Time for my thoughts on @Icarus-Smicarus’ mix. First off, sorry this has taken me ages, but there’s just so much of it….a full 22 tracks, making my twelve or so look like an EP or one of Kanye’s twenty minute “albums”.
I think Thee Oh Sees are one of the best live bands around right now (possibly the coldest take ever on DiS), but never really been sold on them on record. This is a good one, though, a proper banger right out of the gate to kick us off. Then a bit if eroding from The Comet Is Coming. I never got on with this album, which is a shame because I really liked the last one. The Flatworms track is really good, loving the urgency of that driving bassline. Twilight Sad feels really eighties, like Mike Scott’s Big Music gone bit goth, and there are some good squelches on the Battles track. Pretty Eyes is good, has that same trick of making noise effervescent that Parts & Labor did. Really liked Ty Segall around the time of Manipulator, but couldn’t keep up with everything he was putting out. Quite like this one, I should check out the album.
Squarehead are completely new to me, and this is pretty decent, with a big influence from classic US indie rock. Tandem Felix are another unknown. After the first minute or so I was going to write it off, but it picks up at the end, got quite into it after all. Bonniesongs is another new name. For the first thirty seconds or so I was liking this, thinking it was going to be a treat…and then the vocals came in, and I don’t think I’ll be listening to any more from Bonniesongs. Shame, because musically this is one of my favourites so far.
Moving on, we are back in the realm of artists I have heard of. Rozi Plain is someone I’ve always meant to check out. Seen her a few times playing with This Is The Kit, but somehow never got round to her solo records. Definitely in the same ballpark as the Kit, this is another poke to go and try them out. On to the Flamingods, who provided one of my favourite musical memories this year when I had an argument with someone at work about whether their name was pronounced “Flaming Gods” or more like flamingoes with a d on the end.
The Purple Mountains song is one of the few tracks here I knew beforehand. I played the album a lot on release but kind of drifted off it after a while, which is a shame because it is very good (and sad ofc). Stephen Malkmus is nice enough, but at this point I think if I was ever going to fall for his sound it would have happened by now. I was expecting a full on freak out from the Wand track, but this is a lot gentler, very pastoral. Like it.
And now we enter the final stretch with some folk. I do tend to find that a little bit of this kind of stuff goes a long way, but I did like the Shannon Lay track a lot. Alasdair Roberts is a little bit too Mulligan and O’Hare for my liking. It’s a funny one, I quite like the song and a lot of its constituent parts, but I’d like to hear a completely different take on it. I caught Lankum at a festival a couple of years ago and really enjoyed them. I already had this album, so we’re finishing on one I know. It works well as a closer, has an elegiac air of finality to it.
And there we are. Thanks so much for this, I can tell loads of work and thought went into it. Hope I haven’t come across as too negative, there was a lot I liked - will definitely listen to more from Tandem Felix, Pretty Eyes, Wand and others.
