Tuesday Tracks: Your Weekly New Music Discovery – Sept. 13
This week brings us ’60s throwbacks from Ron Gallo and Arlie, genre-crossing creativity from LUCI and Kaya Stewart, San Francisco rock from Megan Slankard and some gory metal by WEDNESDAY 13.
Ron Gallo, “Entitled Man” — I was sold 10 seconds into this song. The song opens with a grungy, distorted bass line before going to squealing guitars and a ’60s-reminiscent hook. It’s like Gallo knew it was my week to make picks and wrote it just for me. The whole thing is a tonally perfect throwback to the garage rock of 55 or so years ago, right down to the sound quality on the recording of the vocals. I don’t care if that’s “lo-fi” now or anything of the sort. To me, it will always be second generation rock and roll.
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Kaya Stewart, “Honey” — It would have been easy for Kaya Stewart to be another pop singer, but instead she decided to channel Blondie’s Debbie Harry with a track that falls somewhere between alt-pop, alt-rock or alt-punk (assuming that’s a thing). If it’s not, that’s what I’m declaring this: Alt-punk. Trademark pending. It makes sense when you hear it, because it really does bridge quite a few sounds without feeling muddled, and I look forward to hearing more.
Arlie, “cool” — While the video looks like the last thing you see before you die in a ’90s horror movie, the song is even more overtly ’60s-inspired than “Entitled Man,” above. It’s hard to tell if psychedelic rock is making a comeback in the indie scene or if I’m drawn to it because of my personal affinity, but I’m seeing more songs like this pop up and I wholeheartedly encourage it. Let’s bring back all the genres I like.
As an aside, if you’re old enough to remember the ’90s, would you like me to ruin your day? The first psychedelic rock songs came in the mid-’60s, which is about 55 years ago. That’s the same amount of time between the ’90s swing revival and original swing music.
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LUCI, “Gnarly” — Once again, we go from a throwback to a multi-genre crossover. Is it pop music? Not really. It’s more complex than that. Is it electronic? Partially, but that doesn’t really cover it. It’s like if an electronic musician tried to channel rock music, and a fantastic vocalist sang over it. Credit to LUCI—Lucianna Ania, whose great-great paternal uncle is John Coltrane—for breaking boundaries and doing her thing.
WEDNESDAY 13, “Insides Out” — And now for something completely different. No throwback here, no crossover, just pure pounding corpsepaint-laden metal. It may have been over 100 degree in the Bay Area for the past few weeks but it’s technically September, which means Halloween is just around the corner. It’s never too early to get started with some extremely heavy punk-inspired groove metal.
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Megan Slankard, “Magical Thinking” — We come back home to close it out with San Francisco’s Megan Slankard and her new rock single “Magical Thinking.” While this week’s collection has had a couple rock and roll throwbacks, singer and guitarist Slankard gives a rock attitude to some pop music trappings and shows that indie rock is still going with a modern flair.
Danny’s Pick: It was a six-way tie for a while, but the pick of the week honors go to LUCI for “Gnarly.” What set her over the edge was that, among an outside-the-box collection of artists, her entry comes from her debut EP. If that’s how innovative and creative she is right out of the gate, I for one can’t wait to see how she evolves from here.
Follow editor Daniel J. Willis at Twitter.com/BayAreaData.