Bourbon & Beyond 2026 - Line 4 (Jessie Murph, Of Monsters and Men, The Flaming Lips, The War on Drugs)

Jessie Murph

One Liner: Generic pop singer voice girl
Wikipedia Genre: pop, country, trap, blues (that is a cursed group of genres)
Home: Huntsville, AL
Day: Saturday

Thoughts: She was at ACL in 2021, and I was not a fan when I listened.  Here was my first paragraph of my review: "Pretty rare for me to do this, but I just had an instant visceral reaction of hate for this one.  The second that her voice started to work on the Pop Starlet Voice(tm) lesson that she is going for, my stomach turned and I knew this was not going to be my jam.  Luckily for me, only three songs to slog through with her nasally smearing her words together before I could move on.  You should too."

That is really not very nice, Jack.  I tried some more this morning and sadly, my initial read remains the final read.  She got famous through TikTok, and then started doing songs with many other famous people like Jelly Roll and Koe Wetzel and Diplo and Teddy Swims and Gucci Mane.  But it is annoying to me that she is at this level on the poster.

She became a star while still a teenager.  She grew up in a small conservative town.  She likes TikTok.  In July 2021, she said this: "I've never even been to a concert before let alone actually performed at one, so my first ever concert experience is going to be my own which is wild!"  Man, really makes it sounds exciting to see her perform!  She apparently felt alienated in her small town and so she moved to Nashville and then ended up in L.A.

In case you feel the need, her initial single was "Upgrade," with 55.3 million streams.

While I do grin when she sings that they are going to have some ugly ass babies, it's the vocal tone that she uses here that makes me insane.  It just sounds so contrived and fake.  My daughter used to sound like this sometimes when she sang, because she was trying to copy other generic pop stars of the moment.  Ugh.  Her biggest streamer is more of a trap R&B thing and makes me want to run away.  "Blue Strips" is I guess about the anti-counterfeit plastic inside of $100 bills.  

Nope.

Of Monsters and Men

One Liner: Iceland's answer to Mumford & Sons
Wikipedia Genre: indie folk, chamber pop, folk pop, folk rock, indie rock
Home: Reykjavik, Iceland
Day: Friday

Thoughts:   I just want to add their names here because of how guttural-growl-rich they are: lead singer and guitarist Nanna Bryndís Hilmarsdóttir, singer and guitarist Ragnar "Raggi" Þórhallsson, lead guitarist Brynjar Leifsson, drummer Arnar Rósenkranz Hilmarsson, and bassist Kristján Páll Kristjánsson.  When I was really into Tom Clancy books I remember working out what my Russian name would be and being very entertained with myself.

The lead singer was previously performing solo as Songbird but asked some friends to help her perform at the 2010 Músíktilraunir, an annual Battle of the Bands in Iceland.  Raggi came up with the name, as an allusion to fairy tales and telling stories. They won, and off they went.  Wikipedia attributes their popularity to the fact that Mumford and Sons had just blown up with their new take on the stomp/clap folky rock movement.

2011's My Head is an Animal was their debut, and it was huge.  6 of their top ten songs on Spotify are still from that disc, 15 years later.  Songs from it were featured in movies, iPhone commercials, TV shows, etc. and they played a ton of festivals.  BUt the major hit was "Little Talks.  1.3 BILLION streams.

Great song.  Totally overplayed on most formats of radio.  Thought it was the Lumineers for a while. I also thought this band was the same thing as The Head and the Heart for a while. I ain't too smart, but there was a wave of this kind of sound after Mumford that confused me until I straightened them all out.  Although, one member of the band quit not long after this came out, saying she was tired of playing this song five times a day.  That is sort of funny.

That first album also boasts several other tunes with hundreds of millions of plays, including one of my favorites, called "Dirty Paws," at 56 million.

Starts off with that spare beat and picking, and later erupts into a powerful singalong that lyrically reminds me of Rush's "Trees."  When the birds join up with the beast for the big battle, you know who is going to win.  And its not the maples who want more sunlight.

Also of note, and maybe just to me, they appeared in two episodes of Game of Thrones as medieval ass musicians.  HODOR!

Their second album (2015's Beneath the Skin), had a big single called "Crystals," that got heavy radio play.  It is good, but has a line in the chorus that makes me think of the drink Crystal Light every single time.

OMOM are HUGE fans of peach lemonade Crystal Light.  "Wooooahhoo, covet your Crystal Liiiiight!"  Be careful, or Ragnar will steal your Snapple too.  This song, like the rest of the album, is good, broad, powerful, arena-ready indie made to pump up a crowd.  Almost every single song includes at least one "woooahhhhoo" kind of line that the crowd will be able to join in with the band on.  Speaking of which, I am liking "Black Water" and "Wolves Without Teeth" very much. And "Organs" is a slow burning, wistful orchestral about pulling yourself apart for lost love that leaves the arena-ready rocker mold in a good way.

They apparently released two albums since, 2019's Fever Dream and 2025's All is Love and Pain in the Mouse Parade (so they hate Disney?) but none of those seem to have made much of an impression by streaming numbers.  I just tried them, and they have fleeting moments of Arcade Fire, Mumford & Sons, and Bon Iver.  Not terrible by any means, but not especially memorable in my mind.  I'd probably be talked into checking this out so long as it doesn't interfere with something better.

The Flaming Lips

One Liner: Truly weird shit from OKC, but they have some great stuff tucked in there
Wikipedia Genre: Neo-psychedelia, psychedelic rock, alternative rock, experimental rock, noise pop, psychedelic pop
Home: Oklahoma City, OK
Day: Friday

Thoughts:  Off the bat, if you don't agree with me that "Do You Realize??" is a freaking amazing and perfect song, then we have beef.  Just a lovely set of lyrics tinged with truth and sadness.  "And instead of saying all of your goodbyes / Let them know you realize that life goes fast / It's hard to make the good things last / You realize the sun doesn't go down / It's just an illusion caused by the world spinning round."  Willie Nelson did a cover of that tune a few years back and it made me pay closer attention to the words and love it even more.

I had the chance to see them live one time - a free SXSW show at Auditorium Shores.  It was terribly disappointing, because they took the stage and announced that they had just released a brand new album and planned to play that from start to finish.  So, I got none of the songs I wanted to hear, just a new weird album that no one knew.  The energy in the crowd went to zero immediately.

The band's name has several origin stories: "One possibility is that it was inspired by the 1953 feature film Geraldine, in which comedian Stan Freberg sings several songs, including one named "Flaming Lips". Another possible source is from the 1964 Shirley MacLaine film What a Way to Go! in which Gene Kelly's character stars in a film titled Flaming Lips. However, according to an article in the September 16, 1993, issue of Rolling Stone, Mark and Wayne came up with the name as a reference to a rumor about a high school classmate who contracted genital herpes after receiving cunnilingus from a partner with active cold sores."  Gross!

Their first album is interesting. From 1986.  Almost like a Replacements sound - indie rock and a smidge of punk power.  It is kind of weird, but nothing like where they go later.  Well, it delves a smidge into trippy stuff, but mostly just straight indie rock.  At the same time, I like it.  But very few streams for those tunes.

Then the second disc, 1990's In a Priest Driven Ambulance, sounds more like what you expect - he's doing that high-straining voice and there is weird shit happening in the background of these songs.  1992's Hit to Death in the Future Head has a great album name.  Definitely more electrified, more psych-forward.  Still pretty fun.  Kinda sounds like Dinosaur Jr sometimes too.  And then the final song is 30 minutes of a very bad noise loop that will make you insane.

1993's Transmissions From the Satellite Heart is where they got some notoriety, mainly in the form of "She Don't Use Jelly."  57.5 million streams.  

Maaaaaaaagazines. That song was apparently used in Beverly Hills 90210, Charmed, and Beavis and Butthead, getting it some notice, so that the band ended up touring with the Chili Peppers. 1995's Clouds Taste Metallic isn't great for me.  And 1997's Zaireeka is where they really let the freak flag fly - the album came in four discs, and was intended to be heard by playing all four disc simultaneously on four different CD players.  So, trying to just listen to it on Spotify is a very unfulfilling experience.

And then their top two albums popped out - 1999's The Soft Bulletin and 2002's Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots.  The latter is the one that I love the most out of all of these albums - has a Beck's Odelay sense of whimsy combined with some genuinely pretty songs and weird shit.  Includes "Do You Realize??" and "Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots, Pt. 1" and "Flight Test," all of which are great.  I think they will be fun live.  But both of these albums caught mainstream success.

Right about here, Steven Drozd went into rehab for heroin.  Which seems like a good idea since he had almost lost an arm due to an abscess created by his needle action.  2003's Ego Tripping at the Gates of Hell feels like a b-sides collection from Yoshimi.  But 2006's At War With the Mystics is cool, in that they seem to go back to the pre-synth-heavy weird stuff and be organically weird.  

But then stuff starts to get reaaaaal weird.  Embryonic, Heady Fwends, The Terror, 7 Skies H3, and this next one I fully reviewed a few years back, it gets way harder to just enjoy for me.

"The Flaming Lips - Oczy Mlody.  These dudes are so weird.  I liked the weirdness on Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots, but I haven't been able to get behind their stuff ever since. The closest this album comes to that same trippy, feel-unsure-to-be-happy rock is "The Castle."  That isn't the most popular track, because Miley Cyrus sings on one called "We a Family," so hipster nerds have been listening to that instead.  But I play you the one I like.

That video is annoying.  And no matter how much she cried cartoons and prayed, her brain could not be rebuilt.  No way.  No way.  No way.  I'll let this one go back to the weird depths of the band's brains."

Some of their songs on Spotify are annoying - like, they list someone else's album as being theirs.  So, you are trying to check out the catalog, and find yourself listening to something called Sparrow Sleeps that is lullaby renditions of their songs, or something called Nell that is an album by someone named Nell with the Lips as the backing band.  GTFO.  Just give me the tunes bro.

2020's American Head is actually pretty nice.

I think I will just hope that they play the old school hits and leave the weird recent stuff out of it.  We'll see.  But I am surprised by how much I like the very old parts of the catalog.

The War on Drugs

One Liner: Top notch indie rock band with a heavy touch of melancholy and classic rock flourishes
Wikipedia Genre: Indie rock, heartland rock, neo-psychadelia, Americana
Home: Philly
Day: Friday

Thoughts:  They last came to ACL in 2022.  I like this band.  I've been listening to them for a while, and have always enjoyed.  I wonder if I saw them at the 2012 ACL and that is where I first heard their stuff?  I can't recall by now.  

The band started when frontman Adam Granduciel met Kurt Vile in Philly.  Both of them had recently moved to town, and they hooked up and started writing and playing together.  They started playing as War on Drugs in 2005, with the name coming from a friend "over a couple bottles of red wine and a few typewriters when we were living in Oakland."  Granduciel claims it was either that or The Rigatoni Danzas.  

Barrel of Batteries was their 2008 EP debut.  It is very DIY-sounding, raw and unpolished.  Claims to have six songs, but three of those are tiny little ditties that don't amount to squat.  Not an auspicious debut, I would not have kept up with them if that was my first exposure to the band.  Later that year, they released Wagonwheel Blues, which incorporated the three songs from the EP into an album.  Also not great.  After that album, Kurt Vile bailed on them to do his solo stuff (in fact most of the members bailed here).

2010 brought us Future Weather and then 2011 brought along Slave Ambient.  From their cover art, they look related.  Future Weather has a song or two where you can start to hear their angle to become Springsteen-esque, but then by the fourth song it goes back into more of that DIY type sound.  The final too songs are kind of weird stuff that I don't much like.  This isn't the stuff that made me like them later on down the road.  Funny thing is that their Wikipedia doesn't even list Future Weather as existing.  It just says that they put out Slave Ambient in this time.  Slave Ambient is better, but still doesn't get to the level where they will get in a few more years.  The top track on there is called "Baby Missiles," and it was actually on both Future Weather and Slave Ambient.  11.5 million streams.

I don't know if Springsteen ever did anything quite so peppy.  Kind of sounds like Dire Straits' "Walk of Life."  Pretty good.  But I'm telling you, the good stuff is yet to come.  

2014's Lost in the Dream popped up in multiple year-end top album lists that year, and I said: "After one listen, it is really good - sounds like a Ryan Adams album with some Springsteen sax and Cure synth. Wow, no, seriously, after listening again, I'm 90% sure this is a Ryan Adams album. A really good one, but still."  A few days later, I said: "I agree it was good, although after about 10 listens now, I think this may be more David Gray than Ryan Adams.  Either way, it is a really nice album."  Isn't it fun to just rehash what you previously didn't read that I said on this blog?  Super fun.  I should just quote myself all the time.  Anyway, totally sticking by my David Gray comparison.  This is good music that sad, old KGSR is going to play to death to the few people out there who haven't yet figured out that KUTX is the actual sound of Austin.  "Under the Pressure" and "Red Eyes" are both really excellent songs.  Since that time, "Red Eyes" has become his top streamer overall, with 191.4 million streams.

You hear those Cure/Killers synths?  Really a good tune - the driving backbone makes it unstoppable.

A Deeper Understanding is the next album, in 2017.  By now, I start to realize that he not only reminds me of David Gray and Springsteen, but now I also get Bob Dylan vibes - with tunes that sound very much influenced by classic rock.  When I reviewed this album a few years ago, I actually said that I had "reviewed him a few years back when he came to ACL," BUT I CAN'T FIND THAT REVIEW!  WTF man.  This album is generally pretty relaxed, but still rock edged, and I can't shake the thought of Dylan anymore. This is "Holding On," with 53.8 million streams.

Kicks in like a Springsteen song, with the bells ringing and the music ready to be used on a road trip mixtape immediately.  My God I'm such a softie too, that damn video got me right up to the edge of tearing up over the superintendent from Coming to America losing his wife but having a good day reintroducing himself to his town.  Criminy.  But the tunes are good, a lot of them have that same driving feeling, and I repeatedly think that the organ/ synth is just about to start playing the lick from "Walk of Life."  Good album, I like it all.

Next is 2021's I Don't Live Here Anymore.  As I listened to one of the songs on here - "I Don't Wanna Wait" - a great comp dawned on me.  For some people, this will sound like the kiss of death, but as a lover of Bryan Adams from back in the day, I think saying that this sounds like classic Bryan Adams is actually a fine compliment.  That dude could write a great turn of phrase, play the guitar, and craft up a pop rock nugget or three that still sound great today.  And then the rest of the songs sound like Dylan got a backing band who only want to do songs that would be good to drive to.  Which also might sound like an insult, but I don't mean it as one.  I love driving songs.  "Harmonia's Dream" makes me think of Springsteen and the Killers and some never-created 80's band who were never featured on a soundtrack for E.T.  Lots of synth riffage.  I'd really like to see this band live - between this album and that last one I find them to be a great version of rock.  The top track is the title song, and it features nice background vocals from Lucius.  "I Don't Live Here Anymore" has 42.6 million streams.

Between that guitar solo at the start and the synths, you get that immediate 80's feel.  And seeing the singer, it makes me realize that I sometimes mix up this band with Strand of Oaks, and yet they are definitely different bands.  A lot of these songs are sad, or at least feature sadness as part of the lyrics.  That one up above, and even more so, "Victim," makes me sad.  Maybe my mind is trained to remember that 80's sound and think of the things I'm missing from that era, or maybe these songs just really do have some melancholy.  Not sure which, but I'm enjoying the sound.

There is a 2024 live album called Live Drugs Again, so I have been enjoying that one to check out what they will sound like in person!

I'd absolutely go see them play if I have the space.  Which reminds me that they still have not released a schedule yet.  Buttholes!  Stop drinking bourbon and release the schedules!