Fretland, Could Have Loved You

About 80 miles North of Seattle, in Anacortes WA, there sits The Unknown Studio. Built between 1909 and 1920, it lived as a church for many decades. It's now a performance space and recording studio. It's a huge space which creates a huge and open sound....the perfect place for the band Fretland to record Could Have Loved You, their follow up to last year's debut album. 

Hillary Grace Fretland, who the band is named for, said that their new album served as a home for her to explore her more enigmatic emotions that she generally tries to put to bed before she's really explores them. Each song and story capitalizing on a feeling; loss, mourning, shame, the kind that 'just takes up all your mental space and puts a heaviness in each room of your chest.' 

In the Unknown's space, the emotiveness of Fretland's voice and words can be felt reverberating off of its walls and soaring up to its ceiling as the band's songs rise, crest, and fall. It's warm and inviting, moving and beautiful, and at moments, breathtaking. Fretland has said that she wants the band to feel like home and like that long road that you take over and over again. Having listened to Could Have Loved You....over and over again....I can say that I'm home.

Kings Of Leon, When You See Yourself

I have had a frustrating relationship with Kings Of Leon from the guitar strike-in on Red Morning Light on their debut album Youth And Young Manhood. Raw, powerful, energetic, and with plenty of that 'fuck you' attitude, the band and their Southern rock music was right up my alley. Then other albums followed.

With each of those albums, the band, their sound, their song-writing, even their hair and clothes changed. For me, it was increasingly hard to separate a band growing and evolving over time from what also appeared to be a band driven by ambition and ego...wanting to simply be the biggest band in the world. Aha Shake Heartbreak...nope. Because Of The Times...loved it!. By Only By The Night, the band's big break through album....the band had lost me. Since then, I have not been able approach any new music they have released without suspicion and an overly critical ear and attitude. So imagine my surprise when I heard their latest album, When You See Yourself, and felt otherwise.

As NME wrote, with record number eight, the Kings marry the old and the new, bottling everything they have learned on the road and on their last four albums while "still reconnecting with the best parts of what made the world love these boisterous, unruly rockers in the first place." It makes sense. The band is older and apparently wiser now and it is great to see the band "finally embracing the mature, laid-back versions of themselves."

The Antlers, Green To Gold

After seven long years, The Antlers are back with their sixth album, Green to Gold. It is a welcomed return. And a sunnier one? 

Unlike past Antlers albums, Peter Silberman has said that he didn’t feel compelled to turn a human experience into a circuitous mythology and all the eeriness that goes along with it. He chose a more direct approach, documenting two years in his life, without overthinking or obscuring what the songs were about. The shift in tone he said is the result of getting older. 

“It doesn’t make sense for me to try to tap into the same energy that I did ten or fifteen years ago, because I continue to grow as a person, as I’m sure our audience does too. Green to Gold is about this idea of gradual change,” he sums up. “People changing over time, struggling to accept change in those they love, and struggling to change themselves. And yet despite all our difficulty with this, nature somehow makes it look easy.”

 

Conceived and written almost entirely in the morning hours, Green To Gold shimmers like sunlight pouring through the kitchen window on a Sunday morning. It’s an album that I would not have expected from The Antlers, but one that I am grateful to have.

William The Conqueror, Maverick Thinker

After a decade as a solo artist, Ruarri Joseph had lost his inspiration to create. It was rekindled when he connected with Bassist Naomi Holmes and Drummer Harry Harding and began creating new music as William The Conqueror, a sort of teenage alter-ego to Joseph which he has used to explore themes from his childhood. 

Over three albums, including their latest, Maverick Thinker, Joseph and this Cornwall based trio, have channeled a Southern Rock sound to best help convey and explore those childhood themes. Yet, as a loose 'trilogy', each album feels quite different. In an interview Joseph noted, that the themes of this trilogy grew out of something he had read by Herman Hesse about the three stages of life being innocence, disillusionment, and faith. The idea 'that we all go through that kind of journey.' 

On Maverick Thinker, which the band recorded at the famed Sound City recording studio, they turn up the swampy-blues a bit more which brings a new and different edge and energy to William's storytelling. It matches up perfectly to the themes explored throughout the album and I think that the band has found a great new musical footing. 

Adam Melchor, Melchor Lullaby Hotline, Vol. 1

So you're a musician stuck at home for a year. What do you do? In the case of Adam Melchor, he committed to keeping up with a hotline that he had set up in February of 2020 that encouraged people to text or email him each Sunday to receive a new song. If they did, they would receive one at 5pm. By the end of the year, Melchor had sent out 44 songs. 

Along the way, his lister group grew to ten thousand and he racked up over 40 million streams. This all brought new attention to Melchor including Warner Records who came knocking and signed him to a record contract earlier this year. So why all the fuss over Melchor? Because he is a damn fine songwriter and musician. In fact, I will say that he is one of the more impressive artists that I have heard in quite some time. 

Now after a year of recording Sunday songs, Melchor has released a selection of them as a mixed tape. Entitled Melchor Lullaby Hotline, Vol. 1, Mehchor's artistry is on full display, showing a level of craft that is unusually strong...this is especially the case when you understand that some of these songs were literally written and recorded in a few hours...at home. 

I suspect that big things are in store for Adam Melchor. We shall see. I will say that I will be rooting for him all the way.

Sad Night Dynamite, Sad Night Dynamite

I have always been a bit enamored with artists who can mash-up samples and music genres successfully to create something new and moving. They're a bit like music magicians with me asking 'how did they do that?" Enter Sad Night Dynamite. 

Childhood friends Archie Blagden and Josh Greacen love film scores and film makers like Quentin Tarantino who play with contrasts between beauty and violence. They also 'adore' bands like The Clash, Stone Roses, Portishead, I Monster and MIA. So why not throw all of this together and see what happens? So they did. The result is Sad Night Dynamite, the duo's debut mixedtape.

Described as a nightmarish trip through hip-hop, dub, Britpop, punk, electronica, and beyond, Bladgden and Greacen have created a fully realized other-world. It's one that 'tries to pull you out of real life and take you somewhere else.' Ever evolving and changing, but always 'dark and sexy' the duo's music is a thrill to listen to. And while it doesn't take itself too seriously they say, it has heart which is ultimately what they hoped to achieve.