Fluxblog #331: 10,000 Maniacs • Modest Mouse • Denzel Curry • David Crosby
Plus a playlist of excessively sad songs
This week’s playlist is SHE LOVES ME FOR WHO I AM, a soundtrack for doomed yuppie romance featuring music from 1987-1993 inspired by this image from a Drakkar Noir ad. I kinda used this frame as an excuse to put together a set of famous songs with a shared aesthetic that I’ve always loved, when I was making it I just got like “let’s just put them ALL in” with no restraint. Click through and you’ll know exactly what I mean! [Spotify | Apple]
Now For The Tricky Part
10,000 Maniacs “Hey Jack Keruoac” (Live in Los Angeles 1993)
“Hey Jack Kerouac” was written in an era when the Beats were most revered, since by the mid 1980s they had transcended mere personhood to become mythic figures representing ideals of artistry and freedom. Natalie Merchant approaches Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg in this song from a place of sympathetic critique – she does not seek to diminish their works, but she’s not blind to their ego and destructive tendencies or how that tended to impact people in their orbit more than themselves. Her goal here is simply to look at these writers as just men – to demystify them, to reveal their flaws, and in doing that, to approach them with empathy rather than awe. Merchant’s lyrics directly address them as though she’s a concerned peer asking difficult questions about what they took from others and what debts they’ve left unpaid.
Merchant’s vocal is bold and strident but has a touch of softness, a little tough love mixed with some joyful abandon at the end of the chorus when she evokes Ginsberg’s “Howl.” The music sounds as though 10,000 Maniacs were attempting to merge the strengths of The Smiths and R.E.M., like they were specifically trying to merge the best elements of “This Charming Man” and “Life and How to Live It.” It can be hard not to see this band as essentially the precocious younger sibling of those two, but a song like “Hey Jack Kerouac” works in part for the way it approaches their sensibilities and dynamics from a different angle. In a sense, Merchant and her band are examining their contemporary influences in the music as much as the lyrics reexamine influences from the not-too-distant past.
Buy it from Amazon.
Endless Crush Of Crests
Modest Mouse “The Sun Hasn’t Left”
Modest Mouse is not a band known for optimistic lyrics, but on “The Sun Hasn’t Left” Isaac Brock plays against type by taking stock of the world as we’ve known it in the recent past and offering a sentiment that boils down to “yeah, things are fucked but the world is still going.” It’s the kind of positivity that comes from a mind that’s predisposed to negativity, enough so to be able to tell the difference between problems and absolute catastrophes. There’s no promise that things will always be okay or that collective luck won’t eventually run out, just that it hasn’t happened yet and so you need to embrace what’s still good. Brock’s tone is weary but thoroughly kind, his voice poking through an arrangement of dense beats and a very artificial mirimba hook like a little flower growing through cracks in concrete. He never sounds preachy or like anyone but a guy who at bare minimum knows enough to tell you that a life spent doom scrolling is no life at all.
Buy it from Amazon.
Random Outburst
Denzel Curry “The Game”
Denzel Curry is blessed with a perfect voice for rap, this perfect blend of a booming and commanding Chuck D tone with the nimble vocal dexterity of a Raekwon or Ghostface, and the raw energy of a young LL Cool J or Lil Wayne. He pulls this all together without sounding too much like a throwback, and with a persona that’s all his own. Charlie Heat’s track for “The Game” allows Curry to flex his chops and charisma over an aggressive but very bouncy synth bass part that has the energy of cartoon violence. The details are what really make this work – eerie hums dropping in and out of the mix, distant background shouts in the chorus, percussion accents that sound like clacking screwdrivers on metal pipes. It’s just enough for the song to feel vibrant and dynamic, but not too much to make it feel choked and top-heavy.
Buy it from Bandcamp.
He Had Some Qualities
David Crosby “Rodriguez for a Night”
David Crosby has been extremely successful as a musician for well over 50 years now but here he is, truly living his dream as one of the most supremely Danpilled humans on the planet by recording a song with lyrics written by his hero Donald Fagen. Fagen only contributed lyrics to “Rodriguez for a Night,” the composition itself is Crosby and his son James Raymond doing their best to emulate a Steely Dan vibe. I think they were probably aiming for a Gaucho feel but actually landed a little closer to the airtight funk of Two Against Nature, but that works out just fine as Fagen’s lyrics about a guy fantasizing about being the guy who stole his girlfriend feels closer to the hapless post-midlife crisis caricatures on that record. The song works very well, particularly as a showcase for the more soulful end of Crosby’s silky vocal style, but also serves as proof that Fagen’s lyrical aesthetic is unmistakably recognizable even outside the context of his own songwriting.
Buy it from Amazon.
I wrote a quick post on House of X this week cataloging the dangling plot threads that are left for Jonathan Hickman to resolve before he takes an indefinite leave of X-Men after the Inferno miniseries concludes later this year. I will not lie to you, this is an actual source of anxiety in my life!
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• And Introducing is back from their hiatus with a 100th episode special on the topic of the Metallica documentary Some Kind of Monster, the best-ever music documentary as far as I’m concerned.
• This New York Magazine article about the Nü Gawker by former original Gawker writer Choire Sicha is absolutely BRUTAL, and contains an absolutely baffling quote that challenges you to consider what the hell the word “radical” could possibly mean in context.