Playlist: The night is dark and full of tеrror
This month’s Fighting with the Undertow playlist includes Garbage, Ride's Steve Queralt and Lush's Emma Anderson, Car Seat Headrest, Tunde Adebimpe and Ecca Vandal.
Welcome to Fire Red Sky’s latest playlist of the 20 best punk rock, alt rock and indie music tracks released in the last month.
Fighting with the Undertow, a line from the same Bob Mould song that provided the name Fire Red Sky, aims to help me (and hopefully you too) wade through the deluge of new music and maybe hook our next favourite band or album.
I usually update the Spotify playlist each month with 20 new tracks and try to include each band/artist just once per year to challenge myself to keep seeking out new music.
Here’s some highlights from the latest instalment of Fighting with the Undertow:
The first taste of Garbage’s eighth album Let All That We Imagine Be the Light, ‘There’s No Future in Optimism’ initially suggests just the opposite of its title, with Shirley Manson’s crooning invitation of “If you’re ready for love”, but things rapidly take a darker turn. Quickly “the night is dark / and full of terror” as helicopters fill the skies, people march and cops swarm. It’s a state of the nation address that makes the political personal, neatly sidestepping subject matter that could easily become preachy, as a driving Depeche Mode rhythm drives the band’s electronic alt rock melange.
An unexpected treat from Ride’s bassist Steve Queralt, who teams up with Emma Anderson from Lush for a tune that recalls M83 as much as it does the participants’ own bands. Among a busy year for first-wave shoegazers – with My Bloody Valentine touring, Queralt’s Ride bandmate Andy Bell putting our his third solo album, the debut on the way from Anderson’s estranged colleague in the Miki Berenyi Trio, and Swervedriver’s first record in five years due to arrive – Queralt’s own debut album Swallow could be among the best of the new releases when it arrives in June.
Ripe with biblical resonance, repeated listens of Car Seat Headrest’s 11-minute indie rock epic ‘Gethsemane’ reveal hidden layers as its different sections flow from plaintive to frenetic. It shows the same ambition as The Decemberists’ ‘Joan in the Garden’, last year’s 19-minute song marred by six minutes of ambient sound effects, but delivers on it. It’s a remarkable turnaround from singer Will Toledo’s debilitating long-COVID which almost ended the band and a marker in the ground for The Scholars, the album that was released last week and which houses the song.
Best known as the frontman of TV On The Radio, Tunde Adebimpe recently released his debut album Thee Black Boltz on Sub Pop. I could easily have picked any of the songs issued to preview the album for this playlist, all of which remind me why albums like Return to Cookie Mountain and Dear Science hit so hard in the 00s, without sounding like a re-tread of past glories. On ‘God Knows’ the vulnerability of heartbreak is carried along by an end of the night down tempo dance.
Ecca Vandal and her eponymous band are new to me, so my first thought on hearing ‘Cruising to Self Soothe’ was, “Cool, someone’s merged Turnstile and Scowl”. The track’s certainly got the bright visuals, stylistic variety and loose-limbed groove I associate with Brendan Yates’ breakout hardcore band, with a dash of the alt rock through a hardcore lens that Kat Moss’ outfit have morphed into. But South African born, Australian resident Ecca has been around since 2013, skipping through genres on her 2017 debut album and guest spots from both Sampa the Great and Refused’s Dennis Lyxzén. ‘Cruising to Self Soothe’ suggests a less peripatetic approach to her sound, one that settles into a two and a half minute blast of modern alt/punk rock.
Fighting with the Undertow - April update
Garbage - There’s No Future in Optimism
The Tubs - One More Day
Sorry Mom - Youngstown
Steve Queralt - Lonely Town (feat. Emma Anderson)
Gang Of Four - Something 99
Pelican - Indelible
Wet Leg - Catch These Fists
Raue - Escape
Car Seat Headrest - Gethsemane
Turnstile - Never Enough
Indifferent Engine - Crashing Into a Hillside in the Dead of Night
Matt Berninger - Bonnet of Pins
Mercury - Faster
Bush - 60 Ways to Forget People
Pain Of Trust - The Enemy
Laura Jane Grace - Mine Me Mine
Illuminati Hotties - 777
Tunde Adebimpe - God Knows
Ecca Vandal - Cruising to Self Soothe
Sparks - Drowned in a Sea of Tears
Playlist image by Maksym Sirman on Unsplash