carly rae clarkson & kylie's surreal camp

plus bonnie "prince" billy, foyer red, KAYTRAMINÉ

Hello from the West Coast! No preamble this week, sneaking blurb time in between meetings on a work trek. We all circle back eventually!

Just straight to the music – I’ll try and double the allowance of Good Links next week to make up for it! As always, you can follow along on our playlists on Spotify and Apple Music, which update every Tuesday along with the newsletter.

Kelly Clarkson – favorite kind of high

This is the most “written by Carly Rae Jepsen” song written by Carly Rae Jepsen you could imagine from Kelly Clarkson – and the two fit together really nicely on “favorite kind of high.” Carly’s twee impulses and tightly-wound writing end up balancing out Clarkson’s massive performance, and Clarkson’s powerful instrument gives Jepsen’s writing a bigger sense of release than on Jepsen’s solo records. It’s so fascinating hearing these two American Idol contestants meet together after years of honing their own styles, and having them interlock so well.

Kylie Minogue – Padam Padam

“Padam Padam” is a genuinely weird, woozy offering from Kylie Minogue. A polar opposite to the aforementioned Clarkson/Jepsen synergy, “Padam Padam” feels like an intentional mishmash of clashing textures and weird moves. The post-IDM synth smear of the intro part ways like gelatin curtains to a rock-hard Eurodance hook and gibberish hook. The textures are surreal and almost grotesque until they seize into lockstep. Like the song’s title, it all makes absolutely no sense, until the moment the chorus locks in and every move seems perfectly obvious.

Bonnie Prince Billie – Bananas

Other than the harmonized chorus that gives the song its title, the thing I like most about “Bananas” is how well it captures the understated awe of love. "I will tie your shoes, I'll clean your plate, I'll pay your way / Dance around in circles in an end of times ballet" – Will Oldham’s verses are bone-dry takes on just being amazed at his own allowance of love, but the chorus’ slightly silly refrain lifts up the song’s tribute to the sublime of the beautiful banality of everyday life.

Foyer Red – Etc

Foyer Red’s new record reminds me of the best of Chris Cohen-era Deerhoof and early Dirty Projectors, where the sheer volume of musical ideas force themselves together into a deceptive simple end producvt. Through singalong vocals and insistent drum-and-bass grooves, the song’s pointilistic hooks almost breeze by until the minute twenty mark, when the song opens up into another set of elastic melodies. More is more!

KAYTRAMINÉ – Who He Iz

This record is a mixed bag at best – Kaytranada and Aminé splitting the bill on a collaborative rap/beats record – but the opening track “Who He Iz” delivers on rubbery dance grooves and silly hooks. The rest of the record gets bogged down with mid-tempo explorations and too few earworms, but “Who He Iz” is a just-serious-enough shimmy that I have a feeling will hit endless summer playlists over the next three months

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James Blood Ulmer – Night Lover

I’ve been trying to find a cheap copy of Greg Tate’s Flyboy In The Buttermilk – they’re going on eBay for $100+ – so I’ve been dealing with it in the interim by borrowing it an hour at a time from the Internet Archive, like an undergrad at the media library.

It’s been worth it for the prose and the new records to dig up, like James Blood Ulmer from the very first essay in the book:

…Blood's into slapstick. His idea of a rave-up is smacking spiky chrome-metal crash chords upside the groove. In between he strings oodles of cryptic licks that noodle towards unorthodox and unsettling pattern shifts. Essentially, Blood's lead lines are almost incidental; his rhythm chops are what kick in the accelerator.

The record sounds like the Minutemen playing bebop, or Pat Metheny jamming with the Contortions, and it’s been a delightfully uncomfortable, scratchy listen to dig into.