Tag: 2020

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Best tunes of 2020: #15 Venus Furs “Chaos and confusion”

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“Paul Kasner is a perfectionist in the same way Kevin Shields, Anton Newcombe, and Thurston Moore are perfectionists. So, it’s probably befitting that all three of the aforementioned artists were among the many influences on Venus Furs, the self-titled debut from Kasner’s solo moniker of the same name.”

These are not my words but those of music writer Dom Gourlay conjured for one of my favourite music zines, Under the Radar. These are the words that he opened his eight out of ten review for “Venus Furs”, still the only album released by Paul Kasner’s project. And yes, these are the words that goaded me into checking out the album after I had missed its initial launch in July of 2020. I gave it a handful of spins on Spotify and found that it was indeed within my wheelhouse and was quickly on the website for Silk Screaming records, the label Kasner set up to release said album, and ordered a copy of it on vinyl for my record shelves*.

Paul Kasner is a Montreal-based songwriter, multi-instamentalist, and producer, who has toured with The Horrors and The Twilight Sad, and has worked by himself for many years on this one album, working to get it just right. Indeed, it is a lovely and tight 8-song cycle of guitar heavy, psych rock, toying with shoegaze and noise rock along the way.

“Chaos and confusion” is the five minute opener that layers acoustic strums with wispy reverb drenched electric licks. Meanwhile, the poltergeist on drums keeps time and space in check with a menacing leer and the bass line eases its way in and out of the miasma like a perfect stitch line sewing up eternity. And floating just above it all is Kasner’s vocal track, affecting his best Jim Reid/Peter Hayes impression, a woeful tale of gambling and loss.

*It later muscled its way into my top ten albums list for that year.

For the rest of the Best tunes of 2020 list, click here.

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Best tunes of 2020: #16 Dehd “Haha”

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Dehd recently announced the upcoming release of their fifth studio album, “Poetry”, due out in May. Some very welcome news for fans of their energetic blend of surf, post-punk, and garage rock.

I only came across Dehd with the release of 2020’s “Flower of devotion”, but that was actually their third album, after forming five years earlier. They are the trio of Emily Kempf (bass guitar, vocals), Jason Balla (guitar, vocals), and Eric McGrady (drums), based in Chicago, which surprises me every time I remember this fact. Because for some completely irrational and unknown reason, to me, they sound like they should hail from the UK.

And though I’ve not heard anything prior to it, I felt completely at home with “Flower of devotion” when I first heard it upon its release in July 2020. It felt alive and raw and vibrating with nervous energy, though from all reports it’s shinier and cleaner than its predecessors. It was exactly the kind of music that we needed as we were coming into the first summer of the pandemic, very much like an invitation to go outside and play.

“How does one get here?
When did we cross the line?
When it comes to falling, yeah
I’m falling all the time“

My favourite tune on “Flower of devotion” was track three, right from the very beginning. “Haha” was never released as a single but it certainly sounds like it could’ve been one. It is just over two minutes of jangly guitars, a hopscotch bassline, tongue clucking, and he said/she said, call and response vocals. With its staccato and twitchy chorus but fun feel throughout, it all seems so simple. But sometimes simple is exactly what you need for a perfect pop gem. And yes, that title makes me laugh every time.

For the rest of the Best tunes of 2020 list, click here.

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Best tunes of 2020: #17 Ezra Furman “Every feeling”

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I recently wrapped up watching the final season of Sex Education on Netflix and almost immediately, I found myself wanting to start over and rewatch it from the beginning. To me, that’s a sign of a great show and when it happens with books, it’s the same – the feeling of missing the characters and their stories and their worlds.

I wasn’t immediately sure when I started watching the first season back in the fall of 2019. It felt a bit weird to be watching a show that explicitly detailed the sex lives of teenagers, even though I knew that all of the actors would be of the age of consent. It did a great job, though, playing with reality, making the stories not about their age or the place and time*, and more about the great characters and how they reacted to universal problems and situations related to love and relationships and yes, sex.

The show lasted four seasons of eight episodes a piece, which seems quite long for British television in my own limited experience. Each episode in each season was quite excellent and of course, I loved the music throughout, a pastiche of hip music from the 70s to the present, with many songs that I recognized and some that I didn’t. A quick google search explained that many of those excellent songs I didn’t recognize were supplied by American singer-songwriter Ezra Furman.

In late January 2020, about a week after season 2 appeared on Netlix, Furman released “Sex education original soundtrack”, which collected together all of her songs that appeared in the first two seasons of the show. Of course, I made sure to peruse it and then found myself perusing more of her work and it was then, that I realized that though some of the tracks were written for the show, many were songs that were repurposed from her previous recordings.

One of the tracks that Furman wrote new for the show appeared at the end of episode three of the first season. “Every feeling” fits the mood of scene perfectly: the wind-down of an emotionally draining day. At the time, the song wasn’t available anywhere and viewers  immediately started clamouring to find out where they could get a copy. It’s a short piece that focuses on Furman banging away at her acoustic guitar like it was cause of her hurt and depression and her drained voice shaking out all the f-bombs. Because sometimes that’s the only word that’ll do to get your message across.

“I’m gonna feel every feeling
And only love
Only love will remain”

It’s a track full of pain but it’s also damned uplifting.

*Though there were plenty of homages to John Hughes’ teen comedies of the eighties, the hints to past and present technologies and trends made it feel out of time completely.

For the rest of the Best tunes of 2020 list, click here.