In which your friendly local new music curator (quickly) talks about old music for a change, runs through a mountain of August releases, and makes way too many Smiths references.
Oh, man! I grew up in the mix-tape era… friends (crushes) making tapes for each other…
The Smith were massive, but radio darlings REM, Yaz, et al were big too!
I also had a music mentor. That guy made a ‘zine, was an artists, and loved hard to access music. We both worked at a comic shop. Organizing comics one day, he put on a live Bad Brains album. I thought my world had been turned upside down in the most fantastic way possible.
At 14, I had the testosterone of a man and the pent up anger of a kid who had authoritarian parents. Bad Brains were the perfect antidote to my world of suppressed emotion. From there, I was breathing music through all the bronchioles, finding new ways to breathe going down the most minute passages.
Yes, I agree that mix tapes made by friends or people you were in a relationship with were great ways to discover new songs and new artists. Maybe it was the effort it took to put those together. And I did not love every song on those mixtapes. But even the tunes I was not that into were an interesting glimpse into the person who made the tape as well as broadening of your music vocabulary.
GIFT is a new fave for me in this batch. And not just because of the Garbage and Republica mention in ONE parenthetical! Loved the comfort blanket of Wishy too.
I can help with this! genres are very squishy things and I'm not the authority on their historical development but I think I should do a like post on my favorites of each of those.
If I recall correctly, I discovered both R.E.M. and The Church by being in the car with a friend with no particular destination in mind. Though we were probably skipping school as we were wont to do. I know I discovered a lot of music on those occasions. Come to think of it, I probably should have skipped more often than I did...
Belle & Sebastian enjoyed a mercurial ascendency where, for a while, everything the band did was brilliant – albums, non-album EPs, and so on. Their early creative impetus reminded me of Suede when Bernard Butler was still in the fold.
You don't seem to get these creative purple patches anymore. I think that when singles and EPs more or less died as a serious format, with it went the scaffold that gave early momentum to a lot of bands.
Belle & Sebastian's debut, Tigermilk was released as a limited edition of a 1000. People were aware of it in the UK, as a result of 'The State I Am In' being played on the Radio One Evening Session, but they couldn't get it. Most people's first experience of the band was their second album - If You're Feeling Sinister - and a trio of utterly fantastic EPs that were released soon after. Tigermilk didn't get a reissue until the after the band's third album was out. I was listening to it (Tigermilk) the other day and I still think that it's their best, purely as a result of it having been recorded during a period where there were no eyes on the band and no expectations. It's all over the moment the creative bubble is punctured by the outside world and self-consciousness begins to creep in.
Fold Your Hands..., for me at least, is where the bloom is off the rose. I like the opening tracks – the hollow-eyed 'I Fought In A War' pressing flesh with 'The Model' which is almost bawdy, like an English farce. 'Beyond The Sunrise' I am not too keen on – It's a Lee Hazlewood / Nancy Sinatra pastiche and not a good one in my opinion. 'Waiting For The Moon To Rise' is Sarah Martin's first vocal with the group. I love the way that the song appears to be moving away from you. I like the short instrumental break that ends with a tidy flourish of brass in 'Don't Leave The Light On'. The remainder of the album feels diluted. I find 'Family Tree' execrable. Isobel Campbell's faux virginal façade always felt like it was laid on a bit thick. She had one foot out the door at this point.
I still buy the band's albums and there are always a few songs that make it worthwhile. After my friend, Cat, died I went to her LastFM page. The final song she listened to was 'The Fox In The Snow' which summed her up so perfectly.
“Girl in the snow, where do you go
To find someone who will do?
To tell someone all the truth before it kills you”
This is beautifully written and in a lot of ways it's hard to disagree with you. But it also really highlights just how important our life's context is for how we experience and internalize music. Fold Your Hands is the first B&S album I heard, so it really struck me, and the songs that you call out as hollow, farcical, pastiche... well, it's hard for me to really pull them apart and view them as something removed from the heightened emotions of adolescence and all meaning that imparts. I worked backwards from this album so I know (and far prefer) If You're Feeling Sinister, and actually know Tigermilk pretty well too at this point, but there's something about Fold Your Hands I just won't be able to let go of.
Interestingly, I never quite kept up with Belle & Sebastian. Theirs is a sound that I didn't take with me as I evolved my musical tastes, and I couldn't even tell you how their most recent album was, though I did give it a spin or two.
My favorite Substack! This is awesome. All this music of which I was unaware. Very excited. Thank you Gabbie. I may have to plan a long road trip just so I can listen to all this new music uninterrupted.
You know what might be cool? A conversation about a certain song paired to an indelible memory. The context of how the song and the memory became permanently and inextricably linked. It’s not a “new music” topic, but certainly one that will resonate with everyone. I’d imagine the responses will range from the joyous to the soul-crushing.
This was such a great share and not just because the Smiths are my favorite band. I had a few people, parents friends that would give me their old tapes and LP’s and the first Smiths tape was one of those. I also had one of those people. His name was Marc and he was a few years older than me. He was the last stop on the bus ride to school, which meant he was the first stop on the way home, so I never felt like I had quite enough time to sit and talk to him. He always had the coolest t-shirts… the Smiths, The Cure, Depeche Mode and he had the Morrissey pompadour. We sat together sometimes in chorus and I would play him songs on these mixtapes that I made off the radio and he would tell me who the bands were. We’re actually still friends and he is now the music buyer for Riot Fest. I’m so glad you talked about Brigitte Calls Me Baby! I saw them here in Chicago when they opened up for The Last Dinner Party. If I’m being totally honest, I was annoyed with them at first, haha! I thought how can these young men have so perfectly distilled what I love about music and THIS is the first time I’m hearing about them!? Where did they come from!? How are they all so young and why am I so old haha. Basically a Smiths song in and of itself. As someone that played in bands in Chicago for the lasts twenty years, I was a little sad that they were existing now in a time after my days of playing music are over. How fun it would have been to play with them and watch them grow with a front row seat?
OH my god. "How are they all so young and why am I so old" just sums up my entire existence lately hahaha. These stupid talented children everywhere!!!
I never see anyone talk about Manic Street Preachers- pretty cool to see you talk about them. I loved their music, but went through a bad breakup with the guy who introduced me to their music and could never listen to them again, as it reminded me of that awful time in my life.
god that's so real. I could write a whole thesis on the men who introduced me to music that I now can't listen to. I think a big part of the reason I got into a "man hobby" is so I could be that person instead.
No offence taken Gabbie (other than the life affirming article being a Pitchfork piece and not a No Ripcord one!) I need to spend a little time with Hamish’s new record but I love the line about boring friends with the virtues of shoegaze - very relatable.
I recently discovered your substack and I'm so glad I did! They way you talk about music is absolute poetry. "Aural collage"?? I mean, come on! I'm excited to give all these recs a listen! Thanks for sharing!
As a person who second-guesses every sentence I write, this is MUSIC to my ears. Eyes. Thank you! I’m so glad you are enjoying it. Let me know what you end up liking best.
Thank you for creating this Substack which speaks to me and me alone, I very much appreciate it. I dunno who these other folks are.
no me neither, no idea what they are doing here. I almost called it "new bands for avron" tbh
Oh, man! I grew up in the mix-tape era… friends (crushes) making tapes for each other…
The Smith were massive, but radio darlings REM, Yaz, et al were big too!
I also had a music mentor. That guy made a ‘zine, was an artists, and loved hard to access music. We both worked at a comic shop. Organizing comics one day, he put on a live Bad Brains album. I thought my world had been turned upside down in the most fantastic way possible.
At 14, I had the testosterone of a man and the pent up anger of a kid who had authoritarian parents. Bad Brains were the perfect antidote to my world of suppressed emotion. From there, I was breathing music through all the bronchioles, finding new ways to breathe going down the most minute passages.
So many bands, so many imagined lives…
It's such a good feeling! Makes me wish sometimes that it weren't all so easily available now. Except that's would be terrible.
And we made mix tapes too, don't worry :)
Yes, I agree that mix tapes made by friends or people you were in a relationship with were great ways to discover new songs and new artists. Maybe it was the effort it took to put those together. And I did not love every song on those mixtapes. But even the tunes I was not that into were an interesting glimpse into the person who made the tape as well as broadening of your music vocabulary.
I'm curious as to what percentage of 16 year olds that didn't like the Smiths became serial killers. I'm thinking 80 percent.
while I didn't fact check this, that seems logically correct to me
GIFT is a new fave for me in this batch. And not just because of the Garbage and Republica mention in ONE parenthetical! Loved the comfort blanket of Wishy too.
who can resist slutty bladerunner music??
Fake Fruit tastes sweet! My personal challenge: figuring out the difference between punk, postpunk, and riot grrrl (besides the gender implication). 🧐
I can help with this! genres are very squishy things and I'm not the authority on their historical development but I think I should do a like post on my favorites of each of those.
That would help tremendously!! 🙏🏻🙏🏻🙏🏻
1960s, sorry using my phone.
Thanks! I’m from Detroit where punk began in the 2960’s with MC5 and The Stooges in the 1960s. That’s about the extent of my historical knowledge 😄
If I recall correctly, I discovered both R.E.M. and The Church by being in the car with a friend with no particular destination in mind. Though we were probably skipping school as we were wont to do. I know I discovered a lot of music on those occasions. Come to think of it, I probably should have skipped more often than I did...
sometimes skipping school brought more valuable (or at least salient) lessons, didn't it?
For me it sure did! 😎
Belle & Sebastian enjoyed a mercurial ascendency where, for a while, everything the band did was brilliant – albums, non-album EPs, and so on. Their early creative impetus reminded me of Suede when Bernard Butler was still in the fold.
You don't seem to get these creative purple patches anymore. I think that when singles and EPs more or less died as a serious format, with it went the scaffold that gave early momentum to a lot of bands.
Belle & Sebastian's debut, Tigermilk was released as a limited edition of a 1000. People were aware of it in the UK, as a result of 'The State I Am In' being played on the Radio One Evening Session, but they couldn't get it. Most people's first experience of the band was their second album - If You're Feeling Sinister - and a trio of utterly fantastic EPs that were released soon after. Tigermilk didn't get a reissue until the after the band's third album was out. I was listening to it (Tigermilk) the other day and I still think that it's their best, purely as a result of it having been recorded during a period where there were no eyes on the band and no expectations. It's all over the moment the creative bubble is punctured by the outside world and self-consciousness begins to creep in.
Fold Your Hands..., for me at least, is where the bloom is off the rose. I like the opening tracks – the hollow-eyed 'I Fought In A War' pressing flesh with 'The Model' which is almost bawdy, like an English farce. 'Beyond The Sunrise' I am not too keen on – It's a Lee Hazlewood / Nancy Sinatra pastiche and not a good one in my opinion. 'Waiting For The Moon To Rise' is Sarah Martin's first vocal with the group. I love the way that the song appears to be moving away from you. I like the short instrumental break that ends with a tidy flourish of brass in 'Don't Leave The Light On'. The remainder of the album feels diluted. I find 'Family Tree' execrable. Isobel Campbell's faux virginal façade always felt like it was laid on a bit thick. She had one foot out the door at this point.
I still buy the band's albums and there are always a few songs that make it worthwhile. After my friend, Cat, died I went to her LastFM page. The final song she listened to was 'The Fox In The Snow' which summed her up so perfectly.
“Girl in the snow, where do you go
To find someone who will do?
To tell someone all the truth before it kills you”
I think of her whenever I hear it.
This is beautifully written and in a lot of ways it's hard to disagree with you. But it also really highlights just how important our life's context is for how we experience and internalize music. Fold Your Hands is the first B&S album I heard, so it really struck me, and the songs that you call out as hollow, farcical, pastiche... well, it's hard for me to really pull them apart and view them as something removed from the heightened emotions of adolescence and all meaning that imparts. I worked backwards from this album so I know (and far prefer) If You're Feeling Sinister, and actually know Tigermilk pretty well too at this point, but there's something about Fold Your Hands I just won't be able to let go of.
Interestingly, I never quite kept up with Belle & Sebastian. Theirs is a sound that I didn't take with me as I evolved my musical tastes, and I couldn't even tell you how their most recent album was, though I did give it a spin or two.
My favorite Substack! This is awesome. All this music of which I was unaware. Very excited. Thank you Gabbie. I may have to plan a long road trip just so I can listen to all this new music uninterrupted.
I am truly, truly honored. Please report back!
You know what might be cool? A conversation about a certain song paired to an indelible memory. The context of how the song and the memory became permanently and inextricably linked. It’s not a “new music” topic, but certainly one that will resonate with everyone. I’d imagine the responses will range from the joyous to the soul-crushing.
this is exactly what my friend Joe does: https://onelifeonelife.substack.com/
I'll leave that to him ;)
This was such a great share and not just because the Smiths are my favorite band. I had a few people, parents friends that would give me their old tapes and LP’s and the first Smiths tape was one of those. I also had one of those people. His name was Marc and he was a few years older than me. He was the last stop on the bus ride to school, which meant he was the first stop on the way home, so I never felt like I had quite enough time to sit and talk to him. He always had the coolest t-shirts… the Smiths, The Cure, Depeche Mode and he had the Morrissey pompadour. We sat together sometimes in chorus and I would play him songs on these mixtapes that I made off the radio and he would tell me who the bands were. We’re actually still friends and he is now the music buyer for Riot Fest. I’m so glad you talked about Brigitte Calls Me Baby! I saw them here in Chicago when they opened up for The Last Dinner Party. If I’m being totally honest, I was annoyed with them at first, haha! I thought how can these young men have so perfectly distilled what I love about music and THIS is the first time I’m hearing about them!? Where did they come from!? How are they all so young and why am I so old haha. Basically a Smiths song in and of itself. As someone that played in bands in Chicago for the lasts twenty years, I was a little sad that they were existing now in a time after my days of playing music are over. How fun it would have been to play with them and watch them grow with a front row seat?
OH my god. "How are they all so young and why am I so old" just sums up my entire existence lately hahaha. These stupid talented children everywhere!!!
this is not what i was told about the 80s lol
You had me at “way too many Smiths references.”
Thank you for the suggestions. I'll check them out.
I’m going to have to start with Wishy. “a comfort blanket for the ‘90s music lover” is just what I’m needing today. Thank you!
I never see anyone talk about Manic Street Preachers- pretty cool to see you talk about them. I loved their music, but went through a bad breakup with the guy who introduced me to their music and could never listen to them again, as it reminded me of that awful time in my life.
god that's so real. I could write a whole thesis on the men who introduced me to music that I now can't listen to. I think a big part of the reason I got into a "man hobby" is so I could be that person instead.
This is a great article! Just want to chip in that you would probably like this track, pretty much written for an Autumn playlist 😆
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=38iyHpJtylg
That's one of my favorite YLT songs :)
Isn't it awesome?! But I acknowledge the irony of recommending a 00's song on a substack entitled New Bands for Old Heads!!
Nuh uh, recommend whatever you want! I can’t recommend new stuff without tying it in with the old.
Keep doing what your doing, it’s great reading 😁
No offence taken Gabbie (other than the life affirming article being a Pitchfork piece and not a No Ripcord one!) I need to spend a little time with Hamish’s new record but I love the line about boring friends with the virtues of shoegaze - very relatable.
I was going to say I hadn’t heard of NR yet but I was definitely writing for you already, so I really have no excuse.
I recently discovered your substack and I'm so glad I did! They way you talk about music is absolute poetry. "Aural collage"?? I mean, come on! I'm excited to give all these recs a listen! Thanks for sharing!
As a person who second-guesses every sentence I write, this is MUSIC to my ears. Eyes. Thank you! I’m so glad you are enjoying it. Let me know what you end up liking best.