5/1/20: Damien Jurado, Joan As Police Woman, Patricia and more
Welcome to another edition of First Listen Friday!
What's New, Tomboy? is prolific singer-songwriter Damien Jurado's newest album, his 9th LP released since 2010. In addition to being prolific, Jurado is incredibly consistent and he's produced another quality album here. 2019's In The Share of a Storm was more of a stripped-down project with just Jurado and his acoustic guitar. Here he's brought back the surrounding instrumentation more reminiscent of 2018's The Horizon Just Laughed. One instrument that appears here which I haven't heard on any of his recent albums is a drum machine, which you can hear on several tracks including "When You Were Few" which is one of my favorite songs on the album. "Alice Hyatt" was another stand-out track for me. If you're unfamiliar with Jurado's work, I suggest starting here.
Joan As Police Woman has a new album of cover songs, Cover Two. There are some really interesting new takes on songs everyone will recognize like Prince's "Kiss" (which kicks off the album), Michael McDonald's "I Keep Forgettin'" (transformed into a fantastic slow-burn track) and "Under Control" by The Strokes (now closer to a piano ballad). The fresh interpretations of the songs here make this album worth checking out.
BrokeN Dreams is the new album from Brooklyn-based rapper & producer HDBeenDope. The album opens with the self-affirming "Inizio", piano and vocals carry the song until they're joined by a choir and horns on the final verse. The skilled production is apparent throughout and I could definitely see HDBeenDope’s fanbase continue to grow with this new album. If you want to jump straight to my favorite track here check out “Hollywood”.
Parcels have released a live album titled Live Vol. 1 alongside a video of the recording session itself (which took place at Hansa Studios in Berlin). It clocks in at over an hour and the band sounds great throughout, if you want to jump straight to a highlight I'd suggest starting at "Redline" which transitions beautifully into "IknowhowIfeel". I really enjoy sessions like this and seeing this one made me go back and revisit Radiohead's excellent Live From The Basement.
Patricia has released "Downlink" and its the first track we've had a chance to hear from his upcoming album Maxyboy. The song is accompanied by a video which has some very cool visuals. Patricia himself (Max Ravitz) and his partner Josephine Ravitz created the video via a self-made visualizer "using analog video techniques from the 1960s and '70s. They modified a Vectrex game console for voltage control, allowing them to control the screen with a modular synthesizer, and rescanned the Vectrex with a camera and colorized using LZX modular video synthesizers." Being a huge fan of 2017's Several Shades of the Same Color, this new album was an instant pre-order for me. The album will be released via the consistently excellent label Ghostly International.
Protomartyr has released another single leading up to their upcoming album Ultimate Success Today. Protomartyr first caught my attention with “Why Does It Shake?” off of 2015’s The Agent Intellect and I’ve been a fan ever since. Everything I’ve heard thus far from the new project makes me think it won’t disappoint.
Pretty fascinating tweet from Unknown Mortal Orchestra earlier this week. If you aren’t familiar with “Hunnybee”, it currently has over 46 million plays on Spotify.
If you’re reading this on May 1st you have until midnight tonight to purchase some music via Bandcamp and have them forego their share of the profit and pass that along directly to the artists themselves in an effort to support musicians during this time that they’re unable to tour. Kudos to Bandcamp for doing this.
That’s it for this week!