The illustrious legacy of country music’s leading lady, Lynn Anderson sparks an impression on a new generation while captivating long-time, dedicated fans as the Rose Garden Deluxe Collector’s Edition is made available on Pink Vinyl. This exclusive anniversary release contains never-before-seen notes written to Anderson from country music star Reba McEntire and legendary producer Clive Davis, while sporting a unique translucent pink color. The Lynn Anderson Rose Garden Deluxe Collectors Edition Vinyl will be released on June 13th, 2020, in coordination with Lynn Anderson Day on June 15th, when a few other surprises will also be revealed. There are only 1,000 vinyl records available, so be sure to get yours and join the celebration. Information on how to order your copy can be found at This Link! Continue reading Pink Thing of The Day: Lynn Anderson Rose Garden Deluxe Collector’s Edition on Pink Vinyl→
‘Transcendent’ is not a world that I find myself using very often these days when talking about modern music, if I talk about it at all. I looked at the Billboard charts a couple months ago for the first time in probably a decade — just being serious — and when I realized that every band or artist in the top 20 or so positions on that chart was either someone I’ve never heard of, or someone I am familiar enough with to have a strong distaste for their songs, I knew l’d made the right decision to abandon rock journalism and start writing about art and food. Because I would rather listen to The Beatles or Led Zeppelin for one hundred million billion years than any of the boring, shitty, derivative, eardrum excoriating garbage that ‘the kids’ are downloading for 15 minutes. Fuck the kids.
Of course, it’s not that everything sucks, but the really good stuff is now back in the underground, and this is why it takes me a week to uncover even one song worth featuring in this column. Fortunately, hard work pays off. This week’s clip, “Spiked Flower,” comes to us from the band Swervedriver, who were being pitched to me when you were in diapers: when I was cranking out CD reviews and long-form interviews with top musicians at a pretty steady clip. How are they still around, and how do they still sound so fucking good? “Spiked Flower” is song that’s transcendence distilled, and I don’t even feel compelled to defend it beyond offering that it sounds like if Husker Du had a baby with the Jesus and Mary Chain. Sometimes the only quality that good music has to have to is that it sounds good. “Spiked Flower” can be found on Swervedriver’s upcoming album, Future Ruins — earning bonus points for featuring Coney Island’s iconic Parachute Drop and Thunderbolt roller coaster on its cover — which will be released on January 25th, 2019 on Dangerbird Records. Enjoy!
My favorite memory involving Jon Spencer (he of the eponymous Blues Explosion) goes back to the time that I was assigned to write a cover story about him for a now long-defunct Rock magazine, whose editors would not allow writers to use the word “that” in any articles. Just being serious. For the interview, I arranged to meet Spencer at a Starbucks in the neighborhood where we both live, assuming it would not be impossible to settle in at an empty table and just chat over the reasonable din of people getting coffee and taking up space. When no tables were free at Starbucks, we attempted to find another nearby restaurant or bar to duck into, but there were no viable options, for some mysterious reason. I then suggested that perhaps we could just go to his apartment that he shares with wife Cristina Martinez, but Spencer said no way in Hell was that going to happen. Lovely. We ended up doing the interview while sitting on a bench in Union Square Park. Whatever. He was a decent interview, and now I have been able to share this fun story with you, so it all worked out.
This brings us to our featured video clip, with Spencer flying solo for “Do The Trash Can” – which was described to me as being “a Molotov cocktail of sound,” so I am just going to go with that. If you are already a fan of the kind of take-no-prisoners, eardrum-excoriating noise rock that Spencer is, dare I say it, the absolute best at churning out, then you will go crazy over “Do The Trash Can.” It’s a Jon Spencer song, what can I say? If you have no previous exposure to this true garage rock legend, consider this a test drive. Your mileage may vary.
Visually, “Do The Trash Can” is a bit of a softer sell, because this video ranks as a Work of Art. “Do The Trash Can” rates up there in the top five or so “most fun to just look at” video clips I’ve featured in five years of running this column. With Spencer dressed up as a vendor of the kind of fast food that you might find at, say, Coney Island, the video focuses on artfully directed images of him interacting with hamburgers, hot dogs, soda, french fries, and pop corn, while also introducing The Trash Can as some kind of minimal dance, and of course playing guitar. This is all presented against the most highly-saturated palette of primary colors that I can recall seeing in a video since DEVO’s “Whip It,” which everyone agrees was ahead of its time. I’m hungry and I want to go to an art gallery, just thinking about it.
As an aside, it has also never dawned on me how much Spencer’s guitar playing sounds to have been influenced by that of the late, great George Harrison. For a point of aural reference, revisit the breakdown in The Beatles’ “Tax Man” and tell me I’m not on to something. “Do The Trash Can” can be found on Spencer’s first ever (no kidding) solo album, Spencer Sings The Hits!, which is out on November 9, 2018 via In The Red Records! Enjoy!
Merry Christmas, and welcome to our Holiday-themed The Video Clip of The Week! Denver-based quintet, Kissing Party‘s brand new video for “Warren City Christmas” is here to get you in the spirit. Imagine Charles Dickens venturing into the Brit Pop genre to create a full album – think melancholia you can dance to. With origins and inspirations from the gray bleakness of Pennsylvania and Ohio in the winter months, Kissing Party serves up boozy ballads about memories in Midwestern basements, jingling and rebellious carols for drunken gutter punks, mini pop symphonies contemplating the overwhelming grayness of the season, and heartbreaks and hangovers. The band’s new album Winter in the Pub (out now via Northern Transmissions) is an ode to December as the month of alt-cheer!
When you’re ready to move past the typical, uninspired cover collections this holiday season, when the awkward nostalgia of being in your hometown starts to sink in, Kissing Party’s Winter in the Pub has got your back. Kissing Party is: Gregg Dolan, Deirdre Sage, Shane Reid, Joe Hansen and Lee Evans. RIYL: The Wedding Present, The Smiths and The Sundays. Enjoy, and Merry Christmas!
Geoffrey has been a fan of Empire of The Sun for a million billion years, it seems, but I never heard their music until the sublime “Walking On A Dream” was used to great effect (i.e. millions of cars and records, sold!) in a Honda Civic Commercial. So, it is my pleasure to finally introduce this fine electro-dance-rock duo to the Video Clip of The Week with their latest, “High And Low.”
Moving seamlessly from scenes found in nature to futurist imaginary landscapes, the video for “High and Low” is a trippy garden of unearthly bliss; a psychedelic journey through space and time, through a waterfall of dreams, beyond the white light of an ice curtain wherein lies a lush, green world. Here, an intricate living forest and ancient wisdom form to create an out of body experience. Says frontman Nick Littlemore of the song and its accompanying video, “Imagination is something that we’ve always nurtured and promoted, and however one achieves that ecstatic madness of being is fine. It can be love to some people, it can be taking a walk in nature, or it can be scaling the heights of a psychedelic experience. As artists, we like to live on the edge. I guess this song is about finding some equilibrium there.”
“High And Low” will be included on the duo’s forthcoming third studio album, Two Vines, set for release on October 28th, 2016 via Astralwerks. Enjoy!
