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. 11

Good morning, Monday! Today is a short week for most, and hopefully all are planning on barbecuing and celebrating the 4th with a few beers with friends. So happy soon to be 4th of July.

The first track of this week's mixtape, "Alright," was performed by Kendrick Lamar as the opening act of last night's BET Music Awards. Lamar stood atop a graffiti-laced cop car and spit out a ferociously technical song on live TV. Listen to this song and the wordplay, speed, and execution of his delivery: "Now tell my momma I love her / but this what I like, Lord knows / 20 of 'em in my Chevy / tell 'em all to come and get me / Reapin' everything I sow / so my karma come / And heaven no preliminary hearing, so my record / I'm a motherfuckin' gangster in silence for the record." The whole track is the epitome of Lamar's ability to spit. Another interesting tidbit is the hook is sung by Pharrell. I thought the song was an interesting choice for Lamar to play to the primarily black audience as he sung along with Pharrell's backing vocals, "Do you hear me? Do you feel me? We gon' be alright."

Trails and Ways hails right over the bridge from me in Berkeley, California. If you like this song, I highly recommend their album. The female singer and some of the songs remind me a bit of another band, Alpine, who released a great album in 2014 and a new one this year as well (which I have yet to listen to!).

Gengahr - NO IDEA how to pronounce that - released their album recently, and "She's a Witch," stood out to me from all the other tracks. The only comparable I can think of is Of Montreal's "Bassem Sabry:"

Both weird songs, both oddly catchy. 

I wrote about Will Joseph Cook's EP already, but I am really digging this song and have been listening to it more than any other song over the past week, so it's gotta make the mixtape!

Twin Peaks sounds like they're recording their music in a garage while their friends jump around, drinking beers, and the band has to just keep getting louder because their friends progressively get drunker. It's raw, unpolished rock.

De Lux is is like the hideous menage trois music-child of LCD Soundsystem, Hot Chip, and Talking Heads. "Irish people hate me / Hippies don't love me." This is not all true, I'm cool with you guys!

Listen to this EP - Will Joseph Cook - You Jump I Run

Will Joseph Cook doesn't have a ton in the blogosphere about him yet, but he released an EP in April, You Jump I Run, that has a songwriter's simplicity that reminds me of Angus Stone while also having the pop and sonic sensibilities of another group I love, Minus the Bear. He looks like a young Cillian Murphy, so who knows what this guy has in store because he could either be the next guitar-wielding pop star (as "Streets of Paris" would indicate) with a real sense of musicianship, or he could go down the indie road of rejection and/or respectability (as "Daisy Chains" could indicate).

"Daisy Chains," probably my favorite track from his EP, builds upon itself through the first minute and then really starts going around the 1:15 mark. "Oh, you got it, you got it good," Cook proclaims on the first chorus as he reminds the listener there's something worthwhile here.

His other great track, "Message," is another track that starts in its shell, peeks out, reverts back and then grows into its own. The lyrics follow the rhythm as Cook confusedly wants to love when he knows it's not there. "I feel like following / following my heart again...The sweetest little things / I can't stomach the things my memory sings."   

There's a pace to this EP that just feels natural. It's not rushed, and Cook sounds like he's getting used to himself. I look forward to see wherever he takes this.