Heartbreaking Bravery

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Tag: FF Bada

May 26, 2016

Watch This: A Long List of Honorable Mentions from A Brief Stretch of Time

It’s been approximately a month and a half since the last volume of Watch This ran on this site. During the interim, there was a lull in coverage due to show coverage (the results of which will be appearing in the very near future) and then a spree to get the three main release categories — single streams, full streams, and music videos — caught back up to the current release cycle.

Now that everything’s back on pace, the Watch This series will be revived in a continuing series of posts that are spread out over the next week. During all of the time the series maintained radio silence, the material that was emerging was being taken into account on a near-daily basis. An intimidating amount of great live performance videos have surfaced in that time and will be split up into groups as those clips are recapped. Below is a list of strong candidates that have a lot to offer, either in the filmmaking department, through the band’s performances, or a mixture of both. So, as always, sit up, scroll down, and Watch This.

Gordi, The Black Angels (x2), The Coathangers, The Peekaboos, Andy Shauf (x2, 3), Sorority Noise, Sera Cahoone, Footings, Lina Tullgren, Abi Reimold, Your Friend (x2, 3, 4), Shearwater, Christian Lee Hutson, Indian Askin, Lady Pills, Valley Queen, Gary Clark Jr. (x2), Choir Vandals, Pearl Charles, New Madrid, Laura Sauvage, Simeon Beardsley, Colleen Green, Palm Springs, didi, Max Meser, Keeps, Pinkwash, Cate Le Bon, Namorado, Mount Moriah, Tacocat (x2. 3), Trixie Whitley, Bleached (x2, 3), Psychic Love

Clean Spill (x2, 3), The Kills, Restorations (x2, 3), Band of Horses (x2), Sioux Falls, The Frights, Behold the Brave, SOAR, The Ultrasounds, Arnold Turbobust, Broken Beak, Korey Dane, Songhoy Blues, Tony Peachka, Beach Slang, Pinegrove (x2), Astronautalis, CocoRosie, Little Green Cars (x2), Golden Daze, Sex Tide, Audacity, Jalen N’Gonda, Sun Club, Laura Gibson, Born Ruffians (x2), Kurt Vile, Bird Laww (x2), Mail the Horse, Radical Face, Yeasayer, Nada Surf, Wimps, Museyroom, Bummer, Quiet Hollers

Deerhunter Rainwater Cassette Exchange, Kaiti Jones, Yak, Operators, Quilt, Laney Jones (x2), Slowdive (x2), Laurel, Penny and Sparrow, Model/Actriz, Savages, You Won’t (x2), Psybeams, Julia Pox, Lip Talk, Pure Bathing Culture, Amanda Bergman, Hinds (x2, 3), Battles, Parlour Tricks, Deerhunter, Jackie Islands, Flying Horseman, Wet Nurse, American Pinup, Blitzen Trapper, Davina and the Vagabonds, Cybee, Jon Latham, Jon Latham.

 

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September 3, 2015

Melkbelly – Mnt. Kool Kid (Stream)

melkbelly
Photograph by Taylor Schneider

At the midweek marker, remarkable releases have continued to be doled out at a breakneck pace. In some ways, that overwhelming magnitude contributes to a slew of smaller releases getting overlooked at their time of release. Today’s featured items was one of those- and it was strong enough to fight off this recent batch to secure the majority of the focus. That, by no means, should detract from the value of the field it’s included in, which continues to cement 2015’s status as one of the strongest years for new music in recent memory. Full streams had the quietest output for the day, yielding only La Misma’s great full-length Kanizadi. Music videos had a heavier crop, boasting strong new clips from Made Violent, Microwave, SadGirl, Little Wings, and Martin Courtney. As always, the individual streams seemed to make the most sizable dent with formidable entries from the likes of Grubs, Fern Mayo, Yung, Ex-Breathers, Midday Veil, Modern Baseball, Drug Church, Brian Carpenter & The Confessions, and Battles.

While everything in the linked above paragraph is worth a click, it’s when Melkbelly‘s latest wound up making its way here that the feature spot really clicked. The band’s not the most well-known act but has secured some high-profile support lately- most notably via this excellent Talkhouse piece from Speedy Ortiz’s Sadie Dupuis. While the piece used the band’s recent outstanding Bathroom at the Beach 7″ as its focal point, they’ve managed to quietly unveil another new standalone track on their bandcamp (a place that’s composed entirely of standalone entries). “Mnt. Kool Kid” sacrifices some of the band’s immediate melodicism in favor of emphasizing their more aggressive noise tendencies. Over four minutes, the band rides the crest of a stark, menacing bass hum and uses it as a catapult for both a brief, outsider pop section and a towering main section that manages to come off as, almost paradoxically, a more expansive and contained version of Lightning Bolt at their best.

Bruising at every turn, “Mnt. Kool Kid” is a commanding show of force that highlights all of Melkbelly’s strongest looks and continues to see the quartet tightening their craft into something that feels genuinely powerful. Unflinching, unmoored, and unforgettable “Mnt. Kool Kid” is the sound of a band continuing to lock into a groove that should set them spinning to an explosive finish. For now, be content to sit back and watch the band burn everything they pass; sometimes the passages to the climactic moments wind up carrying even more meaning than the resolution. A song this good doesn’t deserve to succumb to a fate where it largely passes by unnoticed.

Listen to “Mnt. Kool Kid” below and get lost in an exhilarating course correction. Keep an eye on this site for further Melkbelly updates.

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