Just because the weather is cooling down doesn’t mean the music has to. “Django/Brando” by Sachee, an international collective featuring members from the Netherlands, Belgium, Scotland and USA, is so hot that we’re pretty sure it’ll defrost your car windows in the morning if you play it loud enough. Working it like Anderson Paak jamming with Fantastic Negrito it’s funky, sultry and straddles the line between throw back and contemporary. Few songs can shift between multiple vocalists rapping and singing and have it all feel like one delicious flow as this one does. Take this energy into your week and keep it in your hip pocket for a little extra strut.
October 10, 2022
Week Starter – Sachee
September 7, 2022
The Midweekly – The Suffers
It starts with love, the love for oneself in order to find the confidence to be who you want. That’s just one of the great themes on the new record by The Suffers. Coming out of Houston, this neo-soul group gets bodies moving, faces smiling, and tears falling. It continues with love, the love of friendship, womanhood, and community, as the lyrics take on these subjects, sung amazingly by lead vocalist and activist Kam Franklin. The production has that nicely polished R&B sound. Bright horns, smooth bass, fiery, Latin-inspired percussion. It continues with the love of positive music like this.
July 29, 2022
Week Ender – Emily Elbert
An effortlessly funky soulful rootsy bluesy mix to kick off the weekend? Don’t mind if we do. “For Free” by alliteration lover Emily Elbert is such an easy, unforced, natural feeling groove that it almost feels like something that was found in nature. A perfectly cool woodland stream bubbling and dancing through a remote forest on a hot day and also the stream gets you tipsy. How good is this song? So good that we’re writing a bad fantasy short story about it. Come, gather your allies around and drink from the magical musical stream that will make you drop your chainmail and shake a tail feather (figuratively for the humanoids, literally for bird people in your group).
July 8, 2022
Friday 5×5
Hello! Welcome to PE’s first ever Covid week! It’s been no bueno! But here are five songs making us feel better and our short but feverish thoughts on each. Come get the cure from Modern Diet, The Farewell Project, Rocky Votolato, Bulgarian Cartrader and Weymouth.
.
.
read more »
April 8, 2022
Week Ender – I Used To Be Sam
The Omega to the Week Starter Alpha, Week Ender is the song we want to send you into the weekend with.
Typically with the Week Ender column we give you a big energy rock n’ roll or hip-hop number to get the weekend started, or maybe some sexy R&B to make that weekend spicy, or occasionally as we did last week a “keep your head up, we can get through this” style anthem. Today we want to mix it up and send you into the weekend thinking about empathy. How we can all get to a better place by doing our best to understand and respect others journeys. I Used To Be Sam is the latest project from Annie Goodchild and is her most personal date, unpacking her search for identity as a transracial adoptee. Goodchild’s voice is a powerhouse, no doubt, but the real power is in it’s control and subtlety, the emotional resonance. On “Mountains” it weaves in and out and rides atop a slinky and inventive R&B track that brings to mind Solange’s masterpiece A Seat At The Table. Similarly to that album, Goodchild incorporates clips of interviews into the track, but in this case with other transracial adoptees sharing their stories. It’s a lush and lovely song that flourishes in the ears but opens the eyes and ultimately rests in the heart – if you let it.
February 11, 2022
Friday 5×5
Today we have 25 words total for 5 songs that totally don’t need us yammering on and on for you to get the point and that point is: they good. They real good. Check out the self-explanatory goodness from Airships on the Water, Matan Arkin, The Delines, Butterfly and Half Shadow after the jump.
.
.
read more »
February 7, 2022
Mike’s Monday Muse – Jess Sah Bi & Peter One
Originally released in 1985, Jess Sah Bi and Peter One’s sweet debut album of Ivory Coast-West African-country-soul-folk-reggae tunes Our Garden Needs Its Flowers was reissued 33 years later by Awesome Tapes From Africa. It’s stunning and worth reminding everyone to get yourself these jams.
January 24, 2022
Mike’s Monday Muse – The Delines
Can’t sleep. I’m up at 4:00 AM listening to The Sea Drift again. Counting Willy Vlautin’s novel soundtracks, The Sea Drift is record #6 from The Delines and “Kid Codeine” happens to be my favorite song on it. Willy said the song was inspired by an LA cougar with a big bouffant hairdo, a trip to a strip bar, and a junkie dancer crashing into his table.
January 17, 2022
Mike’s Monday Muse – Phương Tâm
As a wartime teenager, Phương Tâm performed in the Saigon nightclubs becoming one of Vietnam’s first successful rock-n-rollers. Tâm gave it up for love eventually fleeing Vietnam with her husband to California in 1975 where they raised a family. Incredibly, Tâm never shared her past fame with her children. Her daughter, Hannah Hà, found out in 2019 after being contacted by a Vietnamese film producer asking to use her mom’s music in a movie. Hà was inspired to find her mom’s tunes, which led to the fabulous 25-song compilation called Magical Nights: Saigon Surf Twist & Soul (1964-1966).