At BestNewBands.com, we’re trying something new for our Weekend Playlist. Instead of a themed selection of handpicked tracks, we’ll be compiling all the songs and artists we featured this week on the site. Here are some stand-out songs showcased this week:
Monday started us off with our Weekly Concert Picks, in which Lauren Novik highlighted Dr. Dog at the Wiltern Theater tonight.
Lauren wrote: “This Friday, November 5, Dr. Dog will be gracing the stage at the Wiltern Theater and it’s definitely a show to see. Now that Halloween’s long gone it’s time to chillax with Indie rockers Dr. Dog – and those underage are in luck, as there’s no age requirement for this one!”
Also in the Weekly Concert Picks, Laurel Kathleen chose Thievery Corporation and Massive Attack at the Gibson Amphitheater on Sunday, November 7.
Laurel wrote: “The dynamic duo has been making music together for more than 15 years, and they’re still at the top of their game. Within Thievery Corporation, there are no rules; their blend of dub, world, psychedelic, and lounge contains an endless number of guest vocalists and instrumentalists that create an infinite number of feelings within and between songs. Their latest album It Takes a Thief was released in September, and is now available on iTunes.”
Monday also marked the first in our newest “Legends” series, in which Philip Sumner had the amazing opportunity to interview the one and only Yoko Ono. Here’s part of their conversation:
Philip Sumner: How do you see the remix projects fitting into the scope of your work?
Yoko Ono: I am amazed that what I didn’t expect to be in my life has just started to flower into something very important for me.
PS: How do you relate this musical work to your installation work, or do you?
YO: I am very easy with both media: art and music. For me, there’s no difference when I deal with them. I love them both.
PS: Can you please tell me a little about your writing process?
YO: When I am inspired with a song, I immediately write it down. Unless I do that, quite often it just flies away and never come back.
PS: Were there specific events behind each verse in “Wouldn’t It”?
YO: I was the woman with a cup a tea. I was the guy with a cowboy hat, and I was the child who hung herself.
Read the rest of the interview here.
On Tuesday, Leona Laurie reviewed the new Pepper Rabbits album, Beauregard.
Leona wrote: “Track nine, ‘Babette!,’ was a huge relief after skipping through the somber pump organ dirge. It opens with a bouncy acoustic– almost slack-key– guitar and space noises against Decemberists-reminiscent accordian. I feel like I’ve heard this song before, but I couldn’t track down where I would have. I’d definitely call this the key track on the album.”
Read more of the review here.
Next up was the BackStory on Jeremy Messersmith‘s “A Girl, A Boy and a Graveyard.”
Said Messersmith of the song: “‘A Girl, a Boy, and a Graveyard’ is classified in my head as non-fiction. Sometimes my songs are imaginative flights, but this one is closest I’ve ever come to simply writing down a conversation almost word for word, then singing it. Depression can be a strange whirlpool, drawing people together in spinning cyclones of emotion. It can also provide a stable common ground, one that acknowledges our shared human condition. As depressing as this song can be, I hope it serves the latter function! The string arrangement was something we put a lot of time into, hoping to evoke the same sad, but beautiful quality that 60′s string parts often had.”
Here’s the rest of the BackStory, including a video for “A Girl, A Boy and A Graveyard.”
Wednesday brought a BackStory Bonus for Earl Greyhound‘s “Shotgun.”
Said band member Kamara of this song: “‘Shotgun’ is about arriving at those passages in life where you have to let go of everything you’ve known up until that point and walk into the unknown. Sometimes you have to even be willing to let go of your life, be wiling to die in order to find the higher truth of what’s happening– the illumination. The character in ‘Shotgun’ walks into the desert alone, not expecting to return alive, and mysteries are revealed to him that could not have been revealed any other way.”
Read the rest of Earl Greyhound’s BackStory Bonus (and watch a video for “Shotgun”) here.
Next up was Monica Christoffels‘ interview with Alabama’s Kristy Lee.
“Kristy Lee’s featured song, ‘Hey Crazy,’ was a cathartic emotional cleansing after the end of a long-term relationship. ‘It was 12 years of my life,’ Lee said. ‘I wrote that song for me – to make myself feel better after I felt I put 12 years into someone that I wasted… It was my song of revenge. It took me 12 years to find those words, and everytime I play that song, I feel better. Once you waste time on someone, y’know, you can never get it back.’”
Read the rest of Kristy Lee’s interview here.
On Thursday, BNB kicked off a new series called “BNBTV Spotlight,” in which we’ll be featuring videos uploaded by bands. Here’s an excerpt from the original post:
“We decided to start it off with Canada’s Fembots and their video for ‘My Hands Are a City.’ This video has been in our collection for a couple of years, and it’s a perennial favorite among our staff.”
Sherene: The raw feel from the percussions really sets your live performance apart from the recordings. Where did your percussion persuasion come from?
Ryan Camenzuli: We say a lot that one of our biggest influences is Akron/Family, which they 100% are. We wouldn’t be a band without them. At the same time, one of the things that they have done that they never really built upon, they had this one song, “Ed is a Portal” where they had this drumming African vibe and we loved it. And we kind of really wanted to just exploit that one thing because we loved that drumming
Bryan Daly: There is so much raw power in it. The three of us have taken Djembe (FYI goblet-shaped hand drums) classes back on Long Island just trying to really work in that sort of feel.
Greg Coffey: We want to add in something that a lot of people haven’t heard, and the audience always likes the beat. You look out into the crowd and you see people’s faces and they have this expression like, “yeah, this is pretty awesome”. It’s always fun.
RC: if there was a genre for what we do it would be “Badass.”
GC: We like to have fun on-stage. If our friends are in the audience we have them come up and bang the drums with us.
Read the rest of the interview here.
Thanks for reading and listening – tune in next week for another playlist of featured artists and songs on BestNewBands.com!
Latest posts by Monica Christoffels (see all)
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