Songs You Don't Hear On The Radio (Edit)

Friday night is music night! I think you'd need to be my grandparents' age to get that reference and they would be closing in on 130 if they were alive now. Wouldn't that be weird? Anyway, the only reason I know the tagline is because I used to hear them listen to the show back when I was a child. And anyway, this is Friday morning. 

Glad we got that cleared up. Now, what do we have today that would have confused, frightened or outraged my grandparents? Well, most of it, I guess, and I mean that literally. I have to guess. I have no idea what my grandparents thought about any kind of music made after about the 1930s because I don't recall them ever expressing a single opinion - or even a passing comment - on any of it. It was simply as if it didn't exist in their world.

It's weird, now I think about it, especially given that I grew up in the sixties and seventies, in the middle of a culture war just as heated as the present; a war in which pop music was frequently on the front line. I do know, if they could somehow eye what's in the charts now, they'd be in shock - quite possibly literally - over the language deemed "acceptable" in a pop song these days. They used to switch the TV off if someone said "bloody". Can you imagine what they'd make of a song that opened "you make me fucking sick"?

Streetwise - Pretty Sick

Of course, even today, that's probably not something you'd hear on mainstream radio, which is why we still have radio edits. You'd need to go just the slightest bit off-piste, to one of the minorly specialist but really still very close to the center digital stations, like every hip dad's favorite, Radio 6, here in the UK. Or much more likely you'd be served it by your personal algorithm, on the streaming platform of your choice, which would most likely be Spotify.

It is hard to imagine my grandparents coming to grips with Spotify. My mother, now in her early nineties, wouldn't be able to figure it out either, probably. At least I wouldn't want to be the one to try to explain it to her. If she could get to grips with the concept and the controls, though, she might well get good use out of it.

My mother has always been more interested in modern music than you'd expect. When I was listening to the Clash back in 1977 she said they sounded like the Rolling Stones and asked me to turn the volume up so she could hear them properly. Around the same time, when I was clearing out my record collection, planning to sell all my unfashionable prog and metal albums, she asked me to let her keep everything by Uriah Heep. One time I came back from college to visit and found her doing the vacuuming to Very 'Eavy, Very 'Umble.

Even in recent years she's been unpredictable in her musical fads and fancies. In her eighties, she developed a taste for Bruce Springsteen. That lasted a couple of years. I guess it's not so unusual. This next guy is in his eighties right now...

Shark-Shark - John Cale

Two posts I've been meaning to write for the longest time: Old Duffers Who've Lost It and Old Duffers Who Still Have It. Working titles... The problem is, some of them will insist on sliding from one category to the other and back, sometimes in the same week. Cale pretty much stays in his lane: Living Legend.

Getting back to Spotify and the rest of the also-ran streaming services (Is that fair? Is anything else as big? Apple Music maybe? Amazon Music Unlimited? I doubt it.) I can't really make jokes at anyone older's expense because I don't use Spotify either. It's not that I can't - it's that I don't listen to music that way any more. Haven't for a long time. Streaming would be pointless for me, no matter how many songs the service held or how good the algorithm.

I no longer use music as background except in the car or when I write posts, sometimes. And at work, but where I work there's no phone signal so... 

I hunt my music down and swallow it whole, in gulps. I follow the links in news stories or reviews, just like I would have done back in the days of the ink press, although now I just have to sit back and click, not go down town and ask the irritable guy behind the desk to put vinyl on a turntable so I could hear a track in the Listening Booth. 

Several hours of your Saturday afternoon gone, just to hear a tune or two each from a couple of new albums through a pair of sweaty headphones. Not your own sweat, either. Try and tell the kids that now...

When I want to hear something new now, I go look for it with my mouse. Sometimes I don't find anything. Other times I find way too much. Or too much to share here, anyway. It's been like that a lot, lately. There's so much good music out there.

Gold River - Parannoul

This, for example. I didn't find it all by myself. It was a link I clicked from one of the webzines. Do we say "webzine" any more? I doubt it. Stereogum, it was. I just checked. 

I'd vaguely heard of Parannoul before but I had no clue if it was a person or a band or what kind of music it might be. Writing about Gold River, the 'gum's Tom Breihan opened strong with: "There’s a new Parannoul song out in the world this morning, which means you should stop whatever you’re doing and listen."

So I did. Now it's your turn.

 King of the Slugs - Fat Dog

Didn't find this for myself, either. These guys are all over my feeds at the moment. Another Next Big Thing. There's always one. Actually, there are usually about fifty.

I'm tempted to say it sounds a bit like the Pop Group at the start but it doesn't take long to turn into Pigbag. Much like the Pop Group themselves, I suppose, although that was only Simon Underwood. 

I did a whole post once about how most songs are too long and I like things short and snappy. A list of songs I like would not entirely bear that assertion out. I'll do a Long Song post one day. Almost all my very, very favorite songs are five minutes plus. This, by the way, is not one of them. I do like it, though.

One more I had fed to me, I think, then we'll get to some I discovered all on my own. Well, with the help of YouTube's Recommends algorithm, but I did the detail work.

Thot Daughter - Harmony

Okay, I might have "discovered" Harmony for myself, once. I can't remember. I just know she's been on the blog before. This one I can't claim credit for but I have been listening to it a lot. It's kinda compulsive. I wish it was longer. (Cf. previous comments.)

Apologies if the title and chorus offend. I know I didn't write them but I am sharing them, so I guess it kinda comes down on me, too. Still, if song titles and lyrics tend to get your dander up this might not be the best blog to be following, some days. It's lucky my mother doesn't read this, although she might like some of the tunes.

Wet Summer - Mörmaid

Probably not this one. Very recently, I expressed the opinion that AI-generated video would not be producing anything worth seeing for a good, long time. I watched this entire thing with total attention, riveted by the bizarre, hypnogogic imagery. It was only when I read the comment thread I realised it was created using AI. 

My opinion still stands. As one of the commenters says, "...it's pretty clear even with ai you at least for now you still need a creative human intelligence steering the ship or what comes out is lame". Used as a tool for creativity, AI has its place alongside all the others. Just keep it on a firm leash and don't let it run around loose, savaging the scenery.

The song, however, is entirely human-generated. I think. It's getting very hard to tell. There are whole channels on YouTube posting nothing but AI-generated songs now, if you didn't know, and loads of them are getting hundreds of thousands of views. I'd link a couple but I really don't want to encourage it. It'd be like Noah inviting a couple of termites onto the Ark.

Superbloom - Amy O

This one, on the other hand, looks almost as if it should have been made by an AI, even though it patently was not. The lyric seems pretty associative at first, too. Until you think about it. I feel we're on the cusp of an infinite feedback loop, where generative AI and human creativity whirl around each other faster and faster, snapping at each other's tails until it's impossible for an outside observer to know where one ends and the other begins.

Only there won't be any outside observers. Just us and the AIs, trapped in a sack like drowning kittens.

Dopamine - Lemoncello

I do like a coincidence. I'm not one of those people who think they mean something. As a nihilist, I like best that they don't. 

I had two new songs brought somehow to my attention on the same day, both called Dopamine. What are the chances, eh? Probably not that low, actually. Shall we ask the AIs if they can figure it out? Yes, let's!

Gemini says (After a very long preamble with lots of made-up statistics.) "While it's not a common occurrence, it's not entirely impossible for two songs titled "Dopamine" to be released in the same week." Well, no shit, Sherlock. It happened!

The other Dopamine, by ex-Belle and Sebastian member Isobel Campbell is better but it doesn't have a video. See how shallow I am?

 

My Crush - Muque

The thing about Japan is, once you start, there's no stopping. Every time I find one great, new, Japanese band, I find a dozen. And don't get me started on anime. I really should have listened back in the 90s, when people tried to explain it to me.

I went with Muque as a representative sample of the kind of pool I've been splashing around in but I could have gone for Hitsujibungaku, if I was exactly sure what I was talking about. Which I am not. This is them sounding like it's 1995 all over again. And here they are, looking and sounding eerily like my favorite band of all time, Dolly Mixture, back in the early 'eighties.

Primrose Hill - Rachel Love

Speaking of the Dollies... Rachel seems to be currently in the process of re-inventing herself as Rachel Love. This came as something of a surprise to me. I've been subbed to the Dolly Mixture mailing list for many years and I get the occasional notice about something or other, usually a rare showing of the documentary Take Three Girls that whoever owns the rights infuriatingly refuses to release commercially, preferring instead to allow it - infrequently - to be shown at festivals or art exhibitions that always seem to happen hundreds or thousands of miles from where I live. 

They keep mighty quiet about what the individual members, Rachel, Debsey and Hester, might be up to and it was purely by chance I stumbled across the above video, which is three years old. Turns out there are three Rachel Love albums now. I have all of them. They're wondeful.

I really need to do a proper Dolly Mixture post some day.

 Anthems for a Seventeen Year Old Girl 

 Ian Sweet

You wait all of recorded time for a cover of Anthems for a Seventeen Year Old Girl then two come along in a month. Or something. I still prefer Yeule's but this is great, too. 

Literary Mind - Sprints

Always good to end with a couple of bangers. And oh, look! Here's one now! 

Riding in on the new Irish rock renaissance train, here come Sprints. Maybe I should have said "sprinting in"? Nah. that would have been tacky. This isn't their current single but I like it better. Also, it gives Broken Social Scene a run for their money in the "sing the same words so many times they don't mean anything any more" stakes.

And finally. Who else?

360 - Charlie XCX

Now the picture at the top of the post makes sense! Or maybe not. Exactly what Yung Lean and Bladee had to do with either the video or the song is unclear but the new Bladee album, Cold Visions, is fantastic. Do yourselves a favor and listen to it after you're done with Cindy Lee.

I mean, you did listen to Diamond Jubilee like I told you, right?