You Know Something That I Don't Know - Well, Someone Does, Anyway...

Oh boy! I've been looking forward to this! You know how sometimes you hit a run of luck, a winning streak, and you keep riding it and you keep on winning? Well that was me on YouTube this last week. 

It all started when I switched from watching Netflix and Prime on my Kindle Fire in bed at night to watching on my ancient Dell laptop instead. I'd set it up to play games, shunted from the desktop downstairs to the laptop via Splashtop. It kinda worked for a while but even with the desktop doing the heavy lifting things bogged down too much, too often, so I fell out of the habit of doing that...

...but I still had the laptop right there and it was working just fine for media-streaming and I had these nifty new Bluetooth headphones paired with it, so I started using it to watch streaming channels and then I started checking Feedly and from there I ended up on YouTube... and I was right back in the day, when I used to skip from video to video, hopping from stepping stone to stepping stone across a sea of possibilities.

And it worked! I knew I'd been relying too heavily on prompts from Pitchfork and Stereogum and NME and great though some of their tips have been, I needed to do some work of my own. Which is not to say that everything we're going to hear is a discovery. 

A discovery for me, sure, many of them, but some of these have millions of views. Some of them seem so well-known I find it hard to understand how they haven't cropped up in those self-same feeds I was just talking about. But they haven't, or if they have I never saw them.

So, some of these are people or bands new to me but not to everyone else. Anyone else, probably. It shows the value of primary research. And for once, I won't bury the lede. Let's open with the greatest thing I've seen for a long time. I give you...

Tokyo Calling - Atarashii Gakko!

Bringing to mind the Beastie Boys, Gerling and Devo, Atarashii Gakko! bring a post-modern, metatextual reading to the JPop, girl group paradigm. Or something. Even their minimal, uninflected Wikipedia page doesn't know: "While the circumstances surrounding the group’s formation have never been disclosed, they stated on the radio program All Night Nippon that they had met in a supermarket discount aisle.^" Yeah. Right.

Everything about them screams Performance Art Project. Which is a good thing. Not convinced? Try this, a version of the same song, their US TV debut from a month or so ago, that ends up looking and feeling like a political rally.

That feeling's not co-incidental, as the English translation of the lyric reveals. This is a call for change. Of course, set to a beat that could shake Mt. Fuji, tied to a mesmerising dance routine and yelped in a language I can't understand, I had to be told. But now I know, I love it even more.

I spent a lot of time this week going through the Atarashii Gakko! back catalog. There's plenty to see and hear and it's all great. They've been going since 2015. I ask again: how have I never heard of them before?

One more of many I could have picked and we'll get on to the next, well-known art-rock act I've never heard of until now. Not the last for today, either.

Night Before The Exam - Atarashii Gakko!

These grrls got the funk. And the moves. And the energy. Geez, do they have the energy!

After Destruction - Descartes a Kant

Any other week, this would have been the topline. A bit like releasing Enshrouded in the same week as Palworld, unfortunately. Of course that only happened in Bhagpuss time. In the real world, this came out several months before Tokyo Calling.

Descartes a Kant originate from Mexico City, where once again it looks like Devo haven't been forgotten. I guess if you can still tolerate Morrissey, Mark Mothersbaugh has to be an easy ask. Once again, they've been around a long time. This is from 2014.

I took a trot through a little of their extensive back catalog and I'm not convinced I've missed all that much. A bit metal for my tastes a lot of the time. When they're good, though, they're really good.

Hello Kitty - Jazmin Bean

Okay, maybe this would have been the big story this week if I hadn't seen the other two first. Seriously, I'm spoiled for choice. Yet again, everyone's there before me: came out four years ago, 23m views on YouTube and this is the first I've heard of it. Someone hasn't been doing their job and I worry it might be me.

Puppy Pound - Jazmin Bean

I guess the real question is, why did Jazmin Bean never come up as a recommend when I was watching all those great Melanie Martinez videos? And the answer is because that was fucking ages ago! Time moves so fast, when it's not moving so slow. I was checking just the other day to see if Peggy Sue had done anything lately (They haven't. Three years of radio silence.) and I was disturbed to realize it's been almost fifteen years since I first heard Phone Song. Where does the time go? I guess if Sandy Denny didn't know, no-one does.

V. A. N. - Bad Omens x Poppy

Say what you like about her - Poppy rocks! Well, she does when she wants to. Poppy only does what she wants to, now. We're all happy about that. Aren't we?

I-90 Bridge - Chastity Belt

I love a big-budget, mini-movie with a story like Poppy's but I love a fuzzed-up, hand-held home movie more. This is right back in that wistful, elegaic, know it when I hear it sub-genre of Americana I'm coming to love so much. Songs like this are endlessly replayable; always something new to find.

Lana's making a country album. Did you know that?

Somewhere Halfway - Penny Eau

Or you could just get some pals, go to the woods and do Alice. I mean, why not? Everyone else does and it always works.

A Cold Sunday - Lil Yachty

And yet somehow this is my favorite video of the week. Well, except for Tokyo Calling, of course. It's an absolute masterclass in how to do a lot with a little. It seems so simple but it's so complex. The framing, the symmetry, the inflection. I've watched this several times and my eye still can't settle. It's hypnotic. Lil Yachty is a movie star. The tune's pretty nice, too.

Lego Ring (ft. Lil Yachty) - Faye Webster

He also seems like a nice guy with a sense of humor. They're longtime friends from schooldays, apparently. I love the look on his face when Faye goes "Help meeee!", all off-key...

Molly's Construct - Earfth Girl

Okay, enough playing catch-up with people who are already famous. Isn't it more fun to find something new that no-one elkse knows and introduce it around? I dunno. Depends how good it is, I guess. 

Earfth Girl's been posting videos of her songs and other stuff for five years and most of them have a few hundred views at best. I doubt she's ever going to blow up but she could. Who even knows how that works? I like her, anyway. This is another good one of hers.

Okay, I have waaaay too many tunes for one post. I suppose we'd better bring it to a close. Aything left in the locker for a big finish, I wonder? Let's see...

Nineteen Crimes - The Reytons

Currently number one in the UK album charts, or should be according to them, anyway, it's surprising this only has twenty thousand views after three weeks. Then again, to top the physical charts you apparently only need to sell seventeen thousand copies, so I guess most of their fans only watched the video once.

Very old-fashioned sound, isn't it? Reminds me of Rialto, especially at the start. I thought the 90s revival was done and we'd moved on to the noughties but I guess that post-Britpop sound is with us forever, now.

Okay, that really wasn't the big finish I was looking for. It has to be either Destroy Boys or Blu de Tiger...

Dangerous Game - Blu de Tiger

Ok! That's the one. You're going to have it stuck in your head all day now. 

You're welcome!