Best of What’s New

Happy Saturday, which means it’s time to take a fresh look at newly-released music! Sometimes, these weekly posts come together pretty quickly. On other occasions, they take a bit more time. This installment fell more into the latter category. It simply all depends on how much research I need to do to find new music I reasonably enjoy, based on initial impressions. All of my picks in this post appear on albums that were released yesterday (April 8). In one case it’s a single from an upcoming record.

Father John Misty/Q4

I’d like to kick off with American singer-songwriter, multi-instrumentalist and record producer Joshua Tillman, known as Father John Misty. Tillman, who grew up in an Evangelical Christian household in Rockville, Md., has been active since 2001. Apart from having been a member of or toured with multiple bands, such as Demon Hunter, Fleet Foxes and Jeffertitti’s Nile (none of which I know), Tillman has contributed to albums by the likes of Beyoncé, Lady Gaga and Post Malone and produced an album for Matthew Daniel Siskin, known as Gambles – quite an eclectic-looking mix! Since 2003, he also has released 13 solo albums, initially as J. Tillman and from 2012 onward under the Father John Misty moniker. Q4 is a track from Tillman’s new album Chloë and the Next 20th Century. Inspired by big band, jazz standards and traditional pop, it’s been compared to Randy Newman’s Sail Away and Harry Nilsson’s A Little Touch of Schmilsson in the Night, according to Wikipedia. Check out that neat harpsichord on Q4, a tune penned by Tillman.

The Linda Lindas/Talking to Myself

I first came across and featured Los Angeles-based all-female pop-punk and garage band The Linda Lindas in early March. Founded in 2018 when they were still young teenagers, the group features Bela Salazar (guitar, vocals), Eloise Wong (bass, vocals), Lucia de la Garza (guitar, vocals) and her sister Mila de la Garza (drums, vocals). After American actress and film director Amy Poehler watched the band perform live, she asked them to record a song for her 2021 comedy-drama Moxie. The Linda Lindas also penned a tune for the 2020 Netflix documentary The Claudia Kishi Club. Last May, they signed with  Epitaph Records and released Oh!, their first single with the label. Talking to Myself, credited to Mila de la Garza and The Linda Lindas, is a song from their first full-length album Growing Up. There’s just something about the enthusiasm and energy these young ladies project!

Caitlyn Smith/Dreamin’s Free

Caitlyn Smith is a country and pop singer-songwriter. According to her Apple Music profile, she cashed out her college fund to record her debut, Learning to Be, which was released when she was just 15 [in 2001 – CMM]. Her breakthrough album, Starfire [January 2018 – CMM], named for a vintage guitar she received from her father, debuted at the top of the iTunes Singer/Songwriter chart. Meghan Trainor’s “Like I’m Gonna Lose You” and the Dolly Parton-Kenny Rogers duet “You Can’t Make Old Friends” are just two of the hits she’s written for other artists….Garth Brooks called Smith one of the top female vocalists he’s ever heard. Colbie Caillat, Kacey Musgraves, and Maren Morris have all performed at her quarterly “Girls of Nashville” songwriting showcase. This brings me to Smith’s third and latest studio album High and the track Dreamin’s Free, a nice tune, co-written by her, Lori McKenna and Shane McAnally.

Thundermother/Watch Out

Wrapping up this week’s new music revue are all-female Swedish hard rockers Thundermother. The band, formed in Stockholm in 2010, currently consists of founder Filippa Nässil (guitar), along with Guernica Mancini (lead vocals), Mona “Demona” Lindgren (bass) and Emlee Johansson (drums), according to their website. Their debut album Rock ‘n’ Roll Disaster appeared in January 2014. Watch Out is Thundermother’s new single from their upcoming fifth album Black and Gold. “The song is about this moment in our career,” said Nässil in a press release. “It’s about rising up, being powerful women working as a team, and taking charge.” The following clip notes, “For Fans Of: AC/DC, Airbourne, D-A-D, Rose Tattoo, Aerosmith Hardrock” – sounds about right to me!

Last but not least, here’s this week’s Spotify list featuring the above and a few additional tunes. Hope you’ll find something you dig!

Sources: Wikipedia; Apple Music; Thundermother website; YouTube; Spotify

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The Sunday Six

Welcome to another installment of The Sunday Six, my weekly imaginary time travel that celebrates music of the past 60 years or so, six tunes at a time. Today’s post was inspired by fellow blogger and poet Lisa from Tao Talk who is currently doing a great Women Music March series. The reality is the music business is pretty male-dominated, even more so once you go back to the past. But, as many music fans know, there have been amazing female artists throughout the decades. Following are some of them.

Ella Fitzgerald/Rock It For Me

Let’s start today’s journey in the year 1938. ‘Wait a moment,’ you may say, that’s 84 years ago, not just 60. Well, the 60-year span isn’t set in stone. In fact, nothing really is on The Sunday Six, except I have to dig it. I trust everybody has heard of American jazz singer Ella Fitzgerald. According to Wikipedia, “The First Lady of Song”, “Queen of Jazz” and “Lady Ella”, as she was called, was known for her purity of tone, impeccable diction, phrasing, timing, intonation and a “horn-like” improvisational ability, particularly in her scat singing (a vocal improvisation with wordless vocables, nonsense syllables or no words at all – CMM). After gaining popularity with the Chick Webb Orchestra during the second half of the 1930s, Fitzgerald launched a solo career in 1942. Over a nearly 60-year career, she collaborated with the likes of Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington and The Ink Spots, and released an enormous catalog of studio and live solo and collaboration albums. Rock It For Me, co-written by twins Kay Werner and Sue Werner, appeared as a single by the Chick Webb Orchestra in 1938. Wikipedia notes the lyrics include the term “rock and roll,” an early reference to the genre before it existed…Now it’s true that once upon a time/The opera was the thing/But today the rage is rhythm and rhyme/So won’t you satisfy my soul/With the rock and roll…

Wanda Jackson/Let’s Have a Party

Let’s continue our music celebration with some kickass classic rock & roll by Wanda Jackson, one of the first female artists who made a career in rock & roll in the 1950s. One of her best-known tunes is Let’s Have a Party, penned by Jessie Mae Robinson, which Jackson first recorded for her eponymous debut album from July 1958. The previous year, Elvis Presley had released the song as a single in the UK, titled Party. As much as I dig Elvis, Jackson’s version leaves him in the dust! Jackson’s rendition of Let’s Have a Party also came out as a single in June 1960. If I see it correctly, this was her first song that charted on the Billboard Hot 100, climbing to no. 37. Jackson, who is now 84, has also released music in other genres, including country and gospel. Apparently, she is still active. Her latest album Encore appeared last year, and you can watch her most recent single It Keeps Right On A Hurtin’ here. What a dynamite lady!

Joan Jett & the Blackhearts/I Love Rock ‘n’ Roll

Speaking of kickass, next our time machine shall take us to the early ’80s and Joan Jett & the Blackhearts. Yes, I Love Rock ‘n’ Roll may be the obvious tune, and it hasn’t exactly suffered from underexposure. But, as we used to say in Germany during my teenage years, this tune is just “geil,” which loosely translated means amazing. Co-written by Alan Merrill and Jake Hooker, who shockingly were both guitarists, I Love Rock ‘n’ Roll was first recorded by short-lived British rock band Arrows and released as a single in July 1975. After Jett had seen the band perform the tune on British TV in 1976 while touring the UK, she decided to cover it. Her initial rendition was recorded with Sex Pistols guitarist and drummer Steve Jones and Paul Cook, respectively. It appeared in 1979 as the B-side to Jett’s single You Don’t Own Me and went unnoticed. Jett’s decision to re-record the song in 1981 with her band the Blackhearts and make it the title track of the group’s second studio album proved to be a winner. Not only did the tune become the band’s first charting single, but it also turned out to be their biggest hit. I Love Rock ‘n’ Roll topped the mainstream charts in the U.S., Canada, Australia and New Zealand, hit no. 1 in Sweden, and reached the top 10 in various other European countries. Joan Jett & the Blackhearts still love rock & roll and are scheduled to launch what looks like an extended US tour later this month.

The Pointer Sisters/Fire

American vocal group The Pointer Sisters, who have been around since 1970, have performed songs in multiple genres, including pop, disco, jazz, electronic music, bebop, blues, soul, funk, dance, country and rock – I suppose it would have been easier to list the genres they haven’t done! The song that brought them on my radar screen is one of their biggest hits: Fire. For several years, I didn’t realize this was actually a Bruce Springsteen tune. When I heard the original for the first time on Springsteen’s boxed set Live/1975–85, admittedly, I was underwhelmed, feeling it lacked the great dynamic of the Pointer Sisters. I’ve since warmed to it, though I still prefer the rendition by the female vocal group. Their version was first released as the lead single of their fifth studio album Energy in October 1978. The entire record is fairly rock-oriented and also includes a great cover of the Steely Dan tune Dirty Work.

Melissa Aldana/Elsewhere

Not including an instrumental in a Sunday Six post just didn’t feel right, so I decided to feature another track by my “latest discovery,” Melissa Aldana, a tenor saxophonist from Chile. In case you saw my latest Best of What’s New installment, you may recall the name. Borrowing from this post, Aldana, the daughter of renowned tenor saxophonist Marcos Aldana, began formal saxophone instruction at the age of six. By the time she was 16, she already headlined jazz clubs in Santiago. With the help of Panamanian pianist Danilo Pérez, Aldana auditioned at Berklee College of Music and the New England Conservatory, subsequently won a scholarship to Berklee and launched a career in the U.S. Elsewhere is a beautiful tune from Aldana’s fifth studio album Visions released in May 2019. This young woman is so talented!

The Linda Lindas/Growing Up

And once again this brings us to the final stop of our mini-excursion. How many Asian-American and Latino all-female punk bands do you know? I had not been aware of any until I came across The Linda Lindas the other day. This group from Los Angeles, which includes Bela Salazar (guitar, vocals), Eloise Wong (bass, vocals), Lucia de la Garza (guitar, vocals) and her sister Mila de la Garza (drums, vocals), has been around since 2018. After American actress and film director Amy Poehler watched a live performance of the band, she asked them to record a song for her 2021 comedy-drama Moxie. The Linda Lindas also penned a tune for the 2020 Netflix documentary The Claudia Kishi Club. In May last year, they signed with Epitaph Records and released Oh!, their first single with the label. Here’s Growing Up, the title track of the band’s full-length debut album that’s scheduled for April 8. The enthusiasm and energy of these ladies just make me smile. And apparently, they are still so young. I suppose I’m now at an age where I repeatedly find myself thinking, ‘gee, these could be my kids!’

Last but not least, here’s a playlist of all the above-featured tunes.

Sources: Wikipedia; Joan Jett & the Blackhearts website; YouTube; Spotify