by a.d.ork
Hey what’s up I’m A.D. Ork and I’m here to tell you about all the bands I’ve been listening to recently. Why don’t you check ‘em out.
- The Lemonheads – Imagine if the dumbest indie rocker in Boston started a band and did a very famous cover of Simon & Garfunkel and then the singer got addicted to crack and wrote a great album called Car Button Cloth? This is what happened. You should check out the song “The Outdoor Type” if you want to understand what happens at UVM.
- Titus Andronicus – Pretty much everyone who’s heard it agrees that The Monitor is one of the best albums of this century. It’s 66 minutes long, ten songs. There are no standout songs because you have to listen to it all in one sitting.
- Nevada Bachelors – They’re an indie rock band from Seattle, 1998-2000. They’re not from Nevada. They’re not bachelors. They have two albums, Carrots & So On and Hello Jupiter. They’ve got some really strong basslines, clever lyrics, and a song talking to a private eye about how cool E-Mail is (this was from the year 2000).
- Katie Ellen – Named for singer Anika Pyle’s grandmother’s stage name (she was a radio personality on KTLN, get it?), Katie Ellen makes some very excellent, very sad indie-punk kinda stuff. You should check out “TV Dreams” from 2017’s Cowgirl Blues.
- Dillinger Four – There are four Dillinger Four albums. They play some nice fast punk with some of the most interesting placement of vocals in the mix that I’ve ever heard. They’re shouted, super compressed, and turned down just slightly lower than the instruments in a way that makes them slide right into your head without you noticing. You should listen to “Who Didn’t Kill Bambi?”, “#51 Dick Butkus”, and “Contemplate This on the Tree of Woe”.
Ted Leo & The Pharmacists – Been listening to a LOT of Ted/Rx lately. I’m seeing Ted in Boston in December. The four albums I think everyone should hear (and there are four!) are Hearts of Oak, Shake the Sheets, Living With the Living, and The Brutalist Bricks. Standout songs are “The Ballad of the Sin Eater”, “Counting Down the Hours”, “Colleen”, “C.I.A.”, and “Bottled in Cork”. Check it out.