To say Grant Hart lived a hard life is a gross understatement. With 80s noise-pop pioneers Husker Dü, he played the misfit McCartney to Bob Moulds lacerating Lennon, providing the honey chaser to his partners hoarse-throat howls. But just when the band seemed on the verge of following R.E.M. out of the college-radio fringes and into the mainstream, Hart was waylaid by a heroin addiction, not to mention an HIV diagnosis (which ultimately proved to be false). Following the bands extremely acrimonious break-up, Hart gradually faded into obscurity, releasing a small handful of under-the-radar records while Mould enjoyed a steady, successful career as an alt-rock elder statesman. Recent years had been especially trying: Hart lost both parents in quick succession, and he was injured in a fire that destroyed his longtime family home in South St. Paul. And then 2017 brought the diagnosis of the kidney cancer that ultimately claimed him on September 14 at the age of 56.But throughout Harts many trials and tribulations, he never lost the gifts for swooning melody and psychedelized experimentation that made Hüsker Dü the most adventurous band in 80s indie rock. Just when you had counted him out—or even completely forgotten about him—hed blindside you with the dizzying fuzz-pop of 1999s Good News for the Modern Man, the frayed-nerve garage-rock of 2009s Hot Wax (recorded with members of Godspeed You! Black Emperor), or the cinematic grandeur of 2013s Milton-inspired concept album, The Argument, a record that deserves to go down as his career-capping masterpiece.With this playlist, we pay tribute to the man who forged the Dave Grohl prototype of the shit-hot drummer who also a tender tunesmith, beginning with Harts greatest Hüsker Dü hits (including the peak-era duet with Mould on "Flip Your Wig"), and then on through his short-lived early 90s combo Nova Mob*, and his increasingly sporadic, exceedingly underrated solo work.* Note: Nova Mobs 1994 self-titled second album isnt available on Spotify.
Sometimes music is a solitary endeavor. After recording technology advanced to the point of making it possible for one person to construct an entire album all by themselves, hermetic whiz kids started turning out solo albums in the truest sense of the word, in which they played and sang all or nearly all of the parts. Some of them may have been control freaks eschewing additional musicians out of monomania, but others were studio geniuses who crafted entire worlds all on their own, and thats what were looking into here.A few are former band members who ran with the chance to operate unencumbered, such as Paul McCartney and John Fogerty, who had some of their most memorable songs sans helpmates, like "Maybe Im Amazed," from the ex-Beatles 1970 solo debut, McCartney, and "Centerfield," from the CCR frontmans 1985 comeback album of the same name. Some became famous as youthful mavens of multitracking, as Prince did with his first hit, "I Wanna Be Your Lover," as well as Mike Oldfield with his first album, Tubular Bells, known forevermore as the spooky soundtrack music of The Exorcist.More and more artists are going it alone as digital technology has drastically increased the ease and options in creating one-person projects. Sometimes theyve obscured their solitary stances by adopting aliases that could be taken for band names, such as Glasser (Cameron Mesirow), Grimes (Claire Boucher), and Japanese Breakfast (Michelle Zauner). Whether they tip their hands or not, the next Todd Rundgren or Stevie Wonder could be out there right now, just waiting for the right time to pop up with a new, strictly solo masterpiece.
What’s This Playlist All About?: Canadian electro-pop visionary Claire Boucher (a.k.a. Grimes) makes a mood playlist capturing the tracks that inspire her to draw. As a point of reference, here are her drawings.What You Get: A bunch of the least-cluttered tracks by ‘90s IDM trickster Aphex Twin, punctuated by wispy, ethereal songs from Lana Del Rey and other (generally female-fronted) electro-pop/rap acts. We’re not art critics, and we have no strong opinions about how this impacts her visual art, but it does reflect the general aesthetic poles in Grimes’ own music——the mixture of fairy-tale balladry, empowerment anthems, and smeared electronic atmospherics. Biggest Surprise: Grimes still rides for Azealia Banks and Salem in 2018!Greatest Discovery: The blurred, sludgy, nightmare pop of Ginger Blossom, who is exceedingly difficult to Google.Does This Make Us Want To Draw?: Not really, which is probably a good thing for our friends and loved ones. It does, however, make us want to take a nap.
Claire Elise Boucher—a.k.a. Grimes—has always been transparent in her restlessness. Her 2012 breakout album, Visions, was sonically gauzy and thematically thorny, exploring issues of identity, sexuality, and empowerment over smeared, floating electro. It drifted through your headscape like an autumnal fog, but her lyrics—once you understood them, at least—were piercing in their honesty and vulnerability. She painted her follow-up, 2015’s Art Angels, in the bold neon hues of modern electro-pop, echoing her own confidence on entering an increasingly elevated stage. But, still, there was a negotiation taking place—a messy but honest/beautiful evolution of aesthetics and personality —that felt universal.It makes sense that her Spotify mix, the faé list, feels both all over the place and a cohesive product of her roaming gaze. Artisophanes conjures a metallic slab of transhumanist pop on the aptly titled “Humans Becomes Machines,” and Grouper’s “I’m Clean Now” is all somatic romanticism. The playlist’s lead-off track, Yukaris “Am I Dreaming,” floats by in a haze of gentle synth sounds, feeling like the theme song to a narco-fueled Japanese remake of Twin Peaks. But, elsewhere, Claire rocks out with Cardi B and Lil Uzi Vert. She even includes Taylor Swift’s “Look What You Made Me Do,” because why not? Ultimately, like the best playlists, it feels like both a cultural and personal artifact, a flickering glimpse into one of our generation’s most mercurial and talented artists, and an apt reflection of where we all are in this weird, fucked-up, awesome, shitty world.
Though we’ve still got his 2016 Rostam-assisted stunner, I Had a Dream That You Were Mine, in heavy rotation, raspy indie-rock raconteur Hamilton Leithauser is already back with new music—and another fabulous foil. “Heartstruck (Wild Hunger)” is a string-swept duet with Angel Olsen that serves as the first teaser for Leithauser’s next album, due in early 2018 on Glassnote Records. In the meantime, he’s provided The Dowsers with a playlist portrait of where his head is at these days.
Aside from being vaguely familiar with Hood and Flying Saucer Attack, I knew nothing about Bristol post-rock. And Im still not sure if its a "real" thing, but the music is quite beautiful. It has all the dreamy textures and ethereal melodies of Sigur Rós, and the shifting, odd tempos of the Chicago scene, but it also sounds fairly dreary in parts, which is a nice touch. Pitchforks Nick Neyland provides an overview:
As a side not, Pitchforks "Essentials" series continues to impress. Their subjects (such as last weeks melodic IDM) continue to be both very idiosyncratic yet strangely intuitive.
Psychedelic/folk/synthpop hybrid Well Well Well are asking the bigger questions. Namely "Is Here & Now always better than There & Then?" While the San Diego, CA band celebrates their dual EP release of Poptimism and Ships as well as a zine concept tour across their home state, were jumping down the rabbit hole with them on this hand-crafted playlist for The Dowsers. Says the band: "This playlist is a journey down the inspiration highway. Vocal harmonies, dance rhythms, clever lyrics and some of the finest production our ears have ever heard. You want to be a musician? This playlist is Step 3. Not quite for the amateur listener but not too deep down the musicians rabbit hole of hyper-complexity. If you carry a bit of rhythm with you, you will be rewarded. If you enjoy singing in your car or shower, you will also be rewarded. Let the music do what it was created to do. The function of the imagination is not to make strange things settled, so much as to make settled things seem strange."
During the summer of 1991, I began making mixtapes. These were pretty simple: a catalog of the songs I had heard and liked, with each side of the tape separated by month. Most importantly, these were songs I had access to, whether through my modest yet growing record and cassette collection, or my sister and mom’s stuff. In the pre-Internet days, just because I heard a song on the radio didn’t mean I could switch on a computer and download or stream it — besides, I didn’t even have a computer, and I only interacted with them sparingly at my high school in Sacramento. Trying to borrow cassettes and records from flaky friends and acquaintances was another can of worms. So my first tape, “Songs from May-June 1991,” cataloged my introverted obsessions: Morrissey’s early solo career, the Housemartins, and R.E.M. Elvis Costello was a constant, thanks to my goal of purchasing his entire catalog. He was a natural shit-talker who took gleeful aim at the world around him, and who seemed adept at encapsulating his thoughts into a pithy, memorable phrase. Yet he seemed aware that his verbal aggression couldn’t mask his bruised sensitivity, that he was just “another fool,” as he often put it. I imagined him as an idealization of the cynical and uncompromising writer I wanted to be. Eventually, my abiding passion turned to the music I heard on 120 Minutes, the Dave Kendall-hosted MTV show that brought alternative music to a nation of jaded suburbanites. It was awash in the sounds of British rock, from the Madchester jangle rock of the Stones Roses and the Charlatans; to the shoegaze trippery of Lush, Ride and My Bloody Valentine. Hearing these songs felt like being told a secret. I didn’t get the irony that I thought music being played on a nationally televised video show was worthy of cult affection. In my stifling Sacramento reality, I only knew a handful of classmates who bothered watching 120 Minutes, or went to see Ride and Lush when they played at the local all-ages venue Cattle Club. (I’m still bitter that I missed out on that show.) My absorption of Britpop coincided with my first, tentative efforts to break out of my hermetic shell, open that aforementioned “can of worms,” and befriend people who might have similar tastes. A girl in debate class offered to make copies of her Cocteau Twins collection, and soon my tape deck was dominated by the alluring and cryptic voice of Elizabeth Fraser. I became best buds with a high school dropout who collected manga from the San Francisco emporium Japantown, had a subscription to Sub Pop’s legendary “Singles Club,” and turned me on to the blissful miseries of Joy Division. (He later earned renown as an Asian pop culture expert with his own Wikipedia page.) I cataloged my newfound likes on my bi-monthly tapes. As for hip-hop? Sure, I watched BET’s Rap City and, occasionally, Yo! MTV Raps. (I thought Yo! hosts Ed Lover and Doctor Dre were annoying.) Like most kids during the late ‘80s and early early ‘90s, I zombie-d out to afternoon video shows simply to kill time and boredom. But MC Hammer, Digital Underground, and Heavy D & the Boyz were just part of the oppressive pop Zeitgeist. I liked Public Enemy, but that was like supporting a remote political figurehead that had little to do with my daily struggles at school, and my daily struggles to communicate — or not communicate — with the people around me. Britpop seemed like a more exotic world, and I interpreted its relative obscurity as proof of its superior quality. Eventually, however, I grew out of my Britpop phase and embraced the golden age of hip-hop. I arrived at college just as the “weed rap” craze was taking off, and it was more fun to smoke, drink and party to the Pharcyde’s “Pack the Pipe” and Gang Starr’s “Take Two and Pass” than Morrissey’s mopey arias. When I went to Moz’s Your Arsenal concert at the Concord Pavilion, I paid a proper farewell to that chapter of my difficult youth. -- Mosi Reeves
I have a few comments about shoegaze, but I’ve filed a review of a certain band’s new album that recorded those comments. I’m no aficionado, though, and I didn’t listen to Isn’t Anything until a decade ago; the 2012 remaster is amazing. Nevertheless, I’m struck by my ability to remember twenty songs. I can even hum “Glider”!Visit our affiliate/partner site Humanizing the Vacuum for great lists, commentary and more.
Woolworms third album, Awe, is coming out on Mint Records on November 8th, 2019. To hype the first single, Hold the Bow, the band put together a playlist of music that inspired the song and the album. The playlist covers brand new local bands from Vancouver, pals that the band has met across North America on tour, Mint Records label-mates and heroes and serves as a glimpse into the bands world.
Headings, paragraphs, blockquotes, figures, images, and figure captions can all be styled after a class is added to the rich text element using the "When inside of" nested selector system.
Headings, paragraphs, blockquotes, figures, images, and figure captions can all be styled after a class is added to the rich text element using the "When inside of" nested selector system.
Headings, paragraphs, blockquotes, figures, images, and figure captions can all be styled after a class is added to the rich text element using the "When inside of" nested selector system.
