Song of the Day -- Strangest Thing -- The War on Drugs

First, there are some albums that rip off a series of great tracks one right after another. I'm not sure if A Deeper Understanding is such an album for anyone else, but for me, I just love it. It feels so sonically whole. It's repetitive, but not stale; a little up beat, but with a sound that I just want to dip right into. That last note, having a sound I can just lose my imagination in really resonated with me yesterday on a long run while listening to this song, Strangest Thing. It's a long, slow, ballad, that just blossoms at different points. I don't know if you're familiar with what happens when you put a little soap in water, but it's a lot like that. I just feel this surface tension break and ripple out. Not much happens, but a lot happens in it. The guitar quality reminds me of other slow burners, like Peace in the Valley (a stupendously underrated Dawes song) and At Least That's What You Said by Wilco but with far less rage. It's interesting, all of these songs have lyrics that deal with desperation, isolation, and something breaking or needing to break through. Of all three of these songs though, deeper understanding has the softest bloom in it's drop, and it, for me, is a slow, rhythmic, riding forward and falling back, where as the other two are far more scorching and linear. 

I'll also post up and say I loved looking back almost 10 years and seeing a song I didn't recognize as a previous song of the week, Girl Boy Tom. I've now seen and am reading Dune (and I love it) and the mesmerizing, driving, sci-fi-almost-sounding anti-hero-drive-over-a-hellscape-vibe of GBT kind of fits. Good stuff. 

Here's Strangest Thing by War on Drugs. Enjoy. And shoutout to Connor Barwin (and his foundation which does great work in Philly) for putting me onto the band a few years ago. 

Song of the Day -- Relaxation -- Fashawn, J. Cole, Omen

I've been doing something I've never done before. I've been listening to the same song for dozens of plays in a row. There's been a couple songs like this, and today it was this one from Fashawn. I don't know much about him, and definitely only found the song because of J. Cole's feature. The keys, the drums, the ambient clicking and shifting in the background--I love feeling like I'm going deeper into the music with every play, even without the lyrics. Sometimes it's about really hearing it: hearing the actual sounds, the rasp and spit in a voice. Other times it's about experiencing the hearing differently: trying to get under the sounds, or trying to imagine them emerging around me, rather than flowing to me like a stream. It honestly is how I used to listen to music when I was first really getting into it, 16 or 18 years old. Every other song I heard was special then. It's good to go back and appreciate how much every song still is, and how I can still listen in that way. I'll also dedicate this post to all the people in my life who take time to themselves. I hope each day you wake up with yourself (same shit different day?) you feel like you're getting deeper into yourself, either in the content, or the way you hear it. 

Song here 

A new song (lyrics) -- Losing It -- Tall Tales & The Silver Lining

This is a band I saw in Manayunk's Main Street Music back before fall 2015. Some summer around then. Blew my mind. I urgently live texted the entire experience to a friend whose wedding I just now, in 2021, officiated. In some ways this is a fitting song about going forward in life, losing, and keeping on. I couldn't find the lyrics on line, which are really tender, so I thought I would type them up here and post them before putting them on other sites. Enjoy. If you like it, throw them a dollar. They broke up in 2016, but then had a project called Parting Lines, which might have also broken up, because the guy, Trevor Beld Jimenez, is now doing solo stuff.  In ratio to how much I enjoy their music to how famous they are, they're probably up at the top with Nick Corbo of Spirit Was who I've talked to once and was also a really nice guy, artist, and musician. Good people. Good world out there.  

Losing it -- Tall Tales & The Silver Lining

[Verse]

Late last night on an open road 

Where the wind blows through your hair

We was talking bout the past

And all the friends who've come and gone

And lost themselves out there

Where the years go by too fast

[Chorus]

But I ain't losing it

No, nothings gonna change, 

I ain't losing it, 

Like people often do. 

There's a lot inside this tomb. 

And I ain't losing it. 

[Verse 2]

Late last night on a moonlit drive

Where the highway ebbs and flows

We were counting down the ways

How all the friends we've ever loved

Who lost themselves out there

In search of better days

[Chorus]

But I ain't losing it

No nothing's gonna change

I ain't losing it

Like people often do

There's a lot inside this tomb

And I ain't losing it.

[Refrain]

I ain't losing it. 

I ain't losing it. 

I ain't losing it. 

Song of the Day: Yeungling -- Ari Lennox

Fun. And stunning.

Listen here

Live: The Can't Tells - Nothing Heavy

Mohammed Ali - "They must have the skill and the will, but the will must be stronger than the skill"

The best under 1,000 hits song you'll ever hear. His soprano is elegant and understated, wistful, and full of mood and is so well counterbalanced by a forward bass and drums part. This is the will exceeding the skill. These are young budding musicians who have written something that is so much more than the sum of it's parts. Enjoy

Song Here

New Material: The Revivalists - Stand Up

The Revivalists - Stand Up

About three years ago I published a review about the revivalists and their last album, "City of Sound." Three years later, and here we are with a new offering. In the last review, my thesis was that this band was versatile--as a band from New Orleans should be they incorporated funk, jazz, blues, as well as vibes and feelings from arena's of music like alt rock--and that it was on the strength of their musicianship, vocals, and intensity that ultimately held the album in cohesion rather than having it fall to be a collection of pieces. In this review, and more importantly in these live session videos, what became most apparent to me--more even than the musicianship--is that last quality: the intensity.

This band feels hungry. Which is not to say that they haven't had success recently. They've been touring extensively in the three years since their last album: all across the west, in their home town, through the south and even up the north east. What I can't get over is the feeling that they know how close they are to the big time. Face it--these guys are to maroon five as real bread is to wonderbread. Although in the same genre of "bread", the real thing is so much better because of it's rich and nutty flavor (and understanding and appreciation for the history of bread) and yet the other one beats it out in sales every single time. I think they know this. I think they know exactly how close they are to breaking through, and how much better they are than a lot of bands getting airtime. That's what makes this album, and these live sessions, so electric. This is exactly when you want to see a band. It's not only the sound, the songwriting, the lyrics, etc... It's the feeling of hunger that pervades all of it. It's like a wave in the ocean. The wave is big, you can hear it, you can see it mounting bigger and bigger, but what really gets you is that tugging of the undercurrent at your waste, pulling you into it. That's the aura of this band. Maybe that's why the album is called mountains and men. There's his band--these men--and their mountain.  We get to listen to them try to climb it.

This band is electric. Enjoy this selection of their live performances. Enjoy the full throated roar of the alto sax. Enjoy the wail of that sweet solemn steel guitar. Most of all, enjoy that undercurrent, that pulling feeling you get when you stand in front of a wave, that pulling feeling you get when you a band whose trying to reach for something so bad.

Stand Up

Keep Going

Monster

Song of the Day: For the Imperiled - Roy Montgomery

For the Imperiled - Roy Montgomery

It's a full moon out today, just as it was when I first heard this song four years ago this November. I wouldn't have remembered that if I hadn't listened to the whole thing in the middle of a field, half freezing in the middle of the night, watching a bank of clouds run parallel to a moon that had a full halo around it in addition to being full and in the middle of the sky. It's a completely absorbing little offering. There's no lyrics, and I doubt there's anything I can add to it through description. All the same, when we have lot's of songs about things, it's kind of nice to have a song that isn't really about anything, but is just mysterious kind of hypnotizing brick of something somebody made.

Song: Here