Fluxblog 368: Miranda Lambert & The B-52's • Sorry • Cuco
Plus a whole lot of POWER POP
This week’s playlist is TEEN CITY ROCK: POWER POP ERA 1974-1980, a broad view of fun, normal-style rock bridging glam and punk/new wave. Do you want a lot of catchy songs about girls, boys, crushes, being a teen, hating school, and loving parties and rock & roll? Well, this is the playlist for you. [Spotify | Apple | YouTube]
I am the guest on this week’s episode of And Introducing! Molly and Chris had me on to talk about writing Fluxblog for 20 years and counting. We get into a lot of things in this conversation, we end up going on a lot of tangents. You can find it on all the major podcast platforms.
My new Fluxpod Patreon miniseries about Pavement featuring Abraham Riesman continues this weekend with an episode focused on Wowee Zowee. 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.
You Can Still Be A Star
Miranda Lambert featuring The B-52’s “Music City Queen”
Miranda Lambert is a genius and force for good in this world because she wrote this song, had the somewhat improbable but totally correct thought “this could use some Fred Schneider,” and then actually got The B-52’s in the studio to make it happen. “Music City Queen” is a sunny, campy country rock tune in tribute to “flashy and trashy” nobodies living it up in spite of not making it in proper show biz. Lambert, an arena-filling star for nearly two decades, isn’t condescending here though she is funny – if anything she sounds jealous of all the no-frills fun and absolute shamelessness. The song doesn’t sound like The B-52’s but the band’s three vocalists are so perfectly suited to the sentiment and feel of it. Cindy Wilson and Kate Pierson add their signature sugary harmonies spiked with a little attitude, while Schneider does some ad-libs and call-and-response with Lambert that makes him seem like a beloved eccentric bar regular in the context of the song. Can they get John Waters to make a video for this and really complete the bit?
Buy it from Amazon.
The Only Pair Of Hands
Sorry “There’s So Many People That Want To Be Loved”
This sweet little song is a bit of curveball from Sorry, a band that up to this point has been on the icy and unsentimental side. But that inclination is part of what makes this vulnerable and open-hearted song about wanting to love and be loved so poignant. Asha Lorenz sounds reluctant to be saying any of this, and in the first verse she’s grounding the sentiment in a situation where she’s annoyed with the person she’s addressing. Once the song gets going she focuses her attention on what matters – a genuine empathy for all the lonely people in the world, but especially for the ones who are truly open to love. She feels like she is, but you get the sense she knows she can be self-sabotaging and is trying to stop herself from being that way. The core feeling here isn’t love, it’s frustration – in getting in your own way, of how difficult it can be to find something so simple and good, and in knowing that so many of these people who want to be loved are not going to get what they want or what they need.
Buy it from Bandcamp.
Gotta Disconnect Myself
Cuco “Caution”
Most of Cuco’s vocal parts in “Caution” are very sing-song in that very ambiguous genre-agnostic Gen Z way where there’s some familiar elements of rap, R&B, indie rock, and latin pop but it’s not really any of those things. Those parts of the song express exactly the sort of sentiments you’d expect of this sort of thing – he’s neurotic about a relationship and battling his issues, and just trying to play it cool. The song would be very good if it just stuck to this part, but then it goes sublime with this gorgeous wordless harmonized vocal refrain that’s punctuated by blunt rhythmic utterances of “hold up” and “stop.” That last bit adds a bit of friction but doesn’t really get in the way of the raw beauty of that vocal part, which brings a blissful grace to a song that would otherwise be lost in an angsty spiral.
Buy it from Amazon.
LINKS LINKS LINKS LINKS LINKS LINKS LINKS
• Molly O’Brien wrote “A Field Guide for the Ethical Enjoyment of Coachella Music and Arts Festival” for Grandma Sophia’s Cookies. It’s a very thoughtful piece that touches on some big and difficult issues without getting too heavy or glib. I wish more culture writing was like this!
• Larry Fitzmaurice wrote a very good post on Last Donut of the Night this week about what happened to some key indie stars – Animal Collective, Grizzly Bear, the xx, and The Yeah Yeah Yeahs – at the start of the 2010s. A lot of it is about how the media has changed, but it’s also about perception of success from a critical standpoint, and what success means for different artists.
• Here’s a great little piece in The New Yorker in which Nick Paumgarten hung out with Britt Daniel and Jim Eno of Spoon just before their New York City show was postponed due to members of their touring party coming down with Covid. It’s a pretty interesting glimpse into their interpersonal dynamic.