Download: The Black Watch, ‘I Don’t Feel the Same’
Kevin Bronson on
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For more than two decades, the Black Watch have been dependable purveyors of intelligent indie-rock – in particular, the strain informed by the fuzzy pop leanings of the Velvet Underground and Soft Boys, British post-punk bands and the lovingly slack jangle of the luminaries on New Zealand’s Flying Nun Records. Professor/author/songwriter John Andrew Fredrick has his fingerprints on some 17 releases now, and the latest, “The End of When,” not only features 11 new songs but a second bonus disc that offers a “best-of” 16 tunes from the Black Watch’s catalog. The release comes via Pop Culture Press Records, a spinoff of the popular ’zine, and none other than David Kilgour of Kiwi pop greats The Clean authored the introduction on the record’s sleeve. “The End of When” occupies the same world, with singer-guitarist Fredrick aligning with guitarist Steven Schayer (who briefly played in Dunedin’s the Chills), bassist Chris Rackard and drummer Rick Woodard on alternately brash and contemplative songs. As a guitarist and co-writer, Schayer brings plenty to the table – his squalling on “I Don’t Feel the Same” is to die for. The Black Watch, 25 years on and never quite having enjoyed the embrace their music merits, have never sounded better.
||| Download: “I Don’t Feel the Same” and “Meg”
||| Previously: “Emily, Are You Sleeping?”
Photo by Steve Keros
[…] & Lows” arrives two years after the double-disc “The End of When” — which included a 16-song retrospective — and eight months after “Sugarplum Fairy, […]