Fluxblog #297: McCartney | Mountain Goats | Swift | Bel Cobain/Lex Amor
This week's episode of Fluxpod features Rob Sheridan, who was the art director for Nine Inch Nails for 15 years. In that role Rob worked with a wide range of mediums, including the design of NIN's extraordinary, many-years-ahead-of-the-curve visuals for live shows. Our conversation covers his time with NIN, how he was recruited by Trent Reznor on the strength of his NIN fan site, his learning curve and getting over imposter syndrome, and his post-NIN career including his work on his creator-owned comic series High Level. You can find the episode on all major podcast platforms. This weekend's Patreon exclusive episode will be another episode with my friend Sean T. Collins in which we talk about a bunch of different music artists, it's kinda free form.
Also, as a reminder, if you need to catch up on the music of the past year, the 2020 Fluxblog survey mix is right there waiting for you on Spotify and Apple Music.
December 21st, 2020 3:55pm
By The Carrot Patch
Paul McCartney “Winter Bird/When Winter Comes”
“When Winter Comes” is a song that’s been sitting in Paul McCartney’s vaults for 23 years, an outtake from his sessions with George Martin for Flaming Pie. I’m not sure why he didn’t just use it for that record back then, but I’m grateful that he included it in McCartney III rather than relegate it to some bonus track purgatory. It’s an incredibly lovely piece of music – very McCartney in its melodic sensibilities, but somewhat novel in its extreme simplicity. It’s just McCartney doing a little acoustic folk song about tending to a farm, an ode to his rural domesticity and a meditation on the simple pleasures of little routines of being a responsible adult. Even as he sings about chores and tasks there’s a calm, peaceful feeling in this song. He’s escaping all the trappings of being ex-Beatle Paul McCartney to just enjoy being a part of a natural ecosystem and living a humble little life.
Buy it from Amazon.
December 22nd, 2020
The Piece Of The Pie That Belonged To You
The Mountain Goats “Get Famous”
The Mountain Goats sound pretty good with a bit of extra razzle dazzle, even if it’s just a horn section added to sell the irony of John Darnielle’s lyrics about aiming to get big in show business. “Get Famous” is sung from the perspective of someone with a burning need to validate their belief that they’re special and that they have a purpose in the world. Darnielle’s lyrics are satirical and mock the most extreme version of this character – a person we surely recognize from magazines, social media, and reality TV – while clearly understanding that he and pretty much every artist can identify with this feeling in some way. This character is personifying all the darkest roots of a need for adulation, all the things the best people tend to tamp down out of self-awareness and humility: A contempt for the “obedient sheep,” a megalomaniacal belief what they do makes the world a better place, faith in the thought that their success is preordained by a higher power.
Buy it from Bandcamp.
December 23rd, 2020
The Road Not Taken Looks Real Good Now
Taylor Swift “Tis the Damn Season”
“Tis the Damn Season” is like the dark mirror of “Invisible String,” in which the ways two people are tied together are more like a knot of emotional complications than some magical romantic inevitability. The protagonist is a young woman who’s come back to her home town for the holidays who slips back into old feelings for an ex who never left town or moved on. She’s pulled into the gravitational field of their feelings but is incredibly unsure about how close she wants to get to them – “you can call me ‘babe’ for the weekend, ’tis the damn season.”
Even if they are coming on too strong and she’s a bit hesitant, it’s clear enough these two really do love one another. But it’s also apparent that they’re both actually just engaging with their doubts and insecurities about staying or leaving town as the ex tries to hang on tightly to something they thought they’d lost and she worries that she won’t find anyone as eager and accepting somewhere else. Taylor Swift and Aaron Dessner attain a very well-calibrated level of melodrama in this song – just enough to sell the weight of the feelings, but reserved enough to keep it centered in the protagonist’s bittersweet ambivalence.
Buy it from Amazon.
December 24th, 2020
It Was A Normal Saturday
The Silhouettes Project featuring Bel Cobain and Lex Amor “At the Bay”
The Silhouettes Project is an interesting premise – it’s not a band or even a collective, but rather an umbrella name that can serve as a “platform” for a community of rap, R&B, and jazz artists in the UK. It’s like a label, but not a label, or a curated compilation that unfolds in real time. It’s an idea with a lot of potential. “At the Bay” is a showcase for the singer Bel Cobain and the rapper Lex Amor, both of whom perform with a stoned, drowsy affect. The track is produced by Illiterate and is built on a keyboard part that reminds me a lot of Massive Attack’s classic “Protection” – it has that same sort of soft but synthetic feel and lazy but crisp beat, making it sound like Cobain and Amor are being lit by dull fluorescent lights. They have excellent chemistry as vocalists, recalling the dynamic of Tricky’s muttered raps and Martina Topley-Bird’s low-key soulfulness on Maxinquaye.
Buy it from Bandcamp.