Marc Fagel's Blog: Jittery White Guy Music: The Blog, page 153

Apple: An Apple A Day (1969)

Dipping back into the psychedelic 60s obscurities file, this one is a largely unheralded gem that deserved a little more attention at the time. Apple were a UK band that stuck around for just a single album, which failed to make any waves. No clue what became of the band, but the record became one of those "lost classics" that grew in stature over time, finally salvaged from the wreckage by a CD reissue awhile back.

Is it any good? Actually, yeah, surprisingly good. It's mostly British Invasion-s...

The Tourists: Reality Effect(1979)

The Tourists were a late 70s UK band who released 3 LPs of somewhat generic but intermittently catchy new wave/power pop, all long out-of-print and unavailable on streaming media (at least here in the US) (though you can track down a pretty exhaustive Greatest Hits collection on CD, pretty much all you'd really need).

I don't think they enjoyed any chart success here in the States, and presumably they'd be mostly just a footnote today but for the presence of a couple interesting members -- Annie ...

The Sea And Cake: The Biz (1995)

Listening to the Sea And Cake is one of those experiences that always leaves me feeling a little out of sorts, the records both soothing and disorienting, displaced from time. But since stumbling across the Chicago band back in the mid-90s, just as I was getting into Pavement and Luna (between which the Sea And Cake seemed to nestle comfortably), I've leaned on their records from time to time as a way to conjure up that askew indie vibe.

The Biz is their third LP, but the first one I picked up an...

Rose City Band: Summerlong (2020)

Due to the fires devastating California and the Pacific Northwest, it's been 4 days since I've seen the sun, watching the black smog blot out the sky (through the windows, as we're urged to stay indoors given unhealthy air quality). So I need some summer sunshine music.

This latter-day psychedelic gem came out earlier this year, and it's a lifesaver (not to mention one of my favorite releases of the year). Like the self-titled debut from last year, it's gentle, cosmic Americana, twangy guitars th...

Beulah: When Your Heartstrings Break (1999)

A little surprised to realize I had yet to include Beulah in these pages; time to correct that oversight!

The San Francisco band were part of the 90s Elephant 6 collective, like-minded indie pop bands with a similar penchant for reinterpreting 60s pop and psychedelia (Apples in Stereo frontman Robert Schneider produced some of their earlier work). This, their second LP, moves beyond the lo-fi, crunchy noise-pop of their debut and takes on a much more baroque, orchestrated sound, incorporating key...

Oversleeping For The SAT: Ugh, It's The High School Mix

One inescapable fact of life is that, for good or ill, there are certain songs that will always take us back to our high school years. Try as you might to put them behind you, those little fuckers dig their hooks in deep...

Here's a new playlist with about 4 and a half hours of music from my own high school days -- songs that were not just released while I was in school (fall 1980 to spring 1984), but which I actually listened to (voluntarily or otherwise) at the time. Which means a lot of my fav...

Elvis Costello: Get Happy!! (1979)

Writing here about a year back, I noted how hard it is for me to settle on a favorite Elvis Costello album. Those first half dozen or so records were pretty outstanding across the board; I ended up going with Armed Forces , but if forced to pull a single Elvis LP off the shelf, I vacillate between that one and Get Happy. (Which isn't to say I don't also reach for the others with some frequency as well.)

Get Happy, Costello's 4th, stands out not just in terms of quality, but quantity -- 20 pithy tr...

Pink Floyd: The Piper at the Gates of Dawn (1967)

Labor Day weekend, I'm on the go, so just a quickie here -- Pink Floyd's legendary debut.

Though I'd heard a little of the band's music during my pre-teen indoctrination into classic rock radio, it was the release of The Wall in 1979, when I was 13, that I became a huge (one might say obsessive) fan of the band, working my way backwards to Dark Side of the Moon, Wish You Were Here, etc. It was only after getting my arms around 70's-era Floyd that I picked up the debut (as part of a 2-LP package c...

The Moody Blues: Long Distance Voyager (1981)

I know, we've already tried to jettison the "guilty pleasure" appellation; you should like what you like and not feel guilty about it, regardless of what the critics or the rock snobs have to say. Right? But, hey, if ever there was a guilty pleasure, this would be it. 

By the time they entered the 80s, the Moody Blues were well on their way towards segueing from their artsy, sorta-prog, sorta-soft rock early days into a polished, middle-of-the-road adult pop band suited for aging boomers sipping ...

Sloan: Never Hear The End Of It (2006)

Canadian power pop band Sloan have been plugging away for over a quarter-century (their twelfth album, entitled simply 12, came out in 2018), yet don't appear to have ever gotten much traction in the US. Which is a shame, because they've got a ton of hook-filled, guitar-based, crunchy pop-rock in the bin, ideal for anyone who likes the Odds, Cheap Trick, the Posies, the New Pornographers, and Fountains of Wayne.

As is often the case with bands hovering around the genre, some of their music works ...