Bluessy – THE GROUNDHOGS: Blues obituray (Fire Records, 2018)
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“50th Anniversary limited edition die cut sleeve with liner notes from Mojo’s Dave Henderson.
The second studio album from The Groundhogs, now slimmed to the classic three piece line up of Tony TS McPhee on guitar, Pete Cruikshank on bass and Ken Pustelnik on drums.
The beginning of their domination as the hardest working band on the circuit, a testament to their creativity as they re-tooled the blues into a neo-psyche groove.
Breaking from their traditional influences, the first stepping stone for the power trio who would blossom with ‘Thank Christ For the Bomb’, ‘Split’ and ‘Who Will Save The World?’.
Inspired by a Yardbirds’ freak out, hearing authentic Indian drumming and the magic that existed between this legendary trio, ‘Blues Obituary’ is a juggernaut of riffs.
According to Tony in Zig Zag’s John Tobler’s sleevenotes to the 1987 re-issue of ‘Blues Obituary’ it was the BBC’s John Peel producer John Walters that forced the band’s hand. “He decided he hated the blues,” McPhee told Tobler, “We figured it was time to get away from it.”
“A deep excursion into musical depths further down than Canned Heat ever dared go.”
The re-issue also includes a mono-friendly single cut of ‘BDD’ plus its original B-side ‘Gasoline’, an aching solo Tony TS McPhee track” (Press)
Palms – TAPE WAVES: Distant light (Bleeding Gold, 2018)
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Viejos conocidos por estos territoros, el matrimonio Kim Weldin y Jarod Weldin: TAPE WAVES publicó este verano su tercer trabajo, un disco marcado por casi todos los elementos que caracterizaron los anteriores: Dreampop a bajas revoluciones, guitarras esta vez sí, algo más cristalinas y una decidida apuesta por los temas más cercanos al relax que a la inquietud (en casi todas sus portadas aparece una palmera o una referencia playera). Sus referentes podríamos encontrarlos por las mismas sendas: Yo la Tengo, Cocteau Twins, Real Estate, Twerps…
Reminiscencias – JACCO GARDNER: Levania (Single, Full Time Hobby, 2018)
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Aunque su título tenga otras evocaciones, el último sencilla de Jacco Gardner, adelanto del que será su próximo trabajo (que aparece en estos días), es quizás el menos cercano a la Psicodelia, y sí más a cierta onda retro a las guitarras twang y a los Shadows. ¿Qué te parece?
Hopefully – COURTNEY BARNETT: Tell me how you feel (Milk, 2018)
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El segundo trabajo de COURTNEY BARNETT, se ha hecho esperar casi tres años, pero es un disco que ha merecido la pena su demora. Circunstancias personales aparte y la magnífica colaboración con Kurt Vile, este Tell me how you feel es un disco fresco, sin grandes pretensiones pero altamente disfrutable y sin embargo con un cierto índice de maduración. Indie-Pop de los noventa, esa onda rockera neoyorquina Television-Reed tan palpable y un toque justo Folkie hacen de este disco uno de los más interesantes del año.
“Courtney Barnett specializes in miniatures, which is why her 2015 debut, Sometimes I Sit and Think, and Sometimes I Just Sit, was such a wonder: with barbed words and gnarled guitars, she made everyday minutiae seem compelling. Three years in the making — it was delayed in part due to a 2017 collaboration with Kurt Vile — the 2018 sequel, Tell Me How You Really Feel, plays like the flip image of its predecessor. What once was captivating now feels indifferent, delivered with a shrug instead of a snarl. Everything about Tell Me How You Really Feel seems muted, whether it’s the grungy stomp ofBarnett and her band — a group that remains steadfastly and proudly stuck in the glory days of ’90s alt-rock — or her words, which now seem to meander to a point instead of cutting to the quick. As she’s a good craftswoman, the songs are by and large sturdy, but that talent also cuts against the success ofTell Me How You Really Feel: when they’re matched with the appealing yet incurious performances, everything feels a bit too cozy. Sometimes, a hook or a clever line cuts through the amiable haze — and “Charity,” with its chorus of “so subservient I make myself sick,” manages to blend both — but Tell Me How You Really Feel isn’t an album of moments, it’s a collection that sustains a mood: a mood that’s ragged and slack, but too dulled to charm” (All Music)
Underrated – DROPKICK: Longwave (Sound Asleep Recordings, 2018)
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Uno de los adjetivos más utilizados en la prensa musical para hablar de ciertas bandas es “underrated“. Me encanta esa palabra, foneticamente y por todo lo que encierra. El Pop llegado desde Escocia siempre me ha fascinado, y DROPKICK son una banda demasiado “underrated“, infravalorada; que comulga a la perfección con las hordas de Big Star / Wilco / Teenage Fanclub. Ya os podéis imaginar, la fórmula infalible melodía, buen gusto sonoro y exquisitez musical. Me podréis argumentar un cierto seguidismo hacia TFC, pero a estas alturas del partido me da un poco lo mismo: la música de DROPKICK es una delicia para mis oídos, y eso, para los tiempos que corren, es ya más que suficiente.
“Con Dropkick sucede como con esas cosas/personas que de tan cercanas y habituales como las sentimos no les otorgamos la importancia que verdaderamente tienen. El conjunto escocés suma con el actual quince discos editados —sin contar EPs ni manifestaciones en solitario— y siempre bajo una ágil periodicidad.Quizás eso influya en la normalización con la que se aceptan sus altos resultados, algo injusto y que es necesario resaltar precisamente ahora, cuando su nueva referencia se instala en un nivel sobresaliente. Ajenos a estas disquisiciones, el grupo sigue practicando ese noble arte adquirido de referentes como The Jayhawks o Teenage Fanclub a la hora de jugar con el power-pop y/o rock americano más luminoso y delicado. En ese sentido dejarán nuevas muestras como «It’s Still Raining» o «Come Around» de su inagotable pericia en dicho ámbito. Con capacidad también para decidirse por ritmos más cercanos al folk-country («Blue Skies») e incluso construir unos más ruidosos y densos («Giving Way»), emergen sin embargo majestuosos entre bellísimas baladas («Faraway Places», «See You There») para recordarnos su entrañable y emocionante concepción de la música” (Kepa Arbizu, RUTA66)
Nonsenses – MGMT: Little dark age (Columbia, 2018)
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Auténtico despropósito. Yo creo que estos dos se han propuesto hacernos creer que lo de su debut en 2008 fue el verdadero espejismo, y que su verdadera cara es la que han ido mostrando a lo largo de esta década, y que queda reflejada en este auténtico bodrio titulado Little dark age (2018). Algo así como el disco de un grupo de tributo a Depeche Mode, un trabajo falto de ideas, de frescura y de cualquier atisbo de creatividad o imaginación. Más que prescindible.
“Not all of this stuff is necessarily necessary. “One Thing Left to Try” sounds suspiciously like Empire of the Sun, and one of them is more than enough. Similarly, the album probably doesn’t need two songs about the evils of the hand-held internet. (In addition to “She Works Out Too Much,” we also get “TSLAMP,” or “Time Spent Looking at My Phone,” which, spoiler alert: They are none too pleased about it.) But the duo’s delight in sound itself is often infectious. The album is a riot of vintage synthesizers, dubby effects, and sumptuously gated snares, and they round out that ’80s fixation with just the right amount of psych-pop. Flangers flange, phasers phase, and the stereo panning spins like a Tilt-a-Whirl, but for once, the bells and whistles don’t drown out the songwriting.
While VanWyngarden’s lyrics have often strayed toward the impenetrable, here he’s more focused, settling into a dark mood that feels timely. Little Dark Age is an album about certainties dissolving. “Welcome to the shit-show/Grab a comfortable seat,” VanWyngarden sings in the very first song, pretty much summing up the second half of the current decade. It’s telling that the album’s most sing-along-friendly refrain is the rousing “Go fuck yourself!” of “When You Die.” Toward the end of the LP, “When You’re Small” makes a compelling argument for strategic downsizing: “When you’re small/You don’t have very far to fall.”
At this point, MGMT probably know a thing or two about the fear of falling. They seem to acknowledge as much on the closing “Hand It Over,” which, like Congratulations’ eponymous final song, is a kind of reckoning with their career, a self-aware snapshot of the whole complicated business of being MGMT. “If we lose our touch/It won’t mean much,” sings VanWyngarden, as if acknowledging their tenuous grasp on whatever brass ring the music industry once offered. The Beach Boys harmonies and Sgt. Pepper’s horns are familiar—it’s the first time on the album they sound like the old MGMT, really. “The joke’s worn thin,” he sings, early in the song, and, later, “The smart ones exit early.” It’s a long way from the rock-star fantasies of “Time to Pretend.” But if Little Dark Age is a new start, it’s a promising one” (Pitchfork)
The Lonely Crowd Fades In The Air – SWERVEDRIVER: Mary Winter (Single, Dangerbird Records, 2018)
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Buenos tiempos para los que amamos el Pop de guitarras y el Noise más embriagador. SWERVEDRIVER están de vuelta. Lo hacen con este espacial Mary Winter, un sencillo que adelanta lo que será su nuevo material, a publicar a comienzos de 2019: Future Ruins (Dangerbirds Records, 2018)
“Like many of us, what’s to come has been weighing heavily on frontman Adam Franklin’s mind. “There’s a lot of foreboding with regard to the future on this album,” says Adam. “Space is in there a lot too. In the first song, the character is a spaceman who’s trying to remember what life is really like. Also, it could be about somewhere in the world where winter isn’t like the winter here. A sunny place, but it’s December or January and you’re trying to remember winter. Something’s going on.” That first song is “Mary Winter,” an instantly recognizable blast of Swervedriver afterburners that you can listen to” (Brooklyn Vegan)
A Perfect Cycle – THE CROOKED CREW: The sheltering sky suite (1, 2, 3) / Supermoon (Single, 2018)
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Un ciclo perfecto. Una estación completa. Una especie de vida en miniatura. The Sheltering Sky resume en sus más de quince minutos lo que la música de CAPTAIN EXCUSE & HIS CROOKED CREW expresa a día de hoy: una gozosa recreación en lo mejorcito del Pop de raíces Folkies, que comienza de forma inquietante, pero va tomando forma poco a poco, agrandándose y cobrando nueva vida. Un tema en expansión, que cambia de tono conforme pasan los minutos y que termina en una radiante explosión, aunque con esa inquietud que el Capitán suele dejarnos (“An endless parade of frozen days / A reminder of what could have been but never will”). Una canción de las de antes, de las que se hacen desde la independencia, desde ese no tener que rendir cuentas a nadie, si acaso a tu propia expresividad.
Supermoon, sin embargo, musicalmente es más un retorno a los orígenes del Capitán. Nos evoca aquellos tiempos en los que el sonido anglosajón dominaba la escena musical. Una canción de estructura Pop perfecta, de desarrollos exactos que probablemente tenga origen en una concepción mucho más acústica y folk, como nos queda reflejado en los últimos segundos de la misma. Si he de ser sincero, me quedo con esa armónica y esa sencillez adornada de las distorsiones justas que hacen de esta súper luna un ideal inalcanzable (“I thought you could do so much better / But settled for the scum of the earth” ).
The Sheltering Sky / Supermoon es, pues, un sencillo para disfrutar con calma, con relax. Problablemente nunca lo encontrarás en una playlist de las que ahora nos perturban. Qué más da. La música de la Tripulación Maldita es para disfrutarla y saborearla. Los mortales quedarán en la tierra a otras historias.
The Dream – WIDOWSPEAK: Expect the best (Captured Tracks, 2017)
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Abandonaron algo el tono fronterizo y se dedicaron más al ambiente más íntimo, a la introspección sonora sobre bases etéreas. Un resumen de lo que es el último trabajo hasta la fecha del grupo de Molly Hamilton: WIDOWSPEAK, un grupo en el que en cada disco puedes encontrarte algunos cortes memorables. en Expect the Best no iba a ser menos…
“After Almanac and All Yours, Widowspeak seemed like they were on the cusp of going full Americana — a vital aspect of their music, but one that overlooked the band’s distinctive version of rock. Molly Hamilton wrote Expect the Best‘s songs while in Tacoma, Washington, and the return to her hometown may have inspired the band to revisit the misty fusion of grunge and shoegaze of their earliest releases. While Widowspeak still sound more intricate and detailed than most of their Pacific Northwestern forebears, it’s undeniable that this is the fullest, heaviest-sounding incarnation of the group yet, thanks to Hamilton and Robert Earl Thomas inviting touring bassist Willy Muse and drummer James Jano into the studio to bring some live energy to Expect the Best. Of course, “heavy” is a relative term for a band as atmospheric as Widowspeak, but they get heads nodding — if not exactly banging — with foggy interpretations of grunge like “When I Tried” and “Let Me.” The band expertly contrast these heavier sounds with vulnerable moods and words, imbuing them with a bruised brooding on the title track, which feels like a spiritual cousin to their early single “Harsh Realm,” as well as on the yearning “Dog” and “Good Sport,” a brief sketch that nevertheless showcases Hamilton‘s way with an extended metaphor. As Widowspeak return to sounds from their past, they also add new ones, such as the flutes that add an extra witchiness to “Right On” or the smoky, seductive, ’60s psych of one of the album’s standouts, “Warmer.” Here and on the album’s bookends — the golden, bittersweet opener “The Dream” and the seven-minute finale “Fly on the Wall” — Widowspeak are subtle and epic at the same time, building to crescendos that engulf listeners before they realize it. A late-summer bonfire of an album, Expect the Best proves once again that when it comes to hazy introspection and reflection, few bands are better at it than Widowspeak” (Allmusic)
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