KGNU’s Indra Raj chats with DJs Hannah Taub and Michael Buck about their favorite releases of June.
Releases:
- Good Looks, Lived Here for A While (Keeled Scales). “Can You See Me Tonight”
- Man Man, Carrot on Strings (Sub Pop). “Cryptoad”
- Irini Arabatzi, Songs for Them (Albert’s Favourites). “I’m a Joke (for W.)”
- Raveena, Where the Butterflies Go in the Rain (Moonstone Recordings/Empire). “Lucky”
- O., WeirdOs (Speedy Wunderground). “Green Shirt”
- Staples Jr. Singers, Searching (Luaka Bop). “Living In This World Alone” Feat. Annie Brown Caldwell
- This Is Lorelei, Box for Buddy, Box for Star, “Where’s Your Love Now”
- Cola, The Gloss (Fire Talk). “Albatross”
- MJ Lenderman, “She’s Leaving You” (Anti)
- Hermanos Gutierrez, “Sonido Cosmico” (Easy Eye Sound)
Indra Raj: This is KGNU Community Radio, and this is the Radio Record Club for June 2024. My name is Indra Raj. I am the music director here at KGNU. And we’ve been doing this all year, but we’ve just coined this the Radio Record Club. Today we’re going to be talking about our favorite music releases from June 2024.
We have over 150 wonderful volunteer DJs here at KGNU, all of whom listen to new music and are into different styles of music. I’m going to be inviting those people in, two people at a time, until we get through all 150 of them. Today I’m very Happy to welcome in Hannah Taub and Michael Buck, who are two DJs here at KGNU. Maybe we can do some brief introductions for both of you. So Hannah, tell us about you and what you do at KGNU.
Hannah Taub: Sure. Thanks for having me, Indra. My name is Hannah Taub. I go by Hannah Taub on air. So you might’ve heard me on the Morning or Afternoon Sound Alternatives in the past year or so, and I’ve started DJing on SoundLab as well, and I really like being a part of KGNU and helping out at different events and just getting to know this community.
Indra Raj: Great. How about you, Michael?
Michael Buck: I’ve been with KGNU since 2006 and I’ve been here forever. I do one music show, roughly, a month. I do an Afternoon Sound Alternative usually the first Wednesday of each month and, as you well know, Indra, I help you enter the new music for all the new DJs to listen to and select from and hopefully inspire them to do great things on their shows.
Indra Raj: So you literally have your hands on the new music that comes into the station, maybe more than anyone else besides myself. I know both of you really love new music, and showcase it a lot on your shows, and have eclectic tastes. And I’m very excited to hear about what albums you’ve brought in today from June that you like.
Hannah, why don’t we start with you? What is one of your favorite releases from June?
Hannah Taub: Sure. Let’s see. I’ll start from the top of my list. There’s an Austin indie band named Good Looks and they had an album come out on June 7th called, Lived Here For A While. They’re punk-ish, which is a lot of the indie that I like and just really good. Their voices sound Australian. So when I looked up that they were from Austin, I was like, oh, okay. But yeah, they’re really good. It’s their second studio album. That’s all I know about them.
Indra Raj: Have they talked about why they sound Australian?
Hannah Taub: It might just be me. When we listen back to this episode and hear one of their songs, maybe I’ll hear from you both about it. But I feel like that’s a joke about some music. People with British accents sound American when they sing, and some Americans sound British, so maybe it’s just that.
Indra Raj: It’s true. It’s like the vowel sounds change around and make things sound different. That’s great. Definitely not on my radar. So I’m looking forward to digging into that one.
Michael, what do you have?
Michael Buck: Something that came in here a couple of weeks ago, from a band originally from Philly called Man Man. They put out their seventh album this year and they were one of the bands I discovered when I first got here at KGNU. So they’ve been around quite a while. They come from a freak folk, funky circus, like insanity background. And they matured over the years, as many of us do. They’ve acquired more of a listener-friendly style, but they still maintain genre hopping and a little bit of unpredictability in their sound. And it’s great to see them back. This is their second album in the last couple of years after having a fallow period for a long time. So I have to go back and find the one I missed from a couple of years ago as well. But I’m very excited to hear this new release. It’s called Carrot on Strings.
Indra Raj: Wonderful.
Michael Buck: Just out a couple of weeks ago.
Indra Raj: That’s a cool name for an album. Always interesting when bands, you never think they’re ever going to come back, and then they do, and they have a great new album again, and it’s out of nowhere.
Michael Buck: Yeah, it was surprising to see them back again. I was very pleased to see it.
Indra Raj: And you said that you noticed them when you first came to KGNU?
Michael Buck: Yeah, their second album was called Six Demon Bag. It came out just before I got here. So I was playing them in my very early days at KGNU. So it was a fun throwback to see how they’ve changed in almost 20 years compared to how my shows have changed.
Indra Raj: Okay, then my first album that I wanted to talk about is from an artist that I’d never heard of, like she was not on my radar until last week. I guess I had made note of this album, but then I actually listened to it when I came out last week on June 21st and I really loved it. It’s from Irini Arabatzi from her album, Songs for Them on the Albert’s Favourites record label, and it’s a very eclectic album. It’s hard to really pin a genre on it, but I think if you had to, maybe like a neo-soul vibe, but really neo-soul, really getting out of the genre, but still referencing it enough so that it feels like that’s a part of it.
What’s interesting about her is that she was born in Greece and you don’t get a lot of Greek musicians in the indie world, really. And she’s a very accomplished pianist, also a singer and songwriter. She plays piano on this album, but you don’t really hear it. It’s probably more like synths and things like that she does. There’s a lot more guitar on it. And I guess she also plays guitar, but she’s performed with a lot of Greece’s most famous musicians, who I would have no idea who they are. And also some of the Scottish jazz new wave scene, which is very esoteric. But there are some musicians that you’ll hear on KGNU that come from that, including corto.alto. I don’t know if either of you are familiar. I think I’ve tried to get their music into our library before, and it is that esoteric that it’s difficult to get it. And also someone named Fergus McCready, which I don’t know who he is, but I’m going to look into it.
This is an interesting background, Greece, Scotland, and now she has this new EP called Songs for Them, and she made it with her brother, actually. And she says that they’ve been close forever, especially musically and they really trust each other. That has really impacted how they make music together. It was produced while they were living together in their North London home. So they’re based in London now. And with that, there’s a lot of great collaborations with musicians who you’ll find in this kind of neo-soul indie UK scene like Ben Brown, Jonny Wickham, and Inês Loubet, who has a new album out, which is really wonderful. And Oli Barton-Wood, who you may know from Nubiyan Twist, and has also collaborated with Andrew Ashong. These are all like very non mainstream people, but big in this little niche of the indie soul world.
Hannah Taub: That’s a cool one. I’ve never heard of any of those artists.
Indra Raj: You might find their names on the KGNU music shelves if you look.
Michael Buck: Yeah. Neo soul from Greece. Not something you see every day.
Indra Raj: Not something you see every day. That is for sure.
Ok Hannah, what else do you have for us today?
Hannah Taub: Sure, I’ll follow the vein. This isn’t neo-soul, she’s more like R&B, but the artist Raveena had a new album out this month called Where the Butterflies Go in the Rain. She’s on Moonstone Recordings and it really is like a throwback album to me. It sounds a lot like Corinne Bailey Rae and like other early 2000s kind of R&B and it’s just lush and beautiful. It’s a great album and she’s Indian American. So what I was reading was that actually some of the instruments on the album are like electric sitar and an instrument I hadn’t heard of before called a swarmandal. So it’s got some different instruments on there, which is cool. It’s a long album, but worth a listen.
Indra Raj: That’s interesting. Last month I brought up a couple albums that were also this early 2000s, like R&B, almost pop vibe. It seems to be having a resurgence. Which I’m totally here for.
Hannah Taub: Yeah. Right back to the middle school hallway.
Indra Raj: 100 percent it’s very nostalgic for sure. But yeah, that’s really cool. And even cooler to know that she’s Indian American. In 2000, let’s say, there were no Indian American R&B artists. At least that we knew of. So that’s very cool.
Michael Buck: You mentioned Nubiyan Twist a minute ago, so that leads right into the next one I was going to talk about. There’s this band called O, just the letter O. They’re from London. It’s a duo that met while being in different jazz bands. Tash Bari from Tomorrow’s Warriors and saxophonist Joe Henwood from Nubiyan Twist. They were performing separately in these jazz bands. They ran into each other somewhere around 2019 and when COVID happened and live shows stopped and everything stopped, they made some time to get together and explore shared interests, they found they both loved Deftones and Radiohead and other things, and it spun them more in a rock direction, and they formed this kind of instrumental band, just the two of them, the saxophonist and the drummer, with some augmentation here and there, but they produced a new record, it’s their first, it’s called WeirdOs.
It came out on June 21st, because apparently people told them you make music for weirdos, but it’s harsh. It’s all instrumental. It’s upsetting in all the best ways. One of those things that just it’s going to motivate you but make you a little like ants crawling up your skin at the same time. In other words, right up my alley.
Indra Raj: I did. Yes, totally. And Michael, you and I have similar tastes. When you said the band name, Deftones, I have not thought about them in a very long time, but I used to love that. I really loved them. They were big in my middle school, high school years. And obviously, if anyone knows anything about me, I love Radiohead. I think they’re pretty different in a lot of ways, but they do have a similar angst going on.
Michael Buck: This will be up your alley too, I imagine.
Indra Raj: Great. I can’t wait to hear it. That’s awesome.
Hannah Taub: Yeah, I’m glad you mentioned that album because I just saved it to my streaming library, but I haven’t checked it out yet, so now I’m motivated to.
Indra Raj: Another one that I wanted to talk about is a gospel album, which we don’t get a ton of gospel music here at the station. The gospel world, for those of you who don’t know, and I didn’t know this until I started doing this job, is that a lot of the music that gets released is just singles. And for us here at KGNU, as you know very well, Michael, it’s a lot of work for us to just process one song into our library. So we generally only put full albums in. So whenever a gospel album comes along, it’s a big deal and it’s exciting. And it usually gets a lot of airplay on KGNU. So one, and this will be a familiar name to many of you is the Staples Jr. Singers. This is a family band from Aberdeen, Mississippi.
I guess they only had one record, which surprised me, but in researching, that’s what I found out came out in 1975. When Do We Get Paid came out on the Luaka Bop, which is still a label that’s present today. And this new album from the family band, obviously new, updated members. I don’t know how much crossover there is from the original. This album is also on Luaka Bop and it’s called Searching. And it was recorded in 2023 in West Point, Mississippi and Nashville,Tennessee. It was produced by Ahmed Galab, who is also known as Sinkane. And the first pressing comes with a booklet of photos by Adam Wissing, who I don’t know anything about, and notes by Anton Spice. So I don’t know who those people are, but I’m assuming that it’s a cool collector’s item maybe, but also just exciting to get gospel music and to celebrate black culture through music, which is so present, obviously, in the gospel tradition.
That came out on June 14th, again, on Luaka Bop. That’s the Staples Jr. Singers and their new album called Searching.
Hannah, do you have anything else?
Hannah Taub: I have another album, yeah, it also came out on June 14th. This one is back to indie, cause that’s my go to. This Is Lorelei, is the name of the band, he’s on Double Whammy, and this is his solo project. He’s in the band Water From Your Eyes, which is a very eclectic indie band, but his solo stuff at least on this most recent record, which is called Box for Buddy Box for Star, is a little more subdued. And I’m really liking it. If you listen to the album all the way through, there’s a lot of variation in terms of the noise level of each song. One of them just uses one of those kids boxes, like a music box in the background, which is fun. And he reminds me of Alex G, but then his lyrics are really intricate, almost like, Silver Jews, Jonathan Richman inspired, Elliot Smith, definitely on some of them, Americana-ish.
Anyway, yeah, I really like that album and it’s unusual for me to like a whole album on the first listen and this is one of those for me.
Michael Buck: Yeah, that’s a rare thing for me too.
Indra Raj: I know, we talk about that all the time, Michael. There’s one or two songs that just really get you and the rest is meh. Take it or leave it. I think that’s an album that everyone in this room will appreciate. I’m glad you brought that up because I had that in my mind, but had forgotten about it. There’s so much music coming up, the things that you like sometimes you forget about them.
How about you, Michael?
Michael Buck: Yeah, June was a fairly fruitful month. I got a whole bunch here. I have to pick, I have to narrow this down. There’s this new release from a band called Cola called The Gloss. They’re a post-punk band. I feel like I have to mention them because that’s the style I grew up on way long ago. And this band came out of another band called Ought. I thought, that’s funny because the thing that inspired me or one of the things that inspired me to get involved in KGNU in the beginning was in the early aughts, there was a revival or a tribute to the post-punk style of 20 years prior.
Indra Raj: Right.
Michael Buck: So it just all seemed to come full circle, but it’s their second release as Cola and it plays with the post-punk style. I love that this style is still motivating people today. So there’s more to it than just a reaction to the punk music of the late seventies. It’s a style that lends itself to a lot of malleability, if you will. But Cola, The Gloss, their new release.
Indra Raj: I love that every 20 years post punk gets updated and that’s how music works, like you’re talking about with that R&B album that comes back. It sounds like that, but it’s a little different. And that’s one of the coolest things, I think, about music history, like the evolution of music and all traditions through time is how these little updates happen and how genres can completely change or just a little bit and then forge new genres and ideas and it’s just ever expanding.
Michael Buck: Yeah. Totally. Post-punk is going to particularly appeal to me. It may not appeal to everybody with its angular sounds and jagged rhythms, but it’s central to the stuff I like.
Indra Raj: I love it.
Okay, I will say one more. I have two to choose between, but I’m going to go with this one because it’s also just interesting where it comes from. I learned a lot researching this album about geography, actually, which I know you’re an expert on, too, Michael. So this is an album that came out on June 7th from the group Bonbon Vodou called Afrodiziak. It came out on Heavenly Sweetness, which is a really great label. And it’s French pop-y with Creole influences. What’s really wild is this group is from Reunion Island, which is a little island owned by France off the east coast of Madagascar. So it’s in the Indian ocean, I embarrassingly had never heard of it, I had no idea where it was. I finally looked on a map and I figured this out. And it’s just wild to me, that this Creole thing, it’s obviously we know about it, and Haiti and the places closer to America, but it’s also happening over in this French country, in the Indian Ocean.
So it’s a really cool album. Like it’s got these like French pop vibes with these Creole influences and it’s very global sounding. Every once in a while you get an album where it’s truly not one thing. It’s not from one place. It really feels like it takes from cultures from all over the world. And so that is definitely happening on this album. It’s really upbeat and light and good for summer. These hot summer days, if you want to put on something that’ll get you moving and enjoying your day in the bright sunlight, this is a good one to take with you.
Do each of you have one more album you wanna talk about?
Hannah Taub: Have a single. I think this came out yesterday or the day before. MJ Lenderman’s one of my favorite artists. He’s the frontman of the band Wednesday, but he makes music with his own band and he just put out a new single and announced an upcoming album, just a phenomenal single.
It’s called “She’s Leaving You”. So it’s, as Wednesday’s music is and his, it’s like Americana inspired punk-y indie rock and it’s just so good. I’ve listened to it on repeat ever since it came out two days ago.
Michael Buck: Oh, when you get so magnetized to something like that, that you just can’t put it down.
Indra Raj: How about you, Michael?
Michael Buck: I’d say there’s a bunch of other stuff. I like the new record from Hermanos Gutierrez.
Indra Raj: Good, that was on my list, so we checked it off.
Michael Buck: Excellent. Yeah, it’s an album from a brother duo from Ecuador and Switzerland.
Indra Raj: Yeah, wild.
Michael Buck: And produced by Dan Auerbach this time. I don’t know if they’ve worked with him before, of course, from the Black Keys. But apparently this follows up a Spaghetti Western style Ennio Morricone disc that really got them some notoriety and there’s some excellent spacious, desert instrumental vibes to this that I just can’t get enough of. It’s great.
Indra Raj: In their bio on Bandcamp, they say this is instrumental Western sound. So that’s fair. I think that does describe it. It’s fun. Yeah, it’s like soundscapes. It’s soundtrack-y. It sounds a little Western. It sounds instrumental, obviously.
Michael Buck: Very mesmerizing. It’s spacious. You can feel the space when you listen to the songs.
Indra Raj: That is so true. It’s like, how do they do that? It’s amazing.
All right. Some things that are coming out at the end of this month that will be big around KGNU. Hiatus Kaiyote has a new album, Love Heart Cheat Code on Brainfeeder. Everything they do is amazing. And you’ll hear that a lot on the station. I’m sure we also have local favorite Nathaniel Rateliff and the Night Sweats has a new album coming out called South of Here and then some lesser known artists, but things that I’m excited about are Aaron Frazer. He’s a neo-soul musician. Great voice. He has a new album called Into the Blue coming out on Dead Oceans. The Earthtones have a new album on Wonderwheel called We Can Live Together, which is like global beats goodness. And also in the bigger indie scene, Washed Out has a new album coming out called Notes from a Quiet Life.
Have you guys heard any of it yet? It’s pretty different. Like it’s more poppy. I’m not sure if I like it, to be honest. I really love the whole Washed Out thing that he’s curated so well and it’s just his sound. This is definitely a departure from that. It’s interesting to me that the name of the album is Notes from a Quiet Life, and yet the sound feels much more present and extroverted. But I’m looking forward to hearing it anyway because I love Washed Out.
Michael Buck: That’d be exciting to listen to, yeah.
Indra Raj: Yeah, for sure. So as we close up our episode for June, just curious, I always like to ask this to all the DJs that come in here is, are there any trends, things happening in music that have particularly interested you? Is there a live show that you’ve seen recently that just stood out to you? What’s going on in music that’s getting your wheels turning these days?
Hannah Taub: I feel like I’m not necessarily on the crest of the wave of following that stuff. Something that’s settling in over the past year is I’ve noticed country really coming into indie sound and that Americana country is cool again.
That’s been cool to see ’cause I personally really like that sound and it’s just really fun. A live show that I saw recently – Nourished by Time played at Larimer Lounge in Denver and he was really cool. It was awesome to see. It struck me in a sad way how few indie artists of color there are. And especially him performing in Denver, it was good to see a good crowd come out in such a White place. And it was a really fun time.
Michael Buck: That’s great. Yeah. I think I’ve noticed in a few bands I’ve listened to or just come across by happenstances that seems to be more of a trend these days than there used to be, in that bands, I don’t know if they feel pressure to do this, or they’re just inspired to do this, but they jump styles much more quickly than they did when I was younger.
One of the other albums we didn’t talk about was the third album from Goat Girl that just came out. And they went from a punk country thing on their first release to a synth pop thing on their second one, and now this new one is ambitious in a whole new direction. Yeah, it’s exciting.
I’ve noticed that a lot. And it echoes a trend that other people who have already had these chats with you have mentioned, apparently bands are getting outside their comfort zone too. So it’s easy to get yourself siloed by, oh, show me more things like that. No, don’t do that. Don’t do that. Go find something different. Being here at KGNU is the perfect place for that because all this new music comes in of all different styles and if you just start pulling stuff off the shelf and listening to it, you’re gonna expose yourself to a variety of things and maybe that’s what’s happening to these artists as well. They’re just influenced by all that’s around them
Indra Raj: Yeah, there’s more permission to reinvent yourself if you want to. I feel like that was only allowed, at a certain time, not even that long ago, for really big artists who had enough money and they knew that they could sell records no matter what, and they could change their sound and it wouldn’t be a big deal. I think about Beck a lot. In this way, he’s always reinventing himself. I feel like this was reserved for a certain kind of musician in an upper echelon. And now, everyone can do that. It’s great to see people stretching their creativity. And also what you said about country music, Hannah, I think when I was a kid, the word country was almost like a bad word. Like it referenced like Billy Ray Cyrus and this whole vibe that I did not resonate with it at all.
That’s still alive and well in the top 40 country, whatever. But also, there is permission now for other artists to take that style and make it their own and country is not a dirty word anymore. Like Waxahatchee’s new album is so popular right now and it’s a very country indie sound. Is that a new genre? Maybe. It’s just another example of people being allowed to stretch their genres and styles and what they’re interested in without fear of losing their audience completely.
Michael Buck: Yeah. Hope that means the audience is more flexible than it was 20, 30, 40 years ago.
Indra Raj: Yeah, we can always hope for that.
Michael Buck: Yeah.
Indra Raj: We are always hoping for that here at KGNU for sure. Thank you, Hannah and Michael, so much for joining me on the Radio Record Club this June. And I know you two are always staying on top of music.
Michael Buck: Yeah, thanks for having us in today.
Indra Raj: Thanks so much for listening. This has been the KGNU Radio Record Club for June, 2024.
