January Playlist: Just One Rose

Good news, everyone: monthly playlists are back for 2016! Here are 10 of the tracks that most tickled my tympanic membrane in January...

1. Animal Life - Shearwater

(from Animal Joy)

Shearwater are a band I've been meaning to investigate for ages, and January 2016 was the month in which I finally got around to it. Animal Joy was the album I purchased (thanks to @dickiesview on Twitter for the recommendation), and it's a very strong set of songs - Animal Life could well be one of my all-time favourite opening tracks, and I've only owned its parent album for about two weeks.

Negative Qualities

I first discovered Single Mothers in the dying hours of last year's Primavera Sound festival. They were the very last band I saw that week in Barcelona; it was about 3 o'clock in the morning, I was completely knackered, and yet somehow, this bunch of Canadians and their rowdy punk rock music persuaded me to summon my last ounce of energy and jump around a bit before shuffling back to the hotel.

If this unexpected second wind was attributable to one factor in particular, then that factor was Single Mothers frontman Andrew Thomson. His unhinged on-stage behaviour and reckless disregard for his own body was unlike anything I've ever seen before; when he wasn't spitting throat-shredding vocals into the microphone, he was throwing himself around, tumbling over the crowd barrier, and generally trying to ensure that the sting of tomorrow's hangover (I'm pretty certain he was plastered) would be drowned out by the pain of a thousand bruises.

Upon my return from Spain, I more or less forgot about Single Mothers, although happily I did remember to add their latest album, Negative Qualities, to my Amazon wishlist before the memories of that evening (well, morning) faded away.

Fast-forward to the 25th of December and what should I unwrap on Christmas Day but, well, this:

The image above is the cover art for Negative Qualities (the only non-Okkervil River CD that joined my collection this past Christmas), and its primitive cave-painting portrayal of men in their underpants assaulting each other against a backdrop of spilled booze and broken glass serves as a pretty neat summary of what's on the disc itself. This is a punk record that packs a punch, even before Drew Thomson sidles up to the mic; the meaty basslines and trashy drums and gnashing guitar lines make Single Mothers sound like some sort of angry, sped-up cross between Queens of the Stone Age (Overdose in particular reminds me of the first track on Songs for the Deaf) and Urusei Yatsura.

Primavera Sound 2015: 5 New Faves

In my last blog post, I told you all about my first Primavera Sound festival - the good bits, the bad bits, the cool stuff, the uncool stuff, and so forth. However, you may remember that I was tantalisingly reluctant to talk about the new bands that I'd discovered during my time at the festival, and that's because I was saving that blog for today.

Single Mothers (Pitchfork, Saturday)

Without further prolongment, then, here are five of my favourite new (to me, anyway) bands from Primavera Sound 2015. I'd strongly recommend that you kick-start your weekend by listening to all of them.

• We'll start, topsy-turvily, with the very last act I saw last week: Single Mothers, a punkrocky foursome from Canada. Thousands would disagree with me, but I thought they were the perfect band for 3.10 in the morning; they re-invigorated my tired ears (not to mention my tired feet) and got me to a place where I could jump around for one last time before going home. I particularly enjoyed the singer's complete disregard for his own wellbeing as he tumbled about the stage and in and out of the crowd.