Tag: music news

Asheville, NC, band Wednesday followed last year’s fantastic Twin Plagues with a new cover album, Mowing the Leavings Instead of Piling ’em Up, in March, and they signed to Dead Oceans in September with an excellent new single, “Bull Believer.” It’s among their most unrelenting, intense, and chaotic, guided by the songwriting of guitarist/vocalist Karly Hartzman. Karly told us about some of her favorite releases of the year, including They Are Gutting A Body Of Water, SASAMI, Enumclaw, brittle brian, and more. Read her list, complete with commentary, below.

Wednesday have a few shows lined up for 2023, including Primavera Sound, Kilby Block Party, and a date opening for Drive-By Truckers at one of their “HeAthen’s Homecoming” shows. See all dates below.

Karly Hartzman’s Favorite Albums of 2022
Whats up bitches!!!!!
Here are my (Karly) fave albums of the year. No particular order cause I can’t decide.

MJ Lenderman – Boat Songs

Listen, this guy is my boyfriend. Even if he wasn’t though this would still be one of my top albums of all time. Jake’s songwriting is just getting real honed in, and it’s got that funny and sad shit happening simultaneously that I can never get enough of. I’ll always appreciate when there’s hyper specific details in songs that somehow can describe a universal feeling. “… Seed fell out of the feeder And the birds are eating on the ground, Jackass is funny Like the Earth is round. Rogan’s home for the holidays The conversations are good and the dinners are great. If only for being homemade.” I also love that I got to watch how all the music we were listening to around the time this was being written fed into it sounds. We wore out the Band and the Purple Mountains CDs in our minivan the year surrounding and I hear all that and more in here without it being a bastardized worship album.

Babehoven – Sunk

Babehoven also released a full length record this year, but I’ve just spent more time with the EP and saw a lot of the songs live so it’s got a special place in my heart. I’ve said it once and I’ll say it again, Maya Bon is the queen of vocal melody. Also honest to goodness she’s just got one of my favorite voices to listen to. An iconic line: “There is something I said that I regret but he thought that he showed me Fugazi. I don’t know how to explain how that feels it doesn’t make sense why it hurt me.” Also love 7 minute long “Twenty Dried Chilies”. That song is sadness in such a big way I can appreciate.

Police and Pea – I Want an Authentic Tail

This release was recommended to me by my boyfriend and guitarist of Wednesday Jake “Music Jake” Lenderman. He said it would be right up my alley and was 2000% right. We were deep into a long tour and in the middle of some long drive and listening to this revived me. So many special sounds and so much joy. The freedom and fun these songs evoke can just really pull ya out of a deep deep hole of thinking everything is stupid and worthless. It is okay to have fun!!!!!!

Friendship – Love the Stranger

Hot dog, Friendship is just a consistently good ass band. I’m gonna let some lyrics speak for themselves cause as you may or may not know: songwriter Dan Wriggins is in that big boy Iowa writing program. “Everything you’ve got that isn’t busted yet is wearing down every time you use it… Hammering down is how I’ve been getting through. Strong arming life is my bonehead tried and true… Both of us showing zero signs of relenting. I’m usually lost and I’ve got precious little finesse. But I’m still the boss, I’m still tougher than the rest.” Like… kinda makes ya feel like everyone else could just shut the hell up, ya know?

Trhä – endlhëdëhaj qáshmëna ëlh vim innivte

This person is purposefully mysterious and difficult to find any information about but they are extremely prolific. They have had four releases this year and their most recent is my favorite. The music has been giving me something I desperately needed! Don’t know how else to put it into words.

They Are Gutting a Body of Water – s

So I think this is only called “s” now cause streaming services made a mistake on their end… now I don’t remember what the record was originally supposed to be called. It’s reminiscent of the Berenstain Bears mandela effect thing. Amazing. The fact that TAGABOW just went ahead and changed all the names on other sites to match is iconic. Doug just always provides the chunky guitars and noises I need, without it being a regurgitated mess of rips from other shoegaze bands.

SASAMI – Squeeze

SASAMI was probably the best live show I saw this year. Direct and terrifying eye contact, 1000000% energy, insane guitar shit. These songs are so cool. I especially love the scarier songs. “Skin a Rat” was probably my most played song of the year.

Enumclaw – Save the Baby

These babies just do it right. The live performance of these songs is fucking exilerating, and I love remembering them jumping around on stage when I listen to these songs. This is a honed in record, riffs and vocal melodies that get that shit ACROSS with haste. Another record that make your life feel a little lighter when you’re in the fucking dregs of life.

brittle brian – Biodiesel

I went on a walk around my neighborhood to listen to this one. I kept just having the resounding thought that this album is just special, special, special. I love all the little bits in this record, feels like a creaky old house! The vocal melodies are unpredictable in the most comforting way. Songs and sounds like this just keep me excited to make music.

Bitchin Bajas – Bajacillators

I’ll always just have a deep love for everything this band does. We’ve been playing this record at the house a lot. I just love an ambient record that can provide a comforting soundtrack to your daily goings on.

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WEDNESDAY: 2023 TOUR
Apr 1, 2023 40 Watt Club Athens, GA w/ Drive-by Truckers
May 12, 2023 – May 14, 2023 Kilby Block Party Salt Lake City, UT
Jun 3, 2023 Primavera Sound Barcelona, Spain
Jun 9, 2023 Primavera Sound Festival Porto, PT
Jun 10, 2023 Primavera Sound Madrid, Spain

Minneapolis-based musician, producer and Fog frontman Andrew Broder has had a busy year. He was instrumental in helping create acclaimed albums by Lambchop (The Bible) and Joe Rainey (Niineta), and he released The Show Original Soundtrack, featuring his music from the Alan Moore series that featured collaborations with Little Dragon, serpentwithfeet, Moor Mother, billy woods, and more. (Listen to that album below.) He was also just in NYC and Philly for Lambchop shows.

We asked Andrew if he’d tell us about what new music he listened to this year. “Admittedly, the thing I listened to the most this year was Jazz & Traffic 88.5fm in Minneapolis so shout out to them,” he tells us, “but i did also sometimes, listen to some new music. So here’s what I thought when I listened to it.” His list includes The Smile, Billy Woods, Aldous Harding, Claire Rousay and more. Check out what he has to say about the whole list below.

ANDREW BRODER – FAVORITE MUSIC OF 2022

1. billy woods / Aethiopes & 2. Elucid / I Told Bessie
I think Aethiopes is woods’ finest work, just incredibly vivid storytelling, novel-like details, it’s hard but not humorless, artful but not pretentious, painful but not wallowing. And Preservation really killed it on the production here, so detailed and hand-made feeling, I love the jarring little spiky shit poking in and and out, the looseness and dusty quality fits the harrowing petty crime, corruption and bleak humor. Just a beautiful, epic rap record.

Elucid is such a beast of a poet, I love how he strings together short phrases in such unique and surprising burst structures, it’s very surreal and stream of consciousness but still grabbing you by the throat and spitting. Not trying to be acrobatic necessarily, more guttural, heart-rending writing here. Each line is like a little polaroid you found on the sidewalk and want to figure out the back story. Impasse is really something, all the production on the record is great, but really kicks into high gear on the 2nd half.

3. The Smile / A Light For Attracting Attention
Hey the boys are back! Thom Yorke still writes really beautiful songs. It’s nice to hear them done this way, limited palette, funkier drumming, just some guys rocking and having a good old time making tunes, piece of cake. “Free in the Knowledge”…man, I gotta say, it gets me. I like when he goes big, you know? He’s good at nailing the big picture human shit, Moon Shaped Pool had some doozies too like that, that just really get you in the heart. Happy these guys never fell off.

4. Mali Obomsawin / Sweet Tooth
Holy shit! This is a crazy record, some of the best new jazz music I have heard in a minute. Mali is from the Abenaki First Nation at Odanak and writes these tunes that are fiery, catchy, beautiful and far out all at once. The group playing here is sweet and locked in, I love how the use of folk melody feels so original here, alive and poking you in the chest, feels like Ayler marching vibes sometimes but I also hear Henry Threadgill kinda loud, fun pushy stuff in it too. So good and on a righteous mission.

5. Aldous Harding / Warm Chris
She just rules. One of my favorite songwriters, so elegant and unforced, never boring and finds such cool angles to write about people and relationships from. The title track just breaks your heart with the pure singing, so intimate.

6. Claire Rousay / Everything Perfect is Already Here & 7. Lia Kohl / Too Small to be a Plain
Many of us over the last couple harrowing years, have gained a deeper appreciation for very basic, simple comforting moments of our day to day existence and have been trying to linger on them with a deeper sense of gratitude and mundane awe than we used to before all the shit went down. These records remind me of that, of how a little sound can mean so much, can stabilize you in the midst of an awful, exhausting day, how you can comfort yourself with small sounds, small gestures, brushing up lightly against something soft, hearing someone’s laugh, a bird sing, or just hearing a few notes on a piano. I love Rousay’s and Kohl’s approach to “ambient” music because rather than trying to put you in some inhuman, cold space, this is assembled, it seems, with the notion of care at its core. Not in some bullshitty wellness-y way, but real care, observance and connection, just little fragile parts of life blowing gently past you, wanting you to stop and catch them.

8. 700 Bliss / Nothing to Declare
What a cool pairing! Love hearing Moor over some more uptempo club stuff, talking her shit, it’s very exhilarating and the humor in here is not lost on the listener. The beats are edgy and unconventional, very sick production by DJ Haram and all in all this is just kinda feels like a show I wanna be at on mushrooms.

9. Cheba Wahida / Jrouli
I’ll be honest and say I just saw someone I like post this on Twitter and checked it out randomly – so glad I did! Holy shit this record is intense and super funky and raw. I love it. This is Rai music from Oran, Algeria and it’s got swagger and raw street style that is very infectious. The dirty auto tune and hypnotic samples and bass… feels like the best block party you were never at, cuz your actual life is boring.

10. Not Listening to a lot of New Music
It’s true. And I don’t feel bad about it to be honest. I love music, I think about it probably 60-75% of any given day but I am also not that feverish about always needing to stay up on the newest shit. I try, sort of. I look at my little websites, kinda. I click thru sometimes on stuff my friends post about. But I also really enjoy just listening to the radio. Or having my friends play me stuff IRL and we enjoy it together. Or listening to Zelda music because my son likes it, or just not listening to anything and talking to myself. It’s fine. You don’t have to love everything or know everything and, in fact, there is nothing wrong at all with really loving, like 3 albums per year and really getting to know them. Or listening to Thelonious Monk all the time just cuz it’s fuckin soothing and we all need soothing. There is so much recorded music out there, and insane amount, you can never hear it all. I like listening to older records, there’s a lot to get out of them. As a producer, I don’t love feeling like in a rat race to keep up with all that is new, I always want to follow my own ears.