Nightswimming #6: 07/18/24-07/25/24
Jack White! Weird Al! Katie Gavin! And More!
Highly Recommend! (best of the week)
NO NAME - Jack White (Third Man Records)
Jack White has always been an enigma. He’s not a recluse or a hermit. He gives interviews. He poses for selfies with fans. But he comes and he goes. He’s here one moment and gone the next. Sometimes with a new band, sometimes by himself. Maybe he has a new look. Sometimes a pencil thin mustache and bob haircut like V for Vendetta. Sometimes a blue pompadour and plaid tweed suit like a Cyberpunk Johnny Cash.
The rollout of his latest album, which is still happening at the moment of writing this, is the just the latest milestone in White’s mysterious nature.
On July 19th 2024, amid widespread outages in the massive Crowdstrike Incident, users at the Jack White subreddit r/jackwhite began reporting they received a mysterious nearly-blank disc with their purchases at Third Man Records locations in Detroit, London, and Nashville. The plain white disc was in a plain white sleeve with a window that showed the plain white label. On the label was marked in signature blue ink “NO NAME”.
What those lucky customers were treated to was 13 tracks of ass-kicking vintage Jack White riffs that feel like a true return to form for the frontman. An album rollout like this, that relies almost completely on word of mouth and clandestine Google Drive links, is perfect for Jack White music that hearkens back to 2003. In my own journey to find, download, and organize the metadata on these tracks, I felt like I was sitting in front of my family Hewlett-Packard desktop again, downloading the world’s best viruses from Limewire and searching for track listing information on Wikipedia.
I don’t know any of the track names, if the tracks do indeed have names. The folks over at r/jackwhite are having fun sharing their own personal track names, but I’ve chosen to go with the time-tested A1-A7 and B1-B6.
The music really is undeniable. While White’s recent solo projects and his 2019 return with The Raconteurs have been great listens, NO NAME feels like a return to Elephant-era White Stripes. It’s where Led Zeppelin’s guitars meet Captain Beefheart’s vocals. It’s the driving drums of White’s longtime collaborator Daru Jones that evoke the heaviness that gripped us all 20 years ago. NO NAME is gritty, heavy, loud, and straight-forward, but White still shows his diversity of influences in full force. A6 is classic Zappa-esque “Hello operator, can ya give me number 9” carnival barker Jack White, addressing the crowd through a megaphone. B3 is classic Iggy & the Stooges MC5 lightning in a bottle heavy Detroit punk. B4 is Mississippi Delta blues like Willie Dixon and Son House, plugged directly into a bullfrog’s ass.
(This is another piece for another day, but music-lovers need to either recall or learn how to download and organize files, and put them on your devices. We’ve seen it with Cindy Lee’s Diamond Jubilee and SAULT’s Acts of Faith this year. Now with NO NAME, it’s undeniable that artists are going to continue to skirt traditional streaming platforms for releases. I posted the Google Drive link above. I recommend a converter like MediaHuman to convert MP3 or AIFF files to FLAC and ALAC. I can teach you or you can Google it!)
Highlights: A6, A2, B5
The Faster I Run - Jessica Boudreaux (Pet Club/Many Hats)
Jessica Boudreaux announced the breakup of her Portland riot grrrl rock band and Bikini Kill labelmates, Summer Cannibals, in March of 2023. In the last 4 years, Boudreaux juggled the pandemic, breast cancer (which she has since beat!), and a tumultuous break-up with a partner (which she also beat—they’re back together!). So the hopeful, free-from-restraints, anthemic sound of The Faster I Run is entirely appropriate.
Sonically, Boudreaux joins current acts like Blondshell and Lily Seabird in performing big, crunchy, guitar-driven indie rock tracks (Back Then, Doctor) while also letting in the tender moments with quiet ballads (Something In My Gut) and gentle mid-tempo groovers (Exactly Where You Wanna Be, Put Me On). It kicks ass and it’s not afraid to feel.
Lyrically, The Faster I Run is both manifesto and diary. Boudreaux spins wildly between hopeful declarations of growth and uncertain admissions of instability. From Main Character’s “I THINK I FOUND A PURPOSE / I FINALLY FILL A NICHE / AND WHEN ALL IS SAID AND DONE THERE WON’T BE A SINGLE DRY EYE IN THOSE SEATS” to Put Me On’s “SOMETIMES I THINK THEY THINK I’M CONTAGIOUS / LIKE THEY MIGHT CATCH MY SICKNESS THROUGH A TEXT MESSAGE”, Boudreaux’s lyrics are both an homage to herself and a cross-examination of her support system, and vice-versa!
We are in a real Renaissance of women-led indie rock that makes you want to crank the volume. Not that breathy sopranos making bedroom pop tracks with Ableton aren’t great, but the last couple of years have been packed with Liz Phair disciples taking charge up and down the charts.
Highlights: Put Me On, Doctor, Something In My Gut
Worth a Listen! (good to very good)
All Hell - Los Campesinos! (Heart Swells)
It’s a Welsh band with a Spanish name playing American Emo music.
One of the great things about starting this blog is not only discovering new music, but discovering music that completely passed me by while I was listening to exclusively classic rock for 20 years. Los Campesinos! is just the latest in a long list. Apparently this is their 7th?? album??
Shame on me for missing the first six, but this one is very good! It’s a sort of Belle & Sebastian approach to a punk/emo record, with a Wikipedia band personnel chart that looks like a Jackson Pollack painting, and a penchant for fun little keyboards and gang vocals. If you like emo music, Yo La Tengo, LCD Soundsystem, those types of acts…go ahead and elevate this one from Worth a Listen to Highly Recommend. I almost did so myself!
Highlights: Long Throes, A Psychic Wound, Moonstruck
Dr. Dog - Dr. Dog (We Buy Gold Records)
Another return album not entirely dissimilar to the one above! Prolific 2000’s indie rock band with a commune-like personnel list coming back on the scene with a fun record that is both true to form and an evolution of their sound!
Dr. Dog is 21st Century indie rock royalty to many. With a jangly sound that slots in perfectly with their contemporaries like Local Natives, Fruit Bats, Spoon, and Wilco, Dr. Dog established themselves firmly as a go-to group for coming-of-age films and summer hangout playlists everywhere.
Their new self-titled return is an addition to their catalog that shows both a fondness for the sound that made them popular, and a desire to show off their latest influences.
A fun one!
Highlights: Fat Dog, Talk is Cheap
Hot Singles in Your Area!
Here are some great singles that dropped in the last week.
Imminent Redemption - Jane’s Addiction (more like Jane’s Redemption, huh?! But Seriously, Folks…classic lineup JA—Farrell! Navarro! Perkins! Avery!—have reunited for the first time in 34 years! Album next?)
How We Ball - Robber Robber (frenetic rocker with fuzzed out Neil Young guitars and deadpan vocals à la Patty Donahue of The Waitresses, album out 7.26!)
Hog Calling Contest - King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard (the 2nd single from their upcoming album, August 9th! I think they’re probably making fun of Americans with this? That’s okay)
that’s what time does - oso oso (the 2nd single from their upcoming album, August 9th! A nice gentle little upbeat rock song. Easy, clean.
Polkamania! - Weird Al Yankovic (GUYS! We got a new Weird Al polka!!! For those unfamiliar, Weird Al does a polka mash-up of current popular song on all of his studio albums. No album has been announced, but Al says he has “five or six things in the works”…We can only hope)
Aftertaste - Katie Gavin (MUNA’s Katie Gavin has released the lead single from her upcoming album What a Relief, coming in October! Jo and Naomi from MUNA play on the song, which is both super fun and has assuaged the fears of Claire’s cashiers everywhere that MUNA is not breaking up. Sort of like when Crosby, Stills, and Nash all made their first solo albums and they all played and sang on each others’ songs. MUNA is super cool and funny, Katie Gavin has one of the best voices in modern pop music, and I’m very much looking forward to this album, as this single leans in to Gavin and MUNA’s best Lilith Fair/90’s singer-songwriter sensibilities.)
Music Moment of the Week
Did anything happen in U.S politics this week?
I’m kidding.
My favorite thing that has come of all this is a resurfaced video of now presumptive Democratic Presidential Candidate Kamala Harris coming out of Home Rule Records in Washington D.C., asking someone in the crowd with an incredulous face “do you know music?”, and then proceeding to show everyone her vinyl haul (her Haul & Oates, as my friends and I call it).
Vice President Harris walked away with “Let My Children Hear Music” by Charles Mingus (a pretty far-out choice, whereas The Black Saint and The Sinner Lady or even Mingus Ah Um may have been more accessible choices. Respect, Veep.), “Everybody Loves the Sunshine” by Roy Ayers, and Ella Fitzgerald & Louis Armstrong’s “Porgy and Bess”.
I, for one, welcome our new Waxhead overlord.
Nightswimming 2024 Sp*tify Playlist
Here you go, you vondrukes