Canned Dragons - Friday Night Video

Tennis - At The Apartment (Live)

In June, I hope to see long-time indie pop favorites Tennis on their farewell tour. The husband and wife duo of Patrick Riley and Alaina Moore are calling it quits after an impressive run.

The pair made this statement regarding the end of their time as Tennis:

It became clear that we had said everything we wanted to say and achieved everything we wanted to achieve with our band … We are ready to pursue other creative projects and to make space in our lives for new things.

It sounds like a standard, almost corporate-like goodbye message. When they were promoting their just-released 7th album Face Down In The Garden, though, they were a bit more candid about the challenges they had faced.

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⌘ 7:37 PM, May 10

Headlights Pointed At The Dawn

For this Friday Night Video, we’re going back a way, to the mid-nineties. Smashing Pumpkins had released Mellon Collie And The Infinite Sadness a fittingly grandiose title for an ambitious and widely varied double-album. At the time, I heard the first single, the “rat in a cage” song, and I thought this latest effort wasn’t for me. I actually went out and sold my Smashing Pumpkins CDs, which I had been collecting since shortly after the release of their debut, Gish.

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⌘ 8:00 PM, Jan 24

Yvette Young - Always

Upon discovering the new single from Yvette Young (via Instagram of all places), I was immediately reminded of Sophie And Peter Johnson. The breezy sophistipop certainly merits easy comparisons. Then I realized that Young did vocals for Brothertiger’s mesmerizing cover of Sophie and Peter Johnson’s “Torn Open.”

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⌘ 8:06 AM, Oct 26

Noble Oak - Eveningstar

Recently, a friend on Mastodon asked followers about their first cassette purchase. I had no trouble recollecting getting Starship’s Knee Deep In The Hoopla when I was in the fourth grade as my introduction to the world of music on tape. I wore that tape out playing the all-too radio friendly songs like “We Built This City” (some might say the song was pandering — the shoutout to all the cities hasn’t aged well).
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⌘ 7:00 PM, Aug 16

One Actress And A Melon

The creative forces behind Ginger Root have a concept for a show featuring one actress (it’s all they had the budget for). Their Japanese protagonist changes looks and activities often to keep people of the world glued to their sets. In the end, it seems, what suits her best is rockin' out. The song “There Was A Time” itself has a breezy 70s feel, with a healthy dose of tropicalia in the mix and a smidgen of psychedelia.
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⌘ 7:00 PM, Aug 9

Mariya Takeuchi

The song for this video is from 1984, but the video was shot just recently. Originally not a huge seller, "Plastic Love" by Mariya Takeuchi has been growing in popularity over the last 40 years. It fits in with the 80's Japanese genre, city pop, and has come to be a defining piece of that style of music. Jason Morehead describes city pop as "a slick blend of jazz, pop, and funk that emerged during Japan’s economic boom in the ’80s and celebrated an upscale, cosmopolitan lifestyle.
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⌘ 8:00 PM, Dec 10