Episode 4 – The Best Thing to Happen to Rock-n-Roll Since Sex and Drugs

Link to Episode 4

Show Transcript

Welcome to Songs That Don’t Suck with your host Mark Bradbourne.

Thank you to Zach Bowders for agreeing to be the Songs That Don’t Suck Voice of God. Zach hosts a podcast called Data Plus Love, and if you’re into data and pop culture and the passion where those things intersect, Zach’s podcast is perfect for you, so I’m going to include the link in the show notes for today for you to go check out Data Plus Love. Zach’s an amazing human being, and he’s a great friend, and I cherish him, and I cannot thank him enough again for being my personal voice of God.

Hey everybody! It’s your aging GenXer and all-around music nut Mark, back for another episode of Songs That Don’t Suck. I truly appreciate you listening, and I truly appreciate all the feedback that I have gotten on previous episodes. Before we jump into the music, let’s talk about our weekly reminders. Please like, follow, and share the podcast. Mondays, the full episode comes out. That’s the one that has all the music embedded, and it’s available exclusively on Spotify. On Wednesdays, you get the Cliff Notes version. Thanks for listening to both, but if I had a preference, obviously the full version gives you the full Songs That Don’t Suck experience, but I’m not going to tell you to change platforms, and I just want you to enjoy the content, and if you find a new music, I don’t honestly care.

So we have a feature here, a monthly feature, where we ask you to submit your top five songs in a specific theme. This month’s theme is places, so cities, states, countries, buildings, roads, what have you. So submit those songs to me. You can go to the website, SongsThatDon’tSuck.net, and there is a form for submitting the top five. Thanks in advance for submissions, and thank you to all who have already submitted. Some great tracks, and I cannot wait to count down the top five that is coming together the first episode in February. Social media, I’m everywhere, but I think that you need to follow me on Twitter first. I am posting songs that don’t make the podcast on Twitter, so it’s another stream for you to get exposed to new music. So the tag on Twitter is STDS Podcast, easy enough to follow, and enjoy the extra songs. But I’m also on Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok, but again, Twitter is really where I’m focused right now.

So this was a really good week for music this week, much better than last week. I’ve got a couple of things that I want to touch first before I get into the new music. First, I know that I’m not introducing anybody to Metallica. Obviously, everybody learned about them from Stranger Things, right? Now, I pretty much wrote off Metallica years ago. In high school, though, ride Lightning, Master of Puppets, they were daily listening on my way to school. And then Injustice for All came out, and they got huge. Obviously, they’re single for one, blew up on MTV, and everybody was suddenly a Metallica fan. Now, the music was still good at that point, but I think that taste of big-time success obviously changed the game for them. The black album then came out, and it’s still good, but you could sense that they were trying to keep that new audience. Some of that edge was gone, and of course, they should do that. You want to be famous. You want as many people to listen to your music as possible. But longtime fans, I think, maybe struggled a little bit with that transition. Even things like Load and Reload came out, S&M, St. Anger, Death Magnetic. None of those albums really got into my rotation, and I was looking back through their catalog, and Metallica did a collaboration with Lou Reed. I don’t even know that happened. Anyway, if you’ve been paying attention, they’ve put out two singles from their new album that’s coming out 72 Seasons. The second one that came out this week, Screaming Suicide, was awesome. Really liked it. Now, the first single that came out, Lux Eternal, I took that with a grain of salt because the first single is generally pretty great because they spend extra time on production, and it’s the best song on the album generally. Now, when I heard Lux Eternal, I thought it was fantastic. I thought it was the best thing they’d put out in a very long time. Screaming Suicide, for me, follows suit, and it makes me excited for the new album. I’m still debating if I want to go see them in Detroit. I think the show is, the concert is this summer, and I’ve really got to decide soon because I’m pretty sure those are going to sell out. I feel like I should.

Okay, a quick clarification on something I said last week. Jenna, my daughter, raised this to me, and when I said that Phoebe Bridgers was country, I wasn’t saying that she was country, but I was saying that the song in particular, so much wine, was very country. Turns out that that song is actually a cover from The Handsome Family. I think Phoebe’s version is way better. Regardless, this whole conversation sent me down a very deep Phoebe Bridgers rabbit hole, which I thoroughly enjoyed. And, speaking of Phoebe Bridgers, her supergroup, Boy Genius, has new music out this week, and we’re going to get to that a little bit later.

But, speaking of Jenna, she’ll be on the show next week doing an artist spotlight. She’s going to be talking about Leanna Firestone, who has new music out this week, and to share Leanna’s music with you and promote your submissions for Top 5 Songs About Places, her song, Tennessee Slash I Always Knew, from her album, Forward/Slash.

 TN/I Always Knew

and the last thing to mention before we jump into the new music, randomly, an album by a Vitamin String Quartet popped up in a playlist of mine. If you like string quartets and the band Radiohead, boy, do I have a recommendation for you. Their album, Strung Out on OK Computer, came out in 2001. OK Computer is probably my favorite Radiohead album. Listening to this, I was like, oh, this is fantastic. Having that type of focus soundtrack for me is killer, like when I’m working on something really in depth. New music discovery, obviously, 20 years later. If you’re unsure of who Vitamin String Quartet are, if you watch Bridgerton, you know their work.

Let’s jump into new music this week. If this is your first time listening, this is how I am discovering new music and how it ultimately finds its way to your ears. Each week, I dig into new music playlists on Spotify. There’s probably a half dozen that I check regularly, other ones I check randomly, but I probably listen to somewhere between three and four hundred songs a week. Now, the trick is, I only listen to each song a minimum of about 30 seconds. As painful as that is, I give them 30 seconds, and if something catches my ear, I will listen to the whole thing. The best of those will find their way to the podcast. If they don’t fit in the podcast, they get shared on Twitter under the hashtag songs I missed. This week, I’ve got five for you, so let’s jump in and give a listen. The first track comes from the artist Wednesday, and this song is called Chosen to Deserve. Check it out.

Chosen to Deserve – Wednesday

Wednesday is from Asheville, South Carolina, and you can definitely hear that southern sensibility in the instrumentation of this country rock track. Her voice works really well here. It feels lazy and stylistically, it just really works here with the lyrical content, and it’s, I think it’s just a beautiful song. There is a very familiar sadness in some of the lyrics. Lines like, now all the drugs are getting boring. Paint a very vivid landscape of the malaise that can be felt as a teenager when the town you were in offers you absolutely nothing. And if it sounds like something that I experienced personally, you’re damn right. So this is their debut album. The album is called Rat Saw God. So if you liked this one, be sure to check out the full album. Again, this is Wednesday and the track was Chosen to Deserve.

The next song is from a band called Sick Joy, and this is Painkiller.

Painkiller – Sick Joy

From Brighton, UK, Sick Joy released their debut album last year, which was called We’re All Going to Fucking Die. So this song, I haven’t listened to that album yet, but I’m going to because this song was really, really good. When I first saw the title, I thought someone covered Judas Priest Painkiller, and I prepared for the worst. But happily it wasn’t. If you’re a Muse fan, and there’s a couple of people that I know listen to the podcast who are Muse fans, this is the one you want to check out. You’re going to dig this. That was the first comparison that came to my mind. Really catchy chorus on this one for sure. It’s just great. It’s aggressive. I really, really liked that from Sick Joy. It was just good. Not much else to add, honestly. It was just super solid.

The third song this week is from Harpy, and it is called Swallow.

Swallow – Harpy

So the Mother of Darkness from London, UK. She was described as alternative pop, and I think that’s fairly accurate. I would even say there’s a little bit of goth music, some industrial. It reminded me a little bit of garbage and Shirley Manson from a vocal standpoint. Even heard a little nine inch nails, which obviously I’m going to dig. Not my normal listening habit, but I’ve found myself with a couple of these songs each week that I really kind of liked. This one really stood out, though. I really like the attitude. I like the lyrics, the edge of it. Just felt like a good female empowerment track. Like she’s tired of the manipulation and the garbage that she’s dealing with. And just, yeah, it’s just good. So check out Harpy and her song, Swallow.

The fourth one this week. I struggle between this one and the next one to which one to feature. This is The Bites, and the song is called Do Me a Favor.

Do Me A Favor – The Bites

The Bites, obviously from Los Angeles, California. Their Twitter profile reads the best thing to happen to rock and roll since sex and drugs. And I’ll let you be the judge of that, but they might be right. I love a good double entendre. And the way this opening lyric is delivered, it feels like it’s going to go that way, but it doesn’t. Once the song kicked in, it actually felt like modernizing music that you would have heard on the sunset strip in the 80s. Singing about partying and having a good time. Maybe Poison could have put this song out, and it would not have been out of place at least. This is just good time rock and roll, and obviously they’re not breaking any ground lyrically. But if you want to crank something up in the car and burn down the highway, this is it. And maybe they are right. I think this might be what rock needs. We got to get back to having a good time. I think they’re on to something. They are a very, very new band, and I’m going to be watching their career with great interest.

The featured track this week comes from Boy Genius, and it’s $20.

$20 – boygenius

Boy Genius dropped an EP this week, and every song on it is fantastic. For a little background, Boy Genius is a supergroup of talent featuring Julian Baker, Phoebe Bridgers, and Lucy Dacus. And this is the first studio LP. Their second release, they put out an EP in 2018, and their full album is going to come out in March. I love the way their voices marry in harmony on this song. But like I said, all three tracks released have this magic from a production standpoint. It’s not overproduced, and I wouldn’t expect that anyway. But there’s some really cool audio pieces that are buried in the mix. I heard phased AM radio static type stuff, which I love when those types of things are put in the mix. So I encourage you to throw on some headphones and just close your eyes and listen to the spectrum of sound, because I think it’s something to behold. I’ve listened to it several times like that and just really able to get into it. At the end of the song, where they’re all singing different parts, you hear this primal scream cut through this beauty. It’s just it’s super well put together. Lyrically, it’s really clever. They’re painting a lot of pictures. And I had to actually go and look up the lyrics because you have to really listen intently when they start to layer the vocals together and they’re all singing different parts. I’m really looking forward to the full album. It’s going to be fantastic.

So that is it for this week. Again, it was a great week for music. I’ve got at least four more tracks that I’m going to share on Twitter. So be sure and follow me there. Again, the the username on Twitter there is STDS podcast. And you’ll be able to check those out as well. Obviously, if you’ve missed something, go back and check out some of the older episodes. If you’re looking for other new music, we found some good things. I’ve gotten a lot of good feedback on stuff that I’m sharing. So obviously, the audience has some of the same tastes and sensibilities that I do, which is good. I figured there might be a debate here and there, but nothing too severe yet. But with that, I will let you go. Zach, send us on home.

Thanks for listening. And until next week, keep searching for and listening to songs that don’t suck.