26 January 2026 - Simply Red - Stars

I used to really hate Simply Red.

"Holding Back The Years" was NOT a song for teenage me.  It was too mature, and I didn't enjoy it. 

Looking back at their whole catalogue, I can see now how good Mick Hucknall's voice and understanding of soul really was (is, I suppose.  He's not dead). 

This 1991 song - from Simply Red's 4th album of the same name - reached #44 in the US - the last time the band reached the Billboard Hot 100.  It was a much bigger hit in Europe, where Simply Red continued to have hits.  

The song was written by Mick Hucknall and is an upbeat pop-soul song. 

You know, Simply Red is still around - I mean, it's Mick Hucknall that really embodies who the band is and what they are all about.  

And his voice has not lost a single step. 

23 January 2026 - Case Oats - Seventeen

Speaking of Merge Records, let's talk about a 2025 signing.  

This isn't a band from North Carolina, though.  They're from Chicago, Illinois and they make alt-country music.  The band consists of vocalist Casey Walker, guitarist Max Subar, bassist Jason Ashworth, fiddle player Scott Daniel, and drummer Spencer Tweedy.  Put a pin in that drummer.  We'll come back to him.

They released their debut album, Last Missouri Exit, in 2025.  This song was written by Casey Walker - the vocalist - and produced by Spencer Tweedy - the drummer.  

If that drummer's last name looks familiar, it should.  His dad's name is Jeff and they had a band together called Tweedy.  I think Jeff was in another band, but I don't remember.  Anyway, Spencer has been in bands since he was 13 (he was 18 or 19 when he did Tweedy with his dad) and brings a maturity to Case Oats that serves them well. 

Also, Casey Walker is a hell of a country vocalist and she's going to go far. 

UNCLE TUPELO!   That's it!

Anyway, here's what is essentially a solo acoustic performance of the song by Casey Walker at Rough Trade.  It's a great highlight for her voice and shows that she's more than a vocalist. 

22 January 2026 - Superchunk - Watery Hands

I was talking to Courtney about Superchunk one night recently - recalling a post about a Kay Hanley cover of a Superchunk classic - and she told me that she didn't know who they were.  

So, given that I was lucky enough to see the lo-fi Chapel Hill, NC natives live in 1995, in Hartford CT - at Lollapalooza - I figured it was high time that I posted something they did.

I felt the best way to represent them would not be a current song - because they're still making great music - but rather an older one, from their 1997 Indoor Living album.  This was released on the Merge Records label, which has been the home of Superchunk since the late 1980s..... but also, Mac McCaughan, the vocalist for Superchunk, owns Merge Records, so that's probably a big reason why. 

The song, written by the band, is a light lo-fi pop-rock sound that is really excellent and engaging.  The video is SUPER high tech.

Yes, the band is still around and still making music.... and they still perform the songs of their early days.  Here they are in Carrboro, NC - which is literally next to Chapel Hill.  It's like they're the same town.

Anyway, I think they sound better now.   And I look forward to what comes next. 

21 January 2026 - Don Leisure ft. Carwun Ellis - Cynnau Tân

I know what you're all thinking if you don't live in Wales.

Who the hell is Don Leisure?

Don Leisure is the winner of the 2025 Welsh Music Prize, for his album Tyrchu Sain.  In English, the title literally means "sound tunnelling" and that's what he's doing - building beautiful tunnels of sound and burrowing into them - laying acoustic guitars and folk sounds with electronics and modern music.  

This song - which translates to "light a fire" - is a highlight of the album for me.  Leisure is joined by longtime Pretender Carwun Ellis on this one, as well as a couple of samples you are certain to recognize if you are huge Welsh music fans (I didn't know them).   

20 January 2026 - The Sundays - Joy

The Sundays made trippy dream-pop music and made it for a masses that wasn't ready for them. 

This song, which was never released as a single per se but was their first real video released to MTV in the United States, was my introduction to them.  Their whole Reading, Writing, and Arithmetic album, released in early 1990, was an eye-opener and changed my musical fandom forever. 

They broke up in 1998, but starting in 2014, there started to be some rumblings that there would be a return.  It has not yet materialized, but I am hopeful.

They did perform live an awful lot, and this show from 1997 - where they beautifully performed the song - is one of my favorites.  Harriet Wheeler's voice is full of a lot of passion that is far more apparent in this live setting.

19 January 2026 - Madison Beer - bad enough

Madison Beer - her REAL name - released her new album locket on Friday. Earlier in the week, she released this single.

Co-written by the artist, Leroy Clampitt and Lucy Healey, it's a pretty straight-ahead clearly Addison-Rae-inspired song. There, I said it.  

But Madison is very much a talent in her own right. And this is a really solid pop song that she sings the hell out of.

She also co-directed this video - which has a clear theme going to it. 

She literally debuted the song live, on Wednesday.

That's right.  New song and we ALREADY have live footage. 

16 January 2026 - The Art of Noise with Max Headroom - Paranoimia

This may be one of the weirdest collaborations of all time.

Max Headroom was a digital character played by Matt Frewer, meant to be some sort of a digital presenter or talk show host or something.  He's hard to explain.  However, he was everywhere at a certain point of the 1980s.He had a British talk show.  He sold New Coke after the return of Coke Classic.

Art of Noise was an avant-garde noise experimentation electronic group that got a little bit of attention from MTV and finally hit the US top 40 with this weird collaboration with a digital talk show host. 

The song, written by Art of Noise with a title that is a mashup of "paranoia" and "insomnia",  is weird early electronica.... and somehow, it just worked.   

The song was remixed in 1989 by Ben Liebrand for a greatest hits album for the band.   It lacks the Max, but doesn't leave out the electronica.

Despite being a very electronic group, they did perform live, like this performance from Tokyo in 1986. I personally find it interesting how they could create future beats live on instruments like they did.