Just like all the new growth that sprouts in spring, April unearthed some blossoming new tunes! Per usual, we also found a few old jams to help score our pre-summer soundtrack. Dial up that volume, grab your garden shovel, and dig what we've been digging!
Listen to Pandora Picks – April 2024
Some real nice stuff. I don't know much about this person. I don't know if they perform live ever, if they've ever come to America. I think they live in Argentina. The artist is called necesito el valor tanto como necesito el miedo. I'm taking Duolingo - I don't know if I got that right. It's nice and dreamy lo-fi, singer songwriter stuff. Here we go.
-George
What's up, you guys? It's Lisa from Pandora Music Analysis. This month, I stumbled across an artist. I was unfamiliar with named MaKenzie. I couldn't find a lot about her online, but the music definitely speaks for itself. I had a hard time choosing a track off the album. The whole thing is really good, but I went with “Cashmere.” It’s sort of an angry, romantic, conflict type of song. It's pop R&B in the sort of Prince vein, with a little bit more electronic production and also a really beautiful string arrangement that pops in at the end. So, I was really impressed with her voice and super impressed with the production. It really gets you right in your feels if you're having a sort of angry romantic day. So, check out “Cashmere” by MaKenzie.
-Lisa
My pick for this month's Pandora Picks is from Adam Wiltzie, who's one half of the orchestral guitar drone duo, Stars Of The Lid, a group whose substantial body of work is utterly stunning in its subdued epicry. Sadly, the other half of Stars Of The Lid, Brian McBride tragically passed away in 2023. So Wiltzie's new record Eleven Fugues For Sodium Pentothal is a gorgeous. elegy for his fallen comrade, continuing the same sonic path. Like Stars Of The Lid, Wiltzie creates miniature supernovas of sound – small symphonies that quickly expand to fill a space exponentially greater than their constituent parts might in less skilled hands. It's an expansive song suite that delicately fuses Arvo Pärt and sunn O))) into an orchestral drone bliss. Equal parts dark ambience and smoldering majesty, this is “We Were Vaporized” by Adam Wiltzie.
-Andee
I've got a pick for you this month, a track by the band Gramma from Minneapolis. It's off their latest full-length called Eat, which came out last month. This band plays a brand of bouncy, distorted, poppy, punky rock – a little bit Weezer, a little bit grunge. Very melodic and chaotic as well. Maybe a sort of like a more cheerful version of something like the band So Pitted from Seattle (who also have a new album that came out last month called Cloned). I picked the track “MOM ETC.” which is the second song on this album. And if you like it, you'll probably dig what comes after. And most of the tracks are pretty short too, under two minutes or even a minute. So, yeah, good times.
Check it out.
-Allan
Hey y'all, I am so stoked to share the debut track from a brand-new project called Parlor Greens, put out by the always amazing Coalmine Records. With guitarist Jimmy James, drummer Tim Carman, and Hammond B3 organist Adam Scone, their track, “West Memphis” sounds something straight out of the 1960s Stax/Volt vaults. Hope you dig it.
-Michelle
I’ve been obsessed with this epic long-player ever since it dropped in January. The last time I had honest difficulty picking a favorite song from an album was when I first fell for Link Wray’s 1971 eponymous LP. The brilliantly crafted music of San Francisco’s Chris Guthridge isn’t that different from said Link Wray album - the prolific Guthridge played most of the instruments here and recorded these songs in his home studio. And like Link, he shares an affinity for timeless, kitchen sink, Americana, with musical roots that dig deep into the fertile soils of soul, country, and psychedelia. Speaking of all things psychedelic, this song “Jackie” from his second album Mental Health has been putting a kaleidoscopic spin on my spring and I hope it does the same for you.
-Eric S.
My pick for this month is AO Music and they have a new album called Otherness. And the track I really like is called “Nata Ire Vox.” AO Music is a conglomerate of musicians from all over the world who work with children's choirs from all over the world. So, you get this really awesome mix of timbres and sounds and instruments and I just really like it. I really, really dig this sort of thing. I don't know if you want to call it world fusion or whatever, but I really enjoy it. Hope you do too.
-Jamie
My pick this month is a reggae cover of the John Lennon & Yoko Ono song, “Every Man…” by Tchai & The Merger. I'm a total sucker for reggae covers of pop songs and this one does not disappoint. The song is on a compilation titled Riddim Poetry which highlights the emergence of the reggae movement in France through a selection of hidden jams from the 80s – highly recommended tunes.
-Chris N.
Hello, Pandora friends and associates. If you know me (and by now I’ll bet you do), you know that I like obscure bands from who knows where with names that I can't pronounce properly. This month I bring you a track from Cukor Bila Smert' from Ukraine, going way back to like 1990. This is some freaky stuff. In fact, most of the album is so insane, I can't actually get through the whole thing. But this cut “The Great Hen-Yuan’ River” is ok. I can get with it. It’s still pretty freaky. So, dig in and I don't know, just get weird. Get freaky. Get Ukrainian.
-Chris D.
For three strange days, I have been thinking about this hit song from the very early 90s. One of my favorites from the period by a band called School Of Fish. I listened again this morning, sort of wondering if the track would stand up to the glory of my memory of it. And wow, it absolutely does. The interplay between the vocal and the guitar melodies builds a stage for the lyrics in which every scene comes to life vividly, like a movie. Singer/guitarist Josh Clayton-Felt died very young and guitarist Michael Ward passed just recently. They both went on to other musical heights in their careers which are well worth diving into. And they left us this timeless, gorgeous, undeniable smash, “3 Strange Days.”
-Eric D.
I went with a springtime-themed track. This is Pharoah Sanders’ “Love Is Everywhere.” The springtime is my own interpretation, in that I feel like this song encapsulates an explosion into ecstasy, which may sound dramatic, but reminds me a lot of how with spring, we get flowers and trees budding into leaves. And so, there's sort of this frenetic feel as the earth begins to wake up from winter. So please enjoy this song. It's eight minutes of fun, magical saxophone.
-Lee
