ill peach, BLOOM. Dumb name for a band, but a good track. I like the beat, and the bridge at 2:01 is a lovely transition. Gives me some strong Metric vibes, minus the guitar. The rest of the album is hit or miss, but they have a couple of other good tracks from earlier EPs available.
The runner-up from last week:
Acopia, This Conversation is Getting Boring. Much more downtempo, but another good groove. I wish the bass was better quality; the sound is flat and sounds just a hair late on the rhythm and not in a good way. Other than that, excellent.
Jesus, I can’t believe this song is almost thirty years old, and somehow it got stuck in my head all week:
Ah, the days of frosted hair and puka shells.
Also: tangentially related: the time the guy from Creed got in a fight with the band at a bar in Baltimore. Good times!
An old favorite, but for some reason the beat from Inertia Creeps is stuck in my head:
This album will never not be good; it’s high on my top 10 desert island list.
This week’s earworm: My People, by The Beaches. They’re actually getting more play right now from a song called Blame Brett, which is also very good, but this one got stuck in my head. They sound like an incredibly tight live band; I’d go see them if buying tickets wasn’t such a fucking nightmare. This live mix is great other than the snare drum, which is tuned like a 5-gallon bucket.
Since last week I’ve had most of Van Halen’s Fair Warning stuck in my head. In high school during marching band trips, one of the drumline captains had a mixtape of the best VH songs that he’d play en route to competitions, and Dirty Movies! was a standout. Having fallen down the rabbit hole, I found an isolated guitar track which showcases how technical and complex Eddie’s songwriting was—the secret ingredient that stood him far above his peers at the time, beyond the complex solos. Now I’ve got One Foot Out The Door stuck on repeat.
This tune has been going through my head since the trip back from Rhode Island this weekend. It’s a lesser-known song from one of Coldplay’s later albums but I really dig the beat and the tone.
This week’s earworm: Noel Gallagher’s High-Flying Birds, Council Skies. I always thought he had a better voice than his brother, and he’s more talented as well. I really like the melody to this song.
This week’s earworm is the Cult’s She Sells Sanctuary. I remember dimly liking some of the Cult’s songs back in the day, and I went so far as to buy a copy of Sonic Temple on CD in ’89, but quickly realized I only liked two of the songs on the disc. This song rips though.
I’ve had Afterlife by Arcade Fire going through my head for the last couple of days. The original song is excellent; I didn’t know until I looked up the lyrics that James Murphy (LCD Soundsystem) produced the album; that explains the excellent groove this song sits upon.
I remember seeing the music video I’ve embedded above when it first came out nine years ago: Produced by Spike Jonze and starring Greta Gerwig, it’s an amazing live-action production and performance of the song.
I already had Welcome to the Pleasuredome stuck in my head last week, when I read that Frankie Goes to Hollywood was reuniting for the first time in 36 years; this rehearsal for the Eurovision contest sounds amazing, frankly. That bass line is tasty when played live.
It’s pretty amazing how much of a cross-section of popular music one guy touched at a particular period in time, and how much I enjoyed all of that very different music: Trevor Horn produced this album, Who’s Afraid of? by the Art of Noise, and 90120 by Yes.