Vince Staples

Vince Staples

First Place

The Brook and the Bluff

Tranquil, serene, and just enough kick to keep you hooked. First place by The Brook and the Bluff is another classic Indie-Alt album that you would catch at your local dive bar with a "stage" that's really just some plywood stacked on some 2X4s. The entire album feels like a single thread woven from the same fabric. It's very cohesive and on-brand the entire time. You'll get some John Meyer vibes and Coldplay feels on this 2019 album. Let us know what you think!

More about the song First Place. Genius tells us that the the first song on the record plays on the double-entendre of the meaning of the phrase "First Place." The Brook and the Bluff hit on the meaning from 2 different angles: the original occurance of something and being a winner. Gotta appreciate some word play.

"When it feels right
It just feels too safe
I'm not in first place
Never was in the first place"

Hurry Up, We're Dreaming

M83

This is definitely one of those cases where I'd heard a song so many times before and finally decided that I needed to check out the album that song was a part of… and boy I'm glad I did! I imagine many of you are just like me and absolutely adore the song "Midnight City" by M83 but haven't delved to heavily into the rest of their discography. Well wait no longer because this album is an indie-synth-pop masterpiece from cover to cover. Each song is unique and different from the one before but the album still melds together beautifully. Midnight City is all keyboard and synthesizer and then Raconte Moi Une Histoire is dominated by a child's vocal sample and building string synths. Then Wait is a slow acoustic guitar Dispatch-esque ballad that slowly builds. M83 is more than Midnight City, gosh darn it. 

Bonus content: the music video for M83 is a video that features kids with telekinetic powers who escape a federal facility… hello Stranger Things? The video is actually part of a 3-part series featuring two other songs on the album: Reunion and Wait. It's quiet well done and helps to set the mood for the entire album- check it out right here.

Speed, Sound, Lonely KV (ep)

Kurt Vile

Road trip album alert! Road trip album alert! Speed, Sound, Lonely KV (ep) is an album (fine, EP) that's just made for 97 degree desert heat with 0 percent humidity and a quarter tank of gas. I mean even the EP's title just screams "road trip" to me. Nothing makes me think of 10 straight hours in a car like speed and loneliness and Kurt Vile. 

It's stripped down and distorted southern-style rock that's pierced by Kurt's beautiful (eh, scratch that… it's honestly pretty nasally and quite underwhelming) voice. Maybe the fact that Kurt's voice isn't perfect has something to do with the appeal of this album. The songs have long verses and oft-shifting choruses that are often difficult to distinguish which makes the songs sometimes feel like one long verse. The first 3 tracks off of this EP are pretty classic Kurt Vile but in the 4th track there's another artist credited which is a little odd for Kurt as he usually appears solo. Who's that artist? Well it's another great songwriter with a terrible voice…

Bonus Content: In the 4th track of this EP, Kurt Vile covers a John Prine classic tune "How Lucky". It's a cover but the two actually recorded the  duet together in Nashville shortly before Prine's passing in late 2020 due to complications from the coronavirus. Vile covers another Prine song as well on the EP, "Speed and the Sound of Loneliness". Vile calls the interaction, and the chance to record with one of his hero's, "probably the single most special musical moment in [my] life." How lucky indeed.

Good Faith

Madeon

Bonus Content - Madeon’s story is pretty awesome. Like many DJs, he first went viral with a series of remixes, including this 4-minute masterpiece in which he stitched together 40-some songs into a seamless mix. Incredibly, it doesn’t even sound chaotic but rather glides from one sample to the next, including songs from other French legends like Daft Punk and Bastille. This not only caught the eye of millions of fans, but also another electronic production savant, Porter Robinson. The two went on to produce one the most popular electronic anthems of all time, Shelter, and even did a nationwide tour together. The rest is history.

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