Tag: matt berninger
Bolachas Now Playing, a new music Spotify playlist, updated every Wednesday.
John Darnielle is Getting Into Knives! And it’s probably his best album in almost a decade, when ‘All Eternals Deck’ brought us some of the most memorable the Mountain Goats songs. Closing the album, the title track is the standout here – a repeat affair right after the first listen.
Plus: new tracks by Bill Callahan & Bonnie “Prince” Billy, Helena Deland, Jeff Tweedy (Wilco), Woods, Okey Dokey, The Shilohs, Aaron Lee Tasjan, Matt Berninger (The National), The Besnard Lakes, Plastic War, Strange Ranger, Son Little, Nilüfer Yanya, Ariana Grande, Hot Chip (with Jarvis Cocker), Harolddd (with Faye Webster), Skyway Man, Julien Baker, Skullcrusher, Adrianne Lenker, Sierra Ferrell, Oliver Wood, Mandolin Orange, Grace Gillespie, and Valley Maker.
Katie Von Schleicher’s “Consummation” is not only our album of the week, It’s one of our top albums of the year so far, too. There are 27 other songs on this week’s playlist, but if I were you I’d go explore that treatise on indie rock — and the rest of her discography, while you’re at it. New tracks by Jason Molina, Natalie Jane Hill, Soccer Mommy, Good Dog, A.O. Gerber, Becca Mancari, Matt Berninger, Camille Delean, Roadside Graves, Owen Pallett, TALsounds, Neil Young, Steve Earle, M. Lockwood Porter, Country Westerns, Jeff Rosenstock, IDLES, Shilpa Ray, Combo Qazam, Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith, Angel Bat Dawid, Nidia, Idris Ackamoor & The Pyramids, Mulatu Astatke, Purling Hiss‘ Mike Polizze, Woods, and Okey Dokey.
The fourth volume of Matana Roberts’ “Coin Coin” series on Constellation Records, “Memphis”, is our album of the week. It finds the American composer and saxophonist developing her ethnographic work through spoken word traditionals and blues, punctuated by free jazz bursts that make it an essential listen. Plus: new tracks by Dead Combo, Jaimie Breezy Branch, Yazz Ahmed, Vive la Void, Warmduscher, Comet Gain, Wolf Parade, Peggy Sue, Allah-Las, Jennah Barry, Julien Baker, The National’s Matt Berninger & Phoebe Bridgers, Gus Seyffert, Cass McCombs, John Moreland, Christopher Paul Stelling, Richard Dawson, Lankum, Daniel Martin Moore, and Andre Ethier.
Categories
The National – Trouble Will Find Me
When the National became what we could arguably call “present’s world greatest indie band”, a classification Brooklyn-via-Cincinnati group (tks, P4k) achieved among some folks with their widely acclaimed 2010 album High Violet, they’ve sort of crossed the river of relative “pop/rock starness”. That can be tough, can lead to get your own fans to stop from being your fans, can lead, in a band like the National, to an extreme, pernicious mainstreamization, to be sloughy about your song writing and music composition. Even if some people, like that friend of mine (no pun intended) who claimed that despite being a huge fan of Sad Songs for Dirty Lovers and Alligator, and “all tolerant” about Boxer (that enormous collection of catchy – though kinda sad – songs), thinks High Violet is awful, its drumming is unbearable, et cetera, et cetera, the fact is that a record like that only happens once in a blue moon. High Violet is the sad (and officier) version of Seinfeld, the sitcom, of the 21st century, in the form of a music record. Also, the National’s evolution with time is unbelievably well, I dare say flawlessly planned. They have grown as a band with the years, just the way most of their records do the more and more one listens to them (Alligator or its little brother Cherry Tree EP are, probably, the finest example of it), and their strategy is a good one: each time a new record comes out, a new sound, a new topic is added on top of what we already knew.