Fluxblog #334: Chvrches • Maston & L’éclair • Facs • Kate Bollinger
Plus a very very mellow playlist
This week’s playlist is TYPING WILL NEVER BE THE SAME AGAIN, a collection of mellow and lightly melancholy songs inspired by the vibe from this Canon typewriter ad from the late ‘80s. As the title suggests, this is a pretty unobtrusive mix that is a good soundtrack for work – I didn’t actually intend for this to hit the same week I started a new job, but it’s already been pretty useful. [Spotify | Apple]
Due to some scheduling things outside of my control I’m doing a short break on the regular podcasts, but the second chapter of Zeptember – the limited run Led Zeppelin show I’m doing with Sean T. Collins – will be out this Saturday on the Fluxblog Patreon. This episode will cover IV, Houses of the Holy, and Physical Graffiti, i.e., the insane hot streak at the core of their discography.
Dying In A Dream
Chvrches “California”
“California” expresses a sort of existential buyer’s remorse, in which a move to California doesn’t quite deliver on all its promises and leaves a person unmoored, lonely, and feeling trapped by their own quest for success. Lauren Mayberry’s vocal conveys a bittersweet melodrama without getting too maudlin, partly because the arrangement does a good job of presenting a sense of stasis despite a pop dynamic that nudges the chorus towards an anthemic quality. They achieve a very smart balance here, honoring the emotion at the core of it while recognizing it as small and personal and rooted in some degree of privilege.
Buy it from Amazon.
For A Million Years
Maston & L’éclair “Ghost”
On the surface “Ghost” is all placid kitsch, gently grooving with an array of vintage keyboards as if part of the goal was to soundtrack a Hollywood pool party. But just as Hollywood is famous for dressing up misery in mellow luxury, the lyrics sketch out a character who’s just barely getting by while regularly chasing highs and burning out. There’s some judgment in the lyrics but not so much in the way the soft and empathetic way they’re sung, or the way it leaves off on a sentiment that suggests this person’s being viewed with some awe, as if the way they’ve escaped from themselves is an aspirational state – “the lonely all want to know / how’d you fight it off for a year?”
Buy it from Bandcamp.
It’s Cultish Now
Facs “Strawberry Cough”
The lyrics of “Strawberry Cough” come across like phrases and ideas jotted down into a notebook in the midst of a paranoid depression wedged into a loose, shouty melody. The music itself manifests the misery in a plodding mechanical rhythm, eerie synthesizer ambiance, and sudden interjections of noise that feel like bits of infrastructure suddenly breaking down and falling apart. Despite all this ambivalence about form, musical chaos, and heavy goth atmosphere there’s a proper song at the core of this, a punchy anthemic thing with a chorus that could cut right through an arena should this band ever get the opportunity to play one.
Buy it from Bandcamp.
Too Soon To Unknow My Truth
Kate Bollinger “Shadows”
“Shadows” is a song existing in the angst-ridden limbo of some kind of managed break-up in which both sides gradually remove themselves from each other orbit. Kate Bollinger sings in a gentle high register and sounds even-handed on the surface, but pretty much every line in this song is basically saying “this is a really dumb idea.” She’s an emotional fatalist and knows her patterns well enough to recognize where she’ll be too soft and when she’ll be too cold. She essentially flips the famous Aimee Mann line “you look like a perfect fit for a girl in need of a tourniquet” into a warning that she stop the metaphorical bleeding only so much before she’s going to have to untie it. The first portion of the song feels like deliberately dulling anxiety through a stoner haze, but there’s more clarity in the second half in which some ambiance lifts and the music shifts to slow acoustic chords and she sings about the inevitability of them eventually aligning to hate each other in the sweetest tone possible.
Buy it from Bandcamp.
