Fluxblog 528: in defense of "retro"
New songs by Spill Tab, TV Girl/George Clanton/Magdalena Bay, and The Marias
Appuie Tes Trois Mots Précis
Spill Tab “Assis”
The bass in “Assis” feels firm and strong, but still has a bit of slink to it. Pretty much everything surrounding it feels soft or loose – a vocal sung in French in a near-whisper, a keyboard part that seems largely improvised and mixed so the higher notes tickle like a tongue in your ear. It’s an extremely sexy composition that’s clearly recorded to feel as sensual and intimate as possible. As near as I can tell, the lyrics describe a scene between two lovers that’s sexy but a bit sad, as it’s from the POV of someone who’s in love with someone who seems to be losing interest in her. The lust comes through in the instruments, the longing is obvious in her voice whether you understand French or not.
Buy it from Bandcamp.
I Thought About You And You Finally Came
TV Girl and George Clanton featuring Magdalena Bay “Messy Hair”
We’ve been trained as consumers of culture to expect novelty in art and fashion, and to conflate newness with quality. And while it’s always exciting to experience innovations in art and design in the moment – almost always enabled by shifts in technology – the consumer’s pursuit of novelty is more about marketing, packaging, and commerce than it is about appreciating artistic expression. The flip side of this is the knee-jerk dismissal of “retro,” eye-rolling at either the seeming return of older aesthetics or the continued success of popular styles. I can sympathize with being sick of old styles, and feeling bored by predictable cycles of aesthetics going in and out of fashion. You can get jaded easily by this, but a lot of the time that’s just congratulating yourself for noticing a pattern.
It’s better to think of the accumulation of styles as the gradual creation of a canon, a pantheon, a palette for future creation. “Nostalgia” isn’t always the point, particularly when artists reach back to times before they were alive. Ideas will be rooted in cultural moments and become shorthand for those eras, but ultimately it’s the same as new phrases and vocabulary become part of a shared lexicon – useful tools for expression.
I bring this up because “Messy Hair” is a great example of a song that uses an old style to great effect without necessarily being a “retro” piece. Listen to the breakbeat drum part that enters the song around 30 seconds in – it’s a very late 90s sound, and I think on some level it’s meant to signify a bright, stylish, and upbeat future. A lot of late 90s/Y2K sounds have this effect now, particularly for listeners who were either children or came of age in that period. So it isn’t just “futuristic,” it’s a sound associated with youth and innocence, a “simpler time.” Hearing that breakbeat hit as Mica Tenenbaum from Magdalena Bay sings about realizing she’s in love gives the song a nice jolt of excitement and relative weightlessness. It’s like she’s hitting a stride, and feeling all her burdens disappear.
Buy it from Amazon.
Down Across The Sea
The Marias “Back to Me”
There’s a few lines scattered throughout “Back to Me” that nudge you towards interpreting the character in the song as delusional or stalker-ish in a lightly humorous way. I’ll be real with you – I think that’s just hedging, or a shake of salt and pepper to cut through the overwhelming sweetness of the music. They can dial back the earnestness a little bit, but it’s still an extremely earnest song about being jealous of your ex’s new partner and pleading with them to take you back. And crucially, it’s not about that in some dark or creepy way. It’s all genuinely achingly romantic, and there’s a touch of innocence to how María Zardoya sings it that I’d compare to how Susanna Hoffs sang The Bangles’ “Eternal Flame.” The lyrics don’t give you any reason to believe she’ll be successful in wooing them back, but there’s hope and real love in her heart.
Buy it from Amazon.
LINKS LINKS LINKS LINKS
• Did you know Nick Cave has a long-running blog in which he answers fan questions? I didn’t. I quite like his response to this recent question, in which he pushes back on the resentment a lot of people feel towards artists, often without realizing it.
• Nick Sylvester ponders the value of independent labels in 2025, from the unique POV of someone who’s run an independent label, worked as a professional music critic/journalist, been a member of a band, and works as a producer for contemporary artists.
• Stuart Berman has shared an interview he conducted with Stephen Malkmus back when he released his debut solo record in 2001.
• I will hate the "Blurred Lines" ruling forever but I do think that if Pharrell has to give up publishing for sorta sounding like Marvin Gaye, he should also get royalties on this Lil Tecca song produced by Lucas Scharff and Folie that sounds EXACTLY like his work on down to the signature stutter intro. Don’t get me wrong, though, it’s a good song!
LIVE LIVE LIVE LIVE
I saw Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds and St. Vincent at Barclays Center. I’ve seen St.Vincent many times but this was one of the best shows I’ve witnessed, in part because their current live guitar sound is a palette consisting equal parts Reznor, Frusciante, Prince, and Shields, and it rules. Nick Cave is quite an intense showman, and "Into My Arms" made me cry because I truly understand it now.
I also finally saw Mercury Rev perform despite being a fan since the late 90s. I’ve always fixated on the Hudson Valley-ness of their music because there’s so little music that evokes the area where I grew up, but this show made me lock in on the ultra-romantic theatricality of their songs.