Fluxblog Weekly #172: Taylor Swift, Lithics, Astronauts Etc, Robyn
August 6th, 2018
Is It Chill That You’re In My Head?
Taylor Swift “Delicate”
It’s so interesting to hear Taylor Swift doubt herself so much. “Delicate” is a love song, but from the perspective of someone who is desperately afraid that this amazing connection she’s made is about to be poisoned by her past, or ruined by allowing herself to be vulnerable too soon. And all she wants is to honest, and to just tell this guy what she’s feeling. She’s censoring herself, editing out as much as she can to maintain an illusion, but she’s not sure if it’s working.
She really makes you feel her angst here – the urgency of her desire crashing into the anxious need for self-preservation. You can hear the classic Taylor crush vibes in the song, but it’s muffled and muted by the icy arrangement. The song is all tormented restraint, so when the bridge comes and allows a brief moment of pure honesty – “sometimes when I look into your eyes I pretend you’re mine, all the damn time” – it’s incredibly cathartic. But then the song snaps back into the chorus – “is it cool that I said all that, is it chill that you’re in my head?” – and she sounds so totally defeated by her need to protect herself.
Buy it from Amazon.
August 7th, 2018
You Never Know How You’ll End Up
Lithics “Still Forms”
I hate to share a song and say that it sounds just like something else – it feels lazy and disrespectful to me – but… I have to do that here. This band sounds so much like Erase Errata that it’s uncanny. I first encountered Lithics when they opened for Stephen Malkmus and the Jicks recently, and I was stunned by how specifically they sounded like Erase Errata. Not post-punk in general, or other similar bands like Delta 5 or The Raincoats. Erase Errata, right on down to the tone of Aubrey Hornor’s voice.
But this is not a complaint. I miss Erase Errata, and Lithics are very good at making this type of jagged, disaffected music. “Still Forms” has a weird sort of swing to it, and its main guitar riffs have a peculiar sharp trebly clang that is like the musical equivalent of a bitter taste on the tongue. Hornor’s lyrics are evocative too, particular with her cold, blunt delivery. A line like “TV remote lying in a field of golden wheat” comes off as a menacing implication.
Buy it from Bandcamp.
August 8th, 2018
Messy Hard To Understand
Astronauts, etc “Symbol Land”
“Living in a symbol land.” That phrase, central to this song, really gets under my skin. Symbols in and of themselves are fine – utilitarian, a crucial part of how we process language, images, and life. But the way we lean on symbols for shorthand can be disastrous. A lot of the problems in the world come from an over reliance on symbolism: A laziness in interpreting other people that justifies casual cruelty, the intellectual bankruptcy of only seeing action and ideas for their symbolic value, the accumulation of empty signifiers in capitalism.
“Symbol Land,” as a song, isn’t quite as political as my interpretation of that line would suggest. It’s more of a broken love song, with Anthony Ferraro singing about attempting to parse the meaning of a collapsing relationship. His melody is gorgeous, and the sound of the chords and harmony has a stately and angelic quality, like John Lennon’s “Imagine” by way of Brian Wilson. Ferraro’s words are left deliberately ambiguous, almost as though he’s attempting to disrupt the symbols that weighed down this relationship in expectations beyond simple, pure love.
Buy it from Bandcamp.
August 9th, 2018
The Picture Is Incomplete
Robyn “Missing U”
Robyn knows what we want. She knows that we want her to make the kind of songs you dance to when you’re upset. She knows we want her to take our loneliness and heartache and turn it into romantic, cinematic, and cathartic moments that are sometimes more satisfying than actually feeling good. She knows no one else can do this for us like she can. And so here’s “Missing U,” a song that gives us what we want and what we need. Robyn is not very prolific, but she is generous.
Robyn knows her way around a hook, but the reason her songs work comes down to the sound of her voice. She always sounds like a strong person cracking under the pressure of enormous feelings, like she’s trying to hold it together just a bit longer. She always sounds like her pride is slipping away, like someone ready to totally debase herself to get the feeling out. She never loses control in the song, but it always sounds like if you keep playing it over and over, she might.
Buy it from Amazon.