Episode 33 – “I don’t want to turn to the light, don’t pray for me, don’t waster your time”

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

Welcome to Episode 33 of Songs That Don’t Suck. I’m glad you’re here. To kick things off this week, I want to talk about another concert that I went to recently. You might remember the band that I’m going to talk about from Episode 9. I was talking about them during the Brite Winter Festival that they were performing at, where I first saw them. And then more recently, in Episode 28, I featured their song called So Different. I’m talking about Fox Royale. So Fox Royale rolled through Cleveland, and they were playing one of my favorite smaller venues here in town called Mahall’s 20 Lanes. Yes, if you’re not from Cleveland, it is a venue that has a bowling alley in it. It has two concert rooms as well as an attached restaurant. The main room has a capacity of somewhere in the 200 to 300 range. And then the apartment, which I had never seen a show in until this one. And quite frankly, I didn’t know existed. There used to be another small room in the venue that was down in the basement where the bowling alley was called the locker room. Not important right now, but the apartment is kind of the same size as the locker room. It’s very small. And the reason for that is it’s literally an apartment, or at least it used to be. And the show happened in the living room of that apartment. Now I love a good intimate show, but there was some issues. So I’m going to talk about this in two parts.

The first is just going to be talking about the setup and the audio. So the room is all hardwood floors, solid walls, there’s no kind of sound baffling or anything like that to kind of deflect echoes and things of that nature. It had a smaller PA, which for the room is probably appropriate, but if you’re a musician, you probably had this kind of as a practice PA, it’s kind of smaller speakers that are just mid range and high end on tripod stands. It was hooked to a nice mixing head and amplifier, but there’s no monitors for the band. But honestly, it’s a small room. They can probably hear each other on stage, but I’ve played these shows and sometimes it can be difficult, especially if somebody’s stage volume is too loud or whatever. It’s just problematic. So I wasn’t thrilled with the setup of the show. I honestly thought they might have been in the big room having played brite winter, but no, it wasn’t to be. There’s only about 30 of us in the room, but honestly, 30 people in that apartment. It was enough. And the people that were in there were digging it and it’s rightfully so because the boys played really, really well. They went on after a local band called the scoffs who were a mix of the clash and the stray cats, nothing on Spotify. So I can’t really link to it or kind of pump them up any. But again, I thought the guys played really well despite the audio setup. The highlight of the show for me was they had a moment in the middle of their set where they went completely unplugged. So it was just an acoustic guitar and the four of them kind of came out without mics and played a song called panic attack. It honestly, it sounded amazing in that room, which I can imagine if like there was like a folk artist or a singer-songwriter, that apartment like venue piece would be. Perfect for that rock show. Not so much. Anyway, I hope that Panic Attack is the next song that they record and release because I will absolutely have it on the podcast. Most of the people in the crowd, I either overheard them talking or was talking to them directly. They did all kind of see Fox Royale at bright winter, which honestly, I was really happy to hear because sometimes Cleveland gets like an out of town artist. And at those festivals, like they just kind of pass them over, but obviously the boys made an impression and it was enough for them to remember six months later and come out and see them. So it was good. After the show, I did get a moment to talk to three of the four guys from Fox Royale. And I think in a future episode, I’m going to have them on and do a little interview. I don’t do a lot of interviews, but we were talking. I was like, yeah, it might be a fun thing to do. So stay tuned for that.

All right, let’s get into this week’s brain bending cover. This is cool.

One of my listeners from the UK, his name is Dipesh. He sent me a note telling me that he really dug the last episodes cover, which was a Beautiful Stranger by the Dip. And in turn, he sent me a cover song for me to check out and I was like, cool. So if you want to do something like this, you can visit the website, songs that don’t suck. net. You can fill out the song artist submission form. The song that Dipesh sent me was from AnnemMayKetereit, and it’s a cover of Suzanne Vega’s song, Tom’s Diner. Now I actually featured another cover by Annam, oh man, I’m just slaughtering it, AnnemMayKetereit And it was from episode 18. It was Britney Spears Toxic, but somehow I missed this one completely. They’re on the same Spotify singles, but apparently I was so taken with Toxic, I didn’t even see it. This version, a little less jazzy than the remix that Suzanne Vega did with DNA. Really gritty from a vocal standpoint, and I really like the way that they strayed away from the original vocal melody, and they kind of played with the timing of the phrases. I thought it was really fun. So I want to thank Dipesh for sending that one in. That was really cool.

All right. Let’s get into new music. If this is your first time listening, welcome. Welcome to the family. I listen to a bunch of music each week, anywhere from two, three, four, 500 songs, depends on the week, honestly. I go through, I wade through the crap, I bring out the good ones, and I present them here in the podcast each week, hopefully to expand your horizons and introduce you to new music.

The first song that I’ve got this week comes from Royal Blood, and it’s called Pull Me Through. A few episodes ago, I had Royal Blood Mountains at midnight, but this one I’m sharing because it is such a different feel from, honestly, all the other stuff I’ve heard from them over the years. I really dig it. I really liked the acoustic bluesy feel that the verses had when it was kind of put next to that punched up chorus, and that can be a really tricky thing to do. I’ve heard bands kind of just really not do that well, and a lot of bands honestly shy away from it, but the way they kind of slipped back and forth between the verse and the chorus just felt really good, and I really, really liked it, really cool from Royal Blood.

The second song this week comes from Electric Enemy, and it’s called Panic. Now, after the little vocal intro, when the song really first kicks in, I was really, really reminded of Nine Inch Nails, at least from a musical standpoint. The guitars and drums gave me a very early 90s industrial feel, vocally, I’m not sure. Maybe like, I think it reminds me of Muse a little bit, but obviously it’s not as heavy as Muse. I don’t know, maybe there’s a comparison there. Maybe I’m wrong. I don’t know. There is a little bit of play with auto-tuner here, which in this application I found to be a lot of fun, because it was obviously done for more of an effect in the verse rather than pitch correction or, you know, basing the whole vocal line on it. So this was tasteful, I appreciated it. Electric Enemy is actually one person, it’s a multi-instrumentalist named Jim Lawton, he is from London in the UK. He does have a network of other kind of musicians that he’ll pull in to do recordings and stuff, but this is his brainchild. So this was a fun vine this week, I like this one a lot.

The third song this week comes from Twin Temple and it’s called Burn Your Bible. If you didn’t have Satanic Duop on your 2023 musical bingo list, well, that’s okay. I didn’t have it on mine either. Now, for this, I’m going to share with you parts of their bio directly because I don’t think I could say this any better. So although you may expect heavy guitar riffs and thumping bass to accompany cries of Hale Satan, instead you hear old school classic riffs in Alexandra’s crooning voice straight out of the 60s. While many can find Satan to black metal, the duo is breaking the notion that Satan has a musical type. I cannot lie. I thought this was fantastic to find this week. I think the lyrics are really clever and I honestly thought the music and the style were great. Kind of reminded me of Amy Winehouse a little bit, kind of that old school throwback thing going on. And they have other fun hits too, like Let’s Have a Satanic Orgy and Lucifer My Love. Now I am obviously kind of laughing a little bit, but that’s just me. I think it’s important to point out though to them, this is not shtick. They are devout Satanists on and off stage. And honestly, all I can say is I liked it and I hope you did too.

All right, a little bit of housekeeping. I mentioned the website, songs that don’t suck. net. You can recommend me songs and artists. You can give me feedback to the show and you can find links to all social media stuff. Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, I am on threads. And you can also find kind of transcripts and summaries of each episode if you’re looking for something specific. And as always, please continue to share the podcast. I really, really appreciate it. I’ve continued to watch the statistics from around the podcast and the audience is expanding, so you guys are doing excellent work. So I appreciate your efforts.

The fourth song this week comes from Nothing But Thieves and it’s called Tomorrow Is Closed. Now I’ve heard of Nothing But Thieves before, but I don’t think I’ve heard anything from them prior to this song. Or if I did, it didn’t like make an impression on me enough to like remember what was going on. Anyway, they have a very similar vibe as I was listening to it. Bands like Kassabian, maybe Kings of Leon a little bit. It’s got that jangly indie rock guitar thing, a little bounce in the rhythm section, and just a really, really smooth voice. Nothing really much to add around this other than it was a really nice listen and a good find this week.

The fifth song this week comes from The Sherlock’s and it’s called Louder Than Words. This is yet another earlier episode callback as I featured a song from them called Sirens back in episode six, which was the first single off of their forthcoming album. Well, their full length album has finally come out and it’s fantastic. Louder Than Words continues that high energy rock vibe that I got from Sirens and it’s funny, now that I’ve kind of played this song and the prior song from Nothing But Thieves, there’s a similarity in the sound that I’m just realizing now as I’m recording. And I’m not complaining at all, please don’t think I’m complaining. They both have their own thing going on, but they are definitely contemporaries. Like I would go see these two bands on a bill without a doubt. It would be a great night of live music. Now if you like this one, go check out the whole album. The album has been selling really well, I think in the UK it either hit number one or number two for physical sales, which is saying something. So are there big things ahead for The Sherlock’s? Perhaps. The energy’s there, I think so.

That is it for this week. As always… Thanks for listening and until next week, keep searching for and listening to songs that don’t suck.