Isn't That Whatshisname? Nah. Looks Nothing Like Him!

Oh, it absolutely is time! 

Not only has it been three weeks since the last What I've Been Liistening To Lately but it's virtually the first full day,, free of other commitments and interruptions, I've had since then. And, most important of all, I have some corking tunes set by.

No rambling preamble. Let's crack on.

Well, Whatever It Was - Joyce Manor

If I did a round-up of Best Video of the Year, which I don't and I'm not planning to start but please don't let me stop you doing one, this would be right up there in contention for the top slot (Although I think Sabrina Carpenter's Manchild (The hitchhiking one.) has the edge. Hmm. maybe I should at least do a Top Ten after all...)

The fact that none of the look-alikes really look much like the people they're supposed to be is one of the best things about it but the whole thing is just wonderful. I might be the last person left in Britain who's never watched a single episode of Bake-Off but you'd have had to been living in an Antarctic Survey Station for the last fifteen years, with only enough fuel left in the generators to keep the heating on, not to know exactly how it works. 

Also, in the interests of journalistic accuracy, I have seen bits of it because Mrs. Bhagpuss watches it sometimes. It's not her favorite crafting competition by a very long way but she'll watch just about anyone making anything while she's making things herself.

The song's pretty good, too. I really like Joyce Manor.

 Don't Throw Rocks - Westside Cowboy

When I put this lot in a post about the Glastonbury Emerging Artist competition earlier this year, I had them pegged as the not very impressive best of a particularly bad bunch. I thought at the time it would probably the last mention they'd ever get here. I bet they were gutted about that!

Then they won the whole thing and put out a song I liked so I had to talk about them again. And now this. I don't like the taste of crow.

Changeling - Witch Post

I feel like I'm on much safer ground here. Witch Post are one of those bands where I get excited the moment I see they've done something new. And so far they've never disappointed. If they'd make an album I'd add it to my wishlist so someone could give it to me but so far there's only one EP and I can listen to that for nothing. 

How do bands expect make money these days? No wonder they're all complaining how it's just for middle-class kids with rich, indulgent parents or nepo babies with connections. No wonder everyone's cancelling all the time, saying they can't afford to tour. No wonder everyone has to have a day job.

I mean, that's been the life of every writer, artist and musician for centuries but I'm sure it's worse now. When I was in my twenties, Margaret Thatcher used to personally pay for rehearsal rooms and beer for every aspiring indie band in the country, by way of the Enterprise Allowance Scheme. And she funded all the wannabe comic artists scrawling inept cartoons about how awful she was, too. Seriously, half the people I knew in the 'eighties were on that scheme. I felt like an idiot for not giving up my job and joining them, sometimes.

Sorry, I seem to have fallen down a memory hole and I can't get up.

 Burger King Is Hiring - The Dollheads

You know how some media channels do that really irritating thing, where they get someone on to refute the previous speaker, even when everyone knows what they were saying was irrefutable? Balance, they call it. Here's my version.

So, the Dollheads are "three siblings under twenty from Las Vegas with two UK tours under their belts, an EP, an album..." in fact, you can make that three tours of the UK because the only reason I know they exist is because I was walking through town a couple of months ago and I stopped to read one of those posters for a small venue (Back room of a pub, near enough.) with  a list of bands that were going to be on in the coming weeks and one of them was called the Dollheads and the poster said something like "From Las Vegas, back for their third time..." and I thought that seemed a bit weird, to come all the way from the US to the UK to play a venue I know for a fact has only ever hosted very small acts, barely even on the circuit, in all the time I've lived here, which is thirty years now, so when I got home I looked them up and it got even weirder because they're basically children, so how is this even possible?

I do love a good run-on sentence, don't you? Anyway, I have no explanation as to how this band can keep criss-crossing the Atlantic to play in pubs in small cities that barely even have a rock scene to begin with but they're doing it, so it happens, so everyone else can stop whining. Or something. That's how balance works, isn't it?

As to why I've waited this long to mention it, it's because I don't actually like what they sound like much. This is pretty much the only song of theirs I've heard that I'd want to share and I've been waiting for the right moment, which apparently this was. 

Now we can move on.

 He's My Man {The Anniversary} 

 Luvcat with Dr. John Cooper Clarke

There are a lot of surprising things about Dr. John Cooper Clarke, not the least of them being that he's still alive, let alone making new music with people a quarter his age. I'm not surprised he's sitting down at the end.

Obviously I originally listened to this because of the good doctor but it's a really good tune. I've seen Luvcat around before but never really paid her much attention. Maybe I should start.

 Sony Ericsson - HighSchool

Is anything not nostalgia now? Of course, in my case, most of it's anemoia. All these thirty- and forty-somethings, getting teary-eyed over the noughties and nineties. I was there, but it wasn't their there, you get me?

Yeah, but it doesn't matter if you have the fuzz pedals, the whispering, the slo-mo soft focus video, the voiceover at the end...

Actually, I don't think the members of HighSchool, who are Australian and, yet again, include a brother and sister because every band has to have siblings these days, are even all that old. I'm thinking mid-late twenties? But this feels like a paean to lost youth, doesn't it? That's a vibe that's impossible to miss and apparently it hits earlier all the time now.

 Mid July - Miya Folick

Sorry. No video for this one. Won't bother some people. (Hi, Redbeard!) Also we've had some good videos already. We can afford to give our eyes a rest.

I don't know why but I keep thinking Miya Folick's an actor with a side-hustle as a pop star, like a lot of them. She's not. She's a full-time singer-songwriter. She did study acting but I don't think she's ever done it for a living. 

I got that from her Wikipedia page. Just this week I was having a chat with someone at work about AI, warning them to double-check everything, which of course means doing the work yourself so why even bother asking AI to begin with? I mention it because it just occurred to me to I probably ought to check Miya's pronouns before I go to print so I ran "Miya Folick pronouns" through Google and the helpful AI summary at the top confidently told me "Miya Folick uses they/them pronouns. This is most clearly stated in a profile that identifies them under their musical moniker Babebee." Gemini then clarified its position: "Other sources refer to Miya Folick without mentioning their pronouns explicitly, using "she/her" based on the name "Miya," but this is not confirmed by the artist themselves and is therefore less reliable."

Her Wikipedia entry would beg to differ. It refers to her as "she/her" throughout. And so does Miya (Who'd also like you know her name is pronounced Meee-yaaa, not Maya.)  In an interview she gave only this summer to Chicago's GoPride she answered a direct question about her pronouns with  "...she/her, thank you for asking." 

I know there are a lot of people who'd like us to stop caring about pronouns and another bunch who'd like us to believe Gemini getting it wrong is a conspiracy but actually AI just isn't very good, still. That's the takeaway. Use it but never, ever trust it. Always verify.

All of that kind of got us away from the song, which is just gorgeous. And boy, I'm editorializing a lot today, aren't I? We'll run out of time for tunes if I go on like this. I'll try to be more concise.

 GMFU - Syd

I don't have a lot to say about this one, so that should help speed things along. It's Syd, late of both Odd Future and The Internet. She was probably the least-scary of the Odd Future collective, although that's really not saying much - they were all terrifying. They've all mellowed enormously (Well, by comparison...) and they all make great music. Just goes to show you shouldn't be scared of the future.

No Vacancy - Tiger la Flor

I sometimes worry I'm getting stuck in a rut with these posts, relying on the same, predictable artists to keep pumping out tunes that sound like everything else they've done. And it's true but it also has a lot to do with how long I've been doing this now. When you start something, everything in it is new by default, but the longer you keep at it, the more repetitive it gets. 

But then I think, well I wouldn't be saying this about my umpteenth post about the same dozen games I've been banging on about for years, would I? So why worry if I come round again and again to the same singers and bands? 

Mostly, though, if I may be honest, it's that I've been too consumed with other things to go virtual crate-digging for a while. I'm sure there'll be some new stuff eventually. And then you'll all be sorry!

One more before the big finish.

 Second Sleep - Magdalena Bay

Another video that's going to be in contention for that Best of the Year list I'm not going to do. (Or am I?) Mind you, that has a lot to do with her face, which is very characterful. She does a lot of odd things with it and it's quite mesmeric to watch.

I watched an AI music video by accident the other day. I just clicked through because it had an interesting thumbnail and I was a fair way into it before I started to think "Isn't this AI?" 

I mention it because this has some of the same texture to it but the difference is like drinking an ice-cold Coke from the original ribbed glass bottle compared to swiging from a two-tier plastic bottle of supermarket cola that's been left in the sun for an hour. I'm doing wonders with AI music but there's a reason I'm not wasting any time trying to get AI to make videos for any of it. 

And finally, a couple of bangers to end with. No, sod it, lets have three. One of them you'll know.

Hello - Martin Solveig Feat. Dragonette

Yes, I did pick this up from that episode of Ted Lasso where they do After Hours, only with Coach Beard in the Griffin Dunne role. Probably my favorite Scorsese movie. Wasn't my favorite Ted Lasso episode though. Not until this came on...

 I Like It Like That - Fcuckers

I like it like that, too. That's why it's here.

 The Right - DJ Seinfeld & Confidence Man

If you're not dancing after that little lot you might want to check to make sure your legs aren't broken.

Peace and I'm out.