Yesterday saw the release of King Tuff’s self-titled debut for Sub Pop Records and sophomore release for one Kyle Thomas, a.k.a. the King. My favorite jam off the album (and one of my favorites for the year—period) is “Bad Thing.” It’s glam-rock as done in your bedroom, practicing your air-guitar in front of the mirror to a legion of imaginary fans. If he keeps cranking out gems like this, the King will have a royal court in no time.
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From their classic 1966 LP Fifth Dimension, the Byrds turn an ancient Gaelic folksong into a bittersweet beauty. The ballad (which was also covered a few years back by Fleet Foxes’ Robin Pecknold) concerns itself with the changing of the seasons—a time for joy, and yet with every change comes some sadness. The summertime is coming…
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With the passing of the great Levon Helm, I’ve been revisiting not just the Band’s catalog but also the extensive list of bands directly influenced by them. Drive-By Truckers are firmly on that list—not necessarily for their sound, which is less funky and more raucous, but for their subject matter. The Truckers treat their Southern home as something more interesting than a one-note joke, especially on their 2004 album The Dirty South.
In the midst of a song cycle that’s as richly detailed as a Faulkner novel, there’s Jason Isbell’s heartbreaking “Danko/Manuel.” Isbell (who’s since moved on to a solo career) sings about a rough life on the road, invoking Band members Rick Danko and Richard Manuel as case studies. There’s a lot of mythologizing in rock and roll, but Drive-By Truckers—like their forbears in the Band—just tell it like it is.
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In a scene crowded with garage rock that mumbles when it should shout, A Giant Dog is a damned bullhorn. The Austin five-piece builds on the promise of a handful of EPs with Fight, their first full-length—one that’s padded with some of those EP songs, no less. But that’s hardly a complaint. Instant-classics like “Anyway” and “QYJARA” stand should-to-shoulder the boozy rock and punk of “Chatterteeth” and “Teenage Orgasm.”
Lead singer Sabrina Ellis is a glammed-up Debbie Harry, able to preen and howl all the while carrying a hell of a melody. That’s what’s so much fun about A Giant Dog: they hit all the marks by convincing you they’re about to descend into chaos. But they know exactly what they’re doing.
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With the weather changing (who am I kidding? It’s been summer in Texas since SXSW…), I’ve been dusting off Tame Impala’s stunning 2010 psych-rock epic Innerspeaker as the mercury climbs. And this week came news of Melody’s Echo Chamber, an appropriately-named Parisian outfit lead by one Melody Prochet. Her debut single, “Crystallized,” was produced by Tame Impala’s Kevin Parker, and it has that same galloping dreaminess that makes Innerspeaker such a warm-weather earworm. No word yet on an album, though the single will be out on Fat Possum at a later date.
In Tame Impala news, Parker has moved from his native Perth, Australia to Paris, where he befriended Prochet. With his move, Parker was “inspired to write sugary pop sounds,” with one song developing a “futuristic, apocalyptic Motown vibe,” all of which will presumably be on Tame Impala’s forthcoming second album this July.