Growing up in Chicago as a kid forced to go to church I joke that while my Sunday mornings were spent having to listen to things I didn’t believe in, I actually passed that time worshiping at the temple of 23, thinking about the latest dazzling exploits of the two Hall of Fame heroes who wore that number and played for my two favorite teams. (Ryno for my Cubbies and MJ for my Bulls.) So with that number number in mind, it felt fitting to jump in with the first post of the year — on a weekend when one of whose bearers was celebrated in a ring of honor ceremony, along with his teammates and several former greats. When two great Americans (or one great and one solidly acceptable) are celebrated over a three day weekend. (Myself and MLK.) And when your reward for having stumbled back to this darn corner of the internet shall be two sets of three things worth listening to — the first of which were culled from one of my favorite annual traditions, scanning everyone else’s year-end lists.
We’re off to a good start so far after last year’s disappointing harvest (I think Charley Crockett was the only new acquisition I made then) and there are several acquisitions I’m working through as we speak. That needn’t delay me from sharing the first batch of winners, though, so we’ll kick things off with a find from the fan mail bag and an entry from Marinara’s list. It’s from Australian duo the Teskey Brothers who released their third studio album The Winding Way, their first in four years, this past summer. I’d heard of the brothers before but didn’t know they’d released another album, so was happy to get the nudge from our pal down in Texas to go check it out. Thankfully it finds the brothers firmly in “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it mode,” doling out another batch of really catchy time warp songs.
For those unfamiliar with the brothers, they specialize in Stax-style soul songs and blues, with frontman Josh Teskey sounding so much like the late great Otis Redding, it’s insane. Making the trick even more surprising is that the Teskeys are white boys from Melbourne, not big, burly giants of the American south singing from a place of Jim Crow segregation and pain. Those differences aside, there’s a lot of other similarities to embrace — lush, rich production with big, booming choruses, soulful lyrics of love and positivity, all sung in that glorious gravely rasp. It’s a pretty remarkable thing, to hear an album that sounds like it could easily have been unearthed in a time capsule from the 60s rather than recorded 50-odd years later. Two highlights that show what’s in store nicely are the album’s first two singles — the bright, buoyant “This Will be Our Year” and the soaring entreaties of “Ocean of Emotions.” Check out both here:
Up next comes a find from several lists (Allmusic and the ‘Gum, among others) and the debut album from Austin’s Being Dead. This one’s another bit of time warp trickery, giving off shades of the Mamas and the Papas with its fantastic harmonies while layering in the eclectic, occasionally funny antics of the B-52s (sung partly by a guy who sounds like the lead singer of the Rapture.) That quirky mix grabs you from the outset, “merging surf rock, freak pop, and frantic punk….[that] toes the line between jest and sincerity,” according to their Bandcamp.
That’s a pretty accurate assessment as this album skates through those influences repeatedly across its thirteen tracks, often delving into several of them within the same song. (As on the opening tandem of “The Great American Picnic” and “Last Living Buffalo,” the latter of which concludes with band members Falcon Bitch and Gumball reacting to the death of said animal in an over the top (yet entertaining) display of agony and shock.) It gets a little too avant garde and weird at times on the back half for me, but there’s plenty of goodness prior to then to keep you coming back. In addition to the aforementioned, these are two of my current faves — “Muriel’s Big Day Off” and the title track. Give em a spin here:
Last but not least of the newfound trio comes from one of the dudes at the dog park who’s been touting Vermont’s Noah Kahan for the better part of the year and his third album, Stick Season. The album originally came out in 2022, but Kahan spent last year issuing big name re-recordings of some of its songs with stars like Kacey Musgraves, Hozier, and even Post Malone, which generated a significant amount of buzz, propelling the album back to the forefront and a string of sold out tour dates. It even landed him on SNL where he performed the album’s biggest hit (an absolute knock out of an earworm and the album’s title track) and one of the six additional songs he added to the album in an expanded 2023 edition. (The almost equally catchy “Dial Drunk.”)
Keeping with the trend of the previous two artists, Kahan calls to mind several other artists as you listen — whether it’s bands like the Lumineers or Mumford and Sons on tracks like “All my Love” and “Orange Juice,” or Young the Giant or Maroon 5 on ones like “She Calls me Back” and “New Perspective,” Kahan hops among influences pop and folk alike and delivers a consistently winning set of songs. Two highlights among many include the opening “Northern Attitude” (which gives me glimmers of Peter Gabriel, as well as some of the others) and that endlessly catchy title track. See what you think here:
For the second trio we’ll shift from newfound artists to a few from established acts that surfaced again recently, courtesy of live performances I was lucky enough to attend. We’ll start with one from Lucius who I caught opening for Gregory Alan Isakov at one of the two otherworldly performances of his I saw last year. They’re a band that’s fallen off for me in recent years (as they’ve veered into Sunshine’s dreaded Synth Zone), but I still love their debut and think the harmonies of lead singers Jess Wolfe and Holly Laessig are about as perfect as you could ever want, enough to draw goosebumps on the regular.
Case in point being their rendition of the Kinks classic below that happened to pop in my feed after the show — they didn’t perform it, but I strangely DID wake up with it in my head the morning after, so maybe YouTube has achieved mind-reading capabilities now. This version is from nine years ago, but it’s still a stunner, just the two of them singing across a single mic to each other:
Up next comes one from hometowner Andrew Bird who I got to see during his annual holiday Gezelligheid residency again where he performs a series of shows at this anomalous old world church nestled at the foot of all the skyscrapers. It can be a pretty magical thing — this lovely church all dolled up for the holidays while Bird and his musicians play amongst the candles and lights to a reverent audience in the pews. Unfortunately as so often happens he got a little overly jazzy for my tastes, deconstructing songs to the point they were almost unrecognizable at times (Bird is one of those vexing cases where I love his albums — he’s shown up on my year-end lists repeatedly over the years — but I’ve been disappointed by him live too many times to keep trying anymore), but he did at least one song straight and it was a real winner.
It was a deep cut from 2012’s Break it Yourself (which landed at #5 on my year end list) and featured Bird singing alone on guitar to powerful effect. Simple and understated, yet potent. Give it a listen here:
We’ll close with a hybrid of the two sections — a new discovery from an element of an established act — and the solo work of My Morning Jacket guitarist Carl Broemel. Despite loving that band and his contributions to it (and knowing all about frontman Jim James’ solo outings over the years), I never knew that he also recorded on the side — both by himself and with bands like the Futurebirds. At least until night three of that epic run at the Chicago Theater a month or two ago (easily one of the best stretches of my year, as noted in the year-end post).
That was when he surprisingly stepped to the mike during the encore and started singing a tune. Not only did I not recognize the song, the sight of someone other than James singing was noteworthy on its own — but the song was good, his voice was winning, and then he tore into one of his customary soaring solos and sent the whole thing into the stratosphere.
It turns out the song was from his second solo album (of FOUR?!), 2010’s All Birds Say, which was my gateway into the rest of his material. It’s pretty interesting to hear those textbook MMJ runs in songs sporting a voice that’s not James’, but it works well once you get acclimated and he’s got plenty of good tunes across the albums. Aside from the song he sang that night, I’ll throw in an extra from my subsequent spelunking and a track off the most recent thing he’s done outside the band, the 2019 EP with friend Eric Hopper, Brokenhearted Jubilee. Give both a listen here:
Enjoy the long weekend, amici!
–BS