Your New Music Monday picks for your first Monday of June features the new War On Drugs, a sister duo and music from Little D:
Back in his middle school days, Denton songwriter Eric Michener was christened “Fishboy” after accepting a classmate’s challenge to ingest a live fish at the Dallas World Aquarium. Since then, he’s made an art out of writing playfully wry and stylistically whimsical songs, featuring characters like the Christmas tree who came back to life to haunt the celebrants of Yuletide past in “A Surprise Return,” or the lovelorn nerd singing the praises of his crush-accomplice in “Taqueria Girl.” The premise of Art Guards, Fishboy’s sixth and newest album, is fairly simple: “nine lyrically interconnected songs about artists making stuff, with varying results.” “Researching Writer” is the tale of one imposter, working under another. Art Guards is available via Lauren Records, and for the collectors in the house, the deluxe edition features a hand-painted CD jacket and a 55-page comic book.
Best of luck in finding more exquisite harmonies than the ones whose spell you’ll be under when the first strains of The Secret Sisters‘ “He’s Fine,” from their June 9 release, You Don’t Own Me Anymore. It was Brandi Carlile who reached out to the Muscle Shoals sister duo to see if she could produce their third album, so with a leap of faith and Pledgemusic crowdfunding campaign, Laura and Lydia Rogers reached the halfway point on their goal in just two days, and made their way to Seattle to hole up in the studio with Brandi and the Hanseroth twins. They’ll be on tour for a good chunk of the summer, and you’ll be able to catch them at Fort Worth Live on September 10.
2014’s Lost In The Dream put Philadelphia’s War On Drugs on the radar of the music-loving public, and without a doubt it was their most commercially-accessible and radio-friendly album to date. August 25 heralds the mighty return of Adam Granduciel and Co. with A Deeper Understanding, a collection of ten new tracks comprising what Granduciel describes as his “L.A. record,” arriving August 25 on the band’s new label, Atlantic. Lead single “Holding On” channels the 70’s FM soundscape, but is a thoroughly modern affair – with a touch of glockenspiel and the Grateful Dead’s “Touch Of Gray,” which – ironically – War On Drugs covered on last summer’s Day Of The Dead tribute. FYI: The Bomb Factory and KXT present The War On Drugs on September 28.
And as fortuitous fate would have it, the new Arcade Fire song “Everything Now” landed the same day as the War On Drugs track, “Holding On,” and coincidentally enough, they’ll also be in Dallas on the very same night – September 28 – but at the American Airlines Center. July 28 is the release date for Everything Now (or Infinite Content, depending on whichever news source you’re following), and already it’s one of the most buzzed-about albums of 2017. And on a curious side note, anyone else hearing hints of Yvonne Elliman’s “If I Can’t Have You” in this?
Happy ears make for a happy day!
XOXO
Gini.
