Birch Street Radio

Saturday, February 12, 2022

New music: Eddie Vedder, Seratones, Amos Lee, The Gravel Project, The Rural Alberta Advantage

Eddie Vedder: Invincible

To be honest, we were never big fans of the grim, self-pitying songs of early Pearl Jam. But whether he has exorcised his demons or just pushed them into the basement, Eddie Vedder seems to have moved past them. His new solo album, Earthling, leads off with this uplifting song. "We are invincible when we love," Vedder sings, shedding all vestiges of grunge on a track that has brought comparisons to Peter Gabriel and U2. We previously featured the Petty-esque "Long Way," and will be spinning several others, including a McCartney-ish number called "Mrs. Mills" with Ringo Starr guesting on drums, and "Try," which features Stevie Wonder and his harmonica. (But we'll pass on the sappy duet with Elton John.)

Seratones: Good Day

Photo by Joshua Asante

Singer A.J. Haynes and her band from Shreveport, Louisiana, have announced their third album, Love & Algorhythms, due in April 29. “This is a protest album built on the form of protest I’m most interested in at this moment: getting present and sitting through difficult things with abundant joy,” says Haynes. On this lead single, she sings: “Do you really want to get better?/ Do you really want to get well?” The press release describes the track as blending "Black gospel vocals and polyrhythms with roots spread throughout the African diaspora."

Amos Lee: See the Light

This is the second single (following "Worry No More") to spin out from Dreamland, the Philadelphia-born singer-songwriter's new LP. Many of the songs deal with Lee's struggles with feelings of alienation and anxiety. Roots-music website No Depression describes the album as "an expansive sonic canvas that paints with gospel choirs and acoustic guitars, synth textures and hypnotic R&B grooves." It calls this track "a buoyant moment that speaks to the power of community in Lee’s ability to rise above the tension described elsewhere" on the record.

The Rural Alberta Advantage: CANDU

This single is the first release in about five years from the trio of Nils Edenloff, Amy Cole and Paul Banwatt. The title refers to a type of nuclear-power reactor, and the song is about the once-booming, now abandoned town of Uranium City, Saskatchewan. Edenloff explains that the mines closed abruptly in the early 1980, "leaving most families stranded without work. ... Growing up in a mining town myself, it's hard not to think about who or what would have remained for me if the jobs all suddenly dried up, and where my friends and I would have ended up." Adds Banwatt: “My Dad spent decades working as an engineer helping design the CANDU nuclear reactors. What happened to the people in Uranium City is really tragic.”

The Gravel Project: Big Deep Blue

The third studio album from this Massachusetts-based group is the first to find its way to our ears, and we're glad it did. The band is named not for country roads but for the brothers Gravel - Andrew (guitar, vocals), who started the project in 2010, and Jordan (keyboards), who joined in 2015. They cite as influences the likes of The Allman Brothers, Eric Clapton, Santana, Band of Gypsies, Tedeschi Trucks Band and Gary Clark Jr. Funky guitar licks and horns flavor this rollicking track and propelled it into our New Music bin.

Saturday, February 5, 2022

Red Hot Chili Peppers, Eels, Mitski, Colin Hay, Mellencamp & Springsteen in the New Music bin

Red Hot Chili Peppers: Black Summer

The Peppers 12th LP, Unlimited Love, is on its way, billed as the first to include guitarist John Frusciante since 2006 and producer Rick Rubin since 2011. The title of this first single seems to refer to the devastating 2019-2020 forest fires in Australia (where bassist Flea hails from), perhaps metaphorically extended to represent other ongoing ecological and social crises, as we're all "Waitin' on another black summer to end." The band says: "We yearn to shine a light in the world, to uplift, connect, and bring people together. Each of the songs on our new album is a facet of us, reflecting our view of the universe."

Eels: Good Night on Earth

This track from Extreme Witchcraft floated out a while ago, but with the release of the full album we're popping it into the New Music bin. AllMusic writes that on the new album, Mark Oliver Everett "actually sounds like he's enjoying himself much of the time; he's still working out his demons, but his musical therapy agrees with him and he reveals an energy and spark that verges on playful." The theme of this song is that life is trouble but you might as well make the best of it. "Doing what you gotta do is all you got ... but look, my friend, it's a good night on earth."

Mitski: Love Me More

The Japan-born and globally raised singer-songwriter's new LP, Laurel Hell, employs "slick '80s pop surfaces ... its shimmering synths, electric piano, and business-like drums often seeming like a false front given the deeply brooding nature of the album's lyrics," writes AllMusic. We've been spinning the single "The Only Heartbreaker," and now we're adding this song that sounds like a demand on a lover, but that Paste suggests is about stardom and toxic fandom - a performer's need for adulation.

Colin Hay: A Man Without a Name

The former frontman of Australia's Men at Work has spent the decades since as a Los Angeles-based solo artist. His latest album, Now and the Evermore, is due next month, and the title track (with a guest appearance by Ringo Starr) spun out a couple of weeks ago. But we're happy to bring you another number that features an upbeat, swinging mixture of keyboards, sax, Latin-flavored percussion, electric and acoustic guitar.

John Mellencamp, Bruce Springsteen: Did You Say Such a Thing

This jaunty tune about nasty gossip ("Word in the papers / You've been talkin' smack about me") is one of four tracks on Mellencamp's new album where he's joined by Springsteen, and their time-roughened voices and guitar styles blend seamlessly. On the whole, Mellencamp's self-produced 25th LP, Strictly a One-Eyed Jack, takes a rather jaundiced view of the world, with lines like "We watch our lives just fade away" and "Worries occupy my brain." Rolling Stone writes that the music is "a rough yet refined version of the Americana rusticity that’s been a hallmark of his sound" since the 1980s, delivered in the "rugged croak of his voice, which now approaches Bob Dylan and Tom Waits territory in its rangy, weathered gravitas."

Saturday, January 29, 2022

Kate Klim, John Lewitt, Willamena, Brandi Carlile, Peaness - the latest in our New Music bin

Kate Klim: Something Green

This singer-songwriter, now based in Nashville, has been part of our mix for years, and we're glad to know that her new album Something Green is due in March. The title cut is the first single. "The lyrics for this song were inspired by the idea of controlled burns, and how sometimes a prescribed fire is needed to prevent uncontrollable forest fires or to promote new growth," according to Klim. It's a personal reflection on "a time of loss and change, but also [of feeling] hopeful that there was new growth underneath." Americana Highways premiered the track a few days ago and wrote: "The melodies are delicious ... the whole song is shiny and clear."

John Lewitt: Look In My Eyes

Another indie singer-songwriter that we've featured before, this Toronto-based artist will release The Beaten Path in May. On this album, Lewitt says, he's "leaning heavily into the Americana genre and spanning the width of what that means - from the early beginnings of The Band onto artists like Bruce Springsteen and Blue Rodeo and then all the way up to current artists like Jason Isbell." The songs were all written, performed and produced by Lewitt, working solo through the pandemic.

Willamena: The Same Way

Here's the second single to spin out from Broken Songs, the most-recent album by this band from Kalamazoo, Michigan - another of the indie artists we've been happy to feature in our big mix over the years. This mid-tempo rocker picks up the theme of love helping a couple get through troubled times: "I know, it's been a long year / Sometimes it's been hard to bear / And I know, there's good and bad to come, dear / But our hope will make it easier to bear." Written more than 10 years ago, it was freshly recorded for the new LP because, the band says, "this song feels right now. It needs to be heard."

Brandi Carlile: You and Me on the Rock

We're catching up to this single from In These Silent Days - which Spin called "a triumphant patchwork of Americana, folk-rock, pop and soul." The magazine described this song, which features backing vocals from Jess Wolfe and Holly Laessig of Lucius, as "a sweetly acoustic ode to the simple life." It's also a song of a love that treasures constant companionship: "Me out in my garden and you out on your walk / Is all the distance this poor girl can take / Without listening to you talk."

Peaness: How I'm Feeling

This latest single is a lead-up to the indie-pop trio's first full-length album, World Full of Worry, due in May. Formed in Chester, England, in 2014, the cheekily-named group has released a couple of EPs and first came to our ears a year ago with the single "Kaizan." Using the fundamental formula of guitar, bass, drums and vocal harmonies, the three build a sound reminiscent of '80s bands like The Bangles and The Go-Gos.

Saturday, January 22, 2022

The latest from Spoon, Abby Bryant & The Echoes, Christian Lee Hutson, Phillip-Michael Scales, Whole Damn Mess

Spoon: Wild

Here's the second single (following "The Hardest Cut") to be released ahead of the upcoming Lucifer on the Sofa album. "And the world, still so wild, called to me," Britt Daniel sings. "I was lost, I'd been kept on my knees." Stereogum calls the track "a shimmying strut ... a song with some serious heft to it. It’s a big rock song without the pretensions that load down so many big rock songs."

Abby Bryant & The Echoes: Not Your Little Girl

From North Carolina, this singer and guitarist Bailey Faulkner "have been hanging out and playing music together since they were kids," according to their bio. Now with their band The Echoes, they've released their debut album of "vintage-inspired southern soul rock," and landed in our New Music bin with the title track. Americana Highways gives them high praise by comparing their rock-band-with-horns sound to that of Delaney & Bonnie & Friends, and Bryant's "generous bluesy-warm voice" to that of Bonnie Bramlett.<

Christian Lee Hutson: Rubberneckers (feat. Phoebe Bridgers)

This single precedes the Los Angeles singer-songwriter's second album, Quitters, due in April as the follow-up to 2020's Beginners. AllMusic writes that Hutson has "an acute gift for intimate and detailed introspection. ... [He] threads through avenues of light Americana, smart indie pop, and lo-fi folk storytelling." After releasing a couple of albums and EPs in the 2010s, he co-wrote songs for Boygenius, the collaboration of Phoebe Bridgers, Lucy Dacus and Julien Baker, and contributed to the Bridgers-and-Conor Oberst project Better Oblivion Community Center. Bridgers, in turn, co-produced Beginners, and returned with Oberst to produce Quitters.

Phillip-Michael Scales: Find a Way

Astute music listeners may recognize that this track was originally released in 2020, but a new publicity push brings it to our ears this month, as Scales embarks on a U.S. tour. Now based in Nashville, he was born in Detroit and grew up in Chicago, where he picked up influences from B.B. King, a family friend he called "Uncle B." Initially he steered away from blues into writing and singing folk-pop, but later began blending alternative rock and blues influences into a style he calls "dive bar soul." Music-defined.com wrote that this song has "a funky, bluesy vibe that drips with confidence and a rock 'n' roll attitude" and some echoes of Michael Kiwanuka.

Whole Damn Mess: Some Big Something

Four Los Angeles musicians who have belonged to various bands and worked on film and TV projects came together a few years ago to form their own group - while continuing with their other gigs. This is the title track from their latest album. Band member Don Miggs says it's a "song about embracing the beauty of being and living. Being OK where you are but not giving up if what you like to do is dream big."

Saturday, January 15, 2022

New music from Night Talks, Nation of Language, Broken Social Scene, Gang of Youths, Lucius

Night Talks: On and On

A line in this latest single is also the title of the Los Angeles indie band's new album, Same Time Tomorrow, due in late February. The danceable song's lyrics have to do with repeating patterns in relationships, suggesting they can become a rut: "You and I doing the same dance time after time." Lead singer Soraya Sebghati says: "The phrase 'same time tomorrow' represents a willingness to show up and put in the work to fix or maintain a relationship, especially when you're in a rough patch. Things might be difficult, but that doesn't mean you're done-- it just means that you'll show up the next day and try again."

Nation of Language: Across That Fine Line

This Brooklyn synth-pop trio comes to our attention with a fresh remix of a track from its second album, A Way Forward. Everything Is Noise writes: "Somewhere between Future Islands’ dramatic hyper-earnest presentation and LCD Soundsystem’s bleeding cool self awareness, this trio finds a way to make every note sound warm, infectious, and danceable." The reviewer adds that the LP is "just such a ridiculously fun album to play back to back." Nation of Language songwriter Ian Devaney says it's "an exploration of the band’s relationship to the music of the 70s, through the lenses of krautrock and early electronic music."

Broken Social Scene: Curse Your Fail

This track falls in the category of not-really-new-but-new-to-us - and to most listeners. It was on a limited-release 7-inch during a 2009 tour, and now it's part of the Toronto group's latest release, Old Dead Young: B-sides and Rarities. Review site Tinnitist writes that this isn't just a collection of scraps from the cutting-room floor - that most of the tracks "are every bit as good as anything that made the cut on their five official albums. ... Considering that these cuts span 15 years, multiple producers, studios and lineups, the whole thing holds almost together well enough to qualify as a new BSS studio album."

Gang of Youths: In the Wake of Your Leave

Albums tend to dribble out these days, with multiple singles emerging before the LP arrives almost as an afterthought. So with Angel in Realtime, the forthcoming release from this band of Australian expats in London. This fifth single includes backing vocals by the Auckland Gospel Choir and percussion by drummers from the Cook Islands. The lyrics here, and on some of the other tracks, deal with the passing of frontman Dave Le'aupepe's father: “I wanted to reflect on how I became dependent on grief for solace and inspiration.”

Lucius: Next to Normal

Vocal duo Jess Wolfe and Holly Laessig and their band will release their third full-length album, Second Nature, in April, and this is the first single to spin out in advance. The singers also recently appeared on War on Drugs ' "I Don't Live Here Anymore" and Brandi Carlile's "You and Me on the Rock." Carlile co-produced the album with Dave Cobb. Longtime band members Dan Molad (drums) and Peter Lalish (lead guitar) are joined by bassist Solomon Dorsey and other musicians, while Carlile and Sheryl Crow contribute additional vocals. Says Wolfe: “It is a record that begs you not to sit in the difficult moments, but to dance through them.”