NEW MUSIC FOR OLDS #9
A strange but delicious smell
Greetings! I’m finishing this week’s newsletter right under the wire, so advance apologies if this thing is riddled with typos. Pretend it’s beat poetry or whatever.
In today’s NMFO:
Wuss Rock!
A girl named Jesus!
Tshirts-in-the-pool!
The evolution of helmet-based Pop music!
And the always-popular MORE!
If music be the food of email, read on.
GOOD STUFF
As always, a Glossary of Terms.
Horse Jumper of Love, “Ding Dong Ditch”
Listen on Apple Music // Listen on Amazon Music
Album: Natural Part
Nutshell: 90’s style alt rock
Voltage: 7
Thoughts: This song snuck up on me. On the surface, there’s nothing super innovative about HJoL’s minimalist guitar rock; it reminds me of Pavement, but with tighter arrangements and the sarcasm replaced with a true wussy’s sense of melancholy. As a melancholic wussy, I’ve gone back to this album a lot over the past couple weeks, and “Ding Dong Ditch” in particular. Despite coming in at only 2:42, the tune rolls through a number of distinct musical ideas. It doesn’t feel like your standard verse-chorus-verse type deal, but the parts are nonetheless connected. It’s a nifty trick. I especially love the ending, when the distortion pedal gets a good stomping. I don’t have enough music theory to identify the chord on which the song lands (a suspended something-or-other?), but it’s a doozy.
Pairing Suggestion: Insomnia
Zola Jesus, “Dead & Gone”
Listen on Apple Music // Listen on Amazon Music
Album: Arkhon
Nutshell: Elegiac orchestral pop
Voltage: 4
Thoughts: I’m a sucker for a solo voice backed by an orchestra. This is especially true when the voice is as powerful that of as Nika Roza Danilova, aka Zola Jesus. My interest in her brand of Goth Pop has been inconsistent over the years, but this latest album feels like the best iteration of her ‘thing’, which I’d describe as the midpoint between Florence and the Machine and Diamanda Galas. Her clarion vocal tone—half mournful wail, half battle cry—is shrouded in reverb, making Danilova sounds as if she’s singing in an empty cathedral. I find the effect affecting. Or is it an effective affect? Either way, nice job, Jesus!
Pairing Suggestion: Pleading with the heavens above
Coheed and Cambria, “Rise, Naianasha (Cut the Cord)”
Listen on Apple Music // Listen on Amazon Music
Album: Vaxis II: A Window of the Waking Mind
Nutshell: Progressive hard rock…but catchy!
Voltage: 8
Thoughts: Coheed and Cambria is one of those bands about whom a person either knows nothing or way too much. The elephant in the room: Coheed and Cambria’s creative output is almost entirely devoted to a convoluted sci-fi saga known as The Amory Wars—there have been nine concept albums, three graphic novels and a bunch of short stories. I’ve been listening to Coheed for fifteen years and I still don’t know/care what it’s about. Luckily, the music stands on its own. Primary songwriter Claudio Sanchez has major pop smarts; he’s like a prog metal Barry Gibb. Even if you’re certain this won’t be your thing, I urge you to stick around through the first chorus. Tell me you can’t imagine an arena full of greasy haired, tshirt-in-the-pool dweebs singing along.
Pairing Suggestion: Protecting Heaven’s Fence from the the Supreme Tri-Mage or whatever
Comments? Suggestions? Plaudits?
FOR FANS OF… [Daft Punk]
Last year French dance music duo Daft Punk released a video announcing their amicable self-detonation after 20 years of joyful bleeps and squonks. Folks more knowledgeable than me can pontificate on Daft Punk’s place in modern music history. But off the top of my head, it’s hard to think of an artist who achieved Daft Punk’s level of mainstream and critical success without any discernible backlash. You may prefer one album over the others (Discovery, obvs) or quibble that “Get Lucky” was overplayed during its 2013 Summer of Ubiquity. But who hates Daft Punk? Nobody. It’s like hating candy.
Or maybe that’s not the proper food metaphor (most of my metaphors are food-related, if you haven’t noticed). My own anecdotal experience is that Daft Punk’s 1997 debut album felt like a strange but delicious smell wafting from an immigrant neighbor’s apartment. I didn’t get the sense that it was “for me”, but it felt like a window into a heretofore unknown culture.
Daft Punk didn’t invent squat. In fact, they were almost wholly derivative; one song literally lists off all their musical influences. But if you were a straight white dude who was absolutely, almost defiantly clueless about dance music, “Da Funk” and “Around the World” felt exotic. It was more than exotic—Daft Punk seemed…fun. A lot of the music I loved in the 90’s was wry or “funny”, but very little of it was fun.
in 2022, fun music is in no short supply (likely because real life is so acutely un-fun), but if you’re looking for the absolute best in good time helmet-based music, I urge you to check out the Canadian band TWRP.
Two small but notable caveats:
First, I covered TWRP a couple months back in the Paid-Only newsletter. But my interest in this artist has grown substantially since that relatively brief mention. And given that the paid version of NMFO only goes out to a tiny segment of you (although I’d love for that to change, AHEM…), I’ll allow it. Here’s a bit of what I said about TWRP back then:
This is more like the music you’d hear over the end credits of “American Gladiators”. Or, perhaps as an answer to the question: What if Daft Punk was the house band at a “Personal Power” seminar?
Secondly, this is the second mask-and-costume band to be featured in this section of NMFO (following The Protomen). This has been slightly harder to come to terms with, given that I don’t consider myself especially prone to gimmicks. But maybe I’m over thinking this. I dunno, does this seem like a gimmick to you?
And they sound like this:
I’m inspired to write about TWRP mostly because I saw them play Music Hall of Williamsburg a couple weeks ago. It was 80% music, 20% schtick and 100% the most impressive live act I’ve seen in years.
Mind you, that’s different than saying it was my favorite concert. I’m not emotionally invested enough in TWRP for the show to have “meant” a lot to me—honestly, if you find yourself emotionally invested in music this frivolous, you may need your prescriptions tweaked. But in terms of performance chops and sheer panache, you absolutely cannot go wrong with TWRP. In addition to being ace musicians (holy slap bass!), they are legitimately funny dudes and had the crowd eating out of their robotic spacehands.
When seeing a band live, I try not to spend long chunks of time with my phone in front of my face. But I did grab a sliver of footage:
And a bit of pre-encore stage banter…
So yeah, this is all profoundly silly shit. But if TWRP comes through your town, MAKE THE EFFORT! You don’t even need to love the music—I knew maybe 3-5 songs going in and I had the time of my life.
Here are a few TWRP songs with which to whet your whistle (or wet, smelly Talkbox mouthpiece):
TWRP on Apple Music // TWRP on Amazon Music
By the way, here’s a fun explanation of how a Talkbox actually works:
SOME BULLSHIT
This week I had the honor of appearing on The BrandoCast with SiriusXM’s deeelightful Brendan Smith. Our subject was Tears for Fears and lemme tell ya, we had ourselves an Orzabal. (The primary songwriter for Tears for Fears is named Roland Orzabal, you see. That’s what makes this a very good joke.)
In addition to fearing each and every relevant tear, Brendan and I cover a good many other subjects. I even manage to slip in a shout out to a pair of true rock legends.
Here ‘tis on Spotify. For Apple, Stitcher and Google Play, go HERE.
Also:
Last night I was in our nation’s capital to celebrate the 30th anniversary of America’s single best comedy club, DC Improv. The event was held at DC’s world famous 9:30 Club, and all the comics on the bill performed with the Goddamn Comedy Jam. Basically, you do a few minutes of standup, then fling yourself into a bit of live band karaoke. Because I am a glutton for vocal discomfort, I chose to bellow my way through “You Get What You Give” by New Radicals. It was a crazy fun night, the likes of which I’ve not had since well before the Pandemic. But I’m still a bit discombobulated (read: hungover), so I think I’ll let my many thoughts on the evening marinate for NMFO #10. By then, I may even have (shudder)…audio/video footage.
Here’s a tantalizing(?) tease.
That’s about it for today. Until next time, mis amigos. Like/comment/share/carve my initials into your flesh!
Coming back here to note that I went to a Coheed & Cambria show last weekend after really getting into them from this newsletter! Amazing artists and great fans! Thanks for introducing me to them!
Also, on the subject of gimmicks, as you know, my favorite childhood band was KISS, and my favorite grownup band is The Cure. I don't insist that my favorite bands wear a lot of makeup, but the numbers don't lie...