It’s been a week since everything got better and our civic leaders solved what’s been ailing us — for another two weeks! — and if you’re like me you’ve been walking around basking in the glow of that victory, striding just a little more confidently than normal and smiling irrepressibly at their vision and valiance. Like a chubby kid who just walked up a flight of stairs instead of taking the escalator to the Cinnabon, it’s time to reward ourselves for testing our limits and digging so deep. Extra icing, please — I earned it! It’s either all that winning or the residual joy of a couple more new discoveries that got me through the week — who can say for sure? In case it’s only the latter, though, I thought I’d pop in to share just in case the former lets us down again soon. Not that it would. That metaphorical fat kid’s totally fine. We all are. Let’s have seconds!
And seconds we shall have, for as I mentioned I’ve been enjoying a couple more finds from those year end lists that I didn’t have time to get to in the last post — despite my chiseled appearances I am merely human — one a newcomer and the other the most egregious example of “how the fu#$ did I MISS this before?!” of the bunch. We’ll start with the former and the debut album from The Regrettes, Feel Your Feelings Fool! Those two items tell you everything you need to know off the bat — the name, which hearkens back to the army of 60s era pop groups with “The” in their names, one for almost literally every letter of the alphabet (Coasters/Drifters/Falcons/Safaris/etc), and the title, whose imperative gives a sense of the punky, teenage snark the band marries to that sound, both in attitude and its lyrics. It’s a fun mix, and when those two sides are in equilibrium it’s pretty damn irresistible, as on tracks like “A Living Human Girl” and “Seashore,” the former of which should officially be the modern feminist anthem. Funny, no bullsh#$, and GOFY if you don’t like it lyrics that perfectly counterbalance the bubblegum doo wop sound, it’s two and a half minutes of perfection.
Other tracks tip a little more towards the punkier side, with frontwoman Lydia Night’s throaty voice commanding your attention with a Vader-like death-grip similar to The Detroit Cobras’ Rachel Nagy. (A similarly rebellious, albeit more R&B leaning, high octane garage band.) Tracks like “I Don’t Like You,” “Hey Now,” “Juicebox Baby,” “Lucy Loo,” and “Ladylike/WHATTA BITCH” all are fast-paced little gems. There are a couple tepid tracks interspersed in the middle, but there’s enough goodness from the aforementioned tracks and a couple others (“Hot,” “Til’ Tomorrow”) to forgive those minor downsides. (It is a debut album from a quartet of teenagers after all — that this much is so good is even more impressive.) Give em a listen here:
The back half of the discovery sedan is filled with an unexpected bounty of treats provided by the insanely prolific Ty Segall, who caught my attention with his self-titled album on those year end lists, but before I could even fully digest that one and delve too deep into his back catalog he actually released another album yesterday — the monster nineteen song, 75 min double album Freedom’s Goblin, which I’m working through as we speak. And while that may seem fast for normal humans, it’s actually not that odd when you look at his past output — Goblin represents his TWELFTH solo album in ten years, to go along with several side projects (two from Fuzz, among others) and EPs, including THREE albums in 2012 alone! That’s approaching Bob Pollard levels of productivity and breadth (not to mention quality, from what I’ve gotten through so far).
Segall is a furiously good guitar player, who balances his garage rock fire with a Beatles-like embrace of melody and psychedelia, as well as more experimental fare. Noisy, pretty, grungy, trippy — there’s a little something for everyone in his albums, sometimes all at once, as on gems like 2010’s Melted and 2014’s Manipulator, as well as so far on Goblin. Prior to yesterday I’d been spending most of my time blazing through those two albums and last year’s offering, but we’ll have to expand those efforts a bit now that the latest album is here. Pitchfork wrote a pretty great primer on Segall’s sound and how wide-ranging (and good) it is, so dive into that along with some selections from the aforementioned three albums I’ve made for you below. There’s also a great acoustic performance from the new album that Segall did a couple weeks ago on The Opposition to get you started on that one. Enjoy!
We’ll close with a couple new singles from bands whose debuts I adored, but whose later offerings left me a little cooler — first is the new one from The Vaccines, a UK four-piece whose first album What did you Expect from the Vaccines? was 35 minutes of pop rock perfection that landed at #5 on my 2011 best of list before losing me a bit on their follow up, 2012’s Coming of Age. This one captures some of the unrestrained energy and brightness from the former, so hopefully the rest of the album follows suit and harnesses the subtle sweetness and sarcasm they had before as well. Check out “I Can’t Quit” here:
Last up is the lead single from Nathaniel Rateliff & the Night Sweats’ sophomore effort, whose stellar 2015 debut landed at #6 on that year’s list and represented some of the most ebullient, uplifting music of the year. Since then I caught a couple underwhelming performances from the band that got me a little worried, at times sounding like they were fatigued and going through the motions, but hopefully that was just a byproduct of playing so many shows with only an album’s worth of material under their belt. Thankfully they appear to have regained some of that initial joy on this one, “You Worry Me,” which slinks along on a catchy little groove before launching into the uplifting chorus. Get ready to hear this one on commercials across the airwaves — hopefully the rest of the album is just as good!