Weekend Music Roundup

 

The weekend is here and the holiday season is upon us. It's also time for me to start thinking about my favorite albums of the year, which means I've been trying my best to absorb the 2020 records that I have yet to hear. Some of those are on this list, and others will come. There's also some older albums on here the I recently listened to for the first time. Enjoy.

Muzz - Muzz: The debut album from the indie band made up of Paul Banks (Interpol), Matt Barrack (Jonathan Fire Eater/ The Walkman), and Josh Kaufman. This was released in the summer, but somehow missed my radar. It's a sublime and beautiful album, very ethereal and subdued. Paul's voice is fantastic, much more low key and less buried than on Interpol albums, which I love, but I enjoy hearing him clearly too. "Evergreen," "Broken Tambourine," and "All is Dead to Me" are my personal favorites. 

Paloma Faith - Infinite Things: The fifth album from the British pop soul artist is her first in three years. I've been a fan ever since seeing her on the Never Mind the Buzzcocks years ago. Despite her overtly pop sound, there's something there that endears her music to me. This album, like most dance pop these days is heavily 80s influenced. She does a great job on this album of having a good balance of upbeat songs with sad songs. In many ways, this is a sum of its influences, but that's okay with me as long as it's done this well.

Secondhand Habit - Contact High: The forth album from the Canadian hard rock band mixes metal with blues based hard rock and has an early Alice in Chains feel, only without Layne's mesmerizing voice or the misery that permeated early 90s rock. Not that this is exactly uplifting, but is more uptempo and less wallowing. This is one of those albums that is just okay, suffering not for what it does but for what it doesn't do. There are too many aspects that are lackluster (vocals and drums mostly). "Soundwaves" and "Next to None" are standout tracks. 

Spacemen 3 - Dreamweapon: This live performance from '88 was originally released in '90, the year the band was breaking up. At the time of it's released, it only contained the one 40+ minute track "An Evening of Contemporary Sitar Music", but the recent re-issue contains three additional tracks. Pioneers of the shoegazer drone movement, Pete Kember (Sonic Boom) and Jason Pierce (J. Spaceman) were inspired by 70s space rock and reinvented it into something new. Later, Jason would form Spiritualized, a band with more attention to melody, but the work of the Spacemen is legendary. This is one of their more spacey pieces and really good soundscape stuff. 

 

Elvis Costello and The Roots - Wise Up Ghost: The new wave legend's releases have grown few and far between these days. Released in 2013, this was a collaboration with The Roots. I remember at the time thinking that it was an ill advised pairing and that's probably why I skipped it. A few weeks ago, this came to me in a selection of CDs a friend was giving away and I figured it was worth a listen. I was surprised that this is a pretty solid record. There are not dynamite stand out tracks, but there also no stinkers. It's political, poetic and ?uestlove's back beat is pretty great. Not a legendary album, but an interesting addition to an interesting career catalog. 

 

The Charlatans - Between 10th and 11th: This is the second album from Baggy / Madchester outfit from the West Midlands. Released in 1992, at the growing height of Britpop, this was one of those albums that I missed back in the day, but was recently re-issued. The Charlatans were always solid second or third tier Britpop in my world, but always managed to get it all together for a few songs on each album, but never able to put together that iconic album. This isn't that album, but it may be there most complete. "Page One," "Weirdo," "(No One) Not Even the Rain," and "Indian Rope" from the second live disc are standouts.