six cigarettes with none of the fun
Plus the week's best from Protomartyr, Palehound, Kodak Black, John Coltrane, and Glasser
As depressing as the Tweet below is, my first thought was – God I miss smoking six cigarettes on a Tuesday night.
It’s bleak as hell in NYC, especially due to the eerie campfire smell of the Quebecois smoke. But hey, at least we’ve got the Good Links:
Post-punk? Post-something? Dropped a new song with my pal Kareem Rahma, “Entertainment,” about judging people having a good time and realizing you might have been wrong your entire adult life.
Still the hardest button to button – Melissa Giannini tries to get Meg White on the record, and the fact that she still won’t do an interview only helps reinforce the article’s thesis that Meg White fucking rules.
It wasn’t Jerome, sadly – Dan LeRoy gets to the bottom of what inspired the wild-ass Linn beat for the Time’s “777-9311”
Got five hours to kill? Juan Maclean and JDH shared their entire B2B Good Room set for your listening pleasure
M***y H***y – Miranda Reinert wrote the best take on the Swifties and projecting your morals onto your heroes.
Plantasia Hive RISE UP – Mort Garson’s back, baby!!! Sacred Bones is reissuing his work for television and film, including music he wrote for the Apollo 11 moon landing.
You can follow along on our playlists on Spotify and Apple Music, which update every Tuesday along with the newsletter.
Protomartyr – For Tomorrow
I’ve long been a Protomartyr fan from a distance – I’ve seen them, I like them, but never went all-in on their records – but their latest LP Formal Growth In The Desert is just an indie rock stunner. It’s one of those hazy summer rock records that feels exactly like a blast of bar AC on your sweaty shirt as you enter a rock show, and it helps that lyrically the band might be the best they’ve ever been. “For Tomorrow'” was the first track that really caught me while listening on the train thanks to its Hüsker Dü-like stomp, but “Fun In Hi Skool” “Let’s Tip The Creator” and “3800 Tigers” are equally as stunning.
Palehound – My Evil
Palehound’s “Feeling Fruit” is an all-time ballad for me, so I was thrilled to see “My Evil” pop up last week from their upcoming LP Eye On The Bat. In addition to the excellent Sopranos intro remake video – worth a watch on its own – the song’s lyrics perfectly encapsulate living with the worst version of yourself day in and day out. El Kempner’s windup pre-chorus nails it: “I waste time with it / Pour wine with it / Bake bread with it / Give head with it / Make lunch with it / Make love with it / and Share a skull with it / It’s my evil.”
Kodak Black – Flirting With Death
Somewhere between post-Thug sing-rapping and a gothic Autotune nursery rhyme, “Flirting With Death” is the bonkers highlight of Kodak Black’s Pistolz & Pearlz. Black barely switches up his cadence between his verses and chorus, the repetition merely reinforcing the funeral dirge energy he lays on top of the song’s snappy 808 crunch. Gorditoflo’s verse, while able, feels like a strange breath of normalcy in the song’s neon green casket lining – if only the rest of the record decided to be so openly strange.
John Coltrane feat. Eric Dolphy – Impressions (Live)
Next week, Impulse will drop Evenings at the Village Gate: John Coltrane with Eric Dolphy, a live set recorded in 1961 with Coltrane, Dolphy, McCoy Tyner, Elvin Jones, and Reggie Workman. The clarity and energy of the recording is stunning, and the breakneck rush of Coltrane’s opening solo is absolutely matched by Dolphy when he enters at the four minute mark.
Glasser – Vine
A new Glasser LP! Her first in 10 years?? I listened to the first Glasser on repeat when I first moved to NY 13 years ago – “Home” especially was my soundtrack as I kept getting lost walking around Brooklyn to buy a mattress and a desk. “Vine,” the first track from her upcoming crux album, is less crystalline than her earlier work, a bone-dry vocal awash in skittering, distorted drums and cut-and-paste string arrangements. The rising strings in the back half almost overtake her vocal, only to swell around her like a rising tide.
throwbackkkkskskkk
Velocity Girl – I Can’t Stop Smiling
The wave of reunion/anniversary shows has generally hit my own nostalgia for early 2000s rock and emo, but occasionally it’s introduced me to a new group – like DC’s Velocity Girl, who are reuniting to play the Black Cat’s 30th anniversary in September. It’s like finding a long lost ancestor to the indie pop I loved – an earlier American translation of C86 pop and shoegaze whose intertwined melodies and sincere sense of melody I can’t believe I had never heard.