here they are:
"Cumberland Gap" by Jason Isbell: Jason Isbell's 2017 album might just be his best one yet! First he gave us a taste of furious Southern rock with "Hope the High Road", then he gave us a bittersweet, reflective folk-rock song with "If We Were Vampires", and NOW we have a song that sounds like The Pixies by way of Bruce Springsteen, or maybe the other way around, with "Cumberland Gap". With a title like that, I'd have expected this song to be one of his more countrified musical numbers, but nothing could be further from the truth! "Cumberland Gap" seems to pick up where "Hope the High Road" left off, with more protest fueled lyrics, much like "...High Road" had. Jason's disappointed and angst ridden conclusion in the chorus is a righteous cry of, "Maybe the Cumberland Gap swallows you whole!" Sometimes, the real world is just too much to think about these days. That's one of the many reasons songs like this one can come in handy!
"Date Night" by Father John Misty: Only Father John Misty can take a song that sounds vaguely similar to Nirvana's "Rape Me" and make it sound sort of like a Harry Nilsson tune. If this sounds too weird for you, don't worry. You only have to suffer through 2 and a half minutes of this. For the rest of us, this song is pure blissed out bliss! FJM is such a weird dude that I'm not even sure what "Date Night" is supposed to mean in the context of this song. Heck, I'll be lucky if I can figure out what ANY of this song means! But that's FJM for ya. His charm is in his eccentricity!
"Feed the Fire" by Dawes: Dawes recently opened for 1970's rock group, Electric Light Orchestra. In "Feed the Fire" they SOUND like ELO. Well, sorta. Perhaps a band like Steely Dan might be a more appropriate comparison, (esp. for its "Do It Again"-esque sitar solo) but in any case, they sound like they're straddling the line between hippie and hipster like they usually do. What they mean here by "feed the fire" is that they're trying to satisfy themselves artistically. "Fire" is a word that takes on multiple meanings here. It can mean just the burning desire for something to happen, but here, it also means being destructive, like a fire, since living an "artistic" lifestyle can often lead to having detrimental impulses. The Dan-esque guitar in the song is important here, since it contributes vastly to the song's almost 6 minute length.
"Four Leaf Clover" by The Kooks: The Kooks are usually at their best when they do light, airy power pop songs like "She Moves In Her Own Way", "Shine On", and "Junk of the Heart (Happy)". After moving more towards a post-punk/funk hybrid in their more recent songs, Luke Pritchard and the boys have now returned to their power pop roots in "Four Leaf Clover". The song is really a sex, drugs, and rock & roll song disguised as something sweeter and happier, but Kooks fans needn't care about that, as long as they like the music of it!
"Waves of Galveston" by Iron & Wine: And last but not least for this week, Sam Beam is another who has returned to his musical roots with "Waves of Galveston". The song picks up, musically speaking, from where IAW's last song, "Call It Dreaming", left off. "Waves of Galveston" is an equally beautiful song that uses a similar technique of using just acoustic guitar and vocals, instead of adding background instruments as IAW have been prone to do in recent years. The song has a Joni Mitchell-ish flavor to it, and perhaps that's because of its DADF#AD tuning, which Joni has used for many of her songs as well. The song has actually had a longer life than this year, dating back to 2013, when Sam Beam was asked to write a song about Texas. This masterpiece is what he came up with, and now we finally get to hear the studio version of it!
