TRACKS AND NOTES
Tim Burgess | Song: “Cheree” | Album: ‘Clutching Insignificance’ (O Genesis, 2018) … From the lead singer of The Charlatans comes this cover of a song released by Suicide in 1977. Drifting, chiming, lush, and familiar in the way that Burgess’s voice is forever going to echo those early 1990s singles, or at least the only ones you (probably) know. Here he comes again, to take you away.
Cults | Song: “Total Control” | Album: ‘Total Control’ (Turntable Kitchen, 2018) … Cults, of New York City, released this cover of the song first issued by Australian band The Motels, in 1979, as part of Turntable Kitchen’s series, ‘Sounds Delicious’. The rules of the series: one band, one album, cover it all the way through. You can check out the whole deal, a vinyl-album subscription, here.
Neil Frances | Song: “Ask Me Anything” | Album: ‘Took A While’ (Neil Frances, 2018) … Not a person but a duo, Marc Gilfry and Jordan Feller are Neil Frances. Based in Los Angeles, this cut is from their debut EP. They’re known for covers with unique twists, but this one is their own.
Paul Damian Hogan | Song: “Glimmers” | Album: ‘Short Film’ (Paul Damian Hogan, 2019) … Hogan’s work is deeply tied to New York City: the Emmys nominated his soundtrack to ‘Birders: The Central Park Effect’, back in 2007. What’s obvious, based on “Glimmers” is how deep, far, and wide his imagination runs in terms of style and approach … this one blooms from the click-clack-and-plink of an indie rock bauble, at the beginning, into a horns-and-ballast post-psych throwback to the glory days of bands like The Olivia Tremor Control.
Baby Grandmothers | Song: “ADHD” | Album: ‘Merkurius’ (Subliminal Sounds, 2018) … Baby Grandmothers formed in Sweden, in 1967, and toured with Jimi Hendrix in ’68. They put out a single in the spring of that year and then morphed into another band, Mecki Mark Men. The whole thing was over by about 1970, barring a compilation of studio and live material that Subliminal Sounds issued in 2007. That’s how I discovered Baby Grandmothers, a couple years ago, in the run-up to a history-of-rock gig at a bar in NYC. Now, suddenly, there’s this new work … and Baby Grandmothers are back and their prog-gy psychedelia sounds fresh, urgent, and wigged-out as hell.
Khruangbin | Song: “A Calf Born in Winter” | Album: ‘A Calf Born in Winter’ (Late Night Tales, 2014) … The return of the Texas group to the IDES mix series, this heady, burbling phantom-stream is an older track from Lee, Muir, Johnson, and Speer. Khruangbin is on tour around the States, Canada, and much of Europe in 2019 … their Central Park Summer Stage show is already sold out.
Sunwatchers | Song: “Beautiful Crystals” | Album: ‘Illegal Moves’ (Trouble in Mind Records, 2018) … Chunky, spastic, pscych-funk drive is a core characteristic of Sunwatchers. The Brooklyn-based band is going deep, diving upwards for head-ballooning altitudes, on this, their third release. The guitar tones, especially near the end … you can practically see the music streaming from the speakers.
Rain Phoenix (ftg. Michael Stipe) | Song: “Time is the Killer” | Album: ‘Time Gone’ (Kro Records/LaunchLeft, 2019) … Sister to the late River Phoenix, this track leads-off a three-song EP, ‘Time Gone’, with the other two cuts on the album being unreleased songs from Aleka’s Attic, a band that River fronted back in the day. Obviously, the deep connections to Rain’s brother’s biography run … well … deep. Stipe has seldom sounded better.
The samples in this volume are from ‘Love Streams’, director John Cassavetes’ film of 1984. The first and second are from separate scenes of the movie, combined to open the mix. The third and fourth samples are sequenced into the Khruangpin track, close to the end, bumping right up against the start of Sunwatchers.
Mastered by Matt Girard, Revolution Sound Studio, 2019