Monday Mixtape, Vol. 85

SO MUCH new music got released last week - St. Vincent's fourth album, Beck's latest, The Killers, King Krule, and Courtney Barnett and Kurt Vile's Lotta Sea Lice - and all sorts of singles came out that I can't even include them all this week. 

Alas, what I was able to do was make this week's playlist a feel good, uppity, "LET'S DO THIS" type of mix. 

First off, Beck is superhuman. If I haven't said it before, he's our generation's David Bowie, a chameleon with so many colors of sounds that I'm left in awe of his range. Nobody else has the discography he does - it's insane.

Listen to "Devil's Haircut" on Odelay, a phenomenal first track to an album, what an opener!

Then downshift to soft and mightily mellow  "Morning" on Morning Sound:

Then to the wild 70s soul-funk of "Mixed Business" on Midnite Vultures:

To one of my favorite's, the kick ass "E-Pro" form Guero:

I mean COME ON. This is ridiculous. Which left me in huge anticipation of his recent release, Colors. It was being billed as a "pop" album by Beck, something he'd been working on even before Morning Sound. As usual, Beck morphs into a catchy pop star with pristine production and catchy choruses.

I've included the first two tracks from his new album on this week's mixtape. How can you not like these tracks? He's a savant, a true musical genius. 

I just remembered that I wrote a huge rant against Kanye West for messing with Beck when he won the the Album of the Year Grammy, so take a read of that if you have a few. (SIDEBAR: And how crazy that I wrote that two and a half years ago??)

Both Starslinger and The Knocks are party bands who make party music. Nuff said.

St. Vincent released MASSEDUCATION on Friday, and I'm still cycling through the album, so I can't say I have a total take yet. She gave an interesting interview to Pitchfork where apparently she spoke about every track on this album. Unfortunately, she basically answered nothing about the heart of the songs, but she's always an interesting read and just a badass performer.   

"Pills" is one of her more catchy tracks on the album, one where the hook was meant to sound like a commercial-like jingle. An epic comedown off those pills to end the song. 

Have a good week! And listen to more Beck! 

Monday Mixtape, Wedding Edition Part 2

I am back from my honeymoon so I will continue to relive our wedding with more music from the special day!

This playlist was played during our cocktail hour. It's got the Frank Sinatra vibe with some sprinkles of other sounds. While creating this playlist, I found a number of artists who I had not fully appreciated, like Chet Baker, Mel Torme, and Doris Day. 

This is a great playlist for the background of any party. It gets you in the mood to socialize, have a few drinks, and enjoy the evening. Raise up your glass. 

Monday Mixtape, Wedding Edition Part 1

I got married this weekend! I cannot describe the love that enveloped my wife and I by our family and friends. What an indescribable feeling. 

In light of our happy weekend, I wanted to share a couple playlists over the next couple weeks. The first one was our first playlist as people arrived to our ceremony site. The theme was obviously love with in a "modern" genre: 

Next week is the cocktail hour in the key of Sinatra and company!

Monday Mixtape, Vol. 84

I am getting married in 12 days. It's a surreal feeling to finally be headed somewhere I also dreamed. She's a very special person, and all I know is I feel warm when she is near. I've been working a lot on the music for our wedding, and I will share some of the playlists to our wedding in a few weeks.

All I know is throughout my time with her, music has played an integral role in our relationship, in our life. She has an unending passion to explore what she doesn't know, which makes me so happy when she falls in love with Tame Impala, Kendrick Lamar, and loves seeing Radiohead live. And I've learned a lot of country diddy's that I never knew.

As usual, I have curated a list of songs to play for this week, many drastically different than the next.

LCD Soundsystem came out of retirement (let's be honest, no one actually expected them to retire. No one believes music retirements anymore, and I've become more skeptical of them as money grabs to go on farewell tours. I'm sure some are sincere and others aren't) and released a great album which I still need to digest, but I was running recently when this song came on, and I had the "DAMN, who is this??" moment. Great track. 

The War On Drugs released another incredible album that seamlessly plays from front to back. The modern day Springsteen, or that's what some say. 

I'll put basically every single Frank Ocean song on Monday Mixtape, so this is another example of his brilliance. 

Bryson Tiller's sophomore album was a bit disappointing given how much I loved his first album. Nonetheless, there are some jams on his new one, particularly "High Stakes," his Jay-Z-like "December 4th" coming of age track. 

XXXTENTACION gets the annual award for worst name. I can't pronounce it nor understand it and I just feel old reading it. But I do like this track. 

Happy Monday all, love somebody! 

Monday Mixtape, Vol. 83

What with my new business starting and my wedding coming up, I've been a tad bit busy, so my writing will not be up to snuff for the next month or so. Apologies, but I'll still keep the music coming! 

And please, if you haven't checked out SZA's album, it's a must. This is the best female R&B (if that's the genre it falls into) album I've heard in a long time. Just can't stop listening to it. 

Monday Mixtape, Vol. 82

Ladies and Gentelmen, 

It's been a hectic weekend with my attendance at Outside Lands so I won't be writing much. It's been pretty disappointing given that A Tribe Called Quest cancelled their performance TWICE and crushed my dreams of seeing them (although with 2/3 the group in tow, RIP Phife). They were far and away the band I wanted to see most. You win some, you lose some. 

In retrospect, this was the most disappointing festival I've been to. The lineup was not all that impressive, and the acts just failed to really perform at a high level consistently. Surprisingly, one of the best acts of the weekend was Goldroom who came out with a full band and just crushed the small Panhandle stage. The crowd loved them. The other two great performances of the weekend go to Royal Blood and Metallica. 

But in honor of Tribe, this week's mixtape is focused on rap. Haven't done one of these in a while, so I hope the hip-hop heads out there keep nodding that head. 

Monday Mixtape, Vol. 81

Palace was on last week's mixtape. They're on this week's mixtape twice. I can't stop listening to them, slowly rocking my head to their beachy blues and rhythms that just distinguish them from many others. I feel like they'd get along with the jazzy trio Badbadnotgood swimmingly, and I hear so many other influences from a ton of genres. You have to listen to their recent album from 2016. It's been on repeat for me.

Foster the People released their third album, and it's really good. There is not one song that I skip on this album. I think it's definitely better than their last album which was hit or miss. They have sultry "Sit Next To Me," upbeat and hilarious "I Love My Friends," distorted barr chord rocker "Lotus Eater," and spaced out beauties "III" (which I did not include - go listen to it yourself!)

St. Vincent has a large piece of my heart. She's a phenomenal performer, one of the few very who completely command a stage just with her presence, she's a kick ass guitarist, she loves David Byrne, she's a beauty, AND who knew, but she writes quite the ballad! "New York" is a simple and beautiful love song. Can't wait for her next album. 

I saw NE-HI on a Youtube festival and then found this track on Spotify. They're a bunch of young guys just banging away on their instruments. It's raw. 

Have a wonderful week!    

Jeff Tweedy of Wilco performs "One Wing"

I don't think it's quite accurate to call Wilco underrated because they've had some serious critical acclaim, none more so than their album that many critics viewed as their masterpiece, 2002's Yankee Hotel Foxtrot.

But they are definitely under appreciated. I really don't know many friends my age that love Wilco. In case you'd like a primer on them, check out my "Best Of"

For some reason, they seemed to only have really stuck with a previous generation. Yet they still make great music. Their leader, Jeff Tweedy, just released a phenomenal and subdued acoustic album of some of Wilco's great tracks. I liken his voice to Bob Dylan. It's not good but that's exactly why it's so great. His soul is represented in his vocals, it's a scarred beauty.  

"One Wing" was not included on this album (no idea why either because this is such a cool interpretation of it), but Tweedy performed it at music fest, Pickathon. A remarkable performance, even more so as it highlights his penchant for lyrics:

We once belonged to a bird
Who cast his shadow on this world
You were a blessing and I was a curse
I did my best not to make things worse for you
It isn't true, I always knew this would be our fate
This is what happens when we separate
This happens to all dead weight, eventually
We may as well be made of stone
We can't be flown

One wing will never fly
Neither yours nor mine
I fear we can only wave goodbye

Monday Mixtape, Vol. 80

A bunch of new bands to digest this week, including Cende, The Jungle Giants, Palace, and Japanese Breakfast. 

Conde's debut album is really enjoyable yet I can't place exactly who or what they sound like. It's a little upbeat, a little punk-y, but no song from 2017 album is better than "What I Want," which actually reminds me a bit of Deerhunter with their amazing transition at 2:50 from the sweet vocals into an ass kicking of rock. Cool song!

"Quiet Ferocity" is a contender for one of my favorite songs of the year. It's certainly got some LCD Soundsystem in it (and the rest of the album sounds a bit Glass Animals a bit Foster the People - who by the way, just released their third album which I need to give more time and listens and will report back!), a bit of The Maccabees, but I love the rhythms, electronics, and this dude's falsetto. 

Vince Staples continues to carry rap in cool and unique directions with his new, critically acclaimed album. "Big Fish" is certainly the catchiest song (or maybe "BagBak") so that had to be included, but this is an album to really dissect, which "745" is a testament to with its trance-like bass line and starstruck piano. 

Pretty damn disappointed in Cousin Stizz's new album, but "Doubted Me" caught me on my first listen. 

I definitely need to listen to Palace more - this is the only song I've heard by them - because they have a really cool chill rhythmic sound, and I LOVE the lead singer's voice.

I wasn't big on Japanese Breakfast's first album despite the love she got on the interwebs, but her second album is a great album front to back. If you like these tracks, give it a try!

Onwards and upwards. 

Monday Mixtape, Vol. 79

I recently published a poem I wrote, it's called Fixture. It's a poem on life, and I'm proud of it. I don't often feel proud of my writing because the majority of it is terrible, but sometimes, it feels good to write. This was one of those times.

It didn't take quite as long to get another Monday Mixtape out as it took to write another poem, but there's been a ton of music! All sorts of great albums have been released in the past couple weeks which I'll get to on this mixtape and the next one, but it includes Vince Staples, Haim, SZA, Washed Out, Poolside, Miami Horror, Dan Auerbach, and even Jeff Tweedy released a solo acoustic album of Wilco songs. Wow. Breathe. Listen. And enjoy!