NEW MUSIC FOR OLDS #49

What you hear when you spill ayahuasca tea on your laptop

Well hello there! Welcome to another hardcore edition of New Music for Olds.

If you know, you know

Today, I bring you:

• Power pop chops

• The fever dreams of Teddy Ruxpin

• The Art vs The Artist, Chapter One Zillion

• My humble “Genius Grant” proposal

• And, a journey into the world of fictional bands

I’m getting this out rather last-minute, so I put the over/under on typos at 4.5. Place your bets!

Alrighty, let’s do this.

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GOOD STUFF

(New subscribers, you may want a peek at this Glossary of Terms.)

Declan McKenna, “Nothing Works”

Listen on Apple Music // Listen on Amazon Music

• Album: What Happened to the Beach?

• Nutshell: Literate indie rock

• Voltage: 6

• Thoughts: Until recently, I mistakenly lumped the name Declan McKenna in with what I classify as “Great Value Ed Sheerans”, i.e. George Ezra, James Bay and Lewis Capaldi. These are pleasant-but-toothless UK singer-songwriters embraced by young people who prefer not to make waves. After extensive research (read: actually clicking play), I’m happy to announce that Declan McKenna is, rather, a Ray Davies descendent with an acerbic wit and undeniable power pop chops. I hear hints of of Arctic Monkeys and Car Seat Headrest. Lyrically, “Nothing Works” is also a compelling take on what it feels like to longer be the hot young thing. This tune won’t alter your sense of reality, but it’s an airtight indie rock tune that will put a bounce in your step.

• Pairing Suggestion: Bopping along on your morning commute.

“You’d never guess that I hate my job and life!”

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@, “Processional”

Listen on Apple Music // Listen on Amazon Music

• Album: Are You There God, It’s Me, @ (E.P.)

• Nutshell: Avant garde synth pop

• Voltage: 6

• Thoughts: Hey, here’s that Beach Boys/German electronica crossover you were asking for. Is that the best description of this rather strange piece of music? How about “Teddy Ruxpin having a very intense nightmare?” Yeah, that works. Wait, I got another one: “What you hear when you spill ayahuasca tea on your laptop”? Okay, getting warmer. Anyway, everything I know about this Philly/Baltimore duo I learned from their Bandcamp page. If this does anything for you (and it may well not), check out the entire E.P.—each song is bursting with inspired oddness. Okay, one more attempt: “A sex robot slowly overriding its anti-violence directive”? Is that anything?

• Pairing Suggestion: Buffering

  

  In 90 seconds, she will be covered in his blood

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  Sunny Day Real Estate, “Novum Vetus”

Listen on Apple Music // Listen on Amazon Music

• Album: Diary (Live at London Bridge Studio)

• Nutshell: 2nd wave emo

• Voltage: 7

• Thoughts: Sunny Day Real Estate hit me like a ton of bricks in 1994. I wasn’t used to hearing heavy rock music that sounded so tender and vulnerable. I’ve continued to adore them, along with their various offshoots and solo albums. On May 3rd, the reunited band will release a live re-recording of their debut album. Included is this new (but not exactly new) tune, and my buried lede is that “Novum Vetus” sounds remarkably like the band I fell in love with. Jeremy Enigk’s voice may have lost a bit of range, but his tone is still evocative and singular. Does it bother me that drummer William Goldsmith is apparently a QAnon weirdo? Yes, to the extent that I considered not including this very cool tune. “The Art vs The Artist” never really gets easier, does it?

• Pairing Suggestion: Teleporting back to 1994

“Hey look, another “NO”! We should underline that one too!”

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To quote Morris Day…what’s it gonna be, girl?

And here’s where you tell why my taste sucks. Details, please!

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SOME BULLSHIT

A couple nights ago I became obsessed with an old episode of “WKRP in Cincinnati”, in which the station promotes a local gig by British rock lads Scum of the Earth. Scenes are available on YouTube, but the episode does not appear to be streaming in full, at least not for free—I may feel a bit down this week, but I’m not “spend actual dollars to watch an Eighties sitcom” down.

Anyway, I’ve been unable to answer one burning question: did Scum of the Earth actually play a song before they trashed the stage at the end of the episode, and was it any good?

I realize this has been eating at you as well, and I egret not being able to provide a definitive answer. DO BETTER, FINNEGAN.

The upshot is, my plan for today’s NMFO was to create a definitive list of the best and worst fictional bands from film and television, and also my likelihood to have contemporaneously owned their albums. I soon realized that a project of this cultural magnitude cannot be contained within one measly newsletter. Honestly, I should really look into one of them MacArthur “Genius Grants”.

Instead, I give you:

THE NMFO FICTIONAL BAND OVERVIEW, Part I

HEDWIG AND THE ANGY INCH

Source: Hedwig and the Angry Inch (1998 Off Broadway production/2001 film) Likelihood to have owned: 95%

I would almost certainly have owned every Hedwig album—even the “difficult” ones where she converted to Buddhism or collaborated with Will.I.Am, or whatever. In fact, I regularly seek out music that gives me “that Hedwig and the Angry Inch feeling” (to be read as Michael Lerner). The only caveat would be if my first exposure came via someone who made me feel uncool. And lord knows, were there lots of folks who made me feel uncool! In that case, I could see myself projecting a bunch of bullshit onto this band and its fans, based on nothing but personal insecurity. Sometimes it’s nice to not be in your 20s anymore.

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SING STREET

Source: Sing Street (2016 film)
Likelihood to have owned: 90%

The movie Sing Street is too precious by half (a John Carmey trademark), but having spent my formative years glued to early MTV, this is the kind of New Romantic fop rock on which I was raised. That slap bass is no joke! I wasn’t of “record buying” age when bands like this were the rage, but I’d definitely have had this on a blank Maxell or TDK, ripped directly from its short-lived stay on the lower tiers of “Casey Kasem’s American Top 40”. I can almost hear Casey “hitting the post”.

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STEEL DRAGON

Source: Rock Star (2000 film)
Likelihood to have owned: 85%

…And then Def Leppard’s Pyromania snookered me into throwing away my early teens on Poison, Cinderella, Dokken, White Lion, Bullet Boys and Britny Fox. So yeah, I think I’d probably have ridden me some Steel Dragon. But only in private (the least cool way to consume hair metal). I never felt particularly welcome amongst the metalheads—or “rats”, we we called them in my hometown. Can you believe that? The kids my friends and I regularly referred to as vermin were not particularly friendly! The nerve. Anyway, just a reminder that I’m available 24/7 for in-depth conversations about Rock Star, a not-good movie I have seen 50+ times.

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JOSIE AND THE PUSSYCATS

Source: Josie and the Pussycats (2001 film)
Likelihood to have owned: 70%

Among the Extremely Online, it’s become conventional wisdom that Josie and the Pussycats belongs on AFI’s list of the “100 Greatest Films of All Time”. And it certainly was misunderstood at the time of its release, but…come on, folks. The now-beloved soundtrack is littered with some of my favorite 90’s alt-rock songwriters, including Anna Waronker and Adam Schlesinger. But in a world where I didn’t already know that, would I have gone for JATP, or would I have seen them as a slicked up, corporate cash grab? Again, we’re not talking about my 2024 perspective, which has been semi-Poptimism-ified (yes, I think that’s the proper syntax).

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STILLWATER

Source: Almost Famous (2000 film)
Likelihood to have owned: 50%

Almost Famous is another movie I have seen dozens of times, to the extent that I am both blind to and extremely aware of its flaws (those Rainn Wilson scenes are Oooof City). But I truly don’t know if I’d have purchased an actual Stillwater album. Thanks to classic rock radio, I’d surely have known three of their songs by heart, in the same way that I knew every moment of “We’re an American Band”, despite never having remotely considered buying a Grand Funk Railroad album. That’s probably the functional-but-not-particularly-great company in which I’d place Stillwater—Foghat, Bad Company, Bachmann Turner Overdrive. Honestly, Penny Lane deserved better.

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BILLY AND THE BOINGERS

Source: Bloom County (comic strip, 1980-89)
Likelihood to have owned: 100%

I say 100% because I did, in fact, own the floppy 7” single that was included in the 1987 Bloom County collection Billy and the Boingers: Bootleg. Did Berkley Breathed understand the difference between punk and heavy metal? No, he did not. Was this novelty tune about eight years late, stylistically? Yes, it was. Do I prefer the band’s earlier work as Deathtöngue? As an OG “Bloom Country” enjoyer, I am required to say that I do. Is this paragraph gobbledygook to anyone under the age of 40? Most assuredly.

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Okay, this thing is 90 mins late, so that’s enough for today. Which fake bands should I cover in Part II? Eddie and the Cruisers? The Wonders? CB4?

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See you next time! Oh, and if you’d be so kind…