Spencer Griffin's New Music Mondays

My biggest blog in over a decade!! A whopping total of TWELVE songs (my fave number)!! Here we go!! "Black Dog Rabbit Hole" by Devon Gilfillian:  Perhaps Devon's most funkadelic song yet, "Black Dog Rabbit Hole" is a tasty blend of funk and hard rock in Drop D tuning that feels like a lost recording of an early Red Hot Chili Peppers song! No more Mr. Restrained Soul Performer!! Devon unleashes righteous fury on this track with abstract, psychedelic lyrics, and a guitar solo that roars like Rage Against the Machine's Tom Morello!! I currently have no clue about what this song is about, but when Devon sings "Baby, it feels so good!" during the chorus, it's my only hint. And this song DOES feel good...in a spicy, sizzlin', hot summer way!! "Chauffeur" by The Womack Sisters:  If the name "Womack" rings a bell, then you're probably a fan of classic R & B music - and in particular, soul legend Bobby Womack. In case you...

 here they are: "God's Lonely Man" by Anna Calvi (featuring Iggy Pop):  As one might expect from a song that features the Godfather of Punk, there's a charging, swaggering vibe in this song! Even the opening drum riff sounds like "Howlin' for You" by The Black Keys (which itself apes the drum riff of "Rock and Roll Part 2" by Gary Glitter). Iggy actually opens this song! Anna only joins in later. This is not the Iggy of "I Wanna Be Your Dog" or "Lust for Life," though. The song instead seems to take on more of a post-punk flavor (I could easily see this song being done by a group like Yeah Yeah Yeahs or Metric), but it still has this streetwise strut that's unmistakably Iggy! He's one old dog that CAN learn new tricks, and he really does so in this song! "Hold On (Hourglass)" by Devon Gilfillian:  Is "country-soul" a thing?! If so, Devon Gilfillian pulls it off pretty well here! His latest song, ...

 here they are: "An Arrow in the Wall" by Death Cab for Cutie: You never expected a mostly somber, folk-y group like Death Cab to get funky, did you? Well, that's what they do on their latest song, "An Arrow in the Wall." In the 20 plus years that Ben Gibbard and co have been around, they've never attempted a song like this one, which is probably to Death Cab what "Emotional Rescue" is to The Rolling Stones (who, coincidentally, will be mentioned in the very next song for this week): a slow-burning, disco-y number that never quite reaches a climax but is still a slinky, seductive song. However, there is nothing whatsoever that could be considered seductive about the lyrics to "An Arrow in the Wall." It is, instead, a warning to Ben's fans about how our already dangerous world in the 21st century could get even worse if we don't do anything about it. Hopefully, DCFC's fans will take heed to Gibbard's message, even though th...

 Day late, I realize, but better late than never, right? Here are three songs for this week you might wanna check out! "All I Really Wanna Do" by Devon Gilfillian: Not to be confused with the Bob Dylan song of the same name, "All I Really Wanna Do," the latest song from neo-soul musician, Devon Gilfillian, is an interesting one, both musically and lyrically. In terms of the song's musical aspects, it maintains a lot of the vintage soul sound that Devon has cultivated over the course of his career so far, sounding like an R & B song from roughly between the early and mid 1970's, even though it isn't from that era. It's lyrically that the song is really interesting, though. The song encourages people to just be themselves when it comes to pursuing romantic relationships, and the song's creative video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vFMHcsHd1hk) takes it a step further with an animated version of Devon becoming attracted to a "babe-lien...