Episode 26 – You’re Still The Reason I’m Doing This

Welcome to Songs That Don’t Suck with your host Mark Bradbourne. Welcome to Episode 26.

We are officially halfway through 2023. Now as of this episode, I have shared well over 140 songs between our weekly episodes here and social media and I want to take a minute and just thank you all for coming along for this ride. It’s been a blast and I’m looking forward to the second half of the year for sure.

Let’s get right down to business and let’s talk brain bending cover. This week is actually a new release as well as a cover. To set the stage, we have to talk about the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Dolly Partons Induction. Initially, to her credit, she didn’t feel like she should be inducted and the Rock Hall said, yeah, we’re going to agree to disagree and they kept her on the ballot and she got voted in and because of that, she actually vowed to record a Rock album and she has. It’s coming out later this year. There’s 21 covers and nine original tracks and the tracks are starting to hit Spotify. So the first one was a duet with Rob Hallford from Judas Priest. That’s an original track and then the most recent one is a duet with Anne Wilson of Heart and they teamed up for Magic Man.

Okay, there’s nothing really brain bending about this cover. It’s pretty true to form Anne Wilson’s original voice, but it’s really cool to hear Dolly Parton kind of rock out a little bit and I was impressed when she gets into her higher range and she starts belting out those notes with Anne Wilson in harmony. It’s really impressive and I don’t want to lose sight of the fact that she is 77 years old and still kicking ass. I was looking at the track listing for the new album and there’s going to be a few tracks that I’m definitely going to have to listen to. The one that caught my eye the most though was her cover of Purple Rain. So definitely stay tuned for that one.

All right, if you are just finding the podcast, welcome. I listen to a bunch of new songs each week and I peel through them. I pull the ones that I like, I review those, I come up with hopefully a minimum of five and I share them here on the podcast each week.

The first song this week comes from Aaron Jones and it’s called My America. Aaron Jones is from Seattle and I almost put his song Blood in the Water on a prior episode but it got edged out honestly as I was kind of making the cuts. But Aaron has an amazing sound, channeling all of the creative juice out of the Pacific Northwest and kind of sharing it with the rest of the world. I really hope he starts to catch on. He is stylistically, at least for me, fitting in with bands like Dirty Honey and Tyler Bryant and The Shake Down, just great guitar based bluesy rock and definitely has something to say lyrically, I think, especially with this song. Also, there are moments where I felt like vocally he’s got some of the similar characteristics to Corey Glover from Living Color. I think Corey probably has just a slightly grittier voice, but yeah, it was definitely, there was a moment where I was kind of like, oh, that really kind of sounds like Corey Glover. Anyway, fantastic song, definitely check that one out.

The second song this week comes from Vendetta Love and it’s called On and On. Vendetta Love is from Ireland and it’s really interesting to get what I’m going to call grunge from the other side of the pond. There’s definite grunge influences that you can kind of hear coming through musically. The first few notes honestly felt like they were almost paying homage to Would? from Alice in Chains from the Singles soundtrack. Vocally it’s not Alice in Chains, it’s much cleaner, but stylistically it’s very much kind of that 90s era Seattle sound, but from Ireland. Now it’s funny because I know grunge didn’t last very long, but for me it’s nice to hear the influences from grunge still kind of bleeding through today’s artists and it just kind of shows how powerful that era has been and probably will continue to be kind of going forward with bands as they discover those, you know, fantastic grunge artists.

The third song this week comes from Old Mervs and it’s called Sweetheart. Old Mervs are an Aussie duo who actually list a few bands in their biography that I featured on previous episodes of songs that don’t suck. They list them as their kind of contemporaries, including DMAs and Sunroom, and if you like kind of jangly, surf-tinged rock, this is a band you definitely want to check out. They remind me, and I know people are going to kind of disagree with me here, but there’s a bit of Neon Trees that I hear in them. It’s not near as poppy as the Neon Trees are, but there’s something sonically that kind of matches in my ear and it just made me want to kind of draw a comparison between the two, but this has definitely got a slightly more raw edge for sure.

All right, quick housekeeping website, songsthatdontsuck. net. You can check out show transcripts there. You can send me recommendations of artists, and you can find links to all the places you can hear the podcast. You can also find links to all the social media, mainly I’m on Twitter, but I do exist on Facebook and Instagram as well. With that, let’s get right back into the music.

The fourth song this week comes from Good Terms, and it’s called Old Friend. Emo, Pop Punk, maybe even a little bit Prog Rock here. The ending of the song in particular made me take notice with some of the heavy syncopation and almost metal sound that they were kind of moving into. Vocally, it got into a bit of screamo, so they’re melding a lot of things. There’s a lot going on with this track. If you know me, you know I’m not a huge emo fan, I think I’ve mentioned that before on the show, but the one thing that really appealed to me with this song was actually what the drummer was doing. I feel like a lot of times in emo, their drummer will tend to play very straight ahead, kind of like Travis Barker, granted he’s more Pop Punk, but you get the idea, very straight. They’re not really kind of doing anything that would make musicians go, oh, that’s kind of interesting. But this drummer, he’s got some really cool kind of syncopated rhythms going on, throwing some accents in different places, and making it very interesting in the way that he’s playing in and out with the vocalist. Some extra spicy things if you are listening with a somewhat trained ear or now that I’ve mentioned it, give it a listen and tell me what you think.

The fifth song this week comes from Barenaked Ladies, and it’s called Lovin’ Life. Now, as a practice, I try and avoid the more well-known artists. But to me, Barenaked Ladies is a slightly different animal. They used to be huge. They had giant hits, One Week comes, Pinch Me also comes to mind, Pinch Me, which came off the album Maroon, came out in the year 2000. And I remember seeing them before they got ridiculously huge. It was a free show. They were outside at the rock hall, like on the back of a flatbed truck in July of 1997. This band has a very, very long history. But if you’ve kind of had BNL fall off your radar, they’re still putting out really good music. The upcoming album that is coming out will be their 16th. And I will be the first to point out that ever since Steven Page left, it hasn’t been the same, right? It’s just, it’s not. It was a great pairing of songwriters, but they still can write a very catchy song. And for me, I don’t know if it’s age that I’m at or just what’s going on in my life, but I enjoy songs that remind me that life doesn’t always suck, even though some days it kind of feels that way. So I hope you liked that track. And if you’re an old BNL fan who kind of had the band fall off your radar, welcome back. Alright, that is it for this episode of Songs That Don’t Suck, as always…

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