Take a journey with Broke Royals' Local Support.'

For this in the know, the phrase "the latest Broke Royals album Local Support is produced by Bartees Strange," is probably enough for most people to give this a spin. I've struggled with the album myself—the first four songs are hard-charging gems I want to turn up to 11 and dance around to, but the album's swift and extended shift into a lower gear from track five onward was, well, so abrupt I had a hard time figuring out why they didn't just release 2 EPs instead of an LP with such a clear bifurcation of sounds.

But hey, that's why we sit on things we don't immediately understand, right? Despite the apparent binary approach to the album's music, I still found myself putting it on again and again ... and again. And any time I had the urge to "just make it into an EP for me" I realized the second half of the album still got full listens from me, no skips.

Sometimes you just have to let go in order to start to fully understand something, so I now view this LP as being front-loaded with bait so tasty you just have to keep listening, and once that hook is in, the remaining music feels like its more transportive to another state of mind than the speed bump it might initially be read as. This is the album Broke Royals intended to make, and you've just gotta trust them and allow its' charm to take grip.

It's WILD how much I love 'ILYSM,' and I think you will too.

Over the years I have built up a healthy resilience to what I view as bands overly-hyped by segments of the music press, but I've also always maintained that any band can surprise me at any given time, so I never write them off entirely. So that's how I came to order the latest release from Wild Pink on vinyl—one listen and it became obvious to me this was the album I think everyone had been describing in the past, but the band hadn't yet accomplished. But this LP is a real thing of beauty, and fits firmly in the "you've gotta listen to the whole thing, every time it starts playing" category for me.

That scene where two people are running in the rain/sunny field/crowded concert venue, finally finding each other.

Lissie is one of those artists I've followed for years that seemingly always bubbled just under the surface, always working hard and putting in the time, and I respect that. But she keeps my attention because she's routinely displayed true flashes of brilliance, and the first time I heard "Hearts On Fire" all I could think was, "This should be the soundtrack to every scene in a teen dramedy when the star-crossed lovers' fates finally align and race to be in each other's embrace!"

Also? The song just really makes me happy.

Snag this now, and I'll explain later.

The Backset Lovers is a band I think may be about to explode (in the really good way). So while I await the release of their major label debut—something that still feels weird to type about a good band in the year 2022—to share my thoughts on it with you in more detail, I highly recommend you snag their 2018 debut EP and get a little taste of their sound. I recommend this EP because a) it's free! and b) it's really good, and feels more like the precursor to the new album than the one other LP the band has released in the interim.

Consider this your advance notice to do your homework and get ready for what I think is a pretty remarkable album, Waiting To Spill, coming atcha October 28.

Dear me! Have you checked out Dear Boy yet?

Photo by Jonathan Weiner

Somehow managing to drift easily amidst multiple similar swim lanes between Britpop and clearly American sounds like Bishop Allen or Someone Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin, Dear Boy's debut Forever Sometimes is a fresh and clear sound I've been thirsting for! The L.A. quartet combines crisp hooks and sunny melodies that had me doodling sunshine raybeams and smiley hearts all over the cover of my Trapper Keeper. Which, to my mind, is the appropriate response in the face of something both new and timeless.

Check it out, and don't forget this week has a Bandcamp Friday in it if you're interested in your own copy of this fabulous LP!

Taking a breath to reflect.

This morning I stepped outside at my normal waking hour and found myself slightly depressed by the fact it was still dark outside, but the clocks turn back soon and sunshine will return to my mornings. This year I'm more bothered by the evening's curtain falling in the late afternoon, since if I don't get out for a lunchtime walk I kinda depend on the lowering sun to recharge before the end of the day.

Man, my schedule and way of looking at the world is so completely different than it was before I intentionally began to slow things down in 2019. I was in a non-stop activity loop, and barely paid attention to stuff like "the outdoors" and "mental health" and "pacing yourself." My life is much less exciting these days, but at least I stopped doing damage to myself (and other people)—such a pace inevitably extracts a heavy toll at some point. Even from those that seem unstoppable. So I'm grateful for the reframing my life has undergone, even if the circumstances that led to it were extremely painful. But I've learned a lot over the past couple years, and look forward to applying what I've learned to the outside world, so I'm hoping all that pain is worth it in the long run. I think it will.

30 years now vs 30 years then.

When I was a teenager, the notion of a rock band lasting 30 years was still a hypothetical. Literally no "rock" band had lasted that long! I mean, The Who and The Rolling Stones were both still going, but their albums delivered sharply diminishing returns through the '80s (with The Who faring slightly better due to having a single primary songwriter who was restless in his own solo work). And my senior year of high school saw both those bands rolling across the planet on massive world tours—The Who's guest-star-studded Tommy tour and the Stone's slowly rusting Steel Wheels tour—that mostly mined material from much earlier periods of both bands' careers for their setlists.

But hey, no band had ever lasted that long yet, so what could you expect, right?

So it's kinda fun to me that these days as newer bands from that time are coming up on their own 30th anniversaries, they're often releasing albums as good as—and sometimes even better—than the ones during their original glory years.* And most of those bands touring play with a fire and passion that keeps them fro falling into some modern-day nostalgia circuit.

Turns out you need neither burn out NOR fade away after all!

Spotted in the wild—ME!

Photo by Joseph Harnish

I've largely been a hermit for ~2.5 years, so it's still a bit of a shock to see a recent photo of me that wasn't taken by me!

I was standing in the back of a packed crowd for GWAR last Saturday at Riot Fest—two of my friends ventured a little closer but I'd found a spot I knew my height wasn't blocking anyone's sight—when I saw a bright, purplish light appear to the side of me. But after a decade-plus shooting bands in the photo pit, it takes a lot to actually get me to look at a distraction when I'm framing a photo at a show, even if only on my phone. But once I got my shot I looked to my left and there was my friend Joe, grinning from ear to ear, a smile I quickly matched when I realized it was Joe!

And that's the story of the first photo of me by another human in quite a while. 

Tuscadero resurfaces!

Tuscadero used this promo photo for forever if I recall correctly. Photo by Will Weems.

One of the more pleasant byproducts of our current era in music is the ability for unsung or under-recognized bands from decades past to get their music back out there. Olds like me get a chance to snag some things that were either long lost to history or provide a new glance into what the band was doing at the time. And everyone else? I'm guessing most have no clue who is and isn't active when they're streaming music, so it reintroduces bands to the cultural conversation after sitting on ice for a while.

At the beginning of the pandemic I had started planning a whole series covering these resurfacing groups, and those plans never died so much as they just kept getting shunted aside. So while this isn't technically part of the series I planned, maybe it'll spur me to start sharing more of these discoveries with you.

Tuscadero was a band out of the D.C. area that could be both twee as all get out and muscular as fuck when they played live. I saw them a few times and watched them grow from a shaky but fun indie act into an excellent live act that could could command a room and still feel more nuanced even as the volume of the music increased. 

Tuscadero pretty much disappeared after their Major Label debut, and I always suspected their years on the indie Teen-Beat label were probably more fun for the band. Maybe if I was smarter I would've asked them that when I interviewed them in the mid-'90s for one of the Chicago dates they played. For a while they were one of my favorite bands, and I still return to their albums every once in a while. But I never expected to hear from Tuscadero ever again.

But then!

This morning I stumbled across a live release from the band's 1996 tour, which might've been the tour I interviewed them on (though I am having a hard time remembering, and the UIC newspaper digital archives for that era don't exist). But more importantly it clued me into the fact that Tuscadero had a Bandcamp page and there was music there I'd never heard before! It appears the group is sharing their early Teen-Beat EPs and singles for now, so if you are new to the band I would HIGHLY recommend starting with those.* But the 1996 NYC show below is a brand new discovery of a time capsule for me, containing a nice overview of their material as the band was starting to stretch beyond their original comfort zone. 

A word of caution to set context—this is a show recorded at an indie club in the '90s. Back then, most of the time, if you wanted a live recording you just patched into the soundboard. And that seems to be the source of this recording. So this doesn't sound like you might now expect a professionally recorded gig these days, and it misses some of the more nuanced bits with the flatter board mix, but to my ears it's a glorious revisiting of a different time. And it brings back all the feels. Hopefully we'll hear more from the band, but if not this was a nice coda for me.

*In fact, I'm reasonably sure someone at Teen-Beat started the Tuscadero Bandcamp page, but I'm not 100% certain. I don't really care who started it as long as it gives other people a chance to fall in love with this little band too!

Dianel Romano's Outfit shoots for the moon.

Photo by Colin Medley

I personally discovered Daniel Romano early in the pandemic, stumbling across one of his albums and then going down the rabbit hole that is his sprawling catalog. But it was 2021's Cobra Poems that made me realize what a restless genius Romano and his merry crew (dubbed the Outfit) truly were. In fact, that album is on my list of the best releases in 2021.*

On La Luna, Daniel Romano's Outfit tackles the always challenging concept of a—ahem—concept album composed of a single song broken into multiple movements. In lay terms, it's a really long song that never gets boring.

I have found that listening to this album on my own terms has revealed a deeper and deeper engagement with the music on every listen, so I don't want to color your perceptions in that arena. I think it's better if you just let yourself sink into the sound and make sense of it for yourself.

And if that sounds challenging; it is not! Yes, it's a single one song cycle, but it's filled with hooks and emotional transitions and Romano's Outfit always endeavors to keep your attention, so there's no filler to be found here, even in the transitional segments.

*No, you didn't miss it. I have yet to actually publish the final list. But I will!

The solitary shoot desires to become part of the forest again.

I'm still trying to find my way back to whatever "normal" will be. I've got the solitude and self-reflection parts down—the things that should set me up for a positive re-entry—but worry I've somehow missed my re-entry window after so many false starts. And now that most people are living their lives as if the pandemic never happened, those of us that stayed isolated to keep ourselves and others safe are still trying to navigate a world we find both startlingly different in many ways, and depressingly familiar in others. But how do you explain to people that you need a few days to mentally prepare for social interactions any time you want to leave the house?

Instead I spend all my free time walking and reading and playing Best Fiends, and confess I'm often lost in deep mental labyrinths that are healthy and necessary explorations ... but it does make one feel like a hermit that's trapped in their seclusion after a while. 

Early in the pandemic I would text friends to check in on them, but as time passed I worried my honest concern might be interpreted as being needy in some fashion, so I stopped texting anyone who didn't reach out to me first. And now even when someone does text me it can take me days to reply. In my attempt to not be a bother I think I accidentally secluded myself even further. So I come off a long holiday weekend like this last one feeling I covered a lot of mental ground and filled my brain with beautiful, peaceful scenery while doing so, but I also feel I've made no progress in the realm of acclimating myself to social events and interactions beyond the professional.

So yeah, this is more a check in than anything else. I wish it was a chirpier, happier check in, but if anyone else is feeling this way I think it's important that they know they are not alone. I know that would help me.

Living Hour's sound swells and expands and fills your head with light.

Photo by Adam Kelly

It's Bandcamp Friday so it's a good time to pick up anything from your favorite artists you may have been sitting on buying. But it's also a day to support music that may be brand new to you, right? So if you're looking for something to sample and potentially buy today, Living Hour's new album just dropped and I think it's worth your time.

Don't be fooled, while Someday Is Today starts with hushed tones it grows deeply engaging as it unspools. The album slowly blossoms and opens up, and next thing you know you're covered in its bittersweet pollen and don't want to escape.

Living Hour isn't unafraid to build up walls of guitars around their tender missives, but the sound never overwhelms—somehow all the elements remain balanced and it's a remarkable trick to these weathered ears. 

It's a lovely album to soak in as you sit in a park or wander along on a woodsy walk this holiday weekend.

Celebrating Joe.

I previewed a celebration of Joe Cassidy that is happening at Metro this Sunday.

I still think about Joe every single day.

If you want to skip the preview and just pick up tickets, you can do that here. 

Gimme some Fletch—I'm ready!

While I will always wonder what a Fletch movie would've been like with the actor Kevin Smith once told me he wanted to cast in the role, I think Jon Hamm is gonna do a mighty fine job. I was already feeling positive about this movie, but the scene in the trailer where Fletch is being compared to his ID photo ... well, that sealed this deal for me. 

Fletch lives!

Get lost in the meadow with Eli Miller.

Photo by Julia Dratel

There's not a ton for me to say about Chicago' Eli Winter’s self-titled album that's out this Friday, other than I highly suggest you check it out. I'm not a person who usually gravitates towards the folkier side of the spectrum, but the intricate guitar work here elevates this onto a different plain. And as I've found myself drawn to music that is truly transporting—that will remove me from the current moment and plop me in the middle of another world for 30-50 minutes—this seems like a lovely culmination of all the things I like when it comes to playing in that arena. Or occupying that meadow.

Keep For Cheap delivers a bundle of tunes soaring above the Midwestern prairie.

Keep For Cheap, looking mischievous yet subdued, photo by Morgan Winston

Everything I've been sent from Keep For Cheap includes the line "Prairie Rock out of Minneapolis, MN" and I have to agree that the band saved weary music critics from having to come up with their own, less accurate definition of the band's sound.

Bundle is the band's debut full-length, following a series of singles and EPs that clearly define the group's progress over the years from a gifted almost-folk act into their current confident balance of softer sounds, energetic rhythms, and voices that blend as if bonded by blood.

I'd been waiting to write about the band in hopes of linking it to a Chicago show, but it appears the group is currently playing shows only in the Minneapolis region. But today, the band released a video for their latest single off Bundle, "Hide My Emotion," a song that runs along the band's softer contours of sound.

I can see you sitting there (or standing there) watching the video above and asking yourself, "Well this is nice, and I can see why he likes the video, but what else can they do?"

So here's the second-most-recent single off Bundle, currently on YouTube with the caption "The Time is Keep for Cheap's third and final single off their debut album." So I'm happy that turned out to not be true and they had another single / video in 'em! So give this a peek and you'll see the energetic side of the group that clearly also hits me directly in my aural happy spot. 

See? Between these two videos, I think you can see what it is I find so alluring about this group, and I really hope they do tour a little farther from their home base in the near future because I'm eager to see what their live shows are like.* But in my head, they are super fun.

You can give the whole album a spin below, and snag physical** or digital copies of Bundle if Keep For Cheap knocks you off your feet as clearly and cleanly and they did me.

*Private message to Keep For Cheap: C'mon, come play Chicago!

**I picked up the 12" Red Swirl vinyl for myself, just in case you were wondering.

Thinking of you, thinking of Bloods, and wanting to dance in the sun.

Bloods

Bloods hails from Sydney, Australia and applies equal parts pop sheen and rock grit to their danceable tunes. They've got that thing where the band can sound poppy as all get out, but you also get the impression they've played in a few rough bars along the way and wouldn't stand for anyone calling them soft. Maybe it's the continent—INXS had a similar vibe to them in the earlier days they never fully lost despite becoming mega-stars in the late '80s—but whatever it is, it's working for Bloods.

Their new album Together, Baby! is out next month, but the track "Thinking Of You Thinking Of Me" is 110% a summer bop, and it seems criminal for you to not enjoy its pleasures immediately. So give it a listen, put it on repeat, and deploy as needed to either enhance (or make up for lack of) a summery sunshine day.

Midwestern-sounding power-pop via Sweden? That's Capricorn!

I realized I'd been sitting on this album since January, waiting for its release, and then never ever posted about how awesome Capricorn is! But holy shit, this track sounds like old Tom Petty meets Jackson Browne's "Running on Empty;" high-energy stuff that's polished but never plastic, and I can feel the sweat hitting the guitar strings as they push the good times forward.

The video above is just for the opening track, but the whole album fires at this level. And you can sample the full-album playlist on YouTube or go ahead and order yourself a copy of the band's excellent For The Restless LP.

A 100% guaranteed musical shot of joy.

Today marks a number of important anniversaries in my life, and that made me think of the songs I always turn to when I need a dependable boost. One of those, I Was A King's "Norman Bleik," has worked for me 100% of time when I needed it, but it's been hard to track down in an easily sharable form, so I've always kinda kept it for myself, despite believing its power may be strong enough to energize anyone within listening distance.* It's not just one thing about the song that works—not the lyrics or melody or arrangement alone—it is the song working as a perfect whole that gives it rejuvenating powers.

But today I ran across it as a track in a label sampler, so if you don't want to dig through used record stores for your own copy of the band's 2009 self-titled album (or the actual single!), this should do the trick when you have need of a pick-me-up!**

And while I think many would argue this song is well known and helped the band break through to a wider audience, in my mind it has never reached the influential heights is power should've imbued the song with the power to do.

*Keeping in my mind I prefer to not share Spotify or Apple Music or Tidal or any of those kind of streaming links. Once, this is my interpretation of "easily sharable."

**Naturally, I will always prefer having a copy of the actual album, and highly recommend it!

Hello, hi—you'll definitely want to stick around!

So, while I've always enjoyed Ty Segall's stuff, I confess it's always fit more in the "I dig it, bit it doesn't really stick with me" category of music. But the nice thing about that category is that when something does hit, it hits hard! And with "Hello, Hi" Segall made me into a believer. Heck, as you can see above, I even shelled out hard-earned dough for the vinyl of this album!

On "Hello, Hi" Segall mixes lower-key acoustic numbers with some real '70s chugging, choogling rockers. The whole thing is tight, flows perfectly, and actually sounds like an album I'd've asked my mom to play in the '70s. I won't go into all the influences I hear here, you should enjoy the fun in that instead of me spelling it out for you, but this is a really, really lovely standout of an album.