Fluxblog 495: brutal revisited
Plus new songs by Kelly Lee Owens, Weak Signal, and Cameron Winter
I don’t have a new playlist for this week, but I do have a very substantially revised one for you. I’ve revised and expanded last year’s BRUTAL: NEXT GEN ALT-ROCK – a collection of Gen Z/younger Millennial women/nb artists reviving 90s alt-rock aesthetics – with 40+ new songs, mainly bringing it up to date with material from 2024. New additions include Dora Jar, Yungatita, Nilüfer Yanya, Fake Fruit, Sex Week, Suki Waterhouse, Freak Slug, Goat Girl, English Teacher, OK Cowgirl, Nonbinary Girlfriend, Gustaf, and Lunar Vacation. [Spotify | Apple Music]
I saw Maggie Rogers play the second of her two sold-out shows at Madison Square Garden on Sunday night and was very impressed by how well-suited she is to performing at this scale. She’s the Queen of Millennial Adult-Contemporary – at times channeling Shania Twain, Mariah Carey, Florence Welch, Stevie Nicks, Faith Hill, and the very concept of VH1, but with her own spirit and underdog girl-next-door vibe.
Every Word Is Nonsense
Kelly Lee Owens “Dreamstate”
There’s not a lot of lyrics to “Dreamstate” beyond variations on the phrases “feel the dreamstate” and “dream to live,” but Kelly Lee Owens gets a lot out of those words. It’s in the repetition, the re-arranging of the words, and how she seems to surf the waves of her synth grooves and keyboard washes. Most of all it’s in her vocal phrasing – mostly softly spoken with a sense of wonderment, or a little bit bolder, like she’s the spokesperson for a high-end product with some woo dogma attached to it. It’s all very calm until the end, when the music reaches a climax and she starts shouting with some passion. I love how at the end of the song, when it feels like you’re about to wake up, feeling the dreamstate becomes incredibly urgent and important as opposed to just a suggestion.
Buy it from Bandcamp.
Weak Signal “Chill”
Weak Signal triangulate a lot of top shelf influences – just in this song, you get a little Ramones, a little Jesus and Mary Chain, and the answer to “what if Calvin Johnson fronted Yo La Tengo?” But they have a very clear personality and point of view, a lot of which comes down to Mike Bones’ dry wit and droll vocal style. (“Everything is cool, everything is chill,” sung with maximum deadpan delivery.) They err on the side of minimalism, but not in the way that can seem like the best choice for amateurish players. It’s more in the way a good editor will push you towards consolidating ideas, streamlining structures, and chopping out anything that isn’t strictly necessary. The writing is high craft, the performance is totally…chill.
Buy it from Bandcamp.
No Longer Godless
Cameron Winter “Vines”
Cameron Winter’s first solo single outside of Geese isn’t just a Geese song released under his own name. It’s also not solo in the sense of him just making music with some other musicians. He sounds solitary and isolated on “Vines,” like he’s responding to the absence of bandmates. The palette is sparse, just his voice, his piano, and a string arrangement that kicks in midway through to add a touch of poignancy and miserable grandeur. But the song is really about Winter’s voice – all raw nerves and unfiltered emotion, soulfully undisciplined, unabashedly dramatic and romantic, but with just a little bit of a smirk. The lyrics are direct and a little brutal, he sounds like he’s spilling his guts about the most fraught relationship in his life. But there’s also just enough ambiguity that it’s unclear who that might be – I wouldn’t blame anyone for reading this as a romantic song, but there’s some lines that make me think this is more about parents.
Buy it from Bandcamp.
LINKS LINKS LINKS LINKS
• Dan Boeckner returned to Fortune Kit to talk about The Black Keys playing a pro-crypto show in Ohio designed to get the vote out for a Republican senate candidate. When this news came out last week I immediately thought “this is the perfect Dan Boeckner topic,” so I’m really glad this came together.
• Angie Martoccio interviewed Stevie Nicks for Rolling Stone and got some incredible bits from her about trying to give Katy Perry advice and, of course, her ongoing difficulties in dealing with Lindsey Buckingham.
• Matthew Sweet, the alt-rock icon best known for “Girlfriend” and “Sick of Myself,” suffered a stroke while on tour in Canada and needs financial assistance for medical bills and transporting him back home to the United States. If you can help out, please check out his GoFundMe.