When I was 13, I compulsively read AllMusic.com, the closest thing to file-sharing at the time, in an effort to absorb as many obscure bands and important records as possible. For that reason, long before I had heard Television, I knew they were influential, weird, and seminal - all things I cared about a lot.
So I asked my mom to take me to the closest thing I had to a record store - the CD section at Barnes & Noble. I had no idea this purchase would send me down a rabbit hole of strange, imagistic guitar music that wasn’t fun or easy, but suddenly central to how I heard rock music. Nothing shapes your personality in those years more than pushing through “difficult” records that weren’t quite your size yet, like choking down an adventurous meal at a restaurant even though all you wanted was chicken tenders. Marquee Moon was the first record that pushed me off FM alt-rock and into a wild, poetic world. RIP.
And amidst the bad news, some Good Links:
A song I wrote - I co-wrote and produced Kareem Rahma’s “Really Rich Parents,” which dropped last Thursday. We promise we wrote it *before* the NY Mag piece about nepo babies. Really!
The Friction behind “Friction” - Damien Love’s piece from 2012 on the making of Marquee Moon is essential reading this week
You ever go to the YMCA…on Wagner??? Laurel Halo’s meditation on Wagner in casual listening scenarios is brief but entertaining, and the prose slaps: “To absorb music that is so emphatically active, in terms of dynamics, register and harmonic development, feels like a splash of cold water on the face. Or like a hard stare that I can't be sure is going to give way to attraction, laughter or disgust.”
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.
Fever Ray - Kandy
I really can’t get enough of Olof and Karin Dreijer working together again on the new Fever Ray record. I got chills when the bass synth line hit, and every touch was just reminiscent enough of their Silent Shout peak without feeling like a retread or throwback. Karin’s warped main vocal throws a bit of uncanny valley strangeness into the ballad, and you can’t shake off the strangeness of the sinister “all girls want candy” chorus.
Bonobo & Jacques Greene - Fold
The result of a coffee-and-studio hang in LA last summer, “Fold” is a simple and hypnotic track that both artists featured in their DJ sets in 2022. It’s barely more than a clave, a vocal sample and a bassline over a driving kick, but the song’s judicious arrangement is exactly why it’s so brutally effective at getting you moving. More coffee hangs for these two soon, please?
Mica Levi - Skunk Boy
Caught this in this week’s Deep Voices, “Skunk Boy” is a Mica Levi one-off that builds on room hiss and a sparse guitar take with an increasingly dissonant, yet alluring, vocal harmony. Levi's work producing Tirzah and earning Oscar noms gets the ink, but this rough gem is a casual reminder of their range as a solo artist in raw form.
Avalon Emerson & The Charm - Sandrail Silhouette
A fantastic dream-pop detour from Avalon Emerson and her new project The Charm. Featuring contributions from her wife on guitar, producer Bullion, and her friend Keivon on cello, the track is a crystalline slice of wistful, blissed-out guitar pop. The song’s open cello flourishes lend the track a slight high-psych “Take Me With You” wanderlust that the chorus more than happily delivers on.
Kamaiyah - Champagne Tears
We are all taking Kamaiyah’s effortless stream of East Bay heat for granted and that better change in 2023. “Champagne Tears” is purportedly the first of many singles this year per Kamaiyah’s Twitter, meaning the year is already looking up.
WEEKLY THROWBACK
Disturbed Furniture - Information
This whole newsletter is sort of a stance against “algorithm as DJ” but YouTube honestly goes hard when you set it to “rare post-punk,” and it dug up this treasure I’d never heard before. The band and track name are fully on-brief, and it turns out this song was their one and only 7” release in 1981. It jangles, it bounces, and Alexa Hunter’s vocals are perfectly disaffected.