Palm Friends’ music has an easy sound to the ear, with each song stepping into another direction, while keeping it recognizable. It’s a hard thing to do across two or three separate releases, let alone within a single EP. Yet, that is exactly what the Minneapolis quartet have done on The Delivery, their latest record.
Sometimes it is hard to connect the title of an album or EP to the music enclosed, but that is not a problem here. In these excruciatingly hard times, Babehoven’s Maya Bon asks an equally hard question that connects all the songs here - what if we decide to exclude ourselves from everything that makes it so hard?
Curtis Godino is sort of both mastermind and middleman here, as the album is billed in the form of Curtis Godino presents The Midnight Wishers. Although full of Godino and Kramer's touches, it’s The Midnight Wishers who act as the medium to present the ideas of transporting the sound of iconic girl groups into the left-field modern age.
Rae’s songwriting covers practically the full spectrum of sophisticated pop genres. There’s the jazzed-up introduction of “Candy & Curry” and the soulful R&B oriented “True Love Face” to the seventies singer/songwriter west coast stylings of “Gonna Be Strange” and “Drift Away” to full on baroque pop of “Cosmic High”.
Favoring that lo-fi Guide By Voices type approach of recording anywhere you can, from basements to practice spaces, Settle does remix the material professionally (this time around Justin Pizzoferrato, to give it a more polished sound while still retaining that buzz and rush his combination of power pop and punky garage creates.
Throughout the album you get a reflective, melancholy feeling, ranging from warmth to sadness within moments. “Pouring Rain’ just might be the giveaway here, but that feeling permeates the album, making that song and tracks like “Never Play It Cool” or “There Must Be Some Problem Here” things of pure beauty.
Battle Ave are back and so is their obvious love for the music of the nineties, the good stuff that came up during that decade, that is. That good stuff usually came from independent alternative bands - intricate guitar arrangements, subtle arrangements and as much melody coming through the vocals as possible.
What can you expect from an artist that goes under the name Strawberry Guy, giving his new album a title like Sun Outside My Window? Some modern variation of sunshine pop? Something that usually comes from places like the California or Liverpool? If that is what you would expect, that is exactly what you will get from this artist and album.
After releasing a new studio album in 2021, (Sweep into Space), and a documentary (Freakscene: The Story of Dinosaur Jr), this live album represents sort of a Dinosaur Jr career overview so far, complementary to the film. You got it all here, form absolute classics like the always inspiring “Freak Scene” to tracks from the latest album.
How do you collect the essence of modern Americana music from various sources and then present it as your own vision of what music should sound like? If in doubt you might consult Philadelphia’s Sheridan Frances ‘Francie’ Medosch, who goes under the artistic name of Florry and take a deeper listen to her latest album Big Fall.
Here come Rose, Water, Fountain, somewhere from the outskirts of Boston to actually hit that nineties indie rock sound right on the nail's head, and not only that. The duo somehow make sure that it perfectly fits into all that is going on now in music, as if Olivia Tremor Control or Dressy Bessy never went away.
