PBNSOTW

A regular Thursday feature of this channel.

Peter Baird

6/3/2022

Nobody does existential angst like Dawes. I discovered them fairly late with the All Your Favorite Bands album. Comes In Waves does not disappoint: “Let’s keep an eye on our enemies/While we’re popping the champagne.”

I understand if you decide to never listen to me recommend a song again after you hear Jack White’s What’s The Trick. But I wan’t apologize. The sonics are…arresting, I guess you can say. But the real substance is the lyric, which seems to bounce between Carpe Diem and watching your car get towed.

Hips is far too good to get the problem child label. It’s full of really inventive vocal effects and overdubs, and has a strong lyric. But contrast it with the mix on the next tune from the really wonderful emerger and their new song Airplane Park. Unlike Warpaint, emerger has Emma de Goede’s pristine vocal parked perfectly, and the listener doesn’t have to do any extra work to untangle the words from the synth pads. But with a little more attention to balance Warpaint could be huge.

Love Of My Life isn’t as good as last week’s Matilda, but it’s another example of just how strong Harry Styles’ new album really is.

Étude in E - Flat Minor (Op. 10, No. 6) is another gorgeous chapter in the inscrutable The Chopin Project. This particular etude gets an a casual latin treatment. Notably the guitar solo is much more of a fusion approach than a standard latin jazz sound.