Week in Music May 10th - 16th

 Exciting week with two of the best bands - Fightmilk & Desperate Journalist - releasing new music. 

The new Fightmilk record, Contender, is killer. Great tunes that both rock and are very catchy, good lyrics too. My current favourite is 'Maybe'. Gorgeous. And the way it builds throughout the song to such a sumptuous juggernaut at the end is wonderful 

Desperate Journalist are back with a great new tune and video, 'Personality Girlfriend'. I really dig the mood of this one, the minor slow romp of the verses, and especially when Jo goes high with the vocal, smoothly flowing into a chorus where the light of a major key makes for cool shadows

David Shah's new Zeitklein project has released a nice new tune, 'Skydivers'

My favourite Facebook group is The Go-Betweens one and someone mentioned there's a Triffids 'Great Australian Albums' documentary for Born Sandy Devotional so I hopped on that right away.

'Spanish Blue' is in it, well before the album, but what a good single.

And then of course 'Wide Open Road' is one of the best songs ever written. Great performance of it here

And the Church cover of it is fantastic

Still making my way through Colin Harper's excellent John McLaughlin bio Bathed In Lightning. A good compilation of John's pre-Miles 60s recordings here

And finally I was playing quadruple solitaire with the family last night and I put on Burt Bacharach's '20th Century Masters' compilation for us to listen to, not realizing these are instrumental versions of the hits. But OMG, the version of 'Don't Make Me Over' is FANTASTIC. Especially the 'accept me for what I am' part. Intense. 

And if anyone here is a comics fan, I wrote an appreciation of one of my favourite comics creators, the Belgian master Maurice Tillieux, for The Comics Journal, published this week. I love his style, one could describe it as a cross between Franquin and Hergé but it's definitely all his own, his art and dialogue are excellent. 

Week In Music May 2nd - May 9th

Happy Mother's Day, all! I'll keep this short as I'm spending time with mine.

A song I absolutely love that my mom used to play all the time when I was growing up and that I've been listening to a lot the past few days. Sly & The Family Stone's 'Everybody Is A Star'

What else has been in my headphones this week. A lot of Yoko Ono. Exploring more of her work. 1995' 'Rising' album with IMA is incredible. Lots of stylistic territory explored and two gorgeous tunes in 'Goodbye, My Love' and 'Revelations'. The 'Yes, I'm A Witch' remix/collaboration record is really great too and the version of 'Revelations' with Cat Power is very moving

I've also been slowly making my way through Colin Harper's excellent 'Bathed In Lightning' book about John McLaughlin, and so much more. Incredibly dense history, that 200 pages in has provided much detail on the 60s session scene in London. There's many curios to stop and look up along the way. Including John & Duffy Power's take on 'God Bless The Child'

And this amazing performance of 'Cherokee' on the Tonight Show in 1984

It was pouring earlier this week and sitting by the window watching the drops fall it was pleasant to be reminded of Terri Rae's 'It's Raining'. One day I'll find her whole record

And I had a fantastic conversation with Fightmilk for an upcoming episode of the ETC podcast, out May 17th. Their new record, 'Contender', is out before that on the 14th and oh boy, are you in for a treat! They've expanded their palette and taken things up a couple notches. Killer tunes, especially this one. And a great video by Jono Ganz.  'Overbite':

That's all for now. I'm thinking of turning this blog into an email newsletter. Let me know what you think about that idea

Week In Music August 31st - September 6th

First up this week for getting stuck in my head, hitting home more and more as the years go by, is The Melting Ice Caps' 'Selfish Bachelor'. The original, fully orchestrated version which unfortunately isn't on the internet, but there is a live performance of something close to it from 2010

I interviewed Carla Easton for this week's Etcetera ETC With Young Southpaw episode. Her 'Weirdo' is currently my pop album of the year. It's fantastic; enormous energy, huge sound. My favourites switch all the time, which is one of the signs of a great album. 'Never Knew You' is amazing, great video too. On my first listen to the whole record, I looked up during the first verse to see if my device hadn't started playing Taylor Swift for some reason. 

Most stuck in my head this week has been Blast Off Country Style's 'Cutie Pie'. Which was the first song I heard when I turned on college radio when I got to college. Went straight down to Newbury Comics and bought the cd. Incredibly catchy and fun. 

Fightmilk have a new single out. Need I say more?

Bought that, the Illuminati Hotties album, and Honeyblood's 'Killer Bangs' single on this last Bandcamp Friday.

Downloaded all the texts from my friend Andy who passed away last week. 262 pages since November 2018 when I switched to iPhone. Looking forward to grabbing all my old phone's messages when I get back to them. When I was driving cross country in February, rushing to meet up with him in Phoenix for the day and a half he'd be there, I mentioned I had listened to 120 Lucksmiths songs one day in the car. He'd never heard them but I was sure he'd appreciate them. He asked me to send him their best song so I sent him 'There Is A Boy Who Never Goes Out'. He said it was 'pretty good' but then YouTube starting playing him The Beths and he got REALLY into them. Loved 'em. So I listened to their album again which is pretty great. I love the sound of their guitar lead lines.

Then yesterday I woke up with a song stuck in my head and I was wondering how I was ever going to remember what it was. This dismayed me but I remembered I emailed a friend about it sometime in the past year and if it came down to it, I could go through all our old emails. Luckily it didn't come to that and I finally placed it as 'Come In You'll Get Pneumonia' by The Easybeats. It's basically one big great chorus

Today I woke up with Diane Coffee's 'Like A Child Does' stuck in my head and it has stayed

Week In Music: June 14-21 2020

I keep hearing so much great stuff, thought I'd revive this blog to share it. A weekly post of all the great artists and tunes I've discovered or revisited during the week

First up is Judee Sill. Wow! Her songs are so lovely. John Andrew Fredrick of The Black Watch posted 'The Kiss' the other night and I was hooked. Sent me down a rabbithole and I've now heard all her recordings and can recommend the entire catalogue. Boston bassist extraordinaire Eric Donohue hipped me to her BBC Recordings which are just her solo and they are wonderful.

 

I heard 'The Kiss' first and then shortly after, perhaps her most popular song, 'Jesus Was A Cross Maker' which I've probably listened to five times a day since.





John Andrew Fredrick has been posting some great stuff on his FB page lately. His own band, The Black Watch, is definitely worth checking out, and there's 19 albums to dive into. New one, Brilliant Failures, is really good, and I interviewed JAF in my guise as Young Southpaw for it earlier this spring. A really fun, interesting conversation. Here's my favourite The Black Watch song, 'Terrific', a shimmering indiepop gem:





But as I was saying, JAF has posted some great stuff lately, including Prince's 'Starfish And Coffee' which has been stuck in my head a lot and I'm greatly thankful for that. What a tune!





As is 'Baltimore', which I've been listening to a ton lately with everything going on:





It was jazz great Eric Dolphy's birthday yesterday. His bass clarinet version of 'God Bless The Child' is one of the my favourite pieces of music:





Balcony Festival 6 happened yesterday, an 'online music festival in aid of The Mental Health Foundation'. My favourite band David Devant & His Spirit Wife headlined and Lily from Fightmilk played four acoustic songs, including 'Over', I song I truly love. That was great. And every time I hear their new single it gets stuck in my head and I'm glad of it:




I've started rewatching all of Letterkenny again. What a fantastic show. It's hilarious and they really take the time to get the writing and the soundtrack right. Discovered White Reaper that way, and 'Last Fourth Of July' is my favourite song I've heard this year, it's in my head constantly. Like a perfect cross between later My Chemical Romance, The Ramones, & The Misfits.





And another great discovery is The Foots, three piece Australian band from the 90's, on Lost And Lonesome Records. Two Foots reissues now on Bandcamp and some really good tunes on them, including my fave 'Fickle':





Lost And Lonesome is Mark Monnone from The Lucksmith's long-standing record label. Back in February when I set out to drive from Connecticut to Los Angeles that first day in the car I listened to the entire Lucksmiths discography. It was great, they had so many excellent songs. I was really glad, and also sad, to be at their last London gig back in 2009. On that same drive I started listening to Dory Previn again, and I've kept thinking this year it would be a good idea to document the songs that are with me at certain times, hence reupping this blog, especially with Judee Sill reminding me of Dory Previn. Whose 'Going Home' soundtracked so much of the rest of that cross-country car ride: