Note from These Subtle Sounds: if you like something and you have the means, please pay for it beyond your chosen streaming services. Streaming services do not provide musicians with reasonable payment for their work. While we include Spotify due to streaming’s ubiquity, we have also linked Patreon, Bandcamp, and artist stores (where applicable) below.
We most recommend purchasing direct from the artist, but appreciate that Bandcamp’s practices have undoubtedly been the best of the large-scale digital music services. If you purchase from such a service, we strongly recommend waiting for a Bandcamp Friday, which Bandcamp has announced will extend through the remainder of 2020.
An Additional Note: this week was a little lighter on new records, either because the writer spent too much time listening to old records (especially Springsteen). Additionally, there are a few Bandcamp Friday releases included below!
This Week’s New Albums
Microphones in 2020 by The Microphones
Phil Elverum has recorded under the name “Mount Eerie” most recently, two of his most previous releases beautiful things that are almost impossible to make it through without crying (he wrote them in the wake of his wife’s death from pancreatic cancer; his frank meditations on mortality are both enlivening and utterly terrifying, as if free climbing could be made into music). He retreated into his past further and recorded another series of songs with Julie Doiron, and now he extends that retreat into a more-distant self with The Microphones.
This is a one-song album, and it’s full of the nuance, the details that have come to define Elverum songs. It’s not for everyone – in some ways, it’s almost too affecting, and I personally need to stop listening before my mood suffers – but for those of us who seek the confessional, almost-rambling songs of an observant writer, there is gold to be mined here.
Eight Gates by Jason Molina
That I loved this surprised me, but it shouldn’t have. Jason Molina had a transcendent ability to express complex emotions and thoughts in a song that few have matched. He is missed, but this album – apparently recorded a few years before his death – is a more than fine reminder.
Purple Noon by Washed Out
I listen to Washed Out for two reasons. 1) My friend Nick recommended and continues to recommend them, and 2) They relax me. Washed Out continues to make dreamscapes that drift on cotton candy sunsets, and that’s okay with me. There’s a place and time for that kind of song.
El Capitan by Will Johnson
The first of my Bandcamp Friday purchases, Will Johnson continues to demonstrate that he is and has been one of the most vital and prolific songwriters operating in America. His songs can play out like blissed fever dreams with peyote-fueled visuals, always reflecting something real and true, but it’s the playing and the delivery that so often defines his music. There is something unutterably perfect about the way his voice almost keens, and that trademark guitar sound.
El Capitan has a slower, acoustic bent to it, but even still, the songs swirl with space. Will Johnson never disappoints, and I encourage you to explore his entire and vast oeuvre (hit me up if you need/want a guide because I’d be happy to write it). My favorite early tracks are probably “Trouble” and “Los Cuervos”, but to be truthful, I could pick any of them.
Motion Pictures, Vol. 1 by Justin Peter Kinkel-Schuster
I’ve written plenty about Pete already all over this website, but here I go again. He released a surprise covers album for Bandcamp Friday, including a host of songs I never knew I needed to hear him sing. JPKS singing Bowie? A Chris Bell cover? A few I’d have expected – Richmond Fontaine, Neil Young, and even Terry Allen – but he still twists them into a different thing altogether. Make sure to pick this one up if you like singing along with all the songs almost nobody knows but everyone should love.
Ain’t It Like the Cosmos (demos) by Andrew Bryant
A special release for Bandcamp Friday, he takes the listeners inside the songs from Ain’t It Like the Cosmos, giving us a look at the creative process. There are moments when the songs feel distant, but they’re always there, in a familiar way. And to be totally truthful, the song “Every Mile You Run Is Long” is worth the price of admission all by itself.
New Singles
Octotillo by Loma
Oh man, Loma returns, and I couldn’t be more excited. This band takes a host of very exacting creators and puts them in a project together to make songs full of beauty, tension, and the kind of space that walks a tenuous line between calming and panic-inducing. Emily Cross’s voice practically explodes at points, stretched into a vocal storm, and the music around her edges on menace but never quite veers to the point of terror. Highly recommended.
“AUATC” by Bon Iver – (AUATC = Ate Up All That Cake).
With a host of contributors (including Bruce Springsteen, Jenn Wasner, Phil Cook, Jenny Lewis, and others), Bon Iver released a kind of 70s style song that acts like an uplifting protest song (I think?) that might be lamenting the disparities and oppression caused by uncontrolled capitalism. It’s lyrically abstract, but catchy in its way, and brief.
“Whole New Mess” by Angel Olsen
The title track from her forthcoming album that was recorded without a backing band (first since Half Way Home), Olsen continues to show why she’s a musical force. The way she plays creates a fog over the song, setting the lyrical mood, but the power of her voice continually draws in the listener to keep us on track. It’s a heartbreak song, but not just one of romance. It can be for any kind of heartbreak, including the kind that settles beneath the lies we tell ourselves.
Upcoming
Total Freedom by Kathleen Edwards
Have You Lost Your Mind Yet? by Fantastic Negrito
Twelfth by Old 97s
Down in the Weeds Where the World Once Was by Bright Eyes
Right Now by Twisted Pine
Wiseacre by Eric Slick
A Little Heat by Andrew Grimm
