Too much of music news is tech news these days, but there was an odd symmetry in this week’s big news.
Firstly, the inventor of karaoke Shigeichi Negishi died at age 100. He debuted one of the first karaoke machines, the “Sparko Box,” in 1967, and helped popularize karaoke in bars in Japan. If you’ve ever had one more soju than was sensible, then belted “Mr. Brightside,” you owe this man thanks.
Secondly, Rolling Stone did a profile on Suno AI, the “ChatGPT of Music,” where the founders talked about how their platform could democratize music creation: “The most vocal of the co-founders…envisions a billion people worldwide paying 10 bucks a month to create songs with Suno.” Okay then!
Shigeichi Negishi built technology to let anyone sing along to their favorite song; Suno seems to think that everyone should be one click away to creating their favorite song whenever they want. The problem is, that vision of music creation and listening is just incredibly lonely. It’s the opposite of finding a new song because you belted it in a crowded karaoke room, finding a new silly meaning; the idea that summoning any musical idea instantaneous removes encountering other people from music entirely. We’re in a drought of shared reality, not music – an endless stream of “What if LCD Soundsystem made Klezmer?” doesn’t make music more meaningful, or useful, for anyone.
“Democratizing” can mean a lot of things, and not all of them bring us closer together, ideally while screaming along to Billy Joel.
A few more Good Links
A+ grifter porn in the NYT’s profile of Ashin Deshmukh. Endless banger lines, also a truly surprising Oatly subplot.
Sexy boys – Larry Fitzmaurice talked to Air about the meaning and process behind every song on Moon Safari for its 25th anniversary
Just glad they mentioned the pissing monkey Jet review – the Slate Pitchfork oral history is pretty good! 6.5?
Speaking of Pitchfork, its founder Ryan Schreiber dropped in for a Perfectly Imperfect this week, including a love of a Sunday sake routine and a plug for the homie Antiart!
RIP to Guitar Center using a weird guitar as the G in their logo.
Anyways, on to the new tracks. You can follow along on our playlists on Spotify and Apple Music, which update every Tuesday along with the newsletter. Enjoy!
Kacey Musgraves – Cardinal
I listened to Kacey Musgraves’ latest LP all weekend, a perfect winter-into-spring country-folk record meant for weekend breakfast listens. Lots of really beautiful moments abound, especially on the aching chorus turn on “Dinner With Friends,” but “Cardinal” is absolutely front-to-back with earworms. The verses crib partially from Nelly Furtado’s “Say It Right,” but that sort of makes me like it more amidst the Summer of Love harmonies.
FKA Twigs / Two Shell – Talk To Me
This is Twigs’ first new music in two(!) years, allegedly a preview of the sound of her upcoming techno-inspired LP. That aside, this is one of my favorite songs she’s released in a minute – her lithe, uncanny futurism meshes well with Two Shell’s rambunctious, glitchy nostalgia. The drops are well-earned, the melody is memorable without taking too big of a swing, and there’s a ton of infectious energy that’s sometimes missing from Twigs’ more austere art-pop. Love it.
Yung Lean & Bladee – Golden God
This surprise collab LP is awash in way more goth-y chorus guitar than you'd expect. It's a sadboi rap version of the Crocodiles, in a way that works for me way more than either artist's more bass-heavy output.
Penny Arcade – Jona
I really love James Hoare’s music as Ultimate Painting, especially their S/T album where they pull off the band name/LP/song name trifecta. His new solo work as Penny Arcade is way less VU-indebted – imagine an Elliott Smith record produced by Air and you’re close. It’s as intimate and slightly eerie like his other best work – can’t wait to check the debut LP Backwater Collage on May 3.
mui zyu – sparky
Absolutely gorgeous art-pop with shades of St. Vincent, Laetita Sadier and the first Yeule LP. From the artist, “The song is named after the dog “Sparky” from the opening of David Lynch’s Blue Velvet, who is the perfect image of joyfulness — biting water from a hose in front of their dead owner.”
throwback
Carthago – Alech
An absolute banger found by the folks Habibi Funk – “Alech” sounds like a Tunisian Chic, down to the perfect guitar riff circling the track at all times. From Habibi Funk, “Carthago was founded in the late 1970s as a fusion of Dalton and a second band called Marhaba Band. Both bands frequently played at hotels and night clubs in Tunis and Sousse.” The song grooves like it was made by a supergroup, packing all the moves from a killer 12” in a three and a half minute track, including an unstoppable percussion/guitar break at 1:40ish.