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Happy Friday! We’re getting big album announcements for the coming months and great lead singles to get us hyped about them. Here are some songs I've been digging into over the past few weeks.
We’re at that point in the winter where, like clockwork, you’re fooling yourself into thinking the warm days are right around the corner. The Santa Fe skies have been back to “intensely blue” mode for the past few days, and the pink and orange sunsets radiating behind the Jemez mountains are getting a little later each day with the time change around the corner. Yet I know we’re in for a few more hefty snows before celebrating what should be a pretty green spring.
The long-awaited return of FM Skyline may also be why I’m itching for that warmer weather, as I look forward to going into full-on vaporwave mode for another summer. “Fresnel” is as great as any FM Skyline track, and another reason why he is one of the hypnogogogic pop kings (here’s to awesomely niche genres!).
We’ve talked plenty around here about the pop masterpiece in Caroline Polachek’s Desire, I Want to Turn Into You, which ended up pretty high on my year-end list. Still, it’s nice to have some freshly released b-sides from the album. These two covers are my personal picks out of the bunch, especially the heavy house beats of “Coma.” I’m okay with neither being on the version of Desire, I Want to Turn Into You we heard last year, but damn, these are some pretty strong b-sides.
I’m firmly in the camp that Vampire Weekend has not been the same since Rostam left, and Father of the Bride was an extremely overlong, feature-heavy mess that I haven’t revisited since giving up on almost five years ago. The band is back, announcing God Was Above Us with two singles that… I’m still not all that into it. I’m including “Gen X Cops” because it’s the more interesting of the two, and the video is incredible. Maybe it will grow on me.
I’m of the generation that Vampire Weekend was such an unavoidable cultural moment that I continue to give them a chance, even if so far it appears they peaked with Modern Vampires of the City over a decade (!) ago. The new album announcement had me thinking about what a force these Yale preps were, starting in 2007 with their debut EP, which included “Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa,” “A-Punk,” and “Oxford Comma,” a song I still sing to myself every time I’m writing up one of these newsletters. When the self-titled LP was released in January 2008, it was everywhere, and I considered myself a fan. I even lucked out and saw them at a club show in Berlin later that spring. The buzz was hitting Germany, but much less so than stateside, so what a rad opportunity to see them in a basement with a hundred people. It’s one of those moments that makes me never reach the same enthusiasm as their fanbase grows. As for me, it wouldn’t get any better than that.
Here I am, though, hoping that Father of the Bride was the rare whiff and that God Was Above Us sees a return to form.
Alright, one last one from here in New Mexico. Sweet Nothin is a trio that doesn’t get nearly as much attention as they deserve around here. Still, their shows are notorious for being wildly loud (like a notch under Dinosaur Jr. loud), and their worship of Detroit garage rock is cool as hell, down to their retro getups. Today, they released their new single, “More Onions Than Beef, " which is the best song title of the year so far and features local bluesman legend Felix Gato Peralta on guitar.
Hell, I’m so excited about this one that Mama Mañana is hosting them at The Mystic tonight for a release party. If you’re a local reader, ya better be there. And bring earplugs.
What songs have you been digging? Let me know in the comments!
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