Quick Hits, Vol. 206 (Jealous of the Birds, Alice in Chains, Amanda Shires, Prince)

Jealous of the Birds - The Moths Of What I Want Will Eat Me in My Sleep.  Quite an album title.  I very infrequently Shazam anything anymore - I used to use it a lot more before now when I either don't care about a new song or I can guess who sings it already from my incessant new music eating.  But this band's lead single from this album came on KUTX a few weeks back, and I was fully engorged with an immediate need to know the band.  "Plastic Skeletons" has less than 300k streams, and yet it freaking jams.

Kind of funky indie tune, and then the post chorus rock kicks in, and I need to break out someone's teeth with my boot while dancing recklessly.  And then it just shifts right back into that 60's rock groove funkiness.  Such a great tune.  Sadly, the rest of this five song EP is not up to the lofty standards of that track.  They're good - indie rock tunes that stay pretty gentle, with a touch of fire here and there - but sadly nothing like the jam.  Some Breeders sound in here, I'm excited to hear what the full length album sounds like soon.

Alice in Chains - Rainier Fog.  I have long considered when a band stops being that band and becomes something else entirely.  Band members can come and go, and sometimes that is fine, but other times the band doesn't carry on.  Metallica replaced their bassist (and earlier their singer), and I don't think the band has missed a beat.  Journey found a weird voice replica dude to take over for Steve Perry and now they're selling out shows as though nothing happened.  AC/DC kept rolling with a new singer.  Van Halen totally changed and yet kept cranking out hits with a new singer. 
But without Jerry Garcia, there can be no more real Dead.  You can have your Dead and Company and Wharf Rat and whatever else, but the true Dead is gone.  Same with Nirvana.  A one-off performance with St. Vincent on vocals is one thing, but trying to recreate that whole band without Cobain is garbage.  R.E.M. died when a member left.  Rage Against the Machine tried to keep going as Audioslave, but never with the same popularity or power.  Queen died with Freddie Mercury.  
I bring all of this up because Layne Staley died of a drug overdose in 2002, and yet this album sounds exactly like he's still the guy behind the mic for this band.  Which is eerie and weird.  The guy's name is apparently William DuVall, but he very much sounds like Staley over the top of songs that chug pretty much like the classic Alice in Chains.  So what does that leave me with?  Is this still the band, or have we crossed over?  I think its still the band, in this instance.  Except I'm not so sure that this brand of chugging semi-grunge is still the goal anymore.
The album opener is the most popular track by a long ways, at over 5 million streams, but I think those are just curiosity streams, not popularity streams.  But it also has 3.7 million YouTube views, so I'll assume this actually is the hit from the album.

In a way, its actually more impressive, that they could go out and find a guy who sounds enough like the old guy that you could honestly not know the difference.  I really liked the first two Alice in Chains albums, they were a solid part of my rock foundation back in the late 80's and early 90's, so with the strong nostalgia factor here, I'll say that I actually like this album.

Amanda Shires - To the Sunset.  Not sure where this one came from, but its pretty cool, spacey Americana stuff.  Oh, that's it - she's Jason Isbell's wife.  That is where I came up with her as someone to listen to.  But its nothing like the dark storytelling and hardscrabble Americana of Isbell, this is much brighter, with electronics and other odd flourishes used.  But I still like it - tuneful and snappy, its a fun album.  Like the sarcastic "Break Out the Champagne," a fun, guitar-driven tune about life.  "Leave It Alone" is the streaming champ for now, at 318k streams.

Fascinating, that video, which is like the official video on her YouTube channel, has zero comments.  Like, nothing.  94 thumbs up and 2 thumbs down, but zero comments.  Strange.  Also strange, the video version of the song brings out the electronic handclappy sounds from the background and makes them much more prominent, which is a negative.  These tunes are fine, but I'll let this album go.

Prince - Piano and a Microphone 1983.  I feel conflicted about this album, in that everyone seems to agree that Prince wouldn't have wanted to publish these incomplete demos.  And yet here they are, likely the first in a long string of money making releases for his family.  Bums me out.  And yet, it is pretty fun to hear him goofing around and trying out different things in his home studio.  "Purple Rain" is very cool, and "Mary Don't You Weep" is the strongest track on here.  Most of these are poignant sounding meanderings that remind me of that song from the Romeo and Juliet soundtrack by Desiree, "Cold Coffee & Cocaine" is funny.  But nothing on here is something you should save and listen to all the time, its more just an interesting trip into his brain.  The most streamed, at 1.4 million, is "Mary Don't You Weep."

His voice is a monster on that one, so great.  Stupid drug overdoses, man.  I won't keep this album around, but that one track is powerful.