Fluxblog Weekly #249: Tara Clerkin Trio, Caroline Rose, Soccer Mommy, The Heliocentrics
I've set up a new ongoing playlist for 2020 called FluxCaviar. Unlike the one I had public last year, this is not basically just a running draft for the 2020 survey in which most anything is included, and will be curated and only include music I fully endorse. You can follow it on either Spotify or Apple Music.
February 3rd, 2020
Stuck In My Mind
Tara Clerkin Trio “In the Room”
The Tara Clerkin Trio are mostly a jazz group, but their music bleeds into other neighboring territories – vibey electronic music, artsy indie music, psychedelia. “In the Room” starts off slow and pensive with a simple saxophone figure repeating like drawing in steady, calming breaths for about two minutes. After that the song clicks into a mellow percussive groove with a clipped, hypnotic vocal pattern. This shift feels a bit like clouds parting to let in some fresh sunlight after a bit of rain. The pressure changes, the mood lifts. It’s incredibly lovely and calming, and only gets more so as the song drifts out and the percussion dissipates as that original sax pattern gets softer and softer.
Buy it from Bandcamp.
February 4th, 2020
Baby, Watch Me Freak Out
Caroline Rose “Feel the Way I Want”
Believing in yourself, allowing yourself to want what you want, and giving yourself person to do and be what you want all requires a leap of faith that can look delusional and arrogant when viewed from any direction. “Feel the Way I Want” plays on that ambiguity, both celebrating its character’s decision to throw herself into her desires and ambitions and looking askance at her, vaguely dubious of whether she can actually follow through on some big talk. But that bit of doubt is mostly just subtext – the synthy bounce of the song conveys a blithe confidence, and Rose sings her choruses with a joyful sincerity and delivers her verses with a touch of weight and tension, rooting her resolutions in a history of conflict and low self-esteem.
Buy it from Bandcamp.
February 5th, 2020
Dial Back The Flame
Soccer Mommy “Circle the Drain”
The best way I can explain the appeal of “Circle the Drain” is like when people make approximations of popular fast food and commercially produced snack items with superior ingredients. In this case the fast food item is a rock-pop ballad in the mode of the very late ‘90s/early ‘00s: think Michelle Branch, Avril Lavigne, maybe a little Vanessa Carlton. The song evokes that general feeling but doesn’t go as heavy on the gloss or sentimentality. Soccer Mommy’s Sophy Allison is reaching for a more accessible – and at this point, highly nostalgic – style, but still retains a lot of her indie aesthetics. (To keep up the metaphor, consider this the artisanal ingredients.) She’s also a lot darker in her lyrics as she sings frankly about crippling depression, and without reaching any sort of conclusion or teachable lesson. The sort of misery she sings about here is an ongoing suck on her body and soul, and the best she can come up with in the short term is just “trying to seem strong for my love, for my family, and friends.”
Buy it from Amazon.
February 6th, 2020
Nobody To Claim Your Space
The Heliocentrics “Burning Wooden Ship”
There’s really no getting around mentioning that The Heliocentrics are doing a Silver Apples thing with this song, right? The Silver Apples aesthetic – that crisp in-the-pocket percussion, the woozy vocal, the sci-fi synthesizer – is so distinctive that anyone who emulates it can’t really do so without it being a sort of tribute. It’s a great sound, though, and this band does a great job in interpreting it, particularly in the way the drum performance integrates a bit of the feel of Can’s Jaki Liebezeit circa Tago Mago. “Burning Wooden Ship” sounds like an excursion into the cosmos, especially as the percussion drops out and the song drifts off course in the middle section. When the song clicks back into its tight rhythm, it’s like the whole thing falls back into gravity.
Buy it from Bandcamp.