Quick Hits, Vol. 163 (Robert Plant, Thee Oh Sees, Dead Moon, David Wax Museum)

Robert Plant - Carry Fire.  The Led Zeppelin Golden God lives!  Well, yeah, I mean, he's still alive.  Not sure if he's much of a golden god anymore.  All of these songs hew to a lower, more comfortable register of his voice, there is none of that soaring, yowling lightning that used to make him so distinctive.  Not to say that his voice isn't nice here, but this reminds me of the end-of-career sound of guys like Cash and Willie.  The weirdest thing about this album is how varied the tunes are.  You'll have a shoegazing love tune based on a Cure baseline ("Season's Song") and then backwoods Americana lyrics mixed over lite NIN effects ("Bluebirds Over the Mountain") and then an electronic-based Radiohead-ish track ("Keep It Hid") and then an atmospheric Norah Jones space-jazz number ("A Way With Words") and then to some Middle Eastern-infused action ("Carry Fire").  All over the place.  It is jarring.  The top track, coming in just under a million streams, is "The May Queen," more of a Zeppelin style blues/Americana track.

I mean, that sounds like something that could have been snuck into Zeppelin 3 instead of "Friends."  Weird fact about writing this review, I bet I spelled 98 of the 100 words in here wrong at first attempt.  I'm struggling.  Maybe this music is such a powerful message that it ruins the brain!  POWERFUL!  Interesting listen, but I'll let this be.

Thee Oh Sees - Orc.  Good psych rock flailing that turns into odd instrumentals.  I kind of like it, but it feels like one of those albums where I'm going to find better stuff in their catalog or should wait until the next one comes to see their best stuff.  Album opener "Static God," a squealing punk jam, has the most listens, but "Animated Violence" is currently more popular.

That one is a lot more metal than the rest of the album (although kind of prog-psych-metal), which definitely gets more blissed out in the back end, but I dig the crunch of it.  The vocals lean too far into the growling-almost Cookie Monster thing, but I still enjoy the riffage.  My first instinct was to dismiss this album, but the more I've listened, the more I've wanted to go back and check it out again.  I don't love it, yet, but I want to keep it around for a while and see what I think after more time.

Dead Moon - What a Way to See the Old Girl Go.  I know that I sometimes claim ignorance as to how something came into my new music list, but seriously, I have zero clue who the hell this band is.  Or where this album came from, which appears to be a live album from 2017.  Huh.  The Spotify bio says that this is archival footage of a 1994 show in Portland, Oregon.  OOOOOH, I added this because everyone on Twitter was super sad that Fred Cole (their guitarist) had died just recently, and since I'd never heard of him, I added this to the Q.  There you go.  Well, this is super raw punk-ish music with pretty bad sound, and after a few listens, I think I'm good.

While I'm bummed that the guy died and everyone else was bummed, nothing on here is that interesting to me right now.

David Wax Museum - Electric Artifacts.  An old co-worker suggested this album to me the other day, although it comes to mind now that we didn't talk much when she was here about the types of music that I like, so I suspect this rec was not personally tailored for me.  These songs are fine, mostly a very eclectic thing combining male/female voices, violin, and a very quiet touch.  Not many streams for these songs on Spotify, the most (35k) for "Betray Everyone," way more than all the rest of the album, none of which crack 5k. 

The album starts off a little fiery, with that one and the opener ("At Least I Tried") pretty upbeat and forward, but then most of the rest of the album is like a sleepy indie piano, guitar, and violin folk Americana album that kind of smears off into the barroom sunset like a Wilco feverdream.  Check "Your Mother, the Ghost" and see if it doesn't remind you of Wilco.  Not really my thing.  Wikipedia makes it sound like they might be the greatest band of all time, so maybe I need to go back into the catalog instead of this new one...