Fluxblog Weekly #31: Bradford Cox interview, why Carly Rae Jepsen flopped, Studio One mix, Majical Cloudz, Wet, Demi Lovato, Pill, Christine & The Queens
I have quite a bit of stuff for you this week!
Here's an interview I conducted with Bradford Cox from Deerhunter and Atlas Sound a little while ago, but finally have up this week. It's pretty long, but the transcript is MUCH longer – it's edited down from a three hour interview. A lot of the best stuff was off-the-record, but I think if you care about his music, you will get a lot out of this.
A writer named Cam Lindsay to offer my take on why Carly Rae Jepsen's critically beloved album E•MOT•ION flopped. Here's what I wrote back to him, which I shared on Twitter earlier this week:
Hi Cam, I think Carly Rae Jepsen has a lot of things going against her. The most important thing being that she is widely, if perhaps prematurely, considered to be a one-hit wonder, and "Call Me Maybe" is just waaaaaay bigger than she is. "Call Me Maybe" was a massive meme, and her connection to her own song is sorta incidental at a point. This sets her up to be an underdog some people can get behind, but most people just see her as a nostalgic figure at best and a flop at worst. On top of that, there's not really much space for her in the market. Her style of pop is VERY off-trend. She's considerably older than a lot of the other singers working the young teen market, and the fact that she's pushing 30 and still selling a "young fresh innocent" vibe reads as creepy or immature to some people. The best single she could offer on this album cycle was basically a rewritten "Call Me Maybe," which does her few favors. She has no particular identity beyond being "sweet girl next door," and we've already got pop stars with bigger personalities who essentially fill that niche. (Like Katy Perry, who is the idealized self-image of the classic American sorority girl, or Meghan Trainor, who represents an archetype that was previously invisible in pop.) She's essentially surplus to demand, and is frankly lucky to have developed a cult of indie-leaning fans who appreciate her vibe and underdog status. (But make no mistake, that cult does a LOT to destroy her chances at scoring more mainstream hits.) I wrote about this at BuzzFeed a few years ago, but if she plays her cards right, she could turn herself into a Kylie Minogue-esque figure, and she's kinda on the right track with this record :http://www.buzzfeed.com/perpetua/carly-rae-jepsen-is-the-next-kylie-minogue That said, she is nowhere near as good as Kylie Minogue. - Matthew
Here's this week's posts, starting with a special mix to mark the beginning of winter.
December 1st, 2015
Studio One Holiday Party
DOWNLOAD IT
Dennis Alcapone “Power Version” / Johnny Osbourne “Sing Jah Stylee” / Michigan & Smiley “Rub A Dub Style” / Willie Williams “Master Plan” / The Soulettes “King Street” / Maria Griffiths “Tell Me Now” / Willie Williams and the Brentford Disco Set “Armagideon Time” / Sugar Minott “Love and Understanding” / Alton Ellis “You Make Me Happy” / Prince Francis “Street Doctor” / Green Tea & Chassy “Ghetto Girl” / Prince Francis “Rockfort Shock” / Sound Dimension “Granny Scratch Scratch” / Senior Soul “Is It Because I’m Black?” / Larry Marshall “Nanny Goat Du” / The Mad Lads “Ten to One” / Jennifer Lara “Tell Me Where” / Wailing Souls “Row Fisherman Row” / Cornell Campbell “My Conversation” / Aubrey Adams & Rico Rodriguez “Stew Peas and Cornflakes” / Simms & Robinson “White Christmas”
Over the past seven years or so I’ve developed a personal tradition of listening to a lot of classic Studio One reggae, ska, rocksteady, dub, and dancehall in early winter. I’ve come to closely associate the music with crisp air, early nights, Christmas lights, and the general look and feeling of New York City in this time of year. The music has sorta replaced traditional Christmas music in my life, and though I listen to a lot of this stuff year-round, the comfortable feeling of listening to it under these conditions has become part of why December is unquestionably my favorite month of the year. I’d really like to throw a party someday where it’s just a lot of people in a room lit by Christmas lights, and only Studio One music is played. That’s not in the cards this year, but this collection features a lot of the music I’d want to play at a Studio One holiday party.
My personal Studio One playlist features well over a hundred songs, but this set covers a lot of the very best tunes, and my favorite versions of several popular riddims. (Believe me, it was really hard to narrow down to just one in some cases – I could listen to variations on “Real Rock,” “Rockfort Rock,”“Sidewalk Doctor,” and “Far East” for hours on end.)
If you are new to Studio One – or Jamaican music from the ’60s and ’70s in general – I recommend jumping into this music without burdening yourself with too much context, and just feeling it. This is some of the most joyous, texturally unique, beautiful, sonically adventurous, funky music you will ever encounter. But this is indeed music with a very interesting and rich history, and if you want to learn more about it, this documentary about Coxsone Dodd and Studio One produced by Soul Jazz is a great place to start.
This collection features tracks from various Studio One compilations and singles reissued by the Soul Jazz label. Do yourself a huge favor and buy as many as you can from them. A lot of this stuff cannot be found on streaming services.
November 30th, 2015
Going Back To Knowing Nothing
Majical Cloudz “Disappeared”
There’s a line in Spoon’s “The Mystery Zone” that’s never too far from my mind, in which Britt Daniel sings about “the times that we met before we met.” He’s romanticizing the time before two people connect in a meaningful way, and he’s fantasizing about going back in time and doing it all over again. This Majical Cloudz song is sorta the reverse of that idea, and dwells on the time after you’ve become estranged from or simply lost touch with someone who was once important to you, and going back to being strangers with separate lives. There’s a lot of yearning for the past in this song, but no fantasy – he wants the old intimacy, and knows he can’t ever go back. He can hardly even imagine experiencing something similar with someone else. It’s an incredibly sad song, but despite its despondent tone it also conveys a lot of kindness and sympathy for the people who’ve moved on. It’s a lot easier to retroactively make the people who disappear from your life into villains, and that’s not what this is at all. This is more like the thing you wish you could say to someone, but can’t out of respect for their wishes.
Buy it from Amazon.
December 2nd, 2015
There Are Better Things For Me
Wet “Deadwater”
Wet’s music has a lot of superficial gloss that connects it to the more adult contemporary end of modern R&B, but their melodic style isn’t rooted much in soul. A song like “Deadwater” feels more simpatico with melancholy teen pop from the early ‘90s, or even folksy pop like Melanie from the ‘60s. The melody is particularly strong, and I love the way the natural tone of Kelly Zutrau’s voice has this bright, optimistic quality as the melody signals sadness and the lyrics are mostly an expression of futility.
Buy it from Amazon.
Demi Lovato “Stone Cold”
I’ve dismissed Demi Lovato as a second string version of Katy Perry who turns up with bland Perry-like hits whenever the real deal is between album cycles, and while I stand by that assessment of songs like “Cool for the Summer” and “Skyscraper,” the ballad “Stone Cold” reveals something in Lovato that’s not as easily written off. The song is pitched somewhere between understated minimalism and scenery-chewing melodrama, with Lovato belting out some lines like she’s trying to make Christina Aguilera seem subtle by comparison. I think that actually works for the song, though – it’s not hard to imagine a more graceful version of it that shades in the R&B-gospel qualities of the melody, but going way over the top gives it a touch of maudlin camp that enhances rather than undermines the raw emotion at the core of it. She basically sounds like she’s slaying her own song at karaoke, and that’s kinda brilliant.
Buy it from Amazon.
December 3rd, 2015
Skinny Dipping In A Neon Pool
Pill “Hotline”
All the sounds in this track signal danger – the thud of the drums, the buzzing siren quality of the organ, the traffic jam skronk of the sax. But Veronica Torres’ vocal pat seems to charge right into harm’s way, and her words and casually confrontational tone has a specific city girl “fuck you, asshole” quality that you don’t really find too often outside of vintage No Wave music. Her character is addressing creepy, predatory men, but she seems a bit creepy and predatory too – very aware of what she’s getting into, but willing to put up with some things to surround herself with convertibles and Infinity Pools.
Buy it from Bandcamp.
Christine and the Queens “Tilted”
“Tilted” is a translated version of a previous song, “Christine,” and though my French is rather poor and I can’t tell how similar the words are between the two, I am impressed by the English lyrics. “I am actually good” is a very interesting refrain for a pop song – defiant, but also oddly defensive. Maybe that’s just the sort of unique phrasing that comes out of translation, but I think it’s lovely. The words aren’t really the point though – in either iteration of this track, it’s really about how that melodic hook floats alongside that main keyboard part, which sorta flutters gracefully through the song’s ample negative space.
Buy it from Amazon.