Bandcampin’: Good stuff for your ears
Published 2:00 pm Wednesday, February 10, 2021
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Bandcamp is an online music platform used largely by independent artists and record labels to stream songs and sell merchandise. It’s also a vibrant virtual community teeming with interesting sounds just waiting to be discovered. Each week, I’ll highlight three releases available on the site that are well worth your time and attention. If you find something you dig, please consider supporting the artist with a purchase.
The Boys With The Perpetual Nervousness, “Songs From Another Life”
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Faithful Bandcampin’ readers, here it is: The first truly great album of 2021. The Boys With The Perpetual Nervousness are Andrew Taylor, songwriter for Scottish pop masters Dropkick, and Gonzalo Marcos of the Spanish band El Palacio de Linares, about whom I know nothing at all. But this I do know: Pair these guys up and you’ve got (at the very least) 10 tracks of pitch-perfect pop-rock packed with jangling guitars, earworm melodies, buoyant rhythms and pastel vibes. If you’re a fan of classic acts like Big Star, Teenage Fanclub and/or Fountains of Wayne, you should stop whatever you’re doing, find your way to the URL listed above and press play. Just be prepared to welcome a new favorite band into your life.
Tha God Fahim + Your Old Droog, “Tha Wolf On Wall St.”
Did I say The Boys With The Perpetual Nervousness (above) released the first truly great album of 2021? I did. I’m not ready to walk that back, but I do want to note that one week before that one came out, Atlanta-based rapper/producer Tha God Fahim and New York City MC Your Old Droog dropped a collaborative work that might give the Nervousness boys a run for their money. “Tha Wolf On Wall St.” is rap music for old heads, whether that means you’re a longtime hip-hop fan who believes the genre peaked years ago or you’re just old and you have a hard time getting into rap these days. Either way, this collection of sturdy, old-school rhymes and midtempo beats built from old soul and funk samples will remind you of peak Wu-Tang Clan and Nas — never a bad thing.
Kabbalah, “The Omen”
The lines between heavy metal, occult rock, fuzzed-out psych and doom are appropriately hazy, and Kabbalah wanders them quite authoritatively.
“The Omen” is their sophomore full-length album, and it establishes this Spanish trio as direct descendents of bands like Coven and Black Sabbath that effortlessly mix plenty of melody and magic into their shadowy sound.
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And while Kabbalah’s got the distortion pedals and skull drawings and song titles (“Night Comes Near,” “The Ritual”) to hang in this space, what sets them apart from many of their aesthetic ancestors and contemporaries are the vocals, which are sung by females with a finely tuned understanding of how to turn candle-lit death chants into songs that are catchy in a droning, bloodless sort of way. Not an easy trick!