Fluxblog 414: STEELY DAN UNIVERSE
Plus new songs by The New Pornographers, Spill Tab, Salami Rose Joe Lewis, and Overmono
This week’s playlist is STEELY DAN UNIVERSE, a Walter Becker and Donald Fagen career retrospective covering the entire Steely Dan catalog, their solo records, songwriting and session work, production work, music by collaborators, songs they’ve covered live, and a handful of exceptional covers and songs sampling their music. There’s some things missing because they’re not on streaming, but it’s mainly the most obscure of their session/production work. [Spotify | Apple | YouTube]
Here’s the liner notes…
This is a part of an ongoing series of UNIVERSE playlists. If you visit my profiles you will find similar playlists for David Bowie, Björk, Talking Heads, Nile Rodgers, Wu-Tang Clan, Missy Elliott, and Radiohead.
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You Can Take That As A Compliment
The New Pornographers “Cat and Mouse with the Light”
Carl Newman has been lucky enough to write songs for Neko Case to sing for over two decades, and in that time his approach to deploying her as a lead vocalist has changed. Early on she was mainly used for firepower and intensity, belting out hooks in songs like “Letter From An Occupant” and “The Laws Have Changed” like the vocal equivalent of stomping on a fuzz pedal. Over the course of the middle period New Pornographers records Case added gravitas and/or earthiness to ballads, often singing lyrics about Newman’s personal life and marriage that he may have wanted distance from, if just to avoid sounding sappy and sentimental. Or maybe it’s just that something in the grain of Case’s voice unlocks feelings in songs that Newman can write but not as fully inhabit as a vocalist.
I think that’s the case in “Cat and Mouse with the Light,” a mid-tempo ballad with an arrangement that sounds like trying to represent the fizziness of a freshly cracked can of seltzer water with keyboards and saxophones. The lyrics express a lot of cynicism and self-doubt, addressed to someone – a partner, a child? – who holds the singer in high regard, which they don’t understand at all. “I can’t stand that you love me, you love me, you love me,” Case sings, starting the phrase with a slight peevishness, but conveying something closer to gratitude by the third “you love me.” I can imagine Newman singing this part and it either sounding too pretty or too resentful. Case imbues the song with warmth as well as ambiguity, making you question how much she really means the more harsh or distancing lines. She places the emotional emphasis on the character pushing people who love them away, almost smug in the notion that they’d only disappoint them. The way she sings that last “you love me” is the crack in the armor, the tell at the poker table.
Buy it from Bandcamp.
Supposed To See
Salami Rose Joe Louis featuring Brijean “Propaganda”
Salami Rose Joe Lewis – aka Lindsay Rose Olsen – is the primary artist for this song but as it turns out Brijean is like an ingredient that dominates the flavor of a dish. “Propaganda” is built on Brijean’s distinctive version of a tropical funk groove – somehow busy and sparse at the same time, low-key enough to be a mellow background sound but strong enough to loosen up your hips and shoulders even if you’re just walking around to it. Olsen does a fine job of filling out the vibe with most of the keyboard parts on the track, keeping the tone light and bright with just a slight suggestion of tension. The vocal part is a simple singsong chant that bounces off the beat nicely and in my experience immediately insinuates itself as an unkillable earworm, so be warned.
Buy it from Bandcamp.
Hoping You’ll Infect Me
Spill Tab “Window”
This Spill Tab song sounds like it should be put in Buzz Bin heavy rotation, but alas there’s no Buzz Bin to heavily rotate these days. “Window” is jagged yet glossy, a pop song bent by alt-rock and post-punk aesthetics but smooth enough to signal glamour rather than grunge. Claire Chica’s lyrics describe a relationship dynamic in which she come across very anxious-avoidant – she pushes them away, and then the absence makes her heart grow fonder, and a cycle keeps going. She makes it sound torturous but exciting, very much that early 20s thing where you’ve internalized enough fiction to think that the more dramatic a romantic/sexual relationship is, the more adult it is. The song commits to existing in that headspace but I’d be interested in hearing Chica approach this topic from an older perspective down the line.
Buy it from Amazon.
You Will Make Sense
Overmono “Good Lies”
If you’ve read this site long enough you’ve surely seen me try to write about a musical move I mainly associate with Four Tet but is a fairly widely used technique in dance music – sampling and editing vocals for purely sensual effect, often to the point that any lyrical content is lost or illegible. Overmono do that here on “Good Lies” but the vocal isn’t totally abstracted, just edited in a way that smears the singer’s annunciation so some words come through and others get blurred. I love the effect as it intersects with the ebbs and flow of their composition, the way it makes the song overall feel surreal and stoned. We hear music all the time and our brains essentially do this, blurring some elements as we focus on the more musical and overtly rhythmic parts, but I like the idea of making this a default state of a track.
Buy it from Bandcamp.
LINKS LINKS LINKS LINKS LINKS
• Eric Renner Brown at Billboard explains how Gen X bands have leveled up to become the new titans of the touring circuit now as Boomer acts phase out of the market.
• A.B. Allen at Polygon explains why so many movies and tv shows are shot with such a dim palette these days in spite of how most people will experience them on devices and in theaters.
• Brittany Spanos at Rolling Stone has some nice reporting specifically about the collaborations on Lana Del Rey’s excellent new album which I promise I will write about next week when I have more time.