Sounds of Silva – Vol. 1
Re-Introducing Myself
This is Sounds of Silva.
After over a year and a half of hibernation, I feel an itch. It feels like time to revive an old series of mine, one that started as an album review column in high school when I was just starting to learn how to write about music, then soon thereafter had a period as a community radio show with a weekly featured guest and news discussions. Then throughout college, writing and broadcasting as part of the campus outlets gave me the confidence to share my ideas on music, whether stupid or blown out of proportion. As a grown adult, the time has come to revive Sounds of Silva and fill my life lull with a newsletter.
I am lucky to have friends who ask for new music recommendations and ask “where do you find such weird bands?” I was the one in middle school always asking others to make me mixtapes or to lend me CDs by artists I hadn’t heard of before, and I’m pleased to now be on the flipside of that equation. Though of course, I am still learning and processing and working and still depend on others to tell me what shows to go to.
This newsletter aims to be a blast of fresh music, some familiar and some foreign, that hopefully leads you down a further path of music discovery. And while I honestly admit that this is a selfish venture – a way for me to get words on a page and shout into the void – I hope my subscribers find something they like.
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Geese - “Disco”
Geese released a debut record that is somehow a combination of every influential white male NYC rock band before them (I mean this in the most complimentary way) – Television, Talking Heads, The Strokes, The Velvet Underground – while also carving their own place in the current boom of post-punk. It’s a promising start and everyone I know who has seen them in one of their first live performances has returned with glowing reviews.
Additional Listening: Television – “Marquee Moon”; The Strokes – “Ize of the World”; Squid – Bright Green Field
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Parannoul/Asian Glow - “Colors”
Parannoul made big waves as an unknown South Korean artist getting a glowing Pitchfork review earlier this year. They’re on Longinus Recordings, an independent tape label run out of East Lansing, Michigan that specializes in shoegaze-y pop projects like theirs. So naturally, Parannoul (South Korea) and label mates Asian Glow (South Korea) and sonhos tomam conta (Brazil) got together to compose an epic collaborative record. “Colors” is the standout for me with drums that pummel right out of the gate, and emo and math rock inspired performances throughout its hypnotic 8 minutes.
[Have to give a huge shout-out to Joshua Minsoo Kim, writer for many publications and leader of experimental outlet Tone Glow, for spreading the word on some really cool bands from most of Asia, and whose recommendations on Twitter/Substack introduced me to the above artists.]
Additional Listening: Parannoul – To See The Next Part of the Dream; Asian Glow – Cull Ficle; sonhos tomam conta – hypnogogia
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No Party for Cao Dong - “如常”
Whenever I would poll friends from Taiwan on the most promising indie bands in their scene at the moment, No Party for Cao Dong would come back as the constant across all responses. This band won several of Taiwan’s Golden Melody awards following their debut album, then reportedly sold 10,000+ tickets for a May 2021 arena show in Taipei that was indefinitely postponed due to the Covid pandemic. Their popularity seemed to not only stick, but grow even more. Their latest single released last year is a breezy acoustic ballad that frankly is just a pleasant indication of new music to come.
Unfortunately news broke this week of the death of their drummer Tsai Yi-fan. We hope the artist’s family and bandmates take the time they need to process this loss. Thankfully we can appreciate her musicianship with an album’s worth of songs and likely forthcoming new material from the band with her still as the backbone.
Additional Listening: deca joins – 浴室; Omnipotent Youth Society – Inside The Cable Temple (冀西南林路行)
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Big Thief – “Change”
It takes real guts for a well-established band to begin a festival sub-headlining set with a new song that many fans in the audience likely haven’t heard before. But that’s exactly what Big Thief did at Pitchfork Music Festival in September and is emblematic not only of the risks they take in their live shows (see: the searing second half of any of their renditions of “Not”) but also of their pristine record of never releasing a bad album to date. “Change” is lyrically simple and beautiful, with a guitar solo from Buck Meek that doesn’t say too much. Not much else to say other than I cannot wait for the next Big Thief album to drop based on this and the other new tracks they’ve been performing on their Fall tour.
Additional Listening: Tiny Ruins – “Me At The Museum, You in the Wintergardens”; Faye Webster – “A Dream with a Baseball Player”; Joni Mitchell – Blue
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The Velvet Underground - “Heroin”
A new documentary on The Velvet Underground launched on Apple TV and launched a lot of praise on music head twitter for its avant-garde storytelling of an unusual group of artists. The doc had tons of really cool footage of the band’s performances – though the band itself was short-lived like many other influential groups of that era, it seemed like they were paraded around the country as often as possible as an Andy Warhol exhibit until Lou Reed’s final performance with the band in 1972 at Max’s Kansas City in New York City, just 5 years after the debut was released. And while their album White Light/White Heat, specifically “Sister Ray”, broke boundaries for rock music, I always go back to the standout song on their debut as the quintessential VU track. “Heroin” is an incredible accomplishment of songwriting and the perfect display of the four band members’ unique talents – the chaos of the last two minutes is pure bliss.
Additional Listening: The Velvet Underground – White Light/White Heat; Lou Reed – Transformer
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Follow the full playlist of Sounds of Silva featured tracks.
Follow Zach’s Favorite Songs of 2021 (So Far).
Listen to Zach’s radio show archive for Friend From A Big City on Deadbeat Radio – with a debut episode on China.