I'm more in the 'try before you buy' camp. Looks like I'll be picking this up too. Great energy. Full stream avail. ANRMAL, by Juana Molina
Sampled some of this after reading a review in the last issue of The Wire, sounds really promising and I think I need to order this - right up my alley!
everyone I’ve sent it to likes it. My one friend did say he thought it got repetitive and I can see that. I dig it
One of my favourites of 2020 is "Learning English Lesson 3: MERSEY BEAT! The Sound Of Liverpool" a Mersey Beat tribute from "Die Toten Hosen", a German Punk-rock-band. What they're doing on this record is simply great, I'm really enjoying this album. Here's a Video (it actually starts at 0:24)
I'm still enjoying the live release from Swedish psych rockers Dungen, which consists of skillfully crafted improvisational jams.
Got my copy of this in the mail today. Love it. The liner notes are great. Thanks again for the heads up on this!
The NY Times published their list of the best albums of 2020 today. Probably noted elsewhere on the forum but possibly of particular interest to those following this thread.
Russian Tour 5, by Belka Records “This is our 5th compilation. We are happy to share this new "Russian Tour" with you. 12 amazing bands from Belarus, Ukraine, Russia and Estonia take part in this adventure. You can order cassettes...”
This is not a criticism of the year just a personal observation as I think it has been a couple of months now since I latched onto a new 2020 release. I wondering if given the days left in the year and what I perceive is an unusual lack of releases at this time of year (perhaps and if true more than likely due to the pandemic) that I may have seen my last 2020 release. It would be hard to believe that my 10 Best Of 2020 that I posted would change though. It's been more of a solid year in music than anything else in my life though. Ohh that is a lie! Weight loss surgery and 95# down is the best thing.
There's a new album from The Left Outsides released in October, Are You Sure I Was There?, been listening the last couple days and it's sounding pretty great. Their last one, All That Remains, from 2018 has become a huge favorite, listen to it a lot, and I was just checking on the latest Only Darkness Now album from Alison Cotton (the female half of The Left Outsides) and discovered that I'd completely missed this new with her husband. Probably gonna have to shoehorn this one in the top 10 somewhere if it holds up as well as it sounds right now... The basic building blocks remain the same -- half of the sound is Alison Cotton and her viola and keys, the other half is Mark Nicholas with a stunning array of guitars -- but the structures they create this time are darker and more forbidding than their antecedents. This album feels very much a piece of the season in which it is being released, as the leaves strip themselves from trees and the sky grows colder, greyer by the hour. More than once while Are You Sure I Was There spun I was put in mind of the classic Rainy Day LP, masterminded by Kendra Smith back in 1984. The Left Outsides possess the same sure grasp of that place where sorrow, ecstasy and psychedelics meet in a shower of dying stars... Are You Sure I Was There?, by The Left Outsides
Boy this new album by The Dead Tongues, the band vehicle for Ryan Gustafson from North Carolina, is really good. Ryan played lead guitar for several years with Hiss Golden Messenger, and his solos were always a highlight of that band’s live act. But he’s a fine songwriter, terrific arranger, and his vocals here are a great fit for the material. Real country gone, real mystical folk rock. Transmigration Blues (Deluxe Edition), by The Dead Tongues
Thanks! Not previously familiar. My excerpt from your post is no truer than on the utterly superb cover of Little Sadie. For Deadheads that have come to know and love the song through Garcia's solo work, especially the fantastic rendition on Pizza Tapes, this interpretation - both vocally and musically - is more than worth your listening effort: pure gold. Edit: Having spent some time with the album I find that I'm not equally enamored with the original material, but I did just purchase the track, which I'm beginning to think is darn near definitive for my tastes!
A great modern art folk album deconstructed into its stems. 201 tracks. Shore (Stems Edition), by Fleet Foxes
I'm liking this collaboration Robin Trower, Maxi Priest and Livingston Brown have done. United State of Mind. Several songs I'm diggin' Many may not know that Trower was always a BIG fan of soul music. Donny Hathaway was/is his favorite singer. Heck, he even had Sly Stones' rhythm section in his band with Bill Lordan and Rustee Allen. Seems odd him being the heavy blues-rock guitar icon he was but can you see his song Man of the World on his first solo LP as a heavy Heard it on the Grapevine? 75 years old and still making great music.
Genuinely pleasant listen from Matthew Halsall (new to me). Gentle, uplifting, 'spiritual' jazz. Lovely, really. Plays well in the foreground or the background. If you trance out you can just follow the lilt of it all; if you want to listen close there's interesting subtle rhythms, tones and exchanges. Really melodic. Confident but not aggressive. Seems to be nicely recorded as well. Soothes the soul, engages the mind. Check it out. Salute to the Sun, by Matthew Halsall
I think nobody has mentioned yet one of my greatest discoveries this year: German duo Urlaub in Polen "ALL". I'm totally in love with this album, something like mix of good old Krautrock with some modern electronics, hypnotic and mesmerizing, highly recommended.
Ichiko Aoba, contemporary folk artist from Japan, put out an album last week called Windswept Adan. Whether the arrangements are sparse or detailed, the music is always buoyed by Aoba's lilting voice. A nice antidote to an un-nice year.
New album from Seasurfer this week, anxious to hear the whole thing though they've already made about half of the 16 songs available on the main CD, and I like it all so far. Post punk, new wave, shoegaze, dream pop, runs the gamut but leans heavily on the shoegaze sound. Always a good, ethereal vocalist at the front, this time back with Apalonia. It's called Zombies and is released as a double CD with 8-song bonus disc The Dreampop Days with some older recordings featuring Elena Alice Fossi on vocals. Maybe vinyl later if they can round up the funding...
