dua lipa's waste of an imperial phase
also great new music from Sam Wilkes, Art Feynman, Chanel Beads, The Smile, and Bonsi
I was flummoxed on Friday by Dua Lipa’s middling, chorus-less new single “Houdini.” I’ve never been bullish on Dua in general, but Future Nostalgia was hard to hate, especially if you miss the big go-for-the-charts 2010s energy of peak millennial pop. I was also pleasantly surprised by her Barbie track “Dance The Night” with Mark Ronson, mostly because it was perfectly dumb, powerful, and HUGE. With that single, it felt like she was clearly in her Imperial Phase, maybe if only by default: she’s making the biggest pop songs, thus she is one of the biggest pop stars, and can act accordingly.
Even the ill-advised parts of an artist’s imperial phase are so great, because of the batshit tropes that come out of them: the too-long double album, the “raw” followup that’s the “real sound” of the band, the crossover movie event, the alternate persona. Rob Harvilla, in a preview of his new book about the 90’s, wrote about Metallica and selling out:
What prompted Metallica’s edgy, cringey makeover between ’91 and ’96, anyway? Why, “alternative rock,” of course, with its new breed of Seattle-based rock stars ambivalent toward, if not outright hostile to, the very idea of rock stardom.
I would say the answer is much simpler, and kind of boring: they did it because they could. Yes, it’s the path that led us to unlistenable music like Lulu, but seeing someone take their cultural freedom and do weird shit is truly delightful. Fame is a devastating force that ruins people’s lives and brains, but there’s a small window where global success unlocks silly-ass bullshit that makes pop culture thrilling.
So then, with her own cache at an all-time high, would Dua Lipa do so little? The song is missing a chorus and/or personality (Dupe-a Lipa?), but more importantly, without a big swing, the track feels like a missed opportunity to flex her pop power. “Houdini” is familiar and anodyne – the sonic adjustments here care of Kevin Parker are bare-minimum window dressing. The lyrics might as well be “I’m reinforcing my market position / through production tweaks to signify deepened artistry / Houdini.” It’s a waste of her own pop stardom to do this little, and it’s even more disappointing that I’ll probably have to hear it again and again.
Hey how about some good links?
5 Stars, No Notes – No Bells profile prolific NY Yelper Johnny Novo, who uses Yelp as his personal blog across 300 reviews so far this year.
It’s about a hamburger but also butts – I played on this new track from Kareem Rahma, “Juicy Lucy,” which is an ode to the Minneapolis burger of the same name. Want more songs about burgers? Got you covered.
Bubba Sparxx move over – Friend of the ‘stack Dale Eisinger did a Q&A with Voyeur for the release of their debut single “Ugly”
It’ll open up your eyes – I really enjoyed Eric Torres going through the genesis and pop impact of Ace of Base’s The Sign for Pitchfork’s Sunday Review
RIP Jezebel, Jim Spanfeller is forever and always a herb
On to the best of the week! You can follow along on our playlists on Spotify and Apple Music, which update every Tuesday along with the newsletter. Enjoy!
Sam Wilkes – Own
I’ve loved Sam Wilkes’ work with Sam Gendel on Leaving Records, so I was stoked to see his new solo LP hit Bandcamp last week. It’s not jazz – though it’s jazzy – more akin to Grizzly Bear’s folky soup with dashes of pastoral Floyd, Lindsay Buckingham or a warped cassette of a lost great 70s singer-songwriter record. Wilkes’ voice is a small, delicate instrument, but he composes around it with care and detailed attention – as well as help from a number of LA players who elevate his arrangements and songs on every track.
Art Feynman – Early Signs of Rhythm
Found via Bill Pearis’s relentlessly excellent Indie Basement column – “You know the “Life During Wartime” performance in Stop Making Sense where Talking Heads are all running in place? Just about every song here sounds like they are jogging in the studio”
I’ve been a fan since 2017 – “Feeling Good about Feeling Good” is still a jam – but the live band version of his songs truly do break throug his initial lo-fi charm into a full-on dance party. There’s a lot of Talking Heads, to be sure, but I also hear the smeared funk of Matthew Dear’s Beams-era live band.
Chanel Beads – Police Scanner
Chanel Beads' debut single for Jagjaguwar is sly, funky orchestral DIY pop that feels like a hip chamber orchestra got caught up in the middle of a Broken Social Scene demo. The song ends before it fully blooms, but its charm hits immediately – can’t wait to hear whatever full LP they put out.
The Smile – Wall of Eyes
The Smile announced a new record this week, and the title track is Thom in his English Tropicalia / Apocalypse Bossa Nova mode. Like his other recent songs, there's a campfire vibe to his acoustic plucking and barely-there melody, but if the whole new Smile record keeps up this Gilberto Gil meets Scott Walker intimacy, I'm sold.
Bonsi – Four Faces
I found this track browsing Bandcamp, and I don't really know anything about Bonsi, but once her vocals dropped at 0:45 I stopped what I was doing to dig in and listen. Bonsi's sound is immediately UK – you don’t need a bio to mark that – but the song's lurching pop is a sinister inversion of the bright garage nostalgia on the charts, a close cousin to Tirzah’s placeless downtempo pop but with a physical sense of rhythm that moves like a malfunctioning mechanical bull under the melody. “Four Faces” never breaks out of its room tone-tinged halftime, and rarely raises above a murmur – but every move connects.
th ro ww wback
Freddie Mercury – Love Kills
I’m ambivalent to Queen, at best – their singles are unavoidable, and I’m never mad at hearing them on the radio, but I’ve never thought of them in the canon of best-ever rock bands. However, this Freddie Mercury single knocked me out, mostly for all of the song’s non-Freddie elements. It’s a persistent Moroder meets Hi-NRG single that keeps its energy through the song’s shapeshifting chorus. Drizzled arpeggiators sneak in on the margins but the song is entirely driven by the pulsing bass, Mercury's grunting vocal and drum machine.