New Music Monday: The Vaccines, Unknown Mortal Orchestra, 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!
This is gonna be one of those short and sweet weeks, kids. Not a whole heckuva lot going on, just a handful of interesting new records. I’m not even going to bother categorizing them this week, that’s how paltry the ol’ new music pantry is at the moment.

English Graffiti, the album by England saviors of rock and roll The Vaccines, is pert near a veritable classic slab o’ wax. Or maybe it isn’t. This review from NME, which awarded the record 8/10 stars, can’t seem to make up it’s mind: “Will we look back on English Graffitti in 10 years’ time and laugh at how gauche and quaintly of-its-time it seems? Who knows. But we’ll almost certainly look back on it as the moment where the question ‘What did you expect from The Vaccines?’ no longer had a straightforward answer.”

Silverchair front man Daniel Johns unveils his debut solo full length, the soulful and electronic Talk. Quoth Diffuser: “On Talk, Johns is nearly unrecognizable. He adopts an unwavering falsetto throughout, setting it to slinky and moody synths and blippy beats.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gYmTdnvexA4

“Multi-Love is a sanguine adventure into utopian disco driven by slabs of funk,” says Consequence of Sound, in a very astute review of the new Unknown Mortal Orchestra record, Multi-Love. “{Band mastermind Rueben] Nielson kept busy with ’70s sounds before, but while he used to mirror Frank Zappa, he now captures the aura of Prince and early Queen. The change works.”

Oh, new Anti-Flag too.

RIP
Darius Minwalla, drummer for The Posies, died May 22 at the age of 39. Fuck, that sucks.

Louis Johnson, who played bass on Michael Jackson’s “Billie Jean”, among a number of other hits, died at the age of 60.

Mac Poole, who supposedly turned down the opportunity to be the drummer for famous rip off artists Led Zepplin, died at the age of 69.

Sixties singer-songwriter Twinkle died at the age of 66.

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

American rapper Chinx was shot to death May 17 at the age of 31.

Orchestra dude Bob Belden died this week at the age of 58.

My Recommendation
In 1996 I shoplifted a CD from a Vibes music store in Lawrence, KS that had a profound effect on my life. I nabbed it completely by chance, I had no idea what was on the disc, and had never heard of the band, and didn’t expect much from it, but I liked the minimalist cover. So I took it. That album turned out to be Handwriting, the debut release from Rachel’s, the chamber music ensemble led by Joson Noble that helped to keep indie rock in the late nineties and early 2000’s interesting. The pianist for Rachel’s, Rachel Grimes is releasing another solo set this week. It’s called The Clearing, and you should pursue this record, buy it, and love it. Please do not shoplift it.

Bonus! Here’s some Rachel’s!

Next Week
Tune in next week, same new music time, same new music channel for new new stuff from The Darkness, ASAP Rocky, and Florence and The Machine!!