Spencer Griffin's New Music Mondays

 Here they are!! "Knockin' Heart" by Hamilton Leithauser:  Thus far, a lot of the songs that Hamilton Leithauser from The Walkmen has done as a solo artist sound more like folk-rock than they do garage rock. Hamilton's latest solo effort, "Knockin' Heart," might be an exception to the rule that takes his sound back to the Walkmen days! If the "Knockin'" in the title wasn't enough to convince that Hamilton has a bit of kick to his solo stuff, then listening to the song might do the trick! It even has a cool psychedelic-tinged guitar solo to boot! It's never made clear as to whether this song is a declaration of undying love or if it's a song where the intent is for Hamilton to get an ex-partner back into his life, but either way...this song slaps! "Messy" by Lola Young:  Already a sensation on the adult alt airwaves for about a month or two, it took me finding out that the song has hit the regular alt airwaves as well t...

 here they are: "Empty Trainload of Sky" by Gillian Welch:  Sighing combos of banjo and guitar and bittersweet Southern female vocals can only mean one thing. Gillian Welch has come out with a new song! Her latest number, "Empty Trainload of Sky," is a lovely bluegrass-folk-rock song in G minor with a blues-y D7 to punctuate the first two verses midway through. I'm not exactly sure what "Empty Trainload of Sky" is supposed to mean, but chances are it's a metaphor for some difficult experience(s) in her life. As she states in the second verse, "Well, it hit me and it hurt me/Made my good humor desert me." Fitting to her Tennessee roots, Gillian's comparison of hardships to empty trains really evokes "traveling down a lonesome highway" imagery to me.  "Paranoid" by by Hippo Campus:  Not to be confused with the (much) heavier Black Sabbath song of the same name, Hippo Campus' "Paranoid" is more impassion...