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In this episode, Natalie and Tara share "new to them" music that they've been loving. Share your latest music faves in our Discord channel!
Creators & Guests
What is Record Store Society?
It's time to visit your favorite local record store; a place where music fans spend countless hours flipping through records, discuss the minutia of favorite b-sides, best live albums, and anything else music-related. If you have any questions, you can always find Tara and Natalie behind the counter ready to give a recommendation or tell you about a recent discovery. Join Record Store Society, a music podcast, biweekly to see what’s new or just to hang around for some music talk.
0:00:00 - Speaker 1
Hi Natalie. Hey Tara how are ya?
0:00:20 - Speaker 3
Good, how are you?
0:00:22 - Speaker 1
Living the dream. Living the dream.
0:00:24 - Speaker 3
That's good. Yeah, I'm staying indoors as much as possible now because it's too freaking hot outside it's insane how hot it is outside.
0:00:34 - Speaker 1
I'm literally melting within minutes. It's ridiculous.
0:00:37 - Speaker 3
And the air is just like a heavy curtain.
0:00:41 - Speaker 1
Yeah, it's really gross. Hot heavy, and it's probably going to be that way for the indefinite future, because it's always ridiculously hot here in Atlanta for extended periods of time. Oh my goodness, are you ready? Are you ready for the summer? And it hasn't even like hit us in full yet. It's going to be wild.
0:01:01 - Speaker 3
I know I think what 86? 86 today, but we've had quite a bit of rain, so at least that's keeping us cool.
0:01:11 - Speaker 1
Yeah.
0:01:12 - Speaker 3
Not helping on the humidity, though.
0:01:14 - Speaker 1
No, just going to stay inside where it's cool and listen to music to help me relax, music that makes me feel cool.
0:01:23 - Speaker 3
Yes, yes, yes, yes. So I've been kind of frustrated with myself when it comes to listening to new music, because I feel like I'll look at all the new ones out every Friday and then I might have time to listen to one or not, during that work day depending and then I'll forget the next week and then there's a whole slew of new albums coming out that week, and so I've been frustrated because I haven't been keeping up with it as well as I used to in the past, when I had less responsibilities at my other job not the record store so and I do a really good job of keeping up with concerts so I thought, okay, well, why don't I try to solve this problem the way that I've approached the whole concerts thing, and that is spreadsheet.
0:02:18 - Speaker 1
Oh my gosh. Of course, spreadsheet for everything.
0:02:22 - Speaker 3
A spreadsheet for everything I made. A spreadsheet of new albums every Friday. Add to it all new albums. I do not add singles, I just add new album releases every.
0:02:32 - Speaker 1
Friday how extensive is the spreadsheet Like what are your? What are?
0:02:37 - Speaker 3
the columns. The columns of this spreadsheet are artist, album title, release date. There is a column that has drop downs for listened. The answer in the drop down is yes, some or no. And then another column is genre and another column for notes where I can be like, oh, I really like this. Or like, oh my God, what WTF. I cannot listen to this. It's not listenable, it's terrible.
0:03:04 - Speaker 1
Okay, is there? Is there color coding involved?
0:03:08 - Speaker 3
Yes, on the the filters of whether I've listened to it or not. Yes is green, some is yellow and no is red, and so I can also filter those options on the listened column and just see the ones that I have not listened to or just see the ones that I have listened to, or etc.
0:03:30 - Speaker 1
I love it. I'm filled with pride.
0:03:34 - Speaker 3
It really has been working for me. Know that I've listened to so much new music lately, and so I was thinking. Remember when we talked about new music? Oh yeah, recently music that was new to us.
0:03:47 - Speaker 1
You want to do that again? Yeah, for sure, for sure. I'm not as organized as you are. I don't have, I'm not as like intentional with my discovery of new music, but I have stumbled upon some really cool stuff just kind of randomly. You know, this year that I'm happy to talk about, and it's always in like the strangest places if it's like either it's in a store or like a commercial or a fashion show or something completely random, or I'm like oh, what is that? You know I have to whip out the shazam. That's kind of how it's been happening lately.
0:04:18 - Speaker 3
Oh, that's really fun when that happens. I think last time I kind of talked about some old music that I discovered, but I think this time it's going to be all brand new stuff that I've discovered through my, my spreadsheet maintenance. Here for new albums Sweet.
0:04:34 - Speaker 1
I can't wait to hear what you've got.
0:04:36 - Speaker 3
Yeah, same, same here. Do you want to kick it off? Yeah, for sure.
0:04:41 - Speaker 1
Okay, awesome. I've been on a real Afro beat, afro pop kick lately. There are just a ton of dope artists popping up in that arena and my current fave is Iris Star. Have you heard of Iris Star, by any chance? I have not. Okay, so she's. She's amazing. She's very young, only about 20 or 21. She's a Nigerian singer who'd been modeling as a teenager before pivoting to music and you know she'd been posting her covers to Instagram and, after sharing her first original song in December 2019, she was scouted and signed to Maven Records and then she, like, blew up early 2021 with the release of her EP and it's hit track away. Let's listen to a bit. So this song charted really well. It hit number 17 on the Billboard Top Triller Global Chart, which, full disclosure, I didn't know existed. Really, I never quite understood how Triller worked, but yeah, this chart ranks songs based on the amount of views of videos containing the song, the level of engagement with those vids and the raw total uploads featuring that song. So that's a thing, hold on.
0:05:59 - Speaker 3
What is this Triller? It's called Triller.
0:06:02 - Speaker 1
I've heard of it, but I didn't quite understand what it was. But, yeah, it has, like, its own Billboard dedicated chart now. So, wow, yeah, welcome to the social media age. Yeah, she's got a full length mixtape from 2021 called 19 and Dangerous, and the lead single is called Bloody Samaritan. It hit number one in Nigeria, becoming the first solo song by a female artist to do so, which is pretty wild, yeah.
0:06:28 - Speaker 3
Yeah.
0:06:29 - Speaker 1
But the song, the first song I heard from her that really, really got me hooked is a single she released earlier this year called Sibility. Let's listen to that. I am completely obsessed with this song. The groove, her deep, silky voice. You know I love a beautiful woman with a sultry, deep voice. It's just so smooth and it gets in your hips, man.
0:07:02 - Speaker 2
I don't know.
0:07:02 - Speaker 1
I love it. Cool, you vibe into it. It's a really good dance song. That's cool. Yeah, you know who she kind of sounds like Another really great Nigerian singer called Thames. You know what? I'm going to just throw in a side recommendation for Thames here too, because her voice also is super magical, like really deep and rich. Let's listen to a little bit of her song. She's got a song called Hire. That's great. I love Thames.
She won a Grammy this year for her collaboration with Future and Drake, and she did a tiny desk last year, so definitely check that out. She's fantastic. So, yeah, just thrown into amazing Nigerian artists.
0:07:49 - Speaker 3
So how do you spell her name?
0:07:51 - Speaker 1
Thames is T E M S. Oh, okay, all right, handing it back to you. What do you got?
0:07:56 - Speaker 3
Cool, Okay, so I just learned about this band, Indie Rock Band from Detroit called Bonnie Doon, and they are actually the backing band for Waxahatchee. This new album came out June 16th so super new and they started out in 2014 with a demo which became their first self-titled studio album, Bonnie Doon, which was released in 2017. And then they followed that one up with Longwave in 2018. So it's been a while since their last record, but now they have let there be music out on anti-records.
And I love it. I mean, as soon as it started playing, I was like oh, oh, I like this. You know it. Okay, you're going to laugh. You are going to laugh at me. But I've been describing it as Evan Dando meets campervan Beethoven. I've also told friends it's a little pavementy, a little purple, mountain, silver juice.
0:09:12 - Speaker 1
Oh, my goodness Okay.
0:09:13 - Speaker 3
It's that guy, it's his voice, it's very the singer Bobby Colombo just has like a beautiful baritone voice, but it's Indie, it's kind of folky in some in some ways, but yeah, I just I really like it and so this album. I had never heard them before, so I'm not even going to dig into their old stuff yet because I'm still exploring this one. But they were inspired by a few different things. Making this record, bobby moved from Detroit to this place in Northern California that has like really strict laws against development, so it's super rural and able to stay wild, and and so he was he. They wrote most the record out there in this very peaceful place in California.
They were also inspired by French pop, a tell Adnan, who is a Lebanese poet and painter, rafi. Even they were inspired by, so the whole Rafi thing, which I think is pretty neat. They said that a lot of elementary school teachers had written to them and said that they play that album long wave in their classrooms a lot. So they got to thinking about new ways to approach their audience, just thinking about their audience in new ways. And so when they were making this album they were thinking of let there be music as something like a children's song that could resonate with adults too. I think that's super neat.
So let's listen to the. Yeah, let's listen to the title track. Let there be music by Bonnie Doon.
0:10:40 - Speaker 2
Yeah, it's a really kind of a a light hearted album.
0:10:56 - Speaker 3
in a sense oh, it actually in that way also reminds me of Drug Dealer. Do you remember how I was going on and on and on about that album last year?
0:11:03 - Speaker 1
Yeah, yeah.
0:11:04 - Speaker 3
Kind of as a similar feel goodness about it that that one does Someone from. I think it was on actually pitchfork, it says monotone melody suggests Maureen Tucker supporting Stephen Malchemist. Let there be music doesn't particularly sound like indie rock. Safer one factor both Linux and Colombo sing with the deadpan delivery common among bands inspired by 1990s low-fri rockers and when I read that I was like see, I knew it like that had such that same vibe. But I just love that kind of I don't care deadpan thing from the 90s, something about it.
0:11:45 - Speaker 1
Yeah, it's very like kind of languid and chill laid back. Yeah, you know totally. I wonder, I wonder how much you mentioned that they are from, like a rural Area or recorded.
0:11:58 - Speaker 3
They are from Detroit, michigan, but they recorded or wrote a lot of these songs in a very rural area.
0:12:05 - Speaker 1
Yeah, I wonder it's interesting to know, like, how much that impacted the creative trajectory of things you know. Yeah. Like writing music in kind of this open wild space, versus bedroom DJs who are, you know, closed up in their little box churning it out. That's true.
0:12:23 - Speaker 3
Well, okay, so I was going to save some details in case I wanted to talk about it more another time, but I think I will just go ahead and say some because I think it's really interesting. But when, in between their two albums, long Wave and this One, let there Be Music, of course they were touring with Waxahatchie a little bit, but the group had quite a bit of personal traumas. Bobby Colombo actually recovered from a brain injury and Lyme disease and their drummer experienced some an increase of inflammation and Crohn's in their Crohn's disorder. So it sounds like they have experienced some some, some yeah, some issues, but at the same time had some good times with Waxahatchie. So it was an all dark and gloomy and yeah, I, it's just sounds so upbeat and light at times that you you almost don't realize that they would have ever had any issues like that.
0:13:21 - Speaker 1
Yeah, yeah, I can totally hear that or kind of like a it's like a devil may care. Like you know, this is life ups and downs, like even the lyrics of that song. It acknowledges also sadness, which I appreciate, you know that's true.
All right, cool, I like that. One Good pick, Yay, Okay, Number two on my list, I guess two and a half, since I threw in an extra on the tail end. All right Is the band. Reservoir spelled R E S A V O I R, so this is an interesting one. I can't decide how best to categorize this. It's. It's definitely jazz with hip hop, some 60s pop, some experimental electronic elements. It's very complex. I think you dig this one, Tara.
Basically, reservoir is a band led by Chicago Trumpeter, Will Miller, who's been on stage with tons of big artists from Whitney Houston to Mac Miller. He's also part of the indie folk band Whitney. He's label mates with oh yeah, you're familiar with Whitney. Yeah, yeah, he's label mates with Makaya McRaven, both from international anthem, and the lineup from reservoir includes some of Chicago's most shining talents, like a Kenya, Seymour Lane, Bextrum, Irvin Pierce, Senmori, Moto and many, many more. So in 2019, they released their debut eponymous album, the lead single.
Escalator Garnard Rave Reviews. Here's a bit of that. So, Tina Edwards from Supreme Standards which I didn't know this before, but it's a platform based in the UK that supports international jazz, funk and soul Edwards likened the single to quote Radiohead on a jazz trip, which I can totally see what she's getting at with that comparison. I can kind of hear that. So I've been trying to figure out. I think I discovered Reservoir by way of harpist Brandy Younger, whom we spoke about recently in the store. She is a featured guest on reservoir's track Taking Flight.
But I want to play my favorite track from the album called Reservoir. There's like there's so many distinct vibes happening in this track that is just so textured, like it's psychedelic and then it's lo-fi and dreamy but then it gets like really crisp and tight in places. Also, on a nerdy gamer side note, I think I'm drawn to this song too because there's this really nostalgic sound early on. It's like the second theme that happens in the song. It's a sound I distinctly recognize from an old JRPG I love. I think it's Chrono Cross, maybe Chrono Trigger. So any gamer nerds in the store might be able to tease that one out and share the nostalgia with me on that one. But yeah, I love that track.
0:16:24 - Speaker 3
I mean from my nerdy brain on this Spotify description. Do you know how they have the about section for artists? One paragraph says in Miller's modest editing room, reservoir grew from the experiment into epic opus recalling the lush psychedelic soul jazz orchestrations of David Axelrod and Charles Stepney. But and here's the part that I like zoomed in on big time, but in the sample laden style of yesterday's new content broadcast drool or thunder cat Absolutely. So I zoomed in right there like wait broadcast what?
0:17:02 - Speaker 1
Yeah, so throw this one in your spreadsheet, because I think you would enjoy it.
0:17:06 - Speaker 3
Definitely need to be putting this one in the spreadsheet. Maybe I need a whole other tab that's like albums that I need to listen to, that are new, brand new.
0:17:15 - Speaker 1
Do it, man. I'm all for expanding the spreadsheet. The more tabs, the merrier.
0:17:20 - Speaker 3
More to do.
All right back to you, all right, Okay. So this one is a totally new band for me Never heard of them either, but they're also a semi local. They are the Pink Stones from Athens, georgia, and they just released a new album called you Know who, out on June 30th. And yeah, just the all of the players in this band are just so talented. One guy, john Neff, in particular, and he was in Japan cakes and he was an original founding member of. All of the players in this band are just so talented. One guy, john Neff, in particular, and he was in Japan cakes and he was an original founding member of but he is, in my mind, the standout talent in this album. The album is very kind of like Alt Country, but there's some rock elements in there as well, just very like kind of grand Parsons. It's country laden, southern Album. I like it, I dig it.
0:18:39 - Speaker 1
That's sweet.
0:19:18 - Speaker 3
I like it.
0:19:37 - Speaker 2
It always comes back to Evan Dando.
0:20:27 - Speaker 3
I like it, I like it, I like it.
0:21:48 - Speaker 1
I like it.
0:22:07 - Speaker 3
I like it. I like it.
0:22:41 - Speaker 1
Cool, all right. Well, I've got one more for you, and this one, I think you'll be into this one too or maybe you've already heard of her, I don't know A singer-songwriter based in LA named Jessica Pratt.
0:22:52 - Speaker 3
Yes, oh, my God, I love, love, love, love, love. Jessica Pratt, okay, and I've seen her and she's wonderful.
0:22:58 - Speaker 1
Oh, I'm sure. Yeah, I had a notion that you might already know about her because she's been around for a bit, but I'm just discovering her. I believe this was a Spotify recommendation, actually, specifically the song Polly Blue Sing along the days go by, ready and alone, alone, alone, alone, alone, alone. So this is the first song I'd heard from her off of her third album, quiet Signs, which was released back in 2019. And her sound is just this, I don't know, it's like this psychedelic freak folk with some Cali rock, some 60s vibes in there. As far as her sound, I think vulturecom described it so well in an interview with Pratt, saying that her quote sound can feel a little like a rain smeared window blurry, vague, contemplative, which is just perfect, right. But I think, I think her voice is just enchanting. I think of like Leslie Goldfrapp with the haunting wide reverb, a little Joanna Newsom, a little Joan Baez, you know. But that doesn't even begin to capture the unique tone of her voice. It's like how I'd imagine a forest nymph would sound.
0:24:08 - Speaker 3
Yeah, like a Vashti Bunyan. Vashti Bunyan meets like Johnny Mitchell or I don't know. Yeah, there's a cooing and there's also a little like high pitched whininess to it, but like in a good way.
0:24:22 - Speaker 1
Yeah, it's like the whininess actually works. No, I know what you're trying to say.
0:24:26 - Speaker 2
Maybe that's not like the most flattering adjective.
0:24:30 - Speaker 1
But yeah, she does kind of have. It feels like a little tiny fairy is singing to you, like right next to your ear, right, yeah, yeah, but it's like soothing, it's gentle, it is cooing is the word, it's a gentle cue and she's a great songwriter too, it's. You know, I think she's got all the right ingredients. Very simple acoustic guitar, I don't know. I just it just like kind of wraps you up like a blanket and it's just really, really sweet.
0:24:57 - Speaker 3
Yeah yeah. Heavy, heavy lidded voice they say on this Heavy lidded voice.
0:25:03 - Speaker 1
Absolutely. I wanted to hear a little bit of the first single from the album to this time around.
0:25:18 - Speaker 3
That's my song.
0:25:20 - Speaker 1
Yeah, is that your song? I don't know, obviously. I'm just, you know, being turned on to her, so I don't know a lot about her story, but it seems like this third album is when it really clicked and this album was really, really big for her, really major.
0:25:33 - Speaker 3
Yeah, I saw her at Pitchfork Festival and it was very unfortunate because you know, the music is very quiet. It is just her voice and an acoustic guitar and I think she maybe had someone on steel or something like that. There was one other guy, but I can't remember what it was doing. On the opposite stage it was who's the guy? Mackinnon or whatever Club Going Up on Tuesday and I was just like, oh my god, please, I just want to hear Jessica Pratt. But all I could hear was this poppy trap music happening in the background. That's crazy.
0:26:06 - Speaker 1
Why would they organize it that way?
0:26:08 - Speaker 3
I know exactly. It was a bummer and I haven't seen her again since and I wish that she would just come to Atlanta and play 529 or the Earl somewhere. Yeah, something intimate, yeah, that would be dope.
0:26:22 - Speaker 1
Yeah, well, good, I think she's great. I guess that you might have seen her already. I'm glad to have been proven right and that means that you dig her, which is also cool.
0:26:32 - Speaker 3
I love her so much, such a I often listen to her music. I have a whole playlist called Seasonal Folk Women and Seasonal Folk Men's, as a separate one, but it's like songs you want to hear when it's wintery and dark and bleak and deer, and your cardigans and thick wool socks and you're listening to Jessica Pratt and like Vashti Bunyan and maybe broadcast even or Karen Dalton. Yeah, just the whole spread of women like that I love. I love them.
0:27:04 - Speaker 1
I might need you to share that playlist with me. That sounds interesting.
0:27:08 - Speaker 3
I will. It's a good one, but you might need to just save it for winter.
0:27:12 - Speaker 1
All right. Well, that's it for me today. Do you have another artist?
0:27:16 - Speaker 3
I do and.
0:27:17 - Speaker 2
I just want.
0:27:18 - Speaker 3
I know we already both really love. It's not new to me, it's just a brand new song by someone we both really love, and that is Samfa. Oh nice, I've been waiting for new Samfa. It's been six years since he's put out anything new, since his amazing debut album named Process from 2017. But he has a new single. It came out on June 28th. It's called Spirit 2.0. And it's awesome, and he made it with Yusuf Dias El Grincho, owen Pallett has vocals from Yeji and Abayi Abayi's Elisa Diaz.
0:28:09 - Speaker 1
Cool.
0:28:10 - Speaker 3
And then, yeah, it's just starts really soft and soulful and then it kind of crescendos into this sort of floating melody of strings and like electronic bits where you think they're going to drop into something bigger, ladder, heavier, but it never really does and I don't know it's. It's a really beautiful song, of course, as always from Samfa, and I also just love how he has a way of including life in his songs, and I don't know how else to say that except for, like, he just always talks about struggle, but joy and also anticipation. There's like feeling of anticipation in his music, and so I'm just calling that life.
0:28:49 - Speaker 1
Yeah, I dig it. So does this mean an album is coming?
0:28:52 - Speaker 3
That's what I'm saying. I can't wait for an album. Anator Anator, yes yes, it's time.
0:28:57 - Speaker 1
It's been damn near a decade, six years, right, yeah, cool, I like that. It's a vibe. I dig it. I'll listen to this one while I'm chilling or getting some work done or whatever I like, I like the little. I like when there's this juxtaposition of big airy pads with, like a really tight kind of plinkety, plonkety beat.
0:29:19 - Speaker 3
Yeah, yeah, yeah it is plinky. So I got a plinky little drum thing going on yeah in the background.
0:29:25 - Speaker 1
I dig that. That was a groovy.
0:29:26 - Speaker 3
That was it. That was so good.
0:29:29 - Speaker 1
It just gives it so much spaciousness, you know, yeah totally.
0:29:33 - Speaker 3
And then there's the strings, too, that they throw in. Yeah.
0:29:37 - Speaker 1
Yeah, dope.
0:29:38 - Speaker 3
Dope for real. That's my list. We have a good little blend of things here.
0:29:44 - Speaker 1
I think. So we traversed a lot of ground. We did some afrobeat, we did some country folk, blues, soul.
0:29:52 - Speaker 3
Yeah.
0:29:53 - Speaker 1
A lot of stuff A good list.
0:29:55 - Speaker 3
I can see a good like playlist forming from all of those actually.
0:29:58 - Speaker 1
Yeah, for sure.
0:29:59 - Speaker 3
Cool. Well, maybe we'll have to link it on the store website.
0:30:02 - Speaker 1
You hear that folks, all of you in the store.
0:30:06 - Speaker 3
Check it out Check out our playlists.
0:30:07 - Speaker 1
Yeah, relive the magic.
0:30:09 - Speaker 3
Yeah, awesome. Well, I love it when we talk about new music. It's always a fun time and I'm looking for another Jessica Pratt to happen. You know like I want to have that same moment that you just had with Jessica Pratt, where you're like, ooh, you know, because when I heard her for the first time, I was like, oh, I was just smitten with her voice immediately.
0:30:31 - Speaker 1
Yeah.
0:30:32 - Speaker 3
And I wonder what else is out there that I don't know. That's not necessarily new, so I love it when we talk about this stuff.
0:30:39 - Speaker 1
It's interesting, so you say you want to. You're interested in hearing the next Jessica Pratt. Do you think you've? Does she not really excite you anymore Like she used to?
0:30:48 - Speaker 3
Oh no, I mean I just that feeling. The first time hearing her was so right. Just always chasing the dragon almost.
0:30:55 - Speaker 1
Right right.
0:30:56 - Speaker 3
I need the next. What is the thing that's going to be my new favorite that I'm going to have all of the albums of? You know and I have, like I think I have all of her albums, so I need yeah, I like that. I mean, maybe it's another Jessica Pratt album, but I like discovering new artists that I just become immediately obsessed with.
0:31:17 - Speaker 1
Yeah, that is a good feeling. Yeah, I dig that too. I guess I kind of had that too when I listened to her, because I haven't heard a voice like that in so long, you know, and it just it's just kind of filled in this void. I didn't realize was there at all. And I kind of had a similar experience with Ira Star, like I love Afrobeat but I'd kind of been out of the loop for a while, but I heard that song and it just like it just stuck in my gray matter and I was just playing it all the time and dancing to it all the time. So it's exciting when you can get really hooked on something like that.
0:31:46 - Speaker 3
Yeah, do you like a bae?
0:31:48 - Speaker 1
Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
0:31:50 - Speaker 3
They have somewhat of an Afrobeat thing, sometimes not all of it, of course, but I feel like when. I saw them. It had that flavor.
0:31:58 - Speaker 1
I haven't listened to them in a minute. I bet they've got some new stuff. I've missed out on Good call out.
0:32:03 - Speaker 3
Cool. Well, I can't wait to do this again.
0:32:06 - Speaker 1
Yeah, for sure, we got to keep this going. There's always cool new stuff that's popping up in the most unexpected of places. So, yeah, let's do it again.
0:32:13 - Speaker 3
Totally Awesome. Yes, All right. Should we close the store early tonight? It's kind of slow. Yeah, I think so.
0:32:19 - Speaker 1
Yeah, you know, let's go home.
0:32:22 - Speaker 3
Okay.
0:32:22 - Speaker 1
We run the shots we are closing. Yeah, I'll see you around yeah same year. Have a good night, bye, bye.
0:32:45 - Speaker 2
Record Store Society is hosted by Natalie White and Tara Davies. If you'd like to contact the show, visit our website at recordsdoressocietycom, or you can find us on all your favorite social media sites with the handle at recordsdoressociety.
Transcribed by https://podium.page