Sunday 19 July 2015

3WTM July 2015 Playlist

Mwahahaha. John has left me in charge of compiling a playlist for July as he won't have much chance to do one himself.

Ironically, I'd just decided to stop trying to seek out great new music as John was doing such a great job with his playlists. I've also knocked Spotify on the head, with the advent of Apple Music - the £15.00 for the whole family was too good to refuse. I did have various difficulties in setting up Apple Music and Family Sharing or Apple Family or whatever it's called, but got there in the end, and we now all have our own personally tailored music experiences. I'm not too sure how good the tailoring is, but I'm sure I'll be swift to find out (see what I did there?).

OK - onto the music.

Well before I stopped my subscription to Spotify, I copied some of the tracks from my 'Good New Music' playlist into a new playlist, taking the opportunity to rename it ... 'Good New Music'. And it is some of those tracks that I will share, I think. However, I'll create a new playlist called '3WTM July 2015' and see how sharing that goes.

1. Laura Welsh - Break The Fall (Single)

What to say? She seems to be a relative newcomer with an album and a couple of EPs to her name. I suppose a comparison to Florence and the Machine is a bit obvious, but is the best I can do. This song dates back to 2014.



2. The Wombats - Give Me A Try - Glitterbug

Well they've been around for a while, but haven't yet made into my music collection - until now, that is. Good catchy song - bordering a little on dance, but luckily (as far as I'm concerned) not going too far into the territory.



3. Still - The Japanese House - Pools To Breathe In (EP)

There's probably a genre which sums this up perfectly, but I'm not too hot with genres - I'll go with ambient and minimalist. I have to be very careful listening to this around the house - the gentle laid back feel to it doesn't prepare you for the occasional expletive.



4. Wolves Without Teeth - Of Monsters And Men - Beneath The Skin

A return to the blog for 'Of Monsters And Men' who now have a second album out (and what a great album it is). I have three of the tracks in my 'Good New Music' playlist, but picked this one because it has 'wolves' in the title - I seem to have been noticing 'wolf' or various derivatives of it quite a lot recently in either song titles, or album titles - I even had a wolf-based playlist on Spotify (not transferred across to Apple yet). I see now that 'Running With The Wolves' by AURORA featured in a previous post of mine.



5. Good Morning Mr Wolf - Patrick Watson - Love Songs For Robots

Oh what the hell - now we're on the wolves, we might as well stay there for a bit. New to me, but Patrick Watson has been around for a while (9 years or so). I'm not even going to try with a genre for this - again, possibly though minimalist in places ooh - I see it says 'ambient' in his bio and 'electronica'.



6. Bros - Wolf Alice -  My Love Is Cool

Yay, another 'wolf' track - although it does go a bit against the grain to mention 'Bros' in a music blog! Hmm, take a sniff, then a sip, swill it round, spit it out, savour the flavour ... I'm getting Cranberries and Strawberry Switchblade and there my list of fruit related bands runs dry.



7. Higher (feat. Labrinth) - Sigma

OK - enough with the wolves ... and what's this? A dance track? Surely not? Whatever am I thinking of? I kinda like this, that's all.




8. Death Is A Girl - Mini Mansions - The Great Pretenders

Hmm, I'm still a little out of my familiar territory - what have we here? Maybe there's some Metronomy in there, maybe some Scissor Sisters, possibly some Depeche Mode - Apple class it as 'Rock' - I'm not sure that I'd agree.



9. Tear In My Heart - twenty one pilots - Blurryface

Phew - back in familiar territory (musically at least as I've never heard of twenty one pilots). I love the middle 8 in this, and I love the line 'cursing my government for not using my taxes to fill holes with more cement' even if they do mean tarmac.



10 Witness - Mew - + -

Now there's an album title to mess up my track title syntax (+ -). Ah - I see these are from Denmark and specialise in amped-up art-rock. I don't think I could have put it better myself - well you've just read my earlier efforts and you know I can't. I liked this track, checked out the album and liked it, but it went no further than that for me.



11. Even If I'm Loud It Doesn't Mean I'm Talking To You - Tove Styrke - Kiddo

Hey Mickey! 'Pop'? Eeek. Still - this is just good fun - very catchy.



12. Narrow Mouth - The Early November - Imbue

Possibly close to the generic American not-quite-grunge rock that many bands churn out and which can leave me fairly cold, these guys get it right and remind me of Medina Lake who I also like despite myself.



13. The Left Is Right - Desaparecidos - Payola

I've not got a lot to say about this.



14. Fall Again - Tremonti - Cauterize

Another out and out rock track, and again it puts me in mind of Madina Lake. There are plenty of guitars in here!



15. Trip Switch - Nothing But Thieves

It only seems right to end on a new track found through Apple Music (I'm still not sure how it's going to drip feed new stuff that I'll like, but it's early days).



16. The Road - Man Of Moon

Well, here we go - a new song found using Apple Music.



Now, can I share my Apple playlist?

Also - I must mention Everything Everything again - we can't have a month go by without mentioning them. I have to say that their new album Get To Heaven is outstanding.