Monday Mixtape, Vol. 209

Well, I was supposed to be reporting to you every week, and I’ve blown it! A number of new albums released have catapulted up my list of favorite albums this year. The nominees are Harry Styles, Bartees Strange, Soccer Mommy, and Martin Courtney (singer/songwriter of one of my faves, Real Estate).

What I love about each of these artists is they sound nothing like each other:

• Harry Styles is the heir-apparent to Justin Timberlake, but I think he’s a better songwriter and a much more palatable voice (sometimes JT’s falsetto gets a bit much)

• Bartees Strange is unique. He’s a mashup. I hear TV on the Radio in his vocals, Jeff Buckley in his intimacy, Minus the Bear with some go his guitar riffs, and on and on. This guy’s got a lot of talent.

• Soccer Mommy is 90s grunge redux.

• Martin Courtney’s second solo album shows again why he’s the heart and soul of the uber-chill Real Estate.

Enjoy!

Monday Mixtape, Vol. 146

Harry Styles is this generation’s Justin Timberlake, but he may just be more talented. He’d still have to have an album on par with JT’s FutureSex / LoveSounds, but the potential is there. I love his new track, I thoroughly enjoyed his debut album, and maybe if you heard a few mixtapes ago, I even found some One Direction tracks I liked!

Quiet Hounds was a band that - waaaayyyy back in 2012 - I was totally obsessed with due to their album Megaphona. They haven’t lived up to any of my expectations as nothing they’ve released has touched what I thought was their best song, “Calling All Gamma Rays,” but they just released a new album that I’m digging. I’ve put two new tracks and two classics on this week’s mixtape to enjoy!

Phantogram and Will Joseph Cook have new tracks for you to snag, and I have been on a huge Third Eye Blind kick as of late, and in particular, I keep listening to the second tracks of their first two albums, “Narcolepsy” and “Wounded,” two of my favorite tracks Third Eye Blind has ever made.

Come to think of it, “Wounded” is my fave song by them. It has everything I love: great lyrics and a story which feels genuine, a great build up, some orchestral elements, harmonics!, great vocals, great guitar licks, awesome use of reverb (the climax of the buildup “WOOOOOoooo ooo ooo ooo”), I mean what else can you ask for?

And “Narcolepsy” is similar in that it has a slow start which leads to a great buildup but an even better transition into a super bouncy and rhythmic track, but I really love the lyrics of “Narcolepsy” and the part where I sing along with Jenkins, building up from a whisper to an excited chant to a yell into a SCREAM for the whole the third verse:

I read dead Russian authors, volumes at a time
I write everything down except what's on my mind
Cause my greatest fear is that sucking sound
And then I know that I'll never get back out
And there's a bone in my hand that connects to a drink
In a crowded room where the glasses clink
And I'll buy you a beer and we'll drink it deep
BECAUSE THAT KEEPS ME FROM FALLING ASLEEP!!!!

And I can feel this Narcolepsy slide………….

Monday Mixtape, Vol. 142

Hopefully you started listening to this week’s mixtape without looking at the playlist and just listening. Because then you might have really enjoyed the first track without feeling guilty. If you looked first, then maybe you said, “One Direction!!??" and then had a preconceived notion that you shouldn’t like this song, which may have become more complicated when you really liked the song. It’s up to you whether you’ll admit or not. And that’s how we start our Monday, like it or not.

You may wonder how this track got on here. I read Rob Sheffield’s Rolling Stone article on Harry Styles, a guy whose first solo album was really, really good. It’s hard not to like Styles. His charisma, honesty, and comfort with himself (at least at his age) is disarming for someone you’d expect to be a prick.

ANYWAYS, the article included a playlist about all the music they spoke about during the interview process:

Lo and behold, One Direction features somewhat prominently on it. So I heard the track (and didn't know who it was!) and loved it. So that’s how it got on this week’s mixtape (it’s also, by the way, how the beautiful Bill Evans track made it too.)

As for the other tracks on this week’s mixtape, there’s new stuff from numerous bands I’ve enjoyed over the years - Surfer Blood, Little Brother, Vince Staples - and a new band, Gender Roles, whose album I love. These guys are like a music child of The Deftones / Wavves / The Used, and I’m digging it. There’s rhythm, some screaming, and great rock n’ roll.

And finally, a shout out to my bud Sean. He asked if I had listened to the new Taylor Swift album. And speaking of guilty pleasures like One Direction, I am wholeheartedly a fan of Taylor Swift’s 1989, a phenomenal album, but I don’t like most of her other stuff.

Nonetheless, I listened to her new album and couldn’t make it through 10 songs (let alone the fact that the album is EIGHTEEN FREAKING SONGS - which btw is a pathetic scheme by artists to get more album “play counts” on streaming services which makes “the art” of making an album NOT AN ART and instead a money, attention, and awards grab. I’m sorry, but if you’re willing to intentionally manipulate your album to succumb to these bullshit reasons, you’re a sellout, not an artist (and I hate to say it, my boy Drake is in this category too)).

The first ten songs were terrible: formulaic, her annoying falsetto that she can’t actually sing in, “rapping” or whatever you want to call her fast talking, it’s all just bad pop music to me. So I stopped listening.

BUT THEN SEAN. So like I was saying, he texts me about the album and says his favorite track is track 13, “False Gods,” a song I didn't get to because I clearly was too fed up from the reasons listed above.

The song is subtle, quiet with a bit of reverb in her voice (no falsetto!), a horn, a slow beat, FEELING. From the start it just connects. It’s an amazing song. I’m blown away by it, really, and it shows what she can do when she really does it. Or maybe it’s just me and Sean.

So this is my mixtape of teen heartthrobs and pop sensations sandwiched with hip-hop underground favorites Little Brother and one of hip-hop’s current faves, Vince Staples. Definitely a different mix this week. Hope you enjoy.

Monday Mixtape, Vol. 76

My task for you this week is to just press play on the mixtape and not look at who the artists are. Just press play and listen.

Listened?

So this week's mixtape features two artists whom I never really thought would be on the mixtape. Why? Because one - Harry Styles - was from One Direction, and the other was a band that I never particularly liked, a little too much of The Used clones when no one could do their sound like them.

BUT they both released albums this year, and lo and behold, I stumbled on to them and really, really like both albums! I liken Paramore's new album to Carly Rae Jepsen's pop masterpiece "Emotion" from 2015, an album of epic upbeat party jams with an 80s disco flair.

Paramore's "After Laughter" comes in the wake of a lawsuit from the former original member and bassist of Paramore who claims that he got screwed out of ownership of the band by the lead singer, Hayley Williams, thereby missing out on millions of dollars. The suit settled for an undisclosed sum.

Who knows whose story to believe, but Hayley Williams clearly has the bigger microphone, and this album is covered in innuendo or straight up lyrics the lawsuit and Williams' romantic relationship with him as well.

The last track on the album, a beautiful piano ballad (I LOVE piano ballads - which may explain why I use to love Coldplay so much. I mean, come on, "Trouble" is still one of my favorite piano based songs I've ever heard: 

*end parentheses) called "Tell Me How," which pretty much sums the whole album up.

I saw Hayley Williams perform on Kimmel and she's a bad ass, she's got a little Gwen Stefani in her (who, I know at this point and time is a bit more of a tabloid fixture and reality TV show person, is one of the most badass performers I've EVER seen live. No joke, her stage presence was incomparable. She just radiated confidence, beauty, and talent. I saw her on a No Doubt reunion tour (which was AWESOME) for $5, and she just crushed it.).

Now to Harry Styles. Let's just say that I'm awestruck by his debut solo album. I think it is very good with shades and influences of all the British rockers (and John Mayer) I can think of: Pink Floyd (Meet Me in the Hallway), Bowie (Sign of the Times), Elton John (Woman), Mick Jagger (Carolina), and a bunch of 80s hairband rockers on Kiwi and Only Angel. The John Mayer track should be heard the moment it's played: Sweet Creature, which sounds more like Born and Raised-era Mayer. In fact, listen to "The Age of Worry"

and then Sweet Creatures... 

Whoa. So yeah, I'd say Mayer was an influence. 

But all these influences make a pretty compelling debut album from the dude from One Direction.  And it's happened before people! Remember Marky Mark? His acoustic debut solo album was SO GOOD.

I AM JOKING - Marky Mark did not do such a thing (Say hello to your mutha fa me), but Justin Timberlake did! Sometimes the true talent of a group shines when he/she got solo (Beyonce, anyone?) and everyone else is left in the dust (Joey Fatone...). So if anyone's going to do it, it's Harry with the voice of an angel and a heartthrob for all the ladies. He came across pretty likable in Rolling Stone's cover article on him. 

ALAS, enjoy the show!