Fluxblog 395: Muni Long • Whitmer Thomas • Roc Marciano • The Cool Greenhouse
Plus a very chill playlist of night music
This week’s playlist is JUST ONE MORE NIGHT, two hours of late night vibes with some emphasis on hip-hop. This one includes a few of my favorite songs of all time and is kinda perfect for this time of year when it’s night time seemingly most of the day. It’s also kinda romantic? [Spotify | Apple | YouTube]
You Might Get Obsessed
Muni Long “Crack”
Songs like “Crack” are annoying to write about because I will feel like a dork no matter what angle I take in describing or even acknowledging the very explicit lyrics. I figure pure descriptive bluntness is the best path: This is a song in which a woman tells her new partner that they’re about to become hopelessly addicted to her pussy. It’s been done before, but Muni Long nails the tone by dialing it in to about 70% confident sexuality and 30% subtle vulnerability. The latter comes through more in musical moves and Long’s phrasing, these little touches that indicate some lightly percolating fears – Is she overselling this? Will they agree with her assessment of her skills? Does she seem desperate? But none of that is close enough to the surface to undermine the overt sexiness of the song, it’s all just layered in to make it feel human.
Buy it from Amazon.
The Wisdom Of A Puppy
Whitmer Thomas “Most Likely”
Whitmer Thomas’ primary lane is comedy but he’s an accomplished songwriter whose songs flirt with comedic premises and punchlines but mostly veer away from novelty territory. This sets him apart from the likes of Bo Burnham, whose music is always a pastiche of some kind in service of a joke, and puts him firmly in an indie rock tradition. If you squint your ears a bit “Most Likely” could pass a Wilco song – a little brighter in tonality than most Jeff Tweedy compositions, but with a similar grain of voice and a Charlie Brown-ish mix of humor and melancholy. The song is basically Thomas running through sad sack sentiments – What if there was a room at every party where you could just watch a movie? What if he’s too sentimental for when he was too broke to get a therapist? How do you get over imposter syndrome? The song is overflowing with neuroses but the phrasing and tone make it clear at every moment that he’s making himself the joke here, and he’s doing so because he’s got enough perspective on himself to know when he’s being silly. And in showing himself being silly, he’s giving people some room to laugh at themselves a bit too.
Buy it from Bandcamp.
Only The Throne Is My Comfort Zone
Roc Marciano & The Alchemist “Quantum Leap”
The Alchemist’s track for “Quantum Leap” has such a strong nocturnal vibe that it feels wrong to listen to it in daylight. It’s mostly in the keyboard part, this warm and rich tone that evokes the amber hues of city street lights. Roc Marciano is well suited to a track like this and performs with a casual grace, giving off the energy of someone who’s very confident and comfortable in their skin and knows they have the upper hand in a situation. Marciano’s bragging about his stature and success through the song but he sounds thoroughly relaxed and often very deadpan, particularly when he opens a verse with “uhh, I made murder sexy.”
Buy it from Roc Marciano.
Crayons Dipped In Glue
The Cool Greenhouse “Hard Rock Potato”
“Hard Rock Potato” is a lyrical snapshot of an odd pandemic moment – Redditors playing the stock market game as a goof, trading apps making it all feel like a video game. Tom Greenhouse speak-sings it all with an arch deadpan – you’d never mistake him for being serious, but he’s committed to the bit enough for the sarcasm to hit just right. As with the band’s previous song “Alexa,” Greenhouse is in interesting thematic territory by fixating on how new tech trends become most absurd the moment they become widespread enough to become fairly mundane. Greenhouse pokes at the absurdity and has a laugh, all the while his band lock into a very mid-80s The Fall kind of groove.
Buy it from Bandcamp
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• I picked up a copy of Tom Breihan’s The Number Ones book, based on his consistently excellent column for Stereogum. I highly recommend it – it’s seriously one of the best music critics of all time at the top of his game.
• My friend Chris Wade and his Chapo Trap House colleagues are the subjects of a great feature in GQ that just came out this week.
• Here’s a very good Q&A with Brian Eno by David Marchese in the New York Times. It’s terrific if you’d like to know about Eno’s interesting in LARPing and what scents he’s enjoyed recently.