This weekend I was hit hard by this New York Times piece about a “lost soundtrack” discovered in a Fire Island home via hundreds of taped DJ sets from 1979 to 1999.
The article outlines how two men discovered the trove of tapes after buying a beach house on Fire Island last summer, recorded and owned by the men who lived there before them. The tapes tell a story of the communities on Fire Island that lived, played, and tried to survive the AIDS epidemic:
“There were times on the dance floor where some of us would have breakdowns, because a song would come on and it reminded us of somebody that we loved and had lost,” Ms. Rosado said. “But in spite of all that strangeness, there was still joy. We kept trying to stick with the joy of trying not to get morbid and bitter and angry. That was our release.”
The article is great - but the Mixcloud where the DJ sets are digitized is spectacular. The mixes preach freedom with full-throated camp, but there’s real sadness and loss tucked in the sweeping strings and crossfades between belting divas and regional hits, even during the more laid-back daytime tapes. At their best, you can feel the joy and sweat coming off the taped sets, which are rich with campy tracks that never became classics - like this set, which has both a disco version of “Don’t Cry For Me, Argentina” and “Life At The Outpost,” a post-Village people disco/country hybrid.
It’s borderline voyeuristic listening to these mixes created for a specific community in a specific place, digitized forty years later - but it’s that specificity that make these crackle with emotion and meaning. It’s not made for me, but knowing how much these tracks meant to so many - they are still so alive.
Also - I wrote this newsletter before the news from Politico that Roe v. Wade will be overturned, and abortion will be outlawed in 30+ states when the decision is finalized. If you have time and the means, please take a moment to an abortion fund in one the states ready to enact hostile anti-abortion laws when Roe is gone.
And now, on to this week’s tracks! You can follow along on our playlist on Spotify and Apple Music, which update every Tuesday along with the newsletter.
THE UNSKIPPABLES #34
Toro Y Moi - Deja Vu
Toro Y Moi’s 8th album MAHAL was released Friday, and it scrapes away the clubby focus of 2019’s Outer Peace to make room for wooly, wandering psych-pop. “Deja Vu” especially feels like decoupage pressing against your ear, a reverse guitar solo wandering about Chaz Bundick’s doubled, dry vocal. The real star is the Motown-esque bassline, which dances around the hushed, simple song, like James Jamerson going nuts on a Nick Drake ballad.
Blushh - Stressed!
If you apply the Pixies’ LOUD-quiet-LOUD template to breezy indie pop and “Steal My Sunshine”-sized breakbeats, you’d get “Stressed!” from Portland, OR’s Blushh. Initially released as a single in XX, the track is still a highlight on Blushh’s new LP C’est La Vie! out this week on Literal Gold Records. There’s a carefree sing-songiness to the whole album, but the explosive drums on “Stressed!” render the song’s joy in three dimension.
James Righton feat. Benny Anderson - Empty Rooms
Righton, former Klaxons member, has been making left-field dance music with Soulwax at the boards since 2021, starting with the excellent “Release Party” and the followup single “Pause.” His latest is cut from the same blocky funk as his previous tracks, and has a truly unexpected feature — Benny Anderson from ABBA! Anderson contributes a perfectly ABBA-esque keyboard line that emerges around the two minute mark adding a wipsy, continental sadness to the song’s burbling backing track.
Future feat. Kodak Black - VOODOO
Nothing on Future’s new record reaches his previous heights - there’s no “Mask Off,” or “I Serve The Base” - but in the back third of I NEVER LIKED YOU, his duet with Kodak Black gives Future a properly woozy, imperial pedestal to recall the heights of his past records. At this point, any Future record is still worth a listen, but the fact that the gems are fewer and farther between make his creative peak seem more like a memory than a current hot streak.
MJ Nebreda - Quédate
A neon-lit house experiment from LA’s Godmode, “Quédate” is an insouciant, carefree house jam that lets MJ Nebreda’s vocals glide over a pulsing bubblegum piano line and Keytranada-like bass bounce. The rest of her debut EP - Sin Pensar - blends reggaetón, hyperpop, and dance music, but nothing is quite as coolly fun as this opening track, all sunshine and flavored-chapstick groove.
THROWBACK CORNER
Jens Lekman - Maple Leaves
Jens Lekman spoke to Stereogum about having to re-record his first two albums, which are no longer online due to expired sample clearances. I had actually never heard the original version of his early single “Maple Leaves,” which I popped open while reading the interview and blew me away. It’s unfortunate the samples aren’t clear, because Lekman fits together these three bright, almost childlike loops with a ramshackle sweetness, like Lego sets mashed together. His new version is lovely, but there’s something blunt and sweet in the original, like an awkward kiss on a first date.
Aaaaand that’s all for this week, folks! Please subscribe if you’d like these opinions straight in your inbox. See you next week!