Fluxblog #340: Clinic | The Beatles • Guided by Voices • Bonobo • Lana Del Rey
Plus a playlist I almost called "I Can't Believe It's Not Tame Impala"
This week’s playlist is LET IT HAPPEN: THE NEW PSYCHEDELIA 2011-2021, exploring a distinctly 2010s version of psychedelic rock defined by artists such as Tame Impala, Crumb, Mac DeMarco, Post Animal, King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard, Thee Oh Sees. This one features 100 acts, so it goes pretty deep into what’s been going on in this lane over the past decade. [Spotify | Apple Music]
This week’s episode of Fluxpod is an interview with Ade Blackburn of Clinic. We mostly talk about the band’s aesthetic and artistic methods as it has mutated over the years from their early classics Internal Wrangler and Walking With Thee up through their new album Fantasy Island. You can find the episode on all podcast platforms and on the Fluxpod Patreon, where subscribers can also hear the third episode of Poptober this weekend in which Chris Conroy and I get into the second half of U2’s Pop.
Everybody Had A Good Year
The Beatles “I’ve Got A Feeling” (Take 10)
The outtakes featured on the new “super deluxe” version of Let It Be are wonderfully loose and relaxed, a document of four dudes who’ve been playing together for years and know each other well enough to intuitively anticipate moves and effortlessly click together. They’re also close enough for that familiarity to breed a contempt that would end the band within a year, but you don’t really hear that on these tapes. These are just unadorned recordings of The Beatles performing with a casual confidence and playfulness that reminds me a lot of my favorite Pavement live recordings.
The most intriguing moments captured in these tapes are when they launch into impromptu rehearsals of songs like “Oh Darling” and “Something” that would be fleshed out into classics within a few months in the Abbey Road sessions. These are helpful glimpses into songwriting process and subtle band dynamics, but the more fun thing is hearing more tossed-off performances of Let It Be cuts like “Dig A Pony,” “Get Back,” and “I’ve Got A Feeling.” The latter is a total joy, particularly as the contrasting vocal parts by Paul McCartney and John Lennon give both men space to be a little silly with it. It’s just so nice to hear them have fun together, especially since this is the last time they’d do anything like a duet in their lives.
I’ve always been fond of their approximation of southern rock on “I’ve Got A Feeling” and I feel like it sounds a little better in this take with a slightly slower tempo and a bit more slack in the rhythm. The decision to tighten it up a bit for the final take makes sense but I think the spirit of the song is to be more off the cuff and informal. It’s not hard to imagine an alternate timeline in which this version of The Beatles hit the road and closed out sets with this one, extending it out into more of a jam.
Buy it from Amazon.
A Planet Rich In Symbols
Guided by Voices “Dance of Gurus”
“Dance of Gurus” almost tricks you into thinking it’s a straight ahead rock song in the style of The Cars for the first 30 seconds or so before veering off into a more eccentric path that disrupts the expectations of pop structure while amping up the drama. Condensing the dynamic shifts of prog down into the tight minimalism of punk and new wave is a classic Bob Pollard move but it’s particularly effective here in that his lyrics about an epiphany brought on by a chance encounter with an unusually chipper homeless man click into the song so that his big ideas hit when the music suddenly accelerates. He’s playing around with ideas of societal expectations but when it comes down to it he’s essentially delivering a message of solidarity – winners, sinners, all arm in arm and collapsed in laughter.
Buy it from Bandcamp.
I Won’t Leave You
Bonobo “Rosewood”
The first two thirds of “Rosewood” are grounded in warm Fender Rhodes chords that repeat a simple lulling groove before shifting gears into a very chill sort of acid house finale. The intensity picks up and catharsis is provided but Bonobo never really moves the song out of a deliberately vague melancholy. The vocal samples convey regret and heartbreak but it’s all loosely sketched out, evoking a limbo state of being not quite outside the emotional blast radius of something that’s rattled you to the core. The trajectory of the song suggests a move towards momentary escape or moving on completely, but the arc is just not bending towards a full recovery.
Buy it from Bandcamp.
All Circuits Are Busy
Lana Del Rey featuring Miles Kane “Dealer”
The surprising thing about “Dealer” isn’t so much that it’s groovy bass and warm organ drones are a musical outlier in the context of Lana Del Rey’s new record Blue Bannisters or that guest vocalist Miles Kane takes up so much space in the song that it seems like she’s the featured singer on the track and not vice versa. The “wait, what?” moment comes when she sings the line “I can’t liiiiiiiiiiive” in a bold, unrestrained voice that’s far removed from the aloof chanteuse shtick she’s been working for over a decade. The line and its delivery is a homage to Harry Nilsson’s “Without You,” but it’s more of a referential gesture than a full interpolation – she inhabits that naked need for just a few seconds before shaking it off and getting back to chewing out a junkie boyfriend who’s wasted her affections and betrayed her one too many times. She reverts to coy form after this moment, but that little glimpse of a more full-voiced and emotive Del Rey changes how everything else lands, including Kane’s performance. Even with a touch of irony in that big emotional moment it establishes different stakes – anger often gets diffused in self-loathing in Del Rey’s music but here’s it’s very clearly directed outwards.
Buy it from Amazon.
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• Rachel Monroe is one of the most reliable journalists for finding odd, fascinating stories and her latest does not disappoint – a profile of Ari Nagel, a hugely prolific sperm donator called the Sperminator.
• I strongly recommend Beth Morgan’s debut novel A Touch of Jen, which engages with some very nuanced ideas about parasocial relationships in a story that steadily introduces surprising new bits of context and narrative turns to the point that midway through the book it’s clear that there’s no predicting where Morgan will go from one chapter to the next. This interview with her in Rumpus is very good though I will say it does spell out some things that happen over the course of the book that I enjoyed being blindsided by, so it may be better to save it until after you’ve read it.
