In no particular order:
Bracken – High Passes
Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds – Skeleton Tree
Christian Fitness – This Taco Is Not Correct
Piano Magic – Closure*
Carla Dal Forno – You Know What It’s Like
Box and the Twins – Everywhere I Go Is Silence
Frightened Rabbit – Painting of a Panic Attack
*official release in January, 2017 – received in December
On translucent seafoam blue/green vinyl. Delightful in a mellow, bliss out sense, in that it’s mostly instrumental recreations of songs you’d easily recognize from their catalog but recorded with such brilliant, relaxed dexterity that it’s just a joy to hear whilst sitting back and sipping something brown, casually letting it flow over you and drifting on the current.
Modern English at the Middle East Downstairs, Cambridge, MA. Recorded June 7th, 2016.
Performing the songs that Liz Fraser and This Mortal Coil helped immortalize. A dreamy trip back to the gloriously dark and innocent days of early 4AD.
Little more than five months into 2016 I simple cannot imagine anything more sublime being released in this calendar year than Bracken’s “High Passes”.
Recording under this moniker since 2006, Bracken is the “solo” project of Hood co-founder Chris Adams and continues progression of glitchy, electronic downtempo tones that can be heard on the last Hood releases “Cold House” and “Outside Closer”.
Only more so.
It’s haunting stuff, mellow, dub beats for underground clubs full of lost sleepwalkers. Windswept melodies for lonely, barren trees in remote English fields viewed on a cold, huddled late autumn walk home from the pub. Modern sounds, vintage soul. Brilliant.
Found here.
Frightened Rabbit, May 9th, 2016, House of Blues, Boston, MA.
Quote “Boston on a Monday is like everywhere else on a Saturday.”
Searched for weeks for this one. I knew I had the CD somewhere but had a hell of a time finding it so I could digitize and add to my library. Finally fucking found it.
18th Dye – Tribute To A Bus
German/Danish band. Second full album. Released in 1995 on Matador, recorded at Black Box Studio in France with Steve Albini at the helm. Shades of Pixies and Wedding Present they say. It was McLusky’s “Be Average To Each Other” that made me think of it and seek it out. I’m quite sure I bought it from Tonevendor back in the day.
Time to see if it’s a good as I remember.
I need to write. As much as I hide from that fact, as twisted as things get, stymied by the frustrations of everyday existence, it still comes back to that one simple fact.
Write. Draw. Compose. Create.
When I’m not doing it, I’m just that much more miserable.
So here we have it. My Mongrel Soul. Named after a Birthday Party song, let this first post be both a tribute to the inspiration and the recognition of a man who understands the impulse.
Create, express, let it out.
Nick Cave has been doing it since those early days, as you know. From songs like Release The Bats or From Her to Eternity to novels like And The Ass Saw The Angel to the script for The Proposition. The briliant, mature and still relevant work he’s done on Push The Sky Away.
He writes, he gets it out. Everything inside, the jumbled up angst, the fear and the questions that never get answered. All the things you can only really deal with, sometimes, through the abstract act of creation.
Write. Whale on a guitar. Film something. Scribble on paper. Do some fucking thing.
It works.
It should be no surprise what I consider one of the most highly anticipated films to see this year.
Anyway. Welcome to My Mongrel Soul.
My Mongrel Soul 