Fluxblog 356: Spoon • Black Country, New Road • Piri & Tommy Villiers • Drama
Plus an imaginary soundtrack full of late 90s cool girl music
This week’s playlist is WHAT INSTITUTION ARE YOU FROM?, a soundtrack for an imaginary late 90s indie movie comprised entirely of cool girl music from the period including Helium, Elastica, Veruca Salt, Buffalo Daughter, Luscious Jackson, Lush, Free Kitten, Garbage, Royal Trux, Blonde Redhead, Sleater-Kinney, and Cibo Matto. This one is inspired this photo from a Spin fashion pictorial circa 1997. [Apple Music | Spotify]
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, among other things, our current flop queen Katy Perry. 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.
I Know I Love You More
Spoon “Satellite”
“Satellite” is sung from the perspective of someone honoring boundaries set by someone they love but clearly doesn’t love them, and suffering quietly from a distance while insisting “I know I love you more.” Britt Daniel sings this chorus with the full awareness that his love is in vain but he doesn’t care – this isn’t about dignity, this isn’t about reality or possibilities, this is just about the truth as he feels it. It’s not a threat or even an oath to make good on his love, it’s holding on to something pure inside him for a little while longer before it eventually fades away.
This is a fairly old song dating back to around 2014, and one Spoon had seemingly abandoned in the space between They Want My Soul and Hot Thoughts. I’m not sure what the problem was – maybe it just took a while to find the right level of drama and pathos in the arrangement, or perhaps they sensed the song just didn’t fit on Hot Thoughts, or it could be that Daniel needed some space from this sentiment or moment in his life. It’s also possible that he just wasn’t comfortable with using the same “I’m your satellite” lyrical conceit in both this and “Inside Out,” though I like the way the implication feels totally different between the two songs. In “Inside Out,” it’s more about being caught in an attraction so strong he barely can resist it, and in this he’s just this person orbiting someone on the periphery of their life because he can’t let go.
It’s a similar shift in perspective that makes that chorus so different from Karen O singing “wait, they don’t love you like I love you” in “Maps” despite essentially saying the same thing. The Yeah Yeah Yeahs song comes from a place of vulnerability, she’s finding the courage to say something that scares her a little. “I know I love you more” is a statement of pride, it’s coming from a place of refusing to lose when it’s clear the game is over. Daniel makes the song sting by leaning into that pride, and letting you feel it as he dismantles his own romantic delusions.
Buy it from Bandcamp.
Some Way To Keep Me In Your Mind
Black Country, New Road “Good Will Hunting”
It’s interesting how Isaac Wood’s vocals in Black Country, New Road songs sound both witholding and nakedly emotional, as though he’s doing his best to be aloof or stoic and he’s just constantly failing. We’re always catching him as the facade shatters, a shy person suddenly thrust into the spotlight of some movie scored by a bunch of people who wholeheartedly embrace the ornate melodrama of 2000s indie rock. “Good Will Hunting” turns a small moment of Wood imagining an idealized future for a relationship that clearly doesn’t have one into something gloriously bombastic in its sentiment. As the music raises the stakes Wood’s imagery gets more over the top and switches film genres entirely, tossing the sweet summers in France of the first verse for imagining the two of them on a burning starship, and an epic separation across the galaxy. And as huge and overblown as the song gets, it never quite loses the thread of this all just being a guy making a lot out of not much at all and basically just torturing himself.
Buy it from Bandcamp.
Sugar Flowing Through My Veins
Piri & Tommy Villiers “Beachin”
“Beachin’” is extremely mellow at a high tempo, a dreamy moonlit ballad set to beats that sound like they’ve been yanked from a Roni Size record from the late 90s. Tommy Villiers’ production is rich with details but feels a lot more breezy than busy, judiciously doling out bass notes and never lets the vibey atmosphere of the lead guitar or keyboard washes thicken into a dense fog. Piri sings with very modern English R&B inflections – a lot of restraint and no showy runs, but with an elegant soulfulness in smaller moments. She fits perfectly in Villiers’ track, matching the tone for the most low-key parts while adding a boldness when the bass and breakbeats really hit.
Buy it from Amazon.
Here We Are Again
Drama “Monte Carlo”
“Monte Carlo” absolutely sparkles with a piano and groove-centric arrangement that sounds like the sort of opulent splendor suggested by the title. Drama, also true to their name, use this as the foundation for a song about romantic angst and hesitation, with Via Rosa singing wistfully about an on-again/off-again with someone everyone warned her about from the start. The song comes together to feel like an aspirational sort of melancholy, an entanglement that’s as fun and exciting as it is emotionally taxing. The song just lets you luxuriate in the sadness, never letting you forget how much of the pain is driven by pleasure.
Buy it from Bandcamp.
