NEW MUSIC FOR OLDS #64
Redditor Energy
Happy Labor Day Weekend! Raise a glass to Shawn Fain!
Fittingly, I’ve put quite a bit of labor into today’s newsletter. Here’s what you have in store:
My plot to enslave Americana’s finest
Sonically-inclined youths
Soft focus psychedelia
An early pick for 2024’s best album
A case of Pumpkin Blindness
And, a samples sampler
Feel free to read this while you’re stuck in bumper-to-bumper holiday traffic!
GOOD STUFF
As always, a Glossary of Terms.
Gillian Welch, David Rawlings, “North Country”
Listen on Apple Music // Listen on Amazon Music
Album: Woodland (out now)
Nutshell: Pure Americana
Voltage: 3
Thoughts: I’m going to kidnap Gillian Welch and David Rawlings and make them perform for me and only me. I will lock them in the makeshift “opry” I’ve constructed in my basement and they will transfix me with musical snapshots of a mythical America, while I slurp grain alcohol from a Civil War veteran’s boot. This is how it shall be, each and every night, from now until the end of my days. I will be a kind and generous captor. Three square meals a day, unlimited guitar strings. Tattered straw hats for the fella, shapeless dustbowl frocks for the lady. Over time, they may even come to love me. Yes, I am certain they will.
Pairing Suggestion: Late night at the fire-pit
julie, “Catalogue”
Listen on Apple Music // Listen on Amazon Music
Album: My Anti-Aircraft Friend (out 9/13)
Nutshell: Discordant art rock
Voltage: 7
Thoughts: Do you long for a song that sounds like Sonic Youth’s “Kool Thing” but is not actually Sonic Youth’s “Kool Thing”? First of all, what an oddly specific thing to long for. But also, today is your lucky day. julie (sic) is a Gen Z noise rock trio from California, an amalgam of stylistic elements that warm the cockles of my Gen X heart: dissonant guitars, rock-slide drum fills and the jaundiced vocals of a woman who’s clearly had enough of your bullshit. “Catalogue” feels like it’s about to descend into shapeless chaos, but it’s remains catchy almost in spite of itself. Derivative, to be sure, but julie seems to come by it honestly. Given that Kim Gordon and Thurston Moore are kaput, maybe it’s time to let a new crop of sonic youths to take up the mantle.
Pairing Suggestion: Surfing on a sea of feedback
GIFT, “Milestones”
Listen on Apple Music // Listen on Amazon Music
Album: Illuminator (out now)
Nutshell: Synth-heavy indie rock
Voltage: 6
Thoughts: GIFT is a Brooklyn based psychedelic rock quintet, born of Nineties Shoegaze and textural synthusiasts of the Aughts, like MGMT and School of Seven Bells. GIFT was originally brought to my attention by an NMFO reader who shall remain nameless (because I am unable to name him). Are you that reader? Speak up! (sigh) I really need to start writing this shit down… Anyway, I’m quite enjoying GIFT’s sophomore album, despite the lead singer having bad hair and a punchable face. The production is lush and the songwriting is austere, perhaps to a fault. These whippersnappers could stand to let their (bad) hair down a bit. But this isn’t meant to be some acid-fueled freakout—GIFT wants to take you to Bliss City, and is quite successful in doing so. Call it soft-focus psychedelia.
Pairing Suggestion: Evaporating into a fine mist
Let’s hear it, people.
Interact with me, for pete’s sake!
One more thing, new music wise:
I’ve spent the better part of two years now trying to make you fall in love with kitchen-sink synth-pop duo Magdalena Bay. In that spirit, I feel compelled to inform you that their latest album was released last week. I wrote about the lead single a couple months back, so no need to re-hash. But Imaginal Disk is in the driver’s seat for Best Album of 2024.
And their visual presentation remains a joy.
SOME BULLSHIT
PUMPKIN BLINDNESS
Two weeks ago, I gave a rather halfhearted thumbs-up to Jane’s Addiction’s new single “Imminent Redemption”. A good deal of my enthusiasm(?) was based on how much the band meant to me in their heyday. But Perry and the fellas1 were not my only former heroes to release new music this past month. There’s also a new Smashing Pumpkins album, billed as something of a return to form. Aghori Mhori Mei is, to quote one William Patrick Corgan Jr., an attempt to see if the Pumpkins’ “ways of making music circa 1990-1996 would still inspire something revelatory.”
On its face, that sounds right up my alley. So why can’t I muster any shits to give?
I adored Smashing Pumpkins2 from the get-go. I remember exactly where I was standing the night “Headbanger’s Ball”3 first aired the video for “Siva”. It was love at first listen. Like Jane’s Addiction, the sound was was trippy and atmospheric, but heavy enough to satisfy my inner child. It felt like a demilitarized zone between Def Leppard and Disintegration. I must have listened to Gish 5000 times that summer, memorizing every solo and drum fill.
Even then, in that comparatively quaint era of rock journalism, I understood that Corgan was a guy who couldn’t keep his mouth shut. He was always in a fight with somebody, and always for the pettiest of reasons. It didn’t matter that a fair number of these squabbles were instigated by others—Billy could always be counted on to take the bait, employing fifty words where fifteen would suffice. I spent a good amount of emotional energy defending him in those halcyon days, but that became less appealing as the songs got flabbier, the singing got (even) crappier and he became the world’s easiest podcast get.
Corgan’s problem is that his persona is at-odds with his personality. Elvis Costello is also verbose, but his self-fascination is in alignment with his creative voice—even at his most poetic, Costello’s concerns are earthbound. Smashing Pumpkins, on the other hand, is meant to be transcendent. The riffs are primal, the lyrics are impressionistic. It aspires to be the music of myth. But myth requires not answering every question in excruciatingly narcissistic detail. Corgan is like a magician who spends half the show explaining his tricks.
As I’ve grown older and more capable of identifying bullshit, there’s a particular archetype that elicits an automatic eye-roll: dudes who mask their insecurities with grandiose philosophical theories and snooty pedantry. In other words, Billy Corgan has “Redditor Energy”. A couple rungs up the ladder from Incel, sure, but still not where you’d like your rock gods to be. You can mewl about Cancel Culture with Joe Rogan or you can dress like an anime villain, but probably not both.
What’s so maddening is that Billy Corgan often says things that deeply resonate with me, as if he’s dictating my internal monologue. But he evokes the parts of me I like the least—the petty, venal, egocentric corners of my psyche. When I hear Billy prattling on about artistic integrity and “secret handshakes”, he’s like the great Walter Sobchak: not wrong, just an asshole.
Take, for example, the first thing that popped up when I googled “Billy Corgan indie cred”. I agree with (almost) everything he says here. At the same time…OHMYGODSHUTTHEFUCKUP.
So, is Aghori Mhori Mei any good? I truly do not know! I’ve developed an irreversible case of Pumpkin Blindness. I try to separate the art from the artist, but once you’ve been filed into someone’s eye-rolodex, it’s hard to escape.
Feel free to judge for yourself.
Billy Corgan thoughts? Don’t tell me you don’t have a few.
Finally, a digestif:
God bless whoever tracked down every single sample on Paul’s Boutique. This type of thing should be grant-eligible.
That’s all for today. Enjoy your extended weekend. God bless unions!
This sounds like the name of the house band at a 1950’s all-inclusive gay resort
“The” was retconned circa Mellon Collie, regardless of what Billy now claims.
It was part of a new segment called “Frantic Fringe”—basically, Ricki Rachtman’s attempt to placate the alt-rock kids who would eventually devour him
For me it’s Gish - timeless, massive, era-defining - and then everything else. Do I like Smashing Pumpkins? No. Do I like Gish? Fuck yes.
Shake Your Rump has 8,000 samples 😂