S2E1 – “Life’s a Bitter Feeling…”

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

Happy New Year and welcome to season two of Songs That Don’t Suck. This is episode one for 2024 and I am back to bring you the best in new music according to me. Me and my picky judgemental, not mad, just disappointed Gen X ears. Thank you for coming along for the ride.

A little housekeeping before we get into the meat of the episode. A couple of changes that I’m going to do this season. If you’re a long time listener, you’ll be like, Mark, what are you doing? This is what I’m doing.

If you are familiar, I was releasing an episode on Monday and then a Cliff Notes version on Wednesdays, which didn’t have the music embedded. It’s due to a Spotify licensing thing. This year, I’ll be releasing both versions of the podcast on Mondays so everybody gets to start their week with the new episode. So hopefully you appreciate that. You like that. If not, let me know and I’ll change it back. Who knows? You will notice though on the Cliff Notes version in the show notes, you will find links to all the songs that I feature thanks to a service I found called Songwhip. So if you’re an Apple music listener or title or YouTube, hopefully you will have a much easier time locating the music that I am featuring because it automatically will list all the platforms for you to find it. So I found that and I thought it was pretty cool.

Last year, I had a lot of fun finding really cool covers to share. And in episode 48, I dove into my musical vault and unearthed some really killer and little known songs. And I want to continue that practice. So I’ve decided for this season I’m going to be mixing in vault songs with the covers that I find. So hopefully you appreciate that. Get turned on to some artists that while they may no longer be performing, they still have some great music that exists out on the streaming platforms.

The website is still the same, songs that don’t suck. net. You can find transcripts from the show. You can find links to all the good stuff, including social media. If you want to follow us, we’re on threads, Instagram, Facebook and TikTok.

And you can now find the podcast on YouTube. You won’t find my face, but you will find my voice. Google Podcast ceased to exist as a platform and YouTube built in a mechanism to include podcasts. So all 52 episodes from last season are on YouTube. Now you can go check those out. Nothing special. It’s really just the audio, but it’s there.

So it’s a new year, right? It’s 2024 and at the end of 2023, as is kind of the standard, every music media thing put out a best of list. And as kind of is the norm, they’re all really suspect because they are just focused on whatever went viral and not really what is the best. But I still looked at them and I figured we’d do a little bit of comparison to see how my picks were versus some of the larger publications.

So the first one I looked at was Pitchfork. They had a top 100 list they put out between my songs, you know, the 200 plus that I pulled and the 100 they listed. There was one that we had in common. It was Chosen to Deserve from Wednesday. Great song, good pull from their list. They did have other songs from artists that I featured. So they had Boy Genius, they had Kara Jackson, and they had Big Thief, but again, different songs. So not bad, but still suspicious with some of the other things that they pulled.

Billboard’s top 100. Again, we had one song in common. It was Tyler Childers In Your Love. We did have five artists in common with Billboard though. But granted, those five artists were among some of the bigger ones that I pulled from like Foo Fighters. And I think the struts were on there as well.

Vulture, another magazine did a little bit better. We had three songs in common. We had Chosen to Deserve from Wednesday, $20 from Boy Genius and Mother Nature from MGMT.

And then lastly, The Kings of Internet Argument, starting the Rolling Stone magazine. They put out their top 100. We had one song, and that song was actually watching the credits from the Beths. So I was really impressed that they actually found that song. We did pull five artists, most notably The Last Dinner Party and Boy Genius. I did notice Boy Genius showed up basically on every list. Honestly, not surprising. They had a lot of run in the media and the album was honestly fantastic. So it’s well deserved praise. So can’t go wrong there.

For the first time though, I did find a worst of 2023. I’m not going to recap it here. But if you are interested, it’s something that Variety Magazine put out. So if you search Variety Worst Songs of 2023, you will find a very hilarious list of very, very bad music. So enjoy that.

Now looking forward, I was looking at some of the new music that is scheduled to be released during kind of the first three months of 2024. There are a few albums that are coming out from podcast alumni. Last Dinner Party, their album will finally come out. MGMT’s new album is going to come out. And I remember when I first found that track, it was very different from some of their earlier stuff. So I feel like that’s going to be a good listen. Looking forward to that. If you’re a fan of Sheryl Crow like I am, she has a new album coming out, which I think will be good stuff. She’s super talented. And if you disagree with me, don’t tell me about it because I don’t want to hear it. Shambalix have a new album coming out, which I think will be a good listen if you want to go back and hear the song I featured from them. That was in episode 17 of last year. Other artists that I noticed on the list, Amigo the Devil, Judas Priest’s new album is going to come out, Lenny Kravitz’s new album is going to come out, and the K’s have an upcoming release that will be out early this year.

For my big music nerds, Dragon Force has a new album coming out in 2024. And while I don’t have any official news, it’s all just kind of rumor and conjecture. I am anticipating new music from Dream Theater at some point this year, probably late in 2024. But with the return of Mike Portnoy to the drum throne, I don’t think they’re going to wait a real long time to put out at least a single, if not a full album. A full album might be a stretch, probably 2025 for the new Dream Theater album, but a guy can hope.

All right, let’s get into this week’s cover song. This week’s cover song is also a vault song from some of my past listening habits. The artist is called Ausley, and it is his cover of the Wings classic Band on the Run. I am not a fan of Wings. It is safe to say that I actually hate Wings. I love the Beatles. I love Paul McCartney’s solo stuff. For some reason, everything he did with Wings, just, I hate it. It’s not listenable to me. Maybe it was the time period, like, you know, the 80s or just, or 70s, whatever it was. It just, ugh, yeah, don’t like it. The really odd thing is I love this version of Band on the Run by Ausley. It’s pretty true to the original. There’s some updating in the sounds. I think maybe that makes a difference. I’m not sure, but Ausley, I don’t remember how I first heard of him. Only two albums were put out by him in his very short solo career. Both of them really good, very underrated, if you ask me, both worth the listen. He’s got a song that I’ll probably feature at some point this year called Oh No, the Radio, which is just fantastic. He was part of Amy Grant’s touring band, if you’re familiar with Amy Grant. And he was a member of a band called The Semantics. Sadly, he passed away in 2010 from an apparent suicide. Sad stuff, but the music lives on.

All right, let’s get into new music. If you are a first-time listener, welcome. If you’re a long-time listener, welcome back. Here’s how it works. Every week, 100,000 songs come out on streaming platforms. I listen to a few hundred, two to 500, depending on the week. And I try to find the best ones that come out. Most of them are crap. And you’ll kind of pick that up if you’re new. It’s hard to come up with five songs. And I try to come up with five songs per episode. I have done that this week, so let’s get into it.

The first song this week is I Want You to Know by ELLis-D. The first vocal notes of this song sounded like David Byrne and Talking Heads to me. But as the vocalists kind of went into their higher register, it almost felt more like The Smiths, maybe The Cure. Musically, there are some moments where ELLis-D feels like they are channeling the Doors, specifically songs like Waiting for the Sun. And at the end, you could almost argue that it sounds like the song, The End, if you dropped in some kind of rainstorm sound effect thing. During that guitar outro, a lot of stuff going on with this song. And there was just something that really was different about this track as I was listening that kind of caught me off guard. And I figured I would at least share it with you. I won’t say that it was my favorite track that I found this week, but it was definitely interesting to listen to.

The second song this week is Feel from Jack Shields. This track gives off some real strong grunge sensibilities, both musically and vocally. I absolutely love the pre-chorus with that strong staccato hit that kind of builds to what you expect to be a really strong chorus, but it almost like falls off and then goes back into kind of this styled verse chorus thing that goes on. Really well written, honestly. Really interesting to listen to. I will say this is one of those songs that you need to throw some really good headphones on to listen to. Because as a music nerd, there’s some really fun artifacts that you can kind of pick up on. There’s a live guitar cable that sounds like it’s being touched by a finger. I don’t know if you’ve ever been at a concert where they kind of unplug their guitar and it’s not muted and it kind of makes that crackly static noise. You can hear that in some of the song towards the middle and end of it, which I thought was kind of humorous to me. There’s also a moment of infinite reverb on one of the vocal lines that kind of fades off into nothingness. These little production details can get lost, especially if we’re not listening very attentively or if we’re not paying attention, like if it’s just kind of background. So I love the fact that they’ve included some of these songs or some of these artifacts, I should say, in the song. Good stuff. So Jack Shields song Feel. Definitely check out some of those fun things.

Third song this week is Belly Up from Return to Dust. This is an acoustic version done live and it really reminded me of the Alice in Chains unplugged performance from many years back, especially when the vocal harmony came in. You can definitely hear the Lane Staley influence in the vocal delivery. I was really interested because it’s an acoustic live version to hear kind of what I would call the full version. Full version came out in June of last year in 2023. And I’m a little bit mad that I kind of missed it or just didn’t land on any playlist that I reviewed. Really solid song, honestly, regardless of delivery, whether it’s acoustic or full electric. Return to Dust is definitely a band I want to check out more from. In comparing the two, I’m more inclined to the live version just because I think I have a personal preference to live music. I just like the energy in that, but really good stuff from Return to Dust.

The fourth song this week is Every Trace of Us from The Pineapple Thief. A little light progressive track. The pineapple thief are outside what I would call the norm of progressive rock. It’s about prog rock. It’s heavier, right? It’s like almost metal. And if not, it’s jazz or it’s fusion. So they kind of sit in this weird spot in listening to it. It reminds me a little bit, just a little bit of King’s X. If you remember that band, they had a song called Black Flag, which was a big hit, Lost in Germany. And it had some progressive elements to it, but they had a lot of pop sensibility as well. And it was just really accessible, which is why they had a couple of hits before they kind of faded away. Musically, there is a lot going on, which you would expect with it being kind of progressive pop rock or progressive rock. But unlike some of the other progressive stuff, it’s not bloated. Nobody is really overplaying their parts. Nobody is trying to impress the listener with their amazing technical prowess. It’s just really good and listenable. But like if you are in, you know, if you’re an acute music listener, you understand how technically gifted they are as a band. So really, really good stuff from the Pineapple Thief.

The fifth song this week is Starman from Pacific Avenue. Pacific Avenue give me a very classic sound for pop rock. I can hear a very, very strong oasis influence kind of running right through the middle of them. But I hear other bands like Jellyfish, you know, especially when it comes to like the composition, you know, kind of in its entirety. There’s some great vocal harmonies and the overall structure make it just a very listenable track. I can’t decide if the title Starman is a nod to David Bowie. I didn’t pick up anything in the lyrics that kind of made that reference. Maybe it’s just talking about, you know, Starman in general. But I would be lying to you if I didn’t say it was my first thought when I saw it on the playlist before I listened to it. I honestly thought it might be a cover.

Alright, that is it for episode one of season two. As always, spread the word of the podcast to your fellow music fans. Follow the show on social media. Check out the website, songsthatdon’tsuck. net. Check out the songs thanks to Songwhip and…

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