Fluxblog 367: King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard • Blunt Chunks • Faye Webster • V***a Boys
Plus a playlist of cool girl music from the early 80s.
This week’s playlist is WHAT’S A GIRL TO DO?, a soundtrack-style 90 minute mix inspired by this image of model Lisa Marie by Just Loomis from a fashion pictorial by Laurie Schechter in Rolling Stone November 1986. This has a very specific vibe – decadent, self-destructive, glamorous, all early to mid 80s with songs by Cristina, Anna Domino, Madonna, Grace Jones, Sonic Youth, Angelyne, Divine, Berlin, and Soft Cell. [Spotify | Apple | YouTube]
I have another new playlist called ORANGE CRYPTO that you can get via the Dirt culture newsletter – it’s in the weekend edition for 4/30. I recommend the newsletter more generally, they publish really interesting stuff all the time. This playlist is very vibey – a little vaporwave, a lot disco, a good spring/summer energy.
My new Fluxpod Patreon miniseries about Pavement featuring Abraham Riesman continues this weekend with an episode focused on Brighten the Corners. This is for subscribers at the $5 or more tier level, and that subscription will include access to the full archives with all the other paywalled episodes and miniseries.
Astral Thoughts
King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard “Kepler-22b”
Michael Cavanagh drums on “Kepler-22b” like a man extremely eager to get sampled. He’s dialed into tight pocket groove but he sounds relaxed, so the beat never feels stiff and the fills just tumble out with ease. You’ve definitely heard versions of this beat before and the familiarity is part of the charm here – there’s something so satisfying about the way Cavanagh hits the marks, like an itch getting scratch. It’s possible that the rest of the music was written before the drums were worked but it sounds very much like the King Gizzard crew are following the rhythm’s lead into jazz/R&B territory. It’s still in their spacey comfort zone and that’s actually literal when it comes to the lyrics, in which Stu Mackenzie sings about a kid obsessed with a distant planet that’s theoretically capable of sustaining human life.
Buy it from Bandcamp.
Backwards And Forward With You
Blunt Chunks “BWFW”
You can feel the big fuzz alt-rock chorus coming in the first verse of “BWFW,” and not just in terms of genre convention expectations. The song starts pretty clean, like it could definitely go in some other musical direction, but there’s just this menacing thing looming in the background that finally makes its way to the foreground to crush everything in sight. Caitlin Woelfle-O’Brien is singing about having a bad time with someone she’s barely even in a relationship with, and while the lyrics are addressed to someone else it’s pretty clear that they’re not listening and wouldn’t care. That tension really works for the song, where it seems like the real point is her realizing she’s stuck in a dead end.
Buy it from Bandcamp.
At Every Single Possible Angle
Faye Webster “Kind Of (Type of Way)”
The previous two released arrangements of “Kind Of” play the song as a low key country song, but this orchestral version has a melodramatic old Hollywood sensibility that is well suited to the delicately fluttering melody in the bridge and chorus. Faye Webster keeps her vocal phrasing mostly the same rather than going big, keeping to her sweet spot of casual, somewhat self-effacing vulnerability. This particular song really demands that approach to – she’s singing about falling in love with someone and having that stir up anxieties and emotional impulses that make you feel like someone else. There’s an unrestrained neediness in this song, a powerful tug towards codependence that she’s reasonably wary of, but she’s also not afraid of giving in to it.
Buy it from Bandcamp.
Shrimp City Beach 1993
Viagra Boys “Ain’t No Thief”
The lyrical conceit of “Ain’t No Thief” is that Sebastian Murphy is a guy getting accused of stealing someone’s stuff, but it’s just a coincidence of owning the same things. But Murphy plays it as comedy by making the supposedly stolen items extremely specific and his explanations totally absurd, so he ends up sounding like a flagrant liar. But given the sheer force of the music, Murphy’s raw charisma, and the boldness of his claims, you end up siding with him. It’s just like, if this guy is this clever and shameless, maybe he earned this weird commemorative lighter? It’s like the fun version of gaslighting.
Buy it from Viagra Boys.
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• The latest episode of the Trillbillies podcast has a really interesting interview the journalist Rich Woodall about the current version of Hipgnosis and the reasons many veteran artists are selling their catalogs to investors.
• This article in the Hollywood Reporter about the creative power struggles on the executive level at Netflix leading up to their recent decline is very juicy.