Nightswimming #7: 07/25/24-08/01/24
Crunchy guitars! Soccer Mommy! A 40 minute jam! And More!
Highly Recommend! (best of the week)
Allora - Ben Seretan (Tiny Engines)
On his website, Ben Seretan introduces himself with, “I like things that are long or too much or over the top or too personal or bursting at the seams”. His new album Allora is too much and bursting at the seams, but in all the best ways. Like when you go to the State Fair and you fill up on funnel cake and corndogs and lemon freezies and your tummy starts to churn but you’re still so happy. Seretan and his collaborators recorded the album on tape across 3 days in Italy in 2019—both the format and the locale inform the sonic warmth of the record.
If Neil Young, Thom Yorke, and Thurston Moore smashed their guitars together and someone cobbled the shattered pieces together with R.E.M.’s Murmur, you would get close to the complex, yet comforting sound of Allora. At no point is one really able to accurately predict where the songs are going. At one turn you run face-first into a brick wall of huge crunchy guitars and droning drum rattles. At the next turn you’re lulled by Seretan’s lovely Jeff Tweedy-esque timbre while dreamy synths fall in lockstep to form a sonic duvet.
Allora is just downright fun to listen to. Each track offers something a little different, and they’re all good for a backyard hammock nap or a moonlit windows-down drive to the lake. It’s indie rock, it’s shoegaze, it’s post-rock, it’s 3 other things that aren’t just sub-genres of rock. Seretan’s voice is hopeful and mournful all at once, perfectly elevated by whichever instrumental is backing him up on any particular track.
The riffs on Allora are so tasty, specifically on songs like Free, that it just feels like a cool album to be listening to. Seems important and influential and before its time.
Highlights: Free, New Air, Bend
Made by These Moments - The Red Clay Strays (RCA/HBYCO)
I didn’t expect to be talking about country music this much in 2024. I don’t think anyone expected to hear so much country music in 2024. Pop albums with a country angle are all the rage this year, from Beyonce’s Cowboy Carter (which seems like a one-off homage to her upbringing) to Waxahatchee’s Tigers Blood (which seems to signal a real transition in direction as an artist). Americana, country’s hipster cousin, is also coming up in a big way. Rosali, Maggie Rogers, and Cassandra Lewis have all released albums this year that exhibit varying degrees of Americana—not to mention the popularity of The MJ Lenderman Sonic Universe (Wednesday, The Wind) that is bringing country guitar/pedal steel riffs to indie rock tunes. Frontmen like Sturgill Simpson, Jason Isbell, Zach Bryan, and Billy Strings are all jockeying for their place on the Mainstream Country Crossover Appeal leaderboard.
The country-fied potato salad is starting to touch everything else on the plate—and that’s a good thing.
The Red Clay Strays, from Mobile Alabama, have been one of the most authentic iterations of ass-kicking country rock music since 2016 and their latest, Made by These Moments, is proof of their bona-fides.
The star of the show in these songs is frontman Brandon Coleman, whose voice sounds both classic and totally new. Coleman has one of those country voices that seems to come deep from the tip of his toes—or even deeper. He can belt like Chris Stapleton, and he can do the country mumble like Johnny Cash, but both ends of his spectrum are equally powerful.
The guitar work on this record is real, no-bullshit, loud and heavy Allman Brothers type Southern Rock. The opening track, Disaster, sounds like a lost Skynyrd B-side with rollicking guitars trading solos and big organ swells. Ramblin’ is a clear homage to Molly Hatchet and ZZ Top. But it’s not all fuzzed-out Bud Light Southern Rock. The ballads are smooth and let Coleman’s voice shine.
Produced by the great Dave Cobb (we talked about him in Nightswimming #6, too!), Made by These Moments is a strong entry in the ongoing story of Americana, and a strong antidote to whatever the hell Jelly Roll and Post Malone are doing.
Highlights: No One Else Like Me, Ramblin’
Worth a Listen! (good to very good)
I SING - Sinai Vessel (Sinai Vessel/Keeled Scales)
A majorly lo-fi slow-burn chiller with a heavy focus on lyrical turns-of-phrase and sonic swells. Singer-songwriter Caleb Cordes channels his best Sufjan Stevens across the vocal performances on these tracks—communicating immense heartbreak and heartache in a signature whisper. Fellow fans of Midwest Emo will feel right at home with the classic instrumentals here, vacillating pretty wildly between gentle, bouncy strumming and big, crunchy climaxes.
Sonically, it’s more diverse than just Midwest Emo or acoustic singer-songwriter vibes. There are some really pleasant organ/synth moments (like on $2 MIllion) and some downright dreamy pedal steel guitar (on Laughing) that feels like an old country LP.
Better writers than I have had more profound things to say about the lyrical content of I SING, but I’ll leave that to them. I think this record is mostly one long vibe and is Worth A Listen for laying in bed, starting at the ceiling and fiddling with old memories in your mind.
Highlights: How, Laughing, $2 Million
Vertigo - Wand (Drag City, Inc.)
A “cosmic gumbo” of psychedelic fuzz guitars, driving drums, and grimey toad-on-a-lilypad synths that is unequal parts OK Computer, Arcade Fire, and Muse with a singer channeling late-period Roy Orbison. Tracks slide into each other seamlessly and unbroken, like an acid-dripped ’73 Grateful Dead show (right before they debuted the Wall of Sound). At times everything falls apart only to slam back together just in time to teleport to the next track.
Wand is blazing new trails in neo-psychedelia, which is quite the sonic shake-up for them. Previous Wand albums are more pop-forward and indie-rocked out, while Vertigo goes full heavy Psych. But it’s never scary or discordant! Everything fits into this perfect and chill tapestry that actually makes for a fantastic back porch album.
Highlights: Hangman > Curtain Call, Smile
Hot Singles in Your Area!
Here are some great singles that dropped in the last week.
Tonight, Tonight - Snail Mail (a cover of the Smashing Pumpkins track from 1995’s Mellon Collie & the Infinite Sadness, featured in the film I Saw The TV Glow. A great flick that everyone should catch. I searched far and wide for this cover and then realized it wasn’t out yet. It is now.)
I Guess Time Just Makes Fools of Us All - Father John Misty (a single released in support of a Greatest Hits compilation? Or “Great-ish Hits” as FJM is calling it. I thought he was putting out a new album this year, but nothing explicitly on that yet. Although, this track is over 8 minutes and definitely Psych-influenced, which is what his new album is supposed to be.)
M - Soccer Mommy (Second single in support of new album out Oct. 25th. A late Fall Soccer Mommy album is going to liquify me.)
Joker Lips - MJ Lenderman (Second single in support of new album out Sept. 6th. He rhymes “Kahlua shooter” with “DUI scooter” and I don’t know what more you could want.)
All You Children - Jamie xx feat. The Avalanches (Fourth single in support of new album out Sept. 20th. Sample-heavy world music club PANGER. Music for cutting a rug to. I can already tell I’m going to listen to this a thousand times.)
Music Moment of the Week
On Tuesday night I was in attendance at the Chaifetz Arena in St. Louis, MO to witness the 10th longest jam in the history of Phish’s career.
A version of Tweezer that clocked in at 39 minutes and 48 seconds. It had about 6 different movements. Even after all the jam concerts I’ve been to, even I was asking at one point—”Is this STILL Tweezer??”
Here’s a photo I took at about 29 minutes in when Trey’s Gang unlatched the cage and loosed the chains that bound Lucifer to the Underworld, unleashing his wrath upon Saint Louis University’s basketball arena.
Nightswimming 2024 Sp*tify Playlist
Here you go, you vondrukes