WNXP Podcasts

This week for What Where When-sday, we discuss a panel discussion and musical performance celebrating Nashville soul singer Johnny Bragg happening at the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum on Saturday. 

Our Record of the Week is from Freak Slug, which is the musical identity of Xenya Genovese. Her album, "I Blow Out Big Candles" is effortless, catchy and honestly, just a really fun time. She will be in Nashville playing at The Blue Room on March 18th.

This week for What Where When-sday, we discuss the National Museum of African American Music’s Black History Month programming happening throughout the month of February. 

Recording artist Neko Case -- with more than a quarter-century as a solo artist and as a member of The New Pornographers -- has just published her memoir, The Harder I Fight, The More I Love You. Hear Case in conversation with Celia Gregory about the book. A new full-length album is expected later this year.

British funk group Cymande’s journey to Renascence has multiple different layers. From a successful debut album in 1972. Going on an extended hiatus only a couple of years later and a rediscovery of their music thanks to the early stages of hip hop with breakbeats and samples. Cymande returned with their first album in 41 years back in 2015 and now they’ve returned with a new album Renascence, this week’s WNXP Record of the Week. 

English Teacher’s highly anticipated LP This Could Be Texas is a perfect debut, even earning the esteemed Mercury Prize. The Leeds quartet held little to nothing back across the 13 song collection. With piano refrains, guitar riffs and poetic lyrics, the album defies genre, toeing the lines of post-punk and indie-prog and everything in between. It’s expansive and sonically spacious without feeling too unapproachable.

Frontwoman Lily Fontaine explains, “I want this album to feel like you’ve gone to space, and it turns out it’s almost identical to Doncaster. It’s about in-betweens, it’s about home, and it’s about Desire Paths.”

Watch English Teacher perform “Broken Biscuits” and “Albatross” live at WNXP’s Sonic Cathedral here. 

This week for What Where When-sday, we discuss 615 Indie Live happening this Saturday at various independent music venues across Nashville with Chris Cobb, the president of Music Venue Alliance Nashville. 

Dublin four-piece SPRINTS lives up to their band name with their frenetic, garage-punk sound. The fast-paced energy of their music is equally matched by frontwoman Karla Chubb’s intense lyricism. The band’s debut full length Letter To Self “transforms pain into truth, passion into purpose and perseverance into strength.” Chubb tackles issues like bodily autonomy, mental health and social injustice. The quartet channels this “negative energy” into a cathartic 40 minutes with moments of thrashing anger and melodic meltdowns. Similar to contemporary post-punk counterparts IDLES, SPRINTS aims to bring about change in the world, or at the very least, within ourselves. Chubb explains, “No matter what you’re born into, or have experienced, there’s a way to emerge from this and be happy within yourself.”

Watch SPRINTS perform “Adore Adore Adore,” “Feast” and “Up and Comer” live at WNXP’s Sonic Cathedral here.

The core members of NYC band Rubblebucket, Alex Toth and Kal Traver, joined us to talk about their seventh LP, 'Year of the Banana,' which is WNXP's Record of the Week the same week the group returns to Nashville on tour.

This week for What Where When-sday, we discuss the Echo Chamber Music Series at the Parthenon. It’s happening this Sunday with Sista Strings, followed by two more shows in February and March.