NEW MUSIC FOR OLDS #36
My NOPE runneth over
Happy Wednesday and welcome to another super fun installment NEW MUSIC FOR OLDS. Hope you’re as excited as I am!
Here’s what good ol’ #36 has in store:
The elusive “perfect slice” of music
Heatstroke hallucinations
Trench Coat fever (catch it!)
My love/hate relationship with NOPE
And…shameless groveling
Let’s stop dilly-dallying.
GOOD STUFF
Yer rootin’ tootin’ Glossary of Terms.
Sad Park, “Always Around”
Listen on Apple Music // Listen on Amazon Music
Album: No More Sound
Nutshell: Emo punk
Voltage: 7
Thoughts: “ALWAYS AROUND” is like the perfect slice—indistinguishable from countless others on the surface, but somehow…better. Although it’s less present here than in other songs on this very solid album, I kept coming back to “blue album” Weezer. Like the best Rivers Cuomo songs, Sad Park pairs ragged “rock” delivery with efficient, unfussy melodies that evoke the pre-rock and roll era—like, if you supercharged “To Know Him is to Love Him”. Just about every song on NO MORE SOUND feels like one you’ve known forever and, just as importantly, they don’t overstay their welcome. Sounds delicious.
Pairing Suggestion: Getting in, making your point, getting out
Blake Mills, “Breakthrough Moon”
Listen on Apple Music // Listen on Amazon Music
Album: Jelly Road
Nutshell: Blues/Americana
Voltage: 3
Thoughts: Blake Mills is an accomplished session guitarist and producer who’s extensive CV includes Fiona Apple, Beck, and Perfume Genius. “Blues” is usually a red flag for me. It conjures images of sweaty dudes with closed eyes, cycling through the same seven guitar licks at some lame Bar Rescue “roadhouse”, to the delight of 60-something CFO’s in golf apparel. Yes, I’m distilling a rich musical history to its corniest incarnation, but it’s only to reassure you that “Breakthrough Moon” is not that. This is more like a spooky desert vibe, with a restrained tension throughout. You keep expecting it “kick in” in a predictable way, but it never quite does. Great guitar solo outro.
Pairing Suggestion: Slowly coming out of a heatstroke hallucination
Yard Act, “The Trench Coat Museum”
Listen on Apple Music // Listen on Amazon Music
Album: The Trench Coast Museum (single)
Nutshell: Dance rock
Voltage: 8
Thoughts: If you miss the mid-Aughts indie rock dance trend, a la LCD Soundsystem and The Rapture, today’s your lucky day. This 8 minute groove is a real “set it and forget it” kind of song, where you just click play and get lost in the sauce. I have to imagine this will sound absolutely dynamite in a hot and sweaty rock club. And while I think we’re all beyond the meme at this point, if you “need more cowbell”, well… On a personal note, I wore a black leather trench coat throughout most of high school. If I knew where my yearbook was, I’d post my senior photo: me in my beloved trench, a mock turtleneck and fake John Lennon glasses, gazing poignantly off into the distance. Sorry you’re all missing out on that.
Pairing Suggestion: Fancying yourself the world’s only true intellectual (while dancing)
The time of choosing it at hand.
And, for opinions too edgy to be contained in a simple poll response:
SOME BULLSHIT
There are a number of you who have, for some unknowable reason, resisted the lure of Paid Subscribership. And when I say “a number of”, I mean “the vast majority of”. And that’s fine! I love slaving all day over a hot laptop with no recompense. You’re taking treats out of my dogs’ mouths!
Anyway, one way the Paid Only version of NMFO is different than the main freebie version is that, instead seeking out “new” music, I create little challenges for myself to discover music that I missed out on the first (or second, or third) time around. Critical darlings I’m embarrassed to have skipped? Lots of those. Obscure micro-genre dumpster dives? Yup. Songs centered around a particular theme? Indeed.
I don’t mean to portray myself as being particularly openminded. Try as I might to pry this fucker ajar, I approach most things—people, places, experiences—from a place of kneejerk skepticism. I’ve often thought that my superpower is being able to predict, with uncanny accuracy, exactly how and why something will suck. I even make little wagers with myself.
“I bet this deli has a Blue Lives Matter sticker.”
“I bet this clothing store clerk winces when I ask if they carry XXL.”
“I bet this open mic comic makes a [jarring porn term] reference.”
I recognize that this is not the healthiest state of mind, but my talent for identifying any given cloud’s shit-colored lining has come in handy in my capacity as a standup comedian. And when it comes to consuming art, it’s a timesaving mechanism. You’re never going to see all the good movies, you’re never going to read all the good books (or even many of them, in my case). So when I encounter a piece of art that I instinctually find repellent, I’m relieved. Scratch one off the list! Music is probably the area in which I’m the least judgmental and I still have the habit of coming across an artist and, without hearing a moment of music, render a verdict:
“NOPE.”
There are a number of triggers for my NOPE impulse, each indefensible yet undeniable. They are, in no particular order:
A terrible band name
A terrible album cover
An unappealing band photo
Association with other repellent artists
Anyway, in last week’s Paid Only NMFO, I investigated some of my NOPEs—that is, I spent a few hours subjecting myself to artists for whom I felt an instinctual disgust. You’ll be relieved to learn that my powers of predictive negativity are still intact—most of what I thought would suck ended up sucking, in roughly the way I expected it to suck. Before last week, I’d never heard anything by YUNGBLOOD, but I was right to assume that his music would sound like if The Gap wrote a suicide note in emojis.
That said, I was able to overcome my sub-logical aversion to three artists. And in one case, I found a song with which I’m now extremely preoccupied. Which artists and which song, you ask? Well, that’s for initiates only.
That’s all for today. I’ll be better next time!
(NARRATOR: He wasn’t appreciably better next time.)