Out of the newsletter and onto the wider internet! Evan Miller here bringing my regular Countdown segment "3 Songs You Have To Hear" to the website proper for your leisurely perusal and archival purposes, thank you for reading! Being well into springtime now, temperature and precipitation ups and downs in tow, we’re also well into the regular new music release calendar too, with things coming out or announcing nearly every day now (with somehow even more on the way!). Here’s a few for this particular point in this season, both environmentally and musically:
“Spring summer” by Smerz
A fitting song in title (and sound) for our daily forecasts these days! As we drift between summer-like temperatures and springy rainclouds floating about, here’s a more downtempo number from Norwegian electronic duo Smerz to kick back to on brighter days or ponder with on greyer ones, from their upcoming Easy EP.
“American Dream” by Alabama Shakes
The recently reunited Alabama Shakes continue making moves this year – alongside hitting the road again with many great acts (including a stop in Cincinnati on 8/26 opening for Tedeschi Trucks Band), another new single has trickled out from what I’m assuming (hoping) are sessions for a new album, the charged “American Dream”. Howard and crew are no strangers to taking on the issues in their work, and this new track is no exception, wondering in the lyrics what of our day-to-day really is that ideal we always hear about, and instead imploring listeners to “keep dreaming” for something else.
“Fade To Black” by The Tubs
Welsh janglers The Tubs have recently announced their signing to indie rock institution Merge Records (congrats!) and are celebrating the news with a Tubs-ified cover of Metallica’s classic “Fade To Black”. You might initially think that that’s an interesting choice for a band like this, and it is, but as some videos here on the internet have shown me before, metal music of this era can be (jokingly) reduced to surf rock with distortion, and The Tubs take that notion and run with it on this spritely, lightened take on Metallica’s dark ballad.
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