Fluxblog 529: it means I love you
New soundtrack-style playlist + songs by Chime Oblivion, Neggy Gemmy, Sault, and Addison Rae
This week’s playlist is IT MEANS I LOVE YOU, a soundtrack-style mix of spacey, soulful, romantic music largely from the past 8 years or so. There’s actually a fair number of 2025 songs in this one, and I tend not to include current music in these things for whatever reason. I think you’ll get the vibe of this one right away, but it’s a little difficult to describe. It includes songs by Jessy Lanza, Jessie Ware, Spill Tab, Crumb, Lana Del Rey, Billie Eilish, Men I Trust, Mac DeMarco, Banks, Eddie Chacon, Nick Hakim, Erykah Badu, and more.
The Grace Of A VHS Tracker
Chime Oblivion “Kiss Her or Be Her”
You may not know David Barbarossa by name, but if you’ve ever heard the classics by Bow Wow Wow or Adam and the Ants, you’d immediately recognize his drumming style right away on “Kiss Her or Be Her.” It’s a very distinctive feel – boppy but busy with fills, both tribal and urban, tumbling yet graceful. The chaotic and up tempo sound fits perfectly with the gnarly, tightly wound guitar parts by Osees’ leader John Dwyer and H.L. Nelly’s manic vocal. She’s singing about a confusing crush that’s both exasperating and exciting – is this actual lust, or just fascination? What is she supposed to do with this feeling? It all clicks together to sound a lot like The Slits, and you can sorta feel the ghost of Ari Up looking down from the heavens like “just go kiss her already!”
Buy it from Bandcamp.
Neggy Gemmy “Mysterious Girl”
“Mysterious Girl” has a wonderful weightlessness to it, as though all the trebly elements are floating in discrete layers high above the bass line. It evokes the lightheaded sensation of getting too high, the butterflies feeling of having a new crush, the loose physicality of being utterly carefree and in the moment. The lyrics are basically another “kiss her or be her?” scenario, with Lindsey French getting lost in a reverie after spotting a beautiful and stylish woman on the street. She fills in some of the blanks of her existence, but only in the most romanticized ways – she smells like lilac, she sees through you, she’s only going to break your heart. You get the sense that it would be better for this girl to remain mysterious, unknowable, and untouchably perfect in her mind. She’s turned her into a piece of art.
Buy it from Bandcamp.
Every Good Thing Comes My Way
Sault “R.L.”
If you’re only paying attention to the chorus of “R.L.” – and it’s plausible that you would, given how much it’s repeated through the song – you’d definitely get the impression that it’s an unambiguous love song: “Nothing beats your love / no, nothing can come close to you / real love, real love, real love.” It’s sung very sweetly, and the track is so smooth and funky. It sounds like real love, real love, real love. But go a little deeper into the song and it’s more complicated. The lyrics in the verses seem more like a negotiation, like she’s talking this other person into letting their guard down and accepting this real love. And the grooviness of the music is offset by a tightness in the arrangement, where the minimalism of the track comes across like holding back bigger, warmer feelings.
Buy it from Bandcamp.
Addison Rae “Headphones On”
It’s funny how it now feels more transgressive for Addison Rae to sing “I need a cigarette to make me feel better” than to hear Charli XCX sing about cocaine or any number of rappers mumbling about gobbling pills. Rae is basic, but in a high concept way. She’s not necessarily an ordinary girl now, but she would’ve been when I was in my late teens/early 20s and skinny diet soda-sipping, chain smoking white girls were arguably at a cultural apex. “Headphones On” sounds like that Y2K era too – the more introspective end of TRL pop, but with a touch of St Etienne/Pizzicato 5 sophistication spilling over from the mid 90s. I suppose I could have some vain anxiety about my actual youth being a far away romanticized era for young people now, but I mostly just feel happy to have certain sounds come back in style. This is simply an ideal palette for a song about trying to stifle sadness and wishing your parents were (still? ever?) in love.
Buy it from Amazon.
LIVE LIVE LIVE LIVE
Magdalena Bay's Imaginal Disk is such an extraordinary record that I went to Terminal 5, possibly the worst venue in North America, to see them perform it. If you haven't heard it, it's THAT good. And the show was worth it, even if the sound wasn’t great and around 40% of the audience was insufferable.