Best of What’s New

Happy Saturday! Hope you join me in taking a fresh look at newly-released music. All featured tunes appear on albums that were released yesterday. (May 20).

Zach Bryan/Something in the Orange

Kicking things off today is Zack Bryan, a red dirt country singer-songwriter from Oklahoma I first featured in a previous Best of What’s New installment in November 2020. According to Wikipedia, red dirt is a music genre named after the color of soil found in Oklahoma, which includes elements of Americana, folk, alt-country and a few other genres. Soon after receiving his first guitar as a 14-year-old, Bryan learned how to play and started writing songs. Later he followed in the footsteps of his family and enlisted in the Navy. But he didn’t give up music, and during a break in Jacksonville, Fla., Bryan and his friends spontaneously decided to record some tunes that would become his 2019 debut album DeAnn. Now Bryan is out with his third studio effort, American Heartbreak, an ambitious 34-track triple album. Check out Something in the Orange. I can hear traces of Neil Young, Bruce Springsteen and Jason Isbell – great song!

Cola/At Pace

Cola are a Canadian post-punk band from Toronto. The group’s origins date back to late 2019 when Tim Darcy (vocals, guitar) and Ben Stidworthy (bass) who were members of Ought, another Toronto post-punk group, started working on music with Evan Cartwright, drummer of U.S. Girls, which Wikipedia describes as an experimental pop project by musician and record producer Meghan Remy – all completely new names to me. I’m also a bit puzzled how a group can name themselves Cola and not get in trouble with the mighty American beverage maker! Anyway, here’s At Pace, a track co-written by Stidworthy and Darcy from the group’s debut album Deep in View. There’s something about it – I kind of like their bare bones sound. What do you think?

Courtney Jaye/Hymns and Hallelucinations

Next up is folk singer-songwriter Courtney Jaye. Here’s more from her Apple Music profile: Born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, singer/songwriter Courtney Jaye was signed on the spot after a mutual friend managed to set up an audition with several A&R executives at Island Def Jam Music Group. She made her major-label debut with 2005’s Traveling Light, and several of her songs found their way onto TV programs like Laguna Beach and One Tree Hill. Her partnership with Island proved to be short-lived, however, and she spent the rest of the decade issuing independent albums like 2007’s Who’ll Stop the Rain. The Exotic Sounds of Courtney Jaye, her most accomplished album to date, followed in 2010, and featured a combination of Laurel Canyon folk and tropical pop. Which brings me to Hymns and Hallelucinations, the title track of her sixth and latest album (yes, it’s spelled that way) – kind of a riveting tune!

Alex Izenberg/Gemini Underwater

Alex Izenberg is an English chamber pop singer-songwriter. From his AllMusic bio: Touching on influences like Harry Nilsson, Van Dyke Parks, and King Crimson, the intimate chamber pop of singer/songwriter Alex Izenberg is colored by vintage Baroque and psychedelic pop as well as a flair for the romantic. He emerged with his full-length debut, Harlequin, in 2016. He drew inspiration from Alan Watts‘ writings on situational personas for his third album, 2022’s I’m Not Here. Here’s a track off that album, Gemini Underwater, which like all other tunes was penned by Izenberg.

SOAK/Purgatory

My last pick for this week is SOAK, the stage name of Northern Irish singer-songwriter Bridie Monds-Watson. The stage name is a combination of soul and folk. Here’s more from Monds-Watson’s Apple Music profile: Bridie Monds-Watson’s breathy, emotionally revealing songs and evocative, often spare performing style are certainly soulful and folk-influenced, but there’s just as much indie rock in their musical formula. SOAK released a series of EPs beginning in 2012 before issuing their debut album, Before We Forgot How to Dream, as a teen in 2015. It was nominated for a Mercury Prize. The songwriter grappled with the realities of young adulthood on 2019’s Grim Town, then revisited formative experiences on 2022’s If I Never Know You Like This Again after embracing a non-binary identity. The opener of that album, Purgatory, was co-written by Monds-Watson and Thomas McLaughlin.

Last but not least, here’s a Spotify playlist featuring the above and a few other tunes.

Sources: Wikipedia; Apple Music; AllMusic; YouTube; Spotify

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

Return of the Phenix

On November 4, 1980, a cargo plane carrying equipment of Peter Frampton and his band, who were touring South America, crashed during takeoff from Caracas International Airport. The accident killed all six crew members and destroyed most of the equipment. It was believed the latter included Frampton’s Gibson Les Paul he had played for the past decade. In a new documentary on YouTube, the British guitarist recalls the intriguing tale of how he got the guitar in the first place, thought it was lost in the above plane crash, and was reunited with his beloved instrument 31 years later in 2011.

The documentary starts with some footage showing how Frampton received his long-lost guitar and after brief inspection proclaimed, “yeah, it’s my guitar.” He then explains how his story with the modified 1954 Les Paul Custom began – a guitar he didn’t only use on one of the most widely recognized live records of the ’70s, Frampton Comes Alive!, but also on his final album with Humble Pie, Rock On, his first seven solo records, as well as different session work for artists like John Entwistle, Harry Nilsson and Doris Troy.

In 1970, Humble Pie were playing a series of shows at Fillmore West in San Francisco. Frampton had just replaced a Gibson SG for a hollow-body Gibson ES-335. Since the latter was prone to feedback when played at high volumes it wasn’t a happy experience for Frampton. Every time he turned up for a solo, he got feedback. Enter fellow guitarist and Frampton fan Marc Mariana who offered Frampton his guitar, the above-mentioned modified 1954 Les Paul Custom. When Frampton tried it out the next day, he fell in love with it immediately.

Return of Phenix: Marc Mariana (left) with Peter Frampton

“I started playing it. It was just beautiful,” Frampton recalled. “I could see you were really enjoying it, more or less bonding to it,” added Mariana. “And I just made the decision that if it means me leaving with a handful of cash or empty-handed, I’ll leave empty-handed because I couldn’t take it back. It wasn’t gonna leave with me cause I knew it had found a new home.”

Frampton used the guitar the same night at Fillmore West and was a happy camper. When he got off stage he handed the instrument back to Mariana. He also told him it’s an amazing guitar, asking whether he would ever consider selling it. Mariana replied no, he would give the guitar to Frampton. “It was one of those things that you do,” he elaborated. “You know it’s the right thing to do when you do it, and 50 or 40 years later, you still know it’s the right thing to do.”

Quickly, it becomes crystal-clear this Gibson Les Paul Custom wasn’t just any guitar to Frampton. “It became the only guitar I could play,” he said. “It became so personal to me that when I lost it I had to learn how to play other instruments, which was very strange for me.” It may sound a bit weird that a sophisticated guitarist like Peter Frampton would be so challenged to play other guitars, especially to non-musicians. While I certainly don’t want to imply I’m an expert, as a hobby guitarist, I still think I can relate.

What exactly happened in the aftermath of the plane crash and how the guitar was removed from the wreckage remains a mystery. Not surprisingly, Frampton and his band assumed all guitars and other equipment were completely burned up in the fire that resulted from the accident. But when Frampton’s guitar technician went to Caracas a week after the crash to check what was left for insurance purposes, he found the tail of the plane had broken off and that there was some salvageable equipment in the tail. They also saw pictures of other equipment that was totally burned up. What was missing was any trace of the Gibson Les Paul Custom.

Fast-forward to 2009 when Frampton and his crew heard and saw pictures of the guitar. The documentary doesn’t go into the details of how the guitar was found. According to this 2016 story in Guitar Interactive Magazine, Donald Valentina, a customs agent in Curacao who also is a luthier on the side, spotted Frampton’s guitar. After trying for a few years to buy the instrument from an unnamed guitarist who had brought it to Valentina, the two finally came to an agreement in November 2011. Reportedly, the guitar changed hands for $5,000.

In the documentary, Frampton refers to the son of a Mr. “Palm” (phonetic spelling) as the local guitarist – I imagine as part of the above transaction, there’s some confidentiality agreement in place. Valentina, together with Ghatim Kabbara of the local tourist board (presumably his friend – CMM), subsequently flew to Memphis, Tenn. to return the long-lost guitar to Frampton.

Donald Valentia (left) with Peter Frampton

The documentary then goes into the restoration process of the guitar. While I find it interesting, I’ll spare you the details since it gets pretty technical. What I would like to share is the philosophy that was behind the work. “We’re hardly doing anything to the guitar at all,” Frampton explained. “We’re just gonna make it playable. So, the electronics is all sort of gummed up, the pickups don’t work and stuff like that. So only what is absolutely necessary will be changed. It will always look a little bit burned up.”

How did Frampton feel when he held the restored guitar in his hands for the first time? “Happy is not the word,” he said. “Happy as a clam, whatever superlative you wanna say. Not ever thinking it would come back to me and to actually have it is amazing.” A picture is more than a thousand words!

Frampton named the guitar The Phenix. He used it during the Frampton Comes Alive! 35th-anniversary tour in 2012. “On the DVD, I play it [The Phenix] for just about the entire ‘Comes Alive’ material, the whole album, because nothing else sounds like it…Some of the newer stuff [essentially, any Frampton albums recorded between 1981 and 2012 – CMM], because I didn’t have it, it doesn’t sound right on. Because, hey, if it hadn’t gone anywhere, it would have been on those, too.”

For the remainder of the mini-documentary, Frampton reminisces about his career-defining Frampton Comes Alive! album. He also talks about the 35th-anniversary tour and how it felt playing these songs. It’s great to listen and I leave it up to you to watch for yourself. Following is a clip of the entire documentary. I truly loved it!

I’d like to leave you with two additional clips. First up is the iconic Do You Feel Like We Do, captured during a 1977 show in Oakland, Calif. The actual tune gets underway at about 3:05 minutes into the clip.

And here’s Baby I Love Your Way, from the 35th Frampton Comes Alive! anniversary tour. It has been captured on a DVD titled FCA!35 Tour: An Evening With Peter Frampton and released in November 2012.

In February 2019, Peter Frampton disclosed he had been diagnosed with inclusion body myositis (IBM), a progressive muscle disorder characterized by muscle inflammation, weakness, and atrophy (wasting) – obviously a grim perspective for a guitarist. At that time, he also announced his retirement from touring and a planned farewell tour. In April 2020, the UK/EU leg was canceled because of you know what!

It’s currently unclear whether Frampton will be able to reschedule the canceled farewell gigs. “I have a third clock, which is my IBM clock,” Frampton told Guitar.com in March 2021. “Slowly but surely, unfortunately, I’m losing strength in my hands, my arms and my legs. It’s specific muscles it hits. It picks and chooses the muscles and there’s no rhyme or reason for it. They don’t know; there’s no cure. If it takes another year before we can reschedule any dates, I will have to be realistic to see if my hands work or my legs will keep me up.”

He added, “I think there’s a certain level of playing where I won’t perform anymore. If I can’t play certain things the way I want to – I don’t want to be that person to go out there and people feel bad for me because I don’t play as good but I am Peter Frampton. That’s not going to happen.” As sad as it is for Frampton fans, his stance makes total sense to me, and that’s a decision everybody should respect.

Sources: YouTube; Wikipedia; Guitar Interactive Magazine; Guitar.com

The Brandy Alexanders Debut with Intoxicating Melodic Psych Rock

A Brandy Alexander is a brandy-based dessert cocktail, which according to Wikipedia was John Lennon’s favorite drink. It wasted him and Harry Nilsson at the Troubador in March 1974, and eventually, they were kicked out of the prominent Los Angeles nightclub after they had heckled the performing act and Lennon reportedly had hit a waitress. The potent drink also inspired the name of Canadian psychedelic rock band The Brandy Alexanders who released their eponymous debut album last Friday (December 10). The sound is quite melodic and, yes, intoxicating.

The Brandy Alexanders were formed by brothers Alex Dick (lead vocals, guitar) and Daniel Dick (keyboards) in 2016, notes the band’s biography. The brothers, who write the group’s lyrics and music, had started their musical journey in high school where they formed two now-defunct bands. Sean Shepherd (lead guitar), Zack Vivier (bass) and Robbie Cervi (drums) complete the group’s line-up.

The Brandy Alexanders describe their music as follows: Somewhere in the expanse between the Dark Side of The Moon and Abbey Road – Psychedelic Rock band, The Brandy Alexanders, take you to a parallel universe. Introspective, and almost existential lyrics are expressed via dream like vocals that weave themselves into a wall of propulsive guitar riffs, textured synths and a bold rhythm section. Jeez, couldn’t have said it any better! 🙂

In 2019, Renan Yildizdogan, the founder of Gypsy Soul Records, saw The Brandy Alexanders at a local performance venue in Toronto. He subsequently signed them, and their debut appears on the independent label. During an interview with Canadian Beats, the band said the album’s album origin was a 2016 EP, which eventually developed into the nine tracks that are out now. Time for some music. Unless noted otherwise, all tracks are credited to Alexander Dick and Shawn Dawson.

Here’s the opener Ceiling Fan, Man. The tune first appeared as the album’s lead single on August 27. It’s got a cool riff and a big sound that drew me in. Here’s the official video – quite trippy!

Shiram is a nice rocker. In addition to the fuzzy guitar, I like the keyboard work on this track.

Hey, Why’d You Do It is another song with a great riff and a cool sound. It’s just catchy.

Next up: Live by the Light, a tune solely written by Alex Dick, and the band’s new single. “This song evolved over the course of two years, eventually adding the chorus and the unison guitar part after Alex and Dan did multiple demos,” the band told Canadian Beats. I dig the groove. And once again, the sound is great!

The last track I’d like to highlight is the closer Spaceopus, a co-write by the two brothers. And, yes, it’s spacey and has an epic feel to it!

I came across The Brandy Alexanders by coincidence. For some reason, I didn’t see their new album when I checked iTunes for new releases last Friday. While it does get a bit repetitive after some time, the sound of this band is pretty compelling. I look forward to more of their music in the future.

Sources: The Brandy Alexanders website; Canadian Beats; YouTube