26 February 2020: Kewl Pinguino After Dark (fill-in for Jeffrie)

Note: this was a fill-in for Jeffrie.

Set 1

“It Was There That I Saw You” by …And You Will Know Us By the Trail of Dead

Thought this would be a good opening song for a nighttime show.

“Airbag” by Radiohead

I finally included a Radiohead song! My oft-repeated answer to “What’s your favorite band?” is that my top two are Radiohead and Pavement. This song was one of a few Thom Yorke wrote about cars. He was in an accident many years prior, and it inspired a bit of a fear of them in him. The other two are “Stupid Car” from their first release, the Drill EP, and “Killer Cars,” which was a Bends-era B-side.

“Maidenhead” by Protomartyr

First track from their second album, Under Color of Official Right. Apparently it’s inspired by a book called Hangover Square by Patrick Hamilton.

“Objects of My Affection” by Peter Bjorn and John

If you don’t recognize the name of the band, you probably know them for “Young Folks”, aka the song with the whistling. This is the track right before that one from the same album, Writer’s Block, which came out in 2006.

“Click Click” by the Wedding Present

I was really into the Wedding Present for awhile. This is from Watusi, which came out in 1994, so it’s not an early work of theirs representative of the “fast” style they were known for early on. They had already started moving away from that, and this is one of the more accessible examples of their 90s style.

Set 2

“Desire” by Ought

From their third and most recent album, Room Inside the World. Ought have had a weird thing where lead singer Tim Darcy changes his voice every album (and even, between the first and second, his name). On Room he has a bit of a crooner vibe, almost.

“Sweet Disposition” by the Temper Trap

Honestly I only know this song from (500) Days of Summer. It’s from that same time period as “Objects of My Affection” when indie went commercial and showed up in, like, every movie’s soundtrack. Anyway, I like this song, but I don’t know much about their other stuff.

“Magic of Meghan” by Dry Cleaning

Dry Cleaning are a new band from London that I’ve been really excited about lately. I found them through a Pitchfork review (reading them is a vestige of my days as a hipster in middle school) and really loved what I heard. They’ve only got two EPs out as of now, and I’m excited for whatever they do next. This song is from the first of them, Sweet Princess, and is probably their best known as of now because of its subject matter: it’s about Meghan Markle. It came out prior to Megxit, and for a post-punk band to speak positively about a royal is pretty unusual.

“Stay Useless” by Cloud Nothings

Somehow I only found out about Cloud Nothings this past week. Glad I found them though. This song is from Attack on Memory, produced by Steve Albini.

Streaming