Great Friends Great Music 2020
Episode 2: Bootleggers
Flust - Sawtooth EKG
This was the album I was listening to in March 2020 as the entire country was shutting down, which is why it is the perfect opener for this playlist. The whole thing is an 80’s dream pop fantasy. There is a familiar sweetness to the harmony created by sparkly synth counterpoints and melodic bass lines. This music is fearlessly honest, and makes bold but organic choices in composition that only a master song craftsman could pull off. 10/10 months of isolation
Erika Bell - Precept
I find some albums superimpose over reality well. Trees and hills and clouds suddenly belong to an unfamiliar planet. Precept is this kind of album. The songs tell stories with slow moving, winding melodies and pensive, inquisitive guitar chord changes. Like a good book your mind can wander through the invented world. The instrumental performers seem to do the same. Sounds are not controlled, but rather highlighted by the arrangement and allowed to breath. I give this album 10/10 things that a cloud can look like.
Pleaser - Rose Ceremony
Pleaser is asking all the right questions and getting some strange answers. As an audience we get to enjoy the results. Very unique sounds, crystal clear vocals, entrancing and somewhat industrial production, snackable synths, and a bit of post-punk genre bending. The lyrics which at times seem like an anxious inner monologue are honest, hilarious, relatable, cathartic, and… pleasing. 10/10 pleases and thank yous.
Flowers on Loan - music from the 2017 west coast tour
Flowers on Loan has boiled pop music down to its essence and colored it in like a coloring book. Each performer pulls an astonishing variety of sounds from their instruments, a testament to their individual creativity. On top of that the members seem to have synched-up to a collective brain in only the way a good band on tour can do. Pre-covid music for post-covid times. A romantic, nostalgic, time capsule to a different, but not so distant past. 100/100 crayolas still in the box.
Ember Knight - CHERYL
Huge sound, epic arrangements, and one of those instantly identifiable voices. As the liner notes state, this is a soundtrack for a musical that doesn’t exist. I am almost glad it doesn’t. It might be too good and break my brain forever. Bonus: she has been making these helpful videos for adult swim. Ember Knight is a real life superhero.
Kidi Band - “Mary (Merry)” and “Man of Endless Motion”
Kidi kids back at it again. It's impossible not to move to these tracks. I tried and it didn’t work. With magical melody and harmony, the songwriting tumbles over itself like a crashing wave. Layers and phases roll by like rows of apple trees as you drive through the countryside. Kidi Band just keeps getting deeper into their sound. 10/10 rows of apple trees.
Laura Jean Anderson - Take Me As I Am
It's 1AM and everyone is carrying-on outside on the patio, feeling tipsy. This is the song that is playing when you come back into the club. It stops you in your tracks and washes over you. The organ starts to speak all the sense in the world, and the lyrics hit you right in the sternum because you know that it's the truth. Lots of singers have great pipes, good intonation, good tone, but not many people put it all together like Laura Jean. 10/10 musicians having a cigarette between sets.
Gregory Uhlmann - Neighborhood Watch
Greg Uhlmann has a way of looking to the past and the future at the same time. Play this on a long car trip when you are feeling reflective and you won’t be disappointed. This is an intoxicating rock album with hook after hook and arrangements that are full of surprises. Oh yeah, and the band sounds ridiculously good. 10/10 hours until we get through Nebraska.
Steven van Betten, Johanna Samuels, Ted Taforo, Future Gods - Flame In Your Eye
Here is the closer, folks. A sweet song to say goodnight. Hard to find a better one than this. This is an ode to making a home, as many of us are stuck at home; a love song with lots of space, filled delicately with the reverberations of the kitchen it sings of, and water-colors of woodwinds and vocals. 10/10 forks and knives.