A new month means a new monthly playlist - here are 10 tracks, old and new, that made my ears very happy in May:
1. Waitress - Hop Along
(from Painted Shut)
Frances Quinlan from Hop Along (a band recommended to me in the wake of this blog post) is my favourite vocalist in rock right now. Her voice is at its best when she pushes it to and beyond its limits; there are moments in Waitress when it sounds like her throat is about to explode, and those moments are glorious. Top riff, too.
As I believe I've mentioned before, I love a band with a big back catalogue. There's nothing quite like discovering a whole new seam of great music to devour and trying to decide what route you'll take through it all; it's even better when your new favourite band is still active, because you know there's even more good stuff to come.
Today's blog is about the exact opposite of that. Today, I'd like to talk about three bands who only released one album before breaking up or just disappearing and never surfacing again. Where some LPs are puzzle pieces that constitute only a small part of the discography's broader picture, these three albums stand alone, each one making a single, concise statement that the artists concerned presumably never felt the need to expand upon.
Without further ado, then, here are three of my favourite one-album wonders:
Manifest! by Friends
(Released 2012)
I've been listening to this album quite a lot over the past week or so. Every song sounds like it could have been a single, perhaps because the album's ever-changing sonic palette makes every track stand out. That said, most of Manifest! is predominantly percussion-led, which appropriately enough makes the album sound like a bunch of friends gathered in a big warehouse to bang drums, shake tambourines, and sing some songs together.
Lyrically, Manifest! covers quite a lot of ground: Friend Crush is simply about wanting to friends with someone and Sorry is about wanting to be more than friends, but Ideas on Ghosts gets all deep with musings on death and I'm His Girl is a full-blown manifesto for how to have a healthy relationship with someone. Friends split up not long after releasing this debut LP, but by including loads of different sounds and pondering loads of different topics, Manifest! manages to be an extremely fulfilling listen that does indeed give us a very rounded impression of what frontwoman Samantha Urbani must be like to be friends with.
