Album of the week

...survey.

🙂

Make sure you're first on the list next time and put Victor on 🙂

He and San Salvador are my latest musical obsessions 😍

For some reason, it’s not registering my votes 😁 Honestly, it doesn't even matter! If everyone else isn't having this issue, the poll should run just fine. And hey, if we really need to, we can always just go in and manually count the ones I missed... 😁

Steven Newman50 said:For some reason, my votes aren't registering. Seriously. 😁 Whatever. If everyone else is good to go, the poll's gonna run just fine. If we end up missing some numbers, we’ll just do a manual count later. No big deal. 😁

So, apparently my suggestion was actually solid, yet here we go with all this drama. Look, I know how this works. Nothing happens by accident. 😬

Yeah, I caught that too. It’s totally bugged. It shows 3 votes as 2, and 4 votes as 3. Just broken.

Nah, it’s showing up everywhere I look! 😁 There’s definitely going to be another one popping up soon, especially if anyone actually decides to vote for those suggestions sitting at zero right now... 😛 I think I probably just broke the server when I tried to cast my vote 😬

redbear12 said:Funny how everyone suddenly finds issues the moment I actually make a decent suggestion. I know, I know—it’s clearly all just a massive coincidence. 😬

conspiracy theory 🤣

I honestly thought I wouldn't make it to the polls today, so I went last night; turns out you can always find the time if you actually try.
On another note, I started listening to The Sound—a band I'd never even heard of before—and they're actually pretty interesting, so there's that. 🙂

Amanda Lopez50 said:Man, Sade is just incredible 😍

Sade is seriously amazing (and I’m not just saying that because I suggested her 😁). Her vocals are stunning—both in tone and sheer capability—plus she’s got this effortless, mysterious charisma.

The lyrics aren't trying to be some deep metaphysical masterpiece, but they definitely aren't the cheap, shallow stuff you usually hear in mainstream pop either. She's old school. The whole band is always super inspired, and honestly, that bass and drum combo is pure gold.

She’s actually covered a Deftones track here with a darker vibe, though her original version is still a beautiful tribute in its own right... 😁

Steven Newman50 said:For some reason, my votes aren't even registering 😁

You're done, Amanda.
Spill it—which user were you sucking up to, and why'd you have to be such a total jerk about it? ☕

Amanda Robinson4 clicked on Vuca and they banned him instantly 😬

Dennis Martin6 said:You're 'canceled,' Amanda Robinson4.
Come on, tell us—which user were you hitting on, and why specifically fassgodarda? ☕

Speaking from experience here? 😁 I don't exactly go around flirting with users, if you know what I mean... ☕
Though, it never really crossed my mind that I might get blacklisted over some old mistakes, so hey, it’s not totally out of the question... 🙈

Wait, is fassgodard one of the regulars here? I had no idea...
😁

Sorry guys, but what is with all this poking around today?
🙂

Anyway, check this out—our guys actually made it onto progarchives.

They're pretty great...

urbanheron4 said:

Glass Bead Game – Garden of Light (1980)
Genre: American Pink Floyd

If God were a woman, why wouldn't she be fabulous too? 🙂

Not surprising for the progressives out there. We've got our own wild horses in the race... 👍

🍿

I have no idea what this is, but my algorithm served it up to me today.
(this was right after I gave 'Circle of Light' another listen...)

Man, they’re actually top-tier. Just saying this so Lisa Davis46 doesn't get salty.

😁
Don't sweat it, though some of this stuff actually gets on my nerves a bit.

We don't really have much housewife energy going on with the albums we've got,
so starting next week, I'm thinking we should just stick to American music.

I’ve got a hunch that progarchives.com is actually a local US outfit. And even if it isn't, that guy underneath, Snoop Dogg, is basically a New Yorker at heart.

It’s not some local thing, it’s more like RYM—anyone can write whatever they want on there...
He's definitely an American. But, I guess the guy who gave it four stars is too.

Gerald Jackson48 said:Sade is honestly incredible—and no, that’s not just me being biased because I suggested her. Her vocals are just on another level, both in terms of tone and sheer range, plus she has this sort of effortless, mysterious charisma that you just can't teach.

Look, the lyrics might not exactly reach some transcendental, metaphysical plane of existence—let's be real—but they aren't that shallow, trivial nonsense you usually hear in mainstream pop. They've got that old-school grit. The whole band seems genuinely inspired, too; honestly, that drum and bass combo? Absolute perfection.

Yeah, she really is a dream. 🙂
I was listening to the album yesterday on my way to the grocery store—living the dream during these lockdown days—and I totally get what you’re saying. The lyrics aren't exactly groundbreaking or anything, but they're... lovely? In a way. The music itself has that same vibe—just really smooth and easy to listen to. Her songs about love might feel a bit old-fashioned by today's standards—especially that specific way she conceptualizes relationships—but at the same time, it's sensual and, again, just really pleasant. It's nice.
I don't listen to them all that often—honestly, it's pretty rare—but whenever I actually do, it never fails to lift my mood.

So, since it looks like San Salvador is a total bust—meaning I won't be able to annoy you all with my usual deep-dive analyses—I guess that's that. 😁Look, I just wanted to jump in here for a second—mostly because I don't want us turning this thread into a total misinformation factory.

redbear12 said:Sounds like some kind of early ensemble or maybe just some indigenous music from before the Europeans even touched down in South America.

Despite what the name implies—which basically drags our minds straight into Latin America with those smooth guitar riffs—San Salvador really has nothing to do with... Those guys. From San Salvador to El Salvador—they’re basically just French. 🙂 Before you jump to conclusions and label this "colonizer music"—the band's name actually comes from their own little slice of San Salvador, the small town of Saint Salvadour where they grew up. Interestingly, that name is actually Occitan—San Salvador. They sing in Occitan, or one of its dialects, which is arguably one of those "dying" languages native to that specific region of Corrèza. Through their local collective, Lost in Traditions—which was founded by Gabriel Durif, if I recall correctly, who serves as both the artistic director and lead vocalist—they collect, arrange, and perform the songs that have been traditionally sung in that area for generations.



Or, you know, the way one of the band members explained it years ago on YouTube to some offended listener from El Salvador:

So, San Salvador turns out to be a bit of a shapeshifter, doesn't it? Depending on who you ask, it’s an Argentine city, a municipality in Spain, or even an island in the Bahamas. It’s a district in Peru and Paraguay, a movie starring James Belushi, a song by Bernard Lavilliers, and apparently some kind of story involving Tif et Tondu. It can be a volcano, a hotel in Venice, a hydroelectric dam, a Mexican restaurant, or even a folk choir from the Massif Central. Talk about having an identity crisis. 😉

(I don't speak French, but this isn't exactly rocket science)

And within all that—I can't say for sure, since nobody ever asks musicians actually interesting questions—but my take is that the answer to this massive question is hidden right there:

urbanheron4 said:So why is this guy wearing a Barcelona jersey?

See, Occitan isn't just some dialect from a corner of France; it’s spoken in parts of Italy, Monaco, and—well, Spain, specifically Catalonia, where one version is actually an official language.
Now, just like how the name San Salvador caused a bit of a mix-up here, things get confusing elsewhere too—and I’d argue the album cover is a direct response to that confusion and the whole identity crisis: who exactly is San Salvador, how do we as an audience perceive them, and whose music is it, really? Then you have that Barcelona moment, alongside this "summer vacation" vibe (the shirts, the tank tops, the duffel bags, the snapshots—plus that tagline on their page saying San Salvador isn't music from exotic islands) which acts as an allusion to the Bahamas and their specific San Salvador, much like the straw hat. And then there's that brilliant (genre-wise, which makes the story even better) cowboy moment—it's technically a gaucho, but those references tend to blur together in the cultural imagination—and that Western landscape seen in the first music video for Fai Sautar, which inspired all the album's visuals. Because San Salvador is also this imaginary place in Latin America, built out of all the stereotypes we carry as listeners. On top of that, there’s the time dimension: what era (in our minds) does San Salvador and their music belong to? It feels traditional yet "modern" (Fai Sautar is almost a pop track with echoes of the European hip-hop of my youth—not to mention all the other arrangements that refuse to stick to one "original" sound). All those shirts feel a bit retro, and that jersey is Stoichkov's number eight—he joined Barca the same year Gabriel Durif was born—but "retro" can also be read as something very "in" right now, making it timeless. To me, it seems like San Salvador is playing with all these confusions, quirks, and influences—all while the album cover remains this huge, colorful mess of chaos, which is also the album title, so that’s likely a reference too. 🙂

Of course, it’s also possible I’m overthinking it and Durif just really loves Barcelona. 😁

Here is the video for Fai Sautar, which looks simple on the surface but is actually fantastic because it explores all those layers—plus, it's totally DIY since the collective members did everything themselves.

I’ve said this before. It’s one thing when I grab an album and actually sit down to listen—assuming it isn't some genre I can't wrap my head around, like black metal—and try to make sense of it. Sometimes an album doesn't click right away, but then I grow to love it later, or if I were grading it, I might need to spin it a few times, maybe even dozens of times, before I land on a final score.
But that’s not what we’re doing here. This is just a quick glance at the tracks, more of a gut reaction than anything deep.

I "listened" to the first six, and honestly, there are a couple in there I could see spinning on occasion.

I find die Krupps pretty interesting. I can definitely see myself cranking this kind of stuff during the summer.
Interpartysystem follows a similar path to the previous album (die Krupps!), and you can tell the modern influences are there—it's got that early 2000s Linkin Park pop-punk vibe.
The Brdys... man, talk about country. A solid little album, though it all starts sounding a bit much to me—again, keep in mind this is just a superficial listen.
Explosions in the Sky is like watching a band play classical music on rock instruments, if that makes sense. That’s post-rock for you. The thing with these albums is they don't chase that pop effect; you have to listen to the whole thing as a unit. Maybe it just didn't hit for me, or maybe I was just a bit distracted.
Vuco feels like a rock version of Zlatko Pejaković. I expected something a bit more hard rock, but it made me think of those classic lines... "every night around midnight."😵
Third Ear band is a totally different beast. It feels more grounded, though I don't know if the album eventually settles into a more standard groove. For me, though, the vibe is cool. I love throwing on albums like this, lying back, closing my eyes, and just letting the music take me wherever it wants to go.

Hey, hey—what kind of feast is this? Who’s messing with me without even giving me a heads-up? 🙂