Fluxblog Weekly #223: The New Pornographers, Jarina De Marco, Battles, Metronomy
If you didn't know already I keep an ongoing, continuously updated Spotify playlist of the year's best and most notable songs here – it will eventually mutate into the 2019 survey! I mean, it kinda already IS. Go on and follow it!
August 4th, 2019
The Skyline Askew
The New Pornographers “Falling Down the Stairs of Your Smile”
“Falling Down the Stairs of Your Smile” relies more on groove and atmosphere than most New Pornographers songs, and places John Collins’ bass – an easily overlooked element of the band – at the foreground of the arrangement. It works well in gently shifting the listener’s expectations of their music going into their eighth record but also establishes a feel of just-off destabilization that carries through the entire song and its lyrical themes. Carl Newman positions this as a sort of love song, but eliminates all traces of sentimentality and affection in his words and vocal inflections. The song starts with him making a pointed clarification – “you look just like a starmaker / that is NOT like a star” – and the rest of the lines signal calculation, cynicism, and mistrust. The chorus still has a slight love buzz to it as Kathryn Calder sings about a disorienting feeling that wipes out balance and reasonable interpretations of events. You can’t help but be passively manipulated by this person. In the words of another great song, it’s “fate up against your will.”
Buy it from Amazon.
August 6th, 2019
Isn’t This Fun?
Jarina De Marco “Identity Crisis”
“Identity Crisis” is an ALL CAPS song – bold and bright and loud and so overbearingly catchy that it might drive you a little crazy. There’s no holding back here, it’s all maximalist oomph and pizzazz, and that carries over to its extremely colorful and slyly political music video. The music needs to be this hyper and saturated to match the character and intensity Jarina De Marco brings to the table. She’s all flavor and zero timidity, and her lyrics approach the complexity of colorism within Latinx culture, particularly in her native Dominican Rebublic, with an appropriate blend of anger and pointed irony in order to put a spotlight on a poisonous absurdity. The lyrics and video lean hard on parody, but the song goes way too hard to be either a joke or get too serious.
Buy it from Amazon.
August 7th, 2019
Figure It Out
Battles featuring Sal Principato “Titanium 2 Step”
The best Battles songs seem exaggerated and surreal, pushing commonplace sounds like drum hits and guitar strums to odd extremes that make you wonder if a human could really play what you’ve just heard. “Titanium 2 Step” does this trick mainly in a bit that sounds like the end of a riff has been suddenly and drastically pitched up before returning to the base tempo. There’s also a cartoonish springiness to the track, like it’s this big bouncy castle of chords and beats that Liquid Liquid vocalist Sal Principato is bopping around in, shouting with incoherent glee the whole time. What a weird and joyful song.
Buy it from Amazon.
August 8th, 2019
She’s Happy Like My Birthday
Metronomy “Salted Caramel Ice Cream”
“Salted Caramel Ice Cream” is a crush song, but it’s specifically about being into someone who is just a bit out of your league. She’s fancy, she’s a bit posh. She’s aspirational. Joseph Mount sings the song with a cheeky tone – he’s a bit breathy in a campy way, but not enough to make his lust a joke. (Though he’s certainly laughing at himself there.) The song is as light and bubbly as the Perrier he references at the start, and his vocal spikes the sweetness of it all with a salty kick of self-awareness, just like the treat that gives the song its name. It’s so fun and flirty that you can sort of miss that for a good portion of the song he’s stressing out about making eye contact with her and screwing it all up.
Buy it from Amazon.