Fluxblog 459: a baggy-era playlist that will twist yer melon, man
Plus new songs by Yungatita, Cheekface, Goat Girl, and Atarashii Gakko
This week’s playlist is WHAT TIME IS LOVE?: ROCKING THE RAVE 1989-1991, a three-hour collection looking back on when techno, acid, rock, and hip-hop collided in Baggy-era UK at the dawn of the 90s. This one features classics by The KLF, EMF, Happy Mondays, Primal Scream, The Stone Roses, The Shamen, Jesus Jones, James, Blur, and Adamski, plus some deeper cuts from the period. This is stuff that I think sounded “dated” for a long time – largely due to technology shifts on the production side – but now is far enough back in the past that it sounds more like a glorious lost aesthetic. [Spotify | Apple | YouTube]
This is Option's 1995 critics poll from their Jan/Feb 1996 issue, which didn’t have a collective ranked list but instead presented comments from their contributors like a mid-90s peak alt/indie music Twitter. An important thing to note about a lot of these comments, most especially the guys ~furious~ about rootsy jam bands, is just how OLD a lot of common music takes are. Ideas that were rote and lazy in 1995 still get repeated like they’re fresh or insightful decades later. You NEED to push against hand-me-down opinions, especially if you’re a critic!
Also, my apologies to Eddie Huffman for resurfacing his truly cringe-inducing Coolio take.
Gotta Commit To The Curse
Yungatita “Pick At Your Face”
“Pick At Your Face” sounds bright and bratty and effortless as Yungatita seem to tumble through a series of very strong melodies. It’s a song about feeling listless, ugly, and disheveled, but more in a “I’m a loser, baby, so why don’t ya kill me” way than a “I’m a creep, I’m a weirdo, what the hell am I doing here” way. The band go big and bold on the chorus, but also very cutesy – as 90s-coded as this gets, the backing vocals have a post-Kidz Bop quality that’s much more in line with strains of 2000s indie that aren’t particularly cool at the moment. But you know, songs this good have a way of changing minds about aesthetic choices that are a little cringe at face value.
Buy it from Bandcamp.
Looking For Others Wearing Really Big Shirts
Cheekface “The Fringe”
Cheekface is a godsend for anyone out there who misses Cake, or ever wished Calvin Johnson had made a late 70s/early 80s style power-pop record, or wanted to know what a hybrid of They Might Be Giants and Talking Heads might be like. But despite aesthetic similarities to some very specific artists of previous generations, Cheekface has their own personality. A lot of that comes down to the way they mix and match the recognizable elements, like they simply found a new way to style that droll Johnson/John McCrea vocal affect into a fresh new outfit. The personality also comes through in Greg Katz’s lyrical fixation on recognizable hipster archetypes as they manifest in the present day – a frustrated guy deciding to make himself a local character in a town full of surveillance cameras, guys who are frustrated that their friends “getting square,” dudes who are “dispassionately vaping” while watering plants, and in the case of “The Fringe,” an artist who seems to be motivated to create unappealing art to gain some clout. The jokes are pretty good, but the replay value is a direct result of the band taking structure and arrangement very seriously.
Buy it from Bandcamp.
Let’s Be Messy In The Evenings
Goat Girl “Ride Around”
The guitar parts in “Ride Around” have a sludgy tone and churning rhythm that feels sickly and uncomfortable. The hesistant feel of the percussion only exacerbates that, at some points bringing to mind the kind of cautious movements of someone who feels like they’re about to puke. This is all very unpleasant and probably not the most enticing way to describe a song, but it really works as a vibe and matches the lyrics nicely. If you’re gonna sing “The way it goes, I think you’re kinda gross / me and you, I think we could be close,” it shouldn’t be in a song that goes down easy, right?
Buy it from Bandcamp.
Wherever You Are We Are
Atarashii Gakko! “Hello”
The Japanese girl group Atarashii Gakko specialize in extremely high energy tunes with a bratty, punky snarl so it makes sense they’d shine in a song that seems like it was built to be their own version of Le Tigre’s immortal “Deceptacon.” There’s other ingredients in this soup – I hear a little “Burning Up” by Madonna, a touch of the Afrika Bambaata/Johnny Rotten song “World Destruction,” the early Beastie Boys in general – but the thing that puts this over is the attitude in the Atarashii Gakko girls’ vocal delivery. They seem a little cute and flirty, but mostly intimidating and fearless.
Buy it from Amazon.
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• Rob Sheffield on the 30th anniversary of Pavement’s Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain. I have spent a lot of time talking to Rob about Pavement over the years and he can still surprise me with a wild opinion about them – in this case he inexplicably hates “Heaven Is A Truck.”
• I enjoyed Joshua Minsoo Kim’s tribute to the late Can singer Damo Suzuki for Rolling Stone.
• Danielle Chelosky wrote a great and passionate piece about the 10th anniversary of Angel Olsen’s breakthrough album Burn Your Fire For No Witness for Stereogum.
• I was flattered to be included in Josh Terry’s No Expectations blogroll, which recommends a lot of exciting independent music blogs you should check out.
I’ve been waiting for this one.