Fluxblog 362: Tyler, the Creator • Soccer Mommy • Oliver Sim • Disclosure
Plus a playlist full of nerdy new wave
This week’s playlist is NERD WAVE 1978-1982, a look back on a pivotal post-punk moment in which the nerd emerges as a new wave rock archetype with a distinctive twitchy affect. This is one of my favorite playlists I’ve made in the recent past – it’s very tight and focused, and because it’s consistently high tempo it happens to be really good for gym/running use. [Spotify | Apple | YouTube]
Part three 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. Subscribe now to hear it, and all the other miniseries and shows I have available for subscribers.
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On The Dot Is Not Your Aim
Tyler, the Creator “Come On, Let’s Go”
People like to say they “feel seen” in art now, and I suppose this happens rarely enough for me that I never consider it to be a virtue worth seeking out. But here we are with an entire Tyler, the Creator song about being a punctual person totally aggravated with someone else for running late and potentially screwing up your plans, and… yes, I relate to this quite a lot! The song is played as a joke, but only up to a point. The frustration and anger here is exaggerated from comedic effect but still very real, and the deeper tension in the song is a nagging question of compatibility: “Although we in love we are NOT the same.” Tyler made the track with Pharrell and the music plays up the impatience with pulsing tones that shift over into clattering beats, all these little sounds that convey annoyance without tipping over into sounding annoying. I recognize this very well, though I should say it’s not necessarily the most positive way of “feeling seen.”
Buy it from Amazon.
Dessert And Alcohol
Soccer Mommy “Shotgun”
I didn’t know Daniel Lopatin produced this song until after I’d heard it several times, but that bit of contextual information made a lot of sense of the part of this song that threw me for a loop the first time I heard it, and still kinda does now. It’s in the shift from verse to chorus, the way the texture of the sound completely changes on a dime from this dingy grunge bass line with a sorta plodding beat to this burst of melodramatically mood synthesizers that don’t sound as much like actual 80s new wave music as it sounds like The Smashing Pumpkins’ late 90s approximation of that aesthetic in the Adore/Machina era. The heart of the song is in that sudden shift more than it is in either tonal palette. Sophie Allison is singing about a relationship that sounds kinda bleak and depression on those verses, and in the chorus she’s romanticizing the situation. She’s pledging that she’ll be there no matter what, even if she’s aware of how self-destructive it is. She’s covered similar ground before on “Yr Dog,” but that song was pretty much the opposite and declaring that she’s had enough of this sort of thing. But you go back to that sudden kick into the keyboard endorphins and it all makes sense why she’s getting dragged back in. She and Lopatin really nail that effect here.
Buy it from Bandcamp.
The Lack Of A Kiss
Oliver Sim “Romance With A Memory”
The xx is a band with a sound so narrow and specific that while there’s a lot of room to work within that aesthetic, there’s also a lot of creative directions that simply wouldn’t work. It’s a situation that gives its members license to do very different things on their own, and in this song Oliver Sim moves confidently into a sort of minimalist neo-soul direction. The minimalism isn’t just in the track, which is produced by Jamie xx but has the crisp warmth of a Richard Swift production, but also in Sim’s vocal which indicates its soulfulness in understated gestures. He starts one of the verses with the line “Handsome, all I wanted to be was handsome,” and that’s exactly the word to describe his voice here. It’s the sound of a casually attractive man, and he’s presenting himself as the romantic lead of this little drama. The catch is that this is a song about a romance that only existed in his head, and he’s wrestling with the notion that this guy has had more of an impact on him as this mostly fictional character than he probably would have if they’d actually kissed and connected. He wonders if this is some kind of punishment, but the sting in the song is him coming up to the realization that he’s more engaged by fantasy than reality even if it’s less fulfilling.
Buy it from Amazon.
All Out Of Good Excuses Now
Disclosure & Raye “Waterfall”
Like a lot of electronic production duos Disclosure work through a lot of collaborators but it’s usually pretty easy to tell you’re listening to them – there’s always a very particular bounce to the keyboards, like it’s springing up off the beat with a precisely calibrated degree of force. The best Disclosure songs are energetic and joyful but also a little relaxed; for the most part they convey a casual level of fun and a low-key sexiness. The English singer Raye makes the most of this aesthetic in “Waterfall,” a song that tries to keep its effusive praise of a new partner at least a little coy until the chorus hits and then it’s just waves of unmitigated euphoria. It’s not too far removed from what they did with their breakthrough hit “Latch” years ago, but the anxious tension in that song is replaced here by a willingness to let the song hit an uncomplicated high.
Buy it from Amazon.
I got back in the swing of publishing on my House of X site this week by writing about the first wave of post-Jonathan Hickman X-Men comics – Kieron Gillen and Lucas Werneck’s excellent debut on Immortal X-Men, the first nine issues of Gerry Duggan and Pepe Larraz’s pretty good X-Men, and Benjamin Percy, Joshua Casarra, and Federico Vincentini’s generally quite bad X Lives/X Deaths of Wolverine.
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• Brian Hiatt from Rolling Stone published his interview with Taylor Hawkins of Foo Fighters from back in June of 2021 a few days after the drummer died suddenly over the weekend at the age of 50. It’s a fantastic conversation that really gives you a sense of how committed this guy was to what he did and gives a lot of insight into his working relationship with Dave Grohl. You can also listen to audio of the interview on the Rolling Stone podcast.
• I strongly recommend checking out Rick Rubin’s interview with Missy Elliott about her life and career on the Broken Record podcast. Missy very rarely speaks to the press so this is a pretty big deal!
• I liked Olivia Craighead’s brutal but totally accurate essay on Jimmy Fallon’s tenure on The Tonight Show over on nu-Gawker.