Episode 66

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

Welcome to Songs That Don’t Suck. I am your host, Mark, and every week I listen to hundreds of newly released songs. This week was a little bit painful, but we made it. Honestly, the last couple of weeks have been rough. But I do try to find the best ones and bring them to you each week, right here on Songs That Don’t Suck. Thank you so much for listening as always. I appreciate your time. But before we get into the new music, I’ve got some new album thoughts to share and a couple of show reviews, so buckle up. You’ll have to forgive me. My voice is a little trashed, and we’ll get into that.

But first, there were two major artists releases this week, and being fans of both artists, I figured it was worth giving some really quick thoughts on each. The first up, my guilty pleasure, Taylor Swift, released the Tortured Poets Department, which ended up being a double album, 31 Tracks, which she basically released the first one at midnight and then basically doubled it at 2 a. m. , which was kind of cool. Honestly, after listening to it a few times, it feels a little bit one note compared to some of her other releases. There’s a couple of standout tracks among the pack for sure. Top three tracks for me were probably Florida, which features Florence and the Machine. There’s a track called I Can Fix Him, No Really I Can, which lyrically I thought was really smart, and I Can Do It with a Broken Heart, which there’s a lot of interesting lyrics happening there, talking about basically how she put on this massive concert tour endeavor all while she had all of this kind of rigmarole going on in her life and the lyrics of that tell a really good story. Folklore and Evermore are still my favorite albums from Ms. Swift, and there’s at some point I want her to lean back into that style and genre at some point. But like I said, overall, this album is okay for me. I’m gonna give it a couple more listens to see if it grows on me, but yeah, not too bad.

The second album that is definitely worth mentioning is Pearl Jam. They released Dark Matter, and for me, it’s one of the better releases they’ve had as of late. Musically, I really loved the guitar work that was going on in it. Eddie Vedder’s vocals continue to be iconic, like I don’t feel like his voice has really lost anything over the years. There’s some tracks that definitely feel a bit nostalgic towards some of their really early work, but I was honestly overall expecting the whole album to have a little bit more energy similar to the lead single, the title track, Dark Matter, and there’s a lot of slow-to-mid-tempo songs on this album. With that in mind, the standout tracks are the ones that had more energy for me react to respond, still like Dark Matter, the first single, and then Waiting for Steve, I thought was fantastic. I personally think Pearl Jam are at their best when they are doing up-tempo stuff, but overall this was a really solid release, I was really happy with it.

All right, the reason my voice is completely roached is this weekend I got to go to not one, but two live shows. I cannot remember the last time I was able to do that, especially for two different artists. I’ve gone back-to-back, you know, like traveled and seen bands, but when the stars align in a couple of bands that you want to see roll through your area, you buy tickets and you go for it, and you suffer the consequences late on a Sunday night when you’re recording your podcast and you are struggling to speak.

So Saturday night, after a very, very long hiatus of not being able to see them, I got to see Carbon Leaf. My wife and I made it over to the Kent stage, this wonderful little venue right there in Kent, and it was a fantastic show. We first saw Carbon Leaf back in 2002 at the Odeon in Cleveland, and they were opening for great big C at the time. And then maybe a year later, maybe it was two years later, we saw them again, headlining at the Grog shop. And then life basically started to happen, and, you know, we’d listen to the new albums when they’d get released, we’d get excited about them, we’d order them, like we have all the physical media from all the releases, and we’d see tour dates pop up, and I don’t know what it was, but just call it ridiculously bad luck, you know, our schedules. We’re always in conflict whenever they were coming anywhere close. Absolutely maddening, and like I can hear you say, Mark, 20 years and you weren’t able to see them, trust me, if we could have gone, we would have, because Carbon Leaf is one of my wife’s favorite bands, and I am a big fan of theirs too. So yeah, we just never were never able to make it. So this show, they opened the show with Life Less Ordinary, which is one of my wife’s favorite songs, which is fantastic, and they continued for about two hours, kind of rolling through their very vast catalog of music, hitting most of the hits from the past decades. There was a couple songs that I would missed, like really early tunes off their first couple of albums, Traffic was one, and Flood was another, and Big Strong Man, I always enjoy, the crowd always loves that one, but in place of those, I was reminded of some songs that I’d kind of forgotten about, the one that really kind of, I was like, oh man, I completely forgot about the song, was The War Was In Color, which is just fantastic.

Carbon Leaf has been playing and recording since the mid 90s, and I guess it’s important to note there’s only three original members left from when we saw them back in the early 2000s, but the one thing that’s always been very consistent with Carbon Leaf is their high level of musicianship. The setlist really showcased this over and over again. Their guitarist, multi-faceted, plays banjo, mandolin, also sings vocals. Their bassist plays an upright fretless bass from time to time, and then Barry, the lead singer, not only does he have an amazing voice, but he plays a variety of flutes and whistles, which adds a very unique element to their overall sound.

For those of you who are unfamiliar with Carbon Leaf, which probably most of you are, because I think they’re criminally underrated and unknown, they are a joyous mix of alt-country, there’s bluegrass, there’s kind of Celtic sounds going on, like seafaring music, rock, pop. I mean, it all boils together, and it’s just a fantastic experience. Every show is very much a party, and it’s a band you should definitely check out. They have three live albums that are officially released, and then they sell, at least for the last three years, every show that they have, they do a board and audio, or a board and audience recording, and they release official bootlegs, which is kind of cool. They’re like 10 bucks for a two-hour show, which not bad at all. There’s also some really old shows on archive. org. If you’re familiar with their live music collection, you can go download some of their shows from there as well for free. Overall, it was fantastic to see them again after so long. They sounded fantastic. They did mention that they do have a new album coming out this year, and they do plan to be back in Ohio in the fall after the album’s release, so I am looking forward to that. All good things. I will drop one of their songs in the show notes, just so you can have easy access.

It was funny, though. As we kind of walked into the venue, I observed to my wife as we sat down, I was like, this crowd looks really old. Now, to be fair, 22 years ago when we saw them, the crowd looked really young. They all looked kind of 20-somethings as I was at the time, and I feel like somehow their demographic has skewed to an older set, I’m not sure. Either that or I’ve aged really well, and the folks in the crowd have not fared as lucky as me. But it was kind of really cool, there was some folks who were visibly closer to my age who had brought their kids to the show, and we had brought some friends to the show with us, and they kind of commented, and they said that they needed to bring their kids to these smaller club shows because it’s such a different experience than seeing like a U2 or a Taylor Swift or whatever. Taking your kids to rock shows at small and medium-sized venues is awesome because it’s real and it’s intimate, and they can really kind of see the artists, and you should totally do it if you don’t. All right, so that was Carbon Leaf on Saturday.

Sunday night, tonight, as I’m recording this, was Spanish Love Songs. Spanish Love Songs is a band that I discovered last year through the podcast process, so this was the first time that I got a chance to see them live, which was super cool. They were playing at Mahals. They have a new room they’ve opened up recently called Rot the Roxy, and I have never been in a show in that room, and after experiencing one, I would say it’s probably one of the better rooms to see a show in, like very much a 10 out of 10 experience. Bass-sized bar, great bathrooms, fabulous sound, all in all, really happy with that. Spanish Love Songs are currently co-headlining a tour with Oso Oso. Also on the bill were The Worry Club out of Chicago and Sydney Sprague out of Phoenix, Arizona, who, you know, they opened the show. Now, Spanish Love Songs are generally classified as an emo band, and Oso Oso and The Worry Club definitely fell into that category, but Sydney Sprague did not. I’m gonna just tangent and talk about her for a moment. That was a really extremely pleasant surprise, as I expected everything to be emo. I am not the biggest emo fan. I love Spanish Love Songs, but generally I’m not into the emo thing, but Sydney and her band were fantastic. Very much Pop Rock, indie vibe going on. She has an amazing voice, she plays guitar, her band, they were super tight, and I was kind of totally blown away, and I was like, this is why you show up for openers, because sometimes you do find a diamond, you discover a band that you’re like, I need to check more of them out. I ended up buying her vinyl record that she had at the merch table so I could, you know, have a little bit of support for the band as well as a little bit of music to take home, and I’ll definitely be keeping an eye out for more music from her and the band. We’ll see what happens with them.

But back to the headliner, Spanish Love Songs, pure energy from the downbeat. They kept it up the entire show. Their music is very much high energy emo, and the crowd was loving it. They were into it. It was a small but mighty pit happening most of the night, and the band fed that energy, and they gave it right back. So it was pretty cool. They sounded amazing, and it was really cool to see how they produced the sound they get in the recordings, especially with the vocals. Didn’t realize it, you know, because you’re just hearing it recorded, but like watching it, like it realized that the bassist, not only is a killer bass player, but adds a ton of vocal depth to the overall sound. So it was really digging the experience of their live show. I will definitely be catching them again the next time they roll through town. All right. Hear the normal open, so thank you for sticking with me.

The new music. Let’s get into it. Only three songs this week, so I’m going to throw you a vault track at the end that recently popped up into my playlist, then it’s very worthy of sharing.

So here we go. Oh, man, the throat’s killing me. But first song this week is Going Numb from Unpeople. In the first three notes, the vocalist really made me sit up and take notice. He is effortlessly jumping to his upper register in and out of a more aggressive tone. He’s into a controlled scream at one point, just like fantastic control over his voice and then just a ton of versatility of the things that he could do. The song itself is very heavy. My metal followers and fans will dig this one, I think. It’s not metal, per se, but it’s got some really, really heavy moments along with some great melodic lines. So I think there’s a lot of meat on the bone for my heavier music fans. So definitely go check out Going Numb from Unpeople.

The second song this week is Why Is Everyone a DJ by Laundry Day? This one reminded me a bit of Jane’s Addiction vocally, and it’s got a great groove to it. From my research, it looks like they parted ways with their drummer recently, which makes my assumption of a drum machine or program drums more valid as I was listening to the track. But sometimes it works for a song, right? You know me. I’m a purist when it comes to music. I want to hear instruments being played, not programmed, but it works. Now would it have worked for the human drummer? Sure, of course it would. But it works here. It’s fine. Vocally, there’s like a little bit of autotune, which you know how I feel about that. But it’s done for effect in certain places, and it works for me on this track. So overall, I think the track is really well produced, and this was a fun find this week. So check out Why Is Everyone a DJ by Laundry Day.

The third song this week is You Don’t Care by Low Lives? More heavy stuff from my metal fans. When I was reviewing the tracks this week, the drums caught my attention immediately on this one. And then the guitar and bass kicked in with this just crushing groove, and I was like, I was all in. I was like, oh yes. And I remembered just turning it up a little bit as I was sitting at my desk and really getting into it. I don’t even know what to compare this to, to be honest. But I was playing it during the day, and my youngest daughter just goes, this is quite aggressive. And I agreed. I chuckled and I agreed. It’s almost like a heavier Allyson Chains. It’s got like a very chunky guitar sound that I always associate with Allyson Chains. But at the same time, you could draw a comparison to something like Muse. There’s a lot of influences at play here. But I thought overall it was really catchy and another good, heavy song. So it’s a good metal week for y’all this week.

And then the vault track this week that I’ll give you since we’re short on actual music. It’s a band called Bell X1, and their song is The Great Defector. This track was released back in 2009, and I think I discovered them maybe in 2016 or 2017. I don’t remember the first time I heard them. But I do remember the first time I heard the song, and I was struck on how much it reminded me of the talking heads. Really vocally. But this band is a bit of a chameleon as you kind of get into their catalog. They change the way they sound from album to album. But I think the talking heads comparison does kind of hold through. It’s a bit of a thread. You can pull like the DNA is there. They experiment with their sound similar to the way the talking heads did. But the vocal here is very distinctive. Their first album came out in 2000, and the last single that I’ve seen from them was like May of 2023. So still very much active. So check out The Great Defector and go check out Bell X1.

All right, that is it for this week. As always, spread the word to your fellow music fans. Follow us on social media, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, X, and threads. Check out the website, songsthatdon’tsuck. net. In the show notes of the podcast each week, I put links to all the songs so you can find them easily. I also put links to the master playlist. So all of the songs I found this year and all of the songs I found last year. So trying to make it as easy as possible for you to find the music. So go out, support these artists and- Thanks for listening, and until next week, keep searching for and listening to songs that don’t suck.