Two weeks, two weeks since the last time...
Hmm. That reminds me of a song. What the heck is it? Oh, I know! It's one of mine!
Moving swiftly on...
I seem to have bookmarked more than two dozen songs since last time, most of them new, a few of them covers, one or two older ones I happened upon, one way or another. I'm kind of thinking I might ought to structure these things a little better. Do some themed posts or something.
Ah, what the hell!
Shall we start with some very justified anger? Why not?
Heavy Metal - THICK
Yeah, that's not heavy metal. This is. But then you don't generally put the genre in the title, do you? Unless you're Ottowan.
The lyrics are clear enough but I didn't really hear them the first time. I spent half the video trying to read what was written on one of the tee-shirts. Do people ever think about how distracting something like that is? Or even how distracting videos are?
No wonder I can never remember the words to anything. It was easier before MTV, when all we had to look at was the record sleeve. Or Disco 45.
Lobotomize Me - The Rat Utopia Experiment
But then, you can always put the words in the video. Not that either of these songs need subtitles to get their messages across. They're both admirably annunciated.
There's a theory, common with people of a certain age, that goes "Once a punk, always a punk". Not that I want bragging rights (Of course I want bragging rights. Everyone wants bragging rights.) but I was a punk when, if you wanted straight jeans, you had to find a store that sold workmen's clothing. Everywhere else was flares. My first pair of straights had a 2x12" pocket down the side for carrying a metal ruler.
And short hair... don't get me started.
Sorry... where was I? Oh yes. So, as a punk from back in the day, as we didn't say then, I'm always dubious about the whole "Once a punk..." thing. I don't recall anyone extending that kind of respect for tradition and commitment to the bit to the Teds. We just thought they were reactionary throwbacks.
I was a punk from about the summer of '76 to the autumn of '77, after which I was probably post-punk for a while, before slipping off the punk spectrum altogether. You can't be "a post-punk", can you? Not like you can be a Mod or a New Romantic or a Goth.
I am not a punk any more and haven't been since I swapped my straights for white denim Oxford bags, which is what I wore on stage, mostly to annoy the audience. More than once.
It did, too. Annoyed the audience. I got taken to task about it a couple of times. Then again, I guess setting out to annoy the audience you're supposed to be entertaining is pretty punk at that. So is dressing how the hell you want, which was a lot more of a tenet of belief at the time than you'd ever know from the historical record. People wore what they wanted to wear for a while, until the media decided everyone ought to have a uniform.
That determination to go your own way is the true punk sensibility, something I do believe in and which can be life-long. It also has fuck all do with the 1970s, or the 1980s, if you want to get all hardcore about it, or even the 1960s, if you're writing one of those supercilious histories of popular music, except that those were the decades that put a name to it.
Whatever it is and whenever it started, it's still around and always will be. This lot have it. And I like it, particularly like the way Phia Lane almost runs out of breath but just keeps going anyway.
Underground - Mogwai (Feat. Iggy pop)
If we're talking bragging rights, Iggy has all of them.
Back in the late '90s, when I worked for the online side of the business I'm just about to retire from and we could play music at work, all day, every day, I got introduced to a number of artists I otherwise would never have listened to. God Speed You, Black Emperor was one. Mogwai was another. (Also Coldplay but best gloss over that one.)
Post-rock was big in that building for a while and I liked it well enough as background but it's mostly instrumentals and instrumentals tend not to stick hard in the memory. I always liked the sound of Mogwai but never enough to pay all that much attention to what they were doing after people stopped putting them on the CD player. I wouldn't have listened to this if it hadn't had Iggy's name attached.
And there he is, doing his thing. He just keeps doing it, doesn't he? If you had a thing like Iggy's, you'd keep doing it, too, I bet.
Love Song - Knifeplay
I've been watching My Dress-Up Darling on Netflix (Don't ask...) and there's an episode where Kitagana explains to Gojo what a "slice-of-life" manga is. This is a slice-of-life video and those are my favorite kind.
Knifeplay are allegedly a shoegaze band although they sound shoegaze-emo to me, if that's even a thing. Eli Ennis at Chasing Fridays has a review up of this track in the latest issue and he seems to think they're on the edge of the genre now, after a decade at the heart of the scene. Whatever you want to call it, it's gorgeous.
Louisiana Song - Jess Kerber
If this had a video, it'd be slice-of-life, too. I borrowed a couplet for the title of this post. I think it's over-optimistic, to be honest, but the sentiment goes both ways.
Phoebe - Audrey Hobert
Phoebe is my favorite girl's name. Probably. It might be Rachel. Neither of those preferences comes from Friends, although I do love Friends. The Phoebe in this song is the Phoebe from Friends. Or, as Audrey says, "A Phoebe". It's funny how that happens. But we all know what she means.
So much for the introspection. Let's dance.
07XXXXXXXXX - Lifeloose
That's mesmeric.
It kind of made me think of CoCo and Clair Clair but someone in the comments called it Slayyytercore which I really hope is going to be a thing now.
Speaking of which...
i think he's got a girl - Slayyyter
Oh boy. First time I heard this I thought well, it's a bit slow, isn't it? Then I read Tom Breihan at Stereogum saying "it's so fucking good". I respect Tom's opinion so I listened to it again and he's right. It's so fucking good.
And it's a grower.
THE ALLIGATOR - Goldie Boutlier
Best thing she's done in a while, I think. Why the title is in ALL CAPS and her name is in regular I cannot explain. These pop stars and their wacky typography...Want something a little less subtle? I got you.
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