Birch Street Radio

Saturday, June 28, 2025

'Lost' Springsteen + new Marshall Crenshaw, Yukon Blonde, The Beths, Jacob's Run

Bruce Springsteen: Waiting On The End Of The World

"New music" in the sense that it has never been released (except for a bootleg), this 1994-vintage recording is one of 83 (!!!) songs on the just-issued Tracks II: The Lost Albums. Reviewer Josh Kitchen writes: "It's unbelievable that this song was not released until now. ... [It] feels like a perfect summation of the music found on Tunnel of Love, Human Touch, Lucky Town, and now the rest of the songs here on the Streets of Philadelphia Sessions (one of the seven 'lost albums' in this collection). It's peak Bruce, a hopeful sounding Bruce anthem about the price we pay for love."

Marshall Crenshaw: Move Now

Here's another kinda-sorta new track, from an LP called From the Hellhole, Crenshaw's nickname for his home studio. Stereogum tells us "the album’s 14 tracks include 11 repurposed from Record Store Day vinyl EPs released between 2012 and 2016, all of which have been out of print since 2016. Eight of those tracks have been remixed for the occasion. Three more tunes from across Crenshaw’s career round out the tracklist." This song is one of the originals, co-written with Dan Bern.

Yukon Blonde: Colours of My Dreams

This is the first single from Frienship & Rock 'n' Roll, a new LP due in September. The album is described as "stripping things back to spotlight the rawness and electricity of their rock 'n' roll love show." The group from British Columbia says it's "our love letter to rock ’n’ roll itself, like a dog-eared note stuffed in the locker of the universe."

The Beths: No Joy

We've been spinning the New Zealand quartet's recent single, "Metal," and now comes word of an LP, Straight Line Was A Lie, coming in August. This song deals with vocalist Elizabeth Stokes' experience with depression and treatment. "It's about anhedonia, which, paradoxically, was there both in the worst parts of depression, and then also when I was feeling pretty numb on my SSRI (medication). It wasn’t that I was sad, I was feeling pretty good. It was just that I didn’t like the things that I liked. I wasn’t getting joy from them.”

Jacob's Run: Sunday

We're glad to hear more from this Melbourne band - its first release since its self-titled debut LP in 2019. The word is that this single precedes a second album on its way, The Other Side. With Mark Opitz producing, the original line-up of Michael Jacobs (vocals, guitar), Peter Curigliano (bass, vocals) and Fabian Bucci (drums) is augmented here by a 32-piece orchestra led by conductor George Ellis - giving this gentle ballad a lush sound it doesn't really need.

Monday, June 23, 2025

New from Muse, Nation of Language, Beta Trip, James McMurtry, Shayla McDaniel

Muse: Unravelling

Nation of Language: I'm Not Ready for the Change

Beta Trip: Juliet

James McMurtry: The Color of Night

Shayla McDaniel: Pretending For Real

Sunday, June 15, 2025

Cool new sounds from David Byrne, Big Thief, Tune-Yards, Goose, Suzanne Vega

David Byrne feat. Ghost Train Orchestra: Everybody Laughs

This buoyant track will open David Byrne's upcoming album Who Is The Sky? It's due in September and features many collaborators, including St. Vincent, Paramore’s Hayley Williams, The Smile’s Tom Skinner, and New York ensemble Ghost Train Orchestra. "Someone I know said, ‘David, you use the word “everybody” a lot.’ I suppose I do that to give an anthropological view of life in New York as we know it,” Byrne says in a press release. “Everybody lives, dies, laughs, cries, sleeps ... I tried to sing about these things that could be seen as negative in a way, balanced by an uplifting feeling from the groove and the melody, especially at the end, when St. Vincent and I are doing a lot of hollering and singing together. Music can do that—hold opposites simultaneously."

Big Thief: Incomprehensible

Now a trio since the departure of bassist Max Oleartchik, the Brooklyn-based group recruited a bunch of collaborators to record their upcoming album, Double Infinity. We're told they set up New York’s famed Power Station studio and recorded live with minimal overdubs, playing for nine hours a day as they improvised arrangements. The LP is due in September, and this track will be the album opener. Adrianne Lenker's conversational lyrics describe personal reflections on time and aging during a road trip.

Tune-Yards: Swarm

We felt the need to put another track from Better Dreaming into our New Music Bin as "How Big Is The Rainbow" settles back in our giant playlist. One reviewer called this one "a funky soul-inspired piece with a bass that can motivate some serious air guitar playing."

Goose: Your Direction

The current lineup of the Connecticut-based jam band - Rick Mitarotonda (guitar), Peter Anspach (keys/guitar), Trevor Weekz (bass) and Cotter Ellis (drums) - recently released its fourth studio album. Glide Magazine writes that "Unlike the previous genre-bending Dripfield LP that saw the band making a concerted effort to adopt a more indie pop sound, Everything Must Go embraces the group’s jam band roots." The review says this track is an "album highlight thanks to a strong Fleetwood Mac influence and breezy West Coast vibes."

Suzanne Vega: Love Thief

This song from her new album, Flying With Angels, has a very different sound from anything else in Vega's discography. It has a 70s funky R&B sound, complete with background singers supplying "yeah yeah yeahs." The lyric seems to come from a desire to give love, rather than steal it. The narrator is "Loving everybody these days / Like it's some kind of craze."

Saturday, June 7, 2025

New music: Turnstile, Sunflower Bean, Pool Kids, Kathleen Edwards, The Happy Fits

Turnstile: I Care

This Baltimore group has been billed as "punk-hardcore" since its origin in 2010; its website is turnstilehardcore.com; and every review of its new, fourth album, Never Enough, seems to insist it still fits that genre. But as newcomers to Turnstile, we think a better descriptor is "versatile." The LP has some hard-edged tracks and parts of tracks, but they're mixed with strains of indie-pop, shoegaze, classic rock and even jazz and reggaeton. On this and other songs, lead vocalist Brendan Yates seems to channel Sting. Well, after all, The Police were pretty damn hardcore in their day. (Photo by Alexis Gross)

Sunflower Bean: Take Out Your Insides

We've been spinning "Champagne Taste" and "Nothing Romantic," and now with the full release of Mortal Primetime we're featuring this track that Under the Radar calls "sublime ... heartfelt, folky, and quietly devastating." The lyric is a plea to a friend or lover to share inner thoughts and feelings. Paste says the LP may be the "best album of the trio's career. Because after 10+ years of flirting with nearly every classic-rock trope under the sun, [its new record] casts aside the traditional rock-band impetus to choose an era, genre, and style of rock and roll’s past to emulate - and instead embraces all of them. "

Pool Kids: Easier Said Than Done

We're glad to hear these kids from Tallahassee, Fla., have a new album on the way. This first single is the title track, which vocalist Christine Goodwyne says reflects on how obsessive-compulsive disorder "can just rob your life of joy. Things can be going so well, and then it just sucks any enjoyment out of it." She sings: "I told you I know how to have fun / If only I could let go, it’s easier said than done."

Kathleen Edwards: Save Your Soul

The Canadian singer-songwriter says she decided to call her new album Billionaire "because the word is used in such a caustic way these days. But we should all want to be billionaires in life, to be rich in experience, friendship, purpose, and the pursuit of the things that bring us joy." OK but this song's lyric is clearly about monetary riches: "Line your pockets with gold / Who’s going to save your soul?" The LP, due in August, is co-produced by Jason Isbell, who also contributes guitar, keys and backing vocals.

The Happy Fits: Everything You Do

Three friends from the outer 'burbs of New Jersey formed this band in 2016, and had released an EP and three LPs by 2022. Since then the lineup has changed, with lead singer Calvin Langman and drummer Luke Davis now joined by Nico Rose and Raina Mullen on guitar and backing vocals. Langman says he wrote this song, from their upcoming album Lovesick, "shortly after moving to Brooklyn to live alone for the first time in my life. Maybe it’s just my social circles and algorithm, but I feel there’s a shared feeling amongst everyone right now of being overworked, underpaid, and underloved. 'Everything You Do' is my own internal battle of fighting for my heart vs. being practical and rational. Knowing me, the heart always finds a way to win."

Saturday, May 31, 2025

New releases from Yellowcard, Garbage, Caamp, Mt. Joy & Gigi Perez, Grace Potter

Yellowcard: Better Days

Here's the title track from the Florida alt-rockers' first full album in nearly a decade, due in October. Blink-182's Travis Barker produced and added his drums to every song. The band describes this number as an "unflinching reflection on gratitude, perspective and purpose."

Garbage: Hold

With the release of Let All That We Imagine Be The Light, the band's eighth studio album, we're adding this track that Melodic Magazine calls "a rallying cry for a generation lost in grief and rage - a standout track that feels tailor-made for the times." Written during frontwoman Shirley Manson’s recovery from hip surgery, the LP is "steeped in reflection and resilience, anchored by a refusal to succumb to despair," writes Under the Radar.

Caamp: Mistakes

Just months after dropping an EP, Somewhere, but three years after its last LP, the Ohio group is back this week with a full album, Copper Changes Color. This song is said to be inspired by frontman and primary songwriter Taylor Meier’s time in New York City, and seems to describe the early stages of getting to know a potential romantic partner: "Can I get to know you, honey / And all of your lovely mistakes? / I've got more than a few to show you."

Mt. Joy, Gigi Perez: In The Middle

This Philadelphia group broke big with its third album, 2022’s Orange Blood. They return with Hope We Have Fun, which includes guest spots by Nathaniel Rateliff and Gigi Perez. Frontman Matt Quinn says he co-wrote this song with Perez at a songwriter retreat, without knowing that she'd just had her own breakout with “Sailor Song.” “I probably would’ve been really nervous if I knew that she was this star songwriter and singer, so I think it just really worked in our favor,” Quinn says. “It was just two people working on a song together.”

Grace Potter: Before The Sky Falls

In a post announcing her new release, Medicine, Potter says: "Seventeen years ago, I stepped into the studio with the legendary T Bone Burnett to create an album that captured a raw, authentic sound. That album was shelved and remained unheard - until now." Glide Magazine reports that "Potter’s label was unhappy with the softer direction, which they saw as off-brand for the rock star persona they were building." Eight of the songs were reworked and re-recorded for 2010's Grace Potter and The Nocturnals. Our pick for the New Music bin is a song that was never previously released.