Hyperpop goes Canadian indie
dltzk! Your Old Droog! Mura Masa! Julie Doiron! Fielded!
Hi! You may have noticed that as you’re reading this email, it’s Tuesday! I’m changing up when I’ll be in your inbox, mostly for extra time to parse through everything dropping on Friday, but also maybe for some Tuesday record drop days of yore?
Let’s get to the music - and the Good Links of the week:
Rachel Syme profiles Maya and Anna of Pen15, and their creative process is as tender and difficult as you’d imagine
Even if you’re not up for 8 hours with the Beatles, this scene of Paul pulling “Get Back” out of thin air is a must-watch
The Bandcamp Daily team go deep on the current SF indie pop scene, which pulled my heartstrings as a Bay Area expat - and the songs are great
You can follow along on our playlist on Spotify and Apple Music, which will update every week along with the newsletter.
THE UNSKIPPABLES #17
dltzk - pretender
This is the first hyperpop track I’ve heard that references peak 00’s indie - the sprawling melody and bleary-eyed acoustic guitars are far more Broken Social Scene than mall-punk, and the songs stretch far past the minute/minute and a half mark of most other “digicore” artists into distinctly MP3 blog territory. There’s still a distinctly teenage streak to the emotional content, but hearing Canadian indie pop touches reworked for the streaming age hits a new flavor of nostalgia for me — I guess every seventeen year-old girl deserves an anthem?
Your Old Droog - Cosmonaut
Space Bar is Droog’s 2nd LP of the year, and it beat out all of last week’s rap records for pure enjoyment and personality. It’s woozier and hungrier than Gibbs/Jadakiss, it’s less radio bait than Blueface, and the detail-packed texture of New York pushes harder through your speakers than last week’s Ghost/Raekwon freestyles. I had a hard time picking a favorite track from the LP, which is filled with loping dusty beats and detail-crammed bodega-lit verses.
Julie Doiron - Thought Of You
Julie Doiron wrote the best breakup song of all time and is my favorite part of one of the best Mount Eerie albums, so I’m biased in sharing this track as one of my favorites of the week. There’s a casual devastation to her best songs that makes them feel pulled from thin air, and “Thought Of You” is no different.
Fielded - Not That Deep
NYC artist Fielded finds an amazing blend of high 80’s pop and physical neo-soul on this track, from her new record Young Medusa. The verses groove like a lost Maxwell cut, with the vocal layering choices, bright arrangements and chorused guitars pulling from the same neon sheen as Scritti Politti, Tears For Fears and Kate Bush.
Mura Masa - 2gether
This starts as a standard ballad from British producer Mura Masa, until the truly bizarre chiptuned chorus refrain kicks in and it goes deep into the uncanny valley. It’s a torch song stripped for parts, with no huge drop - just a boy, a guitar, and what sounds like his robot lover? I’m in.
THE THROWBACK
Destroyers - Slave Of Love
Before writing “Escape (The Piña Colada Song)” off his HEATER of an LP Partners In Crime, but after writing the Partridge Family banger “Echo Valley 2-6809,” Rupert Holmes tried his hand at filthy, filthy disco.
This was the B-side of the only single from Destroyers, and it’s 4 minutes of grimy slither and big, gross piano.
Thanks again for reading! And see you next week on Tuesday!