Fluxblog 355: Saba • Animal Collective • Cate Le Bon • Kim Petras
Plus let's go back in time...all the way...to 2012
This week’s playlist is a substantially expanded and reworked version of the 2012 Fluxblog Survey Mix, covering the music of the year across genres. Yes, this is basically a deluxe reissue of a playlist! As with the 1982 playlist, the original 2012 survey was made before I got up to the standards I’ve developed over time. Specifically, the original current year surveys were really more about my perspective than aiming to make a true time capsule. Anyway, there’s a lot of truly great music in this year well worth revisiting even if it wasn’t all that long ago. [Spotify | Apple Music]
My new Patreon exclusive podcast miniseries FLOPUARY continues this week with an episode in which my co-host Molly Mary O’Brien from And Introducing discuss flop era mindset and get into flop months/holidays, reinvention vs brand maintenance, the pettiness of artists, Taylor Swift, Elton John, and Madonna. You can check it out for a $5 donation which will also give you access to all the premium episodes including the Led Zeppelin, U2, and Sonic Youth miniseries and archival interviews with bands such as Car Seat Headrest, Hot Chip, Japandroids, and Belle & Sebastian.
A Million Ways To Get By
Saba “One Way”
Daoud & daedaePIVOT set up a delicate and subtle tension here, keeping the bass taut and the percussion in crisp, nervey pockets while leaving enough softness and space for the overall feel of the track to seem at least superficially relaxed. They make you feel every little shift under Saba’s voice – a bit of a tug as the tangle tightens, the relief as it loosens a bit, the weight that lifts when it drops almost entirely and feels like a miracle. Saba’s vocal is just as thoughtful and intuitive as the bass and percussion, sometimes gently dragging up against the music and in other moments gliding gracefully with it, conveying some warmth while maintaining a bit of aloof distance.
Buy it from Amazon.
Put The Baggage Down
Animal Collective “Walker”
Animal Collective’s Time Skiffs is a great example of a band circling back to their greatest strengths as musicians/songwriters after a long period of exploration in various configurations, but if you’re paying attention they’ve added a lot of new tricks and ways of playing together. The most obvious changes is that Avey Tare has grown considerably as a keyboard player and Panda Bear has evolved as a drummer, leading both towards grooves that nod towards R&B grooves without straying from the distinctive feel of Animal Collective. “Walker” combines the boyish harmonies of their most widely beloved music with a strutting groove that’s just on the edge of full funk, all in the service of ambiguous yet clearly reassuring lyrics. The result is bright and joyful, particularly when they accent it all with melodic mallet percussion that adds a little extra sparkle to the mix.
Buy it from Bandcamp.
The Fountain That Empties The World
Cate Le Bon “Running Away”
Cate Le Bon often sings lyrics expressing exasperation and annoyance though her new record Pompeii but it’s always in this aloof and steady tone, like she’s always trying to keep up some sense of decorum. This vocal delivery and the cold geometric quality of her compositions suggests an even keel, but it’s really just an accurate depiction of adult emotions – dialed down, managed, nagging questions that get deferred indefinitely. The lyrics of “Running Away” move between declarations (“I’m sick of soft hearts”), clarifications (“I’m not cold by nature”), and lamentations (“You can’t put your arms around it, it’s not there anymore”), but as much as those lines leap out as provocative phrases, the emotional inertia implied by the music is expressed in a more conceptual line in the chorus: “Multi-directional love with nowhere left to go.”
Buy it from Bandcamp.
You Can’t Hide It
Kim Petras “Treat Me Like A Slut”
Kim Petras’ new mini-album Slut Pop sounds like the work of someone who has diligently studied The Teaches of Peaches and has now become a master of extremely horny pop in her own right. There’s obviously been no shortage of ultra-sexual music in the past decade but given her age and where she grew up I find it hard to imagine a lot of the cartoonishly vulgar dance pop I anthologized on my Motherfuckers & Fatherfuckers: Horny Hipsters 2000-2010 playlist were not major formative influences for her. She’s certainly tapping into that specific spirit on “Treat Me Like A Slut,” a silly-but-not-joking banger that’s like a fully ascended form of Avenue D.
Buy it from Kim Petras.
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• I quite enjoyed this new Talkhouse podcast with Britt Daniel of Spoon interviewing Billy Gibbons of ZZ Top, mostly about Texas, guitars, and their favorite Mexican restaurants.
• Here’s an interview Devon Ivie of Vulture did with Curt Smith of Tears for Fears about the general arc of their career and his favorite Tears for Fears songs. I really like that it gets to a place at the end where he speaks of how he and Roland Orzabal have become much closer in the past few years and his gratitude that the band has been given more respect recently than they had felt for a long time.
• Tom Breihan’s The Number Ones column for Stereogum is a delight three days a week every week, but I especially loved his post this week about Janet Jackson’s “That’s the Way Love Goes.”
• Terry Gross interviewed Jonny Greenwood of Radiohead about his work as a film composer on Fresh Air this week. It’s a real treat to hear Greenwood talk about this, and it’s fun to hear Gross come off as a pretty huge fan of his work as a composer.