Episode 65

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

Welcome to Songs That Don’t Suck, my name is Mark, I am your host, and as always, thank you so much for taking the time to listen to this episode. Each week I listen to a metric butt-ton of new music, most of which sucks. But my hope is that I find songs that I can share with you, dear listener, so that you can add to your playlists so that you’re not constantly listening to the same songs that we grew up with. Before we get into the new music, let’s share some updates.

For those located in the United States, we experienced an amazing event. We experienced a solar eclipse, and if you happen to be in the path of totality this time around, well, honestly, you got to see something truly incredible. When you think about the fact that we are the only known planet that has the correct distance and size between our sun, our moon, and our planet itself that allows for a perfect totality experience, it’s pretty amazing. And I can truly say that it is the coolest thing that I’ve ever seen in person. I’ve seen plenty of eclipses before, but never a total solar eclipse, and it was really cool. Now, I live in Northeast Ohio. I was in the path of totality without leaving my home, which was awesome. And the one thing about Northeast Ohio is the likelihood of a cloudy day is pretty high this time of year. So it was especially concerning because we had had a pretty rainy kind of period coming up to the eclipse, but everything turned out great. It was perfect. So as planned, as I had talked about for a couple of weeks, and as I had gone viral on TikTok about it, I sat in front of my house, I dragged my portable speaker out into the yard with me, my neighbors were really confused as to what I was doing, and I heard one comment that I was really into the eclipse, which was true. And at 2 32pm, I turned on dark side of the moon. And I sat there in my front yard and watched from the moment the first bite of the sun disappeared to the point where we hit full totality. The cool thing about full totality is that you can take your protective glasses off at that point and only at that point. And you can see the eclipse in all of its wonder. It was stunning. And the coolest thing was that the timing worked on dark side of the moon and as we hit full totality, the lyric and the sun is eclipsed by the moon hit and I got goosebumps. It was magical. It was musical nerdiness at its finest and I am so glad that I did it. For me, music connects to core memories and now every time that I listen to dark side of the moon, I’m going to be able to relive April 8th 2024 at 3 15pm when the sun was indeed eclipsed by the moon. I want to take a moment before I get into new music to thank Clayson, who is the host of Cheugy Radio Hour, a podcast on Spotify. He reached out a couple of weeks and asked me to appear as a guest on his show. That show came out today. So if you’re listening to this podcast, you can go and look at the same week for his podcast and you will hear me twice. It was really cool to be invited and I was able to bring 10 songs that are my favorite but they were also reflective of me. He wanted to do a little bit of an interview, talk about songs that don’t suck, talk about my musical background and we talked about the songs and dissected some things about what we liked and told some stories, which it was fun. We talked for ages and if you are so inclined, I highly encourage you to go check out Cheugy Radio Hour. It is on Spotify. Cheugy is spelled C-H-E-U-G-Y. Go give that podcast a follow, support him, fantastically nice guy and honestly a fun podcast to listen to. I find new music that I have not heard all the time on his podcast. So it’s just another avenue to find songs that don’t suck.

All right, let’s get into new music for this week. I’ve only got four tracks this week and I’ve decided that I’m either getting pickier or the music’s getting worse. It could be both but long time listener and friend Clayton actually called me up last week because I made a comment about local scenes not existing anymore. They had kind of dried up. We used to have the sunset strip back in the 80s and then in the 90s we had the Seattle sound and we just don’t get local scenes kind of bursting onto the music universe the way that we used to. He called me up and he said, I have a theory on this and I agree with his theory wholeheartedly as we discussed it and basically he’s saying because of the way the world is so connected now any musician can look up any other musician who has released music from any city around the globe and hear what they are doing. So folks in Nebraska can dial up Manchester UK and hear all the bands that are happening there and they take those influences and they do things you know in their town. It’s like the commoners the band that I’ve had a couple of times a couple of different songs from Toronto but they sound like Southern Rock. It’s not the influence that you would expect coming out of Toronto Canada but because of the way the world is connected I think that we are seeing a lot of homogenization, homogenization there’s the word I’m wanting homogenization around kind of musical styles and influences and it’s I think it’s a blessing and a curse right like I love the fact that we can get music from anywhere but those little pockets of local scenes were where creativity and new things would come from so we don’t have that the same way we did before. So it’s just a little troubling anyway I digress. Let’s get into the new music.

The first song this week is Sink Your Teeth from The Mysterines. I had a release from The Mysterines last year called Begin Again and I remember that I completely butchered their name at the time and I’ve since learned how to say it which is fantastic and the thing that I really like about The Mysterines is the lead vocalist. Her voice is very unique for a couple of different reasons. The first thing that I find really unique is her vibrato. Just the way that she handles her voice in sustained notes. The other thing that I find really interesting that is a differentiator for her is the range in which she sings. When I compare it to other vocalists she sings slightly lower than most other female vocalists that I hear and quite frankly I love that I love that differentiation it just gives it something a little extra. There is one thing that kind of bugged me about the track but honestly it’s works from a stylistic sense and it’s the the drums. I don’t know if it’s they’re using like an electronic drum kit or if it’s MIDI triggers or or what have you it’s just not my favorite sound but as I said stylistically it works for this song so it didn’t really bother me too much but it was just one of those things that I noticed as I was listening to it. Overall super catchy song I found myself kind of humming it as I was doing yard work and just kind of milling around the house over the weekend. So definitely check out The Mysterines and their new single Sink Your Teeth.

The second song this week is I Just Don’t Know from Duff McKagan. Yes, Duff McKagan, bassist of Guns N’ Roses. If you weren’t aware that he had a solo career he does and I’ve listened to his solo stuff in the past as it’s come out and honestly none of it has really kind of caught me as you know something that I was like oh yeah this is this is fantastic but I do really dig this song. I Just Don’t Know is a bit autobiography-ish right? I think he’s talking about his past but the thing that really kind of caught me off guard with this song was how similar his vocal is to Axl Rose’s voice in certain moments. He doesn’t appear to have the upper range that Axl did back in the day and I say that because Axl does not have that vocal range today from all reports but Duff’s got a very rootsy quality to his voice and it makes sense like when I think about Guns N’ Roses because he would be the one singing backing vocals a lot of the times so those two voices would sound really good together. So it kind of like connected some dots for me the fact that I recognize the same vocal qualities between Duff and Axl. Anyway, the song also features Jerry Cantrell from Alice in Chains, it’s always cool to see artists get together and do things. Very chill listen overall and I mentioned that it’s a bit autobiographical. If you have not read Duff McCagan’s autobiography, it’s called It’s So Easy and Other Lies. It is a fantastic read, I highly suggest you go check it out, go to your local library, check it out, it’s fantastic, it’s a quick read. If you’re a Guns N’ Roses fan in any stretch of the imagination, it’s a fantastic kind of behind the scenes look at how that band came to be and all the things they experienced and all the struggles that Duff went through and you know how he kind of became the person he is today. It’s fantastic. Great read.

The third song this week is from DreamCar and it’s called Moonage Daydream and I will be 100% transparent with you dear audience, I’m an idiot. So I’m listening to this song and I’m like man this sounds just like a song off the Ziggy Stardust album and I’m you know I was just like man like it just it could be a B side and then it fricking dawned on me that it is actually from the Ziggy Stardust album. It is David Bowie and they’re covering it. Son of a bitch. I was so mad at myself that I just didn’t recognize it from jump. I’ve listened to that album hundreds of times. I cannot tell you how many times I’ve listened to it and I was like oh I have never felt dumber, extremely dumb. So anyway, DreamCar is a supergroup made up of members of No Doubt and AFI and I think that’s the thing that threw me off. I’m like man that is not the sound that I would expect coming out of a supergroup made up of bands that are not kind of the you know 70s, 80s you know kind of thing. I’m so embarrassed but I am being completely transparent when I tell you that I did not recognize it and I hate myself for the fact that I did not recognize it. So if you’re a David Bowie fan, go check out DreamCar’s cover of MoonAge Daydream. It’s a really really good cover. They stay very close to the original and it’s a fantastic listen.

Alright, the fourth song this week is One Less Question from Madi Diaz and Lennon Stella. Really pretty song, female singer-songwriter thing going on. There’s some really cool vocal phrasing and I can’t quite tell what’s happening but it did catch my ear. The song is not in an odd time signature by any stretch of the imagination but I feel like the way that the vocal is phrased, it’s like they’re almost hanging over the measure or they’re not starting the measure where they would naturally start it. And it’s really cool. It’s really cool to listen to you. These two ladies have fantastic voices when they harmonize. I got kind of shades of some of the boy genius stuff that came out last year. Just really rich vocal, beautiful kind of interweaving of their voices. Sometimes voices don’t sound great together but this is a case where they absolutely sound amazing. So check out One Less Question from Madi Diaz and Lennon Stella.

That is it for this week. As always, spread the word to your fellow music fans. I post on social media all the time. I’ve gone viral on TikTok and that does not move the needle for listeners. And when I tell you, believe it. The thing that does is word of mouth, you telling your friend to check out the podcast. So if you enjoy the podcast, tell a friend. Tell them to check it out on whatever platform they want to listen to the podcast on. I will appreciate that more than you will ever know. Speaking of social media, I am on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Threads and Twitter or X, depending how you feel about it. I do have a website, songsthatdon’tsuck. net. There’s a transcript that goes up there and there’s a mechanism for you to send me recommendations of artists or send me feedback on the show. I do appreciate when I hear from folks who do listen to the podcast. It’s pretty awesome. And check the show notes for the links to the songs. I found a platform called Songwhip, which builds a page for every song that I link. And regardless of your music platform of choice, whether it’s Spotify or Apple or title or Amazon music or YouTube music, whatever it is, it builds a link for it. So you can go listen to the songs that I’m talking about on your music platform of choice, which I think is really cool. So go support these artists and… Thanks for listening. Until next week, keep searching for and listening to songs that don’t suck.