Fluxblog Weekly #20: Martin Courtney, Telekinesis, Against Me!, Lana Del Rey
Good news for survey mix fans! I'm starting a new project in which I'll make surveys for each year of the 1980s, starting with 1989 and moving backwards from there. I think it's more interesting to start with 1989 – it's not as "cool" a year as 1980, and a lot of the point of this is to resist canonical views of the era and attempt to represent the full breadth of what was happening in each year. To a large extent, I'm doing this for my own benefit, so I can deepen my knowledge of the era and understand a lot of familiar music in its original context. I have a few old friends helping out in the curation of this, and if you have any strong feelings, ideas, suggestions, etc, please respond to this email and let me know. The first survey should be ready in a few weeks.
September 14th, 2015
Springs And Falls Long Gone
Martin Courtney “Vestiges”
I’m not sure why Martin Courtney decided to make Many Moons a solo record when it basically sounds like the fourth Real Estate album. I’m sure he has his reasons, but as a listening experience, it is pretty much identical to Real Estate, except that the arrangements are maybe 25% more lush and there’s a touch of ‘70s AM radio vibes about it. I suppose the reality is that Courtney is so loyal to his chill melancholy muse that he can’t help but write nothing but gentle, wistful tunes in any context. This would only be a problem if he wasn’t a master of this form. “Vestiges” is one of the best songs he’s ever written, and approaches his recurring theme of nostalgia from the perspective of someone who can’t escape the detritus of his past. The song doesn’t get too heavy, but you can sense the vague dread of mortality as time seems to slip away, and a nagging fear that life is passing this guy by as old friends move on and he’s stuck living amongst the stuff that everyone else left behind. I think this song is about trying to make peace with those feelings, and looking at the coming and going of things like a tide that ebbs and flows. But I don’t know if anyone is really convinced by that, let along the character in the song.
Buy it from Amazon.
September 15th, 2015
Direct Hit To The Heart
Telekinesis “Courtesy Phone”
There’s a brief breakdown near the end of this song in which Michael Lerner clears away the treble and sings “you forget the feeling of magic / you forget feeling emphatic” over a simple beat and a chugging bass line. I know this feel, Michael! It’s surprisingly easy to go long stretches of time without feeling many strong emotions as an adult – sometimes it’s a matter of falling into a depression that blanks everything out, and more often it’s a steady OK feeling that turns into extended complacency. The former is awful and soul-deadening, the latter is fine but totally unrewarding. “Courtesy Phone” lies on the periphery of this emotional dead zone, with Lerner fighting against the impulse to stay in that plateau, and pushing himself to risk dealing with the lows in order to get some highs. You can hear that tension in the music itself – the beat is stiff and robotic, but the structure of the music pushes against that to build a thrilling momentum.
Buy it from Amazon.
September 16th, 2015
S.O.S. Texted From A Cell Phone
Against Me! “Don’t Lose Touch” (Live)
The most clever thing about “Don’t Lose Touch” is that Laura Jane Grace embedded a self-critique about getting too caught up in a rock star trip in a song that is built to get the audience moving and singing along and worshipping your every move. It’s the sort of punk anthem that pulls you in whether you want to or not; the song is just nonstop rising momentum with a dance beat. And she calls that out too – “manipulation in rock music, fucking nausea!” It’d be easy to read this song as a self-loathing thing, and maybe there’s a trace of that in the original studio recording, but this live version from last year feels like a celebration. Now it sounds more like a pledge than self-admonishment, even when she’s belting out “I’m loooooooosing touuuuuuuch!” It’s also like a contract with herself and the audience – if you think I’m losing touch, call me out. But I don’t think that’s going to happen.
Buy it from Amazon.
September 17th, 2015
I Still Get Trashed When I Hear Your Tunes
Lana Del Rey “Terrence Loves You”
Lana Del Rey keeps writing essentially the same ballad about doomed love with distant, charismatic men, but in her endless iteration, she finds new extremely specific emotions to express in song. The feeling in “Terrence Loves You” is so precise that it’s difficult to put into words, but you hear the way her voice trills on “I lost myself when I lost youuuuu” and deepens slightly on “I still get trashed, darling, when I hear your tunes,” and it’s almost painful to recognize it. It’s such a hopeless form of love, a sort of love that’s built on feeling like you’re never good enough, and grateful for whatever scraps of affection you can get from some person you’ve decided is totally magical. But it’s also the sound of finding comfort in feeling so small in relation to someone else, and wanting in some way to be consumed by their identity. It’s falling in love as a way of hiding from yourself.
Buy it from Amazon.