During the COVID-19 pandemic, local musicians across the spectrum have continued to produce outstanding work at a mind-blowing rate. Periodically, the music writers who contribute to the Scene recommend recent Nashville releases that deserve more of your attention.
For Bandcamp Fridays, on the first Friday of each month since the pandemic started, the popular streaming platform waives its cut of sales. Ahead of the next Bandcamp Friday, set for Nov. 6, we’ve made eight new recommendations below. See previous lists from March, April, May, plus two (first, second) from June, two (first, second) from July and one more in September, as well as our writers’ choices in music from Best of Nashville.
Future Crib, Silverdays (self-released)
If there’s one bright spot in this otherwise-hellish year, it may be the opportunity to spend some extra time with loved ones. In that respect, Silverdays, the nine-track EP and accompanying music video from indie-pop-and-rock group Future Crib, is the perfect time capsule for this year. With a 12-minute run time, this project is really just a collection of short ideas, but the end result is surprisingly cohesive. Songs like “Iceberg” and “Feeling Exchange” showcase the band’s signature sound — experimental pop-rock with just a touch of grunge — but it’s polished off with a dash of playfulness that sets the project apart. BRONTE LEBO
Namir Blade, Aphelion’s Traveling Circus (Mello Music Group)
Namir Blade is one of the most innovative producers in Nashville’s rap community. Part of what makes his work distinctive is the narrative feel that comes through the beats he’s been making for other MCs as well as his solo ambient tracks. He’s ramped that up in a big way on Aphelion’s Traveling Circus, a concept record set in the distant future that looks back at our chaotic present, marked by cycles of poverty, police violence against Black people and the sheer weirdness of the Information Age. It’s a little bit Afrofuturism and a little bit manga, with scene-setting interludes, poignant songs and a stack of red-hot raps. It’s one hell of a debut for the artist via much-loved indie Mello Music Group. STEPHEN TRAGESER
Listen to and buy Aphelion's Traveling Circus via Bandcamp below or buy a CD or vinyl LP via this handy link.
Mac Gayden, Come Along (Arena Recordings)
On his 1973 full-length McGavock Gayden, Nashville guitarist, singer and songwriter Mac Gayden invented a rock-folk-funk amalgam that anticipated the work guitarist Steve Gunn would create on his 2014 album Way Out Weather. Gayden’s new album Come Along shows off his signature guitar sound, which has graced records by notables like Bob Dylan, J.J. Cale and Dianne Davidson. Come Along peaks with a track titled “Baby Slow Down,” a slice of elegantly shaped funk that might remind you of Gayden’s pedigree as a soul-R&B master. The man who co-wrote soul classics like 1967’s Nashville-recorded hit “Everlasting Love” still knows how to finesse a groove, and his guitar work is as incisive as ever. EDD HURT
Buy Come Along from your favorite local record store or direct from Arena Recordings.
Coupler, The Rhythm Method (YK Records)
Progressive, high-quality electronic music — that’s the Ryan Norris promise. Though the Coupler main man left Music City for Chicago in 2016, The Rhythm Method immortalizes the band’s triple-synth lineup with Nashville’s Rodrigo Avendano and Rollum Haas (both of whom play with Soccer Mommy among many other groups) that played last year’s Big Ears fest in Knoxville and took its live score to Japanese silent gangster film Dragnet Girl nationwide. Putting an exclamation point on a strong 2020 for local-lifer label YK Records (see also: Black Bra, The Prudish Few), Rhythm Method’s triad of heady, high-BPM synthscapes makes for an endlessly replayable EP. It’s the first in a planned series based on the band’s “bangers only” live sets and showcases Norris’ dual talents as composer and party-starter. CHARLIE ZAILLIAN
Electric Python, Into the Night (self-released)
If you want thunderous guitar boogie, Electric Python’s debut 12-inch has more licks than a sack of Tootsie Pops. Into The Night is a manic ride of heavy blues bombarded by tube-amp knobs turned all the way to the right — all packaged in a sleeve that looks like it could be the poster to an apocalyptic John Carpenter fantasy. These supernaughts fuse the California half-pipe riffs of Fu Manchu and Bl’ast with the grooves and solos of classic hard rockers like ZZ Top and Thin Lizzy. This is one heavy slab of rock. P.J. KINZER
Snooper, Music for Spies (Computer Human)
Between Soft Option, Safety Net and Spodee Boy, Connor Cummins is one of Nashville’s foremost practitioners of homespun punk and post-punk. The debut 7-inch from Snooper, Cummins’ new duo with vocalist and animator Blair Tramel, continues that run (as well as his reign over the “S” section). Bratty, nerdy, lightning-fast and lo-fi by choice — think Devo falling down a flight of stairs — Snooper kicks and screams to teleport back to the early ’80s. But the tunes (four in seven minutes!) tell only half the story — check out Tramel’s accompanying music videos above, which elevate Music for Spies from grayscale on record to 256 colors on screen. CHARLIE ZAILLIAN
Buy Music for Spies direct from Computer Human Records.
Jordan Lehning, Little Idols (Jordan Lehning/Tone Tree)
There are a lot of ways you might know the work of producer, engineer, songwriter and string-arranger-about-town Jordan Lehning, depending on how long you’ve been following local music. What feels like a lifetime ago (but has in fact only been 12 years), Lehning and The Non-Commissioned Officers, the rock ’n’ pop band he co-fronted with brother Eric Lehning, recorded the soundtrack for the zombie film Make-Out With Violence. That kind of large-scale storytelling is at the center of Jordan Lehning’s recent solo LP, a slice of lush folk-pop titled Little Idols. The concept record follows the arc of an extramarital affair with tenderness; as he told Atwood Magazine, the title is inspired by considering how little souvenirs come to represent a significant experience. STEPHEN TRAGESER
Stream Little Idols on Spotify and stream or buy via Apple Music.
Chuck Hamm, Songs From the Hill (Blackghost Music)
Eight months in, and it’s almost a cliché, the “pandemic album.” But Songs From the Hill, the first solo record from bassist-guitarist-banjoist-vocalist Chuck Hamm, lets the circumstances of its making sit quietly around those sharp, cutting edges. Melding Americana, bluegrass, gospel and country, Hamm and the other players recorded remotely, and that distance resonates deeply. In covering the R&B classic “When Will I See You Again,” Hamm lets his plaintive, sometimes-reedy voice find the yawning chasm of uncertainty, and we feel that ominousness lurking. “Sometimes” and “Space” sneak up on you, the former with oomph, the latter with truth. JASON SHAWHAN
