Quick Hits, Vol. 84 (The Lumineers, M83, The Steeldrivers, Wild Nothing)

Remember when mashups were a big thing?  Right around the time I was coming out of college, I feel like a lot of folks were mashing up all sorts of tunes into great new things - Danger Mouse's Grey Album being the prime example.  Here is a new good one, mashing up Future with Vampire Weekend.  Excellent work.

The Lumineers - Cleopatra.  You may recall these guys because their hit "Ho Hey" was an unstoppable juggernaut of radio that still gets played to this day on all sorts of radio stations.  The year when that song came out was 2012, and until Iggy Azalea two years ago, I'd never seen a bigger crowd jammed into a stage at ACL than I did when we tried to go catch the Lumineers' set.  Of interest (maybe only to me), I added up all of their Spotify plays for that older album and just based on Spotify streams alone, the album would be gold at approximately 565 million streams.
Anyway, new album is out, and it is a fine one.  The hit, called "Ophelia," has another easy-to-sing-along-with tune that will rack up a bunch of great festival plays this summer, I'm sure.

"Heaven help the fool who falls in love."  Sadly, the band is coming to the Austin 360 amphitheater, literally the night before the first weekend of ACL kicks off, then Oklahoma City the next night, then Arkansas on Sunday, so I don't see any way they will be playing the ACL first weekend.  Which is too bad.  But even if I don't get to see them play, at least I can enjoy this album, which is more fun, jangly indie - their vocalist has such a purely nice voice.  I can't help but enjoy him.

M83 - Junk.  I do not enjoy this album at all.  I remember their last album having some fun stuff on it, and during one live performance by Girl Talk I recall just about losing my mind when he transitioned into "Midnight City" in the middle of another song.  I used to have a very cool secretary up here at work, and she gave me their album one year for my birthday present.  Infinitely more cool, to have a gift of curated music selections, rather than some dumb gift card or tie or whatever.
But I've gone through this thing five or six times, and I am not on board.  It is just too uneven.  Its definitely electronic, but its also got kind of a jenky 80's sound to it.  And then "Moon Crystal" happens, and you are transported back to the theme song for some truly terrible 80's soap opera.  Is this whole thing supposed to be a joke?  He got Beck to appear on one track ("Time Wind") but that still doesn't save the album for me.  Here is the most listened-to track on the album, "Do It, Try It."

Pretty catchy, got the hallmarks of an EDM hit with the build and release thing.  I guess that might be the best song on the album?  I don't know, but now I'm kind of sad that I have predicted them to come to ACL this year.  Although, I had some friends who went to see them play Stubbs the other night, and they were all huge fans of the live set.  So maybe this stuff translates well to the stage?

The Steeldriviers - The Muscle Shoals Recordings.  Pretty straightforward and classic sounding bluegrass music.  This album won the 2016 Grammy for bluegrass album of the year.  My personal fave, Chris Stapleton, used to be the lead singer for this band, but no more.  The top song from this album on Spotify is "California Chainsaw," which is an instrumental banjo breakdown.

Not the best recording, but I didn't find another one on YouTube.  Pretty awesome playing.  I generally like this album, but I can't say I'm going to keep it around for much longer.

Wild Nothing - Life of Pause.  Couldn't tell you how this one ended up in my queue.  After my first listen, I remember thinking that I liked it quite a bit, but after a good number of further listens, I'm kinda bored by what is going on here.  "TV Queen" is the most listened to on Spotify from this album, and this video combines both it and another song from the album called "To Know You."  if you just want to hear "TV Queen," then forward to 5:58.

More 80's synth feel.  I guess the answer is that I'm just not that in to the 80's synth renaissance in indie music.  Between this and M83, I'm a big fat loser in trying to relate to what the kids like these days.