NEW MUSIC FOR OLDS #54
I clearly need more groin in my life
Are you ready for an all new edition of NEW MUSIC FOR OLDS? I CAN’T HEAR YOU!!!
No, seriously—I cannot hear you. You really need to project and enunciate. Anyway, let’s begin with a couple of scheduling notes/mea culpas.
Consider this week’s newsletter an intermission in our grand pursuit to identify history’s greatest fictional band. What can I say—I got sick of looking at polls and spreadsheets. The NMFO FICTIONAL BAND MADNESS semifinals will commence in two weeks. Steel thyself.
Also, a quick apology to Paid Subscribies. For logistical reasons, there was no paid-only newsletter last week, but I forgot to schedule an email saying as much. Please don’t stop giving me your money. In fact…
(Yeah, I know: the balls on this guy!)
Anyway, here’s what’s on the agenda for today:
My first “no skip” album of 2024!
Self-sabotage or breakthrough—who can say?
Coldplay, if they didn’t suck!
Warding off Boomerism!
Iggy Pop and his pal Dinah Shore!
And…another arcane waste of your time!
Let’s begin the beginning.
GOOD STUFF
One more time, a Glossary of Terms.
Jane Weaver, “Perfect Storm”
Listen on Apple Music // Listen on Amazon Music
Album: Love in Constant Spectacle
Nutshell: Freak folk/Art pop
Voltage: 5
Thoughts: Hmm, how to describe Jane Weaver? Imagine if an English folk singer was abducted by aliens and eventually returned to Earth, seemingly unharmed but still…off. Weaver’s psychedelia is a gentle one, so nothing on Love in Constant Spectacle is going to bash you upside the head. Rather, her music leaves the door ajar and invites you to wander in and get lost. Musical touchstones abound (French pop, Krautrock, Nico, Echoes-era Pink Floyd), but Weaver’s artistic voice feels idiosyncratic and fully realized. This may be my first “no skip” album of 2024, so I had a difficult time isolating one song. In the end, I chose the album’s leadoff track, but if this appeals to you at all, I urge you to spend more time wandering around Jane Weaver’s brain.
Pairing Suggestion: Delicately removing your temple electrodes, which immediately turn into butterflies oh wait did I do drugs that I forgot about?
Ed Harcourt, “Deathless”
Listen on Apple Music // Listen on Amazon Music
Album: El Magnifico
Nutshell: Orchestral pop
Voltage: 6
Thoughts: I count one particular song on Ed Harcourt’s 2001 debut Be Here Monsters among my 75-ish favorite of all time. So how is it that I have, over the past two decades, mostly lost track of this gifted British singer-songwriter? Reader, I cannot say. Speaking of readers, Harcourt has a novelist’s ear. ”She said, let’s be deathless and sell our souls…” is a really evocative opening line. “Deathless” should strike a chord with anyone who’s ever daydreamed of making really bad life choices. Or is a the moment you turn everything around? Be it a toxic relationship or a gambling binge or a descent into chemical oblivion, self-sabotage can feel a lot like a breakthrough. That’s why I avoid anything resembling personal growth—never can be too safe.
Pairing Suggestion: Taking a majestic swan dive off the wagon
Elbow, “From the River”
Listen on Apple Music // Listen on Amazon Music
Album: Audio Vertigo
Nutshell: Sophisticated Alt Rock
Voltage: 5
Thoughts: Elbow is what Coldplay could have been if Chris Martin wasn’t the corniest dude alive. Elbow makes tasteful, thoughtful alternative music for adults—and by that, I mean they sometimes teeter on the edge of boring-hood. But when it clicks, as it does on the majority of Audio Vertigo, it’s meaty stuff you can really dig your ears into. “From the River” is basically two chords, but it’s arranged beautifully and maintains a dreamy beauty throughout. It also rewards multiple listens, allowing you to focus on each part individually—the drumming is especially inventive. Coldplay could never! Hear that, dweebs? You could have been a respected mid-tier regional act instead of international megastars. Bet you feel dumb.
Pairing Suggestion: Wandering the countryside, through an neverending fog
Declare thyself.
Roll call!
SOME BULLSHIT
Some thoughts about this week’s batch of tunes.
Not sure if you noticed, but all three of the artists featured this week are on the “mature” side—older than 45. In the two-plus years since I started NMFO, I’m not sure that’s ever happened. In fact, I briefly considered switching out one of the songs for something whippersnapper-y. I do my best to absorb new music on its own terms, independent of the artist’s age or biography. But implicit biases are bound to creep in, so when myself drawn disproportionally to older artists, an alarm bell goes off. Is this a subtle version of Boomerism? Has my “ear” begun to atrophy? Is this like when Rolling Stone used to give five stars to forgettable Mick Jagger solo albums?
Update: The advisory board within my brain took up the issue and ruled that I am not, in fact, Jann fucking Wenner—I’m simply a narcissist who spends a lot of time trying convince an unseen audience that I’m “not that guy”. And I suppose it’s perfectly natural that, in the days following my birthday, I might find myself gravitating to the music of my generational peers.
(Did I bury the lede? Only if you consider a 51st birthday spent in remote Covid isolation some major ‘reveal’.)
But there may also be more to it. Listening to these three artists over the past week or two, it’s occurred to me that they’re roughly in the same ballpark, in terms of sophistication. The songs are all smart, but not smarty-pants. Genteel, but not completely bloodless. We’re talking about Apollo versus Dionysus shit here.
Ooooh look at Mr. Fancy Pants, bringing Greek tragedy and Frederick Nietzsche into the discussion. Finally putting that BFA to use! Also, not to brag, but I once played King Pentheus in a high school production of The Bacchae. Here’s an archival photo of me being ripped limb from limb by a pack of sex-crazed womenfolk.
Am I making any sense? One distillation of this concept can be found in this very odd 1977 episode of “Dinah!”, featuring Iggy Pop and David Bowie. The relevant section is from 9:40-10:00 (here’s a direct link).
I won’t get sucked into listing the many strange things about this clip (Why does it exist? Was the booker fired?), but if some enterprising music writer ever does a “longread” about this particular day in music history, I will longread the fuck out of it.
Anyway, I think regularly about Bowie’s Head vs. Groin framing device. Music is rarely all one or the other, so I sometimes find myself daydreaming about where a particular artist falls on this paradigm.
Because I am a weirdo with entirely too much time on my hands (unless my wife is reading this, in which case I’M VERY BUSY), I decided to draw up an Apollo/Dionysus matrix and plot out the artists included in my 1000+ “Favorite Songs of All Time” playlist.
A few notes about what you’re looking at/scrolling past:
As you can see, I didn’t label the points on the grid. I didn’t want to get bogged down debating where any particular band belongs—I’m more interested in what the overall picture says about my musical taste.
Big dots represent artists with larger catalogues (Prince, Zeppelin, etc), and/or the intensity of my affection for said artist. Small dots are closer to one-hit wonders.
I tried to evaluate each artist according to where my enjoyment lies, rather than attempting to decipher an artist’s intention. For example, Elvis Costello has recorded a number of Dionysian freak-outs over the years, where he’s bashing away at his guitar while wailing uncontrollably into the mic. These are, almost without exception, my least favorite Elvis Costello songs. So I plotted him towards the top left of the matrix, as befitting the precise, almost mathematical pop songwriting that has thrilled me lo these many years.
Simply as a point of reference, the yellow box represents my best guess where I’d place the three songs featured in today’s GOOD STUFF. But it’s far too soon to say that any of them will earn a place on my prestigious “Favorite Songs of All Time” playlist. You should be so lucky, Jane Weaver!
Apropos of…something, that yellow box is also where I’d place my own standup comedy.
It’s no surprise that the most concentrated cluster occurs just northeast of the center point—I’ve always been someone who admires a good melding of the head and groin. At least, that’s what I wrote on my old Nerve.com profile.
I am, however, surprised at how many large dots ended up in the top left corner. Am I a robot? You guys would tell me if I was a robot, right? I clearly need more groin in my life.
Questions/comments?
Look, I’m not suggesting you conduct this little experiment on your own. After all, you have a job. Children. Hope. But if you’re searching for a new reason to crawl into your own navel for an hour, you could do worse!
Alright, this newsletter is almost two hours overdue and I worry about your fragile emotional state as you constantly refresh your inbox.
Fly, NMFO #54! Be free!
I think what I needed to read this morning was how much groin there should be in music. Huge fan of the scatter graph. I'm a Maths teacher and the Classics department lie on the same corridor. This is exactly the sort of shit we should be displaying in our shared display board!