Fluxblog 393: Yo La Tengo • Phoenix • Dry Cleaning • Sault
Plus some club music from the dawn of the 90s
This week’s playlist is SHAMPOO ROOM AT THE LIMELIGHT, a selection of dance club hits and remixes 1989-1991 I put together as research for a project maybe you’ll hear about someday. This is a very fun and ecstatic set of songs, and one that will really smash some nostalgia buttons if you’re the right age. [Spotify | Apple | YouTube]
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 in very precarious economic situation as I’m still in the market for a new full time job. Your donations are always appreciated, but I can say for sure that right now they’re more appreciated than ever.
Before It Gets Too Loud
Yo La Tengo “Fallout”
This song sounds as though the members of Yo La Tengo were challenged to make something that would answer the question “what’s so special about Yo La Tengo?” and absolutely nailed the assignment. Yo La Tengo have written a lot of different types of songs through the years but this one really gets to the core of their identity – Ira Kaplan’s distinctive guitar tone and the way he strangles notes out of his instrument in a way that introduces a bit of manic violence to a fuzziness that would otherwise feel cozy, the contrast of a low-key nearly deadpan quality in the vocals with an obvious warmth and sincerity. “Fallout” sounds like it’s in the sweet spot of their mid-90s run of albums Painful, Electr-O-Pura, and I Can Hear the Heart Beating As One, but it doesn’t sound like a self-conscious return to anything. It’s just the logical outcome of moving from the cut-and-paste construction of their last full album to something very live and raw, and this is just what they’re like when they get in that mode. It’s muscle memory, it’s core competencies, it’s a musical identity honed for over 30 years.
Buy it from Bandcamp.
You Need A Little Candor
Phoenix feat. Ezra Koenig “Tonight”
Phoenix are the only rock band I can think of whose genre would be best described as “romantic comedy.” The romance part is obvious enough just by hearing most of their songs – sometimes the feel is more flirty, sometimes more longing, later in the catelog more often the lived-in feeling of long term partnership – but it’s always there, some ambient field of affection and attraction permeating every measure. The comedy comes through in the details of Thomas Mars’ lyrics, typically an English-as-second-language stew of evocative phrases, oddball syntax, and little bits of French. Mars zeroes in on little absurdities and comic moments, grounding big emotional moments or interpersonal tensions with, in the case of “Tonight,” a silly refrain like “who let the boys spill their entrée?” This is a bit of levity before moving on to the more emotionally fraught line “dinner is served, can’t you see we’re not opposites?” I can clearly imagine this playing out as a scene in a film, but it feels more efficient in musical abstraction. The plot doesn’t matter as much as the feeling.
“Tonight” feels a lot like Phoenix’s biggest hit “1901,” mainly in the way the grooves circle each other – one guitar figure suggesting a hesitant movement forwards, the rush into the chorus cutting loose and embracing a carefree acceleration. I’m intrigued by the decision to include Ezra Koenig of Vampire Weekend to sing this with Mars as a duet. The implication is not so much that they’re singing to each other but more as different aspects of the same person in conversation, dramatizing the lyrical hook “I talk to myself and it’s quite surprising.” This also underlines the unspoken tension at the core of this song – he’s overly familiar with his internal monologue, but he’s singing to someone who can still be a mystery to him.
Buy it from Amazon.
Let’s Eat Pancake
Dry Cleaning “No Decent Shoes for Rain”
Florence Shaw mostly sounds like she’s bemusedly reading a notebook full of random phrases she’s overheard, or trying to recite from memory the most awkward exchanges she’s had in the past week. This is an odd voice to build a band around but it makes sense in the context of Dry Cleaning’s compositions, which are dynamic enough suggest cutting between different scenes in a film. In a song like “No Decent Shoes for Rain” it all clicks together to feel like music that operates on dream logic, all jumbled up in neuroses and absurdity and spliced up sense memory and potent emotional resonances that don’t fully make sense. Should “I’ve seen your arse but not your mouth, that’s normal now” feel as weirdly poignant as it does here? Probably not, but they make it feel like something anyway.
Buy it from Bandcamp.
Lead Me To Your Hope
Sault “Safe Within Your Hands”
Sault released five free albums this week, a volume of material that demands to be digested gradually though there are plenty of songs spread through the records that immediately announce themselves as career highlights for the mysterious British R&B collective. “Safe Within Your Hands,” off the heavily gospel-centric Untitled (God), had me from its first few jazzy piano notes. This is a gospel song with the slinky sexuality of D’Angelo on Voodoo; one that uses the old Christian pop trick of making lyrics ambiguous enough to either be about romantic love or a relationship with God to its advantage. When the choir sings “your love is all I need for the day” it feels like it could be about either but I hear it as both – finding your way to the higher power in love and sex, physical and emotional intimacy that blurs into religiosity.
Get it from Sault.
LINKS LINKS LINKS LINKS LINKS LINKS LINKS
• Stereogum’s Zach Kelly interviewed Thomas Mars and Laurent Brancowitz of Phoenix for their regular We’ve Got A File On You feature.
• Here’s an intriguing Billboard article about how various forces including the Whitney Houston estate are working to preserve and capitalize upon her legacy.
• I really enjoyed Todd in the Shadows on Sam Smith and Kim Petras’ rather weird hit song “Unholy.”