Fluxblog Weekly #29: One Direction, Eric Church, Maribou State, !!!, Future Punx
I didn't write about it the other day, but a major highlight of this week was going to see !!! open for themselves as a Stereolab cover band called Stereolad. They were excellent and really nailed the songs they selected. Stereolab is at the top of my list of bands I'd really like to see perform again someday, and though this obviously wasn't the real deal, I was so happy watching it that it may as well have been. There was a young dude near me who was like "Wow, that was amazing! Do you think they'll release that stuff soon? And how did you know all the words??," not realizing that !!! was covering a band called Stereolab. It was really sweet. I pointed him in the direction of Transient Random Noise-Bursts, Refried Ectoplasm, and Emperor Tomato Ketchup.
November 16th, 2015
I Come Alive When I Hear Your Voice
One Direction “Hey Angel”
“Hey Angel” sounds like every song on The Verve’s Urban Hymns album distilled into one epic, lovelorn ballad, and it’s a great look on the boys of One Direction. Richard Ashcroft’s music may be a lot more dark and depressive than what you’d normally get from 1D, but his aesthetic was always hyper-romantic and melodramatic, and that suits them perfectly. Like pretty much all the best 1D songs, this is basically a song in which a bunch of cute boys sing about their admiration for some ordinary yet outstanding young woman. Now, look, the guys in One Direction and their various collaborators aren’t idiots, and they know this formula is something that makes them insane amounts of money. Flattery gets them everywhere. But I really don’t think it’s that cynical, and I think they sincerely respect the audience and aren’t bullshitting when they drop a chorus that goes “Oh, I wish I could be more like you! / Do you wish you could be more like me?” It’s exciting to hear respect and admiration be the focus of pop songs, particularly since that’s in short supply when it comes to the music of other major male pop stars today. You’re sure as hell never going to get this from misogynist uber-creeps like Drake and The Weeknd. And even if 1D is truly coming from a place of greedy cynicism, I just can’t see any downside in a lot of girls growing up listening to songs in which desirable young men sing about how cool girls are and how much they wish they were like them.
Buy it from Amazon.
November 17th, 2015
Hotter When The Sun Goes Down
Eric Church “Chattanooga Lucy”
Eric Church’s Mr. Misunderstood is a “surprise record,” and the product of rapid creativity – ten songs written and recorded in less than a month. You can hear that in the music, particularly in the way a song like “Chattanooga Lucy” has this feverish immediacy. Like a lot of country musicians, Church is a musician with a high level of craft, but nothing about this song feels fussed over or over-considered. It’s exciting to hear a guy trust his instincts so much, and to go out on a limb stylistically and come out with a funk/gospel/country hybrid that doesn’t seem forced in any way. The urgency of the track suits the “forbidden fruit” theme of the lyrics really well, too – you get the sense that when he’s singing about hooking up with this girl that he’s risking a huge mistake at any moment, and that just gets him more excited.
Buy it from Amazon.
November 18th, 2015
The Thinnest Line To Hang You By
Maribou State featuring Holly Walker “Steal”
At this point in time it’s pretty standard to mix R&B-inflected vocals with cool electronic textures, but even still, there’s a warmth and richness to Holly Walker’s voice that contrasts with the tone of this Maribou State track that it almost seems wrong. The music isn’t too far off from what you might expect from, say, Four Tet or Jamie xx, but whereas vocals kinda just float around in their mixes, Walker’s voice is so foregrounded that everything else seems slightly blurry most of the time, like it’s a musical form of rack focus. It really works for the song – she’s expressing a lot of guilt and regret, and she seems so close that her words and feelings can’t be easily tuned out.
Buy it from Amazon.
November 19th, 2015
Dipped It In Chrome
!!! “Lucy Mongoosey”
On both a musical and lyrical level, “Lucy Mongoosey” seems to be about situations which are mostly good, but there’s something slightly wrong about it and you just can’t really place it. The music is mostly funky and bright, but there’s a sad drag to it, and Nic Offer’s voice sounds worn out and exhausted as he gently begs someone not to waste his time. There’s a lot of affection in this song, but it’s all tainted by a vague unease and an acute awareness that time is running out, one way or another. Maybe the point of a song like this is to force someone’s hand, and to get things right somehow. Offer certainly doesn’t sound like a guy who’s excited about the possibility of wrecking a good thing because it’s not totally perfect. If anything, “Lucy Mongoosey” projects a feeling of guilt about thinking that way.
Buy it from Amazon.
November 20th, 2015
When We Finally Smashed The State
Future Punx “Post-Wave”
Future Punx really commit to their premise – this is a song about the future of punk, and it’s a future that imagines the movement eventually succeeding in “smashing the state” and literally saving people’s lives. They sound like the future as imagined in the late ‘70s or very early ‘80s, which is to say… it’s actually more new wave, and rather a lot like Devo. The concept is fun, but the music is a lot better. This isn’t tremendously original in style or tone, but it’s so much in the spirit and tone of a lot of weirdo sci-fi punk from the early ‘80s that it’d be easy to believe this was released in 1981 and not a few months ago in 2015. I can get very cynical about punk, but this is the type of song that makes me believe in the genre, or more specifically, the elements of the genre that informed new wave.
Buy it from Bandcamp.