Quick Hits, Vol. 90 (Sierra Hull, The Last Shadow Puppets, Bob Mould)

Sierra Hull - Weighted Mind.  This is the good stuff, right here.  If you find any joy in the Nickel Creek, Sarah Jarosz - newgrass movement thing - then go grab this one right now. Great mandolin player, pretty voice, nice lyrics, I'd never heard of her until I caught a single song on Sun Radio the other day, but the whole album is sweet.  According to her bio, she was a child prodigy, learning mandolin at age 8, and scored Alison Krauss as a mentor. The top song from the album is one called "Queen of Hearts/ Royal Tea," with only about 45,000 streams.

I could only find live versions, but this one is still pretty good.  I don't understand how the crowd isn't screaming for blood during that big jam at like 2:40.  They cheer at the end (rather politely) but that'd be like waiting until the end of Eruption to cheer for Eddie Van Halen.  I just can't imagine the skill needed to pick out those intricate rhythms perfectly on those tiny little strings, so its like watching magic.  I'd love to see this stuff in person.

The Last Shadow Puppets - Everything You've Come to Expect.  It is an interesting thing, hearing different bands fronted by the same singer.  Unless the second band's music is a radical departure from the original (think Damon Albarn playing rock with Blur and then electro-groove with the Gorillaz), you end up with the last five projects Jack White has worked on, where no one can tell if the song is by the White Stripes, Jack White, the Raconteurs, Dead Weather, or some other new project you can't recall the name of.  This album reminds me of the same, in that Alex Turner from the Arctic Monkeys is the lead singer, and I'd recognize that in a heartbeat.  This music is a little less hard than the Arctic Monkeys, has a little more orchestral backing, but nothing on here seems like it would be terribly out of place on AM.
The most listened to track on Spotify is "Bad Habits," with just over 3.1 million streams, but it is not my favorite track on the album (in fact, its kind of just him shouting the name of the song for about half of the tune).  So, here is "Aviation."

Pretty good album overall, although I don't like it nearly as much as the straight-forward rock of the last Arctic Monkey's disc.  I fully expect that I am about to get to write even more about these guys for the ACL preview, but as of right now I'm not entirely sold on this album.

Bob Mould - Patch the Sky.  I know that Husker Du is the musical touchstone that all of the cool music people cite when talking about Bob Mould, but I've never been able to get into those tunes. I bought Candy Apple Grey back in high school to try to get it, but it just never clicked.  Instead, the Mould-fronted band Sugar, and especially their 1992 album Copper Blue, was my shit at one time.  I loved Copper Blue, and I bet I used almost every song on it for mix tapes to be handed out to friends and siblings and crushes.  It's power pop rock of the grandest order.  And listening to that album got me to check out Mould's solo work, and I found Black Sheets of Rain, which to a high school kid was pretty and depressing and felt deeply personal.  If you don't know any of his music, you should also just go check out the instrumental that opens his first album Workbook, called "Sunspots," which is a really tight little instrumental.
Anyway, despite the past I've got with Mould, this album stands on its own pretty well.  He's not getting a ton of streams on Spotify, likely because no one has ever heard of him other than old people like me who are too busy listening to their CD collection instead of trying to find new music.  But the album opener, "Voices in my Head," has 152k streams to lead the pack.

Man, he looks like an NPR news anchor, rocking on the edge of that bed.  With the woolie on his head, he looks like the narrator in Moonrise Kingdom.  "Chickchaw Territory."  But the tunes are hard, guitar-driven rock that doesn't stray all that terribly far from the Sugar sound of 20 year ago. And I feel like I would have jammed "Hold On" as my anthem at age 15. This is good stuff.