Fluxblog 310: Punk 77-79 | Lana Del Rey • Liz Phair • Miho Hatori • Yaya Bey
Plus: Heather Havrilesky of Ask Polly rates the advice in famous songs
This week’s episode of Fluxpod features Heather Havrilesky, the author of the Ask Polly and Ask Molly advice columns as well as the books What If This Were Enough? and How To Be A Person In The World. We spend a bit of time at the top talking about observations on generational differences before jumping into the main event – judging the advice given in various hit songs from the 60s up to the recent past. You might be surprised by some of the judgments but I can guarantee you there’s some solid wisdom in this episode. If you’re a fan of Heather’s advice columns – as you should be! – this is a must-listen. You can find it on all the podcast platforms and the Fluxblog Patreon.
Speaking of which, both last weekend and this coming weekend’s Patreon-exclusive episodes feature a conversation I had with my good friend Sean T. Collins. These are loose “hang out” episodes in which we cover a lot of ground including riffs on the fall of Joss Whedon, divorce/break up albums, the vampiric qualities of Bowie, Drake, and Madonna, and a LOT more.
This week’s playlist is DURING PUNK 1977-1979, which covers the epicenter of the punk boom in the late ‘70s and completes a string of playlists I’ve made covering the general timeline showing how glam and punk gave way to post-punk and new wave, then college rock and indie rock, and then alternative rock, and finally the ‘00s version of “indie.” [Apple | Spotify]
FYI both versions of the deluxe reissue of R.E.M.’s Monster featuring my liner notes with new interviews with Michael Stipe, Mike Mills, and Peter Buck are currently on sale at a discount in R.E.M.’s online store, along with a bunch of reprints of classic t-shirts and other bits of merch.
Life Is Sweet Or Whatever, Baby
Lana Del Rey “Dark But Just A Game”
Jack Antonoff does some interesting production tricks on “Dark But Just A Game,” mostly in extreme contrasts between textures and tones that in some cases work like a musical equivalent of rack focus in cinema and in others feel more like quick cut shifts in perspective. This feels appropriate to the subject matter – Lana Del Rey is singing about the tragic glamour of Hollywood once again, but this time wondering if her own experience of fame can avoid the obvious well-known narratives of decadence and doom. Antonoff plays on the “maybe, maybe not” feeling of the lyrics by moving between what sounds almost like a parodic version of Del Rey’s classic noir-gone-trip-hop aesthetic and a brighter, quasi-Beatles feel, and not always in a straight A-to-B-section progression. I particularly like the way he contrasts a cleanly mic’d shaking tambourine with a digital bass drum that’s EQ’d so low it sounds like it’s pasted in from a completely different song. It sounds like the present accidentally bleeding into the fantasy of the past, like a boom mic or some modern trash showing up in the frame of a glamorized period piece.
Buy it from Amazon.
How Did That Work Out For You?
Liz Phair “Hey Lou”
“Hey Lou” is a song about Lou Reed sung from the perspective of his wife Laurie Anderson, who mostly just seems exasperated by his sloppy and mean spirited behavior, and exhausted by having to look after him and deal with the social messes he makes. This all checks out with everything I’ve ever read about Reed – as well as my own brief professional experience with the man – so I think the actual bold move for Liz Phair in this song is singing from Anderson’s POV, as there are some assumptions about her which she might not think to be fair and she is still alive to hear this. But even if it’s an unfair portrayal of their real life relationship, the song isn’t necessarily about them so much as the idea of them, and they’re really just standing in as archetypes of a particular toxic relationship dynamic. This song makes me suspect we’re actually about to get the Liz Phair record I’ve been wanting for ages – the one that approaches the relationships of people in middle age or older with the same sharp critical eye that the younger Phair brought to dissecting the relationships of people in their 20s on Exile In Guyville and Whip-Smart. Fingers crossed.
Buy it from Amazon.
The Invisible Book Of Love
Miho Hatori “Formula X”
“Formula X” sounds like a sleek late ‘90s R&B song caught in a paper jam, a copy of an idea warped and bent up and crushed by faulty mechanisms to the point that it becomes something entirely different in the process. This suits the lyrical premise nicely, as Miho Hatori questions the impulse to repeat expected patterns of behavior and consumption in order to yield a happy life. The implication is that invidualism, self-knowledge, imagination, and creativity is much more satisfying and authentic – the ability to approach the question of love and “answer in your own way.” The song sidesteps didacticism entirely, with Hatori singing her lines with a touch of doubt and insecuritiy, and the suggestion that she can be as much of a programmed robot as anyone else, even if she ends up becoming a more surreal version of one.
Buy it from Bandcamp.
Personal Decisions As Of Late
Yaya Bey “September 13th”
“September 13th” has a very casual and informal sound that makes it seem as though Yaya Bey just happened to walk into a room while someone was playing a little keyboard riff and started to sing, and someone else was like “oh, we’re doing a song now?” and improvised some percussion. There’s some conspicuous overdubs but they don’t break the loose feel of the song, which has a lost-in-thought quality as Bey works through her feelings after being dumped. She’s not wrecked by the situation, but she’s certainly feeling stuck and lost – the crucial bit here is the repeated thought “when I get out of this hole that you dug for me…” The choice of “when” over “if” in that sentence says a lot about her and the feeling of this song.
Buy it from Bandcamp.
LINKS LINKS LINKS LINKS LINKS LINKS LINKS LINKS
• Hank Shteamer talked to the members of Slint about their history and the 30th anniversary of Spiderland for a substantial article over at Rolling Stone.
• Devon Ivie talked to Belinda Carlisle about her time in The Go-Go’s over at Vulture.
• Rob Sheffield appeared on this week’s episode of And Introducing to talk about Mission of Burma and let me tell you, it’s a joy to listen to.