Just in under the wire, it’s time for another Music Monday Playlist! As usual, here are the links to the YouTube and Spotify playlists:
The notes on what’s missing: I couldn’t find 7mai or alpha’s songs on YouTube or Spotify, so I’m just linking their Bandcamp pages here. Also, I could only find Flood District’s music on YouTube, but it is on the Spotify list.
One thing I will note here: I’ve historically included YouTube and Spotify playlists in these articles that you can listen along to or sample. Those two platforms are the most requested ones, but I’ve been strongly considering dropping the Spotify one; the most recent reason being the platform changing their rules and demonetizing over 80% of songs on the platform. Essentially (assuming my understanding is correct), artists who can’t reach minimum average listens across their catalog aren’t eligible to claim royalties any more.
I didn’t want to just stop offering it without a warning, but I also don’t know if any of the artists I mention here fall under that threshold, so I’d push people to listen to the YouTube version if possible. Their payouts still aren’t great, but at least they aren’t doing that (to my knowledge). Also, maybe consider supporting ones you really like through Bandcamp or something (which is having their own issues, but nothing on that level); many of them have pages there, and that’s even where I find a lot of the smaller artists. And if the next playlist post I make doesn’t have a Spotify version, that’s probably at least part of the reason.
I feel like I usually have a strong outline here, starting with my favorite release and going down from there, but… I kind of didn’t this time. So instead, here are just my collection of thoughts, roughly assembled into the order they are on the playlist.
The Beaches: I had a friend recommend their new album Blame My Ex to me the week it came out. It was some fun and catchy indie rock, and I enjoyed it enough to check out some earlier EPs and singles (which also got some representation on the list). Several weeks after that, I saw them starting to pop up in more places, so I get to say that I was (moderately) ahead of the curve here! (Although maybe it’s just my local alternative station; their peak chart position feels low given how much it’s been popping up, or maybe it’s just slowly rising?)
Underscores: I feel like Underscores has been on a solid upward trajectory. I liked her debut album Fishmonger, and I enjoyed her follow-up EP(?) Boneyard AKA Fearmonger even more (both featured on one of my playlists), but Wallsocket is yet another step forward. It’s an interesting album, one that focuses on storytelling and characters, a rare approach that I really love. We get stories about bank robbers on the run, young obsessive not-quite-stalkers, feuding small town elites… there’s a lot, and I need to give it another listen trying to piece together a larger narrative (it’s supposedly about the small town of Wallsocket, from the little bit of behind-the-scenes descriptions I’ve let myself read, but I don’t want to spoil myself entirely). It’s hyperpop, but the much more experimental end, the kind that pulls from any- and everything; you’ll get traces of pop-punk, folk, alternative, electronica… I’ve already included my favorite songs, “Cops and robbers” and “Locals (Girls like us)” on past lists and don’t like to re-use, but “Old money bitch” and “Johnny johnny johnny” are also solid choices.
St. Lucia: I called their fourth album Utopia one of my favorite albums on my End of 2022 Playlist, but one of my reservations at the time was that it ended on a relatively weak note. One of my favorite things about St. Lucia albums are that they tend to end on a high note: usually a longer track that starts small and driving, then gradually builds to some crashing finale to drive the whole thing home. Sure, maybe it’s a specific trope, but damn if they don’t do it well.
Utopia was missing that, and trying new things is nice and all… but the Deluxe version of the album adds banger “Two Moons” at the end, and gosh, does it just make things feel right. I love it. They also released an album of unreleased songs from their debut When the Night to celebrate its tenth anniversary, and “Poet” is here for that.
Lauren Mayberry, CHVRCHES: I’ve been working on a larger CHVRCHES post when I have free time, and it’ll hopefully be coming out soon. In the meantime though, I’ve added a song here from their tenth anniversary special edition of The Bones of What You Believe. Also, I loved lead singer Lauren Mayberry’s new single “Shame”, although I still haven’t seen news on if there’s a full album in the immediate future?
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Showing posts with label Bad Suns. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Bad Suns. Show all posts
Monday, January 29, 2024
Monday, January 16, 2023
Music Monday: End of 2022 Playlist
2023 Has finally arrived, but before we get too far along into the new year, I’d like to close out 2022 with some music. That’s right, it’s time for my third annual End of the Year Playlist and accompanying article! I’ve had a fun time finding new music and writing about it the last few months, and honestly, this size feels much more manageable for what I’m trying to do with this series. I might even split my normal Summer Playlist into two smaller ones since it’s been getting more and more unwieldy, we’ll see.
Once again, I’ve assembled the playlist in both Youtube and Spotify so that you can follow along.
Notes: The YouTube playlist is more complete than the Spotify one, missing 5 songs to 13. Of those five, “Under the Sun” and “Milk & Moon” can be found on full albums on YouTube. I couldn’t find much of 7mai on either service, so here are Soundcloud links to the full EP releases of the two songs of theirs that I reference: “Strawberry Mousse”, “Celestial”. The only place that I can find “Spring Cleaning” is on Sir Babygirl’s Bandcamp page.
With all of that out of the way, onto the article:
St. Lucia dropped a lot of their new album, Utopia, early as pre-release singles in the run-up to the full release, and I’m always a little mixed about that strategy. I understand that constantly dripping out new material is a good way to stay at the forefront of people’s minds, which is becoming increasingly important in music. But it does feel like it can sometimes dull the impact of the full album; finding new surprises to enjoy on your first or second listen of a full record is one of the things that I like most, and knowing most of the songs early undercuts it.
But it didn’t seem to matter here, thankfully. On the one hand, Utopia is great, and no amount of pre-release familiarity was going to dull its impact. I still stand by “Touch” being maybe my favorite track of theirs (which I said when it made my last playlist article), and it’s backed up by a ton of other strong tracks, like “Take Me Away”, “Another Lifetime”, “Rockets on My Feet”, and so on. Few other artists have as good an ear for big soundscapes and ringing, triumphant choruses that you can shout along to, in my opinion.
But on the other hand… maybe it’s just too good of an album for surprise to totally wear it down? The group has a strong track record, and I love all four of their albums. But maybe I’d be saying Utopia easily stands above the others if I heard it mostly at once with only one or two singles, as I did their first three (When the Night, Matter, and Hyperion). I guess all I can do at this point is keep re-listening over time and see if my opinion on it grows as much over time as it has for the others.
-Fickle Friends
Every now and again, maybe once or twice a year, I’ll stumble upon a new album from an artist that I haven’t heard of or don’t really follow, and fall in love with it, leading me to go back through their older work and discover that 1) there’s a decent amount of stuff to listen to, and 2) I love it as well. At that point, I just end up kind of stuck on that artist for a few weeks, maybe trying some other stuff but always circling back to them. And that is why there’s so much Fickle Friends on my End of 2022 Playlist.
I saw their new album from earlier in 2022, Are We Gonna Be Alright?, while browsing for something I hadn’t heard before, and immediately latched on. It wound up being one of my favorite albums of the year, just 40 minutes and a dozen songs of tight, bouncy, catchy synthpop. I had it on loop for days, dancing and singing along to songs like “Glow”, “Pretty Great”, “IRL”, “Love You to Death”... there something about it that all works perfectly, the hooks are so memorable and tight, and the lyrics stick in my mind simply capturing moments of love and relationships and loneliness.
And from there, I went back through their back-catalog. Their debut album You Are Someone Else was a little less polished, but still displayed all of their talent beautifully. Their two Weird Years EPs served as a perfect pandemic-era bridge between the two. All of the B-sides and early EPs were similarly fun, all the way back to their first one in 2014. I can’t believe I missed them for this long, they really are straight up my alley! And I spent a lot of the end of 2022 just getting caught up on them, so they end up making a lot of this playlist.
In the past, I’ve tried to limit my picks from a single artist somewhat, but… these lists are at least partly for me to revisit, too, so I’d like it to reflect what I was listening to at the time. And I honestly was just listening to Fickle Friends for a while this year!
-Carly Rae Jepsen
I was a little worried about The Loneliest Time; following up two absolute classic albums like Emotion and Dedicated seems like it would be a tall order. Thankfully, The Loneliest Time lived up to it; it helps that it moved into its own sort of territory, separate from those two albums, lower key while still somehow full of big, emotional moments. But like those two, it's just a bunch of top-notch bangers throughout, with a few 11/10 songs (“Shooting Star” and the title track duet with Rufus Wainwright) highlighting the experience. And now, we can once again return to anxiously awaiting the arrival of The Loneliest Time B Sides.
Once again, I’ve assembled the playlist in both Youtube and Spotify so that you can follow along.
Notes: The YouTube playlist is more complete than the Spotify one, missing 5 songs to 13. Of those five, “Under the Sun” and “Milk & Moon” can be found on full albums on YouTube. I couldn’t find much of 7mai on either service, so here are Soundcloud links to the full EP releases of the two songs of theirs that I reference: “Strawberry Mousse”, “Celestial”. The only place that I can find “Spring Cleaning” is on Sir Babygirl’s Bandcamp page.
With all of that out of the way, onto the article:
My Favorite Albums of the Playlist:
-St. LuciaSt. Lucia dropped a lot of their new album, Utopia, early as pre-release singles in the run-up to the full release, and I’m always a little mixed about that strategy. I understand that constantly dripping out new material is a good way to stay at the forefront of people’s minds, which is becoming increasingly important in music. But it does feel like it can sometimes dull the impact of the full album; finding new surprises to enjoy on your first or second listen of a full record is one of the things that I like most, and knowing most of the songs early undercuts it.
But it didn’t seem to matter here, thankfully. On the one hand, Utopia is great, and no amount of pre-release familiarity was going to dull its impact. I still stand by “Touch” being maybe my favorite track of theirs (which I said when it made my last playlist article), and it’s backed up by a ton of other strong tracks, like “Take Me Away”, “Another Lifetime”, “Rockets on My Feet”, and so on. Few other artists have as good an ear for big soundscapes and ringing, triumphant choruses that you can shout along to, in my opinion.
But on the other hand… maybe it’s just too good of an album for surprise to totally wear it down? The group has a strong track record, and I love all four of their albums. But maybe I’d be saying Utopia easily stands above the others if I heard it mostly at once with only one or two singles, as I did their first three (When the Night, Matter, and Hyperion). I guess all I can do at this point is keep re-listening over time and see if my opinion on it grows as much over time as it has for the others.
-Fickle Friends
Every now and again, maybe once or twice a year, I’ll stumble upon a new album from an artist that I haven’t heard of or don’t really follow, and fall in love with it, leading me to go back through their older work and discover that 1) there’s a decent amount of stuff to listen to, and 2) I love it as well. At that point, I just end up kind of stuck on that artist for a few weeks, maybe trying some other stuff but always circling back to them. And that is why there’s so much Fickle Friends on my End of 2022 Playlist.
I saw their new album from earlier in 2022, Are We Gonna Be Alright?, while browsing for something I hadn’t heard before, and immediately latched on. It wound up being one of my favorite albums of the year, just 40 minutes and a dozen songs of tight, bouncy, catchy synthpop. I had it on loop for days, dancing and singing along to songs like “Glow”, “Pretty Great”, “IRL”, “Love You to Death”... there something about it that all works perfectly, the hooks are so memorable and tight, and the lyrics stick in my mind simply capturing moments of love and relationships and loneliness.
And from there, I went back through their back-catalog. Their debut album You Are Someone Else was a little less polished, but still displayed all of their talent beautifully. Their two Weird Years EPs served as a perfect pandemic-era bridge between the two. All of the B-sides and early EPs were similarly fun, all the way back to their first one in 2014. I can’t believe I missed them for this long, they really are straight up my alley! And I spent a lot of the end of 2022 just getting caught up on them, so they end up making a lot of this playlist.
In the past, I’ve tried to limit my picks from a single artist somewhat, but… these lists are at least partly for me to revisit, too, so I’d like it to reflect what I was listening to at the time. And I honestly was just listening to Fickle Friends for a while this year!
-Carly Rae Jepsen
I was a little worried about The Loneliest Time; following up two absolute classic albums like Emotion and Dedicated seems like it would be a tall order. Thankfully, The Loneliest Time lived up to it; it helps that it moved into its own sort of territory, separate from those two albums, lower key while still somehow full of big, emotional moments. But like those two, it's just a bunch of top-notch bangers throughout, with a few 11/10 songs (“Shooting Star” and the title track duet with Rufus Wainwright) highlighting the experience. And now, we can once again return to anxiously awaiting the arrival of The Loneliest Time B Sides.
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