a bit of a mid-life crisis album. The problem with "Holding Pattern," it seems, is that he pulls it off a little too well. While rattling off football scores & classic rock bands, Wareham presents himself as a man who's bored and, in his middle age, concerned that their really isn't a cure for that boredom. While that's certainly a relatable concern, Wareham's defeatism is contagious. "Holding Pattern" is wrapped up in the kind of guitar solos and everyman hooks that have marked his best work, but delivered with such depressing lyrics, those things almost seem just as expected as stumbling across football scores and Journey songs.
Final Score: 3/5
05. Buildings - Because It Doesn't Matter (from the EP It Doesn't Matter)
TCDroogsma:
Holy shit! Guitars? Yelling? There's no way the folks at The Current are actually playing this over the airwaves, right?
In a way, Buildings are exploring the same themes as Wareham. The difference is that they're younger and angrier about it. They turn up their guitars and rally against the 9-5 life that inevitably leads to Wareham's mid-life crisis. Both Buildings & Wareham are summoning their inner Kevin-Spacey-In-American-Beauty. Both are frustrated, neither offer up solution, but that's not really their job. "Because It Doesn't Matter" is a warning, delivered with passion & a firm belief in the power of rock.
Final Score: 4/5
06. Little Barrie - Sworn In (from the album Shadow)
TCDroogsma:
Oddly, Little Barrie is like Nottingham's version of Minneapolis' Little Man. Both are named (roughly) for their lead singers. Both are unabashedly in debt to the 60's world of blues-based power-pop. Unlike Little Man (who leans heavily on the glam style of T. Rex, Bowie, & Mott The Hoople), Little Barrie takes its cues from The Birds & The Stooges. The guitar work here is dirty, the hooks dynamic, and the originality nearly non-existent. No bother, though. As somebody who's just so goodamn tired of reviewing adorable synth-pop, Little Barrie is a reminder that sometimes you just need to turn up the guitars, write a good hook, and pretend you're a fucking star.
Final Score: 4/5
07. Phox - Slow Motion (from the album Phox)
TCDroogsma:
Phox is a six-piece out of Wisconsin that's riding high on internet buzz right now (they yet to release a full-length album, but you can purchase their "Live At iTunes Festival" LP on their Bandcamp page).
Listening to "Slow Motion," it's pretty obvious why the internet is losing its shit over Phox. It's a charming, dynamic song that puts lead singer Monica Martin front and center while the band around her constructs a canvas of piano pop. She's clearly got the kind of star power that will make you the biggest fish in the pond that is Madison, Wisconsin.
Final Score: 2/5
08. Eagulls - Possessed (from the album Eagulls)
TCDroogsma:
God bless you, England. I don't know why your youth are so consumed with saving guitar-based rock n roll, but you're doing a bang-up job.
"Possessed" comes roaring out of the speakers with a guitar line that's sounds like somebody sped up a My Bloody Valentine record. Lead singer George Mitchell claims spends the chorus claiming he's possessed and, based on his singing/screaming vocals, he's possessed by the ghosts of Ian Curtis & Joe Strummer. The whole song is loud, calamitous, and brilliant. Eagulls wear their influences on their sleeve, but I mean that as a compliment. Keep up the good work, lads.
Final Score: 4/5
09. Future Islands - Seasons (Waiting On You) (from the album Singles)
TCDroogsma:
It's nearly impossible to talk about Future Islands without discussing their Letterman performance so let's just get right into it.
I was aware that their performance had "gone viral," but I didn't watch it until after I had spent a few weeks with this song. Frankly, the only reason I watched the performance was because the song itself seemed very vanilla the first few times. I wanted to know what all the fuss was about.
After watching their performance I can say, without hyperbole, that I was floored. I was partially moved by the performance itself, which was honest in a medium (indie music) that's as constructed these days as pop music was in generations past. Singer Samuel T. Herring became an internet star because of those dance moves and honest/cornball gestures, but watch it again. At the end of the performance he seems genuinely surprised that he's blown away the Ed Sullivan Theatre's audience. He was just up their doing what he always does. Which brings me to a second question. Why did this blow up the internet? Are people laughing at this performance? Do people genuinely love it? I mean, I genuinely love it (and that performance absolutely sold me on the song). Is a guy just doing what comes naturally with his music (as corny as it may seem) just another joke in a world of indie pop that spends so much time trying to act cool & disinterested that it doesn't know any other way to process that type of performance?
I don't know. "Seasons (Waiting On You)" is a very good song being sold by a great frontman. That's all I know for sure at this point.
Final Score: 4.5/5
10. Sonny Knight & The Lakers - Juicy Lucy (from the album I'm Still Here)
TCDroogsma:
Sonny Knight & The Lakers is a curious case. The group has found their long-overdue acclaim thanks to the guys over at Secret Stash Records unearthing some of their lost late 60's songs, cleaning them up, and presenting them to the Twin Cities as part of a lost R&B scene finally getting its due. They put together some revue-style shows based on these lost "gems" and turned Sonny Knight into the star of the show. By all accounts the shows were a great time and everybody should thank Secret Stash for preventing these songs from slipping through the cracks.
However, now we're presented with the question of whether or not we actually need and/or want new music from Sonny Knight & The Lakers. I mean, part of the appeal of those other songs was hearing them as "lost gems," artifacts from a scene that nearly all of us are far too young to have lived through. For better or worse, context matters in music far more than people like to admit. As such, "Juicy Lucy" certainly sounds like it came from that same scene (and, to make that point clear, plenty of ecstatic crowd noise has been left in the recording to make it sound like The Lakers are tearing up a small, secret room). To my ears, "Juicy Lucy" is a pretty straight-ahead R&B song which, when divorced from that "lost gem" context, is nothing special. As I've stated dozens of times on this blog, soul music is far from my scene. I just don't know enough of it to judge these sort of things properly. As a music fan, however, "Juicy Lucy" doesn't do much for me.
Final Score: 2/5
Well there you have it, MP3 junkies! Two 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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