It’s fall and the new music is rolling in, as it always does this time of year. Me, I'm just trying to keep up.
Local Picks
Joe Fahey, “Did I Forget to Feed the Fish?”
Often sardonic singer-songwriter Joe Fahey gets somber but never maudlin on his new breakup album, Andrea’s Exile. Here guitars chime and gals sha-la-la as he wonders what he did wrong and explicates the trouble with birds: “They got gorgeous melodies but they don’t know any words.”
Keep for Cheap, “FedEx”
Plenty to pick from on Big Grass, the latest from the songwriting duo of Autumn Vagle and Kate Malanaphy; I choose this long-haul rocker about a big move “fueled by wine, hope, and weed.”
Nur-D, “Players Anthem [E]”
There’s a vast middle ground between reverence and disrespect, and somewhere on that terrain is where you can find this speedy synthpop remodel of the UGK classic, from a fine little EP of other people’s material called Undercovers.
Products Band, "Steady/Sugarless"
John Dieterich of Deerhoof captures this quartet's thick low-end and the high-end of guitars that glisten like splintered glass, as Jo Kellen shares oblique insights like "I’m free/it’s so easy/to rub the orange peel on the glass and puke the right words on/a/brick/wall."
West Dayton, Jayso Creative, “Don’t Play”
Two local rap notables talk their he said/she said shit over a zippy Jersey club beat.
Non-Local Picks
FLO, “Bending My Rules”
Well if it isn’t an old-fashioned (as in TRL era) girl group, hailing from the U.K., which checks out (they always do Black music a little more trad over there) and explains why I’m just now catching up with them. Sweet and flirty, with full harmonies welling up at appropriate moments and chattering guitar throughout.
Ada Lea, “come on, baby! be a good girl for the camera”
A particularly tuneful complaint about the indignity of becoming an entertainer that’s paradoxically-more-than-ironically quite entertaining.
LL Cool J feat. Sawatee, “Proclivities”
On most of LL’s don’t-call-it-a-you-know-what, The Force, he’s acting hard with his boys, and I’m not complaining. But I’m partial to this sexy little dalliance with Sawatee. Who else could get away with “I hit you in Piscataway/They hear your ass in Brooklyn”? Who else would even try?
Christopher Owens, “No Good”
The boy behind Girls has kept quiet for a few years (nearly 10 of ’em in fact) and he’s neither lost his edge nor developed his style. The ache in his voice is as undiminished as the shimmer in his guitar. The dream of the 2010s lives on.
Wussy, “The Great Divide”
On the lead track from the stalwart Cincinnati, Ohio, band’s upcoming album Cincinnati Ohio, Lisa Walker recalls a loved one from within a thematically appropriate tunnel of deep echo with unrequitable longing. Wussyheads who can’t wait till November 15 for the new LP can check out two EPs today: The Great Divide (the new single + 2) and Cellar Door (three songs from “Wussy Duo,” i.e. songwriters Walker and Chuck Cleaver).
Worst New Track
The Weeknd, “Dancing in the Flames”
From his upcoming album ’80s Beats to Do H&M Inventory to.
Wanna get a local song considered for the playlist? To make things easy on both of us, email keith@racketmn.com with MONDAY PLAYLIST in the subject header. (Don’t, as in do NOT, DM or text: If I’m in a good mood, I’ll just ask you to send an email; if I’m in a bad mood I’ll just ignore it.)
