Saturday, Saturday... what shall we do on Saturday? Well, technically it's the last day of my holiday, although now I'm only working two days a week, that doesn't have the impact it once did. In fact, since I'm sharing, I have a week's holiday booked in every month from now until December, after which my current plan is either to retire altogether or maybe go to just one day a week if my employers are interested, so I'm going to have plenty of time off either way.
Or just "time" as I guess I'll have to get used to calling it, if and when I do retire. Are any other bloggers in this part of the 'sphere retired? Or semi-retired? The only one I can think of is Tobold and he's a real outlier (In so many ways...)
Maybe I should save this for Blaugust. We'll be doing the good old "Introduce Yourself To The Room" bit at the start, I imagine? Why mess with the classics?
Anyway, this is a very odd way to begin what I have decided is going to be a Saturday Morning Music Post. There was a choice. I have... let me see... half a dozen blog posts and news items bookmarked to feature and riff off, most of them gaming-related. None of them looks like they'll age badly, though, so I might just keep them in my back pocket for Blaugust, too.
Even though it's not much more than a week since I last did a music post, I have somehow managed to pile up quite a few good, new tunes. I had a very profitable trawl on YouTube the other evening, when I decided to give myself a night off from making my own music and listen to someone else's for a change.
That's always a dice roll. Sometimes it's an hour of listening to thirty seconds each of thirty songs and dropping them all like wormed apples, other times it's like hitting the bullseye ten times in a row. This was one of the better hours so it seems selfish not to share. Also, I have the perfect tune to start with.
Heat Wave Love Song - Tenderness
Oh, I have so much to say about this. First, it's hot, hot, hot here, at least by local standards. Five days in a row with the mercury at thirty or above (Literally. I have a wall thermometer in the kitchen that I bought on holiday in France sometime in the early 'aughts and it does have silver in it so I'm assuming it's mercury, even though I thought they didn't use it in domestic thermometers any more, what with it being both expensive and poisonous...) Beryl is flat out all day, probably praying for rain like those vendors in Ahgram.
Second, "Tenderness" is Katy Beth Young's new project. She's half of one of my favorite bands of the twenty-teens, Peggy Sue (Formerly Peggy Sue and the Pirates.) I have all their widely-available stuff although sadly none of the series of limited-edition cover CDs they released before they got a proper contract. They've been radio-silent for a few years and for some reason I took into my head to google them this week, which was good timing because Katy had just put up the first Tenderness single, which this isn't. It's the second.
Third, so, this is someone with a certain following and history, a Wikipedia entry and five albums with a band that toured extensively for years, played festivals, supported bigger names, all the things you need to do to build a name and a career. The second single from her new band has been on YouTube for two days and how many views has it got? Well, if two people reading this click through, it'll hit fifty. Does that make you feel better or worse that no-one's watching your YouTube channel?
And finally, one thing I can now not stop noticing since I started using AI as an instrument is how few songs these days use anything even close to the kind of verse-chorus-bridge format I not only grew up with but heard coming out of the radio for most of my adult life. I started my musical AI exploration by recreating all the songs I wrote in the seventies and eighties and almost all of them follow those rules but hardly any of the new stuff I've been doing since does... and it all sounds so much better. No wonder that straightjacket has gone out of fashion...
This is going to turn into a very long post if I don't stop talking...
iPod Touch - Ninajirichi
ᴵᵗ ˢᵒᵘⁿᵈˢ ˡⁱᵏᵉ ʰⁱᵍʰ ˢᶜʰᵒᵒˡ ᶠʳᵒⁿᵗ ᵍᵃᵗᵉ ˢᵐᵒᵏᵉ ⁱⁿ ᵐʸ ᶠᵃᶜᵉ
ᴵᵗ ˢᵒᵘⁿᵈˢ
ˡⁱᵏᵉ ᵈʸᵉᵈ ᶠʳᵃʸᵉᵈ ʰⁱᵍʰ ʷᵃⁱˢᵗ ᵇᵒᵘᵍʰᵗ ᵃᵗ ˢᵘᵖʳᵉ
ᴵᵗ ˢᵒᵘⁿᵈˢ ˡⁱᵏᵉ ˡᵒᵛⁱⁿᵍ
ʸᵒᵘ ⁱˢ ᵉᵃˢʸ ᵇᵘᵗ ᵗʰᵉʸ ᵇᵒᵒˢᵗᵉᵈ ᵗʰᵉ ᵇᵃˢˢ
ᴵᵗ ˢᵒᵘⁿᵈˢ ˡⁱᵏᵉ ⁱᴾᵒᵈ ᵗᵒᵘᶜʰ
ʸᵉˡˡᵒʷ ᴾⁱᵏᵃᶜʰᵘ ᶜᵃˢᵉ
Nostalgia for a lost generation. One of
which I'm not a part. And yet... I fuckin' loved my iPod
Touch.
I still have it. It still works. It's on the table next to my bed. In its battered black leather cover not a yellow Pikachu case but still...
Also, what's with this tiny font on YouTube now? I'm all for the trend of putting the full lyric in the description but now it's in a point size only ants could read. Cool as Beavis would say. Or was it Butthead?
Fuck My Computer - Ninajirichi
And so we enter the NSFW portion of today's program. Apologies to anyone who hasn't sent Google their driving license.
When I saw the title, I assumed it was going to be a rant about the evils of technology but no. The exact opposite.
ⁱ ʷᵃⁿⁿᵃ ᶠᵘᶜᵏ ᵐʸ ᶜᵒᵐᵖᵘᵗᵉʳ
ᶜᵒᶻ ⁿᵒ ᵒⁿᵉ ⁱⁿ ᵗʰᵉ ʷᵒʳˡᵈ ᵏⁿᵒʷˢ ᵐᵉ
ᵇᵉᵗᵗᵉʳ
ⁱᵗ ˢᵃʸˢ ᵐʸ ⁿᵃᵐᵉ
ⁱᵗ ˢᵃʸˢ ņ̶̜̘͓͔̟̩̮̝́͂͐ͅi̴̺̬͐́n̶͈̩͝a̴̢̧̟̰̞̪̝̥̿̐̏̊̌
ᵃⁿᵈ ⁿᵒ ᵒⁿᵉ ⁱⁿ ᵗʰᵉ
ʷᵒʳˡᵈ ᵈᵒᵉˢ ⁱᵗ ᵇᵉᵗᵗᵉʳ
That's the entire lyric, exactly as written. Says it all, I think.
I'm Fucking Pregnant - Ultrasonicas
I love that Ninajiruchi is Age Restricted and this isn't. Consistency is for wimps. No video, sadly. I imagine quite a few people reading this will be familiar with this one. It plays over the credits at the end of the episode of Mythic Quest where Poppy finds out she's going to have a baby.
Oops. Spoiler! Sorry!
It made such an impact on me then that I went straight to google to find out who it was by, since no fucking show ever lists the music these days.
I haven't really had much time for pure punk since about, oh, late 1977 and I never had any time for hardcore but I know a good song when I hear one. And a good band.
After punk went mainstream, this was more the sort of thing I wanted to hear. As Nina said earlier, ᴵ’ᵛᵉ ᵍᵒᵗ ᵃ ˢᵒⁿᵍ ᵗʰᵃᵗ ⁿᵒᵇᵒᵈʸ ᵏⁿᵒʷˢ and don't I just love it? Hipsterism goes back a long, long way. Probably Socrates was doing it. He seems like the sort.
This was recorded three days ago, can you believe it? Well, uploaded, anyway. They're Dutch, I think. Maybe its still 1981 in Rotterdam?
Can we have something that sounds like it wasn't made decades ago? Is that what you're asking? Oh, alright then but that's really not much these days, is it?
I'm Not Crazy - Junior Varsity
The bit at the end of the video where the cars go round her makes me nervous. Certainly sounds like it was made this decade, though.
Oh, now you've gone and blown your cover, guys! That's a super-great chorus, though. And I just love the muzz all over everything. I wanna hear it again!
Lotta talk in the comments to both of these about Junior Varsity blowing up, which is par for the course on everything with any kind of fanbase, but I think there might be something in it for once. Don't forget where you heard them first, if it happens...
Adored - Been Stellar
Been Stellar have already blown up - critically, that is. Commercially, not so much. Also, sounds disturbingly similar to some of the stuff I've been doing. Kieran Press-Reynolds has a great piece at Pitchfork about post-pandemic alt rock and it sure is a sound. I just didn't know it was my sound. A little bit, sometimes.
He, like every music journalist today, it seems, likes to pull things apart until all that's left is a stack of parts and a faint ringing tone but everything doesn't have to mean anything, does it? Can't some stuff just sound good?
Bloody philistine... me that is, not Kieran.
Okay, let's do do some programming here. I'll have two from the bottom and two from the top please, Carol. Boy, that dates me.
Stars - Frank On Tap
No clue who Frank is. If that's even his name. Might be his craft beer of choice. The lovely video was shot in New Zealand, though, so unless he has a lot of air miles to burn, I guess he's from there. Is air miles a thing any more? It was mentioned in a novel I'm reading just now and that only came out last month so I guess so? Also why do I assume air miles takes a singular pronoun? I almost always veer to a plural even when it's technically incorrect.
I bet that's not the conversation Frank thought he was going to be starting when he wrote Stars...
Shadowist - R. Missing
I've been doing this long enough now that there are certain artist that just book a spot. R. Missing is right up there. If you will keep putting out A1+ songs like this, that's what's gonna happen.
On the other hand, you could be like The Molotovs, who I gave a whole post to right after I happened across them. Land with a huge impact and then kinda just lie there, flattened. They have what I think is their official debut single out just now but I don't really like it all that much, which is why it isn't here. It doesn't remind so much of the Who or the Jam as the Merton Parkas and that's not something anyone wants to hear, I'm sure.
They're a truly great covers band but as yet the songwriting's not coming through. They're very young, though...
Ok, big pop finish..
Sweet Serotonin - Amber Mark
She was on the bill for Sabrina Carpenter's big Hyde Park gig this month. Stereogum hears "early neo-soul". I hear 90s trip-hop-pop. Whatever, it's a cool summer groove.
JUMP - Blackpink
Is he really going to close with Blackpink? Well, yeah, that was the plan. Got a problem with it?
I can't say I ever paid much attention to them but they're huge and their comeback is gonna be huge and this single is huge and the video is really, really HUGE!
What the hell is it, though? Those trumpets are like a mariachi band snuck into the studio and pranked them. The rest of it sounds like rock-rap from... when? Any time in the last twenty-five years I guess. And the video looks half like something that ate a load of money and half like the trailer for a AA video game. Also, are those fans going crazy or passers-by being infected with some evil Blackpink zombie virus? Impossible to be sure.
Goes hard, I'll give it that. Also I keep playing it so it's surely doing something. If I start banging my head against the wall until I knock myself out, you'll know who to blame.
I tell you what... we won't end on that dubious note. Let's go out with some good old wholesome fun.
Hungry Like The Wolf
Sabrina Carpenter and Duran Duran
Not the best sound in the world but it's a trip, isn't it? All these pop princesses these days have such a great sense of pop culture history. They all seem so smart and clued in and literate and they all just have such damn good taste. Was it always that way? I think there were always moments but now it's just all the freakin' time and it's wonderful. I give all the credit to Lana but then I would, wouldn't I?
And on that happy note... didn't have time for Suki Waterhouse or Mallrat or underscores or Automatic...
Too good to throw away on a link, all of them. Save 'em for next time.
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