NEW MUSIC FOR OLDS #20
Paul Giamatti I ain't
Greetings, of the seasonal variety! Hey look, a holiday miracle:
Between now and Jan 4, 2023, I’m offering 20% off a full year of paid membership to NEW MUSIC FOR OLDS. I plan on expanding this newsletter quite a bit in the coming year (Chats? Zoom hangs? Guest contributors?), so this is the perfect moment to climb aboard the Paid Subscriber train. Or, send someone a gift subscription!
To gift this special offer, click the link above, select “other subscription options”, then “give a gift”. Perfect for friends, co-workers, old roommates, fellow secret society members and anyone else who’s stuck in an algorithm-induced musical rut. This holiday season, give the gift of new music (for olds)!
As for this week, here’s what’s coming your way:
The return of Sophia the Robot
A prodigal singer-songwriter returns
A genre-defying whatchamacallit
Important Artist alert!
A reminder that the movie “Duets” exists
Me, singing. For better or worse.
Here we go, yo.
GOOD STUFF
Ah yes, the Glossary of Terms.
Miss Grit, “Follow the Cyborg”
Listen on Apple Music // Listen on Amazon Music
Album: Follow the Cyborg
Nutshell: Sexy robot music
Voltage: 6
Thoughts: I’m giving in. “Follow the Cyborg” has been perhaps my favorite song over the past month, but I’d planned to wait until the entire album came out before including it in NMFO. However, because the manner which music is released no longer makes any fucking sense (an 11/1 single for a 2/24 album release???), I’m breaking this completely meaningless promise to myself. “Follow the Cyborg is a feast for the ears, even while retaining the intimacy of a bedroom recording. You’ll hear some St. Vincent, along with Bowie at his kraut-iest, and Miss Grit has a Reznor-esque ear for icy keyboard sounds and squonky guitar tones. That’s right, I said squonky! Headphones recommended.
Pairing Suggestion: Interfacing with your cybergod
Denzil, “Whole Wide World Goes to War”
Listen on Apple Music // Listen on Amazon Music
Album: Whole Wide World Goes to War (single)
Nutshell: Coffeehouse folk
Voltage: 4
Thoughts: I can’t believe this exists. Back in 1994 I fell hard for Denzil’s Pub, an unassuming Britpop album with a novel concept—each song is sung from the perspective of a regular at songwriter Denzil Thomas’ local (you guessed it) pub. At the time, I didn’t pick up on the heavy influence of The Kinks’ Village Green Preservation Society, but Pub became (and still kinda is) one of my very favorite albums. I was evangelical, even as the years passed and I accepted that there would likely never be a second Denzil album. Still, every year or two I send a signal flare out to the universe, just in case something new comes out. Well, after 28 years, the universe has responded! I feel like Jodie Foster in Contact! This song may have come out back in March, but I don’t give a fart—THERE’S A NEW DENZIL SONG IN THE WORLD. True to form, there’s literally zero information about “Whole Wide World Goes to War”. No website, no interviews, not even a social media post. Given that it’s already nine months old, I have to assume this very appealing tune is a one-off. Very sad, but strangely fitting. Heck, I can always listen to Pub another 500 times.
Pairing Suggestion: Receiving messages from the universe
Smog, “My Mind is an Oven”
Listen on Apple Music // Listen on Amazon Music
Album: Smug
Nutshell: Indie-jazz-trip-hop-whatchamacallit
Voltage: 5
Thoughts: I’m not sure I have the words to describe this duo. I have so many questions. Are sunking jazz musicians who listen to a lot of indie rock or indie rock musicians who listen to a lot of jazz? Are they a groovy retread, a glimpse of the post-genre future or something wholly particular to our amalgamated present? Is this starting to sound like hyperbolic rock critic drivel? Questions, questions, questions! Screw it, the guys in the band can explain it better than I can. And this song is only two minutes long—what do you have to lose? If you find this even slightly intriguing, I recommend listening to Smug in its entirety. It will take your brain places.
Pairing Suggestion: Feelin’ groovy on a storm cloud
So…?
Elaborate, please!
“IMPORTANT ARTIST” ALERT
I’m mostly divorced from the vicissitudes of popular culture. At the ripe age of 49, I have no idea what music is commercially viable in 2022, which is as it should be—to tweak Elon Musk’s favorite hack mantra, vox adolescents, vox dei. My hope for the artists I enjoy is that they have enough success that they’re able to make a decent living making art, but beyond that I give zero frigs how popular a band is or is not. But even now, from the vantage point of my cultural ice floe, I like to think I’m pretty good at identifying artists with the potential for long and interesting careers. It’s in this spirit that I’d like to prattle on a bit more about Margaret Sohn, aka Miss Grit.
What I find appealing about this artist is how, despite having only released a couple of E.P.’s, she has a fully formed and distinct sound—icy and restrained, but also intimate. Sophisticated, but clearly DIY. This extends to how she presents her work, visually. Take, for example, this mini-concert she filmed for Seattle’s KEXP last year.
Everyone was doing these “at home” concerts during lockdown, but few have done it with such low-budget flare. Even a simple “lyric video” is presented in a way that’s visually arresting.
And throw a larger budget on there? You get the very cool video for “Follow the Cyborg”.
Again, I have no idea if Miss Grit has any chance of getting “big”, in a commercial sense. There’s usually a commercial ceiling for artists like this—maybe headlining festival “second stages”? Again, St. Vincent is probably the closest template. But I feel confident in predicting that she’ll have one hell of a discography when it’s all said and done, along with a bunch of really innovative multimedia projects.
Excited to see how it pans out. Why not get in on the ground-ish floor?
SOME BULLSHIT
I love to sing and there was a time when I was pretty good at it. I’ve sung in musicals, choirs, a hair metal band (story for another day) and a barbershop quartet (story for a different other day). I mostly abandoned any desire to sing publicly once I got involved in comedy—my voice has never been strong or consistent enough to consider doing it professionally or even regularly. I get laryngitis more than anyone this side of Bill Clinton and even had surgery in 2018 to remove nodes from my vocal cords. It was actually the fear of losing my voice permanently the reminded me of how much I missed singing. I participated in a couple of concerts honoring David Bowie’s birthday and briefly joined a Britpop Choir, until Covid put the kibosh on that. These days, I mostly sing to my dogs.
There’s always karaoke, at which I do fine from a vocal perspective, but the pressure to be entertaining and the fear of looking like that guy mostly keeps my Paul Giamatti-in-Duets fantasies at bay.
I’m an absolute piece of wood when I’m onstage singing. in a musical setting. You’d think the relative comfort I feel as a standup comic would be transferable, but if anything it’s the opposite. Every comedian’s brain houses an overactive “bullshit detector” that kicks in at the first sign of genuine sincerity. When it comes to live musical performance, my juvenile impulse to “pop the balloon” presents a problem. The earnest desire to take the moment seriously (which good singing demands) and the subconscious need to undermine any hint of seriousness cancel each other out and the result is some kind of anti-performance. Like a nervous adolescent, I wind up clinging to the mic stand like a life preserver while staring at the wall just above the audience’s heads. And yet still, I sing on.
Why bring this up? Back at the height of Pandemica, my pal Debbie Chou started a remote karaoke web series where she’d accompany friends on a tune of their choice. It was mostly just a thing to do during lockdown.
Debbie and I both used to participate in those Bowie birthday shows at Astoria’s beloved Letlove Inn, so he seemed like the right choice. Here’s me in early 2021, navigating “Lady Stardust”—mostly successfully, I think? Good acoustics in the outbuilding at our humble Sullivan County abode.
Cut to a few weeks ago. Now that things are kinda-not-really-but-sorta back to normal, Debbie decided to invite a few of us to sing with her at LIC Bar, another one of my longtime faves. I muscled through two of my favorite songs, Peter Gabriel’s “Here Comes the Flood” and “The Whole of the Moon” by The Waterboys.
Because I’m a weenie who can’t simply share something personal without a bunch of caveats:
As you’ll hear, there’s a fair amount of *ahem* ambient noise. I choose to believe they enhance the performance. If Peter Gabriel’s sees this, I’m sure he’ll be kicking himself that he never thought to add cash registers to the final mix, along with clinking bottles and an extremely aggressive automatic hand dryer.
Vocally, I’ll give myself a B-. Definitely hit a bunch of clams, but that’s okay. whatever. I have no immediate plans to book an extended run at Cafe Carlyle.
Physical performance-wise, it would be charitable to call this an F. This is “fill in your name at the top of the final exam and turn it in blank” territory. But as I mentioned, Paul Giamatti I ain’t.
I thrice flub the words to “Whole of the Moon”. Lots of similar-but-not-quite-the-same lyrics in that tune. Apologies to Mike Scott and the various and sundry Waterboys.
Good god, this is the world’s least flattering camera angle. I’m not super thrilled with the current state of my body as it is, but yikes. Okay, enough about that. Why did you include this, Finnegan? Why aren’t you deleting it? Clearly you want to bring attention to your weight gain, but like a child you need to make it clear that you’re fully aware of it because you imagine that’s what everyone is thinking when they look at you even though you know most people are nice and supportive or at worst don’t care people aren’t sitting around gossiping about you you narcissistic prick why are you like this also why are you so fat?
Whoopsie, the ol’ inner monologue grabbed the steering wheel for a minute there. Back in the hole, you!
Anyway, here it is if you’re bored.
I shan’t be quitting my day job (mostly because I don’t quite have one). But feel free to register all slings and arrows here:
Also, I know my mens rooms (winky face) and that bad boy at 2:41 is an XLERATOR. No doubt in my mind.
And that brings NMFO #20 to an end. Paid subscribers, I will see you next week. Everyone else, we shall reconvene on Dec 21st for a list-tastic 2022 wrap up.
As always, I thank you for your support.
I'm sure you sampled around, but maybe I should have mentioned, their latest album is the first time they've tried lyrics and singing, which I'm hoping they didn't get attached to.
Also, subtract the rock and add 90s hip-hop to your requested mixture, you might get Jazz Spaztics.
I have been reluctant to vote in the polls because then I have to admit to myself that I almost always love the lowest scored / chillest song every time, which is a reminder that I am getting older and death is coming for me..... Please post only ragers soon so that the average score of my most loved songs go up and I don't feel like I'm losing my edge!