He Didn’t Mention His Mother | Heartbreaking Bravery

Tag: He Didn’t Mention His Mother

December 23, 2015

Two Inch Astronaut – Good Behavior (Stream)

Two Inch Astronaut I

[EDITOR’S NOTE: With the site now entering emergency year-end catch-up mode thanks to the cruel, mocking nature of time, tonight’s trio of posts will simply be short reviews of the song(s) in the headline(s) and an accompanying list of tracks that deserve to be heard.]

Two Inch Astronaut have been squarely in this site’s crosshairs since 2014’s inspired Foulbrood, which wound up ranking as one of that year’s finest albums. In February, the band will be following that up with Personal Life, a record that the band’s been road-testing to impressive amounts of applause over the past few months. Apart from the live preview, the band’s now graciously offering up the record’s barbed lead-off single “Good Behavior” as a tantalizing preview of what they’ve got up their sleeve. Once again, there’s a formidable marriage of post-punk, basement pop, and outside hardcore influences to create something that, incredibly, is as accessible as it is complex. Leftield chord voicings collide with an impassioned vocal performance to demonstrate that this band’s only getting better as they go. Hairpin turns, heady arrangements, and a new studio member (Grass Is Green‘s Andy Chervenak) establish this song (and likely this record) as a legitimate behemoth.

Listen to “Good Behavior” below and pre-order Personal Life here. Underneath the embed, explore a list of great songs to have appeared over the course of the last several months.

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ARIGATO MASSAÏ (ft. Fannie Linneros) – We Love
Quilt – Eliot St.
Flowers – Ego Loss
Bandit – Flake
MONEY – I’ll be the Night
Pusha T (ft. The-Dream) – M.F.T.R.
Holy Esque – Silences
PWRHAUS – How I Feel About You
Timber Bones – Travelling Song
Sonya Kitchell – Mexico
Running – Reclaimed Would
Public Memory – Lunar
Eddi Front – Goldie
Atlantic Thrills – Vices
Prawn – Seas
Spring King – Who Are You
TV Baby – Half A Chance
Cassie Ramone – Run Run Rudolph
Eleanor Friedberger – He Didn’t Mention His Mother
Cymbals Eat Guitars – Aerobed
Mammatus – Ornia

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December 13, 2015

Alex G – Brite Boy (Music Video)

alexg

As explained in the last post, it’s been fairly difficult to get posts up over the past few months, so a bit of catching up is in order. A lot of outstanding music videos have been released in that time, so we’ll be focusing on some of the very finest in the featured slots and granting the others some of the recognition they deserve in the lists that run at the bottom of these posts. Alex G‘s “Brite Boy” finds itself in the featured spot here- and with good reason.

So often, artists go for the most direct, immediate, accessible route and find reasonable levels of success. The artists that opt to eschew that approach in favor of more understated work have a much steeper battle to fight. Alex G has always been one of the artists that belongs to that latter camp and that aspect of the artist’s aesthetic is brought to the forefront in the animated clip for “Brite Boy”. A continuously-evolving collage of surrealist cartoon imagery (while still making room for two concrete characters wrapped up in a tragic narrative), the Elliot Bech-directed clip enhances both the song’s sense of subdued melancholy and its damaged sense of hope, rendering it an inexplicably moving experience. A palpable sense of loss dominates the latter half of “Brite Boy” and, by the time the clip draws to a close, manages to cut astonishingly deep.

Watch “Brite Boy” below, pick up a copy of Beach Music here, and explore a list of some of the best music videos of the past few months underneath the embed.