The two Traverse City bands released new EPs this spring that earned them lots of attention and lots of radio airplay at WYCE-FM. See the full chart; listen to songs from all of the featured artists.
The Top Two: Traverse City acts dominated the Hot Top 5 last month.
SCROLL DOWN FOR A SPOTIFY PLAYLIST OF HOT TOP 5 ALBUMS
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Leave it to two popular Traverse City bands representing different parts of the musical spectrum to make a big splash with their latest EP releases.
Indie-alt-folk band The Accidentals shot straight to No. 1 on the Local Spins Hot Top 5 Chart for May with “Time Out: Session No. 1,” an intimate and uber-collaborative songwriting project that the trio released in early May.
Right behind The Accidentals on the chart representing the local and regional albums that earned the most radio airplay at WYCE (88.1 FM) last month was Traverse City electronic rock/jam band Biomassive, which recently released its cosmic, psychedelic and festival-friendly “Monolith.”
Four of the five albums are new to the Hot Top 5.
For The Accidentals, the chart-topping at WYCE is just one example of the overall national success of “Time Out,” which is at the top of the most recent “Bubblin’ Up” roster on the Americana Radio Albums Chart, just shy of making the Top 50 overall.
“We have to give a shoutout to Jeff Appleton working radio and all the incredible DJs and stations still spinning the music and helping get it into a still largely COVID world,” said Sav Buist of The Accidentals.
“When you can’t tour an album release, you rely heavily on the voices still speaking through the silence. These folks came through for us. Sometimes it just takes a spin, then people hear it and start Shazam-ing and suddenly the music has a life.”
The EP project is particularly special, Buist said, because it involved co-writes with widely respected artists Dar Williams, Kim Richey, Maia Sharp, Mary Gauthier and Jaimee Harris, “so when the EP gets airplay, that leads to a conversation about the writers who rarely get enough credit for songs.”
For Biomassive, the band’s new EP represents another step toward building a broader audience for its instrumental wizardry.
“We are thrilled and shocked to be included in this (Hot Top 5) list,” said Wesley Roberge of Biomassive.
“The overall response to ‘Monolith’ has been electric, and we are seeing more and more of those reactions as time goes on. ‘Monolith’ is just the tip of the metaphorical iceberg. We are just as enamored with the reception of the record as we feel our fans have been to having fresh new studio content from us.”
With things opening up as the pandemic winds down, both bands also are ramping up their performance schedules.
Playing Sparta and Grand Rapids in July: The Accidentals.
The Accidentals play the “Concerts in Rogers Park” series in Sparta on July 7, followed by an appearance for the Listening Lawn series hosted by Grand Rapids’ Listening Room outdoors at Studio Park in downtown Grand Rapids on July 8.
Biomassive, meanwhile, plays Billy’s Lounge in Grand Rapids on July 9, then will headline “The Jedi Cookout” in Newaygo on July 24. The band also plays the Summer Camp Music Festival in Chillicothe, Ill., on Aug. 20.
Four of the five albums on May’s Hot Top 5 are new to the chart, with Eli Kahn of the South Bend duo After Ours’ solo project, “How Are You? No, Really … How Are You?” coming in at No. 3, even though Kahn doesn’t officially release the record to the public until Friday (June 4).
“Hindsight,” the much-buzzed-about new bluegrass album from Full Cord, meanwhile, slid into fourth place on the Hot Top 5 chart, just ahead of KJ & The Good Time Family Band’s “Dynamics,” which made the chart for the second month in a row.
THE LOCAL SPINS HOT TOP 5 ON SPOTIFY: May 2021
NOTE: The Eli Kahn track is a 2019 single. Tracks from his new album won’t be released and available on Spotify until Friday (June 4).
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