Spencer Griffin's New Music Mondays

 Spoiler alert, none of them are Irish!! But here they are... "Bonnet of Pins" by Matt Berninger:  This song marks Matt's first musical effort apart from The National, but the instrumentation of this song sounds awfully close to what he did with them! A crisp acoustic guitar, orchestral strings in the background, and a jolt of electric guitar to punctuate the chorus set "Bonnet of Pins," Matt's debut solo effort, into motion, and a horn section creeps in later to add more depth! With quiet, sweet female vocals to create a marked balance point to Matt's more somber baritone male vocals, "Bonnet of Pins" is a moody yet sweet piece of music like most of Matt's efforts with The National have been as well. An electric guitar solo gives the remainder of the song a crackling, potent feel! "Gethsemane" by Car Seat Headrest:  At a staggering 10 minutes and 52 seconds, "Gethsemane" by Car Seat Headrest might just be the longest so...

 SEVEN new songs for the month of December?! It's a Christmas miracle!! Here they are: "Agua" by Porno for Pyros:  It's been a little over a quarter century since Porno for Pyros, Perry Farrell from Jane's Addiction's side project, last released a song! Their biggest (and almost only) hit, "Pets," was released back in 1993, an unusually soft song for a band featuring a musician known mostly for doing hard and often controversial rock songs. Jane's Addiction is generally recognized as being legendary and innovative among alt-rock and hard rock fans for both their lyrical audacity and their musical audacity to combine post-punk, heavy metal, funk, psychedelic rock, and progressive rock into a single entity (and even reggae and folk with songs like "Jane Says"). Porno for Pyros tend to not receive near as much recognition as Jane's Addiction, but Perry Farrell's aggressively nasal vocals are unmistakable, and they shine through jus...