Nightswimming #42: 06/27/25-07/03/25
Classic Country sounds! New York shoegaze! Founding Father Hair!
Corn Queen - Hailey Whitters (Pigasus/Big Loud Records/Songs & Daughters)
”Love is love. Drunk is drunk. I’ve been madly in drunk. I’ve been love as a skunk.”
Clever, cheeky, and charming as can be. On her 4th album, Corn Queen, Shueyville Iowa’s Hailey Whitters delivers some of the catchiest, most nostalgic-for-the-90’s Country music in many years. The melodies are so sweet, they’re dripping. The melodic hooks on the first 4 tracks alone are earworms enough for an entire discography. But it’s Whitters’s voice that makes the melodies work.
It is not hyperbole to say that Hailey Whitters’s voice sounds like some Nashville mad scientist captured Natalie Maines of The Chicks in a bottle in 1999. The first instant her voice meets the music, it will absolutely make you do a double-take. And what a joy it is to hear some new melodies with a nostalgic yearning, delivered through a familiar-but-fresh voice.
Lyrically, and with an attitude one can hear in her voice, Whitters is doing for Country music on Corn Queen what Sabrina Carpenter did last year with Short n’ Sweet. She’s having a lot of fun, making fun of herself and the industry, and brilliantly meeting levity with real feeling.
Corn Queen is a UMG Nashville family affair through and through. With songwriting credits from Jessie Jo Dillon (Jelly Roll, Cole Swindell, Dan + Shay), and Ben Hayslip (Blake Shelton, Thomas Rhett, Luke Bryan), a Murderers’ Row of backing musicians like Charlie Worsham (Dierks Bentley, Old Crow Medicine Show) and Justin Moses (Alison Krauss, Garth Brooks, Brad Paisley), and all Produced by UMG Nashville Vice President Jake Gear (Kelsea Ballerini, Luke Bryan, Eric Church, Jelly Roll, Blake Shelton), the pedigree is certainly not missing. And Hailey Whitters rises to meet her collaborators in a huge way.
Even though her voice and delivery are the stars of the show, some of the biggest highlight moments come in her duets with Charles Wesley Godwin, Molly Tuttle, and The Wilder Blue.
Corn Queen is a note-perfect Summer record—it absolutely oozes nostalgia, it’s fun and surprising, and the melodies are so damn catchy. While overstuffed at 16 tracks, and certainly a victim of the Big Loud Records “Radio Country” formula at times (“High On A Heartbreak”, “White Limousine”), it’s so enjoyable that it can be an outstanding soundtrack to a backyard BBQ or late night boat dock hang.
Highlights: Shotgun Wedding Baby, High On The Hog, I Don’t Want You
Raspberry Moon - Hotline TNT (Third Man Records)
It takes about 9 seconds to understand why Hotline TNT is signed to Jack White’s Third Man Records.
In the follow-up to their critically and commercially-hailed sophomore album Cartwheel, Hotline TNT build upon the absolutely massive shoegaze sounds they became loved for and bring a catchy arena rock angle that Matty Healy and The 1975 are likely envious of. Singer Will Anderson, here recorded at his cleanest and highest-in-the-mix, delivers a deadpan vocal like the great Julian Casablancas, but with all of the distortion filters stripped away.
Raspberry Moon is a delicate balance between huge fuzzed-out Billy Corgan guitars and moments that sound like The Stooges (“Was I Wrong?”, “If Time Flies”) , and more beaty catchy pop-rock moments that feel like lost Killers tracks (“Break Right”, “Lawnmower”). It’s a “new era in shoegaze”, one that allows for a bit more melody, and the occasional gang vocal arena rock track.
It’s thoughtful, and contemplative. But it doesn’t take itself too seriously, and neither should we.
Highlights: Julia’s War, Where U Been?
07/04/1989 - (Rich Stadium, Orchard Park, NY)
This is an incredibly hot and well-known show, released as “Truckin’ Up to Buffalo” on VHS and DVD in the 90’s and 2000’s. One of the best all-time versions of Deal to close Set 1, a really nice Terrapin Station, and a scorching All Along the Watchtower.
But all you REALLY need to know is that for whatever reason, Jerry, Bob, AND Mickey all decided to do low-ponytail Founding Father Hair? Maybe because it was the 4th of July? Anyway. We all call this show the Founding Father Hair show.
See below. Thomas Jefferson headasses.
