Every Monday, Add of the Week unveils all the new songs going into the 88Nine on-air playlist, with one hand-picked selection put in the spotlight by a member of our music team.
If you’re a Milwaukee music person, you most likely bumped into Graham Hunt as a member of Midnight Reruns. The last few years, however, have been far more solo-focused for Hunt, who bounced south to Chicago and then west to Madison while rolling out a handful of albums.
The next one is just a few weeks away, so it seemed like an excellent time to give some well-deserved attention to his latest single, “Tashmere Anthill.”
Momentarily putting aside the wordy analysis, this is a damn fun listen. More specifically, it has that structured looseness of early days Beck, with a bunch of elements working together while also nudging you toward repeat listens so you can pluck them out individually. The bass line is what got me — rubbery and melodic to lift the funkiness of the whole endeavor — but you’re just as likely to center on the siren-like guitar or the acoustic breakdown halfway in or the plinky piano toward the end.
Then there’s the music video. Maybe I still have Stop Making Sense on the brain, or maybe it’s the ill-fitting suit, but Hunt’s mesmerizingly bizarre antics/dance moves seem like they could’ve been ripped from the David Byrne playbook. Considering the tone of the song and the content of the video, presenting it in glorious Hi8 format was really the only way to go.
You can get the full audio/visual experience at the top of the page, catch “Tashmere Anthill” as part of the 88Nine playlist and hear it — along with previous single “Emergency Contact” — on Hunt’s upcoming album, Try Not to Laugh, due out Dec. 15. Check out his Linktree for paths to all his music, as well as updates when the new LP drops.
This week’s other adds
- Phoenix (feat. León Larregui), "Artefact"
- Atmosphere, "Rotary Telephone"
