Fluxblog 424: first wave new wave
Plus new songs by Water From Your Eyes, L'Rain, Alice Phoebe Lou, and John Carroll Kirby
This week’s playlist is FIRST WAVE NEW WAVE, a survey of new and established artists embracing the new punk-adjacent style at the dawn of the 1980s. I like this period a lot because most everyone was self-consciously trying to do something fresh and new, in the best cases embracing an eccentric individualism.
I've done some playlists that touch on new wave in the past but never went all in until now. I tried to keep a decent ratio of Big Obvious Hits to deeper cuts depending on the artist to keep this from getting too generically "HITS OF THE 80s.”
[Spotify | Apple | YouTube]
Yr A Kool Thing
Water From Your Eyes “Barley”
“Barley” sounds to me like a musical grandchild of Sonic Youth’s “Bull in the Heather” – the shakers, the off-kilter minimalism, the deadpan counting vocals. But that’s just part of what’s going on in this peculiar piece of music that somehow works as a pop song despite everything about its arrangement pushing in the opposite direction. There’s pulses of sound that sound like someone hitting a space bar and accidentally pausing the music for a second, a melodic counterpoint that sounds like a detuned police siren, harsh buzzes, clattering drums. Water From Your Eyes turn cacophony into coherent hooks mostly by keeping the emphasis on rhythm. The music rushes forward but Rachel Brown’s voice holds your hand through it, their dry affect making it seem like just another hum-drum day in world of chaos.
Buy it from Bandcamp.
Swallow Sun, Spit Out Snow
L’Rain “New Years UnResolution”
“New Years UnResolution” sounds as though L’Rain is trying to zoom all the way out on a feeling in the hope that forcing it into perspective might answer crucial questions such as “why do I feel this way?” and “why do I keep doing things that make me feel this way?” This is extremely pensive dance music, to the point that the groove feels distant. It’s as though the bass and percussion are ground level, but we’re up in the sky with vocal parts slowly moving around like clouds. The lyrics concern a relationship that’s run its course, so much that there’s not much in the lyrics to suggest she’s at all interesting in holding on to anything about it. It’s more of a “what now?” sentiment, with her feeling time whoosh by without her figuring out the answer.
Buy it from Bandcamp.
Life’s Just Sitting There
Alice Phoebe Lou “Lose My Head”
“Lose My Head” starts speeding out the gate on a chugging groove, setting up a reasonable expectation that the big guitar chords will hit on the chorus like a typical alt/indie/pop-punk sort of song. Alice Phoebe Lou sidesteps that by coasting on the groove and filling the arrangement with delicate piano and atmospheric guitar, which feels like switching to a widescreen framing. The song gets more dense as it rushes forward, but then she flips expectations a second time in just two minutes, letting the energy dissipate and crashing down into a final sequence that’s just piano chords and vocal. The last bit is different enough that it feels more like a medley transition, but Lou makes it feel seamless on an emotional level as it pays off the lyrics and makes the forward momentum of the music end at a satisfying location.
Buy it from Bandcamp.
Failed Utopias
John Carroll Kirby “Sun Go Down”
“Sun Goes Down” is a remarkable composition that works wonderfully on its own terms, yet more than any piece of music I’ve encountered in the past few years screams out “sample me, remix me, interpolate me!” I can hear in my mind ways other artists could run with John Carroll Kirby’s keyboard parts or the flute counterpoints, to the point that I wonder if on some level he was making this as an invitation to other artists to mess around with the same motifs. Maybe part of that is because Kirby himself is pulling a lot from the past in the melody, tones, and construction here, and I’m just sensing his understanding that music is ultimately about people taking communal ideas and going in their own directions. But even without all that, and if no one ever actually uses this composition as a starting point, “Sun Goes Down” has a magic to it – funky, relaxed, and vaguely regal, like it’s the soundtrack for someone particularly impressive arriving to a backyard party just in time for a glorious sunset.
Buy it from Bandcamp.
LINKS LINKS LINKS LINKS LINKS
• Josef Adalian and Lane Brown at New York Magazine wrote a very interesting feature about the state of streaming television, which gets into the degree to which all of this has been a crazy gamble but also gives voice to a lot of people who want to kill “prestige tv” and flood the lane with middlebrow slop.
• I enjoyed Molly O’Brien’s thoughts about the debut episode of The Idol, the tv show co-created and starring The Weeknd as some kind of dork sex freak club owner weirdo erotic cult leader.
Probably listened to the JCK song 10 times in a row — whadda groove!