Hey and happy new year. I spent the last week trying to spend time with stuff that was off my radar - which meant a lot of Charlotte Adigéry and Bolis Pupul’s album Topical Dancer. Its funky delights keep revealing themselves on repeat listens and is worth a revisit if you haven’t checked it lately!
But otherwise, I spent a number of days writing songs with ChatGPT! After getting access to the beta, I immediately put it to work writing silly raps, which were very satisfying in the “goes on tangents about giant pumpkins” way.
Things got more interesting once the output became less interesting though - when generating lyrics that were more boring, but more “right.” Once I tried to get it to write, essentially, a Taylor Swift song using prompts like “write a country song from the perspective of a teenager in Nashville with big dreams,” I started getting back what read like functional, albeit generic, songs.
Then with my last pass, honing in on “a teenager with big dreams who feels trapped in their small town,” I was astonished that it came up with one line that actually felt like a really great country lyric:
Getting even one line that felt human, usable and borderline poetic was fascinating and eerie. I put it in a song I was writing, and I’m pretty sure it’s going to stay there. Do I need to give OpenAI a publishing credit??
And now - on to this week’s best tracks! As always, you can follow along on our playlists on Spotify and Apple Music, which update every Tuesday along with the newsletter.
UNSKIPPABLES #64
Kate Davis - Monster Mash
A rollercoaster of an indie pop track from Kate Davis’ upcoming new LP Fish Bowl. The song’s rollicking melodies are paired with a muted, cassette mixtape-ready backing track, with fizzy synths slowly overtaking the arrangement and spinning out as Davis sings “I can’t control myself - is there anybody out there?”
03 Greedo feat. Drakeo The Ruler - No Free Features
Alongside the great news that 03 Greedo might be out of prison this week, he dropped a surprise new mixtape Free 03 with another batch of material recorded before he started his sentence in 2018. “No Free Features” is a highlight of the mixtape, but the whole thing feels celebratory, like a homecoming party for an artist who’s been away for far too long.
POSH SWAT - DUNGEON CRAWLER/BUG CITY
Jon Dwyer’s fourth outing making improvised, spacey jazz with friends follows his excellent pandemic-era collabs as Bent Arcana and Gong Splat. It’s hardly as bracing as his OHSEES work, and not quite as funky as his Gong Splat collaboration, but you can feel how much fun these musicians are having making intentionally weird music for fellow weirdos. I wish every indie rocker were as excited to do something as unnecessary, dank and funky as these albums.
Local Weatherman - Bad
Biiiiig Ben Kweller MTV2 vibes from this New York outfit, writing what might be the best Weezer-style rock song of the 2020s. Fritz Orman’s slacker vocals speak-sing on all the right words, the guitars wail and spittle in all the right places, and though the chorus is a tad reductive - “She’s not coming back / I want her fucking bad” - there’s tons of pitch-perfect teen angst to be found in the verses - “My girl has potential!” There’s even a “tiny distorted drum part” bridge! They’re playing their album release at Union Pool this Friday, if you’re into that sort of thing - but let’s find them a teen movie reboot to soundtrack STAT.
Spoon - I Can’t Give Everything Away (David Bowie cover)
A breezy cover of the underrated second-to-last song on Blackstar, released on what would have been Bowie’s 72nd birthday. Do yourself a favor and put on all of Blackstar after this one, just to hear again what an amazing epitaph Bowie recorded for himself.
THROWBACK CORNER
The New Pornographers - The Jessica Numbers
The New Pornographers announced a new record this week, coinciding weirdly with a Christmas break re-listen to Twin Cinema and Electric Version. Few bands have ever been as generous with their hooks-to-song ratio, and this song is a prime example. Which part is even the chorus? Is that a post or a bridge? Who cares!
That’s all for this week, folks. Please subscribe if you’d like these opinions straight in your inbox. See you next week!