Fluxblog Weekly #250: Angelica Garcia | Melkbelly | Trippie Redd | Deeper
February 10th, 2020
Jaywalking To The Corner Store
Angelica Garcia “It Don’t Hinder Me”
The weight of “It Don’t Hinder Me” shifts around – a bit airy at the start, and stridently stomping in the more theatrical second half to emphasize the singer’s strength and pride. Angelica Garcia, a Southern Californian of Mexican and Salvadorian heritage, is singing about the cultural details of her youth that make her feel homesick, and the context that gives her a sense of self. There’s a vibrant specificity to her lyrics, particularly as she recalls bits of her past that weren’t exactly fun or glamorous. But she’s making a point of claiming it all, because every bit of it made her what she is, and this is a song about being proud. This sort of thing could easily be sentimental or tacky, but Garcia’s witty delivery and the punky bluntness of the rhythm keeps it all in check.
Buy it from Bandcamp.
February 11th, 2020
I Cannot Hear Above The Sugar
Melkbelly “LCR”
“LCR” would feel wired and panicky in most any arrangement given its fast and jagged central guitar riff, but Melkbelly’s James Wetzel pushes the song to a frazzled extreme with his dizzyingly busy drum fills. The rhythm is constantly shifting but even in relatively quiet moments there’s no sense of stillness, only a jittery pause before bolting forwards again. But as the music signals anxiety, singer Miranda Winters sounds as unaffected and chill as a young Kim Deal while singing about observing people but feeling totally disconnected from them. Is she just bored, maybe? Or could it be it’s more like she’s traumatized and numb by whatever intense experience the music seems to be reacting to?
Buy it from Bandcamp.
February 12th, 2020
Let’s Play A Game Of Simon Says
Trippie Redd featuring Young Thug “Yell Oh”
“Yell Oh” is immediately apparent as a Pi’erre Bourne composition even before his signature “Yo Pierre!!” drop comes in around 20 seconds into the track. The piano hook is just so extremely him – the tone has the uncanny quality of a cheap keyboard in preset piano mode, and the repeated melodic hook is almost too busy to allow space for rapping. There’s also the way the drum programming sounds as though it’s tilted at a diagonal from the vocal, leaving the music feeling a bit drunk and stumbling. The use of bass here is particularly inspired, with a low rumble that vibrates under the track in a way that makes it feel as though all these other elements stacked on top of it could fall over and crash like a Jenga tower if the frequency gets any deeper.
Buy it from Amazon.
February 13th, 2020
So Sick So Sick So Sick
Deeper “This Heat”
“This Heat” is the extremely crisp and rhythmically tight sort of post-punk, the kind that sounds as though it’s a mathematically precise chart of someone’s real-time anxiety that’s been transposed to musical notation. Deeper aren’t reinventing any wheels here – if this is a vibe you enjoy, it will sound immediate familiar and welcome – but they execute this mode of music at a high level. A lot of this comes down to Deeper being as adept with writing melodies as they are with creating a tense rhythm, and the way the vocals sound a lot like The Cure’s Robert Smith in the best possible ways, drawing on the raw humanity and open-wound melodrama of his trebly yelps. It cuts straight through the more schematic elements of the music to keep you focused on the angst at the core of it.
Buy it from Bandcamp.