Reporter's Notebook

A reader recommends the tenth track off the new album from Gary Clark Jr., The Story of Sonny Boy Slim. Jewly Hight recently highlighted the artist:

There was a clear path laid out for Gary Clark Jr. If he’d wanted, he could have allowed himself to be crowned the young, African-American savior of 21st-century blues guitar. After all, the guy came up in the clubs of Austin, apprenticed under Jimmie Vaughan (brother of Stevie Ray) and was welcomed as a hero among legends at Eric Clapton’s Crossroads Guitar Festival. But almost as soon as Clark stepped into the national spotlight, he began signaling that, though he knew the rules and expectations of the overwhelmingly white blues-purist and classic-rock scenes, he wouldn’t be following them.

The music video for “Grinder,” another track off Clark’s new album, is here. Wanna recommend one? Email [email protected].

Pandora threw a band at me I’d never heard of, with a genre I’d also never heard of, and the song is sticking hard. Listened to it like five times now. The band is Pelican, the genre is “Post-metal” or “Metalgaze.” From Wikipedia:

Post-metal is a mixture between the genres of post-rock, heavy metal, and shoegazing. Hydra Head Records owner and Isis frontman Aaron Turner originally termed the genre “thinking man’s metal,” demonstrating that his band was trying to move away from common metal conventions. … Pelican’s Trevor de Brauw said, “I have an affinity for metal, but I don’t think of Pelican as a metal band. So when people call us ‘instrumetal,’ or post-metal, or metalcore or whatever, I can see why they say that, but it’s not something that I feel a close connection with... I feel our [music] has more in common with punk and hardcore.”

Have a new track to recommend? Email [email protected].

It's been more than two years since I posted a Track of the Day, for better or worse.

But I chatted this song to Spencer this morning because he’s in D.C., where the Pope is, so I understand that some of the streets are shut down. And Spencer and I saw A.C. Newman with The New Pornographers in Richmond not long ago.

This song, “They Should Have Shut Down the Streets,” from Newman's 2012 solo album, does feature Neko Case on harmonies, so it sounds a lot like The New Pornographers. But it’s not. There are a certain number of band members that are needed to constitute a band, and I don’t know what that number is, but when your band has seven members, that number is greater than two. I recently remembered how good this song is, so even if no streets are shut down where you are, this is a good song for the first week of Fall. If it’s not Fall where you are, don’t listen.

When Taylor Swift lusts after a guy with “that James Dean daydream look” and brags about her “red-lip classic thing that you like,” she’s pining for something specific that is often thought of as universal: the “all-American” aesthetic, very much a Swifty fetish, one that’s more political than it may seem.

No surprise that for his 1989 cover album, Ryan Adams subbed in own alterna-dude OK Cupid interests: “Daydream Nation look in your eyes,” and “pent-up love thing that you like.” No wonder, too, that he ditched Swift’s sleek synths for herky-jerky indie rock. It makes you think of the other styles of “Style” there could be, and of all the ways different people might envision secret fun forbidden love.

(My new review of the album is here.)

Have a track to recommend? Email [email protected].

A reader recommends it:

A member of Sebadoh and Dinosaur Jr, among other bands, Lou Barlow has been writing music longer than I’ve been alive. His latest album, Brace The Wave, is pretty stripped-down, but you can see why he’s been able to stay active so long.

NPR premiered the song last month:

Barlow’s latest is a fidgety rumination on a recent decision to leave Los Angeles after 17 years, and move back to his home state of Massachusetts. Written and recorded extemporaneously with a detuned ukulele, “Moving” picks away at Barlow's attempts to let go of the past and look to a better future. “I may be chewing on my brain,” he sings,” “If I ever dare to reach / Inward on beyond belief the way I’m moving.”

Have a track to recommend? Email [email protected].

We are mere hours from an event that is celebrated among some of my friends, at least, as a kind of secular holiday: the 21^st night of September. That’s because of this track—Earth, Wind, and Fire’s “September”—which takes this very evening as its setting.

“September” is one of Earth, Wind, and Fire’s best-known songs, and there’s lots that’s familiar here and lots that’s self-evidently great. (That layered guitar intro!) So what I’ve been focusing on today is the background trombone line during the post-chorus that first appears at 1:07. It’s a brass orchestration of the rhythm section groove, and it evokes all of the song’s feelings (joy, infatuation, nostalgia) in just a few measures. Here’s hoping your September 21^st is great, even if (as here in D.C.) the clouds aren’t quite chased away.

A reader calls this new track from Beat Connection a “good song, but especially good with the video.” More from Stereogum:

The song is a vibrant electro-pop offering from their upcoming record Product 3. Set in the abandoned underbelly of urban New York, the video features the incredible dancing of Sean Douglas — known as Brixx — amidst backdrops of empty parking lots, barren streets, underground tunnels, and faraway skylines. Brixx’s fluid choreography brings life and color to the derelict scenery, his smooth moves paired brilliantly alongside Beat Connection’s catchy, electro-pop sound.

Track to recommend? Email [email protected].

Like many people, I suspect, I recall important periods of my life mostly by what I was listening to at the time. Any big moment requires (or acquires) a soundtrack. I recently moved from D.C. to Durham, North Carolina, and the soundtrack of the move has been Phil Cook’s new album Southland Mission.

It doesn’t hurt that Cook is based in Durham, but like the best work by Ry Cooder, whom he cites as a hero, the record seems to capture the palimpsest of American music, the romance of the road, and the comforts of home. “Ain’t It Sweet,” a bouncy Southern-rock groove—fiddle, organ, Skynyrd-esque piano, and a soaring slide-guitar solo—seems made to accompany a cold drink on the porch at the end of a long, late-summer day.

My colleague Sophie just flagged this new item from Vulture:

Ever since Ryan Adams announced last month that he was in the process of covering every song on Taylor Swift's 1989, we’ve been wishing he would just drop the full project already. Now our wildest dreams have come true. Adams announced today on Instagram that he’s out of the woods: The blank space where the album should be will be filled on September 21. … To celebrate the release date, Adams also unveiled his version of “Bad Blood” on Zane Lowe’s Beats 1.

Listen above. One big fan tweets:

Ryan's music helped shape my songwriting. This is surreal and dreamlike. Countdown to #RyanAdams1989 @TheRyanAdams pic.twitter.com/pGZB0uUqiB

— Taylor Swift (@taylorswift13) September 17, 2015

Sophie’s team will be covering the full album release on Monday. Have a track to recommend? Email [email protected].

The packaging for Wilco’s new album already felt like a parody of what the Internet is interested in. Star Wars + cats = the ultimate clickbait, no? Now, the rock band has taken entered the next phase of digital commentary, creating a Buzzfeed quiz to allow fans to figure out which member of the band they are, featuring lil Bitmoji pictures of musicians usually associated with depression opuses and guitar squall.

It’s not technically sponsored content—Wilco is a “community user,” contributing to the section of Buzzfeed that anyone can write for—but it is, essentially, an ad, meant to promote the single “Random Name Generator.” When I reviewed Star Wars after its surprise release in July, that track was my favorite, and now, it’s nice to see a marketing strategy that matches the song and album’s spirit—playful, small, unexpected. “I change my name every once in a while,” Jeff Tweedy sings. “A miracle every once in a while.”

A reader recommends a track from Frankie’s Dreamstate, which came out earlier this year:

Nolan Feeney a few weeks ago debuted another track from Frankie:

The 23-year-old Bay Area native and Los Angeles transplant already scored a major label deal on the strength of the buzzy, blog-approved “Problems Problems,” whose mix of modern synth-pop and girl group vocal stylings made the track feel both retro yet somehow of the moment.

Perhaps that’s to be expected from a singer who grew up listening to a mix of ’70s rock and ’90s bubblegum pop and holds artists like Stevie Nicks and the Spice Girls in equal regard. Another song called “Gold,” [listen here], sounds nothing like either of those artists, but it has its own seeming contradictions: the track has humble origins in rising producer Petros’ bedroom studio, but “Gold” sounds like it should be all over the radio with its big, in-your-face hook.

A reader writes, “This new song from Steve Earle is definitely noteworthy.” Details from American Songwriter:

Earle’s song, released in partnership with the Southern Poverty Law Center, a legal advocacy organization for civil rights, calls for the removal of the Confederate flag likeness from the Mississippi state flag. The Magnolia State is currently the only state that retains the image of the “Stars and Bars,” the battle flag of the Army of Northern Virginia during the Civil War, on its state flag.

“I grew up in the South and lived there until I was 50 and I know that I’m not the only Southerner who never believed for one second that the Confederate battle flag is symbolic of anything but racism in anything like a modern context,” Earle said. “This is about giving those Southerners a voice.”

Have a track to recommend? Email [email protected].