It's been too long since the last one so here's a music post for Friday. For me, Saturday's the better day but this needs to get done and I don't have any better options so...
Listening of late has been... odd. I do tend to get caught up in the folds sometimes and this has definitely been one of those weeks. Fortnights. Whatever.
I could fill this post with what I've genuinely been listening to or I could go with all those interesting and/or excellent tunes I've been bookmarking as I come across them in my feeds. Problem there is that although I must have thought them all well worth sharing at the time, I can't say with any conviction I've actually listened to many of them more than once or twice.
Hmm. Decisions, decisions...
Of course, you know what the answer's going to be. All of it. Could be a long post.
Let's start with the sound that has no name. Well, I imagine it does but I don't know what that name would be. I'll try to describe it: pale, quiet, delicate music made by pale, quiet, delicate people, the kind who find bedroom pop just too brash and noisy.
Some of it gets tagged as "ambient" or "lo fi ambient" but my definition of ambient music won't stretch as far as acoustic guitars and singing. I don't know about yours. There's some technological leakage here and there but always discreetly done. Glitchcore and hyperpop this is not.
There's clearly some sort of a scene going on because half the songs I've listened to are people covering other people doing the same thing. Also a lot of covers of better-known bands that tend to sound not much like the originals.
It vaguely reminds me of the anti-folk movement of the noughties and twenty-teens but those guys went out to clubs and played gigs and met each other face-to-face. I get the impression these guys don't.
At least two of them definitely have met though because now they're a couple. They make songs together, appear in each others' videos and leave love notes in their mutual comments on YouTube. I know but it's sweet. Really, it is. If there's one thing entirely absent from this scene, whatever it is, it's cynicism, so I'll thank you to leave yours at the door.
Enough talk. Let's listen. I warn you, this is going to be a relatively low-energy start to a music post, but I'll do what I can.
Algernoon - nickateen
Nickateen was my gateway drug to whatever the hell this microgenre is, although I'm not entirely sure they're a part of it. Also I have not the least clue now how I got to Nickateen in the first place. I guess I probably clicked on a link out of curiosity thanks to the title and things went from there.
I'm also not at all sure in retrospect that nickateen is even part of the clique I'm struggling to define. They're a bit more literary, a bit more glitchy. It is the source of the links that took me into the rest of it, though, so I guess they have some denominator in common, at least in the mind of the YT algorithm.
The striking opening is Sylvia Plath reading her own poem November Graveyard, which is a bravura move if ever there was one. The rest of the lyrics have something to do with Daniel Keyes' disturbing novel Flowers for Algernon, or possibly the movie that was made of it.
Actually, Flowers for Algernon has been adapted for so many media over the years - movies, TV, stage, musicals, radio - that who knows how nickateen found it? Or cares. It's just great they did because this is what we got and we're lucky to have it.
That movie clip is quite distracting, though. I'm guessing it's Jean-Luc Godard. It usually is.
gun girl - nickateen
Once I'd heard Algernoon I went straight to nick's back catalog and listened to everything they'd done. Didn't take long. There were only six songs. Every one of them is wonderful though. I hope there are going to be more some day.
No video for this one but with soundscapes like these, who needs moving pictures?
Isn't that just the most soothing thing you ever heard? And the video is so incredibly wholesome, with the dog and the cuddling and all. Yet somehow it manages to be quite spooky, too - in a really nice way.
It's so calming. I listened to it twice as I was typing this and I literally felt my blood pressure dropping. That's the defining feature of this sound, I think. That and sadness.
Let's have some more from just miranda on her own. She's the less prolific of the two. Her channel on YouTube only goes back a couple of years. myheadisempty's goes all the way back to 2010 but I think a lot of it is actual ambient stuff, which doesn't do much for me other than put me into a daze.
a letter to the person i used to be - miranda rain
miranda only has seventeen videos on her YouTube channel and ten of those are
covers. Her most recent work is all either originals or collabs with
her beau, though, and she has
a lot of socials
so this may not be everything.
It's extremely hard to gauge how "successful" or "famous" these performers are. Traditional measures don't really apply. miranda has only a little over a thousand YT subscribers and on her channel most of her videos only have a couple of thousand views at most. That very much makes it sound as though she's incredibly obscure and unknown.
myheadisempty, however, her partner and collaborator, is very much better known. He's been posting music for fifteen years, he has more than 170k subscribers and some of his songs have over ten million views. One of the songs he and miranda have recorded together, a way out - has a quarter of a million views on his own channel and just over a milion on another. I don't know what counts as success these days but if I'd made something that a million people had listened to I think I'd claim it.
if u wanna stay - miranda rain (sweatcult cover)
A couple of covers from miranda rain and we'll move on. This is a song by Sweatcult, of whom I'd not previously heard. I had heard of softcult and at first I thought it was them but it's not.
If U Wanna Stay, which the people who wrote it capitalize normally so now I really don't know which version to go with, looks to be their best-loved song with almost 18m plays on Spotify and 3.3m views on YouTube. miranda's cover is waaay better than the original for my money, mostly because the Sweatcult singer has a really grating voice.
an art gallery could never be as magnificent as you
miranda rain (Scruffpuppie cover)
The original is even more downbeat than the cover, if you can imagine that. (You don't have to imagine it. Here it is. Listen for yourself.)
I was taken by the title, as who wouldn't be, but I was more than somewhat surprised to find out there's at least one other song with almost exactly the same name: An Art Gallery Could Never Be As Unique As You by mrld. Can that be a co-incidence? Maybe it's a quote but I don't know what from if it is. Then again, no-one ever knows what my quotes are from so I oughtn't to complain.
Warsh_Tippy and Zelda - Whatever, Dad
And finally in this part of the program, something of a classic of the genre, I think. Whatever, Dad is the name of one of Eliza Santos' many projects and it feels like the forerunner or maybe the progenitor of this whole thing.
There's a Reddit thread from six years ago where someone's asking "if this is like a genre" so they can go search for more of it. They don't get much in the way of a meaningful answer, just much the same touchstones and suggestions I came up with myself. I guess we'll just have to settle for calling it music.
Time to switch tracks, I think. Always assuming anyone's still awake. Seriously, all of these songs should come with one of those "Don't listen while driving or operating heavy machinery" warnings.
Transparent - Claire days
Okay, not such a leap, I'll grant you but I didn't want to give anyone whiplash. We'll slde over gently.
Typography is crazy these days, isn't it? I had a whole bit about it up there near the begining, where you might have noticed the capitalization is all over the sodding place, but I took it out for reasons of flow. I feel I really have to say something about it now, though, because if I don't it's just going to look like I mistyped Claire days name and never noticed.
No, that's how she styles herself. All the typography here is taken straight from the named artists' channels or Bandcamp or website or wherever. I love the energy but it's hell to transcribe sometimes.
Anxiety - Doechii
Someone we've heard of! About time! Doechii has been getting a lot of attention lately, all of it very much deserved. I had her previous single, DENIAL IS A RIVER (For some reason it's all caps but let's just not...) bookmarked to showcase here but somehow it never happened.
Know what? I like that one even better than Anxiety so let's have it too.
DENIAL IS A RIVER - Doechii
Now that sounds really old-school to me. It's the exact strand of hip-hop that I love and she does it brilliantly but I'm not exactly sure why it's being treated as something so new. It sounds super-90s to my untrained ears.
She has amazing stage presence, though. That might have something to do with it. I watched a whole festival set she did the other day and she was mesmerizing. She's headlining the West Holts stage at Glastonbury on Saturday this year, at the exact same time Charli XCX will be topping the bill on the Other Stage. I'm only going to be sitting here at home watching it on TV and even I'm annoyed by the scheduling, which is intentional to stop either stage being overwhelmed. Gonna be a real Battle of the Bands except without the bands.
Towards Horses - Real Lies
Talking of things that remind me of other things and other times....
Bloody goes though, doesn't it?
One more by Real Lies to drive the point home. This one's got a video.
They've been around for a while, it seems, although I only came across them a couple of weeks ago. It's one of those names you never really notice, which is fine when you're famous but not so great for getting people to give you a try when you're not. I mean, only this morning I clicked on links for Pure Bathing Culture, Teen Mortgage and Black Moth Super Rainbow, all purely on the strength of their names.
None of them are in the post though, are they? Read into that what you will.
And finally...
If there's a new Blondshell you're going to get it, just like if there's a new Lana. Both of them have albums out this year so get used to it.
And we're done. Thanks for stopping by. Let's do this again in a week or two.
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That's a nice buch of songs there. The one that hit the most was An Oral History of My First Kiss, because it got me to thinking about my own first kiss, and looking back on it how much (or not) it meant.
ReplyDeleteI'm always surprised people can actually remember things like that. I certainly can't.
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