Records that I enjoyed in 2019.

Here are a few records I enjoyed this year. Maybe you have/will enjoy them, as well.

Spread the Feeling (Pernice Brothers)
Sure, I enjoy those relatively recent New Mendicants and Scud Mountain Boys records and Joe Pernice’s twitter feed, but it’s been forever since the last Pernice Brothers record. As bad as it may sound, I had kinda resigned myself to the idea that there may not be another one. Spread the Feeling reminds me again why I love Pernice: quotable lyrics, Byrds guitars, a little New Order, and amazing bridges. (If you’re new to Pernice, I think he’s kind of like AC Newman, when, at his best, he combines disparate influences into something coherent and unbelievably catchy.) You know, he could have easily made a really long album to make up for lost time. But instead, he made a eleven-song album that I just want to keep flipping over and starting again.

Never Know (Author of the Accident)
I don’t really know much about Allison Chhorn, Australian artist who records under the name Author of the Accident. One day early this year, Never Know showed up in a search result for shoegaze on Bandcamp. I spent quite a bit of alone time with this record, without the help of a review or magazine article. But I think that lack of attention that Chhorn receives only adds to the mystique. There’s a dreamy, almost Velour 100 or early Map vibe at time that I enjoy. Arrangements are sparse, and the recording a little homespun. And because it’s only eight songs, Never Know doesn’t feel too long. Allison, if you’re reading this, please make more music. Thanks!

Undercurrents (Hammock)
Undercurrents was a serial album, with Hammock posting a song on its Bandcamp page each month this year. (This approach kept me aware of the record all year, which doesn’t seem to happen with streaming. Nowadays, a month seems like a year and we quickly forget about new albums.) Each song on Undercurrents is nearly 20 minutes, making the entire album nearly four hours in length. The usual Hammock-y things are here: dreamy guitars, occasional cello, and delay on the drum machine. Look, there’s no way to really discuss an album of this magnitude, but it was certainly an audacious and respectable undertaking. While maybe not really necessary for most fans, it is a beautiful record and I love it.

Flamagra (Flying Lotus)
While I like Flamagra, it’s certainly not one of my favorite FlyLo albums. But when you have a kid who loves a record, you end up listening to it a lot.

Zeppelin Over China/Warp and Woof/Sweating the Plague (Guided by Voices)
A significant amount of digital ink is spilled in Guided by Voices Facebook groups about which lineup is the best, so I’m not really going to add anything significant to that conversation. But I can say that Bob Pollard has been on a tear with this new(-ish) lineup. Very few filler tracks this year, spread across three albums (one of which was a double album). I love all three of these records.

Bioluminescence (Teen Daze)
Jamison Isaak keeps doing his thing, mixing electronic and organic sounds. I feel like he might be getting better and better at realizing his vision with each release. Or at least it feels like he’s on a journey to somewhere who knows, but I’m along for the ride. Bioluminesence is a little fuzzy, a little new age-y, a little Tangerine Dream, and maybe little ambient house. And, on many tracks, all at the same time. I enjoy this kind of music to work to.

There is No Feeling Better (Mike Adams at His Honest Weight)
Thing is, most bands trade in songwriting for cleaner production and better drum sounds. Fortunately for us, Mike Adams never got that memo. The hooks and gorgeous vocals are here, like always, but the arrangements seem even more clean this time around. (I think I said the same thing about his last album, Casino Drone; Mike just keeps getting better.) Sure, it still sounds like Mike’s spending lots of time with his Starflyer 59 and early Weezer records, but there are some songs on There is No Feeling Better that are more Friends-era Beach Boys than Friends-era Beach Boys.

Life Metal/Pyroclasts (Sunn O))))
Like many people, I was excited to read that Sunn O))) would be recording an album with Steve Albini. But then I wondered why on earth hasn’t Sunn O))) worked with Albini before now? And when I listened to Life Metal, I hoped they would record again with him and then they announced their new record Pyroclasts was recorded at the same sessions as Life Metal and then oh my goodness these records are fantastic and they almost feel like two parts of the same album. If you’ve never listened to the band, it plays really slow, sludgy metal. Not that I’ve listened to a glacier move before, but I’m guessing the band kinda sounds like a glacier moving. I don’t know, whatever. You try to describe these records without sounding ridiculous. I guess there’s maybe a little more “going on” with Life Metal to make it “accessible”? You know, with organs, vocals, horses, and whatnot. But I don’t really compare the two.

Come What May (Joshua Redman Quartet)
The last time Redman recorded with this quartet was on the very excellent record Beyond, nineteen years ago. And, like that record, Come What May is especially catchy. Like some of his best work, Redman’s playing here can be soulful and referential in ways that feel inviting. I feel like I’ve heard this record before, but in the best way possible. Oh yeah, and his show at The Folly this autumn was fun. I felt like Gregory Hutchinson was the star of the show, with a couple amazing, melodic(?) drum solos.

Young in My Head (Starflyer 59)
I’ve only met Jason Martin a few times. Although he’s not exactly talkative, it feels like we’ve been friends for a long time. 25 years, in fact, as he reminds us in the song “Remind Me.” And what do say about an old friend? He still tips his hat a lot to Terry Scott Taylor and Joey Santiago and keeps writing songs about getting old and obsolete, but this record feels a little different. It feels maybe a little more like a “solo” album, but it also rocks. Not quite like his jump from Gold to Americana, but Young in My Head feels more like a rock album than he’s made since Old. And is it me, or is Jason starting to sound a lot like the dude from Future Islands on this record?

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Ten favorites from 2018

What does it mean to write about music when most people can instantly access new music, with or without subscription services? Because music is a relational thing, maybe we need to focus our writing more on the context for the music: people involved in making it, the scene (or lack thereof) that gave rise to the music, how we experience the music, how the music shapes us, and probably even the chicanery involved in creating it.

So, this year, I want to emphasize context a little more than describing how my favorite records sound. I am not going to rank my list, because I think they’re all pretty great for different reasons.

Not Thrilled by Fine China

After some very good reunions by Swevedriver, Loop, The Dream Syndicate, Ride, and Slowdive, “getting the band back together” isn’t as bad as it once sounded. Add Fine China to that list. Sure, Rob Withem has made some great synthpop with Foxglove Hunt since the last Fine China record was released 13 years ago, but I didn’t expect a comeback album to be quite this good. Sure, it’s more of the same Smiths-meets-New Order stuff like they’ve always done (long, long before bands on Captured Tracks tried the same thing), but Withem has also been listening to Dire Straits and working on his vocals. I sure hope this isn’t the final Fine China record.

 

The Sky Looks Different Here by Paper Dollhouse

I don’t really know where ambient pop ends and dreampop begins, but I’m guessing Paper Dollhouse is somewhere in the middle. Sometimes fully-formed, and sometimes only snippets and soundscapes, the songs seem to just float by, as electronica and dub are buried beneath blankets of reverb. It kinda sounds like the group listens a lot of 4AD records that I also enjoy so maybe it’s referential and nostalgic, but the record also feels like the future. Furthermore, nobody seems to mind when they enter my office and I’m playing Paper Dollhouse. It’s kinda like the weird music that I can get away with.

 

Singularity by Jon Hopkins

When we had a baby, I feared that I’d spend my life being annoyed by Imagine Dragons or Hot Chelle Rae or something else that my son would love. But for now, he loves Jon Hopkins (and I’m perfectly fine with that). And since our son is seven and you must play songs to death when you’re a kid, we listened to Singularity a lot.

 

Absence by Kristjan Randalu

With my new job, I spend a lot of my time in an office, not in a classroom. So I find myself streaming quite a bit of music as I do paperwork. Then I become aware of how instant access to so much music might be changing me. Then I started to second-guess my feelings about the albums I enjoyed on Spotify. How could I call an album a year-end favorite if I hadn’t actually purchased it?

Absence is one such album. I haven’t purchased it (yet), so how could I call it a favorite? I’ve bought so many other ECM releases in the past, so what’s stopping me now? Where’s my commitment? Sheesh. I guess these are sorta legitimate questions, but still. Why am I so hard on myself?

Randalu is an Estonian pianist who plays in that airy, spacious, European style. The songs are focused, but they also just kinda float. I like this record a lot. I guess that’s all that matters to make it on my year-end list.

 

September Love by Stephen’s Shore

Another weird thing about music now is how, because it’s too expensive to fill your closet with records that you’ll never sell, some bands will press only a limited number of records. I get it. I still have about 15 three-inch CDs I burnt for a small tour I played back in 2002. But I also don’t feel like paying $80 for a band’s new LP on Discogs just because I learn about an album a month after the band sold out of the 25 LPs it pressed for a short tour. So until Meritorio Records re-issues the record, I guess I’ll just keep streaming it.

 

Portrait with Firewood by Djrum

I think Portrait with Firewood benefits from a single, uninterrupted listen. The album feels like a long journey through drum and bass, sparse passages of Keith Jarrett-ish improvisational piano, and even some unexpected cello arrangements. Sorry, I don’t really know how to describe this record. And I feel that’s a great thing.

 

Look Now by Elvis Costello and the Imposters

By the this point, Elvis is basically like an old friend to me. Sometimes I don’t know how good his records really are; I just buy them. He’s a great collaborator, but there’s no way he’s going to make another full-length albums with Allen Toussaint, The Roots, or Burt Bacharach. And then there was the cancer diagnosis. So I started to wonder if he’d ever release another really good solo album again. But oh my, Look Now feels like a return to Imperial Bedroom, elegant and still a little snarky. Pretty much everything I need from an Elvis Costello record.

 

Both Directions at Once by John Coltrane

Was Brian WIlson’s Smile a new record back in 2004? I’m not sure. Is Both Directions at Once, with its previously unreleased recordings, a new record? I say yes.

The songs here aren’t the usual uninteresting rough drafts for an artist’s later, more realized work. These songs were intended for a release and might have stood up well next to albums like Coltrane and Ballads. (At least I’d like to think so. But who really knows?) Plenty of (digital) ink was spilled to promote this album, featuring some outlandish claims by labels, publicists, and respected jazz artists. Not sure that I can add to the conversation in any meaningful way, but I’ve enjoyed listening to this record this year with my son.

 

Zebra by Arp

I usually buy vinyl, but sometimes I still buy CDs. This was one of the CDs I bought in 2018.

 

The Hex by Richard Swift

By 2003, I had been making music for a while. And somehow, Richard Swift obtained a CD with some of my songs. Then one of my friends got on AOL Instant Messenger after seeing Starflyer 59 play somewhere in Arizona and told me that Swift was raving about my song, “Heart Beat Next to Mine.”

Thing is, I don’t know how he got a copy of my CD. But it led to an interesting pen pal relationship where Swift would email me about his favorite Harry Nilsson records. We met a few times, and he seemed really nice. Swift became sorta like my muse, even when he moved on to playing with and producing much bigger bands.

Over the past ten years or so, Swift dabbled in old R&B, Beefheart, and doo-woppy fragments with varying results. I’d always wanted more songs than sounds and snippets from him, you know maybe a proper follow-up to Atlantic Ocean or something. But he was an artist who followed his own muse and I had to be okay with that. (It wasn’t like he was twiddling his thumbs. Swift spent the past decade producing some truly great albums for other artists.)  And now, The Hex seems like the follow-up I wanted. But since Swift passed before the album was released, it’ll also be his swan song.

Teen daze.

It’s not everyday that I find an artist like Jamison Isaak. He releases music under the name, Teen Daze. It’s not merely that he writes great pop hooks or creates luscious soundscapes (both of which he does exceedingly well), it’s that I get this irrational feeling that he understands me.

I know, I know, this is a weird thing I project on some artists. Sure, I’d like to think that some of my favorite songwriters would get me, but that’s purely one-sided. If I found myself in a room with, say, Paddy McAloon or Tracey Thorn, I wonder if we’d really have any fruitful conversation. I wouldn’t be surprised if we’d just stare at the carpet and wonder when we can go home. But I digress.

With his Teen Daze project, Isaak has been refining his idea of what pop songs and electronics can be, not unlike how the mid-nineties group Virus tried to reconcile techno, mid-tempo pop songs, and ambient music. I feel like he references a lot of sounds I enjoy: from new age music to Aztec Camera to Durutti Column and maybe a little like Sound of Ceres. Soothing electronic music with lots of major sevenths and pop hooks.

And just last week, Isaak released an EP under his own name. From the beginning with acoustic piano and pedal steel, it’s obvious why this is not a Teen Daze release. Nothing synthetic here, but it’s still that melodic wallpaper that I love.

As a special education teacher, I do a lot of paperwork and need zen-like ambient music for hours of work alone on student plans and progress reports. And as it feels like the world seems to get louder and more chaotic, I need artists like Jamison Isaak who encourage us to sit back and listen.

Comfort food.

Maybe it’s my age, or maybe it’s my loquacity. But I’ve realized that habitually expressing my opinion is an easy way to pigeonhole myself. So when I’m frequently solicited for music recommendations, I feel pressure to offer mind-blowing suggestions. I feel like I have to live up to some imaginary perception as a tastemaker. Sometimes I just want to discuss songs I enjoy. Not necessarily the ultimate or epic ones. These songs* are my comfort food. When I first heard these songs in college, I knew I was home.

For that reason, I can’t really describe the songs or explain them. To me, they’re great as they are. Maybe they won’t be as revelatory to you as they were to me in college, but I hope you enjoy them as much as I do. (For your convenience, click on the links to open the songs in Spotify.)

“Black Velvet” by The Lilac Time

“Walls Come Tumbling Down!” by The Style Council

“Frost and Fire” by Everything But the Girl

“When Love Breaks Down” by Prefab Sprout

*I realized early on that I was probably born in the wrong decade. In most cases, I found myself more interested in influences of the nineties bands I liked than the nineties bands themselves. That love for historical context inevitably drew me to bands like The Smiths, New Order, The Jesus and Mary Chain, Echo and The Bunnymen, etc. Bands that immediately preceded the big nineties alternative/indie rock bands. For the sake of simplicity, I’m not going to discuss those bands right now. (Besides, hasn’t enough digital ink already been spilled on them? I don’t know that I can meaningfully add to that discussion.)

After everything.

Personalities of its members aside, The Church is my ideal band. In the past 35 or so years, it has matured from jangly post-punk to a mix of psychedelia, ambient and dreampop. To me, the romantic ideal of a two-guitar band is embodied in The Church, as the guitarists refused to adopt the usual lead/rhythm guitarist roles. Both Peter Koppes and Marty Wilson-Piper interwove lead riffs and panned them hard-right and left. (Sadly, Wilson-Piper is no longer a member of the band.)

Last weekend, I fell back into After Everything Now This, my favorite album by The Church. The band had started falling into the usual trap of recording covers and endless jams, and After Everything Now This marked a return to songwriting. While it’s not necessarily the band’s best or most historically important record, it was the first album by The Church that I bought on its release day. The riffs (especially on this almost-title cut) bring back that warm feeling of basking in the summer sun in my Ford Aspire and impatiently waiting for the air conditioning to finally get cool.

Guess I could say more, but why don’t you just listen to the song for yourself?

 

 

Episode 112: Go Easy

Listening back through this show, I’m reminded how much I love the deep album cut. Maybe it’s my contrary nature that won’t allow me to enjoy the first few songs on a record (the accessible ones clearly aimed at some amount of radio play) or maybe I just like those moody songs that land after the album’s hype and hooks. Or, could it be those really are the best tracks on the album?

Whatever the case, it feels good to be back, blathering about the music I love.

1. “Maple Trees” by Cascading Slopes (Towards a Quaker View of Synthesizers / Plastiq Musiq / 2013)
2. “Four Long Years” by Wire (Object 47 / PinkFlag / 2008)
3. “Sun” by Echo Lake (Era / No Pain in Pop / 2015)
4. “English Subtitles” by Swervedriver (I Wasn’t Born to Lose You / Cobraside Distribution / 2015)
5. “It’s Easy” by Robert Pollard (The Crawling Distance / Guided By Voices Inc. / 2009)

Radio Free Raytown – Episode #112 (07/01/15)

Top Ten of 2014

Before I begin with my list of ten favorite albums from 2014, here are a few of the usual caveats.  This is a list of my favorite, most frequently played, records released in 2014. In no way is this an objective list of the year’s best albums. (You won’t find Swans or Scott Walker here. While releasing some of the best albums of this year, or any year, I rarely listened to them in their entirety.) Also, a couple albums were unexpectedly released after I had finished this list. Since their vinyl releases won’t be until next spring, I’m just going to pretend they’re 2015 releases and discuss them next year. (Yes, I’m referring to Luxury, Steve Taylor and D’Angelo.)  And finally, there are some albums I’ve recently purchased that I’m still processing, still trying to get my head around.  (Maybe I’m just being difficult, but I don’t feel like including the Iceage and Protomartyr albums in this list.  Please forgive me, but I’m still trying to figure them out.)

1.  Rising Son / Takuya Kuroda

Rising Son was, by far, the album I listened to the most in 2014. It provided great background music while students worked, and it was excellent for my planning periods. At first, I felt the album was a Xerox of a mid-seventies Roy Ayers or CTI-era Freddie Hubbard record, but then I realized that Kuroda really does bring some strong, memorable hooks.  The drumming also brings it up to date, with Nate Smith playing up to his hip-hop influences and tipping his hat to Questlove on nearly every track.

2.  Hendra / Ben Watt

There’s absolutely nothing new about Ben Watt’s first solo album in 30 years, and that’s the best part. Invoking influences like Steely Dan and Fleetwood Mac, this could have easily been an exercise in nostalgia, but Watt brings pop hooks and some decent, thoughtful lyrics. The packaging is gorgeous, including a poster for the lyrics. The art is incredible, insulting anyone who’d be content with a download.

3.  Atlas / Real Estate

Believe it or not, I don’t intentionally try to be difficult.   So why have I been so hesitant to admit that I enjoy Real Estate?   I think I’m finally at the point where I’ll admit to liking its last album, but I really, really love Atlas.  It’s one of those rare albums where I imagine the band just walked in, laid down its tracks and left.  (Obviously, bands don’t really do that anymore, but uncluttered arrangements lend themselves to that impression.)

4.  Bécs / Fennesz

Somehow I doubt that Christian Fennesz cares for all the micro-subgenre labels in electronic music.  Sure, he’s influenced by glitch and ambient, but his music feels more alive than that.  Bécs is a great example of how an artist can treat a laptop as an instrument, especially on the tracks “Static Kings” and “Liminality.”  His music allows me space to think, to work and to dream.

5.  Syro / Aphex Twin

As time went on, I felt like I was alone in my love for drukqs, Richard James’ last album as Aphex Twin from 2001.  Sure, it was a bloated double-disc, but I enjoyed all of it: all the weird electronic stuff, the minimalistic piano exercises and experiments with prepared piano.  So obviously I was ecstatic at the promise of a new Aphex Twin record, but I also feared that James might feel pressure to get aggressive and do EDM to be relevant or something. The best part about Syro is that it’s just a continuation of his unique vision to write real songs and make technology groove and breathe. No idea yet where it fits into his canon, but it sure is a great album.

6.  Fortuna / Popstrangers

Apparently nineties indie rock has become the thing to imitate.  And the fact that I’m complaining about that probably means I’m getting old.  Sure, Fortuna sounds like a Deerhunter record, but it feels more cohesive than what Brandon Cox usually delivers.  I’ve been rewarded with how Popstrangers takes its time to develop even the murky songs.  Maybe not the best album of the year, but with many long hours at work, Fortuna just made sense.

7.  Home Everywhere / Medicine

Brad Laner and his band Medicine are like old friends.  Or maybe more like that older brother who schooled me on good music.  (But unlike my real-life stepbrother who introduced me to Dinosaur Jr. and The Cure, Laner hasn’t grown boring with age.)  After nearly two decades apart, the band Medicine reformed in 2013 and released a new album, To the Happy Few, with its trademark mix of psychedelic pop and tape-mangled industrial noise was still in tact.  This year, the band took things a little further, testing listeners’ limits with dense layers and almost too many musical ideas in each verse.  So of course I loved it, especially because it’s on beautiful people vinyl.

8.  You’re Dead / Flying Lotus

Steven Elison has tinkered with jazz on his previous Flying Lotus albums, but You’re Dead finally feels like his first jazz record.  The electronics are still compressed to the point of absurdity, but he uses more live instruments on this album.  Elison’s great success is in creating his most cohesive album.  So much so that it becomes difficult to discern between tracks, at times.  Given the complexity of the arrangements, it’s remarkable how short the album feels.  It’s a mind-trip, but I was quick to start the album over many times this year.

9.  Deep Fantasy / White Lung

Remember when you first listened to “Whirring” by The Joy Formidable and the band ripped off your face for nearly seven minutes straight? That’s kind of the feeling I still get from listening to Deep Fantasy, except that the intensity lasts for the entire album. Heavy, aggressive, melodic and brief.  Just what the doctor ordered.

10.  Into the Lime / The New Mendicants

The New Mendicants feature Norman Blake from Teenage Fanclub and Joe Pernice from Pernice Brothers, two of my favorite bands. But I’m not gonna lie, I was a little disappointed when I first listened to Into the Lime. I hoped for big power pop, but the record feels a lot more front porch-ish and acoustic. The vocals are upfront and mostly unaffected, Blake’s acquiescence to role as a background vocalist is frustrating and gone are many lush layers I’d come to expect from either artist.  But the songwriting is great, and I just lived in this album for a couple months. Some of my favorite albums are the frustrating ones, and Into the Lime was the difficult album that grew into a favorite this year.

Discovering Satchidananda.

I played alto and baritone saxophone in jazz bands through high school and into early college but rarely listened to jazz for enjoyment.  Early in college, when I started listening to Miles Davis and Dizzy Gillespie for fun, I discovered the Red Hot on Impulse compilation from Impulse Records.  Looking back, this should have been an insane leap for me, but it completely made sense at the time.  See, I loved the music of Charlie Peacock, he loved John Coltrane, this CD featured music by both John and Alice Coltrane, and it was in the record stores bargain bin.

Red Hot on Impulse opens with Alice Coltrane’s “Journey in Satchidananda.”  At that formative time in my discovery of music, I had never heard free jazz, I only knew of sleigh bells in Christmas music, and the only context I had for sitar was Indian music (this was before I listened to The Beatles).  The collision of jazz and world music was unlike anything I had ever heard before.

Pharoah Sanders’ solo in “Journey in Satchidananda” is captivating. Quite possibly my favorite tenor sax solo of all time.  Effortlessly bridging bebop, free and out there astral jazz, he weaves together nearly a quarter century of jazz history with cascading arpeggios.  Sanders’ solo is one of longing, searching, yearning.

His restraint and melody are especially uncharacteristic, especially after all his experimenting with John Coltrane’s quartet and sprawling work on his own solo albums.  Although his playing on Don Cherry’s Symphony for the Improvisers was memorable and breathtaking, it’s not especially melodic.

Anyway, I feel the term spiritual is thrown around too freely when describing the music of John or Alice Coltrane.  While they both had spiritual motivations and wanted to convey spiritual lessons, perhaps visceral is a more accurate term in describing much of their music that eludes easy description.  Sanders’ solo isn’t merely an academic exercise; it’s. His solo has to be felt.

Rotation (1/21/13)

Long before last.fm, Instagram and Facebook sharing, an important tool in musical discovery on the internet was through the sharing of rotations on message boards and email discussion lists. Inspired by radio stations that would post the singles currently in rotation, people would share lists of recently played albums.

While they could be perceived as exercises in elitism or narcissism, these lists also served as recommendations (for albums that required years of scouring local record stores). Hopefully this list is helpful, as not everything I listen to can be scrobbled.

Just a list, in no particular order, of what I’ve been listening to over the past two weeks or so.

10. The Bears for Lunch – Guided by Voices (Guided by Voices / 2012)
9. Coltrane – John Coltrane (Impulse! / 1962)
8. Opus de Jazz – Milt Jackson (Savoy / 1956)
7. Third Stream Music – The Modern Jazz Quartet + Guests (Atlantic / 1960)
6. Out of the Woods – Tracey Thorn (Astralwerks / 2007)
5. It’s a Jungle in Here – Medeski, Martin and Wood (Ryko / 1993)
4. Car Alarm – The Sea and Cake (Thrill Jockey / 2008)
3. A Smattering of Outtakes and Rarities – Yo La Tengo (Matador / 2005)
2. Low – David Bowie (RCA / 1977)
1. Stage – David Bowie (RCA / 1978)

Episode 106: The middle of July in a stocking cap.

Dan Billen, performing with The Billions

I don’t know what the weather’s like in your neck of the woods, but it’s been insanely hot in Raytown this summer. About the only thing worth doing is watching my son play around in the living room and listening to records. Fortunately for us, a ton of great music has been released in the past few months.

I’m occasionally accosted by dudes who want me to play their music on my show. (As if they’ll see a substantial uptick in albums sold, right??) Usually their music is, at best, mediocre. But when Michael Edwards told me to check out his band, I was blown away. Not because it was the best thing I’ve ever heard or that it was something entirely new. No, the band impressed me with how comfortable it feels with itself and the audience. In this episode, I play a song from Genetic Engines’ new EP, Feed My Mind. Please buy it. It’s only four bucks.

I’m also petitioning discerning music lovers to buy Dan Billen’s new EP, Not Alone. Billen is a long-time friend who played bass in The Billions. Since the band broke up, he has quietly sat by as his brother amassed quite a catalog of indie pop. (Truth be known, he and his wife were trying to get their family started, a focus of many of his songs.) Like his best work in The Billions, Not Alone, boasts diverse styles and honest lyrics. Name your price and buy it.

I’m excited to record another episode. It seems like it’s been forever since my last one. I hope you enjoy. (For some reason, WordPress won’t allow me to stream episodes like I used to, so just use the download link at the bottom.)

1. “Into the Cold” – Genetic Engines (Feed My Mind / independent / 2012)
2. “When We Come To” – Michael Miller (When We Come To / Shiny Shiny / 2003)
3. “Flying Backwards” – Doug Gillard (Malamute Jute / Cushion Records / 1998)
4. “Let a Dreamer Dream” – Dan Billen (Not Alone/ independent / 2012)
5. “See Right Through Me” – The Bats (Free All the Monsters / Flying Nun / 2011)

Radio Free Raytown – Episode #106 (7/20/12)