Spencer Griffin's New Music Mondays

 here they are: "Billy (Yeah Yeah Yeah)" by Inhaler:  The Irish indie quartet are back, with a more disco-y yet still intimate-sounding flavor than we might be used to from them. A similar vibe to songs like Modest Mouse's "Float On" with its combination of breezy dance-rock and light guitar riffs interspersed enough to make it seem it doesn't stray completely from the rock category. I have a question before I begin this review, though. Who IS Billy, and why do they repeat his name 12 times before the first verse begins?! Billy Idol? Billy Joel? Billy Squier? Billy MAYS, maybe?! (Well, ok, the last one's highly unlikely). It's probably just an ordinary person named Billy, and Elijah Hewson seems to be reaching out to him in a similar way to how Burt Bacharach reached out to someone named Alfie many decades before this song came out. Elijah may not be asking, "What's it all about?" to Billy, but that sense of empathy is clearly there!  ...

 Hi everyone! I'm so sorry if I left anyone behind these past three weeks! I was going through a lot and I just didn't feel up to doing new music blogs during that time. Luckily, I took the time to heal myself emotionally, and I feel better now! That being said, I missed out on a lot of new music during those weeks, but I'm finally ready to catch up. So here goes: "Afterlife" by Sharon Van Etten:  One of the more synth-heavy Sharon Van Etten songs, "Afterlife" has a rather strange but alluring appeal. Ordinarly, SVE has a sound closer to folk-rock and indie, but in the past few years, she's gotten a bit more of a techno influence. Sharon's ethereal, cathartic nature remains in this song, though. In a time of uncertainty in the world at large, her sentiments on "Afterlife" speak volumes! The entire song centers around uncertainty, and specifically spiritual and supernatural uncertainty. Sharon's eerie yet buoyant vibes, both instrume...

 here they are: "Just the Once" by Metric: Not since Blondie has a female lead singer crooned so seductively to an instrumental backdrop that is equal parts disco and new wave. "Just the Once" is one of those songs that makes you want to get up and dance the moment you hear it! The lyrics are somewhat cryptic. No one knows just what Emily Haines means by "you said that it would be just the once." First of all, who places a "the" before the word "once"? Second of all, what does she even mean by "it" and "the once"? More than likely, she's referring to a sexual affair, but she never makes that clear in the song, instead preferring her fans to savor the mystery, making this banger of a song even more alluring than it already is! "Just to Keep You Satisfied" by Inhaler: This song is a bit more chill than most of Inhaler's zippy, upbeat material. On "Just to Keep You Satisfied," the 2020's ...

 Love is in the air...and so are 8 new songs!! Here they are: "Ghosts Again" by Depeche Mode: Depeche Mode are not known for writing love songs as much as they for writing songs that decry politics, religion, and pretty much anything central to human affairs that has the potential to both divide and unite us, but "Ghosts Again," just in time for Valentine's Day, is a love song. Well...sort of. It's an elegy of sorts to their recently departed keyboard player, Andy Fletcher, who passed away last year. It is both surprisingly upbeat and surprisingly pristine for a DM song while still maintaining the dark vibes that the now legendary pioneers of goth-rock have become known for. The song is almost U2-ish with the exception of its constant use of keyboard, but even the keyboard has a more soothing sound than the more synth-y stuff that DM usually go for. It is as mournful as it is celebratory, and this is exactly how the surviving members of the group intended fo...