Hmm. Have you noticed that now I've been doing this for a few years, patterns are begining to emerge? When I first started throwing in a few music posts, I was hanging them on some odd pegs, like Cats vs Dogs or why ponies make good signposts. Then there were the quarterly - later, monthly - title megaposts. Those really got out of hand.
All things considered, though, it gave much more of an impression of variety than the "What I've Been Listening To Lately" series I seem to have fallen in with now. There's quite a bit of the old usual suspects creeping in.
Which is okay, I guess. I mean, the ears want want the ears want, as Emily Dickinson once texted Selina Gomez. It's not quite as simple as that, though. Back when I was hand-crafting music posts to fit a theme or trawling lyrics.com for any phrases that might fit, I wasn't also subscribing to NME, Stereogum and Pitchfork. Just Pitchfork, probably.
These days I notice my music posts do sometimes display a disturbing congruity with Pitchfork's "Best New Songs" or Stereogum's "The Five Best Songs of the Week". Particularly that second one. I do make an effort to find new artists and tracks on my own but I do feel I might have been farming the responsiblity out a little since I started watching TV shows in bed instead of surfing YouTube.
Anyway, a good tune is a good tune and even if all I'm doing is acting as a clearing house for the prozines, it's still a socially responsible act. I mean, I'm saving you from having to skip past Lizzo's lawsuits and the Melvins' drummer's spinal surgery to get to the good stuff.
And speaking of the good stuff...
bad idea right - Olivia Rodrigo
OMG! (No-one says omg any more, do they?) She can't keep this up, surely? Every one a total classic. It's such a timeless sound, too. This would have been a hit in 1972, 1982, 1992, 2002...
Reminds me of so many things I just can't quite place, which is wonderful. The Nails' 88 Lines About 44 Women is in there somewhere for certain sure... And that breakdown towards the end is like Eno when he still wore a feather boa...
Cannot wait for the album.
Let's Do Drugs - NOBRO
Best. Title. Ever! If only I wasn't too old. It'd kill me.
They are so glam it's not true. Just listen to this one...
Don't Die - NOBRO
You're wide awake now, aren't you?
NEO KAWAII, K? - CHAI
It's all about having your name in all-caps, right? That's what matters.
I'm never quite sure about CHAI. They never seem to be exactly one thing or the other. I guess that's good? I like this one, anyway.
Legendary (2023 Pokémon World Championships Theme) - Kero Kero Bonita
Wow! That only just fitted on one line. Everything I know about Pokemon, which is very little, I learned from TAGN, except the parts I learned from Tipa. I found this one all on my own, though.
Muriel's Big Day Off - Being Dead
If you've just started watching this one and you're thinking "It's fine but it really doesn't need to be three and a half minutes long", just keep watching. Some people really don't want to be commercial at all, do they?
Absolutes - SNOOZERS
Case in point. 250 views in eighteen months and I bet fifty of those were for the puppets. Also, another band with a faulty Caps Lock. There's a lot of it about.
Trauma Mic feat. Pink Sifu - Armand Hammer
Anyone getting Test Department flashbacks?
A tad NSFW - or anywhere, really. I've seen Armand Hammer's name crop up all over the place - Pink Sifu's too, for that matter - but I think this is probably the first time I've actually clicked through to listen. To say it's not what I was expecting would be an understatement. Actually, it'd be whatever comes under an understatement. An underunderstatement. I'm not sure I'd listen to it without the video - it's their producer, DJ Haram, banging on a wheelbarrow with that pipe that sells it for me.
Wounded Coogi - Iceboy Violet
If we're going out of our comfort zone we may as well make a trip of it. Or a trip-hop. Although maybe this is soothing as well as sinister. Can you believe we used to listen to stuff like this at dinner parties in the nineties and I am not making that up. Tricky was pretty much obligatory back there for a year or two.
Can you believe people are still making stuff like this, too? I'm glad about it.
Candy - Pony Girl
I guess this is what passes for dinner party music nowadays. If people still have dinner parties. Young people, that is. I mean, we don't. I think the last dinner party we had was in the 'nineties.
Also, remember I said you can almost always trust a pony? Add this to the evidence board.
Anyone ready for a few more? I've kept the chat to a minimum this time so we can fit more in.
Knockin' - MJ Lenderman
This seemed to be getting a lot of traction in the trade press a week or so ago. Is he famous? Am I supposed to have heard of him? Because I haven't.
I only clicked through because of the "Knockin' on Heaven's Door" thing. It's one of my favorites of our Bob's. Pretty much bombproof but this didn't need protection. It's great. There's a lot of Sufjan Stevens going on in there, somewhere, wouldn't you say?
So You Are Tired - Sufjan Stevens
Is that spooky or what? Here he is! The inventor of whatever the hell that sound is. A guy called Tom who I worked with for a while introduced me to Neutral Milk Hotel, along with Animal Collective and Hank Williams. or maybe it was Hank Williams Jr. Probably both of them.
A big improvement over my other colleague, who played Frank Zappa for two weeks straight, after which I was fit to kill someone. Zappa, preferably, except he was already dead by then. Lou Reed famously called Zappa "the most untalented musician I’ve ever heard", a sentiment I found it hard to argue with after being forced to listen to the old hippie's entire back catalog. Apparently the two vaguely warmed toward each other in later life. I can't say I've warmed to Zappa.
Joiner - Blondshell
Last time we did this I posted Blondshell's magnificent homage to Veronica Mars, noting "I just listened to it five times in a row". Make that fifteen. And another right now. Any excuse.
I just couldn't stop playing it. I went through a lot of her other stuff too and it's all good. This is the one I liked second-best after Veronica Mars.
I prefer this live version to the dreamier studio take, which feels a tad too produced for my tastes. It's all a little rawer, live. Brings the lyrics out more.
I really love her way with a lyric. Sometimes it can seem like she's just streaming her consciousness into the mic but it's far more constructed than that. It's almost like abstract expressionism in sound, somehow and I've always been a sucker for an abstract impressionist.
And finally...
Cool With You - New Jeans
The now-obligatory New Jeans number, here with a live band. It starts at one minute in if you don't speak Korean. This is smooth jazz, isn't it? It sounds like Sade. I never used to like Sade but I can see it now. She was big in France, you know. Still is, probably. She lives not all that far from me, apparently. Why are we taling about her, again?
And finally, for reals this time...
Not A Betty - Career Woman
Always leave 'em wanting more. That Y2K sound just never grows old, does it? And don't I ask a lot of rhetorical questions?
That's it. I'm all out of tunes. Haven't you lot got homes to go to?
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I was on a Donovan kick today, so thanks for this post to knock me out of that rut.
ReplyDeleteYou're very welcome! Donovan made some good records and a lot more not so good records and even the good ones are are very much "of their time". With Season of the Witch on his resume, though, he's pretty much locked in for posterity, I'd say.
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