Finally, some absolutely breaking headlines! These albums have just been released and are itching for listeners highly attuned to quality hooks and elevated sentiment. Get them while they’re hot!
A new Gregory Pepper EP is definitely a top news story for me. There’s something about his idiosyncratic songwriting and performance style that bolts to the top of my news feed every time. But what is The Dream? If the lyrics here are anything to go by its about shopping at dirt malls, shoplifting at the funeral store, freeing lab animals, and blue-skying the storage possibilities of a brand new dumpster. Then again, perhaps these are snippets of distorted dreams and nightmares rather than literal observations. I’d venture to say that the real dream-like quality of this release is in the music as Pepper is a master of carefully calibrated exercises in sonic shading. It’s the uniquely drawn-out textures of the songs on this EP that really stand out. “Dirt Mall” is a fabulously put-together collision of melodic elements – percussion, guitar, vocals. “Stuck on a Fence” has a roomy feel where the drum is up front while the vocals loom overhead. “Invisible Man” is stripped-back sonic eloquence, defined mostly by just the percussion and bass. “Funeral Store” leans on piano, toy version and otherwise. I love the cacophony of stringed instruments populating “Brand New Dumpster.” Then “What Was The Dream?” layers the vocals in a Beach Boys kind of meditation. For many “We Squish Bugs” will round out this EP with a march-like baroque flourish. But if you source the record from Pepper’s bandcamp site you get two extra songs. One is a rougher take on “Stuck on a Fence” but the other may just be the this outings most outstanding track. “Like You Don’t Already Know (You’re My Voodoo Doll)” sounds like a breezy 1960s pop masterpiece, overlaid with an enticing lead guitar line.
The new Super Ratones album Camouflage is pure fun. The record pulls together a host of covers originally contributed to other projects as well as reimagined versions of songs from the band’s own back catalogue. The end product is a lively mix of tracks sung in either English or Spanish (sometimes both) that somehow cohere into a real party LP with an identity all its own. It’s also one that takes in the whole scope of the band’s history in terms of their recording career and including contributions from late founding member José Luis “Person” Properzi. The former is covered by the inclusion of an alternative version of “Barbara Anne” that initially appeared on the band’s debut LP Rock de la playa. The latter with “Coplas del musiquero” where the band finished a song featuring a Properzi vocal. In terms of covers, the variety here is impressive, ranging from the Beatles, Squeeze, The Posies, John Lennon, Charly Garcia and Fountains of Wayne. Two Tom Petty tracks also make the cut, “Into the Great Wide Open” and “Running Down the Dream” (the latter sung in Spanish as “El sueño que viví”). Personal faves include the band’s treatment of Squeeze’s greatest hit “Tempted,” not an easy song to cover, and the acoustic reimagining of their own “Carreras de aviones.”
Slack Times are back actively Casting for new fans. Think of their new album as an open call to discover what this southern United States indie band have been up to all these years. Hint: everything comes slathered in delicious jangle. The sound is still kinda REM-meets-C86 with perhaps a dash of The Church thrown in. “Right Time” certainly strikes the right chord as the opening number. Feel the rush as the jangly lead guitar bristles in near constant accompaniment to what is going on. “Goodbye” is more easygoing but still ebullient with a lead guitar that practically sings the melody. “Swing the Dial” changes things up again with a more lurching sway. “Cast-out” and “Long Shot” alter the mood with a more melancholic feel. I hear echoes The Primitives on “Wayside” and Together Pangea on “In the Way” but that could just be me. The band even ace a fab instrumental cut with “Smooth II.” I’m signing up for Casting. You should too.
I discovered Toronto’s Jay Feelbender the other night opening for Dent May and I loved what I was hearing. Sure, his onstage banter was droll and amusing. But it was his impressive live sound that really grabbed me, at times blistering and intense, at others intimate and personable. He was mostly playing tracks from his 2025 LP Gallery of Desire, along with few more recent cuts like “1 Hour Photo.” Played live the songs were more rocking but the pop undercurrent defining the album versions remained strong. Case in point, “Benny’s Sleepover,” a song that has so many seductive elements working on the listener at the same time. There’s captivating lead guitar licks, understated vocals, and a wall of guitars that drop in from time to time. Personally, I love the shimmering guitar pop goodness defining “Summer Camp Love Letters.” Stylistically, songs riff on the 1950s (“Party Down the Street”) right up the 1980s (“Trust Yourself”) and beyond (“Champagne Coma”). There’s a neo-Springsteen quality to a number of tracks here that speaks to a degree of authenticity that’s impossible to fake. Few artists can sing about ‘getting drunk in your car’ (from “Pink Whitney”) or praying for someone (from “Pray for You”) without descending into cliché. “Angel” even verges on rockabilly in a Springsteen sort of way. What we have here is a great album and a very promising clutch of singles.
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Photo courtesy Thomas Hawk Flikr collection.
Feel free to cancel Christmas, my present came early with Gregory Pepper’s new single “I’ve Got a Bottle.” Pepper is Canada’s should-be favourite curio pop songwriter. Master of styles, piquant tunesmith, a clever with words guy, Pepper never fails to deliver the goods. But I have to say, it’s been a while – too long. Pepper took a year to write a song a week during 2017-18 while weathering the loss of his father, arrival of a baby daughter, and driving the occasional snow plow. But now the word has come down that a new album of Pepper tunes – I Know Why You Cry – will drop in the new year. I can’t wait! Seriously, waiting is not my strong point. But in the interim you have this delightful dollop of Pepper pop craftmanship. Enjoy, and get ready for a fab Pepper-stravaganza coming to this station sometime this February.
Christmas music gets a bad wrap (pun intended). Some people seem to think that you can take any old song and throw a seasonal reference in and – voila! – holiday classic. Hardly. Every year an ocean of new Christmas songs hit the holiday beach but few have any staying power. There is something inexplicably magical about the combination of tune, sentiment, and bells that maketh music genuinely seasonal. Kinda like if tinsel and marzipan had a soundtrack. Fortunately, there are a few tunesmiths who still understand how to work the formula, with some of the finest featured here on our now annual holiday music post!
Nine. I don’t why or how I settled on that number but my three previous holiday music posts have all featured nine artists. Weird. Well, I’m not one to needlessly buck tradition so here’s nine more … starting with the amazing Lannie Flowers. Flowers is a longtime veteran of the power pop/indie music scene, charming audiences with his consistently Beatlesque melodic hooks. He returns this year with a remixed version of his 2013 holiday release, “Christmas Without You,” a song that nicely combines jangle with just a hint of country. Next up is a very modern take on seasonal themes, namely, that surely Joseph would have had some doubts about just what was going on with Mary and their miracle baby. Only the New Pornographers could pull off such content and they do on “Joseph, Who Understood,” a new holiday, sing-along classic. Proving their recent comeback Good Times! album was no fluke, the Monkees return this year with a whole album of festive music, with a similar crew of indie pop royalty providing the tunes and musical direction. There’s plenty of good stuff here but “The House of Broken Gingerbread” stands out for me as a superior poprock tune, written by celebrated author Michael Chabon and FOW’s Adam Schlesinger. I’m kinda cheating a bit with this next contribution from Gregory Pepper who just released his holiday-themed four song EP Tsundere. I’m treating his effort like a double-A sided effort, but one with four songs. Pepper’s work sounds deceptively simple but melodically and lyrically he’s a master of so many genre styles and a brilliantly funny and smart lyricist. Spend some time with these tunes. Anybody who can song-check both Macca (“Secret Satan”) and the mopey one (“Home Alone”) knows what he’s doing!Lannie Flowers – Christmas Without YouThe New Pornographers – Joseph, Who UnderstoodThe Monkees – The House of Broken Gingerbread
Digging a bit deeper into our Christmas music bag, Pugwash prove they are the deserving inheritors of XTC’s brand of hooky, intelligent indie poprock with “Tinsel and Marzipan,” capped with a darling Irish-accented child at the end! Crossing the water to Liverpool Rob Clarke and the Wooltones Mersey up the Christmas music scene with a whole album of festiveness on Bring Me the Wooltones This Year! It’s a very Beatles-ish collection of serious and not so serious contributions, with new songs and old faves. The double-A single for me would be “Another Wooltones Xmas Record/Santa Claus.” It can’t be a Christmas tune-age roundup without a tender ballad of seasonal longing so now we head a bit north to Glasgow to hear from The Pooches and their simple song of needing to be with someone as the yuletide comes, “Christmas, With You.” Both stark and moving. Super poprock stars Fun. haven’t put out much in terms of albums but they did put out a holiday single shortly after their first album. “Believe in Me” bears all the hallmarks of that band’s winning formula: intriguing change ups in the song structure, toy piano solos, and plenty of hooks of course.Pugwash – Tinsel and MarzipanThe Pooches – Christmas (With You)Fun. – Believe in Me
Wrapping up this year’s holiday blog post (literally this time), something more traditional. Well, sort of. Quiet Company love the holidays and we’ve featured their stellar coverage of the traditional canon before. Now they’re back with a timely release that captures the distemper of the times with Baby It’s Cold War Outside. With song titles like “Merry Christmas, The President is Terrible” and “Alone on Christmas (You’re Going to Die)” the sense of seasonal dread really comes through. But the traditional themes of hope are there too with “Little Drummer Boy” and particularly on their original reworking of “Carol of the Bells/Setting the Trap.”
Ah, the telephone. That iconic 20th century technology is all over the rock and roll canon, mostly in its original analog form but with a few recent smartphone additions. Plenty of obvious telephone songs to choose from in terms of hits: The Marvelettes’ “Beechwood-45789,” ELO’s “Telephone Line,” Blondie’s “Call Me,” Tommy Tutone’s “867-5309,” and many, many more. There’s also a slew of less obvious yet popular niche tunes like the Nerves’ “Hanging on the Telephone,” Nick Lowe’s “Switchboard Susan,” and R.E.M.’s “Star 69.” But in this post I wanted to feature some less obvious material, either with songs that focus on key aspects of the phone experience or by lesser known but certainly deserving artists.
“Party Line” appeared on the Kinks’ 1966 album Face to Face and even saw release as a single in Norway (it was the B-side of “Dandy” everywhere else). Leave it to the Kinks to go right for the classed aspect of the modern phone experience, no surprise really given Ray Davies’ lyrical attention to social issues. Nearly everybody from a working class background in the 1950s and 1960s had a party line, a cheaper phone service that you had to share with other households. Like “Dead End Street” and “Picture Book” the song catalogued the not-so-hidden injuries of class in 1960s England, in this case the indignity of the singer’s failed efforts to make a private call. At one point he even mock threatens, “I’m not voting in the next election if they don’t do something about finding out who is on my party line.” One can definitely hear the cross-pollination of Kinks/Beatles reciprocal musical influences on this tune, particularly on the guitar work.
The Records debuted with a pretty great album, 1979’s Shades in Bed, featuring should-be hits like “Starry Eyes” and “Teenarama.” The record also featured “The Phone,” which opened with a classic operator voice-over announcing “I’m sorry, but that number doesn’t answer. Would you please try your number again.” The singer bemoans the phone’s ability to bring food, love and possibly danger but not necessarily connection. In contrast to such serious themes, Rupert Holmes showcases the lighter side of 1970s telephonic tunes on “Answering Machine” from his 1979 album Partners in Crime. In the late 1970s answering machines were just taking off as mass market items and Holmes’ protagonists play an early game of telephone tag with a marriage proposal and response, including the distinctive (and jarring) message-ending beep.
But enough of the past – there are some great recent telephone songs too. Twin Peaks kick up their heels on the rollicking “Telephone” from their 2014 album Wild Onion, a song that sounds so light but recounts love lost via the phone line. Mo Kenney also finds the phone a barrier to communication with her significant other. From Kenny’s 2014 release In My Dreams, the song has some great lines, both lyrical and melodic, and a great 
