2018 has been a great year for music so far, so we decided to create a ‘currently listening’ playlist that captures the new (and new-ish) releases we’re listening to right now. Some of the tracks we’ve included are by our friends and others are by people we wish we were friends with, the common thread is that they’re all grade A bangers. It’s important to support other musicians and hopefully people who like Doe will also find something they like here. We’re going to keep adding to the playlist as the year goes on, if nothing else it’ll provide something we can listen to together in the car on the way to shows to get pumped. - Nicola (Doe)
Subscribe to the Spotify playlist here.Virginia native Shelley Marshaun Massenburg-Smith always seems to have a huge grin on his face, and makes the kind of infectiously whimsical anthems that put a smile on everyone else’s faces. The 2015 EPs #1Epic and Gahdamn! established his unique sound and irrepressible personality with the Super Mario Bros.-sampling hit “Cha Cha.” A wide array of features followed, with kindred spirits like Chance The Rapper and Donnie Trumpet as well as surprising collaborators like Chairlift and E-40. The full-length debut Big Baby D.R.A.M. arrived on the heels of the smash Lil Yachty collaboration “Broccoli,” showcasing D.R.A.M.’s witty rhymes as well as his earworm melodies.
In July 2017, veteran Washington State sludgemasters The Melvins unleashed their 26th album (and a double, to boot), A Walk with Love & Death. At the time of its release, we gave you a thorough introduction to their extended family; now, with his debut solo album,The Fickle Finger of Fate, out this month, drummer Dale Crover has created a special Dowsers playlist celebrating his kings of the kit.
"Heres a playlist I made of some of my favorite drummers. I left off the obvious. Theres no Bonham, Moon, Charlie, or Ringo on the list. All of these songs/drummers have had a big influence on my playing. Even though none of these songs date past the 1980s, I can still listen to them to this day and get excited. Enjoy!"—Dale Crover
1. Judas Priest, "Exciter" (Unleashed in the East version)Drummer: Les Binks
2. The Jimi Hendrix Experience, "Little Miss Lover"Drummer: Mitch Mitchell
3. Black Flag, "Slip it In"Drummer: Bill Stevenson
4. Blondie, "Dreaming"Drummer: Clem Burke
5. The Stooges, "Dirt"Drummer: Scott Asheton
6. Gang Of Four, "Hed Send In The Army"Drummer: Hugo Burnham
7. Alice Cooper. "Public Animal #9"Drummer: Neal Smith
8. The Sweet, "Sweet FA"Drummer: Mick Tucker
9. Deep Purple, "Fireball"Drummer: Ian Paice
10. Iron Maiden, "Murders In the Rue Morgue"Drummer: Clive Burr
11. Kiss, "Parasite"Drummer: Peter Criss
12. Mountain, "Never In My Life"Drummer: Corky Laing
13. Cactus, "Evil"Drummer: Carmine Appice
14. Black Sabbath, "Turn Up The Night"Drummer: Vinnie Appice
15. Jeff Beck Group, "Shapes Of Things"Drummer: Mickey Waller
Since the late ‘90s, New Jersey trio Dälek has been pushing hip-hop into harsh, dissonant realms, and their latest album, Endangered Philosophies (Ipecac Recordings), honors their reputation for raw rhymes, bruising beats, and extreme sonics. On this playlist created specially for The Dowsers, the crew’s namesake MC salutes his fellow rap iconoclasts. “This is a collection of songs and groups that move me. It is a playlist of underground musicians who each, in their own way, have pushed the culture of hip-hop forward. What strikes me is the sheer variety of styles, sounds, and experimentation here.“I am lucky enough to have shared stages or studios with most of the musicians here. Some I only admire from afar. All of them leave me in awe of how powerful and beautiful music can be. These groups to one degree or another are, in my opinion, underappreciated.“There are a few artists that unfortunately were not available on Spotify that should be on the list: Techno Animal, B L A C K I E, The Labteks, Company Flow, and I’m sure a few others that may have slipped my mind.“Also, full disclosure: I added two of my own groups—Dälek and iconAclass—and a few tracks I produced for other artists, as I feel these all are a part of the story that this playlist paints.“This list goes back from the mid-’90s to present day. It is not in any particular order, chronological or otherwise. It was just compiled to show the depth and scope of what hip-hop music is.”—MC Dälek
With each new Gorillaz album, more attention is paid to the number of guest collaborators invited to perform than to the group’s only consistent musical member: Damon Albarn. Humanz, which arrives this week, is no different. The songs released so far center around performances from Benjamin Clementine, Popcaan, Vince Staples, Jehnny Beth, D.R.A.M., Pusha T, and Mavis Staples, with Albarn happily orchestrating things from behind the curtain. But he’s a strong performer and highly sought-after collaborator in his own right, one completely worthy of the spotlight he avoids. His selfless attitude, which foregrounds other performers in his own work, makes him such a great songwriting partner.Taking cues from The Kinks and XTC, Albarn’s early work in Britpop act Blur focused on couching his biting social commentary in character studies, a theme that continued even after the band’s influences drifted further and further beyond the white cliffs of Dover. As the band began to pull apart in the late ‘90s and early ‘00s, Albarn walked away, melodica in hand, and started the horror film-loving, The Specials-aping, cartoon outfit Gorillaz, beginning a lifetime of long-standing—and very fruitful—collaborations with the eclectic and diverse likes of Bobby Womack, De La Soul, and Tony Allen, among many others.He’s had countless other projects, including Mali Music, Rocket Juice & The Moon, and DRC Music, as well as his Honest Jon’s label, all of which show the songwriter using his visibility in pop music to give credit where credit is due, and to highlight the work of incredible musicians who have inspired him.This playlist goes deep into Albarn’s discography, putting his songwriting talents front and center and focusing on the not-so-guest-heavy songs that form the bedrock of Gorillaz’s nearly 20-year career. It also contextualizes his work with Blur, the band that put him on the map, and any and every collaboration he’s been involved with in between.Click here to follow this playlist on Spotify.
At this point in our young century, Dan Auerbach’s trademark sound is damn near inescapable. His entrancingly fuzzy slide work, moody atmospherics, velvety reverb, and love for prominently framed percussion all pop up in albums by garage punks, shaggy hard rockers, folkies, rappers, and even pop divas. Of course, it’s through the wildly influential jams of The Black Keys (whom Auerbach has co-produced for most of the duo’s career) that his sound has left such a profound impact on modern music, but that’s not its only path. After all, in addition to maintaining a solo career—including his upcoming June 2017 release Waiting On a Song—as well as a clutch of side projects (The Arcs record from 2015 is a particularly tasty highlight), he has evolved into one of the music industry’s most in-demand producers.Much like The Black Keys’ music, Auerbach’s immediately identifiable work behind the boards has become more sophisticated with time. Patrick Sweany’s “Them Shoes,” from 2007, is a slab of husky, stripped-down blues rock that’s light years removed from the intensely textural swamp funk and gris-gris soul comprising Dr. John’s 2012 gem Locked Down, one of Auerbach’s most ambitious productions to date. Even when Auerbach, who possesses an encyclopedic knowledge of music history, steps outside of his rock ‘n’ blues comfort zone, he leaves a unique sonic imprint on the work of other artists. This is certainly the case with Lana Del Rey’s Ultraviolence, on which he wraps the singer’s art-pop noir in layers of nostalgia-kissed echo and sustain so plush, your ears will sink into them. This is also true of Nikki Lane’s outlaw-country epic All Or Nothin, which boasts the same throbbing groove hypnotics heard on the Keys’ albums.Compiling tunes from all these albums and a whole mess more, including some overlooked production nuggets like the Buffalo Killers’ stoner-rock trip Let it Ride, our playlist is sure to impress even the most diehard Auerbach fans.Click here to follow this playlist on Spotify.
Though best known as the electro-pop Pied Piper of the Baltimore underground, DIY deity Dan Deacon has also delved into modern-classical composition through commissions for Kronos Quartet and scores for ballets. His latest project marks his first full-album foray into the form—a soundtrack for Theo Anthony’s new documentary, Rat Film, an examination of the rodent infestation in their hometown and, by extension, the systemic poverty and racism that suppress the city’s underclass. For this playlist he created specially for The Dowsers, Deacon selects the film music that put him in a cinematic state of mind. “Music composed with the intention of being paired with a moving image is written with such a different mindset than music written for any other context. Being able to listen to soundtracks separate from the films allows my imagination to seep deeper into the universe of the films. For example, listening to Bernard Herrmanns themes for Taxi Driver or Jerry Goldsmith’s music for Total Recall puts me in the mindset and emotions of the characters and transports me to the locations. It adds levels of depth that further my enjoyment for subsequent re-watchings of the films. This playlist contains some of my favorite music for films available on Spotify.”—Dan Deacon
A charmer, also a dick. Critics love the idea of Justin Timberlake: white boy leaves best-selling boy band, “matures,” gets better haircuts, etc. I bet he even smells good! The boy band’s singles were solid to excellent, though, and for a while I didn’t hear a difference between end times N Sync jams like “Girlfriend” and “Gone” and the first couple Justifiedsingles. I can’t deny he’s recorded more than a dozen bangers, and now that pot smoking has sanded down his unbearable falsetto he’s become a decent ballad singer — I have a fondness for his Inside Lleweyn Davis number. His singles have a way of sneaking up on me too. Corporate retreats and elementary school talent shows have shown the sinister nature of “Can’t Stop the Feeling!” but its rictus grin of joy got hypnotic with each play. I haven’t quite forgotten the deviousness with which he slinked away from Janet Jackson after 2004’s so-called wardrobe malfunction during the Superbowl, nor the general ignorance of a promotional circle that didn’t understand why naming a pussyhound anthem “Take Back the Night” was a dreadful mistake.We’ll be dealing with this guy for the rest of our lives.Visit our affiliate/partner site Humanizing the Vacuum for great lists, commentary and more.
The ‘90s were an unstable moment for female-driven pop music. Coming out of new wave and post-punk, the decade’s mainstream pop struggled to find its true identity within the context of the grunge of Hole, the coffee-house croonings of Sarah McLachlan, and the hip-hop stylings of Lauryn Hill and the Fugees. Then came the divine intervention of Britney Spears and producer Max Martin, two of the musicians responsible for infusing bubblegum pop with the vitality and sugary veneer of pounding Swedish house and electropop. With their provocative and skirt-shakin’ single “...Baby One More Time,” which featured clean dance rhythms, driving piano chords, and cresting synths, they transformed the game. The next few years saw the infiltration of the new style into the music of both established and rising pop stars such as Christina Aguilera, Mariah Carey, Brandy, Monica, and more, ushering in a new era of pop history.
Whats This Playlist All About? The London DJ and producer offers an ever-expanding mix of "the music in his head," and, thankfully, it doesnt just stop at 2017.What Do You Get? Much like Averys own moody, minimalist translations of classic club sounds, this lengthy collection is all about harnessing negative space to create dark, disturbing, sometimes disorienting, alien atmospheres. As the playlist takes several celestial detours, current tracks (including selections from his own 2018 EP, Slow Fade) seamlessly mix with older classics from New Order and exotic gems like the dizzying 808 experiments from Hypnobeat.Greatest Discovery: The rare, rather inviting voice comes from Australian singer/songwriter Carla dal Forno, whose hypnotizing track "Clusters" is dark and dreamy, all while laced in a soft lo-fi buzz.Will This Playlist Ever End? Currently at 103 songs and nearly 11 hours, it does have its moments of seeming endlessness, where beats and loops refuse to cease. This may admittedly cause some slight anxiety, but theres enough transcendent bliss in between to set you at ease. In other words, the real answer to that question is: We hope not.
The ’90s have never sounded better than they do right now—especially for modern-day indie rockers. There’s no shortage of bands banging around these days whose sound suggests formative phases spent soaking up vintage ’90s indie rock. Not that the neo-’90s sound is itself a new thing. As soon as the era was far enough away in the rearview mirror to allow for nostalgia to set in (i.e., the second half of the 2000s), there were already some young artists out there onboarding ’90s alt-rock influences. But more recently, there’s been a bumper crop of bands that betray a soft spot for a time when MTV still played music videos and streaming was just something that happened in a restroom. In this context, the literate, lo-fi approach of Pavement has emerged as a particularly strong strand of the ’90s indie tapestry, and it isn’t hard to hear echoes of their sound in the work of more recent arrivals like Kiwi jr. or Teenage Cool Kids. Cherry Glazerr frontwoman Clementine Creevy seems to have a feeling for the kind of big, dirty guitar riffs that made Pacific Northwestern bands the kings of the alt-rock heap once upon a time. The world-weary, wise-guy angularity of Car Seat Headrest can bring to mind the lurching, loose-limbed attack of Railroad Jerk. And laconic, storytelling types like Nap Eyes stand to prove that there’s still a bright future ahead for those who mourn the passing of Silver Jews main man David Berman. But perhaps the best thing about a face-off between the modern indie bands evoking ’90s forebears and the old-school artists themselves is the fact that in this kind of competition, everybody wins.
It may be that 2019 was the best year for ’90s metal since, well, 1999. Bands from the decade of Judgment Night re-emerged with new creative twists and tweaks: Tool stretched out into polyrhythmic madness, Korn bludgeoned with more extreme and raw despair, Slipknot added a new drummer (Max Weinberg’s kid!) who gave them a new groove, and Rammstein wrote an anti-fascism anthem that caused controversy in Germany (and hit No. 1 there too). Elsewhere, icons of the era returned in unique ways: Nine Inch Nails’ Trent Reznor scored a superhero TV series, Primus’ Les Claypool teamed up with Sean Lennon for some quirky psych rock, and Faith No More’s Mike Patton made an avant-decadent LP with ’70s soundtrack king Jean-Claude Vannier. Finally, the soaring voice of Linkin Park’s Chester Bennington returned for a moment thanks to Lamb of God guitarist Mark Morton, who released a song they recorded together in 2017.
Taking a look at the playlists for my show on Boston’s WZBC might give the more seasoned college-radio listener a bit of déjà vu: They’re filled with bands like Versus, Team Dresch, and Sleater-Kinney, who were at the top of the CMJ charts back in the ’90s. But the records they released in 2019 turned out to be some of the year’s best rock. Versus, whose Ex Nihilo EP and Ex Voto full-length were part of a creative run for leader Richard Baluyut that also included a tour by his pre-Versus outfit Flower and his 2000s band +/-, put out a lot of beautifully thrashy rock; Team Dresch returned with all cylinders blazing and singers Jody Bleyle and Kaia Wilson wailing their hearts out on “Your Hands My Pockets”; and Sleater-Kinney confronted middle age head-on with their examination of finding one’s footing, The Center Won’t Hold.
Italian guitar heroes Uzeda—who have been putting out proggy, riff-heavy music for three-plus decades—released their first record in 13 years, the blistering Quocumque jerceris stabit; Imperial Teen, led by Faith No More multi-instrumentalist Roddy Bottum, kept the weird hooks coming with Now We Are Timeless; and high-concept Californians That Dog capped off a year of reissues with Old LP, their first album since 1997. Juliana Hatfield continued the creative tear she’s been on this decade with two albums: Weird, a collection of hooky, twisty songs that tackle alienation with searing wit, and Juliana Hatfield Sings the Police, her tribute record to the dubby New Wave chart heroes (in the spirit of the salute to Olivia Newton-John she released in 2018). And our playlist finishes with Mary Timony, formerly of the gnarled rockers Helium and currently part of the power trio Ex Hex, paying tribute to her former Autoclave bandmate Christina Billotte via an Ex Hex take on “What Kind of Monster Are You?,” one of the signature songs by Billotte’s ’90s triple threat Slant 6.
