Tortoise - I Set My Face to the Hillside (YouTube)
Last year, I bought TNT by Tortoise on CD from a Discogs seller.1 I should tell you, this sort of activity is as sure a sign of my devotion to a particular album as any. After all, I’ve got access to high-quality digital copies of albums like this through streaming. I don’t need to seek them out on an online marketplace, where, let’s face it, you don’t always know the quality of the merchandise.2
The last few days have brought with them some serious nineties nostalgia. So it’s fitting that Weezer released a video for their new single, “We Might As Well Be Strangers.” The song represents a return to the form for the prolific but not always consistent band. Perhaps the best part of the song and the video is the inclusion of guest Karly Hartzman of Wednesday. Hartzman brings her punk rock sneer and pout to the breakup song.
With Life in Small Spaces, the upcoming album from Black Marble, the project’s creator, Chris Stewart, taps into one of my semi-obsessions. The album’s description on its Bandcamp page has further details on the clue we are given with the album title.
It is an invitation to accept and consciously agree to a more minimal lifestyle for the sake of creative expression and freedom, and to never need to compromise your values for the tempting illusion of success.
I’ve been on a post-punk x new wave kind of kick the last several days, after I learned Black Marble (who I blogged about last year) are going to be playing nearby in September. The algorithm overlords recommended Castlebeat to me after the end of a listening sesh of “Bigger Than Life.” I hadn’t listened to Castlebeat in a few years, but remembered them from this fan video using footage from the best movie ever to take place in a Target big box store — Career Opportunities.
In honor of Tops’ new album Bury The Key being released yesterday, I’m featuring one of the tracks, “Falling On My Sword,” as the Saturday Night Video this week.
“Falling On My Sword” is my favorite among the early singles from this LP and probably the one that most closely matches the 70’s prog rock-inspired cover art. It’s a bit of a left turn for Tops. Based on their previous work, you would think anything born of a seventies influence would be more in line with late-decade disco (and the remainder of the album features some of that).
Brothers Evan and Quinn Seurkamp, who primarily make up the Ohio band The Laughing Chimes, call upon the hauntings of the Appalachian foothills of their native state as inspiration for their gothic jangly post-punk. There is a wistfulness appropriate to the rust belt and its faded glory that pervades their album Whispers in the Speech Machine.