Fluxblog Weekly #26: Beach House, Eleanor Friedberger, Peaches, Car Seat Headrest, Hinds, Jeffrey Lewis
This issue of the newsletter catches up on two and a half weeks of posts, as I continued to post shortly after publishing the 1988 survey mix set. I'm curious whether any of you have preferences about the frequency of the '80s surveys – right now I'm planning on dropping them every 3-4 weeks, but I'm interested in knowing if you think that's too fast to digest them. I'm not really sure how anyone consumes this stuff. You can just respond to this email if you have thoughts.
October 21st, 2015
She Never Really Sleeps
Beach House “One Thing”
It’s easy to write Beach House off as a one trick pony; they have a very narrow aesthetic and never stray from it. Releasing two albums in the span of a couple months might seem like overkill, and maybe it kinda is, but it’s a clever move in that it highlights just how different their records can be while essentially being iterations of the same thing. Thank Your Lucky Stars sounds more open and airy than the highly claustrophobic Depression Cherry, and it feels more dirty, worn, and scuffed-up in comparison. The previous record sounded like hiding from the world; this one is more about being weathered by it. Also, unlike the three Beach House records before it, Thank Your Lucky Stars sounds like it’s made by people willing to make eye contact with you.
“One Thing” is the most abrasive and beautiful thing on the record, and maybe their entire catalog. It’s built on a chugging chord pattern, and centers on guitar rather than keyboards. There’s a wonderful ambiguity to the mounting tension – is it fear, is it anticipation, is it lust, is it violence? Is it all of it at once? It’s a very sexy and romantic song without being obvious about anything, or even slightly sentimental. Victoria Legrand’s lyrics hint at a tension and some kind of sexual and emotional entanglement, but the lack of clarity seems to be the point. It’s never clear exactly what’s happening, and that’s why it’s such a powerful experience, or strong feeling.
Buy it from Amazon.
October 22nd, 2015
Love Letters In Motion
Eleanor Friedberger “False Alphabet City”
“False Alphabet City” is basically a song in which Eleanor Friedberger deals with the frustration of having nostalgia for a version of a neighborhood that doesn’t really exist anymore, and feeling like maybe you don’t really belong in that space anymore. This could easily be a more maudlin or angry song, but the feeling of the music is very relaxed, and at least to me feels like going home. Everything sounds familiar – the shape of things, the sense of space, even if the details are off. It sounds like a much looser version of the aesthetic The Fiery Furnaces had on Widow City and I’m Going Away, with the more rigid rhythmic structures swapped out for groovier bass parts and a lot more hi-hat. You can’t really go back but you can get close enough sometimes.
Buy it from Amazon.
October 26th, 2015
Just Say What You’re After
Peaches “Dumb Fuck”
Peaches sings this song from the perspective, more or less, of the sort of person Heather Havrilesky has been telling people to be over the past few years of her Dear Polly column. Which is to say, she’s being direct and honest and not buying into the insecurity-masquerading-as-politeness that allows tepid dudes to keep on being flakey and indecisive with impunity. Peaches isn’t fucking around here – she wants to define the relationship, or move on. She doesn’t really want to dump the guy, but she’s flustered by how dense he’s being. So what do you do if he doesn’t have a clue? You just call him a dumb fuck over and over until the exasperation turns into catharsis. Yet another great lesson from the teaches of Peaches.
Buy it from Amazon.
October 27th, 2015
Art Gets What It Wants And Art Gets What It Deserves
Car Seat Headrest “Times to Die”
A thing I really love about Will Toledo’s music is how often the songs sound like they’re being made up on the spot. This is a major feature of Car Seat Headrest’s live show, where I’m pretty certain I have literally seen them improvise new material on stage, but it’s apparent in a song like “Times to Die,” which has a very eccentric, nonlinear structure. It is in fact a highly structured song with very deliberate lyrics, but the feeling in the recording is that Toledo keeps remembering that he has more things to talk to you about, and so he keeps adding a bit more time to your trip, like “Fuck it, let’s drive another few blocks.” He’s got a lot on his mind, though! “Times to Die” is about him getting signed to Matador, and the Book of Job, and feeling like your friends have more adult lives than you, and grand ambitions, and the peculiarities of organized religion and sacraments, feeling on the outside of things, literally dying, metaphorically dying, and probably seven or eight other things. He piles on the hooks and bridges and asides and ideas as though this is the only song he’ll ever write, but the beautiful thing is that this is all coming from a hugely prolific songwriter who’s got an entire other record in the can as his Matador debut comes out this week. He’s very interesting, to say the least.
Buy it from Amazon.
October 28th, 2015
Amazing Feelings Juice
Hinds “Chili Town”
Hinds is a band of charming, effortlessly cool Spanish girls, and “Chili Town” is their most charming and effortlessly cool song. I’m sure there are people who would hear this and actually wish they’d put a bit more effort into it – it always sounds like one thing could go wrong and collapse at any moment, and their voices have a…sorta casual relationship with the notion of singing in tune. But that lead guitar part really nails a relaxed yet vaguely nervous feeling, and I don’t know if these lyrics about being so flirty and bratty to mask underlying feelings of uncertainty and impatience would come off as perfectly if they didn’t sound so very cool. The lyrics are fantastic too, full of vivid language like “amazing feelings juice,” “my laugh is oversized,” “saliva mixed with lies,” and “I am swimming in the dark because all your friends are sharks.” I like that they just state the subtext of their actions in the song, because in the actual moment, they’re just doing everything they can to keep it buried because they want some dude to catch a hint.
Pre-order it from Amazon.
October 29th, 2015
Dizzy From The Circle
Jeffrey Lewis & Los Bolts “Support Tours”
I imagine the audience for a song about the specific things that make touring as an opening act so awful is fairly tiny, but I’m certainly in it. “Support Tours” is basically a very interesting and funny blog entry set to music, but it is in factmusical – Lewis’ words flow along a strong melody line, and his cadence and inflections add shades of irony, sadness, and bemusement to his lyrics’ jokes and truth-bombs. I particularly like when he gets to the part about graduating to headliner level and it being his turn to screw over some other band, and it’s like a defeated shrug. The entire song is just like “hey, this all sucks, but what can you do?”
Buy it from Amazon.