Fluxblog #376: Flasher • Soccer Mommy • Muna •Anna Butterss
Also, let's celebrate Canada Day with a playlist of Canadian rock from the 90s
Happy Canada Day to all my Canadian readers! This week’s playlist is CANCON FEVER: CANADIAN ALT-ROCK AND INDIE IN THE 90s, a retrospective covering a period of time when Canadian music was mostly confined to Canada and only a handful of artists crossed over into the US or UK. This is a pocket of time just before Canadian rock music became a major prospect in the 2000s, whether it was Sum 41, Avril Lavigne, and Nickelback in the mainstream or The New Pornographers, Broken Social Scene, and Arcade Fire in the indie realm. [Spotify | Apple | YouTube]
Feel My Way Through History
Flasher “Nothing”
“Nothing” hits me hard in two different but not unrelated sweet spots – harmonies that overlap in atypical ways and offer multiple perspectives on the lyrics, and lyrics about actively trying to change who you are and how you perceive yourself and the world. Flasher make the song more complicated as it moves along, starting with a rather straight forward mission of self-improvement before layering in the notion that this guy wants to change to please someone else, and then the passive aggression starts slipping in. By the time the bridge hits the tension boils over – “I’m in the basement, nothing is taking / so if you hate me, why don’t you replace me?” – and the female counterpoint vocal just voices a vague disappointment. The finale of this song is incredible, the sort of thing I find myself rewinding to hear several times in a row. The harmonies pile on as the frustration mounts, and the female voice gets louder and more passionate but still a little distant in the mix. The sound is lovely and cathartic, but the lyrics are just two people crumpling as they face futility – “when it’s all or nothing, you can count on nothing.”
Buy it from Bandcamp.
Teaching Me How To Bleed
Soccer Mommy “With U”
They released four advance singles from the new Soccer Mommy record and somehow none of them was “With U,” a lovesick power ballad that’s by far the most obviously commercial song on the album. Sophie Allison manages a tricky balance here – the song goes as big and sentimental as Taylor Swift in Red mode, but her vocal delivery signals the shyness and insecurity that comes through in most of her songs. In lesser hands that might undermine the sweep of the song, but Allison commits enough that it sounds like someone who’s pushing through their reflexive defensive moves to sing something that feels enormous to them. I like her lyrical angle here too – she’s singing about feeling overwhelmed by the intensity of her feelings in the context of a long term relationship, expressing feelings a lot of people could easily file under “codependent.” But that’s so judgmental, really, and what she’s singing isn’t toxic or anything like that. It’s just being honest that investing that much in anyone is scary, and she doesn’t feel like she wants another option.
Buy it from Bandcamp.
She Is Of Material Substance
Muna “Solid”
“Solid” has a very ‘80s shoulder pads energy to it, the sort of pop song you might expect to find buried on the second side of a Sheena Easton record. Muna really lean into the aesthetic but stick to a more contemporary type of studio gloss, enough so that a younger listener might not even realize there’s any throwback quality to it at all. The hooks are strong but the lyrics are what make this one – they start by announcing the object of their affection is a woman who refuses to be projected upon, but then spend the rest of the song idealizing her as a superhumanly capable person who’s “using her hands, she’s pulling the levers.” It’s funny but also just really sweet to have this song that’s just like “damn, my girl gets things DONE.”
Buy it from Bandcamp.
Oooh Ahhh Oooh Ahhh
Anna Butterss “Doo Wop”
“Doo Wop” sounds like it’s rather pointedly adjacent to a lot of genres and styles but actually exists in some undefined space between them all, and this strikes me as much a set of interesting musical choices as an expression of displacement. And I want you to know that I arrived at this impression before I learned that Anna Butterss is an Australian who’s been living in the US for a long time! There’s just something about the sort of interstitial limbo she’s conveying here that feels like moving through surroundings that are interesting and pleasant but feeling disconnected on some deep level, as though your body is trying to tell you that you’re not where you belong. Butterss’ bass carries a lot of the feeling here, rumbling through little melodic runs in a way that sounds almost conversational. You can glean some meaning, but it’s like listening to someone speak another language and pulling meaning from the cadences.
Buy it from Bandcamp.
LINKS LINKS LINKS LINKS LINKS
• I liked Ryan Broderick’s tangent in a recent issue of Garbage Day about “Gaylecore,” an aesthetic that’s bubbling up in music that gets big with teens on TikTok that most people seem to attribute to Olivia Rodrigo, though musically and lyrically it’s more similar to other things. For example, I think the “Mad at Disney” song sounds like if Lorde had no scruples whatsoever and just tried to make a big hit right now.
• Here’s a new profile of the xx’s Oliver Sim in the New York Times. I got to see Sim play one of his first solo shows over the weekend and it was very good – his solo material is quite strong and offers an interesting and specifically gay POV, and he’s become a very confident and visually magnetic performer. Kinda like an introverted Jake Shears?
