NPR Music - The Contenders, Vol. 14: Upchuck, Just Mustard, Brandon Woody, more

Episode Date: June 24, 2025

This week's update to our running list of the year's best songs includes some scorchers from Atlanta's Upchuck, the shoegaze group Just Mustard, jazz trumpeter Brandon Woody and more.Featured artists and songs:1. Upchuck: "Plastic" (single)2. The Westerlies (with Sam Amidon): "Paradise," from 'Paradise'3. Just Mustard: "POLLYANNA" (single)4. Brandon Woody: "Beyond the Reach of Our Eyes," from 'For The Love Of It All''All Songs Considered' 25th anniversary segment: Our No. 1 songs from 2017Weekly reset: Frogs and crickets chattering in a rice field in Okazaki, JapanEnjoy the show? Share it with a friend and leave us a review on Apple or wherever you listen to podcasts. Questions, comments, suggestions or feedback of any kind always welcome: [e-mail] Hear new songs from past episodes in the All Songs Considered playlists in Apple Music and Spotify.See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.NPR Privacy Policy

All right, it's All Songs Considered. I'm Robin Hilton. And this week, on a very special edition of All Songs Considered, the prodigal son returns. Nationan editorial director at W.R.T.I. Is that who I am, too, Robin? Yeah, are you a wild child? You know, I'm trying to rein in my wilder impulses these days. It's been a minute, a very long minute since we did a show together. Yeah, I'm psyched to be back. Thank you.

I think maybe not since, you know, we were hanging out, drinking vermouth. And I told you that jazz is overrated. And you basically, you've been ghosting me ever since. Yeah. Yeah. I threw mine in your face. Yeah, you tossed your drink in my face. Now, I'm kidding.

You are a jazz head, of course. But one of the things that I've always loved about you and the music you bring, Nate, is you're one of those big ear listeners. You love lots of different stuff. Always a good hang because you're always turning me onto something I was missing. You know, we've been starting these contenders episodes. out lately by flagging or highlighting whatever the big questions are that come up in the songs we're going to play. And this week's batch of songs, it wasn't so clear for me. There's a lot

going on in all of them. I think maybe subversion maybe seems to be at the heart of a lot of these songs. But I don't know. Yeah, I'm not sure if I could find a through line other than just sheer authority. That's a good one. You know, like this, this is a batch of tunes that really tell you the people making them know exactly what they want and they know how to get it. Well, I mean, that's certainly true of this first band that we're going to hear. It's a band called Upchuk. Upchuk. They're from Atlanta.

And they just put out this single that I think will probably spike anybody's pulse. It is called plastic. I don't know if it's because they keep saying so what you want, but I keep thinking of the Beastie Boys. Oh, right. And I keep thinking this is like punk Beastie Boys and like a little. bit of red hot chili peppers or maybe even like, I don't know, arrested development or something. Well, you know, that's that's such a, you know, the beasties came up out of hardcore, right? Yeah.

So like, so that sort of sneering like absolute mayhem and the coiled intensity. Like, yeah, that all feels true to the reference. Because I'm not, I don't have my ear to the ground of like the hardcore scene. Like this band took me by surprise. And then when I looked into their story, it's like, oh, yeah, of course they're like skaters. Right. They came out of a out of like a real DIY skater punk kind of scene in Atlanta. Yeah.

But then I guess have gotten an enthusiastic cosign from the likes of Henry Rollins and Iggy Pop. And then Ty Siegel produced that track. And I don't know. I mean, with the like absolute triumph of turnstile this year, it kind of. feels like the, you know, the hardcore and hardcore adjacent scene is really having a moment. Is that, is that how you see it? I mean, I have to be honest. I don't listen to a lot of hardcore. And maybe it's because Ty Siegel produced it and I really love Ty Siegel and his fingerprints are kind of all over this song. But it may be no more complicated, you know, the whole idea of

hardcore having a moment. It may be no more complicated than it very much reflecting the times. I mean, just like how punk came up, you know, in the 70s. It would be. It was sort of inevitable for the times. And then this track also has lyrics in both English and Spanish, right? Right. Yeah. What are your thoughts about that in this particular moment in time? Yeah, I certainly feel comfortable saying it's very intentional, that it was a very intentional move on their part.

Right. And I guess that's maybe another reason why the song works so well is because it's not so on the nose, right? I mean, they're getting you thinking about things without saying very explicit. Oh, this is a song about the horrors that are happening around immigration right now. Right. So Upchuck and, first of all, A plus, A plus on the name. That's just, that is, how is it taking this long? You know, I feel like it should be one of those things.

Like, remember, remember the band Chick, Chick, Chick, which was three, three exclamation points. And it's like, you don't, you don't say it the way that it's rendered. I feel like Upchuk should maybe have like a pronouncer. And the pronouncer is like, Huh. Like, that's the actual. that's the actual name of the band. But upchuk, they've put out a couple albums that two back to back in 2022 and

2023. Right now, we just got this new single, but they just signed with Domino Records. So I would say a new album is probably imminent. All right, Nate, where do you want to go next? I was thinking maybe this Westerly's cut that you've got. So was I, because we have started the show with very sort of aggressive, go for the jugular kind of track. And this is the polar opposite of that. This is all about community and softness and empathy and love, you know.

It's a very nurturing and healing track. It's called Paradise by the Westerlies with Sam Amadon. I know that my Redeemer lives. I have a home in what comes. I have so sweet sentence gives. I have a home in the stress. I have my... I have so many thoughts about the back third or so of this song.

But maybe you should just start by telling us a little bit more about who the Westerlies are and what this cut even is. Sure. So to start, the Westerlies are a brass quartet. Yeah. two trumpets, two trombones. And they come out of jazz and classical training, but the music that they make is informed by all kinds of American folk music. There's really like a vocal ideal that I think they strive for. And that's why this particular record, which is called Paradise, is such a slam dunk for them. It is very, very directly inspired by the traditional.

of sacred harp singing or shape note music, which is this tradition that goes back to the 19th century. It has very strong roots in New England, but it's also traveled down to the south. You know, it's a rural community collective music-making endeavor. And a lot of it comes... Usually, acapella, isn't it? I mean, yeah, it's all vocal, usually. So sacred harp is a term that refers to the voice. Right. And on this. track that we just heard, the title track, which of course is a, you know, a song from the, you know, 19th or even 18th centuries. I think it's just so deeply beautiful. Yeah, it's really a resting and unexpected for me. I mean, when I think traditional folk or spirituals or sacred heart music,

I don't normally think brass quartet. I will say as beautiful as it is and as calming as it is, my favorite moment is when there's this sort of, I think it's maybe, it kind of sounds like a little effect they're doing maybe on the trumpet where it's a little overblown, this sort of breathy swell. And when it hits Sam Amadon, it's like he doesn't flinch at all, right? It's this dissonance in the middle of all the beauty. Everything else stays really sweet and beautiful. And I don't know.

For me, that's kind of all I needed for the narrative to unravel a little bit. Plus that really, it has a really dramatic build at the end. It made me think that maybe they don't really believe entirely what they're. singing about, which I think is everything's fine because even if the world is terrible, our just reward is lies in the beyond, right? Right. But it seems like maybe what they're saying is, in the meantime, it'd be nice if everyone was better off in the here and now.

Do you feel that? I think that's spot on. Yeah, it's introducing the shadow of doubt. Yeah, right? Exactly. And I think that that is definitely intentional and very thoughtful, you know, and it's about the expressive effects and about what they can do with sound in a space. one of the founders of the group,

trombonist Andy Clausen, he recently made a solo trombone record in a grain silo. Wow. And some of the lessons that he got from working in a space like that. Is done work in a grain silo? Yeah. Right. Make sure you have an exit strategy

when you are working in a grain silo. But, you know, he brought that, like that understanding of what reverberant sound in a natural space can do. I think they brought that in. But to your point about what happens in the arrangement, I mean, they're really acutely aware of like how something that seems like just a little wrinkle can actually have enormous impact on a listener. I'm going to blow it all up here with another recent discovery for me.

And I am not making the band name up here. They're called Just Mustard. Just Mustard. Mustard with a righteous cause. This mustard is just. This is a band from Ireland. I guess you'd call them maybe Shugay's Rock, but a little grungy. They've got a new single out now that I'm really loving called Pollyanna. You know, whenever we have a guitar band in for a tiny desk,

there are all these music nerds on the Empire music team who will kind of mill around and look behind the desk and look at the effects chains for the different pedals and stuff like that. I would bring Just Mustard in just so I could see the chain of pedals that they use to come up with that sound, because it is just glorious to me. Before we talk about guitars, I have to talk about this drumbeat

because at the very beginning of the track after like the sort of ambient fuzz tone intro, when that beat kicks in, at first I thought it was a sample from Radiohead's, was it, arpegy, weird fishes. Do you remember that track from In Ramos? Oh, interesting.

It is the same beat, the same. Yeah. Yeah. And I was like, oh, are they sampling? radio head but no it's just the same you know he's just playing the same beat I think I hadn't made that radio head connection at all but now I can't get it out of my head

and it's making me see some similarities between the two groups and I mean maybe one of the reasons why I love this so much because I do love radio heads so much yeah is this like do you dig this sound is this like yeah very much very much I mean I'm generally a sucker for

well executed shoeges you know or anything in that kind of that sort of wash, like distortion wash zone. Yeah. And then this has that other element, which is Katie Ball, the lead singer, has this really beautiful and kind of vulnerable voice. And the way that she sings this song, you know, it reminds me, like, in the early

part of the track, I thought of the affect of Deerhoff, which is a band I love, right? Where you have this kind of like clear, small voice against all this kind of tumult. Right. But however pretty this voice is, it is also very determined. There's something in her phrasing, the way that she presents these lyrics that is, you know, she's standing athwart the storm. You know, like she's not seating any ground. So, just mustard, they've got two albums out so far. And then they dropped this cup, Pollyanna.

When they dropped it, they said, stay tuned for more to come. So hopefully we'll get more from them soon. Yeah. All right. we still have that look back at our number one songs from 2017. That's coming up, plus your weekly reset. But Nate, you've got one more I know you want to play. Yeah, there's rarely a glow-up for an improvising musician,

quite like the one we've seen this year for Brandon Woody, who is a trumpeter from Baltimore. He has been signed to Blue Note Records, and his band Upendo released their debut album. And I've got to tell you, Robin, I have seen Brandon Woody at three or four festivals already. Oh, wow. And the summer is just beginning.

I think I'm more impressed that you've gone to three festivals so far this year. I'm trying to make the rounds, trying to keep up. But yeah, I mean, he was at the Roots Picnic. He was at the San Francisco Jazz Festival. I saw him at the Exit Zero Jazz Festival in Cape Maine, New Jersey. He also recently played the Blue Note Festival at the Hollywood Bowl. And I had to pick this song because it's weird picking a song from a jazz album sometimes because, you know, it's not always melody first that you think about. Sometimes it's more about a vibe or a harmonic progression or whatever.

But in this case, Brandon Woody wrote a piece of music that legitimately has been stuck in my head for weeks and weeks. It is beyond the reach of our eyes. I love the way it sort of lights back down to earth at the end of the song after all of that. But I have to ask you, what part of the melody gets stuck in your head? Because if you can contain all of that and have that kind of looping in your head, that is very impressive. It's not like lollipop, lollipop or something like that. It's that da-da-da-da-da-da-da. You know, it's, it is catchy.

I mean, I think it's probably easier to hear in your head than it is to actually sing. And it's always pushing. Yeah, it's the series of intervals that feels. I don't know, like a battle cry or some kind of like, we are triumphant, you know, like we are, we are climbing the hill. This song is really a whole journey. Well, Brandon Woody, the album, for the love of it all, that's the album, the songs from Beyond the Reach of Our Eyes. That's out now on Blue Note, yeah? That it is. All right, Nate Chenin, editorial director at WRTI. Thanks so much for doing this. Let's not let so much time pass before we do it again.

Yeah, let's definitely do it again. Thanks, Robin. All right, let's get to our number one song from 2017. This is something we've been closing out every episode with on All Songs Considered. It's for our 25th anniversary. Stephen Thompson, back here as always. Welcome, Stephen. Hello, Robin. So we're up to 2017, and we've been trying to sort of play

a little bit of Stump to stump the chump, playing something for each other, like, here's my pick. Do you even, do you, dig through the cobwebs of your mind? They're going to get less cobwebby as we get closer and closer to the present. At least I hope so. Do you remember this one, this deep I think for 2017, we're 100% in agreement, certainly on the album, if not the song, we would pick. And we'll just go with this one.

I got, I got loyalty inside my DNA. Cocaine, quarter piece, got war and peace inside my DNA. I got power, poison, pain, and joy inside my DNA. I got hustle, though, ambition flow inside my DNA. I was born like this, it's born like this, emaculate conception, I transformed like. This, perform like this With y'all's you a new weapon I don't contemplate

I meditate They're off your fucking head This that puts the kids to bed This that I got I got I got I got I got DNA from Kendrick Lamar Obviously from the album

Damn I remember when this record First came out I listened to it And then I just started it all over again Right then in the same In the same sitting

Listen to it all over again Second time And I literally put a Do Not Disturb sign up and I listened to this four times all the way through without... Before you even took a break from it, walked away. And it just blew my mind apart. Yeah, I mean, DNA is a, DNA is a perfect jam.

You could play that one. You could play loyalty. You could play so many songs. For me, one of the ones that I have just kept going back to over and over again is love. I said this about Lemonade for 2016, and I remember thinking it again when Dam came out once in a generation album. I'm like, boom, boom. I mean, the fact of the matter is, many years have once-in-a-generation albums.

I don't know, man. I don't, stuff that stands up to damn and lemonade. I mean, yeah, that's a really good pair of years from music for sure. But, I mean, it was also, like, such an undeniable record that it was like, it won a Pulitzer Prize. Yeah, I was going to say. Like, here's your, I'm a Pulitzer Prize. And everybody was like, oh, yeah, that checks out. Yeah, no, that was good.

Yeah, it was here. a pretty good album. Well, since I know that you were going to pick Kendrick Lamar as well, what was sort of your backup for what would be your number two pick. Well, 2017 was a great year for music. Kendrick Lamar definitely looms, you know, kind of largest over that year. There are a number of directions I could go. I mean, I certainly could go with that Siza record.

Control came out that year. And it's so funny because Kendrick and Siza, now they're touring together. They've been so, you know, they had Luther, which is, you know, the biggest song of this year so far. You know, they've become sort of inextricably tied to each other. And so I want to go in a different direction completely. I'm going to pick a song from 2017 that I have listened to hundreds of times. I think very, very, very few people, even people who listen to this show are going to know this song.

The one or two people will be going to know this band. I've certainly talked about them on this show before. But a song that I cannot believe more people are not as obsessed with as I am. You'll make it all right if you fall along and enough throw it away You know the only thing I can come up with is still Vanessa because it sounds a little like But it's not, I'm drawing a blank. So the song is called Afterthought by the band Close Talker. Oh, no, I don't know Close Talkers.

And they're terrific. And they've got a bunch of great songs. That song, to me, kind of towers over everything because it is to me perfect. It gives me goosebumps. I'm sitting here with goosebumps. There is something so sly that just like slides under your skin listening to this record. I just cannot get enough of this song. And I feel like, doesn't everybody love this song?

I don't think anybody else knows this song the way that you know this song. I mean, it's new to me. I like this a lot. Do you hear what I'm saying, though, the similarities to Sylvanessa, certainly in the voice? Oh, yeah. The voice in some of the chord progressions, it definitely feels of a piece. And maybe that was just a vibe that really worked for me in 2017. Yeah.

But I got to say, in the years since, I've got to say, I've got to say, on back and revisited that song again and again and again, and I have never gotten tired of it. Well, I wrote down quite a few things for 2017. A Crow looked at me. By Mount Erie. Yeah, Mount Erie. Yeah, Mount Erie. Oh, my God.

Yeah. Also wrote down Pleasure by Feist. Oh, yeah. And also this one that I was going to do, but I figured you'd just know what it was immediately. Oh, Lord. Oh, this song is so good! We order different drinks at the same bars. I know about what you did, and I want to scream the truth.

She thinks you love the beach, you're such a damn liar. Those great whites, they have big teeth. Oh, they bite you. That you said that you will always be in love, but you're not in love. No more. Did it frighten you? How we kissed when we dance. Lord, on the light of floor.

I'm a light of floor. But I hear sounds in my mind. New sounds in my mind. Ward, back with new music. I know, yeah. Stevie, you just want to hang out, listen to music. Listen to music with a friend is fun. Music's so good.

It really is. What else you got for 2017, though? What a great year. Oh, man. I mean, 2017 was the... the year of the Kesha come back. All of a sudden, Keshe had that song praying. Phoebe Bridgers dropped her first record in 2017.

That was a huge, huge, huge record for us. I mean, I think when we get to her next record, we'll certainly be talking about that. Well, we'll go out on this, though. And as always, thanks, Stephen. Thank you, Robin. And for NPR music, I'm Robin Hilton. It's all songs considered.

Those rumors, they have big teeth. Hope they bite you. That you said that you will always be. in love but you're not in love no more did it frighten you how we kissed when we danced on the light of floor on the light of floor but i hear sounds in my mind the new sounds in my mind be seeing you