Mixtape 221 • Top Brass
Is there anything Matt Berry can’t do and do well?
Is there anything Matt Berry can’t do and do well?
There’s a whole new album from Wreckless Eric, a whole album, but tonight’s selection resonates for the simple fact that this is the third reference to the radium girls I’ve heard this week, all from very different sources. As we say around these parts, it’s a real plate ‘o shrimp. Also worth noting tonight is n-th track from the Bug Club’s Rare Birds album, which has so many good songs on it you’ll be hearing from them for months to come, and that’s even with not playing the ones with bad words.
Things started out normally, with a cover and an excellent new single from Waxahatchee, but took a turn for the unexpected when the highly-anticipated Cat Empire set went missing. Was it skipped over on the player accidentally? Had I forgotten to make a copy to bring to the station? Could I download it from the backup at home? After a couple of sets of troubleshooting, it turned out I had named the file incorrectly. These are the hazards you encounter as a live-in-the-studio DJ, kids.
When I was younger, still developing my musical tastes, in an era where the Beatles were closer to those days than Nirvana are to these, I hated on Yoko. It's what we all did. The older me, like Stephin Merritt and the many other luminaries on Ocean Child: Songs of Yoko Ono, appreciates the inexpressible beauty and uncompromising nature of her art.
Shane McGowan was a true Irish poet, and although Cat Power delivers the classic track from the Pogues in a voice very different from the original whiskey-and-gravel, the song's deep inner character is unchanged.
Sometimes it takes a while for an album to be recognized as a classic, sometimes the shock of recognition is instant and universal. This is the case for Spoon and their latest release, Lucifer on the Sofa, which showcases much of what has made the band a constant source of solid material, but in a concentrated way that will make you start all over as soon as you hit the end.