Nothing in Common - Kicking Myself
We're happy to be among the first to spin the debut single by this indie-pop group from Stockholm. Guitarist Pelle and drummer Bo met while taking a digital-design class and began collaborating on music, then met singer-songwriter Alice and formed a trio. In this song, Alice reflects on a situation she wishes she'd handled differently. The sound and the descriptive lyrics remind us a bit of the Swiss-German duo Boy, and one repeated line - "Getting a little too close for comfort / Tracing your fingers over my t-shirt" - is as evocative of awkward flirting as "I Don't Know What To Do With My Hands" by Minor Alps (Juliana Hatfield and Matthew Caws).
Real Estate - The Main Thing
Their fifth album finds Martin Courtney and his band "underpinning their ever-sunny tunes with unlikely themes of anxiety for future generations and apocalyptic dread," writes AllMusic. Courtney says this title track was his attempt at "an inspirational anthem for anyone who's ever been in an existential crisis - specifically, me." The message is to focus on what really matters to you, what makes you happy and what you believe in. “Despite the crushing weight of all that’s on our plate ... / I will stay true / To the main thing / It's all I can do / The main thing."
Lilly Hiatt - Candy Lunch
This early single from her upcoming album Walking Proof is a rumination on taking life as it comes, without trying to control it or let it control you. "Nothing seems to go better when I / Grab onto anything too tight," she sings with a smile in her voice. “I’ve always done my own weird thing / And sometimes that means I want candy for my lunch.” The singer's father, John Hiatt, makes a first-time appearance on one of her records on a track called "Some Kind of Drug," to be released with the full album in late March.
Robert Cray - Anything You Want
That's What I Heard is the latest release from this veteran purveyor of blues flavored with soul and R&B, and his fourth album with drummer/producer Steve Jordan. AllMusic praises "how well his unfussy but passionate vocal style, narrative lyrical stance, and exciting but never overdone guitar features blend with the soul grooves generated by Cray's band." This album opener is a Cray composition in classic blues-rock style.
Eliza Gilkyson - Sooner Or Later
Gilkyson has had a long and varied music career, starting when she was growing up in California and would occasionally help with background vocals on her singer-songwriter father Terry Gilkyson's recordings. Her upcoming, 2020, was produced in Austin by her son, Cisco Ryder. It's a collection of protest songs - her own along with Bob Dylan and Woody Guthrie covers. "I wanted to really address ... the political emotions of the times and the different things that I and, I think, others are feeling," Gilkyson told Billboard. Of our featured track, she said, "There's a lot of anger in that song, and also, I think, a sense of inviting the tribe in and together."