Though Laura Groves “Sky At Night” was released as part of her album Radio Red in 2023, it may be my favorite “new to me” song this year. Groves delicate bedroom chamber pop is at once melancholy and curious. Her vocals bring to mind Natasha Khan’s Bat For Lashes project for which she was once a backup singer.
This isn’t an “official” video, so it’s pretty simplistic, with pattern overlays, retro technology, color washes and Groves herself serving as the main visual interests. The song itself is the draw here. It’s one of those rare tracks that I can just rewind and listen to over and over.
Glazyhaze released Sonic in March of this year. The sophomore album from the band has received a lot of positive press for its refined take on shoegaze, with physical copies selling out very quickly and having to be restocked hastily.
With shoegaze being such a global phenomenon at this point, you wouldn’t necessarily pick up on Glazhaze’s Venetian origins. Still, singer Irene Moretuzzo’s aquiline nose and Neapolitan beauty, and the gratuitous smoking in the video for “Nirvana” are some clues. The band cites DIIV as a major influence, and it comes across in their music, which is full of glide guitar and ethereal textures.
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the importance of the gatekeepers. Even in an era where doing it yourself has never been easier, the patronage of entities like book publishers and record labels remains important.
The case in point that revived my thoughts on the matter is the new EP I Call This One by Gileah Taylor. Taylor blends folk-country sounds with a desert-noir vibe on her latest release for Velvet Blue Records. The soft, forlorn ballads that comprise the four-song EP hit a sweet spot for me during this oppressive summer heat.
Years ago, a friend a colleague mentioned to me how she gets choked up at daddy/daughter songs. I thought to myself that I couldn’t even name a single song that would fit into that description. It’s interesting how our interest in different musical genres put us in touch with varied subject matters. With Scout Gillett’s “Enough,” I can finally say I have at least some idea of what my colleague was talking about.
Gillett’s last album, No Roof, No Floor, brought her Midwest rural sounds to the city, reflecting the urban environment of Brooklyn where she had relocated. The videos that accompanied those songs made a subject out of life in New York. Gillett’s new singles, created after her move to Los Angeles, bring to the foreground some of the earthiness that always bubbled a bit beneath the surface of her songs. The sunny California setting works alongside her new sun kissed look.
Chris Stewart from Black Marble sets his Joy Division-like post punk to footage from a rodeo, what appears to be a county fair and a horse race. He plays his icy synth on the outskirts of a concert crowd watching a band that seems a much more likely rural attraction. Stewart doesn’t stray far from the sounds of his Brooklyn origins, despite the subject matter of the video. It’s a strange juxtaposition, but it works in a slice-of-life kind of way.
When someone complained about the surface noise that came with listening to music on vinyl, the late BBC disc jockey John Peel (a notable lover of the format), was said to have replied, “Mate, life has surface noise.”
It’s hard to argue with Peel’s assessment of life in this mortal coil. Who among us wouldn’t wish that things were different, though?
I’ve come to a point of frustration with my record collection where even new records have an amount of surface noise (crackling, pops) that are hard to ignore. It’s especially irking when you pay so much these days for any music pressed to vinyl. I’ve tried various methods to reduce the noise:
A new stylus
An anti-static brush
A Big Fudge record cleaning set
A Milty Anti-static gun
A Spin Clean record cleaning set
Homemade cleaning solution recommended by several sites
Nothing has made a substantial impact. I still have newer records that sound like they’ve been gathering dust in the attic for years. I even have some older records that won’t play. Here’s video of one of my favorite records with the needle skating across it.1
Independent records labels, in particular, have gone all in on vinyl. I get countless emails from various labels touting their latest releases on wax. I just received an email from Polyvinyl Records today about new vinyl variants of albums by the band Alvvays. These are in edition to several variants that are already offered by Polyvinyl and at places like Newbury Comics. You can hardly blame the artists and the labels for milking this cow for all it’s worth when opportunities for compensation from making music are drying up.
Despite being sympathetic to the plight of the recording industry, vinyl is a market that I’m becoming less likely to participate in.2
I couldn’t replace this record, even if I wanted to. It’s long out of print, like many vinyl releases. ↩︎
This especially holds true in a world where so much music is available for little cost in the hi-res streaming format. ↩︎
Brothers Evan and Quinn Seurkamp, who primarily make up the Ohio band The Laughing Chimes, call upon the hauntings of the Appalachian foothills of their native state as inspiration for their gothic jangly post-punk. There is a wistfulness appropriate to the rust belt and its faded glory that pervades their album Whispers in the Speech Machine.
“High Beams” is one of the catchier, more upbeat tracks on the album. The vocals call to mind Peter Murphy and the keyboards add some sparkle. One can imagine this is what Bauhaus might have sounded like after indulging in some Special-K.
Bandcamp is finally adding a feature that I, and other like-minded enjoyers of music have been wanting for some time. The new ability to create playlists feels like in most ways it aligns with the ethics of the service, which is a good thing, but the focus may be a bit too heavy in that area.1 Bandcamp describes the feature as, “Like digital mixtapes.” There isn’t much need to describe how it works, everyone is familiar with the concept of playlists and this feature appears to do exactly what it says on the tin.
In June, I hope to see long-time indie pop favorites Tennis on their farewell tour. The husband and wife duo of Patrick Riley and Alaina Moore are calling it quits after an impressive run.
The pair made this statement regarding the end of their time as Tennis:
It became clear that we had said everything we wanted to say and achieved everything we wanted to achieve with our band … We are ready to pursue other creative projects and to make space in our lives for new things.
