To my taste, Karl Neudert’s extremely prolific demos are better produced than anything I’ve ever mastered.
When the chorus/backing vocals kick in around the one minute mark something very good becomes revelatory and mercilessly catchy.
Seek out his hyper-active youtube channel for more radiant lo-fi hooks.
Dig Nitty, “Reverse of Mastery” was one of the best albums of 2020.
Screen is a bit more up-tempo than the majority of the album, but it all includes these inventive, careening vocal melodies drenched in the appropriate level of reverb. The drumming pattern in the chorus is expert and perfectly arranged.
Other standout tracks are the harpoon to the heart that is “Angel Calling,” and the highway hypnosis of “Palm Springs.” But it’s all very good.
Erin McGrath et al are writing excellent songs.
Please buy them.
“One more time with feeling… billions and billions of people have already died. You too will die. Sing along with us, won’t you?”
I love everything about this performance: The participating audience, their nervous laughter, Daniel’s death monologue.
Before the plague at a new year’s gathering I tried to toast the recently dead: David Berman, Daniel Johnston, and Denis Johnson… but ended up drunkenly saying Daniel twice instead of Denis, to mild amusement.
Here is a third, small tribute. We love you, Daniel.
“And Anne, and Elliott, and Sylvia / Do the work and then it kills ya / right, mama?”
Hard to pick one track off this excellent album to celebrate, so more will likely follow later. But damn. Full of grace and dread, end to end. A great work I am deeply envious of. And, whether I am worthy or not, I feel a deep kinship with it.
This is some combination of gut and sucker punch. A brilliant French-Canadian garage rock tune that launches right out of the gate into several varied strong melodies. There are also some superb driving vocals and excellent jangly guitar production.
The strength of the melodies and production mean that the 90 second run-time is brief even by my standards. But this allows for borderline infinite replayability.
Solid backing vocals and production accompany the mildly manic delivery. Everything comes together nicely in a scourging, flailing sort of fury.
Fun and frantic, marauding around the standard pop structure. it’s nice.
Ok, give them more listens here.
Plainly & Painfully 