Monolith Cocktail Blog

Our continuing partnership with the leading Italian culture/music site and platform Kalporz. Samuel Conficoni brings us a choice septet of curious and interesting new/releases.

Jeff Tweedy of Wilco.

At regular points during the year the Monolith Cocktail shares posts from our Italian pen pals at Kalporz. The site recently celebrated its 25^th anniversary. Here’s to longevity, which isn’t easy in the unstable online world.

From the site’s regular new series, This Week’s Top 7, Kalporz mainstay Samuel Conficoni shares seven (plus a sneaky bonus) choice recommendations; many of which lean towards the country, or share a theme with Bob Dylan.

7. Ever true to themselves, the Whitneys have released a new song.

“Dandelions” previews Small Talk, the new album released this November by Max Kakacek and Julien Ehrlich’s group, and the follow up to 2022’s Spark album.

6. Margo Price between innovation and quotation.

With a visual reference to Bob Dylan‘s legendary 1965 music video for “Subterranean Homesick Blues”, the singer-songwriter’s new single, which follows on from the previous intriguing “Don’t Let the Bastards Get You Down”, is titled “Don’t Wake Me Up” and features Jesse Welles. Her new album, “Hard Headed Woman”, will be released at the end of August on Loma Vista.

5. An unleashed Jeff Tweedy announces a new triple album and a tour.

Twilight Override will contain thirty songs and be released at the end of September. The Wilco leader offers us a taste of his new solo album by sharing four previews: “Enough”, “One Tiny Flower”, “Out in the Dark” and “Stray Cats in Spain”.  Tweedy and his band will be in North America this fall, and in Europe next February.

4. “She Explains Things to Me” is David Byrne’s kaleidoscopic new track.

After last month’s “Everybody Laughs”, a new preview that gives us a taste of the intensity of Who Is the Sky?, the Talking Heads frontman’s new solo album, due out in early September on Matador.

3. 80 years later, the Kronos Quartet commemorates J. Robert Oppenheimer’s atomic bomb test by performing (in two versions) a Bob Dylan classic.

To commemorate the extraordinary event of July 16, 1945, the Kronos Quartet has recorded two versions of “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall”, the poetic gem that Bob Dylan composed in late 1962, likely inspired by the Cuban Missile Crisis, and which he included on his masterpiece album The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan, released the following May. Among the names featured on the project are Willie Nelson, who, at 92, is currently touring the US with his Outlaw Festival, which also features Bob Dylan and his band; Ringo Starr, who turned 85 a few days ago; Iggy Pop; Laurie Anderson; Tom Morello; and Charlotte Gainsbourg. One version of the song is intense and hypnotic folk-rock, while the other, the “Drone Version”, is a reinterpretation of the classic in spoken-word form.

2. A passionate tribute to Jason Molina, so we never forget him.

Jason Molina, best known for his singer-songwriter project Songs: Ohia, passed away prematurely in 2013. After the fascinating and seminal reissues of much of his catalogue over the past decade or so, a compilation album dedicated to him, titled I Will Swim to You: A Tribute to Jason Molina, will be released by Run for Cover in early September. The album features, among many others, MJ Lenderman, Hand Habits, Sun June, Advance Base, Lutalo, and Horse Jumper of Love. Lenderman’s version of Molina’s “Just Be Simple” was shared the other week.

1. Woody Guthrie again, unforgettable and ever-present.

Shamus Records will release a fascinating double volume entitled Woody at Home in mid-August, containing 22 previously unreleased tracks by the legendary singer-songwriter. Among the many fascinating pieces is his only recording of “Deportee”, a legendary song performed over the decades by Bob Dylan, Pete Seeger, Bruce Springsteen, and Joni Mitchell, which Guthrie wrote after the deaths of 38 people, including 22 migrant farmworkers, in a 1948 plane crash. Thanks to the restoration of some analog tapes, on which Guthrie himself recorded these songs at home when he was 38, these two volumes have reached us. They will be enhanced by a book containing exclusive photos of Guthrie and his family and some of his lyrics, obtained from the Woody Guthrie Center in Tulsa.

[Bonus Track] 0. Headlights by Alex G is a great album. 

Headlights, the tenth studio album by Alex G (the moniker of American singer-songwriter Alex Giannascoli) our artist of the month was released this month. This is his first release for a major label, in this case RCA, and from the first listens – as the singles that preceded it had already demonstrated – it seems to be an excellent album, yet another step forward for an artist who knows how to renew himself and make his compositions engaging every time while maintaining a sincere, visionary style that is true to himself.