New Music Monday: Snoop Dogg, Surfer Blood, Tallest Man on Earth, Prefuse 73, and More!!

Happy Monday music maniacs! LIke new stuff? Great! You’ve come to the right place. Each week all sorts of audiolicious goodies are unleashed onto the masses and this is where they come to be judged. I’ll tell ya what’s good, what’s bad, and what’s a waste of your time. Thanks for stopping by!

The Big News!
After a horrendous foray into reggae under the moniker Snoop Lion in 2013, Tha Doggfather, Snoop Dogg, has returned to form on his 13th release, Bush. Produced by Pharrell and featuring guests like Stevie Wonder, the record (which I haven’t heard) is supposedly a thankful foray back into the gangsta decadence that over which Snoop reigns supreme. The Guardian awarded the record four freaking stars and says: “Business as usual, in this case, is no bad thing.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E4XoEFzMSxA

By the way, has anyone here been listening to the highly entertaining Bludgeon Your Horizons podcast hosted by Eric Diebel and other Overmental music writers? If you’re not you should be. The hosts deconstruct albums considered dificult or problematic. Last time they ranted about Pop Tatari by The Boredoms, an album for which have a particular affinity. Check it out here.

Indie Fuckers
After breaking out with Crimes of Passion, their masterful 2013 release, San Diego based noise-gasm Crocodiles bite back with their latest, Boys, which is getting great reviews. Music OMH claims that the record is filled with “infectious beats… fuzzy guitar hooks… the normal staple of Jesus and Mary Chain fuzz” along with (drum roll please) an “odd flirtation with Latin beats and a dollop of salsa”. Oh, great. Can’t, um, wait to hear that.

The third Surfer Blood album, 1000 Palms, drops this week. NPR is all giddy about how mature this record is after the band was dropped from Warner: “Surfer Blood circa 2015 only distantly recalls the sneakily clever slacker-rock of its beginnings,” says the first listen blurb. I’m not excited about it. I think Surfer Blood sucks. And I hate this new record. But a lot of people disagree with me. So judge for yourself.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5BUwb-YIrTs

Swedish singer-songwriter The Tallest Man on Earth unveils his fourth effort, and his first with a full band, the “monumental” Dark Bird is Home.

Brothers From Another Mother
A pair of nifty new releases from a couple of studio stars this week. First, super producer extrodinaire Guillermo Scott Herren’s latest Prefuse 73 release dabbles in “an even more kinetic and unpredictable type of rhythmic mania”.than he normally does, according to Consequence of Sound.

And the super prolific industrial dragon wizard Dom Fernow unveils a “monster” new “sickening electronic rumble” this week in the form of the new Prurient release, the epic Frozen Niagara Falls. Like all Prurient releases, this one kinda hurts.

Legendary Legends
Folky legend Buffy Ste Marie reemerges after seven years of silence with a new record, her first since 2008, Power in the Blood, which features reworkings of old classics and some covers (including the Alabama 3 song “Power in the Blood”, which themed The Sopranos and lends a title to this record). The song has “an energetic pulse that is overlaid with vocoded robo voices along with organic singing from Buffy”, writes Exclaim. “This isn’t the first time she’s worked with electronic sounds, but it makes the 74-year-old sound extremely modern.” Couldn’t find a video for the new stuff, so here’s some classic old stuff.

David Duchovny, yes Fox Mulder, humbly offers up his debut solo record, Hell or Highwater. Don’t tell Scully but he curses in this single.

Metal Mania
Chicago’s Veil of Maya have a new vocalist and a new record, the massive Matriarch.

RIP
Sad news from the other side this week. R&B legend Errol Brown, vocalist for Hot Chocolate, passed away this week at the age of 71.

Free jazz pioneer Jerome Cooper shuffled off this mortal coil at the age of 68.

And fiddler Johnny Gimble died at the age of 88.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tTrqGN2Nlwo

My Recommendation
Gonna be digging the new Mondo Drag this week hepcats and kittens!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eq6gOQhee1U

Next Week
Tune in next week, same new music time, same new music channel for new new stuff from The Milk Carton Kids, Joanna Gruesome, and FAITH NO MORE!!!!