Despite its sound owing much to late-‘90s alternative – and that it’s coming two years on from her initial breakthrough – there’s something so beautifully ‘now’ about Little Miss Sunshine, this debut full-length from Eaves Wilder. Not the ‘now’ that one might imagine rapacious, cartoonish A&Rs to seek – that’s already been and gone, despite their efforts, if it even existed. But a ‘now’ that, among other things, has digitally-literate teens metaphorically crate-digging in a way that’s seen many a veteran act performing to audiences younger than their biggest hits; Olivia Rodrigo using her stage as a pseudo mixtape, Hayley Williams spilling her own guts across new material, and acts like Mitski, Wolf Alice and Wet Leg crossing over into pop spheres…
Tag Archive: Secretly Canadian
…This anniversary release of the band’s first EP includes three additional tracks: remastered demos of “31 Seasons in the Minor Leagues,” previously titled as “Tonight I’m So Down,” and “Lonesome Valley,” recorded at Echo Park Studios in Indiana during the ‘Hard to Love a Man’ sessions, as well as “One Thin Dime,” recorded during the Black Ram sessions at Sound of Music Recording Studios in Richmond, Virginia.
Let’s begin at the end, with the cover of Warren Zevon’s “Werewolves of London” that closes Magnolia Electric Co.‘s Hard to Love a Man EP. Mike “Slo-Mo” Brenner’s always elegant guitar work makes it clear that the song is probably a barnstormer live, probably saved for the first encore so that the band can cut loose…
…Jens Lekman is an accidental wedding singer. But he’s also a wedding singer for a reason. Ever since his 2004 song “If You Ever Need a Stranger (To Sing at Your Wedding)” he has had a side gig fielding requests from strangers to sing at their weddings. For over twenty years, he’s had a particular vantage point from which to see the role love songs can play in our lives. In 2020, he and novelist David Levithan co-conceived a novel-with-music, Songs from Other People’s Weddings. Originally this album was meant to contain the songs from the weddings in the book, but as the novel came together, Lekman began to imagine what happened between the book’s chapters. The book and the album eventually became intertwined but also found their own paths.