There are a million playlists to soundtrack your social distancing. But how about a playlist of songs about social distancing?
These 20 antisocial songs from Vermont artists new and old all touch on keeping your distance and staying inside. Some of them offer good advice for our current predicament. Others offer extremely bad advice. You should never take advice from a musician. Continue reading »
The lyric sheet for art-punk band The Bubs’ debut album Cause a Fuss looks at first like most lyric sheets. There’s a lot of talk about pre-choruses and “repeat 4x.” But then you look a little closer at the notations. “Intro with pirate vocals” is one. “Weird oohs section” is another. There are “bah bah bah bah”s and “ooh-wa-hooooo”s and “ahhh”s, with varying numbers of “h”s to indicate how long everyone should ahhh.
Even when there are real words, they sometimes get notated like this: Continue reading »
“Love Will Tear Us Apart.” “Blue Monday.” “Tell Me When It’s Over.”
As you can tell from the genre’s song titles alone, post-punk is not known for being cheery. The chorus of what might be post-punk’s most iconic song sings about being crushed by double-decker bus. And that’s one of The Smiths’ happiest songs!
But on their new album, Vermont trio Community Garden deliver the most unlikely of combinations: upbeat post-punk. “Don’t Sweat It,” says the title track. “Brush It Off,” another encouraging title. Or how about “Be Honest” – that’s just good advice! Continue reading »
Recording an entire album in one’s bedroom used to be a feat of DIY ingenuity. With modern technology, though, it’s no longer a big deal. Billie Eilish recorded her blockbuster debut in her brother’s bedroom and it doesn’t sound lo-fi or hissy or any of the other hallmarks we used to associate with “bedroom recordings.”
Harrison Hsiang wrote, produced, recorded, and mixed his band Couchsleepers’ debut album Only When It’s Dark in his bedroom. Yawn. But he takes it one step further. It’s a bedroom album – about that very bedroom. Continue reading »
“Transitional Forest” is billed as the lead single of Bad Rat’s upcoming album This Time Around The Sun, but it’s almost two singles in one. The first half is a bit of a feint, a meditative meander that doesn’t predict the drop to come. With little warning, Marc Kamil’s mellow ballad becomes thudding post-punk, little more than a shared guitar line connecting the two halves. Continue reading »
“I don’t wanna be fifteen” is the first line on Lily Wade’s new album 5teen, and she’s in luck: She turns 16 in a few days.
The indie-rock songwriter’s chops bely her age. She writes short and snappy songs, filled with hooks and wit and pop smarts, even as the subject matter reflects her own life experiences: high school crushes, grade-grubbing schoolmates, a summer you wish would last forever, etc. Continue reading »
A few years ago, a video called “Winooski, My Town” went semi-viral. Over a bouncy production, a group of young African refugees recorded an infectious Afropop tribute to their hometown. But this “Winooski” isn’t in the singers’ native Somalia or Tanzania. Winooski is in Vermont. The group calls themselves A2VT, and you can see why a recent Afropop Worldwide article felt the need to add a question mark to the end of their headline: “East African Bliss From Vermont?” Continue reading »
“African refugees in Vermont” is the elevator pitch, but their music offers so much more than just the human interest story. A duo of singers and rappers who go by Jilib and Pogi, augmented by a rotating cast of friends, they sing in English, Swahili, Maay Maay and a combination they refer to as “Swahenglish.” This infectious love song doesn’t hit as hard as some of the higher-energy songs on their great new album Twenty Infinity, but the joyous and insanely catchy chorus will burrow its way into your brain for days. Continue reading »
At first, the music video for Vermont-via-Portland-via-LA band Babehoven’s “Maybe I’m Bitter” evokes that old computer game The Sims, all empty-room templates rendered with rudimentary software. But watch closely for the early signs of the simulation breaking down. A lamp on a chair. The chair on a dresser. Soon giant disembodied hands invade – think Thing from The Addams Family – and the simulation collapses completely. Continue reading »
Critics of ranked lists like this see it as a bug that they’re entirely subjective and somewhat arbitrary. I see it as a feature. There’s not really any difference between #12 and #13. Frankly, there’s not all that much difference between #1 and #25. But my feeling has always been, everyone gets that. No one actually thinks you can mathematically rank works of art. But the trying offers a wonderful opportunity for music nerds to look back at the best of the year, and for the sort of vigorous debate on which such nerddom rests. Continue reading »