Fluxblog 370: Interpol • Florence + The Machine • The Smile • Mallrat
Plus a visit to THE EVIL BEACH and some late 80s college rock
This week’s playlist is PLACE SERIES #6: THE EVIL BEACH, a collection of dark and romantic summer vibes featuring songs from Lana Del Rey, Pixies, King Krule, Mazzy Star, Dum Dum Girls, Mitski, Khruangbin, and more. Think “Wicked Game,” though I used a version of that song you might not know. [Spotify | Apple | YouTube]
I’ve also created a YouTube version of WHAT WAS COLLEGE ROCK? 1986-1990, an old favorite from a couple years ago covering a lot of foundational alt/indie rock. I updated the cover art with a portrait of Natalie Merchant by Herb Ritts. [Spotify | Apple | YouTube]
Flame Down Pacific Highway
Interpol “Toni”
Interpol is a band that has stayed within rather narrow aesthetic boundaries for two decades so “Toni,” a song that prominently features piano, can hit as a bold new direction even if everything else about it sounds like an Interpol song. Daniel Kessler’s piano part here isn’t that different from what he’d play on a guitar but it changes the temperature of the music like a gust of cold wind blowing through the room. The delicate tonality of the piano brings out a wounded quality in Paul Banks’ voice on the verses, and then a more majestic feel once the drums pick up and the vocal harmonies kick in. Interpol have always specialized in austerity and stateliness, but this song pushes beyond that towards a refined elegance. Banks’ lyrics, as enigmatic as ever, suggest the point of view of a worn down person who’s feeling an unexpected optimism, though it seems to be tempered by self-interest. The character comes across as complicated, but the music makes the glimmer of hope in the song feel profound and hard-won.
Buy it from Bandcamp.
When I Decided To Wage Holy War
Florence + The Machine “Girls Against God”
The lyrics of “Girls Against God” were written mid-lockdown, the musings of a woman gone a bit stir-crazy and resenting God for putting her in circumstances where all she could do is dwell on the past without being able to move towards the future. Florence Welch is a singer with a powerful voice that can make anything sound heavy and important, so it’s interesting to hear her sing about feeling pathetic and powerless here. The song opens with her admitting that she never feels comfortable being loved because it makes her feel trapped, and then she’s singing about feeling trapped in her home, and then flashing back to a Tom Vek basement show when she was too young to act on her feelings whether they were positive or negative. The song builds to a declaration of war on God, a symbolic rejection of impotence and passivity, but a lot of what makes the song poignant is her knowing this is just another way of doing nothing in the face of something that feels impossible. It’s just coming from the perspective of someone who knows enough that you have to find a way to claim power, even if it’s all just in the mind.
Buy it from Amazon.
Dancing For Pennies
The Smile “Pana-Vision”
A lot of people talk about how they want to feel “seen,” particularly by those who love them. And not just to simply be perceived, but fully understood in that gaze. “Pana-Vision” is a song that makes that concept seem awful and terrifying, with Thom Yorke giving voice to a character who is rattled by his apparent partner’s mysterious, cosmic, and inescapable surveillance. The music is led by Yorke’s piano, which moves between a circular melodic motif and his oddly distinctive way of playing rhythmic chords. Tom Skinner plays jazzy around the piano while Jonny Greenwood goes overtly cinematic in orchestration, making the music fall somewhere in an odd space between eerie horror and regal grandeur. That tone is just right for Yorke’s lyrical conceit – you can’t quite tell whether he’s more frightened or awed through most of it, and by the end he seems to be willfully succumbing to her power.
Buy it from Bandcamp.
In My Prayer I Don’t Speak
Mallrat “Teeth”
I read a line from Grace Shaw of Mallrat about this song where she says she thinks of this song as something that could’ve been on The OC soundtrack if it existed in 2004, and maybe that’s true, but being a little older that seems odd to me as this music is far more aligned with mid-90s alt-rock aesthetics than the corporate gloss “indie” of The OC era, though there’s obviously a fair amount of aesthetic crossover. I certainly would consider sounding like mid 90s alt-rock to be the more flattering comparison, but I would, wouldn’t I? The main reason I hear “Teeth” as part of that lineage is that it’s built around a very Kim Deal-ish bass line that throbs in a way that somehow conveys both a relaxed looseness and a vaguely sexual menace. There’s a grit and desperation to this music, a sense that you’re dealing with someone under a lot of pressure who’s not afraid to snap. Shaw deliberately conflates sex, religion, and violence in the tradition of PJ Harvey and Tori Amos, and delights in the blur of it all as if to say “why not all three?”
Buy it from Amazon.
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• Here’s Craig Jenkins at Vulture with the most nuanced and thoughtful reviews of Kendrick Lamar’s new album Mr. Morale and the Big Steppers I’ve seen so far.
• And here’s Steven Hyden at Uproxx with a very smart piece on how Harry Styles’ insistence on presenting himself as basically a perfect man has made him rather bland as a pop star, though I personally think his male “pick me” persona isn’t as much a problem as his generally dull taste and eagerness to make very sanded-down versions of rock music that won’t upset radio programmers etc.
• Molly O’Brien examines what it means to be a “clean girl.”