Shuffle Selects - September 29th Edition

Hey everybody, welcome back to another week of deep indie cuts. Let's see what the shuffle brings us today!

How This Works:

For those of you who don't know how this is all going to go down, here's how it works.

First, I go to my massive Spotify playlist that contains (currently) about 1500 of my favourite songs on the planet. Then, I hit shuffle, and the first five songs on shuffle that come up, I share with you and tell you why I like them. At the end of those five songs, I will select one more song of my choice that I want to share. Sound good? Okay, let's get started.

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Song #1: Foreign Talks - All Alone

I stumbled onto Foreign Talks a little over two years ago, about half a year after the launch of Discover Weekly on Spotify. It was around this time that I started to realize just how good discover weekly is. The whole album No Ceilings that this song is off of is a gem of thoughtful indie rock. Often mixing it lovely acoustics with soothing vocals and funny lyrics. One that particularly stands out to me is "It's funny how your ego changes, I hope that shit don't happen to you. 'Cause when I become rich and famous, I'm gonna be the same damn fool." featured on 'Disco'. I'm still waiting on them to release another album, here's hoping.

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Song #2: C2C - Down The Road

Not much of a deep cut here, but I think just about anyone can rock out to C2C's 'Down The Road'. Great song to play at a party or dance around to while you're home alone acting like an idiot. The song samples vocals from Eddie Cusic's 'You Don't Have to Go'. Who would've thought the vocals of a blues guitarist could go so well with an electronic song?

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Song #3: Margaret Glaspy - Emotions and Math

I love this song for so many reasons. The guitar riff is insanely catchy, Margaret's raspy, deep voice suits this somewhat grungy sound so well, and her vocal control and nuance is impressive. Her general aesthetic is also amazing, and the music video is fun too, so that's a nice bonus. She's someone I would just love to chill with by a lake while listening to her jam out. Apparently all it took was her to sign with ATO records in 2016 for her career to take off!

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Song #4: Allen Stone - Upside

The soul man Allen Stone rarely disappoints, and 'Upside' is no exception. Although it's certainly not my favourite effort of his (see: 'Perfect World'), it features great vocals as always and a very catchy keyboard part. It's hard to find many contemporary soul artists as talented as Allen. Much of his latest studio album Radius contains similar efforts.

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Song #5: Led Zeppelin - Ramble On

I'm forced to take what the shuffle gives me. Although this is hardly indie, it's hard to complain about getting one of the best songs of all time in your shuffle. If you disagree, then I'll let you 'ramble on' in the comments.

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Personal Choice: Car Seat Headrest - Vincent

I couldn't find the full studio version of this song on YouTube, so instead you get the epic KEXP live performance that they did in early 2017. This band is a bunch of weird looking dudes, and much of what they released prior to 2016 was a plain old lo-fi garbage. But somehow, out this steaming hot pile of trash came the widely acclaimed LP 'Teens of Denial'. From instant classics like 'Fill in the Blank' to emotional roller-coasters like 'The Ballad of the Consta Concordia', it really doesn't get much better than this folks.

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So what do you think? Is there any songs by these bands that you're a big fan of which I didn't mention? Let me know in the comments.

Stay tuned for more coming soon,

Nathan Kamphuis