For the playlist this week, I’ve added tracks from the latest albums by Tennis, Y La Bamba, and Jonathan Bree (from the Brunettes), as well as a different song from Royel Otis’ latest EP plus a few new artists.
This week we’ve got nine new songs on the playlist, including another track from the great new album from Scott McMicken of Dr. Dog, plus selections from the latest albums by Tanukichan and Dutch Uncles, as well as some new bands I highly recommend.
This week, I’ve added three new tracks to the official Squawkin’ Good Radio playlist. Beach Fossils have released a fourth single from their forthcoming album Bunny, one of my most anticipated albums of the year. Momma, who made my year end top 20 of 2022 with their song “Lucky”, also have a new single that I’ve been listening to a lot. Finally, we have a track from Narrow Head, a band who are new to me but have been around for a while, and their latest album Moments Of Clarity is one of the highlights of the year so far.
Life has been too busy for me to have a radio show right now, but I would still like to keep you up to date on my current favorite songs. I will be updating this playlist each weekend. You can listen on Spotify, YouTube Music or Tidal. The hottest tracks are up first in the list, but I recommend that you put it on shuffle and enjoy!
I’m back! It’s been a long time since I’ve posted here. Life has been really crazy the past few years, and that is why it has been so long since you’ve heard from me. But I’m finally in a place now where I feel like I can return. Expect more Squawkin’ Good content soon. In the meantime, I would like to share my Top 20 songs of 2022 with you. 2022 was a great year for music and I am pleased with this list of songs. As always, I have limited it to one song per artist, as several of these artists could have had multiple songs here otherwise.
20. Coheed And Cambria “A Disappearing Act”
“How long have you waited here? / For someone to touch you, for someone to hear you scream? / It’s okay to be afraid, I’m here with you”
19. Beach House “Only You Know”
“You come to my window / You tell me you’re high / Where do all the friends go when the fantasies die? / Only you know”
18. Why Bonnie “Nowhere, LA”
“Stepped on my own tail again / When I saw you across the street / Thought of what I’d say to you / But my words all come up empty / All my words, they sound so empty”
17. Nilüfer Yanya “The Mystic”
“This is the last chance that you got / Are you gonna give this your best shot? / I’m not gonna text like you’re on the hit list / Assume that the red lines / Assume that the red signs / Assume I’m the red”
16. CMAT “Every Bottle (Is My Boyfriend)”
“I got a wet drink, it’s like a gun in my hand / But maybe I love drinking and just hate all the plans / That someone made in my name / I don’t even wanna tap my potential / No I don’t”
15. PLOSIVS “Pines”
“Can’t leave the prose of all in autumn / Can’t beat the throws of all in all in all October / Burning alive in leaves of amber”
14. Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever “Blue Eye Lake”
“You can ride the back of a star and go anywhere / Open up your eyes and I will dive in”
13. Yumi Zouma “In The Eyes Of Our Love”
“I went sideways / I went back / But I fought for truth through every single broken artifact / I’m not trying to get you off track / But I’m lying if there’s nothing I could do about that”
12. Shadowgraphs “Loss Prevention”
“Cause there’s no loss prevention / Tethered to her / I can’t believe I’m falling / Just keep on telling me that same old story”
11. Camp Cope “Running With The Hurricane”
“Look out, boys, I’m on fire and I’m not going out / Been moving with the bodies that move to a different sound / And that fire started burning / And that hurricane was turning once I moved”
10. Momma “Lucky”
“If I drive in four days time / My highway hills could reach the east / If I drive in four days time / I’d pick you up from hometown streets / Buckle up, I’ll be there”
9. AURORA “Blood In The Wine”
“I was given a heart before I was given a mind / A thirst for pleasure and war, a hunger we keep inside / We fell from sky with grace, and life gave us a sweeter taste / You can drink, you can feast / There’s beauty in your beast”
8. Alvvays “Pharmacist”
“I know you’re back / I saw your sister at the pharmacy, picking up / Said you had that new love glow”
7. Flock Of Dimes “Pure Love”
“And when we had nothing, it wasn’t enough / And when we had everything, it was too much / I don’t wanna be static, staring at the way that it was / Just want a pure love / Pure love”
6. The Beths “2am”
“Do you feel it? / Feel it like you did back then? / We were young / We were cruel and mistaken / And I know it more with every passing day / Though it hurts / I still love you the same”
5. Royel Otis “Bull Breed”
“So we drink until we find / A reason to chase with our favorite songs / In my molly coated mind / These days are my favorite ones”
4. Big Thief “Simulation Swarm”
“Once again, we must bleed new / Even as the hours shake / Crystal blood like a dream true / A ripple in the wound and wake / You believe, I believe too / That you are the river of light / Who I love, that I cling to / In the belly of the empty night”
3. Hatchie “Lights On”
“Slips through my hands / A love so fleeting, I don’t understand / I should have answered the call / I never wanted to fall”
2. Lou Roy “Uppercut”
“I swear it to you babe we’ll always have our fun / Even when we’re grinded into cosmic dust / And even when we’re back on earth as pond scum / I swear to you babe, we’ll always have our fun”
1. Ethel Cain “Sun Bleached Flies”
“What I wouldn’t give to be in church this Sunday / Listening to the choir so heartfelt, all singing / ‘God loves you, but not enough to save you’ / So, baby girl, good luck taking care of yourself”
You can listen to a playlist of all of these songs below, either on Spotify or Tidal.
Thursday Throwback is a feature on Squawkin’ Good Tunes where we dig up a forgotten gem from at least 10 years ago, play it on that week’s edition of Squawkin’ Good Radio, and review the album on squawkingood.com.
This week I thought we’d cover something a little different from the power-pop/punk bands featured the past few weeks. Let’s go back to 2003 and hear from Venus Hum, a dream pop/electronica group from Nashville consisting of lead singer Annette Strean and multi-instrumentalists Kip Kubin and Tony Miracle. Their debut full-length Big Beautiful Sky (a reference to lead singer Annette Strean’s home state of Montana) featured the single “Hummingbirds” a vibrant, dramatic song with surreal lyrics.
After kicking off with “Hummingbirds”, Venus Hum cycle through three candy-colored pop tunes with varying levels of success before arriving at the haunting “Alice”, a contender for best song on the album. It’s followed by the bouncy, intriguing pop song “Lumberjacks”, and the album finishes strong with the ethereal “Honey”, suspenseful “Sonic Boom” and closing track “Bella Luna”.
While very much a product of the early 00’s electronica scene, Big Beautiful Sky is a solid album recommended for fans of artists like Florence & the Machine, Goldfrapp or School of Seven Bells.
Take a listen to the whole album below on Spotify:
Thursday Throwback is a new feature on Squawkin’ Good Tunes where we dig up a forgotten gem from at least 10 years ago, play it on that week’s edition of Squawkin’ Good Radio, and review the album on squawkingood.com.
This week’s Thursday Throwback is one from my college years. Nakatomi Plaza were a band from Brooklyn who played a style of post-hardcore descended from the likes of At the Drive-In, with a sound that skews decidedly towards the punk energy of Sparta rather than the experimental leanings of The Mars Volta. Their album Unsettled was released in 2007 during my sophomore year of college, and several songs from it would be played on my radio show.
Opening track “A Manifest Destiny Grows in Brooklyn” gives you a good taste of what to expect from this album. From there it goes into quite the variety – from the heavier screaming tracks “Get Me My Meds” and “Bang Bang Sing Sing”, to the well-crafted pop-punk sensibilities of “Undefined”.
The album’s standout track is “Not Hopeless”, which also appeared on their Frog Octopus Wolf EP. Propelled by an energetic synth keyboard riff, this song delivers socially conscious lyrics backed up by a powerful, catchy melody.
If you like what you hear, listen to the full album below on Spotify.
Thursday Throwback is a new feature on Squawkin’ Good Tunes where we dig up a forgotten gem from at least 10 years ago, play it on that week’s edition of Squawkin’ Good Radio, and review the album on squawkingood.com.
This week we go back and revisit one of my favorite bands from high school, A. Yes, their name is just the letter A, making them one of the most impossible bands to google. They were a band from England who were pretty popular in their home country in the early 00’s, and were popular in a few other countries like Germany and Japan. Their sophomore album, A vs. Monkey Kong (also just known as Monkey Kong in the states) was my introduction to the band.
A were another band I discovered on my local alt-rock station WEQX’s new music show Download, and they were a favorite of Download host Alex Taylor’s as well. 5 different songs from this album would receive airplay on Download, the first of which “Old Folks” would also go on to be in rotation in EQX’s regular playlist.
A’s music is best described as pop-punk but they mixed a lot of genres together including punk, metal, Britpop, 60’s pop and whatever else they felt like. Monkey Kong showed just how diverse their songs could be. In addition to their energetic, melodic rockers like “Old Folks”, “Down On the Floor” and “Miles Away”, there are a couple short hardcore punk tracks “Warning” and “Don’t Be Punks”, as well as some weird slower songs like “Hopper Jonnus Fang” and “Jason’s Addiction”.
These days, my personal favorite track off the album is “Here We Go Again (I Love Lake Tahoe)” a song that couldn’t have been written by anyone else and perfectly shows off their sense of humor with lyrics like “Yeah the trees are pretty wide/That’s where Sonny Bono died.”
While I wouldn’t consider this album a classic, it’s still worth revisiting every few years along with their other three albums: Their more commercially successful followup Hi-Fi Serious, their hard to find debut How Ace Are Buildings, and their final heavier, darker album Teen Dance Ordinance.
Check out their official site for more info on A (it saves you from googling them!) , and listen to Monkey Kong on Spotify below:
It’s been a while since I’ve posted on this blog. Things have been really busy. After not being sure where I was going to end up and whether I would continue with the show, I ended up moving to St. Albans and will continue doing Squawkin’ Good Radio at a new time slot!
Squawkin’ Good Radio returns to WRUV at a new time, with some new changes! Tune in on Thursdays from 6-8 pm. In addition to new music, the first hour will also feature tracks from featured artists, including a Thursday Throwback where I’ll play a forgotten gem from at least 10 years ago, and you can check this blog to learn more about the artist you heard.
There will be more special features coming your way this fall. Hoping to make the new show and blog an interactive experience.
The new and improved Squawkin’ Good Radio returns this Thursday, October 5th at 6 pm.
Thursday Throwback is a new feature on Squawkin’ Good Tunes where we dig up a forgotten gem from at least 10 years ago, play it on that week’s edition of Squawkin’ Good Radio, and review the album on squawkingood.com.
Here’s a band I completely forgot even existed until a few weeks ago, after a few listens to current B-52s guitarist Greg Suran’s great instrumental rock album Augmentation. I learned in his bio that he was in a band from Chicago called Cupcakes who released an album on Dreamworks Records in 2000. This sounded like the kind of artist that had to have been played on Download, a Sunday night new music show on my local alt-rock station WEQX that I listened to every week. And sure enough it was, in the form of the album’s second track “Vidiots”. With swirling keyboards, a propulsive beat, and lyrics about the fear of technological advancement, this catchy song is a good example of the music that was bubbling just under the mainstream at the turn of the millennium.
But how is the rest of the album? It’s solid, if a little long. Doesn’t stray far from the themes presented in “Vidiots”, even if none of the other songs are quite as catchy. Cupcakes’ music sounds like an updated version of the theatrical glam-rock of Queen or David Bowie, with a bit of Weezer’s playful power-pop mixed in. One album highlight is “High Speed Cakes in the Hole”, which is a welcome change from the first four songs, bringing in some spacey electronic elements with a sense of dread. Then there’s “Blood Thirsty” which kicks off the second half of the album and is more angry and personal than the other songs. The album loses momentum towards the end, but closes strong with “Intentionally Vague” which showcases Greg Suran’s guitar work and is the closest link between Cupcakes and his new album Augmentations. This song sounds quite a bit like Muse, who had released a couple albums at this point but were nowhere near the popularity they would achieve in the mid-00’s. And who knows? If Cupcakes had stayed together and put out more albums they might have had a similar career arc.
Check out their single, “Vidiots”, above and if you like it, take a listen to the full album below on Spotify.
Squawkin' Good Tunes 