The band to watch in 2013 + one of my favorite songwriters of the last five years, winner of the Bolachas Top Album of 2012 Award, together in one song. It delivers.
Pickwick’s long awaited debut LP, Can’t Talk Medicine is out next March 12th. May the Gods of the Internet make it so we can hear some more of it sooner than that.
DSS
There’s not a single song nor a video to show you, but I had to take a pair of minutes just to let you know David Bazan (Pedro the Lion, Headphones), Will Johnson (Centro-matic, South San Gabriel), Matt and Bubba Kadane (Bedhead, The New Year) have formed a new band called OVERSEAS. There’s an album coming out later this year. Someone at Facebook took the time to say all I ever needed to say about this announcement: The mere idea of this makes me all warm and fuzzy. Word.
DSS
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1. Fiona Apple. The Idler Wheel…
2. David Byrne & St. Vincent. Love This Giant
3. Point Reyes. Golden
4. Sharon Van Etten. Tramp
5. Bill Fay. Life is People
6. Matt Elliott. The Broken Man
7. Swans. The Seer
8. Neil Young & Crazy Horse. Psychedelic Pill
9. Hundred Waters. Hundred Waters
10. Spiritualized. Sweet Heart Sweet Light
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Check this out, a best of 2012 list that actually wasn’t posted until the year ended! A typical characteristic of a list like this – composed of the individual lists of some people whose music tastes I enjoy enough to ask them to contribute to the blog – is a certain conservatism (although there are some newcomers ranking pretty high, like Hundred Waters, Purity Ring, alt-J or Point Reyes) with some albums that manage to sneak into the top 10 despite not being the artists’ top moments (GY!BE, Spiritualized, Andrew Bird). Was 2012 that boring or are we the boring ones who only listen to boring music? Have your say in the comments section and post your own lists. Enough with the small talk…
I’ve despised most of Matthew Houck, AKA Phosphorescent’s output before his great 2010 album, Taking It Easy Too Long. If it wasn’t for that record – which I didn’t listen immediately after the release date because I thought I’d hate it as much as I hated Bon Iver’s debut (hey look, another city dweller, bearded guy locked up in a cabin somewhere pretending he’s countrier than thou), but a friend shoved me one of his songs down my throat until I loved it – I wouldn’t be so keen on listening to “Song for Zula”, the first song off his next album, Muchacho, coming up in March. I’m glad I did. Again, I could live without him saying he recorded the album in a “little hut” on some beach down in the Mexican southern peninsula of Yucatán, but at least he acknowledges that story is cheesy as fuck. I think I like you even more after you said that, Matt. I’m sure you’re nice folk and you wrote my first favorite song of 2013. I haven’t listened to anything else to be released in the next year, but hey, I gotta start somewhere.
DSS