i'm glad the bad new beatles song exists
Plus the week's best from Tokischa, Shit Robot, Kiki Bohemia, Chemical Brothers and Spiritual Cramp
Hi there! Hope your first week of November isn’t weirdly hot like it is in New York. Gotta love some seasonal existential dread.
I spent a lot of time last week listening to “Now And Then,” the new (and final) Beatles song built around a demo tape of John Lennon’s the rest of the band built a track around. The song itself is a full-on dud: it’s the type of song that gets worse both as you’re listening to it, and worse every time you hear it. Every arrangement choice feels murky and weird – the maudlin, out-of-focus string arrangement, the listless strumming under the verses, and meandering harmonies. Even Ringo sounds generic thanks to a placeless room sound, as if he, too, was AI-assisted.
That said, I found the accompanying documentary really moving, as Paul McCartney clearly worked hard to get one last chance to work on a song with all of these men who mattered so much to him. A tangible sense of loss permeates his voice over, and the desire to make this lost demo tape work as a track is touching. Paul, who as recently as 2018 was trying to score a hit with Greg Kurstin, feels like he’s taking stock of his legacy as death nears hits with the elegiac feel of Bowie’s Blackstar. For that reason, I’m glad this song exists – but I wish the song itself carried any of that energy in its arrangement.
Hey, here are a few Good Links, just for you:
What the FUCK is up, Exxon – A Memphis hardcore band throws a show in a local gas station, raising the stakes for all other show venues. Wait for the guitarist reveal at the end.
Did Blink-182 Secretly Remix Their Album? r/Blink182 users have noticed changes in the sound of the band’s new record on streaming – all for the better, as the record notably sounded like Machine Gun Garbage when it dropped
How little is your art worth? Use Billboard’s stream toyalty calculator to find out!
Why does AI Homer covering Underworld sound like the Happy Mondays?
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!
Tokischa – CANDY
"CANDY" is a relentless dembow track from Dominican rapper/singer Tokischa. There's so little to the track that a muted sub-bass at the end feels like a huge move under Tokischa's restless, packed vocals.
Shit Robot feat. Mutado Pintado – Superstar
Nobody knows how to ride a bassline like the human ket key bump Mutado Pintado. He sings over hardware techno like your afterhours id inner monologue unleashed on the mic – and Shit Robot’s “Superstar” is the perfect venue for his murky monologue. James Murphy’s mix takes a starring role as he tweaks the sub bass, throws claps into reverb, and creates tension around the song’s unrelenting snake of a bassline. Close your eyes and you can almost imagine you’re in the bathroom line at a warehouse, desperate to get sweaty again.
Spiritual Cramp – Better Off This Way
Spiritual Cramp’s new self-titled LP is deeply stupid, brutish, unsubtle and utterly addicting. "Better Off This Way" delivers the biggest sugar rush on the album, powered by a pummeling guitar riff and a turnaround-as-chorus that serves just to create centrifugal force throwing you back into the main hook. If the return of the Hives this year had you excited, this song is better than every track on their new record – thrilling, potent, and defiantly dumb.
Kiki Bohemia – Lonely People
This is a new-to-me find from the Bandcamp homepage – imagine a goth-tinged midpoint between the Walker Brothers Nite Flites and 80’s Kate Bush and you’re almost there on “Lonely People.” Bohemia and collaborator Sicker Man excel in crafting real tension and release where lesser art poppers might be content to be just a vibe – and it’s refreshing to hear the ideas expand and mutate over each track on her new album Those Are Not Songs.
Chemical Brothers – Goodbye (Erol Alkan Rework)
A bloghouse remix??? In 2023???? Alkan takes the original squelchy major key bass of the original track, streamlining the song’s noise into an ever-ascending anthemic house track. The track knows better than to pull too many moves, instead just focusing the original’s nostalgic melodicism into something built for the end of the night.
throwback
Stereolab – Super Falling Star
I was inspired to dig back into the first Stereolab album after a shoutout from the Mount Eerie Substack, and while the band’s early, brusque motorik on Peng! is a blast, the opening track “Super Falling Star” just wrecked me. The searching, mildly chromatic verse progression opens up into a devastating chorus of layered vocals and yearning pedaled organ. I’ve showed every person I’ve hung out with this song for the last week, and it’s still haunting me.