Milking It

Well, it's been a couple of weeks. I guess it's time. Now, where to begin...

Let's start with some famous people. Kind of like putting the bread and milk at the front of the store. Or do they put them at the back now? I know that works, too, but only when you actually have to walk there. Not so much when you can just scroll down.

Bunch of friends of the blog dropped tunes since last time. Billy Eilish, Miley Cyrus, Clairo, PinkPantheress, Kate Nash, Shygirl, New Jeans...

They're all good. I guess we can't have 'em all, though. Shame. That Miley Cyrus Talking Heads cover tho' ...

Psycho Killer - Miley Cyrus (Talking Heads cover)

That is a really hard song to cover. Just ask Duran Duran. Like most songs that definitive, you have to tear down and rebuild or why bother? Miley's sure done that. It's barely recognizeable. 

Obviously people are going to hate it. The YouTube comment thread is gonna be fun.

Outside of the news pages, I've been doing my own legwork. I spent a while skimming the surface of the dark, uncharted depths of Japanese indie rock. The names always get me. The winner this time has to be My Hair Is Bad. I mean, would you call your band something like that? 

Anyway, I listened to a load of them and the song I liked best was School by Chilli Beans. Unfortunately, for some inexplicable reason, their management chose to block all the band's material from being embedded anywhere off YouTube, even Blogger, which is bloody stupid given the two platforms are both owned by Google, but there you go.

Because of that idiocy, I'm going to have to lead with the runner-up, Glim Spanky, who have a great name but sound a tad too rawk for my tastes. I liked this one, though.

 

怒りをくれよ - Glim Spanky

Could that be any more '90s? Matthew Perry still speaks to Courtney Cox, by the way. Did you know that? Come to listen, stay to learn.

Once I'd gotten that out of my system, I moved on to a surprisingly rich seam of very English oddness. There never seems to be any shortage of young Brits willing to make themselves look foolish for the sake of... shall we agree to call it their art?

 

Case in point:

Shopping - Welly

A couple of days ago, Mrs Bhagpuss asked me if I knew Yard Act. I said "Yeah, I like them but not so much I'd buy a CD." Apparently I don't need to. We have one already. It's in the car.

Not that Welly sound much like Yard Act apart from the talk-singing. They sound like Art Brut covering the Young Knives. In the last fifty years of English Popular Music there's always been at least one band that sounded like that. Usually a lot more than just one. Tradition is reassuring, isn't it?

Bale of Hay - The Pill

There are other bands called The Pill. At least one of them sounds quite a lot like this one. That confused me for a while. I suspect there may be a particular influence at work here but I wouldn't be so gauche as to name it.

Yoo Hoo - Maty Noyes

Alright, so it's not just the English who like to dress up. Also, who could resist following that last video with this one? Not me, obviously.

It gets quite disturbing towards the finish, by the way, something I think ought to be obvious from the moment the old geezer in the cowboy hat says "What's your name, sweetie?" The whole thing is making a statement against factory farming, which was something I didn't appreciate until I read the end titles. 

 

It all makes sense now. Sort of.

America In Your 20s - Winnetka Bowling League

It might not sound like it but Winetka Bowling League fit right into the nerdy, wordy, herky-jerky niche carved out mostly by underweight white guys wearing suits or smart casuals, going back at least as far as The Monks. If you could see them you'd get that. Oh, wait, here's a link!

That's a much more interesting video but America In Your 20s leads neatly into the next one, what with their shared theme of how shit being a grown-up is and how no-one in their right mind wants to do it. We can all get behind that sentiment, right? If not, what are you doing here?

Teenagers Forever - Durry

"Still love Dungeons and Dragons
In the basement with my friends
But everybody's got commitments now
It's getting hard to plan"

I could quote the entire lyric for truth. Listening to midwestern emo feels like taking a philosophy class sometimes. Must be hell growing up in the midwest, that's all I can say. Or not growing up.

Bunny Goes 2 Business School - idialedyournumber

I normally draw the line at screamo but look at that title. Also, bunny ears. Plus that guitar just goes there, doesn't it? 

Love the video, too.

Kind Robots Make Me Cry - Strawberry Girl

Me too, Strawberry. May I call you Strawberry? Probably not.

Seriously, though, they do. I have a very similar emotional reaction to stories about robots and AIs being mistreated as I do to ones featuring animals or children. Somehow, instead of having them labelled as a Threat To Humanity I have them filed under whimsical imaginary friends. Going to get me killed one day, I'm sure.

There's a great discussion on the YouTube thread for this one, where someone makes a comment and Strawberry Girl replies and they get into a to and fro about it until a third person enters the thread and sorts the whole thing out. It's a textbook example of why YouTube comment threads are a net social good.

Golden Retriever Boy - KiNG MALA

There's an official video for this one but it doesn't have a dog in it. You could probably watch this with the sound off and still enjoy it. Don't do that, though. It'd be rude.

Minimalism - Daphnie

Always good to end with a banger. Although they've pretty much all been bangers up to now. And this isn't even the end. One more to come. Also, another skinny, white, hyperactive English guy. Do they ever stop?

Woke Up - XG

"XG is a Japanese girl group based in South Korea." So does that make them KPop or JPop? Who fricken cares? People on Reddit, apparently. There's a bunch of threads about it there. I didn't read any of them. Obviously.

And that, I think, is about it for this time. Kept the chatter to a minimum for once. Can't promise it'll happen again.