People often get nostalgic about the 90s-era Chapel Hill music scene, but I believe our local music community has never been better than it is today. And of course all those great musicians have spent the last two years holed up in pandemic isolation, with little to do but think and write and produce. Now we’re reaping the benefits, with fantastic new albums from artists of all stripes. Soon enough, we might be looking back fondly on this era as another golden age for local music. It’d be well deserved.
Here’s what went down in February!
Above the Fold
The splashiest new release of the month was Superchunk‘s Wild Loneliness, the twelfth studio album from an iconic band that’s still going strong after more than 30 years. It’s a solid late-period album, maybe their best since 2010’s Majesty Shredding: the gang have less to say than they used to, but their chemistry is as strong as ever. Come for the lead single, “Endless Summer,” but stick around for the album’s closer, the quietly insistent “If You’re Not Dark” (with Sharon Van Etten chiming in on vocals).
We also got a new album, Nightroamer, from Sarah Shook and the Disarmers. With their distinctive wavering twang, Shook might be my favorite Triangle vocalist; it’s a voice that lends itself most obviously to throwback country (see 2017’s “Dwight Yoakam,” still my favorite Disarmers song), but on Nightroamer they go for a harder, grungier rock sound, and Shook’s voice falls right into place. And like Superchunk, the Disarmers save the best for last: “Talkin’ to Myself,” the album’s closer, gives us another classic Sarah Shook antihero, tightroping on the edge of society and sanity, with both others and themselves about equally to blame.
Pound for pound, though, the best release of the month might have been Django Haskins’ EP Beforetimes 1, the first of two “Beforetimes” releases he’s planning this year. Haskins told me he’s written nearly a hundred songs since the pandemic began; he gives us only five here, but they’re all stellar, with support from other great artists like Skylar Gudasz and Phil Cook. I think my favorite is “In Afternoons,” the opening duet with Gudasz – but ask me again later and I’ll probably have a different answer.
Listen to Django Haskins’ appearance on 97.9 The Hill last month.
Under the Radar
As great as Beforetimes 1 is, though, it’s got competition from Chapel Hill pop-punkers The Consequences Of Our Own Actions. If you’re nostalgic for the mid-2000s, give yourself twenty minutes and check out Get Well Soon, an EP with five terrific songs – a nice step up from last year’s Nobody Dances Sober, which was pretty solid in and of itself. (Maybe because bassist Kristi Dixon takes lead vocals on several tracks this time? Not sure, but “Sorry For The Next Girl” and “Nothing Like You” are both great.)
February also brought debuts. Funk outfit JULIA. have been around for a few years, but last month they released their first full-length album, the succinctly titled When Dirt Was Clean and Dinosaurs Roamed the Earth. And banjoist Brendan Macie bounced back from Misc’s breakup last year, teaming up with Jodi Jones as the Sugaree String Society for the equally-succinctly-titled lo-fi album, Don’t This Road Look Rough and Rocky?
Listen to JULIA.’s appearance on 97.9 The Hill last month.
Overachievers
Finally, the folks from Mipso put out not one, not two, but three worthy releases in February. Collectively, the band released a nice cover of Guy Clark’s “Dublin Blues”; Libby Rodenbough recorded a new song called “East” in conjunction with an Austin-based podcast; and as That Other Band, Wood Robinson dropped a whole damn album, teaming up with five other great artists for a jazzy collection of ten instrumentals called In the Middle of Everything.
One of those “five other great artists,” by the way, is drummer Yan Westerlund, whose own band Canine Heart Sounds dropped a fine LP of their own: Sun Size Guitar, their first new album in seven years. (“Job Hop,” the opening track, should be enough to pull you in.)
Good thing February is the shortest month. After all that work, those guys’ll need a break as soon as they can get one.
Photo of Django Haskins and Aaron Keck, during Django’s appearance on “Live & Local.” Tune in to 97.9 The Hill every weeknight at 6 p.m. for an hour of the best in local music, present and past.
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