Communication Breakdown

Two weeks brings twenty-eight tunes. That's going to need some culling. At a rough guess, three-quarters of them new names. Well, new to this blog. Does novelty get preference over familiarity? Maybe. Not over quality. 

Oh, hell. Let's just start and see what happens.

 Carottes - 1tbsp, miki

Okay, that was random. But so good! I love French vocals I can't understand. I can, technically, speak and understand French. I did it right into my first year at university, although by then I only had to read it, not speak it. But my first year at university was more than forty-five years ago. These things don't stay with your forever.

Not that I'd ever have been able to understand a song sung in French unless it was A La Bande A Tout Faire that we used to have sing in class when I was about fifteen. No, wait, I think we just had to listen to it at the start of every new chapter of the  audio tape that got played to us when I was doing O-Level French. Except, when I google it, there doesn't seem to be any record of it ever having existed. There's a series of short films called Toute La Bande but that's not it.

I just wasted half an hour trying to find whatever it was that I used to listen to in double French back in the 70s. Que dalle! That's French for not a sausage. Not a sausage in French is pas une saucisse, apparently, but that isn't anything any French person would say, unless, presumably, they were looking at something other than a sausage and wanted to make that quite clear. 

I could sing that song, though. Well, the title, which I used to sing in my head when it was playing in class and which I've sung many, many times since. Looking it up, though, it seems the phrase I have always remembered is meaningless gibberish. It might be a mishearing of "La bonne a tout faire", which is a maid of all work aka a housemaid but what I remember is a story about a group of teenagers who did good deeds or odd jobs, a bit like the Scouts.

Oh, well. Lost to time, if it ever existed. Certainly made for a bizarre start to this post, though. 

Stupid Boy - 1000 Rabbits

If you could resist following a song called Carottes with one by a band called 1000 Rabbits, you have more willpower than I do. Unfortunately. It's horrible programming. Those two songs shouldn't even be on the same radio show, let alone next to each other on the schedule. This train has gone careening catastrophically off the rails before it's even gotten rolling. Let me see if I can do anything to haul it back...

Stop Calling Me Out - Grocery Bag

Alright! Some nice, straight-up rock and roll (Albeit with a vaguely reggaefied bridge...) That should settle things down. Could have been made pretty much any time from about 1972 to... well, now. I like the effort they've put in to get a band "look" with all the red and black right down to the guitars. Didn't the Strokes do that? Don't ask me. I know nothing about the Strokes. They came up in my wilderness years.

As for the name, Grocery Bag is one of those names that genuinely is so bad it's good. When I saw it, literally thought "That's such a terrible name! I have to find out what a band who'd call themselves something like that would sound like." And they sound alright. 

 i spend my time crying - twisted teens

If you want a rock band here in 2026, though, I don't know that you can do a lot better than Twisted Teens. Oh, look, I capitalized them in the text but not in the caption! That's because they have it both ways on their own channel, so I guess It's optional.  One of my favorite videos this year, too. It's a three-minute movie.

Numb - Esther Rose, Angela Autumn

This one's more like a home video but it works. No need for a credits sequence. It was just them and I bet they filmed it on one of their phones. 

 Look at Miss Ohio - Carriers

I guess we're into the Americana section of the show now. This is a cover of a song by Gillian Welch & David Rawlings, a duo I cannot in good conscience pretend I'd ever heard of before I came across this, which Carriers rush-recorded in celebration of the election of Democratic governor-elect for Ohio, Amy Acton. The original is quite a lot more twangy. I prefer the cover.

 Black Boys On Mopeds - Sinead O'Connor

I was about to say that the opposite is true of this one, which I only heard for the first time a week or two ago, when a cover of it came up on either Pitchfork or Stereogum, only now I can't find any such cover. I thought it might have been on TripleJ but no joy there, either. I think actually what happened is there was a cover of something else and it got compared to this but the knowledge is lost, now. It's like the Great Library of Alexandria in my mind; a heap of smouldering rubble.

I know I found it by following a link from something I was reading, anyway, but I guess the provenance doesn't matter. The important thing is that I found it because it's stunning. But then, what did Sinead O'Connor ever write or record that wasn't?  

It is odd that I've never heard it  - or even heard of it - before. Not only is there Sinead's wonderful original but it's been very widely covered by the likes of Pheobe Bridgers, Sharon Van Etten and Fontaines DC. The Fontaines make it sound a lot more Irish than the original, although not nearly as Irish as the excellent version by Madra Salach. Sinead's version sounds almost Americana to me, which is why I slotted it in after Look At Miss Ohio.

 Have I got any more like that?

Summer In Siam - Tom Waits (Pogues cover)

Kinda! Only in reverse.

Is Tom Waits in some kind of private competition with Bob Dylan, where they challenge each other to make everything they sing as hard to understand as possible? I mean, Shane McGowan wasn't exactly the model of clarity but he had the excuse of being drunk most of the time. I saw the Pogues twice and the second time, Shane spent most of the set slumped on the drum riser with his back to the crowd - and he still sounded clearer than this.

 hey boyyy - Slayyyter

Yeah, that's not exactly the trailer park,now, is it? I guess we're not in Americana anymore.

 High Forever - Petite Meller

As I said in my review of Edgerunners Season 2, Petite Meller was tapped to write a song specifically for the closing credits and another that's probably the key song in the body of the show, making her the Rosa Walton of the season. I've always loved what Petite does but that's a high bar. I included the video with scenes from the show in the other post but here's her own original because who doesn't want more Petite Meller to watch?

 Postinternetfame - Quiet Light

I only heard this for the first time yesterday and I nearly didn't hear it then. She has a new song out that sounds nothing at all like this. It made Stereogum's 5 Best Songs of the Week list, which crosses over with my selections all too often. I try to avoid it when possible but the best songs are the best songs so it's hard.

Anyway, I hadn't heard this one because who's going to waste time clicking a link to a song with a bland title like "Forever" by someone with a dull name like Quiet Light? Not me, obviously. But the staffer who picked it, Danielle Chelosky, mentioned the album from earlier this year sounded like "a soft, bright glimpse into the future of music".

Forever certainly doesn't. It sounds more like an eighties soft-rock pastiche to me. I didn't see how that could be the future of anything so I went to YouTube to see what the difference might be. Everything, pretty much, as you can hear for yourself if you listen to both. I only like one of them. I bet you can guess which one.

I also wanted to include Kristen Hersh's new single, Pass Christian, and Armand Hammer's Assembly Lines, but that'd be three out of Stereogum's five for the week and that's just embarrassing, especially since I hadn't heard them before I saw they were on there. It's one thing if I get to them on my own first but you can't just poach everything.

And now, to no-one's surprise more than mine, we're going to the "I literally just found this while I was putting the post together..." section.

On 2 U - Starcrawler

I'd kinda lost track of Starcrawler. They were one of my picks for greatness, about back when I started doing these posts, them and Superorganism. Superorganism pretty much vanished after two albums and some kind of scandal. Starcrawler just kept plugging along but never seemed to get anywhere much. 

Then they seemed to disappear, too. I did a search on them maybe a year ago and didn't find anything new. The last time I posted anything by them seems to have been about four years ago. And now it seems they're back. 

In fact, they've been back all year but they've miraculously managed either not to turn up in any of the music news sites I read every fucking day or I've missed it every fucking time! Modern communications, eh? I just watched three videos for three songs, two of which are very new and one's from earlier this year, and they're all great. I'll save the other two for later but On 2 U is my favorite. (Great live version here, too.) I'm also following them now, which I honestly thought I already was...

 Product of Profit (P.O.P.) - daine

And daine too. Bunch of new tunes, not heard any of 'em. What is going on? Can't even trust the press, now? Subbed her channel as well now, so this will not happen again!

And that's really messed up my finish. I try to keep it to a dozen or so but I guess we're gonna run over. Sorry.

 Winner - Sorry

No, really, Sorry. That's who's up next! I was trying to avoid using anything with no video but that's just too good.

 openinghearts - BOY1GIRL

Always was gonna close with that one. It's got that Go Chic Hard Date crunch at the start and that's all I need. Also any excuse to plug Hard Date and I'm gonna take it.

I guess it's time to stop. Shame. I was just starting to get into it. Back to the search for  Christmas Songs I go. This year's Advent Calendar isn't going to program itself.