Great new tunes for the end of your week

In the news of the music world this week is... not much, really. IA's music guru, David Kowalski, gives us some new music to listen to instead.

NIKI — Too Much of a Good Thing

Indonesian-born, Californian-based artist NIKI has dropped a new single, the ironically titled ‘Too Much of a Good Thing’ ahead of her third album, Buzz, to be released in the next few months.

This is a slow burner of a track, with a funky groove that is undeniably cool. The understated arrangement is minimalist, in direct conflict with the title — it’s just enough to be intriguing, but not enough to be fatiguing like a lot of modern pop productions are.

The video for the song sees her living her best life, hanging out on the streets of New York City. I’m keen to hear what the rest of the album will surprise with.

Johnny Casino

John Spittles, AKA Johnny Casino, was a member of the Sydney surf punks Asteroid B-612 back in the 1990s and early 2000s. As a big fan of the band, I was intrigued to learn that Casino has now relocated to Spain and is doing a lot of recording and gigging in the USA these days.

Casino still wields a hollow-body Gibson electric guitar and makes a big MC5/Detroit-inspired sound. He has a new record out now called High Stone, which hits all the right chords in all the right places.

He has released a single (it won’t be on the vinyl release, but it is part of the digital releases) of an expansive and very dreamy ten-minute version of The Byrds track ‘Eight Miles High’. This has to be heard to be believed.

Mackenzie Porter — country music from Canada?

Canada is not normally known for its country music scene. The only country artists I can recall that hail from America’s Hat are Anne Murray and alt-country upstarts Cowpuncher. Mackenzie Porter is about to change all of that.

As I read through the online music press, I saw so many advertisements, her deep blue eyes gazing through the screen at me, that I had to find out what all the fuss was about.

Hailing originally from Medicine Hat, Alberta, but now based in Nashville, Porter's new album, Nobody is Born with a Broken Heart, is a 19-track, 58-minute epic that covers all the emotions she can muster, with a pop sheen that will make it sound great on radio.

Plenty of deep lyrics within, described on her website as primarily tackling issues relating to ‘her experience with life’s many types of heartbreak: friendship, career, health and love’, sung in a beautifully pure voice with her heart on her sleeve — a bold statement for a debut.

Blackbirds FC

Melbourne group Blackbirds FC is an interesting band that has one foot in the indie rock camp and the other in alt-country.

Members of the band have previously played in The Hollowmen, The Vandas, The Golden Rail and Helvellyn. They proclaim influences as diverse as Paul Kelly, XTC, Crosby Stills and Nash, and The Church, creating a warm and inviting sound that feels like a ray of sunshine through the window on a freezing winter’s morning.

The band's latest single, ‘Rings Around the Sun’ is all kinds of gorgeous, with Gina Hearnden's sweet vocals topping off this confection of greatness. Look out for their third album release coming up later in the year.

R.I.P. Duane Eddy and Richard Tandy

Another couple of trailblazers have shuffled off the mortal coil this week. One was a household name, one less so.

King of the “twangy” guitar (his description, not mine), Duane Eddy passed away at the age of 86.

He was less of a “flashy” guitarist and more of a sonic innovator, always after the perfect guitar tone to wrap around melodies that either he composed in tandem with his producer, Lee Hazelwood, or contemporary pop tunes of the late 1950s and early 1960s.

Eddy even recorded an entire album of Bob Dylan songs in 1965, with no vocals, but led by that trademark sound. He was made famous again by his collaboration with UK art-pop agitators The Art of Noise, who revived the iconic ‘Theme from Peter Gunn’ and featured a brand new performance of that classic guitar figure.

Less well-known but indispensable to the band he was part of for many decades, Electric Light Orchestra’s keyboardist Richard Tandy has also left us. Band leader Jeff Lynne and Tandy are the only constant members playing on every album the band ever released since its debut in 1971, right up until the most recent release in 2019, From Out of Nowhere.

Tandy's work on piano, synthesiser, mellotron and a wide array of keyboard-style gadgets made him an integral part of the ELO sound.

Both will be sorely missed. Thank you for the music, gents.

Until next time...

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David Kowalski is a writer, musician, educator, sound engineer and podcaster. His podcasts 'The Sound and the Fury Podcast' and 'Audio Cumulus' can be heard exclusively here. You can follow David on Twitter @sound_fury_pod.