This is Why
🔀 Shuffle Sundays #89 • Big Thief, Paramore, Odesza, Ólafur Arnalds, Wassily Kandinsky, and more!
💽 » Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe in You, by Big Thief
indie-rock / folk • 20 songs • 80 minutes
For their fifth full-length studio album, Brooklyn band Big Thief decided to move a bit further away from their indie-rock signature and jump with both feet into a much more folk sound, similar to what lead singer Adrianne Lenker presented in her most recent amazing solo record Songs two years ago.
In a time when double albums are not as common as they used to be, the band defies us with the 20-track Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe in You, which feels like a true journey once you pay proper attention to it. Although the songs are not necessarily challenging, this is definitely an album that grows with time, with each new hearing surfacing a new favorite track that may have passed unnoticed before.
With a very prolific and still pretty young career, Big Thief has everything to easily become one the best bands of the decade.
🎶 » This is Why, by Paramore
Five years after their poppiest (and one of their best) albums to date, Paramore is back with a brand new single showing that the sound experimentation didn’t stop with After Laughter (2017) at all. But instead of the colorful 80s synth pop of the previous era, This is Why sees the band taking a somewhat more experimental path that got me thinking about bands like The Talking Heads and Minus The Bear, with lyrics discussing the price of the exposure and mental health. No idea what the rest of the album will bring, but this was a hell of a first teaser!
🎶 » Light Of Day, by Odesza feat. Ólafur Arnalds
Serving as the closing track of their most recent album The Last Goodbye, Light of Day sees electronic duo Odesza joining forces with Icelandic producer and multi-instrumentalist Ólafur Arnalds in a song that blends their individual styles perfectly. On top of that, the track also got an incredibly beautiful (in all aspects) animated music video that only makes the song even better.
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🧩 » Random Bits
🥁 • Count Me In is an awesome documentary for drummers and music lovers;
🏄🏻♂️ • a memory from 3 years ago in San Francisco;
🎨 • some of my favorite album arts from last month;
🔀 • ICYMI: Phone Wallpapers & an emo album recommendation.
⚡️ Visual Inspiration
I recently saw an amazing exhibit of the Russian painter Wassily Kandinsky in NYC and got mesmerized by some of his work I was not familiar with. Kandinsky was also an art theorist and was generally credited as one of the pioneers of abstraction in western art. Here are some favorites from the show:
🎶 » New Music
this week’s new albums I'm curious to check out
Also, new singles from Men I Trust, Lau e Eu, Polyphia, LCD Soundsystem, and many more. If you’re curious to hear some of these songs and more, make sure to follow my 2022 playlist on Spotify, updated weekly with new releases:
Always loved Big Thief Leo, especially 'Shark Smile'.
(PS here's one more chance to sign up for my music themed novel https://challenge69.substack.com you'll love it, promise!
That Paramore track and video is GREAT. wow.