Categories
Playlists

Ultimate Autumn Playlist

Last fall as a small freshman, I spent many mornings sitting alone in Clark dining hall cultivating playlists. Many of the songs on these playlists had much jazz and soul influence (but not all of them), and I have found myself going back to these songs as the season approaches. These tunes will have you feeling like you’re in “It’s the Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown” or longing to wear your best turtleneck. The hottest fall soundtrack will accompany you on your walks to class. If you’re into any of these things, hopefully this post finds you well. 🙂 **These songs are not strictly autumn themed, but their sound will hit you right in all of your autumn-loving places**

1. Tis Autumn – Red Garland Trio

2. Para Machuchar Meu Coração – Stan Getz & Joao Gilberto

3. Baseball Theme – Vince Guaraldi Trio ( or any song from this soundtrack)

4. Make a Smile for Me – Bill Withers

5. Try Me – James Brown

6. Piece of Clay – Marvin Gaye

7. Voila – Francoise Hardy

8. Then You Can Tell Me Goodbye – Bettye Swann

9. Thank You – Bonnie Raitt

10. Autumn Leaves – Nat King Cole

11. Time of No Reply – Nick Drake

12. Diamond Day – Vashti Bunyan

13. Moon Dreams – Miles Davis

14. Alone Together – Chet Baker

-Elizabeth Esser 

Categories
New Album Review

ALBUM REVIEW: Palehound – Black Friday

BEST TRACKS: Aaron, Black Friday, Killer

FCC violations: B******t, Stick N Poke

Palehound, formed in 2013 in New England, is fronted by singer-songwriter Ellen Kempner. Kempner, who has been involved with music for nearly all her life, is a tremendously talented lyricist, guitarist, and vocalist. She is not afraid to be vulnerable and jarringly honesty in her songs, the result of which is a refreshingly genuine discography. Black Friday is Palehound’s third full album. Unrestrained, gritty, and heartbreaking – this album is astounding. I can safely say that every track on this album is pouring with emotion. Black Friday takes on a more serious note than Palehound’s previous two albums, exploring some of the many different types of love.

Black Friday is cool and smooth. I would even venture to say that dessert rock influences can be seen in a number of tracks, most notably in the 5th track Killer and the 7th track b******t. Kempner’s hushed vocals add a new level of intensity and realness to her songs. Kempner’s voice is gentle but her words are strong.

This album makes me think of a quote by F. Scott Fitzgerald: “There are all kinds of love in the world, but never the same love twice”. Each song on this album is about a different kind of love. Aaron is one of the most wholesome love songs I’ve heard in a while. Inspired by Kempner’s partner, who is trans, Aaron is about the unconditional acceptance of a loved one. The title track, Black Friday, is a heartbreaking song about being okay with being even less than second best in the eyes of someone that means the world to you.

Kempner says that she wants people to hear her songs and feel less alone than they did before. Well, Black Friday does exactly that.

I’d recommend giving this album a spin if you like The Handsome Family or Strange Ranger.

-Safia

Categories
Weekly Charts

Daytime Charts 10/1

Artist Record Label
1 (SANDY) ALEX G House Of Sugar Domino
2 OH ROSE While My Father Sleeps Park The Van
3 CEREMONY In The Spirit World Now Relapse
4 BODYWASH Comforte rLuminelle
5 ROYAL TRUX Pink Stuff [EP] Fat Possum
6 ROYAL CANOE Waver Paper Bag
7 HATCHIE Keepsake Double Double Whammy
8 CHERRY GLAZERR Stuffed & Ready Secretly Canadian
9 COACH PHILLIPS Never Is Enough Den Tapes
10 TOWNES VAN ZANDT Sky Blue Fat Possum
11 PALEHOUND Black Friday Polyvinyl
12 JULIA SHAPIRO Perfect Version Hardly Art
13 FRANKIE COSMOS Close It Quietly Sub Pop
14 FROTH Duress Wichita
15 OH SEES, THE The Cool Death Of Island Raiders [Re-Issue ]Castle Face
16 STRANGE RANGER Remembering The Rockets Tiny Engines
17METZ Automat Sub Pop
18 JAY SOM Anak Ko Polyvinyl
19 FLORIST Emily Alone Double Double Whammy
20 MITSKI Be The Cowboy Dead Oceans
21 KIM GRAY Plastic Memory Buzz
22 SUMMER CANNIBALS Can’t Tell Me No Tiny Engines
23 TACOCAT This Mess Is A Place Sub Pop
24 LALA LALA Sleepyhead (Reissue) Hardly Art
25 PSYCHEDELIC PORN CRUMPETS And Now For The Whatchamacallit Marathon
26 CHASTITY BELT Chastity Belt Hardly Art
27 FLORAL PRINT Floral Print Tiny Engines
28B BOYS Dudu Captured Tracks
29 TEEN BODY Dreamo Broken Circles
30 ILLUMINATI HOTTIES Kiss Yr Frenemies Tiny Engines

TOP ADDS:

1 MILLY"Talking Secret" b/w “Crazy Horse” [Single] Dangerbird
2 VIVIIVIVII Dumont Dumont
3 SQUIDTown Centre [EP] Speedy Wunderground
4 WWOMAN Chuchi [EP] Self-Released
5 LONG BEARD Means To Me Double Double Whammy
6 SURF CURSE Heaven Surrounds You Danger Collective
7 PARANOYDS, THE Carnage Bargain Suicide Squeeze
8 (SANDY) ALEX G House Of Sugar Domino
9 GUAXE Guaxe OAR 
10 CHASTITY BELT Chastity Belt Hardly Art

Categories
Weekly Charts

Underground Charts 10/1

ArtistRecordLabel
1 EARTHGANG Mirrorland Dreamville
2JID Dicaprio 2 Dreamville/Interscope
3VINCE STAPLES FM! Def Jam
4 C. SHREVE THE PROFESSOR Daddy Love to Rap Self-Released
5 BROCKHAMPTON Ginger Question Everything/RCA
6 DENZEL CURRY Zuu Loma Vista/Concord
7 TYLER THE CREATOR Igor Columbia
8 AMINE OnePointFive Republic
9 SAMPA THE GREAT The Return Ninja Tune
10 XAVIER WULF “Kid Cudi (Remix)” [Single] The Hollow Squad/ Empire, Ghostrage

Categories
Concert Review

Rhiannon Giddens: A Goddess Among Goddesses

This past Wednesday (9/25) I joined my parents in attending the Rhiannon Giddens concert at the North Carolina Museum of Art. Rhiannon Giddens is a native to Greensboro, North Carolina and frontwoman of The Carolina Chocolate Drops, an old-style African American folk band. Rhiannon was on vocals, fiddle, and banjo. Italian musician Francesco Turrisi joined her and played drums and tambourine. Accompanying them were a stand-up bassist/pianist, and an unbelievable player of the spoons. This show was different from most in the way that is was more than just a concert. It was a history lesson of sorts. Giddens successfully integrates her music and the stories behind the songs she plays into one entertaining show. Some of the traditional songs she covers date back upwards of 200 years ago, and a majority of the music is by black musicians. She touched on things such as black face and minstrel bands for example, and how many of the songs she played were also performed in ways like these. While the historical exploitation of black music is a harsh reality, Giddens makes it a point to use her music as a teaching point throughout her set. I found this extremely inspiring, and learned a lot. The banjo she played is a replica of a model from around the 1850s – the neck has no frets and has a lower register than what many people are familiar with today. This is one of the original styles of banjo, and was often played in minstrel bands. I left this show with a new perspective on old-style folk music, and was eager to learn more (and also buy a banjo:)) Definitely a memorable experience. Rhiannon Giddens is a queen.

-Elizabeth Esser 

Categories
Short Stories

END OF A SOFT BOY: PART 1

END OF A SOFT BOY, A TWO-PART DRAMATIC CONCLUSION (and possible TV movie): PART 1

It wasn’t pleasant.  I mean, it wasn’t particularly anything I suppose.  Therein lied (read my lips; not lies) my absolute confusion. If  IT wasn’t particularly anything, it quite frankly begged the question of what was ME.  Suddenly my own entrails, my grimy appendages, were not nearly as salient as I had and still might now imagine them.  My mouth which had so often laid bare as to consume reflexively snapped shut upon the first notes of Boston’s “More Than a Feeling.”  The void which had originally laid behind the veil of my teeth was suddenly transferred to myself, absolutely. My throbbing eyes jerked against the darkness which swiftly pollocked my home.  And then it was, or still is, done.

How does one appreciate nature?  How does one lay their legs in the dirt and relax? How does one return to footing as a tyrant?

There is no resolution.  And there is no problem. They lived against nature, so they could not feasibly return to it.  And so they ceased in fury and was killed in whole. IT was violent, but IT was not industrial; there was no purpose, only singular movement.

Sitting flaccidly along a brick wall and observing nature.  Force yourself, force yourself, force yourself. There is nothing there. No impetus of satisfaction.

Upkeeping a house is mundane.  But without it there would be no passage of time, no reminder of fluidity.  Shutting windows to open them again. Day and day comes and then not. There is decay, one of terrible tragedy. But they denied themselves the horror of banality.

And so then they ruptured.

-Cliff Jenkins

Categories
New Album Review

ALBUM REVIEW: HUSKER DU- Metal Circus

BEST TRACKS: Real World, It’s Not Funny Anymore, First of the Last Calls, Diane

If not for Husker Du, I probably wouldn’t be writing for this blog right now. The entire apparatus of modern alternative rock would be fundamentally different.  Without our darling 80s three-piece, punk’s defiant outersiderdom may never have settled upon the general anxieties of adolescence; and while the 90s grunge explosion was this sentiment’s most (commercially) developed form, Husker Du’s insistence on honest alternativism was a lightning rod for anybody searching for honest, offbeat rock and roll.  Du’s magnum opus, Zen Arcade, was radically ahead of its time. Blending amphetamined screeches, startlingly tender piano, and percussive folk guitar, the absolutely essential double album is regarded as the definitive blueprint for something very dear to all of our hearts: College Radio. That’s right, if I were to step into a time machine and travel to 1978’s St. Paul to break Bob Mould’s arm, you could very well be wearing sperrys this very moment.  But I didn’t, and you aren’t. And in honor of our collective Husker debt, we should all stand together in our crusty Vans and thank them for their service to aggressive otherness.

But we aren’t talking about Zen Arcade today.  No, that would be too easy. Instead, this installment of WKNC From the Vaults Punk Rock Classics Hour with Cliff Jenkins Title Pending is their 1983 EP Metal Circus.  Released on SST, Greg Ginn of Black Flag’s independent label, Metal Circus hints at the power punk nirvana (no pun intended) which defined Zen Arcade; and yet was still subtly positioned behind classic hardcore.  In fact, SSTs catalogue was stacked with former hardcore bands set on rupturing the boundaries of a genre strictly confined by minimalist fury. Acts like Meat Puppets, Dinosaur Jr., and the Minutemen were stationed at the horizon separating hardcore from punk’s modern iterations by transitioning from a reactionary to a progressive sonic model.  Of course, Husker Du was perhaps the most important of this noisy new guard, and Metal Circus deserves to be examined as the first evidence of a hardcore band embracing its most egregious blasphemy:power pop.

Husker Du (I don’t want to add the umlauts) was born out of Saint Paul’s Macalester College by Grant Hart, Bob Mould, and Greg Norton.  Eventually the trio began practicing with keyboardist Charlie Pine, mainly playing typical classic rock covers. However, on several secret occasions where Pine was absent, the remaining trio confided their love for the Ramones and began testing to see the upper limits for the band’s speed.  At their first gig in late 1979, then billed as Buddy and the Returnables, the band ran through expected pop rock before, unbeknownst to Pine, unplugged the keyboard and ripping into several speed fueled originals. Unsurprisingly, Pine was subsequently kicked out, and the band was rechristened “Husker Du” after the eponymous memory game from the 50s.  Du began playing out as the consistent three-piece and entered 1980 as a pretty typical hardcore band. Although Mould has stated that there was always intent to remain at least partially removed from the strictly political aggression of bands like Crass or Minor Threat, they closely paralleled these bands’ sound in their infancy. Du toured ceaselessly and, by 1982, released the two critically acclaimed albums Land Speed Record and In a Free Land on the Minutemen’s label New Alliance.  This level of semi-local fame caught the attention of punk’s pasty father figure: Greg Ginn of Black Flag.  Ginn soon invited the band to move to his own SST where Husker Du were finally upgraded from one collapsing hardcore label to another collapsing hardcore label that the Meat Puppets were signed to.  Born out of their brief tenure with SST was the EP Metal Circus: the first indication that their hardcore abrasion was thawing towards the inception of modern indie rock.

Metal Circus does not initially betray its forgiveness of everything sweet.  The first track “Real World” does, at least upon first listening, sound pretty close to DOA’s frustrated tremors. But there is something within the apparently standard guitar assault that sounds…off.  It could be the power chords shellacked with chorus, but Bad Brains already did that. It could be an anthemic melody brushed behind furious speed, but the Descendants already did that. Maybe it was the off-kilter guitar leads that meandered away from brutality…but Television already did that.  Honestly, there is no particular element which separated Husker Du from their influences. But there didn’t need to be. Du was not a gimmick band. There was no awe to them beyond their incredibly explorative and tight songwriting. That being said, “Real World” was only an introduction to Metal Circus’ embrace of pop sentiment. “Deadly Skies”,the EP’s second track, is a laid trap.  It’s the purest punk of the EP’s 7 track odyssey; it lures the listener into imaging “Real World” as an aberration.  Maybe it was easy listening for marketing purposes. Nope, sorry my imagined 80s hardcore fan with a freshly shaven head and a dirty pair of white Reeboks, the pop has only started.

“It’s Not Funny Anymore” is actually the best 90s alternative song ever released despite coming out in 1983.  Are you listening to Nirvana? Are you listening to Blur? Are you listening to fucking Oasis? Fuck that. This song connected the 11 years of poppy alt-rock between its release and Green Day’s Dookie, and shit on absolutely everything else that came out in the interim.  If you ever consider creating or watching a video essay documenting the slow transformation of pop punk, don’t.  Listen to the Buzzcocks, Descendents, Husker Du, and early Green Day. But I digress. “It’s not Funny Anymore” is the first substantial crack in the ice; it’s slow, fuzz filled guitar lead essentially nullifies any supposed progress that Grunge made.  Bob Mould’s pained belches roughly glide along something that certainly isn’t fully departed from punk (it’s production is still shitty) but is indifferent to the rigorously ascetic lifestyle demanded by their hardcore forefathers. For better or worse, the rest of this EP is a tribute to individualized anxiety.

While “Real World”, “It’s Not Funny Anymore”, and “First of the Last Calls” deserve due recognition for their contribution to mope-riddled punk, we still haven’t explored the track that, quite frankly, birthed modern college rock.  “Diane”, the EPs only (semi)ballad, instantly received nationwide attention for its declaration of a new alternativism. Its intensely muddy four-minutes of echo-fuzzed guitars, uncomfortably distant drums, and harmonizing wails brought with it a haunting melody that sat comfortably between radical noise and pleasantry.  Heavily circulated among university radio stations, the song exploded any legitimate wall separating college tastes from serious commercial attention. (Again) for better or worse, college radio would now become the engine for new-wave exploration; bands like REM, Dinosaur Jr. or even Sonic Youth owe a great debt to Husker Du and the groundbreaking success of “Diane”.

Husker Du simultaneously represents the birth and actualization of college rock, and to a further extent, an accepted mingling of punk with power pop.  Though later releases would ultimately prove to be more acclaimed than Metal Circus, this early EP documented a revolutionary change in indie rock that absolutely qualifies it as a legendary addition to punk’s canon.

-Cliff Jenkins

Categories
Music News and Interviews

The Local Beat-Flood District

The Local Beat-Flood District

DJ Beowvlf interviews Flood District, plays some of their tunes, and premiers some new stuff from their new EP!

Categories
Classic Album Review

Retro Review: Rock*A*Teens – Sixth House

           Okay. Here’s the thing. We can all appreciate something that sounds even a little bit different than what we usually get from Merge. This album is different. I like that. Sixth House isn’t whiny and sounds like real rock, a lot less moaning and fewer ‘recorded on a laptop next to my dead aloe vera plant’ vibes – a nice switch up in my opinion. It’s also nice to have an experienced band in your local mix, but the vibe of this album is almost too gentle. Rock*A*Teens has been around since the 90’s so of course their sound has changed some, but they rocked way harder in their earlier stuff.   

            Besides being kind of underwhelming, the sound is also kind of confusing. The cover screams indie and makes me think of someone with long hair singing about crying and then starting to cry while singing. I wasn’t expecting to hear a dad voice when I first popped in my headphones.

            Sixth House sounds kind of like if Tom Petty was backed by a younger band that started off in a garage but upgraded while still holding on to their grunge roots. It’s almost jammy. Or jammish. Laid back with little to no frill, Rock*A*Teens is a respectable group. But if I had it my way, they would have stuck to their original sound and gone a little harder on these newer tracks. Sorry! Try again next time!

– Music Librarian 

Categories
Weekly Charts

Chainsaw Charts 10/1

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ArtistRecordLabel
1 CREEPING DEATH Wretched Illusions Eone
2 OF MICE AND MEN EARTHANDSKY Rise
3 VALLEYS “Moon Child” [Single] Tragic Hero
4 HELLYEAH Welcome Home Eleven Seven
5 KNOCKED LOOSE A Different Shade Of Blue Pure Noise
6 LOWEST CREATURE Sacrilegious Pain Isolation Rec.
7 WORN THIN Worn Thin [EP] Self-Released
8 KORN The Nothing Roadrunner
9 CARNIFEX World War X Nuclear Blast
10 GATECREEPER “From the Ashes” [Single] Relapse