Fluxblog 312: R&B/New Jack Swing 1987-1993 | Tune-Yards • Sofia Kourtesis • India Jordan • Gilligan Moss
Plus...a clip show! You love a clip show, right?
This week's episode of Fluxpod is a clip show intended as a starting point for new listeners. If you’ve never heard the show, this is a sample platter that I think gives a good sense of what I’ve been doing. If you have been listening, I ask you to please pass this episode on to other people who might like it! The guests features in this compilation include Rob Sheffield, Brittany Spanos, Heather Havrilesky, Trevor from Champagne Sharks, and Maria Sherman. It’s on all the podcast platforms and on the Fluxblog Patreon.
This week’s playlist is SENSITIVITY: R&B AND NEW JACK SWING 1987-1993, a collection looking back on a pivotal period of time in the history of R&B in which the genre integrated elements of hip-hop, electronic production, and moving ahead with Prince’s innovations from the middle part of the ‘80s. This playlist is packed with classics – if you’re of a certain age this one will be incredibly nostalgic, but I recommend this even more if you’re not especially familiar with this era of music.
[Spotify | Apple Music]
Look Back On This Time
Tune-Yards “Sometime”
“Sometime” is built on a beat that’s steady and forceful but has a loose bounce to it, like someone dribbling a basketball down the court. The bass sounds slippery and sneaky, like it’s trying to hide behind the beat but it’s far too big to be obscured by it. In all this, there’s Merrill Garbus’ voice, or more accurately, her voices – the high end swirling and soaring like gusts of wind, the low end more closely tethered to the rhythm, not quite rapping. The aesthetic is very recognizable as Tune-Yards but with anything that would register as “twee” removed so it’s reduced to blunt rhythm and a thin atmosphere of harmony. I was a little put off by the extreme neuroses of the more recent Tune-Yards records but “Sometime” seems to be reacting against that somewhat as Garbus sings about developing a sense of historical context for the present, confronting the uselessness of a reflexive pessimism about the state of the world, and being able to forgive yourself for your complicity in bad things without necessarily letting yourself off the hook.
Buy it from Bandcamp.
I Only Have Eyes For You
Sofia Kourtesis “By Your Side”
One bit of film critic wisdom I hear repeated a lot is the idea that a movie shouldn’t overtly reference a far better film because it’s basically asking the audience to think about how much better than film is than what they’re watching. I don’t think that logic totally applies to music – nods to other songs in the form of interpolations and samples mostly just integrate warm feelings towards the source material into one’s reaction to the new song. The more analogous thing is probably when an artist with bad or middling material covers much better artists, since you have more of a stark contrast of their attempt at songwriting and the compositional talent of someone else.
I bring this up because one of the several samples floating around in Sofia Kourtesis’ “By Your Side” is a man announcing The Flamingos’ “I Only Have Eyes for You.” It’s not a sample of the song, just someone mentioning the existence of this widely beloved pop classic. This ought to trigger the problem that happens with referentiality in film, but it doesn’t – for one, Kourtesis’ own composition is very beautiful and highly effective as a dance track, so it succeeds on terms entirely unrelated to The Flamingos’ song. The nod to “I Only Have Eyes for You” doesn’t undermine anything about “By Your Side.” Being reminded of the Flamingos song in a non-musical way has the effect of drawing a line between these two seemingly unrelated works, highlighting the way these two very different songs share a similar sort of heavenly romantic ambiance.
Buy it from Bandcamp.
On And On And
India Jordan “And Groove”
“And Groove” contrasts two deliberately mechanical elements – fast and precise programmed beats and a vocal sample loop – with a keyboard part that feels loose and soulful, like India Jordan sat down and improvised a chord progression on the spot while the tape was rolling. I’m not knowledgeable enough to identify the make and model but I love the tone they are using, a bit like Fender Rhodes but not quite as expensive-sounding? The finale of the song is unexpected but appropriate – the beat and loops drop out and you just hear the keyboard unaccompanied, playing out the chords for an extra 30 seconds.
Buy it from Bandcamp.
We’re A Perfect Disaster
Gilligan Moss featuring Rebecca & Fiona “Ferris Wheel”
Gilligan Moss sound extremely familiar but are in fact something that feels very new to me – a sort of retro music seemingly made to bring back to the wistful twee vibes and aggressively cheerful grooves of the 2000s. The aesthetics on their debut record have not been gone for long, but just long enough to feel both potently nostalgic and vaguely wrong, like we’re not quite ready to reconnect with this sort of joyful innocent optimism just yet. “Ferris Wheel,” a song that feels particular to the early Obama era, is even premised on nostalgia on a lyrical level as Rebecca & Fiona reminisce on a failed romance in a carnival setting. The relationship isn’t necessarily what’s being romanticized here, though – it’s more a yearning for a sense of mindless freedom and seemingly unlimited possibility. In that sense, it’s a perfect song for the waning days of the pandemic, as people impatiently wait to regain that feeling and jump impetuously into anything like good old-fashioned fun.
Buy it from Bandcamp.
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• This video of Rob Sheffield interviewing Michael Stipe for Rolling Stone is a delight, especially in the way Rob gets Michael to talk about some of his favorite R.E.M. songs which also happen to be some of Michael’s personal favorites. As it turns out Reveal is currently Michael’s favorite R.E.M. record?
• I really enjoyed this episode of 99% Invisible about The Real Book, a bootleg collection of sheet music for jazz standards originally created by students at the Berklee College of Music in the 70s.
• Here’s a great interview with Dry Cleaning by Emma Madden over at Pitchfork.