New Music | November 2021 (E49)

Sunday nights when I was 15, 16 years old. There was a new music radio show that we could hear in Farmington Hills, MI… from up north in Canada. A two-hour new music show. We found Heaven 17. The Fixx. Early Thompson Twins. Big Country. All from this exciting show. I had a silver cassette boom box/radio that we used to record it. My sisters, Juliet and Heidi, and I all loved what we got from this station.

And so my mind turned, last week, to this experience 40 or so years ago as I was listening to Chris Bro’s show, All Things Next. I am not sure why it struck me that I MUST do a new music show… and NOW! Yet it did and I jumped into the project and the results were… just like Sunday nights in Farmington Hills, Michigan.

Some Light Pop | An Epic Metal Saga

I tried to get the best of Chris Bro’s last four months of shows and jam it into one show… with some success, I think. But I’ll let you be the judge – you lucky dog – you get to listen to the work… right here:

Sunflower Bean’s “Baby Don’t Cry” tackles hauntology, i.e. the constant presence of the past in the present day. From memories of listening to sad songs in the backseat of a car to hearing bad news on the radio, the New York band have the weight of history on their shoulders. That they chose to excise this feeling with a retro glam ballad of their own only adds layers to the nostalgic onion. 

Sunflower Bean is an American rock band from Glen Head, New York and Brooklyn founded in 2013. The band consists of Julia Cumming (bass, lead vocals), Nick Kivlen (guitars, backing vocals), and Jacob Faber (drums). The group has released two albums, Human Ceremony (Fat Possum Records, 2016) and Twentytwo in Blue (Mom + Pop Music, 2018).