Fluxblog 361: Guerilla Toss • Red Hot Chili Peppers • Omar Apollo • Charli XCX
Plus a look back on Cold War era pop music
This week’s playlist is MELT WITH YOU: COLD WAR ANXIETY IN 80s MUSIC, an exploration of Reagan-era songs inspired by US/Russia tensions and a lingering fear that everyone and everything could get wiped out in sudden nuclear war. Certainly nothing anyone could possibly relate to today, right? [Spotify | Apple | YouTube]
I’ve made a version of one of my older playlists, DESTINATION UNKNOWN: SYNTHS AND POP 1979-1987, for YouTube. This one covers the impact of synthesizers on popular music through most of the 1980s and includes many beloved hits alongside a lot of other more obscure tunes. [Spotify | Apple]
Part two of the Fluxpod Patreon exclusive miniseries OTT FUTURE, will be out on Saturday. This is a series about the intersection of technology and music culture from a few different angles. This week’s episode is mostly about how social media completely warped the nature of how the media works. Subscribe now to hear it, and all the other miniseries and shows I have available for subscribers!
All Things A Fascination
Guerilla Toss “Happy Me”
The songs on Guerilla Toss’ excellent new record Famously Alive are bright and bold in a way that’s half cathartic and half confrontational, as though they’re daring the listener to embrace a positive mindset in the face of seemingly insurmountable anxiety, despair, and dire external circumstances. Kassie Carlson sings from the point of view of someone actively fighting through all this and has managed to break through to the other side, and is now rushing back to tell everyone else – this can be done! “Happy Me” is the climax of the record and the point where the lyrical theme running through all of it is stated outright over a groove that seems to sparkle and gleam before moving into a more triumphant mode at the end. Guerilla Toss successfully pull off a tightrope walk in this music – one false move and they could fall into a cheerful, saccharine abyss. But they keep the sound just weird enough to avoid a very 00s sort of goofiness, and the lyrics based in dark realities enough to keep it from being just hollow inspirational chatter.
Buy it from Bandcamp.
The Best Of My Loco
Red Hot Chili Peppers “Poster Child”
I like to imagine Anthony Kiedis alone in a room memorizing his own lyrics, particularly for a song with a dense rhyme scheme like “Poster Child.” It’s a funny image, but I’d genuinely like to get a sene of how seriously he takes the craft of doing something so goofy yet carefully balanced against the fluid, casual funk of the rest of his band. Kiedis’ vocal is actually the tightest element in the song, everything else feels exceptionally breezy and light in a way that’s unusual for Chili Peppers singles. John Frusciante’s presence after many years away is very apparent – he was always the guy bringing a bit of elegance and grace to the band’s hyper-masculine physicality, and in this case you find everyone else just trying to flow with his mellow energy. Kiedis’ words are mostly silly doggerel but I appreciate the musical and cultural canon he’s sketching out here, and his apparent pledge to do his best to get on the level of what he loves.
Buy it from Amazon.
Singing A Bass Line
Omar Apollo “Tamagotchi”
“Tamagotchi” is essentially an acoustic ballad about trying to hook up on the road but tricked out by The Neptunes so that the Spanish guitar takes a secondary role to classic Williams/Hugo syncopated drum programming with an emphasis on a booming bass drum. The guitar part feels a little cold and crystalline, so the shift into chords on the outro feels like a sudden warm breeze coming through the track. Omar Apollo tips between rapped and sung parts that mostly stick to bragging about designer clothes and trying to get laid, but he follows the lead of the chords and gets rather tender on that outro, layered with lovely harmonies and comically – but effectively! – contrasted with the widely sampled “DON’T STOP! POP THAT POP THAT!” bit from Luke’s “I Wanna Rock.” That last thing probably shouldn’t work, but the Neptunes really work their magic by making it click right into the arrangement.
Buy it from Amazon.
Quit Acting Like A Puppy
Charli XCX “Yuck”
Until the chorus hits “Yuck” could easily pass for a Dua Lipa hit, a groovy quasi-disco number with an urbane gloss and lyrics focused on love. But once that chorus comes we’re firmly in Charli XCX territory – a little bratty, a little silly, and deliberately subverting pop expectations. The premise of this one is very clever: she’s into this guy, but he’s too into her and laying it on thick with romantic gestures she finds utterly nauseating. It’s just as relatable as a typical love song but covering more specific ground, particularly as the lyrics and the whole feeling of the song nudges toward an unstated question: Why the hell do I even feel this grossed out? Is this a matter of taste – bro, can you please just be cool? – or more about self-sabotage, insecurities, or anxieties about being smothered? There’s a lot going on in this song that could easily just be taken as a joke.
Buy it from Amazon.
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• Alan Hanson recently started a Substack publication called Take Surface Streets, a blog about Los Angeles geography and cultural landmarks. The new issue came out this week and looks back on the Beastie Boys’ experience in the Atwater Village, Los Feliz, and Silver Lake of the late ‘80s while recording Paul’s Boutique. Alan is the best LA tour guide you could hope for.
• I loved Malcolm Gladwell’s interview with Patti Smith in this week’s episode of Broken Record – as you can expect from her, it’s really thoughtful and interesting, but there’s some wonderful details about the parts of her life that don’t turn up in her books. Like, for example, how she came to be close friends with Michael Stipe, or finishing her first memoir while hiding out at Johnny Depp’s estate.
• Larry Fitzmaurice talked to Dan Bejar about the new Destroyer album over on his Last Donut of the Night newsletter.
• Here’s Zach Rabiroff on “the strange second life of legacy comic strips” like Mary Worth over on The Comics Journal.
• I provided a few quotes for this Thrillist piece by Esther Zuckerman explaining how and why “indie sleaze” has become a big fascination in the recent past.