Liner Notes- 19.Jan.2023

Records from around the world right to your inbox.

Jan 19, 2023

Good Morning!

Welcome to the 2nd issue of Liner Notes for 2023. And it's a good one! This week I’m looking at albums from Portland to Paris to Philly.

If you’re looking for even more, you can visit here to see everything I’ve written about lately. If you’d like to support On Repeat, the best ways to do that are by taking out a subscription and/or sharing this (or any other) post.

Share On Repeat by Kevin Alexander

On to the music…

2nd Grade- Easy Listening

(Click any record to listen on your platform of choice)

Power pop is at its best when the rhythm speaks for itself. Any record worth its salt will be packed with hooks that draw you in and riff that sound best when turned up to 11.

There’s no shortage of these on Easy Listening, 2nd Grade’s third album. The 5-piece band from Philly is back and sounding as stylish as ever.

They waste no time setting the table, either, with the first chords of the opener, “Cover Of Rolling Stone,” letting you know you are in for an adventure.

“Kramer in LA” is an odds-on favorite to be the most lyrically specific song we talk about this year. It doesn’t just reference Seinfeld the show, but rather a small subplot in the series.

Hello Jerry, it's me Kramer
I write you from three thousand miles away
You may recall in the previous episode
That I packed up and moved to LA
Life here's crazy, I'm doing the Hollywood hustle
Working hard and trying to catch a break
But between the Smog Strangler and being made fun of on The Tonight Show

With its bum bum bum bum-bum-bum bum bum line, “Beat of the Drum” drifts a little too close to Blink 182 territory for my liking, but it’s nothing the guitar can’t overcome.

Likewise, the lyrics on “Strung Out On You” hobble a song that’s an otherwise perfect earworm. Love as a drug has been done before, and words like “Give me something / Be my pick-me-up / I’m strung out on you” seem cheap in 2023.

With a record like this, there’s always a risk of everything blurring into one, but 2nd Grade knows when to dial it back & change things up. “Poet In Residence” is a downshift at just the right time, with a bit of scuzzy guitar and riff that evokes the Rolling Stones’ “Waiting On A Friend.”

Bottom Line: There are a few missteps here, but they don’t take much away from what is otherwise a lovely homage to power pop kings like Fountains of Wayne. Kramer got out because the murderer struck again. With Easy Listening, 2nd Grade strikes again too.

For your playlist: Cover of Rolling Stone, Poet In Residence, Keith and Telecaster

Below the jump:

Dream pop from Paris.
Some Americana from…the Rose City?
A cutout bin full of music news/links priced to move.
The absurdity that is #Music Twitter.

All that and more. Check it out!

Other Reviews

Gardens East-Portal (EP)

Tom Weir performs as Old Moon, and his Under All Skies EP was one of my favorite finds last year. Reviewing that record, I noted the following:

Under All Skies will take you back to the era before terms like alternative and indie existed when it was all bundled under the “college radio” umbrella. The EP has elements from all corners of those days in it. There are some post-punk Wire moments, jangle, and some roots rock.
All in all, Old Moon just might be your new favorite college band.

Weir’s back. And this time around, he’s traded his guitar for synthesizers. Gardens East is his electronica side project. Portals is an EP that he describes as “Old Moon but with more synths, house/garage beats, and atmospherics.” That’s an accurate description; all four tracks are full of atmospheric sounds ricocheting between your speakers. Weir’s vocals also bounce back and forth between ethereal and an almost choral tone.

Under All Skies was a trip back to the early days of college radio. A little bit bouncy and a little bit trance-y, Portals is a trip back to the early 80s new wave/electronic sound, with gauzy synth grooves powered by early model drum machines.

For your playlist: Opaline

Glenn Smith-Out on the 47 (EP)

Note: This photo is from an earlier release.

Out on the 47 is an all-acoustic outing from Glenn Smith. It’s a 24-ish minute trip to Americana with plenty of pickin’ and without a drum in sight. Smith occasionally sings in a higher register, the result sounding something like Neil Young.

Out on the 47 will transport you to a cool fall morning looking out over a fog-covered valley. Best played with a cup of good coffee. Acoustic records aren’t normally my speed, but this was one I kept coming back to over the week.

For your playlist: No Time Like Now, Muddy Water

Disclosure: This record was produced at Cooper Mountain Sounds, which is owned/run by a lifelong friend of mine.

Hibou- Arc (EP)

Hibou is Peter Michel, a Seattle native now living in Paris. Arc is his first new music since 2019’s Halve. Arc continues, well, the arc of his discography, which is to say that there is lo-fi, shoegaze, and dream pop in equal measures here.

The opening track, “Night Fell,” sets the tone with a fast(er) pace and some light melodies. It’s a look back at a romance that’s over but still fresh enough to be tinged with regret.

The EP turns toward the dreamy with “June,” a song oozing with lilting guitars and a mesmerizing melody that feels like riding on a cloud but with a beat that’s just enough to keep things rolling along.

Closer “Already Forgotten” is a bit harder-edged (relatively speaking) and will remind you of Seventeen Seconds-era The Cure.

Bottom Line: It’s hard to believe that Hibou is essentially a one-man band. Jase Ilhier plays the drums here, but otherwise, it’s all Michel, and the result is five tracks of lush soundscapes and a full sound one usually finds in a full band.

For your playlist: Upon The Clouds You Weep, Already Forgotten

Thoughts on any of these? Any records you think I should review?

What Was On

Not too long of a list this week. I bounced around a lot between records rather than listening to one all the way through.

Wire- The A-List
Kiwi jr.- Chopper
The B-52s- Mesopotamia
Old Moon- Under All Skies
회사Auto-Achikochi
Pere Ubu-Cloudland
JJ Cale- 5
Roxy Music-S/T
Throwing Muses- House Tornado
The Wonder Stuff- Hup
Expert Timing-Stargazing
Shawn Colvin- A Few Small Repairs
patchnotes-Golden Hour
Completely Grocery-Shag Nasty
Prefab Sprout-Steve McQueen (aka Two Wheels Good)
The Beach Boys- Love You
The Muffs-Blonder & Blonder
Japanese Breakfast-Psychopomp
Big Drill Car- CD-Type Thing
Wussy-Funeral Dress
Bumper-Pop Songs 2020
Perfect Angel At Heaven-EP
Peter Gabriel- So
Allan Epley-Everything
Crowded House- S/T
Graham Parker-Heat Treatment
U2- Wide Awake In America

What records did you get to listen to this week?

B-Sides

If you didn’t feel old enough already, R.E.M.’s Chronic Town turned 40 last month, and everyone from Fred Armisen to the Indigo girls joined Mike Mills and Peter Buck on stage to celebrate.

Get ready; a lot of great records doing the same thing this year, too.

Speaking of great bands from Athens, a whole host of people are sharing what The B52s have meant to them and how they’ve shaped their careers.

I still remember seeing Fred, Cindy and Kate for the first time on Saturday Night Live when I was a teenager: Kate’s high-pitched opera sound opening Planet Claire, Fred talking, singing, prowling the stage, the beehive hairdos – what in the fuck is this?! I fell in love before the song was over. Nobody sounded like them. When Berlin got called to open for them, I think I died and went to heaven. Our tour together was the best time I ever had. It’s always a bigger risk to blaze a new trail musically, but if you do it and succeed, like the B-52’s have, you’re irreplaceable.
~Terri Nunn, Berlin

There are a lot of jazz greats, but one that doesn’t get talked about nearly enough is Cannonball Adderley. If you want to mix things up, I highly recommend giving his 74 Miles record a spin.

Is it possible that if Adderley joined the tour instead of a young John Coltrane, he would have gone down in history as the yin to Davis’ yang? Fate played a hand that favored Coltrane as Davis’ musical counterpart, but Adderley was destined to work with Davis as a frontman, just as much as he was to play as a member of Davis’ band. A few years later, Cannonball recruited Davis to play as a sideman on Somethin’ Else, with Davis subsequently tapping Cannonball to play sax on the larger-than-life jazz opus Kind of Blue.

Not everything is sweetness and light, of course. Rolling Stone has a list of the 50 worst decisions in music history. Van Halen hiring Gary Cherone only comes in at 28th.

It feels like it should be much, much higher.

Van Halen was already fighting gravity in the mid-Nineties, after their LP Balance disappointed commercially and MTV essentially froze out every band from their era. The best way forward at that point was to either reunite with David Lee Roth for a tour or go into the studio with Sammy Hagar and make another killer album. They choose option C: Fire Sammy Hagar, tease a reunion with Roth at the MTV Video Music Awards, and then bring in former Extreme singer Gary Cherone to front the band for an underwhelming album and tour. “It was a bad time to be making that move,” Hagar told Rolling Stone earlier this year. “That was the biggest mistake the band has ever made.”