No idea why Sub Pop quietly released a new video for a song on an album that’s been out for over a year by an artist who’s not currently touring and doesn’t seem to have anything new to promote, but I’ll take any opportunity I can find to listen to Natalie Mering’s amazing voice. “A Given Thing” is the closer from 2022’s And In The Darkness, Hearts Aglow and it encapsulates all the cosmic Karen Carpenter vibes we’ve come to expect from Weyes Blood.
It’s not a one way street
Sometimes our love is enrapturing
And other times, it’s just unraveling in front of me
And it feels like we’re burning
Making ashes of our joy.
Hopefully this video is a hint that something new is coming. But even if it’s not, who cares, it’s nice to have more Weyes Blood to watch.
Directed by Callum Scott-Dyson. From What Do We Do Now, out February 2 on Sub Pop.
Oh wow new J Mascis solo music! This is the second single off his upcoming album. We somehow missed the first one despite the fact that its video features a bunch of J’s famous friends including Fred Armisen and David Cross. This new video doesn’t have any celebrities in it but it does have an animated rodent who goes on a bunch of adventures.
Unlike previous Mascis solo stuff, this new set features drums and electric lead guitar. Which is fun. Still mellower than Dinosaur Jr material though.
Mascis says, “When I’m writing for the band. I’m always trying to think of doing things Lou and Murph would fit into. For myself, I’m thinking more about what I can do with just an acoustic guitar, even for the leads. Of course, this time, I added full drums and electric leads, although the rhythm parts are still all acoustic. Usually, I try to do the solo stuff more simply so I can play it by myself, but I really wanted to add the drums. Once that started, everything else just fell into place. So it ended up sounding a lot more like a band record. I dunno why I did that exactly, but it’s just what happened.”
Glad it happened. I like the all acoustic stuff but there’s nothing quite like a Mascis electric guitar solo.
Last year’s “Grapevine” ended up being one of my favorite songs of 2022 and now there’s a new video to promote Weyes Blood’s “In Holy Flux Tour” which will keep Natalie Mering and co. on the road through November. The video is something of a tour diary of the previous run of shows in Europe and North America.
I’d give anything to hang
I’ve been without friends
Oh I’ve just been working
For years and I stopped having fun.
I imagine that’s a sentiment that a lot of us can connect with. It’s been a weird bunch of years, hasn’t it? But there’s no question that all of our lives could be greatly improved if we incorporated more capes into a wardrobes.
Directed by Lael Neale. Single out now on Sub Pop.
Lael Neale is known for her Omnichord recordings but I prefer her guitar songs. Not to be a rockist or a luddite or anything but I feel like a little more soul comes through when a human creates the rhythm as opposed to a machine. Just me? Probably. I’m fine with that.
This was recorded during the Star Eaters Delight sessions, the album she released this spring. Producer Guy Blakeslee says, “‘White T-Shirt’ dates back a number of years to when I used to follow Lael around LA to all of her barely publicized performances. The song never ceased to silence the chatter in the room. There was nothing I could add to this performance, it’s a raw gem that stands alone and cuts through the noise.”
It is a raw gem. It’s one of those evocative but enigmatic songs that makes you want to listen to it over and over again, trying to figure it out, each time getting closer but never quite unwrapping its mysteries.
You drew a knife
You killed a clock for killing time
I killed another bottle of wine.
Coincidentally, the video was released just as the National Cherry Festival was kicking off in Traverse City. Not sure if it’s cherry season in Virginia where Neale is from, but Michigan cherries are the best. Had she shot this video with Michigan cherries it wouldn’t have ended up so compelling because she wouldn’t have wanted waste them like that — she would’ve just scarfed them all down.
Directed by Eleanor Petry. From Plastic Eternity, out now on Sub Pop.
It’s Iggy Pop’s birthday today so it seems appropriate to share the latest Mudhoney single wherein Mark Arm and his pals imagine what it would sound like if the birthday boy loved pomeranians and miniature dachshunds as much as he loves his funny cockatoo Biggy.
Mudhoney’s currently on tour in Australia and they’ll be rolling through North America in the fall.
Directed by Alex Ross Perry. From Lucky For You, out June 2 on Sub Pop.
Aw, the new song was written after Alicia Bognanno’s dog died. She says, “As someone who has spent the majority of my life feeling agonizingly misunderstood, there is no greater gift than experiencing true unconditional love and acceptance. I waited my whole life for the bond and irreplaceable companionship I had with Mezzi. She was my best friend and my only constant through some of the most pivotal moments and phases of my life. I was a stranger to the level of love I now know exists because of Mezzi. Love you forever; I’m lucky for you.”
“Mezzi was my best friend,” she explains. “She made me feel safe and empowered, she showed me that I was worth loving and never judged me or viewed me as a let down. I always felt accepted, understood and so much less alone. Mezzi was living, breathing proof that I was worthy of being loved.”
I’ve had four dogs in my life. My first dog, Boo, was a blue standard poodle I got for my ninth birthday. She was great. She was my pal. She got sick after I went away to college and my mom and I had to put her down when I was home over a break. At the vet, I remember her lying on the metal table as we were hugging her and saying our goodbyes. She started pushing me away with her strong legs as if she didn’t want me to be next to her. I couldn’t understand why she didn’t want me by her side. Then her bowels abruptly exploded diarrhea all over me, head to toe, and I realized in her last moments she was trying to protect me from getting showered in shit. She was a very good dog.
Frankie was my firstborn. She was a red and brown miniature dachshund and she was feisty but sweet. Frankie slept in my belly every night for 18 1/2 years. When she was a couple years old we got her a friend. Georgia was black and tan and was the strangest dog I’ve ever known. She was an angel. She didn’t bark once until she was seven years old. She would eat one kibble at a time and after eating she would lick a spot on the rug for a half an hour. George was terrified of hardwood, tile and linoleum, and would have to ramp herself up to get from one rug to another by spinning in circles. After my son was born, Frank had no use for him but George loved him and stayed right next to him until she got sick and we had to put her down. My son cried, “Now all I’ve got left is a useless dog.” It was true. By that point Frank was a shell of herself. Deaf, blind, no teeth, clearly suffering from dementia and various other ailments. I realize now that keeping her alive for those last couple of years was a selfish act on my part. But I held onto her until the last possible moment, and I still miss her.
Now we’ve got Birdie and she’s quite possibly the greatest dog ever. She was a puppy mill rescue and she’s super needy and suffers from extreme separation anxiety. All she wants to do is be with us and please us. She is the most loving, affectionate animal I have ever known. She’s ten now. And I’ve told her she needs to live forever because I’m not going to be able to handle it when she dies.
Directed by Kit Harwood. Stand-alone single out now on Sub Pop.
Huh. Naima Bock released her debut album, Giant Palm, on Sub Pop last year and I completely missed it. If “Lines” is any indication, I’m going to have to go back and correct that. She’s got the classic folky vibe that I can’t get enough of.
Bock says, “Lines is about what we do to each other, some call the dance of intimacy, exchanges. What we are given, carry with us, then subsequently pass on to others- good and bad. How the recipient is often undeserving of the negative side of this reality. It’s about trying to dodge blame and the loneliness of guilt. It’s about the irony of impermanence and unhealthy patterns coexisting; ‘nothing stays’ but ‘nothings changed’. The idea of change I had grown accustomed to but the reality that some things won’t change until you actively work on them is something new to me, preferring to adopt a slightly lazy attitude and misunderstanding the saying ‘all passes’. Sometimes it doesn’t pass quickly enough. It’s also a song about anger, and the familiarity of not knowing where to put it.”
Directed by Arturo Baston. From Plastic Eternity, out April 7 on Sub Pop.
Whoa is this dance music? Madchester by way of Seattle? Cool.
Grunge was never my thing. Always seemed a little too macho and dick-swinging, and the sludgy guitar tones sometimes veered too close to metal which was definitely not my thing. But I saw Mudhoney’s Mark Arm singing with what was left of the MC5 in 2004 and he totally won me over. I’ve since gone back and listened to Mudhoney with the MC5 in mind and I get it now.
Arm says this new song “was originally known as ‘Gopal.’ It had been sitting in the recording device at our practice space for years and we avoided erasing it because we always loved its swinging Escalator groove.”
Translation for non-rocksnobs: Sam Gopal’s Escalator is the only album by Lemmy Kilmister’s pre-Hawkwind/pre-Motorhead band, released in 1969 on Stable Records. And yeah, it kind of sounds like this (but without the Madchester drums).
I feel like if I had a gorilla suit I’d wear it everywhere. Which is pretty much what the gorilla does in Quasi’s latest video. I hope I’m not spoiling anybody’s experience by suggesting it’s not a real gorilla. But yeah. Gorilla suits are always funny.
Quasi is such a great band. Jane Weiss’ drumming is as gnarly as ever on this one and Sam Coomes’ guitar and keyboard tones are even gnarlier.
Here they come now thoughts and prayers
Thoughts and prayers won’t get you there
But I guess they do make a pretty pair.
Weiss, the most powerful drummer alive today, whose day job is being a locations manager for feature films and television, says, “I put my Locations chops to good use and felt like a real DP filming from the tail gate of the minivan. Great times.”
I recently finished reading the big Weyes Blood profile by Margaret Talbot in the New Yorker. (I like to do the deal where you sign up for a six-week print subscription for like $6 and then spend the next six months reading those six issues.) Before reading that I didn’t know anything about Natalie Mering and I’d only heard a song or two. Must not have been in the right headspace because my first impression was it just sounded like boring Fleetwood Mac album filler. But the article inspired me to want to go back and listen closer. Mering is clearly a super interesting person with lots of ideas about music, nostalgia, and sounds. If her voice reminds you of Karen Carpenter, don’t forget that there was always a darkness and a sense of doom underlying those pretty melodies and dopey lyrics.
I haven’t had yet had a chance to dive too deeply into the message of “Grapevine” because I’m so knocked out by the sound of it. The tone of the opening acoustic guitar and bass is so warm and perfect that I find myself starting the track over and over so I can hear it again. It’s almost a minute before any percussion comes in and when it does it’ll blow your mind. Just listen. It’s worth it. (Make sure you turn up the volume. After I initially wrote this I listened to it in the car at “normal” volume and the experience was not the same.)
