Top8 - 01/05/25

January 06, 2025 - 02:06 PM

Welcome back to Top8. I want to wish everyone a very happy new year. Although, realistically, we all know 2025 will be one of the worst years of our lives. Personally, I am hoping that the bird flu kills me before the state of WV makes it illegal for me to step outside, but hey, I guess we will all find out together.

December 2024 marked the end of a personal era for me as I wrapped up my personal show, Attention Please. I am starting grad school this month and I just didn't feel like I could spend the kind of time on the show that I needed in order to feel good about it. I am planning to keep co-hosting The Crows Nest with my dear friend Andrew Adkins, as well as maintain this blog. I expect that the blog may get a little shorter as a result. Which is funny given that it has frequently been much longer than it was supposed to be. 

Please send all time management ideas to wtsq.org/contact, whenever you get around to it anyway. 



Tony From Bowling - Appear

They had me at loud, noisey rock. Tony From Bowling are a band from up in Morgantown. We've been lucky to have them play several shows down in the southern part of the state, including, very memorably, a couple years ago at Basecamp. This is the kind of rock that could destroy your stereo, get you kicked out of an apartment, or maybe end a relationship. Those goddamned kids and their rock and roll music. "Appear" is the first single released ahead of an upcoming album. The usual Tony From Bowling sound is here – it's loud and distorted, but with just a little late 60's psychedelic jangle. All this bodes well for the next album. We are lucky to have this band in the vicinity, and if you get a chance to check them out you really should.


Horsegirl - Julie

Horsegirl's new album is due out in February and "Julie" is the second single released ahead of it. I was a big fan of 2022's "Versions of Modern Performance", so I am excited to see where the band goes next. This song and the first single, "2468" are both quieter songs with more space and jangle. I absolutely like this, but I am not sure I am going to enjoy this as much as the last album. Because Horsegirl is such an interesting band, I am excited to find out one way or another.


Drop Nineteens - Shannon Waves

Back in 1991, (approximately 180 years ago) Drop Nineteens recorded a demo that got them a deal with Caroline records. Feeling bullish about their skills and the band itself, they decided not to re-record any of the demos for their debut album, but write entirely new songs instead. That album was the classic "Delaware", and the demos were left to wander the dusty corners of Youtube as a bootleg. After a 30 year break, the band recently reunited for some shows and 2023's "Hard Light". Which brings us to this year's release of an album called "1991" made up of those old demos, remastered. All of which is to say that you may have heard "Shannon Waves" before, but you should check it out again because it sounds better this time. This is pure classic era hazy shoegaze goodness. And since you usually can't understand shoegaze lyrics anyway, they just made this one an instrumental.


Lots of Hands - Game of Zeroes

There is a laconic, sorta stoned, uneven sway to "Game of Zeroes". At times it starts and stops in a way that makes it sound like a random assemblage of sound clips. There's a banjo (I think??) and a fiddle dancing around a howling distorted guitar and a weirdly distorted vocal. All this makes me think of Teen Suicide, which means this is one of my favorite songs this week. 


Superheaven - Numb To What is Real

Bands like Superheaven are odd to me in some ways. Here's a band usually classified as "grunge revival" which formed 17 years ago, broke up, got back together, and released a double single. So, the revival has revived. We have reached the end of history.

None of which really has anything to do with this being a great track. When this first came on, there was something a little… meh about it to me. But I got distracted and kept it playing in the background. By the time I was a minute in, I was banging my hands on the table with the drums. I don't even know what I didn't like either because this is just great. The sound is crushing and evokes classic Deftones or Smashing Pumpkins. The vocals are beautifully strained and emotive. This isn't trying to just rehash the past. There's something new and cool here.


2nd Grade - I Wanna Be On Your Mind

First there was pop music. Music made to intentionally follow tastes and pander to the largest common denominator. As pop became a more and more soulless endeavor, some people held to the bubblegum earnestness of its origins and created power pop. Decades after all these trends have come and gone, we still have a few bands making pop in that traditional rock style.

2nd Grade is one of the bands doing this right. If you're like me, "I Wanna Be On Your Mind" will make you think of Belle and Sebastian or The Sundays. This is comfort food to me. The band has some sonic diversity though and you will be rewarded if you check out their other music.


Being Dead - Van Goes

"Van Goes"  is the kind of angular post punk that was created specifically for me. There's a sort of psychedelic swirl here which makes the song feel like it lasts longer than its three and a half minutes. The band sounds like they are just fooling around while still sounding really tight here. Contradictions are good for music.


Noeline Hofmann - August

About half a year ago, I heard Noeline Hofmann on Western AF singing a song called "Purple Gas". She would go on to duet on that with Americana superstar Zach Bryan. Although this got her a lot of very well deserved attention, Bryan was, in my opinion, dead weight in that performance; Hofmann doesn't need any help.

She very much proves me right on her debut EP, also titled "Purple Gas". It includes a solo performance of that song, as well as five other excellent tracks, including "August" which I am including here. There are echoes of (fellow Canadian) Neil Young's "Harvest Moon" in this track's waltz time. Hofmann makes the hard times of a rural farmer sound sweet backed with a band. That's a trick great country music has; you can cry, dance, or do both.


And this week's extra innings. Just a few other things I am listening to.

Karl Hendricks Trio - Baseball Cards

The Sundays - Goodbye

Seu Jorge - Queen Bitch (Bowie Cover)

And a playlist with everything.



Thank you all for reading and listening. 

-emily