Spencer Griffin's New Music Mondays

 here they are: "Angoon" by Portugal. The Man:  I don't know who or what "Angoon" is, but this piece is the angriest one I've heard yet from the normally calmer PTM!! Even reading the lyrics, I could tell it was a tense song. It uses a Pixies-ish method of swinging between calm verses and angry choruses, but the ire in this song is present throughout. With such dark lyrics as "when you dance with the devil, all I see I defend, no surrender in the shadow of drones," "No ICE no borders enforcer, no owners, no new world order," and "I'll be burning in water while we're drowning in fire," this is PTM at their most apocalyptic! Hard to believe these were the same guys who did "Feel it Still." The song's piercing guitar solo and eerie synth drone in the middle make it clear that John Gourley and co are not going to give up without a fight!! And the ending lyrics where John repeats the phrase, "Feeling that I...

 here they are: "Dracula" by Tame Impala:  (to be read in a Transylvanian accent) Greetings! It is I, the music blogger! They call me the music blogger because I love to blog songs!And today, there are SEVEN! SEVEN songs in this blog!! Ah, ah, ah. (to be read in a regular accent) Come on, I had to!! "Dracula" is right there in the song's title! Unlike last week's TI track, "Loser," Dracula" has more of the synth-pop sound Tame Impala have cultivated in more recent years. Its spooky (but fun) minor-key sound is fitting to the song's title. Did Tame Impala intentionally release this song around Halloween?! One never knows, but I get the feeling they might have! It even includes lyrics like "run from the sun like Dracula." The song seems to center around how much of an outcast Kevin Parker feels like overall (keeping with the theme of "Loser" from last week). Also, are "dueling songs" a trend now?! Spoon also has...

 here they are: "Amnesia" by M83: Techno-influenced indie-pop group, M83, has been responsible for one major hit so far in the ever-expanding alt-rock pantheon, and that song is "Midnight City," which starts off with a rather eerie synth before morphing into a catchy pop song. "Midnight City" was a bit too synth-y for me to get into at the time it came out, which was a little over a decade ago, but with "Amnesia," I feel a bit more ready to dive into M83's music. It is mostly synth-dominated, like "Midnight City" was, but "Amnesia" has a bit more guitar backing it up, earning the song more than a few comparisons so far to groups like New Order. "Amnesia"'s shimmery guitar line does bear more than a passing resemblance to Bernard Sumner's guitar work. The song's ability to switch between a standard-sounding C major song and its more exotic descent into E flat major during the chorus parts is another no...