I haven’t done a Spotify list in a long time, so I made one out of 2016 songs that I’ve fallen in love with. It’s by no means a definite best of the year list. I could easily come up with another 40 similarly important and there’s a bunch of stuff that isn’t on Spotify. This thing already kind of got out of hand, because the plan was to just quickly put 20 great songs on a list. Anyway, here it is in case someone wants to hear it. Maybe I’ll do another in a few weeks/months time or just add more stuff to this one.
Austin Lucas – Between The Moon & The Midwest
I really should quit this blog, because I haven’t even managed to write about the new Austin Lucas album Between The Moon & The Midwest. I always end up in trouble with the albums that matter the most, because I want to write something better and more meaningful about them than just a quick little news entry. Then months fly by, because I can’t come up with anything that I would be happy about and one day I notice that the album(s) that matter the most to me, didn’t even get a mention. For example new Austin Lucas and Daniel Romano albums fall into this category. I suppose the good thing is that while these people might not be world famous, the readers of this little website are probably all aware of their greatness. So this is like preaching to a choir kind of thing.
Between The Moon & The Midwest came out early in the year on At The Helm Records (UK/Europe) and Last Chance Records (USA) and it’s one of my favourite albums of the year. The whole thing is absolutely gorgeous. Personal favourites are the opener Unbroken Hearts and it’s traditional country vibes, Wrong Side of the Dream that is beautiful duet with Lydia Loveless and the album closer Midnight. Austin Lucas sure knows how to end an album. Splinters was the biggest treasure on his previous album Stay Reckless and Midnight is the one that strikes me the hardest on this new album. So brilliant. The whole album is. You’ll definitely need to hear this one, if you already haven’t. Austin is timeless and Sally is forever.
It proved to be difficult to find album cuts to stream from the usual places, so here’s a great video of Austin performing the album opener Unbroken Hearts (video by Alex Berlin).
Aaron Lee Tasjan – Silver Tears
The new Aaron Lee Tasjan song Little Movies premiered over at NPR earlier in the week and it has been my favourite song in the world since then. ALT has been damn good for a long time, but this is still on a whole another level. It’s also a bit different than what I was expecting. Heck, actually this one also fits quite nicely under that “pop site” subtitle unlike most of the stuff I post these days. So maybe I was expecting something like this from the new Cotton Mather album for example (which I still haven’t heard, have to fix that soon) instead of Aaron Lee Tasjan. Nothing to complain about it though. I absolutely love this song. It’s brilliant and shines brighter than his suit. The album Silver Tears will come out on New West Records in late October. There’s also a pledge campaign going on at the moment, if you want to support the release by pre-ordering.
Here’s the new Aaron Lee Tasjan song Little Movies. The best music thing in my world right now.