Quick Hits, Vol. 358 (Fontaines D.C., Gillian Welch and David Rawlings, Pony Bradshaw, Sabrina Carpenter)

I just saw the Shaky Knees lineup, and I am immensely jealous at what they are getting out there in Atlanta.  Now, I know that many people would not be excited about My Chemical Romance.  I get that, but having The Black Keys, Vampire Weekend, The Pixies, Cage the Elephant, Public Enemy, TV on the Radio, Blink 182, Franz Ferdinand, Wet Leg, Devo, Lenny Kravitz, Spoon, The Deftones, and Weird Al?  Come on!  And that is even with Friday looking suspiciously like they still need to add 15 more bands.  I'd take this as the ACL lineup in a heartbeat!

Although, in what world are the Black Keys in smaller font than My Chem, Deftones, or Blink?  To me, the Keys are bigger than all three of those for sure.  Anyway, new tunes!

Fontaines D.C. - Romance.  The album opener and title track of this album comes on like a thuddingly strange combo of Metallica and a toy piano that really opens up the possibilities for the whole thing.  But it is the second song that has all the streams and the massively rad rocking sound that propels the album.  When I first heard this song, I thought this was IDLES.  The droning background vocals, the strings, the wild deep breathing during the chorus, the organ, the riffs - its unlike anything I can think of right now but pretty well rules.  "Starburster" with 50.3 million streams.

That video is unhinged.  Like a grimy Oasis who just may want to fight you instead of themselves.  Those deep inhales just make this seem so much more vital.  I wasn't sure about them at first, but now I think they rule.  "Here's the Thing" is a little brighter and catchy, but still great.  They can get shoegazey and Cure-ish at times too like on "Sundowner."  "Favourite" and "Bug" are jams.

Gillian Welch and David Rawlings - Woodland.  I have decided in my own mind that Gillian Welch is one of my favorite singers of all time.  Maybe I will regret that large of a statement, but everytime I hear "Revelator" from 2001's Time (The Revelator), I get smacked in the face again by the pure beauty.  So, this is a joint record with David Rawlings, who I don't know from any other folky Americana bro, but they made something really nice together here.  I definitely prefer the tracks that really focus on Welch and just use Rawlings for harmonies, but I could just keep this disc running in the background of the next month and probably feel just fine about it.  Impeccable vibes.  Of course, though, TikTok's algorithm has skipped it entirely, and so the stream count is criminally low.  Top streamer is the first song, "Empty Trainload of Sky."  1.3 million streams.

That guitar tone is dope as hell, even before the voices dig in with smooth harmonic penmanship.  Without any doubt, I need to go back into the archives on this duo and see what else they have done before this disc.  Excellent stuff.

Pony Bradshaw - Thus Spoke The Fool.  This disc reminds me of Lyle Lovett's Step Inside This House era, which is a good thing.  Prior to being a musician, he was a sportswriter for a local newspaper, and then decided to give full-time music a shot.  He didn't even pick up a guitar until he was 25, but he had always written tunes.  The article I read said he was "raised in East Texas," but it doesn't give the town.  He tried out multiple colleges, ending up at the Air Force Academy before getting kicked out for underage drinking and fighting.  Real name is James Bradshaw, and now he is settled in Georgia.  If you want some pleasantly fun and generally uptempo country tunes, then this is your jam without any doubt.  "Going to Water" has the most streams with 352k.  Must be on a playlist somewhere for Americana tunes.

Excellent storytelling lines where you can really see his mom living in that house full of cats, or him wishing for a good night's sleep as he rubs his lady's feet.  That banjo rules too.  Really good tune.  Awesome to have two great vibe albums in a row right here, this one nails me despite a relatively relaxed demeanor.  Very good.

Sabrina Carpenter - Short n' Sweet.  This may sound false, but I am 99% sure that I just heard that "Espresso" song for the first time ever.  Nothing about it sounded familiar in the slightest to me.  As I understand it, that was a huge hit that got parodied on SNL and everything.  1.8 freaking BILLION streams.  Which is deeply weird, because growing up, I would have definitely heard the most popular song of the year.  Now, hearing it for the first time, it's sort of like seeing Shrek for the first time, after years of people telling me that it was hysterical, and ending up a little less excited about it because it couldn't live up to the hype.  This just sounds like Ariana Grande or Dua Lipa or whatever the newest disco-biting pop thing is.  I don't get the excitement?

She's very pretty, but the song itself just seems entirely generic to me.  I guess I'm not the target audience because I think coffee is gross.  We'll see, maybe my brain will ear worm it and I'll be singing this tonight, but right now I feel like "Taste" is a better track.  Makes me feel like an asshole to dismiss a huge star like this, but I just don't hear anything here that matters.  Some aspects of the poptimism movement make sense to me, but I still can't get my head around trying to act like all sugarpop matters. [finds out Carpenter is the headliner for ACL, sighs deeply, starts to write about how amazing her voice is...]