Fluxblog 378: Alicia Bridges • Quelle Chris • V••gra Boys
Plus a soundtrack for an imaginary rom-com
This week’s playlist is THIS IS JUST AN IMAGINARY INDIE ROM-COM SOUNDTRACK, featuring new and old songs of sappy love and romantic angst by artists including Maggie Rogers, Soccer Mommy, Beabadoobee, Alphabeat, Taylor Swift, Velocity Girl, Marit Larsen, Faye Webster, Charly Bliss, and Camera Obscura. [Spotify | Apple Music | YouTube]
I Got To Go Where The People Dance
Alicia Bridges “I Love the Nightlife (Disco Round)”
“I Love the Nightlife (Disco Round)” is for a lot of obvious reasons associated with disco but the bulk of the song doesn’t quite fit the genre, coming closer in style and tone to an Al Green slow burn R&B number. The verses establish context and stakes for the carefree chorus as Alicia Bridges sings from the perspective of some exhausted woman in a fading relationship who’s sick of all the arguing and appeasing and just wants to have some fun. It’s not a break up song but it’s certainly a song about being on the verge of a break up, particularly as it’s clear that a lot of her hope for going out is meeting someone a lot more exciting. Bridges’ voice swivels from solid Green emulation in the verses to a more flamboyant style on the bridge and chorus, over-annunciating the word “action” as “ACK-SHUNNN!” in a way that’s so gloriously silly it pushes the whole song over into the realm of the sublime.
“I Love the Nightlife” rejects seriousness but is rendered as a sort of emotional realism in which every line carries the weight of a full life experience, a high defined by the lowest lows. Bridges is trying to shake off the tedious details of “this broken romance” but everything she sings is a reaction against it whether she’s resentful of being strung along by someone with “women all over town,” or declaring that she doesn’t just want to give some action – she wants to get some too! The pettiness in the song doesn’t run too deep, it’s more like using dissatisfaction as a starting point for determining what would actually make you feel satisfied. The whole song blooms when the chorus hits, it’s the sound of someone making an active choice to prioritize pleasure and become who they want to be. A lot of disco in the 70s and dance music ever since has been about this promise of escape, but few songs have dramatized it so well with this graceful genre switch-up from verse to chorus.
Buy it from Amazon.
You Can Keep The Feast And Wine
Quelle Chris “Alive Ain’t Always Living”
Quelle Chris is a rapper and is technically rapping through this song but his vocal performance registers more as some ambiguous combination of conversational speech and very low key soul singing, occasionally making his voice go very flat for a sort of an implied italics effect. The feel of the track is loose enough to seem as though he just happened to stroll by the melancholy piano loop on the street and felt compelled to casually monologue about his philosophy of life. This makes the content of his writing go down easier – there’s nothing self-aggrandizing or overbearing about this, just a weary guy acknowledging just how difficult life can be and coming away with the conclusion that simply being alive with only occasional moments of satisfaction is still far better than the alternative.
Buy it from Bandcamp.
When I Was Younger None Of This Existed
Viagra Boys “Creepy Crawlers”
“Creepy Crawlers” is a satire of terminal conspiracy brain that’s played straight enough that I think there are some people who could hear it, not notice the wink, and assume that Viagra Boys are totally Q-pilled. Sebastian Murphy’s vocal performance is silly and unhinged, but also conveys enough frazzled terror to make this character seem genuinely upset and concerned about little kids growing up with animal hair and creepy crawlers being put in the vaccines. This intensity is matched by music that merges the antsy claustrophobia of Suicide with the bug-eyed manic energy of Dead Kennedys to make something that sounds sickly but gets kinda fun once they’re chanting “they’re turning kids into adrenochrome.” While this is 100% a song brutally mocking actual people who believe in this stuff there’s also a bit of empathy for these people in that their emotional reality is taken seriously. It’s left unspoken, but the message is basically “imagine making yourself this upset because you need a complicated answer to why the world feels so bad right now, when the truth is actually pretty simple.”
Buy it from Viagra Boys.
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• Here’s Ilana Kaplan on the psychology of “sad girl” pop over on the official Grammys site.
• Eric Harvey wrote about Alice In Chains’ classic Dirt for Pitchfork’s Sunday Review, definitely one of the best things they’ve published in a while.