Ya see what I did there? That was a Kubrick reference, which means that I am a witty fellow. Worship my prowess.
To begin, my name is Dan Davis, and as of several months ago I became the Jazz and Blues Director here at the ever lovely re-purposed music room known as KZSC Santa Cruz. Due to mounting pressure, I was told that I must create a blog post or face a severe flogging.
Here are this week’s charts. Some stalwarts around the top. Grizzly Bear, Camera Obscura, and Phoenix are all things that have done well at KZSC and at radio in the past, and our charts reflect that this week. As music director, I’ve tried to make our charts reflect smaller, stranger bands that have broken into college radio recently – not the Decemberists of the world, etc, but I am always pleased when a band with a baroque sound like Grizzly Bear can be atop any chart.
Alas, it has happened. Woods have reached the top of the KZSC charts. Woods are Jeremy Earl and Jarvis Taveniere (and others) and they sing into a pair of headphones and an old bullet microphone. It is gorgeous sun-drenched psych-folk from Brooklyn that I cannot recommend enough. With releases on their own label Woodsist and Mike Sniper’s Captured Tracks, you can’t go wrong. The b-side of the Captured Tracks single, “The Dark”, is one of the best 2 minute nuggets of pop this year.
KZSC has decided on a new music director for next year! Her name is Caitlin Hannah, and she’ll be updating this soon enough. She’s wonderful, and a more experienced blogger than I. But for now, stuck with me, here are this week’s charts.
St. Vincent takes hold of the top spot! Annie Clark has put out a wonderfully dynamic pop record, which spans many soundscapes and feelings. The track “Actor Out of Work” has a fuzzy pop thing and an upbeat pace kind of like Julie Doiron’s “Consolation Prize” (a category of songs I like this year) and it’s wonderful. It also has my favorite album cover of the year so far perhaps. Apparently, Annie likes stark photographs of her face.
Hello friendly readers of the KZSC Blog! A lot of new entries on the charts this week. Thunder Power from Omaha has broken into the top 5 on the strength of their EP, “Love Yourself” and some DJ spins across the board. Don’t they look nice?
