Lord Knows Best is a well calibrated machine of a song. Like clockwork, spiraling gears gracefully align the complimentary melodies while brackets of tones reinforce them.
Full of purpose and with great density, it must be lowered by crane carefully into the heart.
Check out Alex Zhang Hungtai’s more experimental, clamber and field rec’d new stuff as well, Young Gods Run Free.
There are two excellent renditions of this song on No Silver / No Gold. The other is a better single, but the version included below from the end of the album is preferred.
“Has anybody seen my bag / it’s the one I put together for the leaving”
This is what folk/americana could be and should be known as: all the layers of grit, complexity, simplicity, and directness. A unique and passionate delivery, playful and apocalyptic.
And just the one long note on the organ, putting Iggy to shame; making him out to be an overachieving opportunist for all those additional percussive hammerings.
Stamp is one of them joyous garage rock lamentations, end to end.
Everything down to the outro refrain and terminal exclamation are so well balanced and calibrated, it almost defies belief. The fuzz and fade are most agreeably punctuated by the lead guitars tremolo.
Disgust and disillusionment never sounded so kindly, even merry. Tom Waits enjoys “Beautiful melodies telling (him) terrible things,” and so do I.
It is Good.
Well, well is a stunning track and, good news, the whole album is built like this. Maybe a full, proper review to come when things settle down a bit.
But Black Bug’s s/t is a well contained rampage of burning saw patterns, choral uproar and properly clobbered digi drums.
15 tracks and no song is longer than 2:08.
Female/Male tradeoff the purging, vocal utterances and I don’t know if any album is as much fun as this is fun.
Name your price.
San Diego’s Teenage Burritos 2016 s/t has much good within it.
The standout tracks for me are Prom Song and the one rated here/posted below, Kamikaze. But the whole thing is so fluent in building convincing garage rock fragments that it appears effortless.
A real compelling alchemy of elements, dodging and compiling. I prefer this version featuring Andreas from Holograms to the other two listed on their bandcamp:
Even given the perpetual deluge of quality bandcamp content that no one of us will ever be able to sort through, it is borderline criminal that Windowsill’s “Twolip” has 9 sales to date.
Recommended to me initially by my internet-pal Paolo Yumol (who makes fine music in his own right), this track is sheer wonder and sweetly confides in its listener in the most appealingly warped and ravaged manner.
The strings and refracted melodic variations and repetitions build to great effect. The detailing and textures are comprehensively plotted. Its greatness is readily apparent. ok?
Katie Von Schleicher has released not one but two essential rock albums of our common era, 2020’s Consummation and 2017’s Shitty Hits.
This track is off the former, which is the latter, chronologically. I don’t have a copyeditor. This is a blog that only people who are getting ping-backs to their bandcamp pages are reading.
The point is that very few people are writing songs on the level of The Image and Strangest Thing. They’re full of majesty and momentum and calibrated to kill. In a kind way.
She’s also doing engineering/recording with Nate Mendelsohn for Shitty Hits Recording Co. If you’re in the NY area and need such services.
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.
“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.
Plainly & Painfully 