This year we are giddy with excitement for highly productive long standing favourites to do what they do best; keep releasing great albums.
Songwhip 
Motivations
Roobin
Buck Meek, it has to be Buck Meek.
I can’t remember the last time I was so excited about an album like I am over this release.
I’ve said it before, Meek has the whole package. The wonderful storytelling, the traditional folk with lovely quirks in a unique yet familiar style.
In the singles leading up to the album and in the tune I’ve chosen – Candle – the mix sounds awesome! Drums and bass in one ear and the guitars in the other, so nostalgic and cool. Love it!
Buck gives me goosebumps all the time, he has a sincere expression that leaves me breathless. Candle is a folky country tune that makes me long for the album like a child for Christmas.
It will be amazing, I’m sure of it!
And now one day later, the album is released and it’s everything I could have ever hoped for!
Viktor
Mogwai announced their first proper album since 2017’s Every Country’s Sun to be released February 19th. This is great news! Mogwai are consistently good. Every Country’s Sun was no exception some 3 years ago. Not that they have been slacking off or anything, they have made no less than two full length soundtracks in those 3 years. Even though some soundtracks that Mogwai have worked on ranks among my favourite albums like The Fountain where they perform Clint Mansell’s amazing music together with Kronos Quartet, their own studio albums are of course where they get to express their new ideas the most freely.
Next year will see the 25th anniversary of their debut album Young Team’s release which was a genre defining album. Mogwai have honed their craft and broadened their formula while always staying distinctly themselves even as that formula has become a blueprint for so many other artists.
What I’m trying to get at is that with a new Mogwai album you’re not exactly risking anything if you pre-order it, it’s going to be good, they have 20 released albums and soundtracks to their name to prove it. Now it’s easy in such a steady stream of goodness to become complacent, as a listener and music fan that is, Mogwai seems unable to slow down in their work ethic. Seeing As The Love Continues being announced and hearing the first single that is what got me. Dry Fantasy sounded good, as was expected and the album was to be released less than a year after the soundtrack to ZEROZEROZERO. All was as it should be. I guess my response was more that of a, “cool”, rather than the more appropriate “WOW!”, “Yay!” or even a “Cool!”.
Then they released the second single Ritchie Sacramento a few days ago and I haven’t been able to stop listening to it since. It is nothing too new or experimental to be honest. It operates within the framework of Mogwai’s vocal tracks. However, on Ritchie Sacramento it all comes together, the expert song crafting, the pop-sensibilities hidden under layered noise and the sublime beauty sculpted from raw and jugged distortion. Ritchie Sacramento might have replaced San Pedro as my favourite Mogwai track and it certainly makes me well excited for As The Love Continues in just that “WOW!”, “YAY!” and “COOL!” way.
… and for our next task …
…you like but wouldn’t want to see Live.
For our last challenge last year we wrote about what we would like to see live as soon as live concerts are a thing again, well not all music is meant to be seen live.
See you in two weeks