We’re back and we’re bringing you a ton of music. Unusually, August was kinda eventful, with plenty of great single and album releases. So we had to exaggerate a bit and make a 33 song playlist (and we had to leave quite a few tracks out to make it reasonable). Our focus this week is The Hold Steady’s new album “Thrashing Thru the Passion”, probably their best since 2008’s “Stay Positive”. There’s no way we’re tagging every single artist this time around, so just scroll down for the track list.
Sometimes it’s hard to be objective and unbiased when writing about a festival that is such a big part of your life. Except for two (very) unremarkable lineups that made me stay home, since I was old enough to go to college all my summers involved a trip to Paredes de Coura (and a painful trip back, too). When you’re a kid, they say you’ll eventually get older and boring, in a process they call “becoming an adult”. This usually comes with amazing perks such as ceasing to listen to any new music whatsoever, stopping seeing your (also ageing) friends, having great conversations about changing diapers with your remaining friends (yes, the other couple with kids you always go vacationing with to some shitty beach full of other couples with kids and the odd mother-in-law). Obviously, a multi-day, non-kid friendly, rural music festival such as Festival Paredes de Coura seems like one of those things that are amongst the first to drop from your newfound “adult life”. Except you don’t have to be that person; and is there anything better to remind you of that than going there and finding all your friends in the same place, same month, year after year, all over again? (Well, other than imagining the smell of those diapers.)
Vodafone Paredes de Coura 2018. Photo by Hugo Lima.
Another summer, another missed opportunity to have a vacation somewhere because there’s nowhere else we’d rather be other than at our little paradise of Paredes de Coura, in northwestern Portugal. The festival runs from the 14th to the 17th of August, but, like always, the fun begins way earlier than that, with four fun-packed, free entrance days with concerts and DJ sets right in the center of the small Minho village.
Our album of the week was released in April. Confused? Well, thank Record Store Day for that. WARMER, Jeff Tweedy’s companion album to both last year’s excellent WARM and his autobiography, was previously only released through a very limited vinyl run, but is now available on all streaming platforms and as WARM/WARMER pack. Far from being a compilation of b-sides, some of the tracks on this collection of songs are as strong as the best songs off his proper solo debut.
And, because this week is the last before we go on our typical vacation around the Festival Vodafone Paredes de Coura – more about it next week – we have packed this playlist with two hours of new music. In addition to Wilco’s frontman “new” record, we feature recent tracks from Jeremy Ivey, Jordan Moser, Will Johnson, Steve Earle, My Morning Jacket, Black Country, New Road, Thee Oh Sees, Purling Hiss, Tropical Fuck Storm, Marika Hackman, Strange Ranger, Black Belt Eagle Scout, (Sandy) Alex G, The Dead South, Red River Dialect, Sam Outlaw, Taylor Swift, The Highwomen, Aubrie Sellers, Dori Freeman, Angie McMahon, Okey Dokey, Susto, Rayland Baxter, Skinshape, Loving, Rosemary Fairweather, Let’s Eat Grandma, and Florist.
‘what we say in private’ is the debut album by Canadian singer-songwriter/painter/visual artist Alexandra Levy, or Ada Lea. It’s been out for less than a handful of days but it’s already one of our indie rock albums of the year. Is it because its opening song sounds like a lost track off Wilco’s Yankee Hotel Foxtrot’s recording sessions that eventually morphs into a more layered Big Thief song, while never sounding like a tribute to either bands? Or maybe it’s because of the stellar songwriting in it. We don’t know. Let’s just listen.
Plus: new tracks by Wilco (the new kind of Wilco, not the old YHF one), Andrew Combs, Strange Ranger, Long Beard, Aviva le Fey, Shannon Lay, Joan Shelley, Holy Golden (now known as Dolly Valentine), Summer Salt, Grace Lightman, Bleached, Roselit Bone, Trash Kit, Fly Pan Am, Adam Green, Tony Molina, Leon Bridges, Whitney, RF Shannon, Hiss Golden Messenger, Joe Pug, Jim Lauderdale, and Twain + The Deslondes.