Monday Mixtape, Vol. 210

I’m back for a second week in a row! It’s like Joe Dimaggio’s hit streak.

King Gizzard’s “Magenta Mountain” is the song-child of MGMT’s “Electric Feel” and “Kids.” These are two of the greatest (and even more influential) songs of the past 25 years, so I welcome all copycats.

Oracular Spectacular is now 15 years old…so that makes me…really old.

Sharon Van Etten’s new track is very outside her lane, which is great. Gives me Arcade Fire vibes.

The hell if I know who Lo Moon and Ceramic Animal are.

I’m a Wilco fan boy, always will be. At this point, they’re properly rated, maybe they have been since Yankee Hotel Foxtrot. Why do I love Wilco? Because they do things like this! Sadly, I missed out on Wilc-O’s, the cereal. No longer available :(

Jeff Tweedy is properly underrated, always will be. He’s my Dylan. Yeah, I said it. I didn’t say he was Dylan, so cool out, but listen to “Ambulance” and soooo many songs before that. Listen to his solo albums. Listen to the album he made with his 16 year old kid! It’s all great, and Tweedy’s a poet every step of the way. That dude and a guitar is all I need.

Let’s end with Lupe, another wordsmith. His new album is good. It’s simply produced. It allows Lupe room to breathe. He exhibits his masterful wordplay while not trying too hard (there’s a bad line or two and couldn’t believe Lupe was cool with it, but that’s me being petty.). And his voice sounds like old Lupe.

Turns out Lupe recorded his album with a $100 microphone and GarageBand! Which is less than I spent on my album! And my album was SO MUCH better than Lupe’s. Ok ok, it was so much worse, which goes to show that money can’t buy talent. But then there’s the entire pop music industry which would say otherwise. So I guess that goes to show that money can buy you talent, but you have to have enough money to buy you talent, and I didn’t have enough money to buy me talent even though I had more than $100 but not as much as Iggy Azalea.

Enjoy the week.

Monday Mixtape, Vol. 122

I follow a number of random playlists by music doppelgängers that I’ve found during my searches through time, and many of them will post their favorite current albums by bands I’ve never heard of and wonder what rock these guys found them under, but alas, I will listen to the first two tracks of every album by these randomly named bands which will give me a feeling of whether they’re worth digging into more.

This is an easy technique to listen to a TON of new stuff to quickly cull through the garbage and find that which rings my ears. I bring you into this weird world of mine because I’ve started today’s mixtape with the first two tracks from James Blake’s (I know, I know, not exactly a “random” artist - WE’RE STARTING SLOW) new album, the fourth of his career, called Assume Form.

If you don’t know James Blake, words don’t exactly do him justice, his voice says it mostly and his production/orchestration say the rest. He’s not everyones’ cup of tea, but these two tracks (the second is expertly assisted by Travis Scott) give you a great approximation of whether you should dig in further to this album.

The remainder of the mixtape includes two tracks from Deerhunter’s EIGHTH ALBUM (I write this in CAPS because it’s wild that I’ve been listening to these guys since the beginning of their career back in 2007 - Yes, this is a sign that I’m (we’re) getting old), Post Malone’s new track, a great track from the perennially underrated Bear Hands, and my favorite song from Sharon Van Etten’s new album.

Happy New Year to all. Let’s have a hell of a 2019 in music and life.