Tears of Silver, a band fronted by The Posies’ Ken Stringfellow and Mercury Rev’s Jonathan Donahue, performed at Hi-Fi House on Oct. 2, 2017.
Last Thursday the Hi-Fi House account on Facebook posted that the members-only listening club and vinyl vault will be “going on hiatus effective immediately until this pandemic subsides for good.”
Located on the corner of 37th and Farnam, Hi-Fi House has been closed for almost a year and is giving up its Blackstone location with hopes of returning elsewhere sometime in the future, according to the post.
The brainchild of Kate Dussault, Hi-Fi House opened its listening room back in 2016 boasting high-end audio stations used for spinning a dazzling collection of vinyl, with records counting in the tens of thousands. In addition to hosting educational music labs and listening parties, the space hosted a number of live performances.
The first question that popped into my mind when I heard the news was what will happen with that massive vinyl collection? Dussault said the answer is being discussed now and storage options are being considered, including a satellite operation that utilizes parts of the collection. Stay tuned.
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Saddle Creek Records today announced it’s releasing a new 2-song EP by Hand Habits, a.k.a. Meg Duffy, titled Dirt. Co-produced by Sasami Ashworth and Kyle Thomas (King Tuff), Dirt hits the streets Feb. 19. The first track of the 2-song EP, “4th of July,” dropped this morning on YouTube via the following video. Pre-order the EP here.
McCarthy Trenching, Perfect Game (2020, self release)
Long-time Village Voice music critic Robert Christgau is still writing reviews, these days via a Substack newsletter account (you can subscribe here). The subscription includes his monthly “Consumer Guide” reviews, and the January edition includes a glowing review of McCarthy Trenching’s latest LP, Perfect Game.
Said Christgau:
“Alerted by Phoebe Bridgers’s cover of this ‘band’’s ‘Christmas Song,’ I spent a fine little Spotify morning checking out all 57 of Dan McCarthy’s entries. These date back to 2007 with the band part mostly theoretical—guitar strummer McCarthy doubles on the piano that dominates here and has hooked up with a bassist who I presume inflected the horn arrangements that add welcome color to his latest and most impressive tunes—most of which, to be clear, truly are tunes. McCarthy sings clear, mild, droll, calculated, casual and writes clever and inventive without ever overwhelming his offhand affect—the many laugh lines are more chuckle lines. ‘Why Don’t I See You Anymore’ devotes single lines and whole stanzas to 16 reasons before ‘Phaethon’ modernizes Greek mythology. ‘Red Maple’ and ‘Russian Olive’ chronicle dead trees. ‘I Didn’t Come to Town to Get a Haircut’ is something his uncle used to say only by the time Dan finally gets around to it the town doesn’t even have a barber. And that’s only the half of it. A MINUS“
Christgau has been writing reviews since the ’60s and is my all-time favorite music critic. It’s a joy to see him recognize a local boy.
BTW, he wasn’t so glowing with Phoebe Bridgers’ Punisher, in which he said: “If articulated depression is what you crave, does she have lyrical and musical detail for you—philosophical solace or melodic relief, no (“I See You,” “Graceland Too”) **”
The ** rating is an honorable mention on the Christgau scale.
Omaha indie band The Sunks’ have a new album coming out next Tuesday. The band consists of frontman Sean Paul on guitar/vocals, Ben Volkman on lead guitar; Adam O’Connell on bass and Kevin Kelly on drums. Here’s the first single, “The Sunks Song.”
I’ve been waiting all week to write about these releases because I thought we were coming up on another Bandcamp Friday, but it turns out that Bandcamp is skipping January and relaunching the promo in February. Why skip January? Who knows. Regardless, I can’t wait another month to write about these new tracks and releases, so…
First up is the new one by Hartford/Focht. The core of the band is the singing duo of Matt Focht and Crystal Hartford, but as Matt said in a super-long IM in Facebook, “Our band is basically backed up by Head of Femur and Ben Armstrong’s father on piano and organ. (We) also had special guests like the Mike Mogis and the Fink sisters.” Sort of an indie folk supergroup if you ask me.
The self-titled album was recorded and mixed in Omaha this past November at The Library and ARC by Adam Roberts, and mastered by Dan Dietrich at Wall to Wall in Chicago. In addition to originals by Focht, there’s renditions of songs by Lowell George, Rick Roberts, Laura Nyro, Larry Murray, Al Kooper and Bob Dylan (“I Shall Be Released”). The whole album has an early ’70s Laurel Canyon vibe, thanks in part to Hartford’s Joni-esque vocals and the overall arrangements.
Wherein I like the covers, the originals really shine, like “Chico Hot Springs,” “Standing in the Light” and “Capitol Sunset.” Check it out here on their Bandcamp page and buy a download. It’s also at the usual streaming services.
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It’s been awhile since we heard from Matt Whipkey. There have been trials. There have been tribulations. And coming out of all that is a new album due later this year.
“I wrote and recorded an entire new album throughout the course of this last year / quarantine. The tracks were completed via email with my good friends and collaborators Scott Gaeta and Ian Aeillo. When I thought it was finished it was screaming for something more.”
Here’s an early sneak peek – a track actually written back in 2016, long before the troubles. Best sounding Whipkey track I think I’ve heard. So yeah, Whipkey’s back.
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What do you get when you mix broken-bottle country with an Omaha punk superstar? You get Lightning Stills and Junkyard Dan on the new track, “Passed Out on the Bar.”
Lightning Stills is Craig Fort (actually a punk dude in in his own right), while Junkyard Dan is Dan Maxwell of Little Brazil and Leafblower fame. I think this is the first time I really heard DMax’s vocals in all their glory. Yeah, he’s sung on plenty of albums, but the mix and the contrast with Fort make his vox stand out like never before.
This one comes with a video that’s pretty weird, actually. Can’t wait to see these two on an Omaha stage.
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Finally, Shaun the Loud sent an email to me out of the blue and I’m glad he did. I hadn’t heard of him, though he released an album on the late Eric Medley’s Tremulant Records last year. Shaun the Loud is Shaun Sparks. And while 2019’s Galaxy Particles was a twangy singer/songwriter band-driven collection, Sparks has gone almost all digital on this new one, thanks, in part, to the pandemic.
The result, the self-released Cosmic Barbecue, sounds like a dance album sung by one of Glen Campbell’s sidemen. Sparks said his teenage kids along with a few contributors, including a handful of players, Christopher Steffen, who mixed the album, and Doug Van Sloun, “encouraged the electronic thing.”
“The original concept of the project was to make dance music but it took a life of its own from there, mainly because Idk how to make that and I’m normally into songwriting, so that’s why there’s more emphasis on beats, synth and bass lines rather than the more songwriter-y structure in the previous release,” he said.
Call it a singer/songwriter electronic dance music, if you will, and definitely worth checking out, but not on Bandcamp. Sparks’ albums are released on Distrokid, which includes every streaming service but Bandcamp.
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It’s the second Friday of the month and you know what that means — Blackstone Second Friday or #BSSF.
Well, I don’t know if #BSSF is a thing yet, but maybe we can get the ball rolling, especially tonight when The Little Gallery Blackstone hosts an opening reception featuring the works of artist Jeanne Pittack. Titled “Heimweh,” the show features Pittack’s black-and-white photography.
It’s the first new opening at the new Little Gallery space in Blackstone, located at 144. So. 39th St., which is inside the Blackstone Mansion just east of Night Owl. The show runs from 7 to 10 p.m. and admission is free. Masks are required, as is social distancing, and there’s a 5-person limit inside The Little Gallery. See you there.
It’s time to gaze into my crystal Peavey Amp and tell you what’s going to happen in the music world in 2021, but before I do (as I do every year), I’ll first look back at last year’s predictions. Only a stark-raving lunatic could have foreseen the rise of COVID-19 and its dreadful impact on the music industry. And yet… Let’s take a look:
2020 Prediction: One or two Omaha music venues will shut down permanently this year, while “those in charge” will begin to second-guess the proposed $109 million Omaha Performing Arts concert venue.
Reality: The Lookout Lounge and Barley Street Tavern both closed their doors, and rumor has it there’s some head-scratching going on over the OPA concert venue. Of course a pandemic played a role in both those predictions coming true…
2020 Prediction: A former Omaha Girls Rock student will break through in her own band on our local stages.
Reality: No one broke through on any stage in 2020.
2020 Prediction: In an effort to retain local talent, a new local nonprofit will form that will financially subsidize local musicians, their recording projects and their tours.
Reality: The only way this is going to happen is if I do it myself with Susie Buffett’s money.
2020 Prediction: The popularity of cassettes as a consumer format will continue as more artists choose to release new recordings on tape.
Reality: By July 2020, there was a 103 percent increase in cassette sales in the UK; still, cassette sales comprise less that 1 percent of the overall music market.
2020 Prediction: A major concert will be organized to bring out the vote in Nebraska’s 2nd District, which could play an important role in keeping Trump out of office.
Reality: NE2 did swing for Biden even if the pandemic prevented huge Democratic rallies in Omaha and elsewhere.
2020 Prediction: Despite capturing big sponsorships, Maha will not book a Lizzo-sized headliner this year, instead opting to spend more money on high-end bands across both festival nights.
Reality: The Maha Festival didn’t happen (but having seen the proposed line-up that was never made public, the prediction was spot on).
2020 Prediction: “The trend of booking fewer touring indie bands at Omaha venues will continue. We’ll be lucky to get one A-list indie show per month.”
Reality: When you’re right, you’re right.
2020 Prediction: We’ll all be singing “Deacon Blues” in 2020.
Reality: Donald Fagen did not join Walter Becker last year, though we all were singing the blues.
2020 Prediction: Bands we’ll be talking about next year: Algiers, Bright Eyes, Criteria, Perfume Genius, King Krule, David Nance Band, The War on Drugs.
Reality: All released albums in 2020 despite the pandemic, but we’re still waiting on those new ones by Beach House, Kendrick Lamar, Slowdive and St. Vincent.
2020 Prediction: Conor Oberst will finally walk across the Saturday Night Live stage.
Reality: Here I thought, at the very least, Conor would make a cameo alongside Phoebe Bridgers. Nope.
Final score: Around 50/50, with help from a national pandemic. So what about 2021? As shitty as 2020 was, things will only get better, but…
Prediction: Vaccinating enough people where it feels safe to go to concerts again will take a lot longer than anyone expects. The Waiting Room, Reverb Lounge and The Slowdown all will begin booking touring bands again beginning in July. O’Leaver’s will plug in the amps in early fall, alongside The Brothers Lounge.
Prediction: The Maha Music Festival will be back in late summer, though we’ll all still be wearing masks and social distancing (sort of). On the other hand, South By Southwest, which takes place in March, will remain a digital-only affair.
Prediction: As of this writing (Dec. 16), Save Our Stages legislation as part of a revised CARES Act has not passed, but it will pass eventually, only to be followed by a Save Our Stages II Act.
Prediction: Despite federal SOS and CARES Act money finally flowing, venues will continue to go out of business (including a major Omaha player) because gun-shy audiences still fearing COVID-19 will drag their feet before returning to the clubs.
Prediction: Under pressure from some very large artists, streaming services (and labels) will be forced to look at how they’re compensating talent, considering streaming revenues increased 21 percent in 2019 vs. the previous year, while Spotify now boasts 320 million monthly active users as of Sept. 30.
Prediction: After a year of ordering stuff online, shoppers will rush back to brick-and-mortars post pandemic, and record stores are going to be one of the big beneficiaries. Watch them enjoy their biggest 3rd and 4th quarter sales in years.
Prediction: One bi-product of the pandemic — live-streamed rock shows — will become a new revenue generator for bands and venues who learned how to properly produce and monetize online events. Look for venues to offer streaming tickets right alongside live show tickets on a regular basis.
Prediction: Home recording was already a thing, but after spending a year stuck at home, bands and musicians have honed their skills. Look for more home-recorded releases in 2021, though formal studios will be plenty busy servicing the big stars who have been holding their water throughout the prior year.
Prediction: While there was a surprising number of albums released in 2020, watch the floodgates burst this year, as artists rush to release recordings they’ve held onto until they could return to the road.
Prediction: Bob Dylan won’t be missing that song catalog he just sold to Universal after this year.
Prediction: Bands and performers we’ll be talking about this time next year: Arcade Fire, Bright Eyes, The Faint, The Good Life, David Nance, Courtney Barnett, Little Brazil, Nick Cave, The National, Angel Olson, Modest Mouse, Phoebe Bridgers and U2.
Prediction: I’ve given up on my annual “Conor Oberst on SNL” prediction, which almost guarantees this is the year it’ll happen.
Over The Edge is a monthly column by Reader senior contributing writer Tim McMahan focused on culture, society, music, the media and the arts. Email Tim at tim.mcmahan@gmail.com.
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Lazy-i Best of 2020 Compilation
Relive the year gone by with the Lazy-i Best of 2020 Comp CD!
The collection includes my favorite indie tunes I’ve come across throughout last year as part of my tireless work as a music critic for Lazy-i. Among those represented: Waxahatchee, David Nance, Bright Eyes, Digital Leather, Sufjan Stevens, Run the Jewels, Fiona Apple, Nathan Ma, Criteria, McCarthy Trenching, HAIM, Future Islands, No Thanks and lots more.
To enter, send me an email with your mailing address to tim.mcmahan@gmail.com. Hurry, contest deadline is TONIGHT, Monday, Jan. 4, at midnight.
Or listen on Spotify. Simply click this link or search “Lazy-i Best of” in Spotify, go to the Playlists tab, and you’ll find the 2020 playlist along with a few from past years, too!
Before I began writing this annual music year in review article, I glanced back at last year’s reflections on 2019. It was mostly gripes. Music sales have dried up. Touring has become an expensive, money-losing proposition. And with the constant exodus of talent moving away from Omaha, who was going to play on all these stages (with even more planned in the coming years)? I even complained about the lack of quality touring indie bands coming through town.
Oh woe is us.
After the year we’ve just been through, you have to laugh at those comments. What spoiled, entitled, jaded brats we’d become. We didn’t know how good we had it. Well, we know now.
The Year of Our Lord 2020 — the Year of COVID-19 — needs no explanation to any of you. We each have our own pandemic story. You were lucky if you weren’t struggling to stay alive or to keep someone alive or to pay your rent or feed yourself and your family.
You were lucky if being bored was on top of your list of worries. That said, life without live music — for those us who love it — can be pretty boring.
I miss it. To the point where, when I watch concert footage online or on TV and see the shots of dark, crowded clubs or jam-packed arenas filled with maskless faces, I literally am in awe, and wonder if it will ever be like that again.
It will be. Eventually.
If there’s one thing I’ve learned through all this it’s how much live music and the local music scene has become part of my personal identity — the music, the bands, the venues and, above all, the people. How strange it is to lose it, if only for a year. How much more strange it must be for those who make a living from it.
They could have sat home alone and pouted, but instead musicians and venue owners looked for ways out of the darkness, and will emerge from the pandemic stronger for it.
NIVA
For the first time, live music entrepreneurs joined together — more than 2,900 independent music venues and promoters — to form the National Independent Venue Association (NIVA). Their mission: To lobby Congress to pass legislation that provides recovery funds and tax credits to help venues survive the pandemic.
Their message throughout has been that independent venues were the first to close and will be the last to fully reopen. Their dire warning is that 90 percent of independent venues will close permanently over the course of the coming months without federal funding.
In fact, so far two Omaha venues have closed permanently at least in part due to necessary COVID-19 clampdowns — The Lookout Lounge on 72nd Street and The Barley Street Tavern in Benson — and more may be on the verge of falling off the financial cliff. Club owners from The Slowdown, The Waiting Room and O’Leaver’s have been among the most vocal local members of NIVA pushing since this summer for legislation and asking their patrons to write lawmakers and prod them to sign on to Save Our Stages legislation.
Ingenuity
Meanwhile, artists found new ways to stay engaged with their audiences. Within months of the national shut-downs and tour cancellations, bands began to take to the internet for live-streamed performances. Suddenly Zoom sessions — as quiet and distant as they felt — became the new normal.
Without income from live performances, some artists turned to Patreon, an online platform that connects musicians with fans by offering membership tiers that provide perks such as premium content and early exclusive access to new work, all for a monthly fee. Among the artists with Patreon accounts are Ben Folds, Circa Survive and ’80s indie legend Lloyd Cole, whose offerings include everything from private-streamed concerts to online guitar lessons.
Despite being sidelined from performing, 2020 still ended up being another strong year for new releases from both a national and local indie perspective. Last month, The Reader published links to more than 40 Nebraska-based artists who released new music during the pandemic, all available on the usual streaming services as well as Bandcamp, the online digital music store that has become the central marketplace for new and independent bands.
Which brings us to my list of favorite albums of 2020. Here they are, in no particular order:
Waxahatchee, Saint Cloud (Merge)
David Nance, Staunch Honey (Trouble in Mind)
Christian Lee Hutson, Beginners (Anti)
Nation of Language, Introduction, Presence (self release)
Porridge Radio, Every Bad (Secretly Canadian)
Criteria, Years (15 Passenger)
No Thanks, Submerger (Black Site)
Phoebe Bridgers, Punisher (Dead Oceans)
Sufjan Stevens, The Ascension (Asthmatic Kitty)
Disq, Collector (Saddle Creek)
HAIM, Women in Music Pt. III (Columbia)
Digital Leather, New Wave Gold (No Coast)
Those Far Out Arrows, Fill Yer Cup (self release)
Fontaines D.C., A Hero’s Death (Partisan)
Bright Eyes, Down in the Weeds, Where the World Once Was (Dead Oceans)
This is where I usually list my favorite live performances from the past year. It would be unfair to forget the concerts that took place before COVID-19, such as:
Susto at Slowdown Jr., Feb. 24, 2020.
Susto at Slowdown Jr., Feb. 24 — A night of story-telling rock reminiscent of the late, great Jim Croce.
PUP and Screaming Females at The Waiting Room, March 4 — PUP’s Stefan Babcock remarked that the set was a disaster, but it sure sounded great from where I stood, and certainly the fist-pump-fueled crowd loved it.
PUP was the last live show I saw before the pandemic. I was all set to see Nap Eyes at The Waiting Room March 15, but it was cancelled along with everything else — including this year’s Maha Music Festival — as one by one venues closed down beginning in March.
Favorite livestream performances included Mike Schlesinger and Rebecca Lowry streamed from The Sydney March 27; No Thanks, Little Brazil and Noah’s Ark Was A Spaceship streamed live from The Slowdown May 21 and 23, and Glow in the Dark streamed live from Low End at the Bemis Nov. 12.
And How at Petfest, Aug. 15, 2020.
And there were a couple outdoor concerts — Petfest Aug. 15 behind Petshop in Benson, featuring killer socially distanced performances by And How and Those Far Out Arrows; and Slowdown’s 3-day outdoor festival held in the parking lot behind the club Oct. 1-3.
I even snuck into one indoor live club show when local bands Dead Letters and Las Cruxes played at the newly remodeled Reverb Lounge Sept. 19. But that was it. By the time fall came ’round, live indie rock shows evaporated as everyone hunkered down for the next wave of COVID-19.
As I write this in mid-December, a second vaccine is being approved by the FDA, and shots are being fired into arms of healthcare professionals and first responders throughout the country. They’ll eventually get to your arm, too, and masks will become a thing of the past, but now I’m getting into 2021 predictions, and you’ll have to wait until tomorrow for more of those.
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Lazy-i Best of 2020 Compilation
Relive the year gone by with the Lazy-i Best of 2020 Comp CD!
The collection includes my favorite indie tunes I’ve come across throughout last year as part of my tireless work as a music critic for Lazy-i. Among those represented: Waxahatchee, David Nance, Bright Eyes, Digital Leather, Sufjan Stevens, Run the Jewels, Fiona Apple, Nathan Ma, Criteria, McCarthy Trenching, HAIM, Future Islands, No Thanks and lots more.
To enter, send me an email with your mailing address to tim.mcmahan@gmail.com. Hurry, contest deadline is Monday, Jan. 4, at midnight.
Or listen on Spotify. Simply click this link or search “Lazy-i Best of” in Spotify, go to the Playlists tab, and you’ll find the 2020 playlist along with a few from past years, too!
It’s the last week of the year and that means the beginning of the end. Let’s kick it off by announcing the annual Lazy-i Best of 2020 compilation CD track list.
Regular readers of the blog know I’ve been putting together this compilation since the website went live in ’98 (and even before that). It started as a cassette comp, and when home CD burners became affordable (or, should I say, when I could afford one), it switched to a CD (back in ’99, the first CD cover featured a live photo taken at a Dismemberment Plan concert at Sokol Underground).
The comp consists of the best tracks from artists I’ve written about in Lazy-i or The Reader throughout the year. About half the tracks are from Nebraskans. Despite the pandemic, it’s been a damn good year for new music.
Anyway, here’s the Lazy-i Best of 2020 tracklist:
“Can’t Do Much” – Waxahatchee (Merge)
“The Merchandise” – David Nance (Trouble in Mind)
“Snake in My Basement” – Those Far Out Arrows (self release)
“Mariana Trench” – Bright Eyes (Dead Ocean)
“Hot Water Rising” – No Thanks (Black Site)
“Compass” – Digital Leather (No Coast)
“Video Game” – Sufjan Stevens (Asthmatic Kitty)
“For Sure” – Future Islands (4AD)
“Beautiful Machines” – Joan App (self release)
“the ground below” – Run the Jewels (Jewel Runners)
“Don’t Wanna” – HAIM (Columbia)
“Under the Table” – Fiona Apple (Epic)
“Northsiders” – Christian Lee Hutson (Anti)
“Cold Light of Day” – Lewsberg (self release)
“Blue Bird” – Nathan Ma (self release)
“Agitate Resuscitate” – Criteria (15 Passenger)
“Dying to Believe” – The Beths (Carpark)
“Coolie Trade” – Mike Schlesinger (self release)
“Asking for a Friend” – McCarthy Trenching (self release)
“If We Make It Through December” – Phoebe Bridgers (Dead Ocean)
“Christmas” – Marinelli (self release)
Want a copy of the CD? Enter to win one in the annual drawing! To enter, send me an email with your mailing address to tim.mcmahan@gmail.com. Hurry, contest deadline is Monday, Jan. 4, at midnight.
The playlist also is available in Spotify. Simply click this link or search “Lazy-i Best of” in Spotify then select Playlists, and you’ll find it along with a few from past years, too.
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What a wonderful surprise last week when the fine folks from The So-So Sailors posted a new song on Bandcamp.
From their Facebook post announcing the song: “Well, it’s been a while. And, we’ve missed you an awful lot! So, in the spirit of the season, and despite the trials of 2020, we wish you happiness, health and prosperity. And with that, please accept a little Christmas cookie in form of “My Arms,” the first single from our forthcoming 2021 LP release. Here’s to 2021!!“
The band, which consists of frontman Chris Machmuller (Ladyfinger), drummer Dan Kemp, bassist/vocalist Brendan Greene-Walsh, keyboardist Dan McCarthy (McCarthy Trenching) and guitarist Alex McManus (The Bruces), released its debut EP, Young Hearts, in December 2011. Read about their illustrious origins in this 2011 Lazy-i interview.
Their new album is just one more thing to look forward to in 2021, along with the end of COVID and the return of live music. None of it can come fast enough…
Maybe Christmas and Hanukah will be a little merrier for club owners this year now that the Save Our Stages Act has passed as part of the COVID-19 relief bill.
For those of you not keeping track, club owners and promoters pulled together early in the pandemic and formed the National Independent Venue Association — or NIVA — to rally the troops to contact their lawmakers to get this legislation passed. It became attached to the bigger omnibus relief package in late summer and passed in the House but — as we all know — sat on Sen. McConnell’s desk ever since, waiting for a Senate vote.
According to NIVA: “The legislation provides critical help to shuttered businesses by providing a grant equal to 45% of gross revenue from 2019, with a cap of $10 million per entity. This grant funding will ensure recipients can stay afloat until reopening by helping with expenses like payroll and benefits, rent and mortgage, utilities, insurance, PPE, and other ordinary and necessary business expenses.”
Trump has yet to sign the bill, but he will. He better. Next up, NIVA is working with the Small Business Administration to make sure the money gets distributed as the bill intended. And while no doubt this will be a great help, something tells me that more relief funds will be needed since it’s going to take a shit-ton amount of time to get that vaccine in everyone’s arm…
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You may know Bryce Hotz as the frontman to Omaha indie powerhouse Lodgings, whose 2019 album, Water Works, was one of my favorites that year. Well, encapsulated as we all are in this COVID cocoon, Hotz has been working on new solo material and yesterday released the first track, titled “All the Rain.”
It’s a sort of stoner-esque departure from the Lodgings’ material. Hotz says it’s more in line with his 2011 solo album, Fix’r Up’r, which you also can find at his Bandcamp page.
Expect Hotz’s full-length by the close of 2021. By then hopefully he’ll be hosting a real, live album-release show.
It has been excessively quiet in Lazy-i land over the past week. I’ve spent this down time writing the annual Year in Review and 2021 Predictions articles for The Reader, which will be out in January. Seems like a long time to wait, considering every other publication already has posted/printed their year-end “best of” lists.
Pitchfork, the self-inflicted arbiter of hipster taste dipsticks, published its top-50 list last week. Pitchfork is more of an electronic/hip-hop review website these days based on these numbers, and no doubt that’s a reflection of indie’s ever-changing shift in direction. And yet, there’s still plenty of indie and pop to go around on this list — Taylor Swift at no. 29; Soccer Mommy at No. 26. And so on.
Who am I kidding. Pitchfork sneaks a few obscure albums on their list every year to appear to be hip, but in the end, it’s the same ol’ story. Topping the Pitchfork list was Fiona Apple, who is topping a lot of lists this year, followed by by Waxahatchee and gospel-tinged art rocker Moses Sumney on Jagjaguwar. Phoebe Bridgers, our pandemic It Girl, came in at No. 4.
Stereogum published its top-50 list three weeks ago. Fiona Apple, was again at the top, followed by Waxahatchee and Run the Jewels, with HAIM at No. 4 followed by Taylor Swift. Poor Phoebe was pushed all the way back to No. 28!
Consequence of Sound has become more rabid about its reviews these days. They try to be edgy, but they’re just as predictable. No. 1, Fiona Apple; No. 2 Run the Jewels; No. 3 Phoebe Bridgers. Waxahatchee drops to No. 6 on their list, right about the new Deftones album. Maybe they’re not that edgy after all. In fact, flipping through their list, it’s easily the most pop-centric of the bunch.
It’s here that we look at the aggregate site Album of the Year, which combines reviews from all the websites, assigns points for where an album falls on a list and then adds them up to come up with its rankings.
With that in mind, it should be no surprise that Fiona Apple’s Fetch the Bolt Cutters was No. 1, with 444 points; Phoebe Bridges was a distant No. 2 with 364 points; followed by Run the Jewels RTJ4 at No. 3 with 304 points; Taylor Swift at No. 4 with 246 points and Duo Lipa at No. 5 with 223 points (I don’t get Duo Lipa having watched her on SNL and discarding her as a Katy Perry wannabe).
Missing from all these lists is the new Bright Eyes album, Down in the Weeks Where the World Once Was. It certainly got a lot of attention when it came out, but not nearly the push that Phoebe Bridgers got for her release on the same label.
According to Album to the Year, BE’s album did have some year-end lists appearances: No. 5 on The Sunday Times list, No. 9 on NBHAP, No. 10 on DIY; No. 12 on The Forty-Five; No. 21 on Double J; No. 40 on Slant Magazine and No. 45 on Uncut. Its year-end Album of the Year aggregate ranking was No. 267. Well.
BTW, the Gordon album I’m listening to is the three-song live set recorded at O’Leaver’s way back in 2014. I don’t know whatever happened to Gordon, but I can give you this holiday tip if you’re looking for something to listen to while wrapping gifts: Check out Live at O’Leaver’s. Within a few minutes of perusing the site you’ll be falling down the rabbit hole back to a simpler time when we all listened to live music surrounded by convicted felons and other assorted drunken miscreants. I miss O’Leaver’s. I might have to swing by at lunchtime and get a cheeseburger…
A sneak peek at the inside sleeve of the new Mousetrap Attica 12-inch.
It’s all about who you know.
I got my advanced copy of the new Mousetrap 4-song 12-inch 45 rpm EP, Attica, yesterday in all its blood-red vinyl glory. The story again — the four songs by this ’90s-era seminal Omaha indie punk band were recorded sometime in 1997 and have sat locked in a vault (or stashed in a cardboard box under bass player Craig Crawford’s bed) all these years only to be remaster by Bob Weston of Shellac in 2020 and released for this limited run of 500 copies. It is scorching, classic Mousetrap at its most angry and acidic. Check out the lead track below and pre-order the vinyl before the Dec. 16 release via the Mousetrap Bandcamp page.
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The last time we saw indie band Lodgings they were opening for Criteria at The Waiting Room last Dec. 28 for the annual holiday show. Alas, with COVID, there won’t be any holiday shows this year.
Well earlier this week, the band released the first video from its 2019 Albini-engineered LP Water Works for the song “Emu,” directed by Amélie Raoul. Check it out below and go to their Bandcamp page to buy the album!
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I’ve been meaning to mention this for awhile but it keeps slipping off my screen: Back at the end of November Pitchfork reviewed David Nance’s latest album, Staunch Honey (2020, Trouble in Mind), and gave it a very respectable 7.7 rating, saying “The Nebraska guitarist and songwriter strips his music to its raw, noisy core, revealing how his favorite records might have sounded when still being hammered out in rehearsal.”
It’s mostly a rave wherein critic Sam Sodomsky seems to revel in the idea of underproduction, pointing out numerous times the stripped down, recorded-from-scratch nature of this album. He concludes with: “While the songs on Staunch Honey feel like breakthroughs, it’s living proof that their real journey is just beginning.” Not sure what that’s supposed to mean…
At any rate, it’s great to see Pitchfork review Nance (or any Nebraska artist, for that matter). Twas a time when a Pitchfork review was a “big deal.” It’s hard to gauge a Pitchfork effect these days when no one is touring, but even when they were, the Pitchfork effect was very limited as far as its impact on the local show draw — I can’t count the number of times I went to see a band with an 8.0+ Pitchfork review at O’Leaver’s or The Waiting Room expecting an SRO crowd only to be met with 20 or so people.
That said, Pitchfork remains a go-to website for indie reviews (though there has to be something else out there)…
Some artwork for the top Nebraska releases in 2020.
So Bandcamp Friday (today) is the day in which you can purchase downloads via Bandcamp, and all the money goes to the artists because Bandcamp is waiving their cut. With that in mind, I pushed online my column in this month’s issue of The Reader. It’s a listing of 40 Nebraska recordings released during this, the Year of Our Covid 2020. Included in the story are links to all 40 recordings on Bandcamp, wherein you can buy, download and listen to the best our state has to offer.
You know, The Reader didn’t do a “music issue” this year, and as such, didn’t publish a Reader Top 20 (and the next whatever). This list of 40 releases is as good as it gets considering no one was out performing or touring this year. These artists threw their wares to the masses anyway, knowing that they wouldn’t be able to support their album releases with live shows.
With that in mind GO TO THE STORY NOW and check out the list, click through the links and download/buy some music and support local area artists while hearing some damn fine sounds. Another way to help the artists out is by sharing The Reader story on your social media channels so others can discover what we already know.
Couple more things…
Flight School is a musical project of studio engineer/musician/genius Ian Aeillo. Ian doesn’t like it when I call him a genius, he thinks I’m funnin’ him, no matter how many times I tell him I’m not. The guy just can’t take a compliment. Fact is, Ian was involved in a number of the 40 recordings I mentioned in my Reader column.
Anyway, this morning, Flight School dropped its latest digital full-length effort, This Will Get You There. It’s 21 songs Ian wrote for his favorite vocalists, none of which sing on any of the tracks, leaving you with just Ian’s fine instrumental music. I asked him to list the “favorite vocalists” on the Bandcamp page so we could try to guess who went with which song, but he wasn’t having it. Buy/download/listen here.
Also online today, Lightning Stills (a.k.a. Craig Fort and band) released his entire debut EP Sings His Songs, which wasn’t expected to drop for awhile, but this being Bandcamp Friday, he said ‘what the heck.’ Check out the recording here, buy and download!
And for one day only (today), Simon Joyner is making available for download at Bandcamp Ten Songs (Home Demos for 2021 Album). These are demos recorded on his phone over the past few months that he’ll use as reference while working on songs, but the sound quality is hella good (certainly better than those early Sing Eunichs! recordings!). Go, buy, download here.
That’s it. If you’re going out, wear a mask (as if I had to tell you that!). Have a great weekend!
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