NEW MUSIC FOR OLDS #48
Bulk sucker assortment
Ahhhh, the first “normal” NMFO of 2024.
No time to fart around. Here’s what I have for you fine folks:
The perfect musical milkshake
The sound of young love
A psyche-prog epic
The Algorithm and its discontents
Confessions of a 50 year-old choirboy
And, wise words from Radmun Szikielovic
Shall we begin? (Oh yes, we shall.)
GOOD STUFF
The all important Glossary of Terms.
The Lemon Twigs, “My Golden Years”
Listen on Apple Music // Listen Amazon Music
Album: My Golden Years (single)
Nutshell: 60’s-inspired pop rock
Voltage: 6
Thoughts: Look, I’ve talked about the Lemon Twigs before. At length. But, my personal connection notwithstanding, I love this band and so should you. The D’Addario Brothers are still so young, but after four albums and a handful of EPs, they seem to have locked in on a sound—sunny, sugary and airtight. I kinda of miss the kitchen sink grandeur of their early albums, but it’s hard to complain when this new standalone single goes down easier than a half-melted milkshake1. It’s a real magic trick to make something this sophisticated sound so simple. Derivative? Sure. But when you’re talking about Brian Wilson, Revolver-era Beatles, Big Star and the Byrds…derive away!
Pairing Suggestion: Hitting repeat. Again.
Mall Girl, “Emo Shred”
Listen on Apple Music // Listen Amazon Music
Album: Emo Shred (E.P)
Nutshell: Math pop, I guess?
Voltage: 5
Thoughts: Don’t be put off by the song title—“Emo Shred” is the sound of young love, which is just about the nicest thing you can say about a song. There is, in fact, some dazzling guitar work in this 2-minute ditty, but your face will remain safely un-melted. “Technical” music rarely sounds this tender, which makes me wonder how wide an audience there is for this Norwegian quartet—it’s feels too smart for the dummies and too romantic for the guitar geeks. What is the path for a band this idiosyncratic to ever play anything more than 500-seaters? I’m fully aware that I sound like someone’s dad right now. “But honey, can you make a living from 2nd Wave Emo…?” That’s only because I want them to stick around long enough to evolve into something truly special.
Pairing Suggestion: Lying on the hood of your car on a starry night
SLIFT, “Ilion”
Listen on Apple Music // Listen Amazon Music
Album: Ilion
Nutshell: Psychedelic metal
Voltage: 9
Thoughts: Okay, the first two songs this week have been on the short side, so maybe you’ll indulge me an 11-minute psyche-prog epic based on Homer’s Odyssey! Oh, you’re skipping directly to the next section of the newsletter? Well, I appreciate your candor. But just know that you’re missing out on some of the best freak-out music since the the early days of The Mars Volta. I wish Slift paid a bit more attention to vocal melodies, but all three players are absolute monsters. Give it a try, just once. There’s even an extended “cooldown” section in the middle, so they clearly understand that one’s ears can only take so much. I do hope you make it to the end—the final minute of “Ilion” makes me want to devour planets.
Pairing Suggestion: Curling up with a good book, in bed by 10pm
And the first reader-approved song of 2024 is…
And yes, you should comment. It’s the right thing to do.
SOME BULLSHIT
THING #1
In NMFO #47 I griped a bit about the hegemony of year-end lists. For the most part, I directed my impotent rage at groupthink amongst the writerly class. But you can’t have a conversation about music consumption in the 21st Century without addressing the elephant in the room: the dreaded…Algorithm.
I didn’t get into the Big Tech of it all because it wasn’t central to my point, and also because I’m not sure I have anything to say about algorithms that hasn’t been said better by someone else. Case in point, NMFO reader Emily Rainbow Davis wrote this concise and considered piece about who Spotify thinks she is, and how “popular things are popular because they’re popular”.
I sprained my neck nodding along with this section:
I think this makes for an increasingly less interesting world. If we can only see what is popular, we are missing some of the most interesting songs, people or art. It’s how we end up with a highly polarized art world. It’s why there’s no middle class left in music (or art, or theatre, or film, or dance or…). You’re either Taylor Swift or no one.
The vanishing middle class is a trend in every walk of life, so it’s no shock to see it happening in the arts. But I think music is particularly vulnerable to the potentially deadening effects of “machine learning”. More than other art forms, popular music comes in tidy little digital widgets—what the ancient ones used to call “songs”. People mistakenly personify an algorithm, as if it’s some ill-intentioned “eye of Sauron” type deal. I think of it’s more correct to think of it like self-perpetuating hype centrifuge. A tornado, sucking up everything in its path. Somewhere around 4,000,000 million new songs are released every year, so that’s a lot of data banging against itself.
People are busy and it’s totally forgivable to let Spotify (or Apple or Amazon) cook all your meals, musically speaking. I can’t count how many artists I’ve been exposed to via algorithmic suggestions. I’m likely including one such artist in the next NMFO! But it’s important to remember that The Algorithm, while awe-inspiring, is in no way invested in your happiness. The technology behind your Spotify recommendations cares about your personal enrichment as much as a tree cares about falling on your house.
This is where I slide into my “cranky old man” chair (Ahhhhhh, so comfy…), but I wonder about the longterm effects on our critical faculties. I don’t mean critical as in ‘important’, though it clearly is. What I mean is, if we fully let ourselves be carried away on the algorithmic wave, will it erode our ability to identify what we like and don’t like? It’s not just missing out on interesting art, it’s will we be able to recognize interesting art, even if it’s right in front of us? And will we care?
Anyway, I highly recommend reading Emily’s piece and checking out her site, Songs for the Struggling Artist, also available in pod form. She speaks to a lot of my fears, given that maintaining a career in the arts past the age of 45 is like being permanently locked in the Bargaining Stage of grief. But she carries it a bit lighter, I think.
THING #2
NOTE: I didn’t intend these two “things” to be related, but now I’m starting to wonder…
Here’s a little thing I’m not sure I’ve mentioned in the Main Newsletter: For roughly the past year, I’ve been a singing in a choir. That’s right, I’m a literal choirboy! We rehearse Monday nights, at a Lutheran church right here in my neighborhood of Astoria, Queens. It is, in fact, known as The Astoria Choir. Catchy, eh?
“TAC”, as it’s known in the email chain, has been around since at least 2010, so I’m a relative newbie. In fact, I had to miss our last concert due to a scheduling conflict. I wasn’t heartbroken—the music in that program was a bit above my talent/commitment level and if I never again hear the name Ottorino Respighi, that’s just fine. I much preferred our Spring ‘23 program, a mix of traditional choral music and contemporary tunes by artists like Sweet Honey in the Rock and Hem. The coolest and most challenging selection, which I regret to say we kinda muffed, was composer Eric Whitacre’s arrangement of “Hurt” by Nine Inch Nails.
In typical midlife crisis fashion, this has mostly been an attempt to reconnect with my younger self. Back in junior high and high school, I sung in just about every configuration imaginable—standard choruses, smaller groups of “chamber singers”, show choirs (with the some of the awful choreography you’re probably imagining) and, yes, a barbershop quartet. We were called The Bandoleros and we were technically a sextet. Bowties and suspenders? Hell yeah, we wore ‘em.
(Regrettably, I have no audio or video evidence. Or do I…? I guess you’ll never know.)
One thing I enjoy about singing in a choir is the anonymity. A comedian’s life is mostly self-determined, which is part of the appeal. You work alone, you set your own goals, you succeed or fail based solely on your own abilities. I’ve spent the majority of my professional life rowing my own dinghy, but as I’ve gotten older, I find myself longing to be part of the fleet, any fleet—to be a midshipman, rather than an admiral. Frankly, I’m a teensy bit lonely. Joining a choir is, I think, my ever-so-delicate attempt to address that. I’m with other people, enjoined in a common purpose. And having a purpose is key—we’re actually doing something.
The problem is, my dumb brain resists any attempt to be included in a larger community. Whether it’s a hatred of bureaucracy or my oversensitive “bullshit meter”, which projects mental illness onto perfectly normal people, I usually end up going my own way. A chunk of the choir goes out for drinks after every rehearsal, but I have never joined in. Of course, a lot of that is because I no longer drink. And if there’s one thing I truly miss about drinking (editor’s note: there are many things Christian misses about drinking), it’s that it gives a form and purpose to social interaction. Absent a slight buzz, I doubt I could sit around making chitchat with relative strangers without crawling out of my own skin. Someday, perhaps.
The other reason I sought out a choir is that, as I've mentioned here from time to time, vocal harmonies organize my brain. There are so many definitions of what “art” is, but here’s one that’s always appealed to me:
Art reveals or imagines moments of order in a disordered universe.
— Radmun Szikielovic
Pretty wise, right? I mean, that might be the smartest thing you’ve heard in months!
Fun fact: Radmun Szkielovic does not exist. I made him up. That definition is something I came up with myself. But I attributed it to a made up person and placed it in italics to seem brilliant and quote-worthy. Did it work?
Admit it: it kinda worked.
Anyway, I think I’m onto something. Life feels (is?) meaningless and nonsensical, but something within us cries out for a sign that maybe some of the pieces fit. We don’t want this theoretical “ordered universe” laid out too simply—our brains balk at “2+2 = 4”, because it feels pat and deceptive. We want a glimpse of God, but only through the mist.
I’m not sure how long I’ll stick with TAC and my voice is a shell of what it once was (thanks, vocal nodes!), but nothing scratches my existential itch like standing in a large group and nailing a slightly complicated harmony. The forty some-odd hairs on my pale Irish arms occasionally stand on end! At this point in my life, I don’t take that for granted.
I wish for you a similar glimpse through the mist.
Paid subscribers, see you next week. The rest of youse, let’s meet back at your inbox in a fortnight.
The ideal milkshake constitution
Dennis Radmun's quotation and the line "We want a glimpse of God, but only through the mist" reminded me of the end of Act I in Amadeus: Salieri is railing away at God for making Mozart so brilliant and him so mediocre and he says the reason he worked so hard at music was "solely that in the end, in the practice of the art that alone makes the world comprehensible to me, I might hear Your voice…" Playin music has always been my meditation and reset switch.
Also, group singing has been shown to release oxytocin (which is why whenever I get people to sing along at my shows I ask them after if it was good for them). "This is Your Brain on Music" is a fascinating read on the neuroscience of music, which I need to probably re-read (cuz it's been a while and it was dense!)
Good stuff as always, Finnegan!
I read the whole newsletter before listening and fully did not expect to prefer the metal anthem. You stopped me from skipping ahead when you said "oh you're skipping directly to the next section..." and I'm glad you kept me there because it was my fav song! I've already listened to it 3 times.