Fluxblog 385: Betina & Boogarins • Louis Cole • Gorillaz
Plus a playlist celebrating foundational female rappers
This newsletter is free, but the work that goes into making Fluxblog and the playlists and the podcast etc takes up a lot of my time. I don’t like pestering people into signing up for the Patreon or doing one-time donations on Ko-Fi, but I will say that right now would be an excellent time to do this as I’m entering a very precarious economic situation. Your donations are always appreciated, but I can say for sure that right now they’re more appreciated than ever.
Patreon subscribers can check out a monologue I released last weekend about the expanded Radiohead/Thom Yorke/The Smile discography!
This week’s playlist is LADIES FIRST: WOMEN IN RAP 1985-1993, a selection of songs from foundational female voices in hip-hop including Salt-N-Pepa, Queen Latifah, MC Lyte, Yo-Yo, Anquette, Roxanne Shante, and Sister Souljah. This playlist was a suggestion from someone who donated via ko-fi, so thank you to that person twice over! [Spotify | Apple | YouTube]
Steal Color From Your Feeling
Betina & Boogarins “Polaroids”
Pretty much every sound in “Polaroid” feels as though it was arranged specifically to please my ear but the part that really puts this song over the top for me is the bass, which has the slo-mo groove and womb-like warmth of a classic Jamaican dub track. Boogarins’ track pulls in sounds from other sources – modern and classic psychedelia, some traces of classic Brazilian pop, a touch of R&B – but it gracefully avoids any particular genre, though I get the sense that we’ll have better terms for this sort of aesthetic down the line. I do love the neither-here-nor-there of it, and the way Betina’s vocal moves between different shades of melancholy so there’s a definite feeling but an ambiguous degree of intensity. The weight of sadness and positive feeling is constantly shifting through the song, and that fluctuation seems to be the point.
Buy it from Amazon.
Where The Little Moments Go
Louis Cole “I’m Tight”
“I’m Tight” is a song showcasing Louis Cole’s dazzling skill as a funk bass player, but then you go and read his bio and it says “Louis’ main instrument is the drums.” This is impressive, but also vaguely infuriating – like, really, this isn’t even your core competency? Cole plays everything else on the track too like he’s Stevie Wonder or Prince, and comes pretty close to attaining the sort of magical tight-yet-minimalist funk of the latter circa Controversy. The big difference is Cole doesn’t have a magnetic and sassy persona or an overwhelming warmth and soulfulness, and rather than emulate that kind of presence on the microphone he goes in a totally different direction by embracing neurosis and self-deprecating humor. The lyrics don’t jump out enough to overwhelm the funk with irony but he spends a lot of the song trying to sort out what he thinks of himself and embrace the parts of himself he feels good about. It seems like he’s deliberately approaching a genre that’s traditionally hosted a lot of strutting confidence as a challenge to find that in himself, in his own weird way.
Buy it from Bandcamp.
Everything Will Disappear
Gorillaz featuring Tame Impala and Bootie Brown “New Gold”
Damon Albarn has used Gorillaz as a vehicle for exploring a lot of musical ideas through the past two decades but there’s one trick he’s figured out that no one has come close to rivaling – electro-funk groove + energetic rap + plaintive indie vocal. This is the basic formula for a lot of the most successful and widely beloved Gorillaz songs – “Feel Good Inc,” “Superfast Jellyfish,” “Stylo,” “Ascension” – and it’s the setup for “New Gold,” their best song in a little while. It’s a delicious little ice cream sundae of a song, a perfect balance of those three core elements with a little bit of Albarn’s vocals tossed in like rainbow sprinkles. Tame Impala’s presence is the most overwhelming ingredient as anything with Kevin Parker’s voice ultimately sounds like anything else with his voice, but there’s just enough contrast between him and Bootie Brown’s verses to keep it squarely in the aesthetic realm of Gorillaz. And they’re all certainly on message with the lyrics, sketching out a vision of post-apocalyptic society not far off from most anything on 2010’s Plastic Beach.
Buy it from Amazon.
LINKS LINKS LINKS LINKS LINKS
• The Singles Jukebox has ceased publication as of this week. I hate to see a long running independent music site end, but if you’ve never checked in on this site you’re in for a treat as their extensive archives cover a lot of ground and feature literally dozens of terrific writers over its run.
• If you live in New York City you’ve undoubtedly noticed the extreme growth of the venture capital backed Blank Street Coffee franchise, which is almost literally like if Warby Parker sold mediocre coffee with an app. Don’t be too envious, I’m sure these sterile soulless coffee shops will be omnipresent where you live pretty soon!
• Tom Breihan’s The Number Ones column on Stereogum is now in the early 00s and he just wrote up Christina Aguilera’s “Come On Over Baby (All I Want Is You),” one of my favorite pop hits of the era.