New Music Musings

Happy Saturday and welcome to my new music review! In the middle of December, it’s not surprising that new releases are largely limited to “old music” being offered as reissues and special editions. Since this weekly feature is focused on new music, I decided to use the three remaining posts for this year to take a look back at new music I reviewed in 2023.

Between my Saturday posts and album reviews, there was a lot new music I featured. While I oftentimes note the charts on this blog (typically when it comes to ’60s and ’70s music), in general, you won’t find Taylor Swift, Drake, Rihanna or other music artists who are frequently on the Billboard Hot 100 nowadays – not because there’s anything wrong with their music, but because it’s simply not what I like to listen to.

If you’ve visited my new music reviews before, you probably know I tend to look at contemporary music through the lens of my preferences, which are largely shaped by the ’60s and ’70s. While that frame of reference weeds out a good deal of new music, it leaves a remarkable amount to discover, if you’re willing to look beyond the mainstream charts!

Here’s how I intend to tackle this look-back on 2023. The first two posts revisit specific songs I enjoyed. Each post highlights six of them, which are also included in a Spotify playlist, along with other picks. Between the two posts, the playlists include 46 tracks, and I could have added more songs – not too shabby! The third and final installment will focus on my favorite new albums of 2023, which I’m still figuring out as I’m writing this.

Here’s part 1 covering new songs that came out in the first half of the year.

The Bad Ends/Mile Marker 29

My first pick are The Bad Ends, an alternative rock band from Athens, Ga. Their website notes the group catalyzed when Mike Mantione (vocals, guitar), who gained initial prominence as frontman of popular Athens band Five Eight in the ’90s, had a chance encounter with Bill Berry (drums, guitar, electric sitar), former drummer of R.E.M. The band also features Christian Lopez (guitars, mandolin, banjo), Geoff Melkonian (keyboards, piano, guitars, vocals) and Dave Domizi (bass, vocals). Mantione and Domizi had been friends since 1991, while Melkonian produced one of Five Eight’s  previous albums. The Bad Ends “quietly recorded, produced, and mastered what would become The Power and The Glory“, their great debut album. Here’s the opener Mile Marker 29 – not a bad end at all! And, yep, they definitely can’t deny their hometown!

Joe Louis Walker/Is It a Matter of Time?

Guitarist and singer-songwriter Joe Louis Walker has earned most recognition with blues but isn’t a one-trick pony. According to his bio, the Blues Hall of Fame inductee and six-time Blues Music Award winner has recorded with Ike Turner, Bonnie Raitt, Taj Mahal, and Steve Cropper, opened for Muddy Waters and Thelonious Monk, hung out with Jimi Hendrix, Freddie King, Mississippi Fred McDowell, and was a close friend and roommate of Mike Bloomfield. Walker’s 1986 debut album Cold Is the Night on HighTone announced his arrival in stunning fashion...A brilliantly lyrical guitarist, soulful singer, and prolific songwriter, Walker has toured extensively throughout his career, performing at some of the world’s most renowned music festivals, such as Glastonbury and Montreux, as well as on national television. From his latest album Weight of the World here’s Is It a Matter of Time? penned by Walker – the soulful vibe is totally up my alley!

The Nude Party/Word Gets Around

The Nude Party are a band from North Carolina I first featured in January 2022 with their eponymous debut from July 2018. They were formed in 2012 when freshman students at Appalachian State University in Boone, N.C. decided to start a band. Their members are Patton Magee (lead vocals, guitar, harmonica), Shaun Couture (guitar, vocals),  Don Merrill (piano, vocals), Alexander Castillo (bass, vocals), Austin Brose  (percussion, vocals) and Connor Mikita (drums). At the end of their freshman year, they all moved together to a house outside of town and learned how to play their instruments. It still almost sounds a bit like a fairytale! What’s very real is Word Gets Around, a cool-sounding rocker with a ’60s vibe, off their third and latest studio album Rides On, credited to the entire band!

Billy Tibbals/Hollywood Baby

This brings me to Billy Tibbals, a Los Angeles-based alternative rock artist. From his Bandcamp bio: Moving from London to Hollywood back in 2014, Billy Tibbals quickly found a love for the city and its esoteric, debauched history. Combining this with his childhood obsession with British rock and roll, surrealist literature, and musicals from the 1940’s, Billy’s music presents a unique and fantastical view of the world around us. As a part of the exciting new wave of rock and roll music emerging from Los Angeles, Billy hopes to inspire the youth to get off their phones and come join in with the fun. Tibbals’ latest inspiration is his debut EP Stay Teenage. Here’s the excellent opener Hollywood Baby, which like all other tracks on the EP was solely written by him.

Marty Stuart & His Fabulous Superlatives/Sitting Alone

American country and bluegrass singer Marty Stuart has been active since the late 1960s. Initially working as a touring musician with Lester Flatt and Johnny Cash, Stuart launched his recording career in 1978 with Marty (With A Little Help From My Friends). He has since released 18 additional albums, including his latest, Altitude, appearing as Marty Stuart & His Fabulous Superlatives. Let’s check out Sitting Alone, penned by Stuart, which reminds me a bit of a Tom Petty – love that jangly guitar sound!

Foo Fighters/The Teacher

Wrapping up this post are Foo Fighters with a haunting song from But Here We Are. It’s their first new album since the untimely death of drummer Taylor Hawkins in Bogotá, Columbia in March 2022 at the age of 50 during the band’s tour in South America. A brutally honest and emotionally raw response to everything Foo Fighters endured over the last year, But Here We Are is a testament to the healing powers of music, friendship and family, the band said when announcing the album. The statement added the 10 tracks run the emotional gamut from rage and sorrow to serenity and acceptance, and myriad points in between. Here’s The Teacher, a dark-sounding 10-minute track credited to the entire band – quite an epic song!

Here’s the aforementioned Spotify playlist featuring the above and 18 additional songs from the first half of 2023. Look for Part 2, which is scheduled for next Saturday, December 23.

Sources: Wikipedia; The Bad Ends website; Joe Louis Walker website; Billy Tibbals Bandcamp page; Foo Fighters website; YouTube; Spotify

Song Musings

Once again it’s Wednesday, which means the time has come to take a closer look at another tune I’ve only mentioned in passing or haven’t covered at all to date. My pick for this installment of Song Musings is Redemption Song by Bob Marley.

When I think of reggae, a genre I generally dig because of its groove, the artist who always comes to my mind first is Bob Marley. While I’ve only dedicated a handful of posts to the legendary Jamaican artist, I’ve touched on many of his well-known songs. Perhaps the only exception is Redemption Song, I guess in part since it’s a folk, not a reggae song and, as such, it’s an unusual tune for Marley.

Written by Bob Marley, Redemption Song is the closer of June 1980’s Uprising, the final studio album released during his lifetime. Considered one of his finest tunes, Redemption Song also became Marley’s last single that same month. Like many of his other singles, chart performance was moderate. Wikipedia only lists New Zealand as a country where the tune charted, reaching no. 22. However, again mirroring numerous other Marley singles, Redemption Song enjoyed commercial success in Britain where it became one of his two singles that eventually hit Gold status (400,000 certified sold units).

Unlike other Marley tunes, Redemption Song only featured him on vocals and acoustic guitar without any backing musicians. A full band version of the tune appeared separately in the UK and France in October 1980. That rendition has since been included as a bonus track on the 2001 reissue of Uprising, as well as on the 2001 compilation One Love: The Very Best of Bob Marley & The Wailers. Personally, I prefer the acoustic version, a sentiment I evidently share with many other listeners of Marley’s music.

When Marley wrote Redemption Song, which was ca. 1979, he already had been diagnosed with cancer in his toe that eventually spread, at least in part due to his refusal to accept medical treatment, and took his life in May 1981. “He was already secretly in a lot of pain and dealt with his own mortality, a feature that is clearly apparent in the album, particularly in this song,” said Marley’s widow Rita Marley, as quoted by Wikipedia.

Redemption Song was ranked at no. 66 in the 2004 edition of Rolling Stone’s list of The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time. On February 5, 2020, the eve of what would have been his 75th birthday, Marley’s estate released an official animated video for the song. The clips also commemorated the 40th anniversary of the tune’s release.

Following are some additional insights from Songfacts:

This was Marley’s last single before his death on May 11, 1981. It sums up his life and what he stood for in his songs: freedom and redemption. Marley was a very spiritual singer who gave hope to the downtrodden in his native Jamaica, and whose message spread to the United States and around the world when he became a star.

Marley completed the Uprising album (his last) in the summer of 1980. He was suffering from the cancer that would eventually kill him at age 36, but was very productive in his later years. He refused traditional medicine because of his Rastafarian beliefs and chose to make music and perform as long as he could.

This song drew from the works of the civil-rights campaigner Marcus Garvey, who in a 1937 speech said:

“We are going to emancipate ourselves from mental slavery because whilst others might free the body, none but ourselves can free the mind.”

This can be heard in Marley’s lyric:

Emancipate yourself from mental slavery
None but ourselves can free our minds

Garvey’s 1923 book The Philosophy and Opinions of Marcus Garvey contains this preface, which is likely where Marley got the idea for “Redemption,” which he used in the title:

“Dedicated to the true and loyal members of the Universal Negro Improvement Association in the cause of African redemption.”

This is much more of a folk song than a reggae number. Very unusual for Marley, it is just his voice accompanied by his acoustic guitar. Marley first recorded it with his group The Wailers, but his producer Chris Blackwell suggested he try a solo acoustic version, and that’s what stuck.

Johnny Cash and Joe Strummer both covered this song.

This plays over the credits for the 2007 movie I Am Legend starring Will Smith. It was also sung by the character Sawyer in the season finale of the first season of the show Lost on ABC.

Barbadian singer Rihanna covered this for the Haiti Relief Fund after the earthquake that devastated the country. Urging fans to download the track she said: “This song for me, growing up, anytime there was a difficult situation, I always listened to this song because it was so liberating. Even now I listen to it when my back is up against the wall. I feel like the people of Haiti need to hear something inspiring.” Rihanna performed an acoustic version live on the Oprah Winfrey Show on January 20, 2010.

French artists Octave Marsal and Theo De Gueltzl created an animated video for the song using 2,747 original drawings. Their black-and-white clip was released on February 6, 2020, on what would have been Bob Marley’s 75th birthday.

“From the history of Slavery and Jamaica, Rastafarian culture, legacy of prophets (Haile Selassie the 1st, Marcus Garvey, Malcolm X), as well as Bob’s personal life, we take the audience on a journey through allegories and representations,” Marsal and De Gueltzl explained of the visual.

Sources: Wikipedia; Songfacts; YouTube

At 76 Paul McCartney Remains Full of Energy and A True Inspiration

Paul McCartney has been pretty busy since June, promoting his new solo album and upcoming Freshen Up Tour. Things peaked with the release of Egypt Station last Friday and a ‘secret’ concert that evening at New York City’s Grand Central Station, which was live-streamed on his YouTube channel.

It all started with the June 10 reboot of Macca’s Instagram page and the subsequent posting of photos over the following days, showing music gear (some with, others without him) and cryptic symbols, clearly suggesting something was up. The title Egypt Station was revealed on Facebook on June 18, Macca’s 76th birthday. The next day saw the official announcement of the first two tracks to be released as a double-A single on June 20. That day, the album’s September 7th release date was unveiled.

On July 3rd, the first dates for the Freshen Up Tour in Canada were announced. Numerous additional dates have since been revealed, including in Europe, Japan and the U.S. The latter concerts start in May 2019. Leading up to the album’s launch, Macca also appeared on Howard Stern and The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon last Wednesday and Thursday, respectively. Calling all of this an elaborate PR campaign is an understatement!

Egypt Station shares its title with one of Macca’s paintings. In a June 20 announcement, he said, “I liked the words ‘Egypt Station.’ It reminded me of the ‘album’ albums we used to make… ‘Egypt Station’ starts off at the station on the first song and then each song is like a different station. So it gave us some idea to base all the songs around that. I think of it as a dream location that the music emanates from.”

Macca’s productivity and energy is remarkable. Egypt Station is his first full album since New from October 2013. In addition to these two pop records, Macca has released two other very different types of records over the past 10 years: his fifth classical album Ocean’s Kingdom (October 2011) and Electric Arguments (November 2008), his third experimental record with The Fireman, a duo he formed in the early ’90s with English record producer and musician Martin Glover, artistically known as Youth. There is also Macca’s collaboration with Kanye West and Rihanna, which resulted in the single FourFiveSeconds in January 2015. Oh, and in-between all these activities, he has been touring frequently.

I managed to write five paragraphs without saying a bloody word about the new record. So what’s the verdict? While I prefer Macca’s 1973 Wings album Band On The Run and his fourth solo release Tug Of War from 1982 and his voice is showing some signs of aging, I am impressed with Egypt Station – of course, as a huge Beatles fan, this is a completely unbiased statement!😀

One of the things I find remarkable about the record is the variety of material ranging from piano-driven ballads, acoustic guitar-focused songs, some pop rockers to even some ambient music. In addition, two of the tunes clock in well over six minutes. One has distinct parts a la Band On The Run, while the second track is a suite of three songs, a concept reminiscent of Abbey Road. Time for some clips!

Here’s the first track Opening Station, an ambient instrumental. All except two tracks on Egypt Station were written by Macca. “When we decided we were gonna call the album ‘Egypt Station’, I liked the idea of making a montage of sounds that were sort of like a station,” he explains in an audio clip on his website. “So we found one station, then we added another to it – the sound effects of real stations. And then we started to add some noises we made up to make it like a dreamscape, so the idea being this kind of dream location, which where all this music was gonna emanate from.”

Immediately following Opening Station it’s on to signature McCartney with the piano-driven I Don’t Know, one of the tracks that also appeared separately ahead of the album.  It’s about people having a difficult day, wondering what it is they’re doing wrong. Notes Macca: “Sometimes that’s a good way to write a song, ’cause you’re coming from your soul. We often used to say that writing a song was like talking to a psychiatrist or therapist or something, ’cause you’re saying it, but you’re saying it in a song rather than in a room to a specialist.”

Happy With You is one of the album’s acoustic guitar-focused songs. Noting there were days when he had a lot of free time and would lay around doing nothing and getting “a bit stoned,” Macca explains, “It’s a song about growing up. There’s a period in your life, in some people’s lives, when they’re not being as productive or not being as organized or disciplined as they may later turn out to be.”

One of the rock-oriented songs on the album is Who Cares. Macca says he basically wrote the tune to show compassion to younger people all over the world who get picked on by others.

Things get political without naming names on Despite Repeated Warnings, which Macca co-wrote with OneRepublic lead vocalist Ryan Tedder. “I thought I’ll do a kind of song where I use symbolism,” Mecca points out. “And so the person that is symbolic of certain politicians or people who argue climate change is a hoax, and we know a few…So I thought, ‘okay, it’s a sea captain’, and he’s steering the boat, and he’s gonna go towards the iceberg. But he’s been warned, but he’s going, ’cause he thinks he’s right, and he thinks they’re all making to much of it and the usual arguments.” The 6:57-minute song has various distinct parts and, as such, is a bit reminiscent of Band On The Run.

The last track I’d like to call out is a 6:22-minute three-song suite that closes the album: Hunt You Down/Naked/C-Link. It starts with a rocker, Hunt You Down, links to another “simple song” called Naked, and finally blends into to C-Link, a bluesy instrumental featuring Macca on electric guitar. About the latter he notes, “it’s just me really enjoying playing electric guitar…people often say, ‘why do you still do it?’ I say, ‘coz I love it, I love this thing.’ And I’m still thrilled with having the privilege of being able to go up to an amp, turn it on, get my guitar, plug it in, and play it very loud. Just, it’s a thrill, you know, and it’s never stopped being a thrill…” This commentary very much feels like it comes from Macca’s heart. You can also feel it when you see him during live performances!

Egypt Station appears on Capitol Records and was mostly produced by Greg Kurstin, who has worked with artists like Beck, Kelly Clarkson, Pink and Foo Fighters. Two tracks, Fuh You and bonus track Nothing For Free, were co-produced by Tedder  and  Zach Skelton.  In addition to OneRepublic, Tedder has written and produced for U2, Adele, Beyoncé, Maroon 5, Taylor Swift and many other “hot” contemporary artists. Fortunately, Egypt Station’s sound isn’t too contemporary!

Macca’s  Freshen Up Tour kicks off on September 17 in Québec City, followed by shows in Montréal (September 20), Winnipeg (September 28) and Edmonton (September 30), before leading to Japan in late October and Europe thereafter. Currently announced U.S. dates start in New Orleans on May 23, 2019, and also include Raleigh, N.C. (May 27); Greenville, SC (May 30); and Lexington, Ky. (June 1), among others. This year, Macca is also scheduled to perform at Austin City Limits on October 5 and 12.

It’s safe to assume additional U.S. dates will be announced. I’ve been fortunate to see Paul McCartney live twice. Both shows were fantastic and will always stay in my memory. If his Freshen Up Tour comes within reasonable driving distance from my house, I will likely see him a third time!

Sources: Wikipedia, Paul McCartney website and Facebook page, YouTube