Fluxblog #322: Sleater-Kinney • Pom Pom Squad • Hether • STAYC
Plus a playlist of dance pop classics 1991-1995
This week’s playlist is 100% PURE LOVE: DANCE POP 1991-1995, a collection of major hits and lost classics from a pivotal and beloved era in which house music merged with the pop mainstream. It’s bright and joyful music that provided escapism during a very bleak phase of the AIDS crisis. If you’re of a certain age this is going to be an incredibly nostalgic set of songs! [Spotify | Apple Music | YouTube]
There is no new free episode of Fluxpod this week, but I did “unlock” a premium episode from a few months ago featuring my friend Sean T. Collins. My series of Sonic Youth audio essays is still moving along on the Fluxblog Patreon – last weekend there was an episode about Experimental Jet Set and Washing Machine, and this weekend there will be an episode focused on the SYR series and A Thousand Leaves.
If you’re not into signing up for the Patreon, you also have the option to do a one-time donation via Ko-Fi – I really appreciate anything you can give, especially right now when I’m in a precarious position between jobs.
Call Your Cure A Candy
Sleater-Kinney “Path of Wellness”
Sleater-Kinney are in an unenviable position in their career where if things had not changed for them musically whatever they released would be “ah, ok, another Sleater-Kinney record, sure whatever” since the novelty of their return had already been played out. But then, of course, when they changed things up musically they ended up losing Janet Weiss as their drummer and so Path of Wellness arrives buried in the context of her absence.
Corin Tucker and Carrie Brownstein are talented enough to carry a record on their own – they did make their first two albums without Weiss, after all – but it’s still very hard to hear Path without thinking of what would be different or the same if she had stuck around. Having spent some time with the album I’m inclined to say it probably would’ve been mostly the same with Janet, particularly as the drummers on the record play in a fairly similarly muscular and fill-heavy style. In some ways that comes as a relief and in others it’s disappointing, as the new songs are neither a jump into totally new territory they couldn’t have explored without Weiss or, if you’re a Weiss partisan, proof that they can’t be a good band without her.
“Path of Wellness,” a song built around a clangy busy rhythm and a distorted bass groove, is the track that moves furthest from the band’s established aesthetics with Weiss. It’s also maybe not coincidentally the best and most exciting song on the record. “Path” pulls off an interesting trick of sounding unlike any previous Sleater-Kinney song while also tapping into a loose, atmospheric quality I don’t think they’ve had since The Hot Rock came out over 20 years ago. There’s no effort put into thickening the sound here, the starkness of the clatter and buzz is the point. Tucker’s voice, always the most unique and exciting aspect of the band, is at the center of the track. She’s not fully cutting loose here, but she does work through a lot of her best vocal tricks as the song moves from sly, winking verses towards a classic S-K climax in which Brownstein’s snaky riffs and Tucker’s raw emoting weave around until they converge at just the right cathartic moment.
Buy it from Amazon.
Naturally, I’m Alone Again
Pom Pom Squad “Crying”
“Crying” sounds like a sentimental breakup ballad but Mia Berrin doesn’t seem hung up on anyone but herself in the lyrics. It’s all self-flagellation for failing in attempts at relationships, castigating herself for making “a game of breaking promises,” feeling nothing, losing arguments, and obsessing on people who she thinks hate her. Berrin sings it all with convincing feeling, but it’s also clear she’s playing up the melodrama and winking at the audience a bit. The song effectively has it both ways – it indulges your self-pity, but also gently nudges you to notice that maybe the reason connecting with other people has been so hard is that even aside from all the ways you self-sabotage, you’re just too caught up in yourself to really notice or care about how anyone else feels.
Buy it from Bandcamp.
Broken Radio Station
Hether “Oidar”
I know it’s unfair to Hether to say this, but I’m pretty sure you could trick people into believing this is a Tame Impala song. There’s some subtle differences, but for the most part the performance and aesthetics of this song are so closely aligned with Kevin Parker that it feels weird to not mention it. “Oidar” feels a little more peevish than what Parker usually gets up to though, particularly in how the lyrics express a dismissive and passive-aggressive vibe in a relationship dispute. The sentiment of the words is softened by the relaxed feeling of the music, which I think is part of the point. Not in terms of going for a contrasting irony, but in telling someone “right now you’re driving me crazy” and deliberately trying to soften it so it doesn’t overstate what is only a faintly negative feeling. The sound feels affectionate, and that’s not just sugaring the pill – it’s the main emotion.
Buy it from Bandcamp.
Really Cool
STAYC “ASAP”
“ASAP” bounces between sections like tapping through a feed, cycling through cartoonishly boppy pop to rap sections to plaintive balladry every few measures. It all holds together smoothly partly by the logic of feed curation – elements may be different, but there’s an internal logic of aesthetics and taste. All the K-Pop that I enjoy basically works like this, a new variation on the ADHD pop maximalism that was bubbling up in the 2000s and fell out of fashion amongst the cold minimalism that dominated the 2010s. The pendulum is clearly swinging back in favor of this style, and it seems like increasingly like the power of the K-Pop machine is great enough to force pop in general to snap out of its malaise and move towards this sort of energy, if not necessarily the relentlessly cheerful hyperactive genre-mashing of a bop like “ASAP.”
Buy it from Amazon.
Over on House of X I wrote about Planet Size X-Men #1, a wildly ambitious issue illustrated by the great Pepe Larraz in which the mutants terraform Mars and claim it as a mutant planet.
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• If you’ve ever wanted to do a karaoke of an entire R.E.M. show, Karaoke From Space has put together a YouTube playlist of every song performed at their famous Utrecht, Holland gig from the Document tour in 1987. Most of the songs in the set are brand new karaoke videos made for this by the channel! Definitely check out the rest of their channel for other unexpected bespoke karaoke tracks.
• Steven Hyden did an interview with Isaac Brock of Modest Mouse for Uproxx in which he talked about all of the albums he’s made and got off on some very pilled conspiracy theory tangents.
• The Culture Journalist have Ann Powers on their new podcast episode to ponder the question - has music criticism/journalism lost its way?