PBNSOTW

I’ve had Freedom Fry on PBNSOTW before, but Strange For Love is on a whole different level. Great chorus: “Maybe I’m just too troubled/Maybe I’m just unlovable/Or maybe I’m too strange/Strange for love” It’s Fleetwood Mac at their Lindsey/Stevie-driven peak with compelling guitar licks, great vocals, and perfect song construction. Marie Seyrat and Bruce Driscoll may have their first real hit.

Everything But (Her Love) will require more lyrical analysis to really understand than I’m willing to put in right now: “Her parade on the ceiling is looking like rain” But it’s beautiful, it’s a waltz, and it has great chordal structure. Just wish Fr. John Misty’s vocal was less buried. If you’re going to double-track the lead make sure the words are still distinct.

Let’s just stipulate that if Melody Gardot releases an album she automatically gets on the list. What Of Your Eyes is a song I will come back to again and again. It’s a standard from the last century that never existed but should have. Then Melody and partner Philippe Powell wrote and performed it, which sounds like a cliché, but when she sings the first verse you automatically think, “nice, someone’s actually singing the verse…usually they just play the chorus” like you’ve already heard it a thousand times. Just her and piano, ruthlessly perfectly performed and recorded.

Samm Henshaw’s The World Is Mine is the first song good enough to break the recent release rule here at PBNSOTW. It’s actually from 2019, but somehow slipped under my radar. Heard it for the first time last night, and as far I’m concerned it’s brand new. “Whole world ahead and the old world behind” Great melody, compelling lyric.

The Gromble is an Orange County band who’ve been around a minute. Cope is their latest single, and while it ain’t perfect in any sense it’s very good. “You’re the moon on a midnight walk/A pilgrimage through city blocks” And producers take note: here is the very best example of intentionally using distortion on a lead vocal in context that won’t have the band wincing when they hear the track ten years from now.