Music Review

What to think of the new Kavinsky album

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Almost a decade since Outrun, Kavinsky aka Vincent Belorgey, has dropped Reborn and I have thoughts. First, the new Kavinsky album is really something. You can’t help but love Belorgey’s devotion to 80’s electronic music and cinema. I would add, however, there are electronic alternatives to Reborn without the same pop sensibilities that you shouldn’t look past. Last year I was smitten by Invisible Cities by A Winged Victory for the Sullen, so keep reading.

Kavinsky is Reborn

Listen to tracks from the new Kavinsky album here

First point, the sophomore slump is real. The challenge of reinventing yourself is real. What better way to defeat these phenomena than releasing your second album nine years after the first? “Nightcall,” of “Drive” fame, thrust Kavinsky into the spotlight in 2011. I’ve never actually seen the movie, but heard the song. Remember this?!

Rather than re-racking his success from “Nightcall,” the new Kavinsky album goes brighter and all-in on 80’s nostalgia on Reborn. At its very best, it is muscular and compelling, as on the soaring collaboration with Cautious Clay on “Renegade.”

Other standout tracks include opener “Pulsar” and the funky “Cameo.” It is a great, cohesive synthwave tribute to the 80’s.

Editor’s note: At times, Kavinsky indulges cheesier, Xanadu territory, as on “Trigger.” Or am I hearing Styx? I DON’T THINK it’s ironic, but when you hear songs like “Vigilante,” it’s hard not envision G.O.B. Bluth dancing through his corny magic act, aces high.

G.O.B. magic act arrested development

If you like Kavinsky, you may love this band

Second point, I was more engrossed in last year’s Invisible Cities by the ambient/neo-classical A Winged Victory for the Sullen. (I know, I know…I am going to write a full post on stupid band names). The genres are only adjacent — or the labels we attach to them are only adjacent. But the scope and power that AWVFTS captured on Invisible Cities, scoring a dance production of the same name, is just awesome.

Here is “Only Strings and Their Supports Remain.”

Now that’s what I’m talking about!

You are hearing the score for some Macbeth-level tragedy on “Succession,” and it couldn’t get more decadent. You CAN’T NOT listen to AWVFTS in the car without being transported into a movie in which you are the hero.

5/5 stars, would recommend.

The new Kavinsky album is terrific. See also: A Winged Victory

The new Kavinsky album is an 80's treat. Listen to standout cuts here

So much good happens on Reborn that it has to be considered indispensable listening for synthwave fans, specifically sci-fi enthusiasts born between 1968 and 1973. The album runs from hard-hitting to rhythmic to sultry numbers like “Zenith.” Buy it here.

Related/Unrelated…last year’s new classical Invisible Cities by A Winged Victory for the Sullen is a super-compelling, timeless listen.

You can’t go wrong with either.

The Chesterf!elds band returns

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The Chesterf!elds band returns with a new album for 2022

In the summer and fall of 1987, I was in no position to sample the first two albums by The Chesterf!elds The Kettle and Westward Ho! When I started college in the Boreman South dormitory at West Virginia University, I was in a deep — and I mean DEEP — classic rock wormhole. On their first records, The Chesterf!ields band was jangly, but still New Wave-adjacent. Meanwhile, I was buying tickets for Pink Floyd’s Momentary Lapse of Reason tour.

I say this to my shame.

I wouldn’t intersect with The Chesterf!elds music or their descendent acts, including The Blue Aeroplanes, for another four years. Now The Chester!elds have released a single from an upcoming album that makes me excited to go back in time.

New Chesterf!elds album leaps from 1988 to 2022

The Chesterf!elds released three albums in 1987-1988 with a rotating cast of characters. They’re not easy to track and the sound that was not perfectly indie pop. At times they hit C86 notes; at others they toggled between ska and a more angular, reformed New Wave. Their 1988 single “Blame” is a good example of how the band defied easy labels.

However in the middle of July 2022, fully 34 years later, The Chesterf!elds band previewed their upcoming album New Modern Homes with the single “Our Songbird Has Gone.”

Cover art for The Chesterf!ields band new single, "Our Songbird Has Gone."

“Our Songbird” perfectly updates The Chesterf!elds’ sound while lovingly name checking 20 or more indie pop luminaries. It’s a tribute to the 2003 death of Chesterf!elds founder Dave Goldsworthy, their songbird, and I can’t imagine anything more lovely.

The Chesterf!elds band is back and they’re beautiful!

Members of the newest lineup of The Chesterf!elds band. The Chesterf!elds are back with a September 2022 album

Honestly, what hasn’t changed since 1987? The Chesterf!elds offer a touching tribute to a late friend and update their sound overnight. It is welcome, and I’m excited to hear New Modern Homes when it’s released on September 23.

The band Best Bets drops a post punk gem

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Formerly Transistors, New Zealand band Best Bets releases a killer post-punk debut

Rock can still be fun after all

Ahhh remember when rock and roll was still a good time?! We’re so brooding now, so socially serious. Always ironic. How about three or four chords that just make you bump the volume to max and drum the steering wheel? With their April debut On An Unhistoric Night, the band Best Bets deliver a kind of Sloan tribute to the Ramones.

Formerly Transistors, now the band Best Bets

Founders Olly Crawford-Ellis (drums) and James Harding (guitar) spent a decade as New Zealand’s Transistors before re-forming as the band Best Bets. The Christchurch luminaries released 2020’s Life Under the Big Top EP. As the band Best Bets, it’s now a family affair with Harding’s brother, Luke Harding.

Crawford-Ellis and Harding have pedigree, and now a new lineup. So just for a second, imagine when they take the stage for Unhistoric Night. Best Bets break out “Wrong Side of the Sun,” the HOO HOO’S! start to peg the meter — and the kids go absolutely coconuts.

Now, does every minute of Unhistoric Night hit that kind of arena standard? Alack and alas, a couple of the twelve cuts do get a little same-y. But there are so many more hits than misses! Here is Best Bets’ much crunchier, second single for Unhistoric Night, released last December, “Whataworld.”

The band Best Bets concludes album like The Replacements

Best Bets wrap Unhistoric Night with a bit of a Replacements-like closer, “That Movie Never Got Made.” Something of a nod to “Here Comes a Regular.”

Spend $10 or $12 with Unhistoric Night and remind yourself that music can still be fun. Because if you don’t love Best Bets, do you really love rock and roll?

Chew on the band Buddhist Bubblegum

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Listen to the band Buddhist Bubblegum

I had honestly forgotten I ordered this rapturous new music from the band Buddhist Bubblegum until it arrived in the mail. In fact, I hadn’t even looked closely enough at the original purchase of Dreaming in the Desert to notice the release was actually a split with Kansas City musician Wiggly. More on Wiggly in a moment.

Buddhist Bubblegum delights

Starting with Buddhist Bubblegum, I am super looking forward to the full length later this year. BB is Polish emigrant Wiktor Szotowski, who is now working in Slovenia. Each Szotowski sketch on Dreaming of the Desert is some intoxicating marriage of Buddy Holly, Paul McCartney and Ty Segall.

If regrettably named, Buddhist Bubblegum show off multiple, glistening 80’s and retro sounds. For example, they’re perfectly comfortable as a polite garage band on “Paper Ridges.”

However, Buddhist Bubblegum is more intriguing when Szotowski shows off different gears. “Merry-Go-Round,” originally released in 2020, could be a sunnier version of the delirious harmonies of Veronica Falls, or more immediately, The La’s. Seriously — I can’t be the only person who wonders how songwriters even tap into this kind of sublime creativity. Bliss out with “Merry-Go-Round.”

Even more recently, the band Buddhist Bubblegum dropped “Seems Like Yesterday” in July, which could have been a B-side from Sgt. Pepper.

Can’t wait to hear which of these directions – or others – that BB leans into when their expected full length comes out later this year, I presume on Cavern Brew Records.

Wiggly isn’t worth it

Listen to the band Buddhist Bubblegum. But skip Wiggly!

I’m not entirely clear why Cavern Brew appended Wiggly’s six cuts here with BB to fill out the split. For every song he introduces with some coherent direction, Wiggly quickly layers a second, unrelated melody over the top. Or he abruptly stops and restarts the song in some new fanciful direction. I support experimenting with structure and space but here, the results are just noodlings.

If you want a better idea of what the mysterious Wiggly is capable of, check out his self-titled debut in 2019. It’s a charming collection of bedroom pop. Wiggly can be quite endearing…a bit of Luna, a lot of Lambchop. Here is the delightful “The Promised Land (Remember the Rainbow Through the Years).”

I liked it so much, I bought it. More of this please, Mr. Wiggly!

Quality Used Cars band looks back at life over a beer

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Quality Used Cars band from Melbourne, Australia have an outstanding new single

How often do you come to an Absolute. Dead. Stop. And focus on a song that just mesmerizes you? The music, ambience and story inside “Me and Damon Drinking Beers at the Grandview Hotel” by the Quality Used Cars band left me wrecked.

I don’t know exactly why. I’ve been thinking a lot about my own past, about sliding door moments. But also those sweet interactions and words that stay with us forever.

Lead Francis Tait is some kind of lovely combination of Bob Dylan and Lou Reed, but also so easy. He doesn’t try too hard. Tait is telling a story, not writing self-conscious lines for posterity. The delicate vocals, backing woo’s and lyrics are just the start:

“We talk about the world,
Talk about the future,
Talk about the ones we love
And all the ones we used to.

“You see Davey’s anti-vax now
And Joe’s off with his new dream.
Jamie had a breakdown,
They’re getting back up on their feet.
And you see Frazier bought a house,
Shit it’s the nicest house you’ve ever seen.
The sort of house you find in a
Better Homes & Gardens Magazine.

“And I keep waiting…
I’ve just been waiting,
Waiting all this time,
Wasting all this time,
Does it get much better?”*

Quality Used Cars band leader has all the feels

Quality Used Cars band single is called "Me and Damon Drinking Beers at the Grandview Hotel"

“Me and Damon Drinking Beers at the Grandview Hotel” beckons so tenderly you hardly realize Tait has opened a door to his world — and to your own past — that makes you think about everything differently.

He doesn’t suffer from the pretentiousness of later Lou Reed or Bob Dylan. Tait’s stories are prosaic and clean, like a more profuse Paul Simon. Speaking of which, you can hear Tait’s cover of You Can Call Me Al here.

Find more from Melbourne’s Quality Used Cars in last year’s debut Good Days/Bad Days. “Me and Damon Drinking Beers at the Grandview Hotel” is a single that I can only hope means a sophomore album very soon — and more sliding door moments.

*Lyrics deciphered by KZ without the aid of the interwebs

The Valery Trails Australian rock drops sugary new single

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The Valery Trails Australian rock band members Andrew and Sean Bower plus Dan McNaulty

For nine of The Valery Trails‘ twelve years, brothers Andrew and Sean Bower collaborated on releases from, respectively, Houston and Brisbane. The Valery Trails Australian rock, which includes fellow Aussie Dan McNaulty, has released three albums starting with 2012’s Ghosts and Gravity…all the while separated by 8,344 miles of Pacific Ocean.

Since the corona, Andrew has returned to his native Australia and we’re seeing the results of that propinquity in 2022. February saw TVT release two EP’s, Introvert Blues and Disappear, which feel like tasty mashups of Bob Mould and Drive-by Truckers.

“Jaisalmer” is new single from The Valery Trails Australian rock

The Valery Trails Australian rock deliver with their new single "Jaisalmer"

This week comes the first single from The Valery Trails‘ fourth album, The Sky is Blue. “Jaisalmer” sounds like FUEL-era Sugar splurging on a brass section for an appearance with David Letterman.

Download “Jaisalmer” at Bandcamp. The Sky is Blue releases Aug 12. Buy any of The Valery Trails past releases or TVT merchandise at their website.

Argentina jangle pop: Un Día Soleado

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The Argentina jangle pop of Un Día Soleado

Well it’s been a minute. Welcome back.

At one time. I confessed these music reviews wouldn’t be about DISCOVERING new music. Well today we’ll do exactly that — exploring together the wonderful world of Argentina jangle pop.

Argentina jangle pop, from a bedroom in Viedma

Argentina jangle pop album by un día soleado

Last year, the mostly unknown members of Argentina’s Un Día Soleado released four singles and a live EP. In March 2022, they bunched those together in the promising release, y todo sigue igual​.​.​.​ It includes last year´s singles, the live cuts and a few covers. Tremendous bedroom pop for all.

Fast foward to this week, KEXP challenged Twitter to volunteer acts to perform for a week of live performances in Buenos Aires. I had been listening to Un Día Soleado just 30 minutes before, thanks to a mostly-random post I read on Janglepophub. This seemed like fate — how could it not be? — and I added Un Día Soleado to the Twitter wishlist.

The band wryly notes on their YouTube page that some indie label should pick them up. Yes — and ahead of that — a scrappy, up-and-comer spot with KEXP in September, please.

This is indie jangle pop perfection!