Category: Blog

Categories
Playlists

Valentine’s Day with DJ Mozzie

Black and white hearts cover a gray background. In the foreground, there are four red and pink exclamation points.

Howdy y’all! I hope you’ve been doing well. This week, I wanted to put together the ultimate Valentine’s Day playlist for you and yours. I love Valentine’s Day – the pink and red color combination, the fun candy, and getting to express just how much you love the people in your life (although I don’t think you need a holiday to do that). Admittedly, I pulled quite a few of these songs from my Twilight playlist on Spotify, but nonetheless, they make me feel mushy and gushy and grossly in love. Here’s to hoping you get to live out your rom-com dreams this weekend!

Valentine’s Day History

For our history enthusiasts reading this week’s blog, here’s a bit about Valentine’s Day. The specifics about Saint Valentine are quite contested. One legend tells the tale of Saint Valentine marrying young lovers after Emperor Claudius II banned marriage for young men in the name of making them better soldiers. While some believe that Valentine’s Day is in the middle of February to commemorate the saint’s death, others believe it was the Christian church trying to rewrite the Pagan celebration Lupercalia. Valentine sentiments date back to the Middle Ages, while written valentines appeared around 1400. Americans started swapping valentines around the early 1700s, and they became more mass-produced around the 1840s. Now, about 145 million Valentine’s Day cards are sent annually.

  • Stubborn Love by The Lumineers
  • Home by Edith Whiskers
  • Lover Of The Light by Mumford & Sons
  • Flightless Bird, American Mouth by Iron & Wine
  • Falling in Love at a Coffee Shop by Landon Pigg
  • I’m With You by Vance Joy
  • The Night We Met by Lord Huron
  • Sea of Love by Cat Power
  • All I Want by Kodaline
  • Turning Page by Sleeping At Last
  • Even If It’s a Lie by Matt Maltese
  • I’m Happy You Exist by Angus Maude
  • Beach Baby by Bon Iver
  • I Love You Too by Peter McPoland
  • Sweet Creature by Harry Styles
Categories
New Album Review

“Posey Hollow Quartet” by Ably House Album Review

Posey Hollow Quartet Album Cover

It’s not an ordinary day when you stumble upon a hidden gem of an album. The kind of album that you try to talk to your friends about, only to be met by blank stares. The kind of album that you expect to be the magnum opus of an already famous band, only to discover they have less than 1,000 monthly Spotify listeners. That’s the kind of day I had last March when I discovered “Posey Hollow Quartet” by Ably House.

The whole album has an eerie feel, fitting for a band named after a famous haunted house. Many tracks have strange, unidentifiable instruments and distorted, experimental guitar parts that are simultaneously satisfying and suspenseful. Not only that, but the album is incredibly cohesive; I am a strong believer in the art of the album, and Ably House knocked it out of the park with this one. Some tracks blend seamlessly into one another, while others have small breaks in between them for the listener to get a breath.

Along with being an incredibly cohesive album, “Posey Hollow Quartet” encompasses multiple different vibes. “Melancholia,” my favorite track on the album, has a distinct 90s indie feeling to it. Meanwhile, “Balcony” and “Down on the Farm” have the feel of a Revolver or Sgt. Pepper-era Beatles song with a more modern twist. And “Grave Song,” with its rhythmic bassline and impressive guitar solo, reminds me of a psychedelic rock song from the 60s; if you told me it was a cover of a Creedence Clearwater Revival or the Doors deep cut, I’d probably believe you.

I’m still not completely sure how I stumbled across such a diamond in the rough. With its so few monthly listeners and almost no social media presence, I know close to nothing about the band itself, but there is one thing I do know: they created a no-skip gem of an album with “Posey Hollow Quartet.”

Categories
Band/Artist Profile

Songs About Poop, A 23,000 Song Discography and Spotify Revenue

Matt looking at the camera and smiling.
Image used under Creative Commons License, from Wikimedia Commons. Source: Matt Farley's Twitter

Somewhere out there, there is a man with a more extensive discography than you can possibly imagine, with over 23,000 songs. He has 27 Spotify profiles (as far as I know of, there could be more) where he puts out album after album. You might be thinking, “Caitlin, I know who you’re talking about, and his name is John Darnielle.” And while it’s true that The Mountain Goats have an extremely extensive discography, that’s not who I’m referring to.

Continue reading “Songs About Poop, A 23,000 Song Discography and Spotify Revenue”
Categories
Blog New Album Review

“We” by Mythless EP Review

"We" album cover
"We" by Mythless album cover

I’ve noticed that in a lot of the album reviews I’ve done in the past few months I’ve made one specific observation: the lack of a verse-chorus-verse structure. I bring this up whenever I get the chance because it’s usually associated with a more experimental presentation that I notice and appreciate, but by now I’ve probably reviewed more albums that don’t adhere to this standard songwriting practice than do. So strap in as I talk about yet another structurally experimental release, this drone metal EP by Mythless.

Confession: Metal music isn’t one of my areas of expertise, and I had never intentionally listened to a drone metal project before so I didn’t really know what to expect. I was pleasantly surprised to find a very restrained, emotive group of songs, kind of like a souped up Animal Collective sound. Opening track “Dreadless” kicks things off with a frenetic drumbeat and soft keys to propel things forward slowly, for me this was the weakest off the project because it had this one annoying piano line that kept popping up but the rest of the track was quite good; the vocals have a very intriguing cadence that says as much as the lyrics behind them and the way the drum patterns combine to elevate the song.

It only gets better from there, with closing track Glossless being a particular highlight. It has the slow, characteristic buildup of drone but with a driving pace and exciting horns that propel the track forward in a unique and fun way. The chanting vocals suit this instrumental style perfectly and the unceasing motion of the track makes every line feel like a powerful mantra which is the kind of maximalist vibe that I want to see out of this type of freeform, emotionally charged music.

Drone and its various forms has always felt somewhat unapproachable to me, as I got into music through vocal-focused indie rock and this is structurally different in almost every way. But if you’re like me and want to dip your toe into drone music but don’t know where to start, “We” is a pretty great place to begin, it’s accessible and almost like the pop of ambient music where it takes concepts that are definitely unique to the genre and packages them into short bursts of enjoyment. I know I have a long way to go and that this is a genre I’m by no means an expert on, but I know a good EP when I hear one and this definitely fits the bill.

-Erie

Categories
Blog Music Education

Should We Judge An Album By Its Cover?

While CDs are definitely falling out of favor in our general listening habits, WKNC still receives a healthy amount of CDs, of which the album cover quality tends to…vary substantially. I was just informed I had a mailbox and have begun logging all of my submissions, and a piece of advice I received was that most of the time, you could look at an album cover and not bother listening to it. This was interesting to me, someone who got into music in the streaming era when the album cover is just something in the corner of the screen, but when new favorites were found in record store racks the album cover was basically the only window into what the experience would be.

In particular, the inspiration for this blog was the album “Meatcup Just Snack” by Noodle Muffin. Now, with all due respect to Noodle Muffin, this cover is genuinely hard to look at and, while it did certainly make me curious as to how the music would relate to the weirdly Photoshopped teacup full of meat (that’s a sentence), I would still definitely come in with some negative biases.

But why is that? I like to explore the weirder areas of music, what should an album cover have to do with why I would choose one album over another, or wouldn’t that be enticing for a cover to be as weird as possible. Well, to me there are different kinds of weird, and the kind I like the most is an artistically focused weird. A cover with someone’s severed head framed in stylistic lighting is weird but in a cool, evocative way, while a bad photoshop is, well, a bad photoshop. It’s like if there is a certain level of professionalism in the cover, that will be reflected in the quality of production. Noise pop can sound distorted and intentionally dense on a structural level, but when it’s good there’s a level of care and passion that can be felt through all of that.

I ended up looking into Noodle Muffin and found that the cover might have been more intentional than I initially thought. They’re a band that employs crass humor to craft their songs and are very heavily targeted towards the college radio crowd. Interestingly, despite the surreal nature of the album, I didn’t guess that, something about it told me it was a failure of intention rather than a deliberate aesthetic choice. And after actually listening to the album, it’s genuinely well produced, the band has been around for a decade and knows how to put a track together. I judged an album based on a cover and missed. I guess my punishment is opening more mail.

-Erie

Categories
Weekly Charts

Daytime Charts 2/8

"Multiverse" album cover
"Multiverse" by Reptaliens album cover
#ArtistAlbumLabel
1REPTALIENSMultiverseSinderlyn
2HIATUS KAIYOTEMood ValiantBrainfeeder/Ninja Tune
3ILLISMFamily Over EverythingThe CRWN
4MCKINLEY DIXONFor My Mama And Anyone Who Look Like HerSpacebomb
5FLYING LOTUSYasukeWarp
6KILLS BIRDSMarriedKRO
7PLANET GIZADon’t Throw Rocks At The Moon [EP]Self-Released
8SERENA ISIOMASensitive [EP]Fashionably Early
9SHYGIRL“Cleo” [Single]Because
10WAVEFORMLast RoomRun For Cover
11ZEBRA KATZLess Is MoorZFK
12BROKEN SOCIAL SCENEOld Dead Young: B-Sides & RaritiesArts & Crafts
13CAKES DA KILLA, PROPER VILLAINSMuvaland Vol. 2 [EP]Warner
14HAVIAH MIGHTYStock ExchangeSelf-Released
15JPEGMAFIALP!EQT
16LAVA LA RUEButter-fly [EP]Marathon
17MARKEE STEELEVet & A Rook [EP]Thee Marquee
18TYLER THE CREATORCALL ME IF YOU GET LOSTColumbia
19YOUR GRANDPARENTSThru My WindowSelf-Released
20BLACK MARBLEFast IdolSacred Bones
21DAWN RICHARDSecond LineMerge
22DYME-A-DUZIN AND MONEY MONTAGETRAINING. [EP]Below System
23ELIJAH ROSARIOGenuine Truths1496748
24ILLUMINATI HOTTIESLet Me Do One MoreSnack Shack Tracks/Hopeless
25JIMMY EDGARCheetah BendInnovative Leisure
26JOESEFDoes It Make You Feel Good? [EP]Bold Cut
27JYROSCOPE AND MONTANA MACKSHappy Medium [EP]Self-Released
28LITTLE SIMZSometimes I Might Be IntrovertAGE 101
29MILAN RINGI’m Feeling HopefulAstral People/PIAS
30PINK SIIFUGUMBO’!Dynamite Hill

Daytime Adds

#ArtistAlbumLabel
1WAVEFORMLast RoomRun For Cover
2WARPAINT“Champion” [Single]Heirlooms/Virgin
3HONEYGLAZE“Shadows” [Single]Speedy Wunderground/PIAS
4SUGARFUNGUSLetting Go, Moving Still [EP]Self-Released
5POM POKOThis Is Our House [EP]Bella Union/PIAS
6ELENA SETIENUnfamiliar MindsThrill Jockey
7EELSExtreme WitchcraftE Works/PIAS
8BODEGA“Thrown” [Single]What’s Your Rupture?
9UNA“It’s OK” [Single]Cool Jewel
10EKKSTACYNegativeUnitedMasters
Categories
Weekly Charts

Afterhours Charts 2/8

SYS03 album cover
#ArtistAlbumLabel
1FJAAKSYS03 [EP]Self-Released
2COFFINTEXTS8700 [EP]Club Qu
3KEDR LIVANSKIYLiminal Soul2MR
4PARK HYE JINBefore I DieNinja Tune
5ROSS FROM FRIENDSTreadBrainfeeder
6SMERZBelieverXL/Beggars Group
7ARCAKICK iiXL
8YAEJI AND OHHYUK“Year To Year” b/w “29” [Single]XL
9CFCFMemorylandSelf-Released
10LSDXOXODedicated 2 Disrespect [EP]XL
Categories
Weekly Charts

Underground Charts 2/8

mood valiant
1HIATUS KAIYOTEMood ValiantBrainfeeder/Ninja Tune
2ILLISMFamily Over EverythingThe CRWN
3NATIVESON91Come Back Down [EP]Spear Head
4HAVIAH MIGHTYStock ExchangeSelf-Released
5JPEGMAFIALP!EQT
6LAVA LA RUEButter-fly [EP]Marathon
7MCKINLEY DIXONFor My Mama And Anyone Who Look Like HerSpacebomb
8PLANET GIZADon’t Throw Rocks At The Moon [EP]Self-Released
9SERENA ISIOMASensitive [EP]Fashionably Early
10YOUR GRANDPARENTSThru My WindowSelf-Released
Categories
Weekly Charts

Chainsaw Charts 2/8

stangarigel
#ArtistAlbumLabel
1STANGARIGELNa Severe SrdcaSelf-Released
2PENSEES NOCTURNESQuel sale BourreauLES ACTEURS DE L’OMBRE PRODUCTIONS
3TRICKLEBOLTVARIOUS ARTISTSSelf-Released
4NOVA SPEISequentisBam&Co. Heavy
5EMPLOYED TO SERVEConqueringSpinefarm
6RUNDGARDStronghold Of Majestic RuinsSignal Rex
7WHEN THE DEADBOLT BREAKSHope Valley Burns: EulogyElectric Talon
8CARCASSTorn ArteriesNuclear Blast
9PREDICTOR…thus spoke death [EP]Iron Bonehead
10ZETARDevouring DarknessSpirit Coffin
Categories
Blog Miscellaneous

The Music of “Ted Lasso”

"Ted Lasso" soundtrack
"Ted Lasso" soundtrack cover

At the beginning of 2022, I opened my iPhone to be treated with a surprise: 3 free months of Apple TV+. While that came as a welcome surprise, I didn’t really know what was good on the platform, with the only name I had heard of being “Ted Lasso.” I gave it a shot and was rewarded with a uniquely charming, funny, and engaging show that also had, and this is relevant for WKNC blog readers, a killer soundtrack.

Pop culture references are the language the show is built on, and there are often mentions of artists by the characters such as Elton John and Robbie Williams. It’s definitely populist, often using tracks that it expects the audience to be familiar with. A moment where lifelong fans of soccer team Richmond AFC finally getting to stand on the field has Queen’s “We Are The Champions” playing triumphantly over it, while the titular character enters England to “God Save The Queen” by Sex Pistols. It’s clearly a very expensive show and casually flexing songs from that caliber of artist adds to the production value. 

And in my opinion at least it does it well; when a lot of shows use really obvious musical cues it feels like a symptom of poor writing and a cheap emotional play, but “Ted Lasso” strikes this interesting balance where it uses familiar songs as a way to bring everyone to the party in a way. It’s like how when you’re at a club, super popular songs you would never admit to listening to on your own time become danceable bangers just because you’ve heard them before. There’s a particular episode where “Never Gonna Give You Up” is used as a plot point, and how a connection to that song helps a character overcome grief, taking what is a very played out song by this point and adding emotional resonance to it.

One other way I thought songs were used in an obvious but creative way is through very on the nose lyrical choices. The line “strangers to friends, friends into lovers” is sung over a quasi-montage of two characters going through that exact arc, while Gilbert O’Sullivan’s “Alone Again (Naturally)” plays over, naturally, a character being alone again. This is a technique that always results in cringe, and yet although it’s maybe one of the weaker elements of the show, it genuinely works with “Ted Lasso” in a way I rarely see. Maybe it’s because those songs are often slow and subtle so it’s not very in your face, but I think it’s more of a tonal phenomenon: the show is wholesome in a way where obvious gestures add to the appeal. That’s why I wanted to talk about it today, it’s a wholly unique experience even at the sonic level and I’m really glad it’s been seeing the awards success and viewership that it has been getting. Season 3 is set to start filming soon and it’s probably my most anticipated show right now. And of course I can’t wait to hear it as well, with inspired song choices and musical motifs being such a cornerstone of the experience.

-Erie