Fluxblog #315: Post-Rock 96-02 | Proper Nouns • Billy Nomates • Hiatus Kaiyote • Alfa Mist
Plus: A podcast episode entirely about R.E.M.
This week’s episode of Fluxpod is a deep dive into the R.E.M. discography with Jack Shepherd of The Babysitters Club Club. We discuss 30+ songs from across all 15 of the band’s albums, and there’s a bonus premium episode on the Fluxpod Patreon in which we get into 7 more, including “It’s the End of the World As We Know It,” “Nightswimming,” “What’s the Frequency, Kenneth?,” and “Fall On Me.”
This week’s playlist is WHAT WAS POST-ROCK? 1996-2002, which explores the period in which indie rock moved towards the aesthetics of film soundtracks with tracks from artists such as Godspeed You! Black Emperor, Do Make Say Think, Mogwai, Tortoise, Explosions in the Sky, Fly Pan Am, Tristeza, and Gastr Del Sol. Thanks to Julia Gfrörer for help on this one. Julia also created the art that I used for the thumbnail, and if you like it you can buy it as a t-shirt from her Threadless store. (There’s many other great goth-y designs there too.) [Apple / Spotify]
Please No More Opinions
Proper Nouns “Feel Free”
Proper Nouns’ debut album sounds so much like Ted Leo that it’s a little disconcerting, it’s almost like listening to the result of someone deciding to make their own Pharmacists record because it’s been 11 years since The Brutalist Bricks and they ran out of patience. This is not a complaint. I also would like to have a new Pharmacists record, and it’s a remarkable feat to write and perform music that sounds like Leo in style, structure, and content. It’s entirely possible that Proper Nouns songwriter Spencer Compton is not even familiar with Leo’s music, and if that was the case it’d be even more impressive for someone with a very similar voice and melodic sensibility to arrive at similar conclusions. But either way, I feel like it would be dishonest to not note the similarities – it’s both obvious and a major selling point.
Compton reaches for a Leo-esque falsetto on “Feel Free,” but it’s otherwise one of the least Pharmacists-y numbers on the record. The song has the swing of csoul but the rigid crispness of power pop, and a breeziness that contrasts with the neurotic tension of the lyrics without negating it. When the song reaches its climax on the bridge there’s some degree of catharsis – or at least airing of annoyance – and then, interestingly, the song sorta abruptly resolves on the breezy part.
Buy it from Bandcamp.
Demanding Attention In The General Direction
Billy Nomates “Petrol Fumes”
“Petrol Fumes” is a song about driving yourself crazy by falling in love and knowing you can’t do anything about it without the very likely possibility of blowing up the whole situation and losing a lot more than you would if you just kept your mouth shut and buried your feelings. This is hardly a novel topic but Tor Maries approaches it with nuance and a vocal performance that’s conveys a simmering lust and low-key nobility rather than communicating misery or self-destruction. The most interesting details Maries drops in the song portray the object of her affection as someone charismatic and popular, someone with a lot of suitors. “Well, I know the world is heavy and everyone seems to want a little piece of you,” she sings with a bit of a sigh, in awe of this person and unable to see herself as a particularly compelling option. The music, which sounds a little like a crossbreeding of Bruce Springsteen’s “Dancing in the Dark” and “I’m On Fire,” is all quick-paced tension that makes you feel her reach the point of snapping and shooting her shot: “Well, nothing’s ever gonna really be the same right after this…”
Buy it from Bandcamp.
Feed Me Rhinestones
Hiatus Kaiyote featuring Arthur Verocai “Get Sun”
“Get Sun” is mostly slick, smooth, and easy on the ears. The string arrangement by Arthur Verocai comes in like a warm breeze, the rest of the track settles into a comfortable groove that’s tight enough to provide a danceable structure but loose enough to imply plenty of space to lounge around. Naomi Saalfield’s lead vocal resists the flow of the track in some spots, in some moments seeming to move against the tide of it if just to make it feel more profound when she lets up and glides along with it on the chorus. She’s dramaticizing the notion of the lyrics, which deal with learning to open up to joy, but I get the sense that she was responding to the feeling of the song rather than forcing the music line up conceptually with her words.
Buy it from Bandcamp.
A Life Paved With Lies
Alfa Mist featuring Lex Amor “Mind the Gap”
“Mind the Gap” opens with a clip of a train announcement, which makes me imagine Alfa Mist and Lex Amor’s performances as the interior monologues of two exhausted, weary people making their way home from a shift at night. The sort of people you can glance at from across the train and sense the weight on them as they stare off into space or try to rest their eyes in half-sleep. The keyboard and sax parts set a drowsy atmosphere, but it’s Lex Amor’s hushed and delicate voice that really sells the bleary-eyed angst. Her phrasing is remarkably nuanced, sliding seamlessly between rhythm and melody in every line while conveying a thousand shades of hopelessness, anxiety, irritation, and fear in just the tone of her voice before even keying into her actual words.
Buy it from Bandcamp.
LINKS LINKS LINKS LINKS LINKS LINKS LINKS LINKS
• Please consider getting tickets for the FRQNCY1 streaming festival, which is organized by my friend Chris Wade and Dan Boeckner from Handsome Furs and Wolf Parade. The show will be on June 5th 2021 and will stream live globally on a new platform that will allow for breakout rooms so you can hang out with friends and a way of making your applause and laughter heard so the performers can, y’know, feel your presence and enthusiasm. The bill is split evenly between live bands such as Pom Pom Squad, Zola Jesus, and Downtown Boys, and comedy/podcast crews such as Chapo Trap House, Tinder Live with Lane Moore, and Throwing Fits.
• Sean T. Collins and Gretchen Felker-Martin have launched a new podcast called Cut To Black focused on TV criticism. They’re both brilliant thinkers with distinctive tastes, so this is a real gift if you’re interested in TV as an art form. The first proper episode is focused on one very provocative and devastating line of dialogue from Boardwalk Empire.
• Craig Jenkins got Ghostface Killah to talk about his favorite career moments over at Vulture.