The best of the week (astigmatism edition)

YES AND ALSO SHAQ

Hello! Welcome back to the Unskippables, where we’re desperately trying to build a time machine to stop this track from happening.

My kid broke my glasses Sunday while playing with me, so I’m wearing two-year-old glasses while typing this, and enduring the headaches of a just-so-slighty-off prescription. So forgive my brevity, I’m doing my best despite my toddler’s fists of fury.

Here are your Good Links of the week:

• DJs HATE him thanks to this one weird trick! – Nick Sylvester wrote about his all-request DJ night experiment in LA, and the surprising return on investment from letting the people rule.

• The Deepest Voices – Matthew Schnipper shares his best tracks of June, and goes long on the Charli/Lorde duet.

• Best New Head of Editorial Content – Billboard interviewed Pitchfork’s new Head of Editorial Content, Mano Sundaresan, who also founded the excellent No Bells blog

• RIP Rob Stone

As always, you can follow along on our playlists on Spotify and Apple Music, which update every Tuesday along with the newsletter. Enjoy!

Queen of Jeans – Karaoke

I really love this whole record of dreamy indie pop, but “Karaoke” is a killer love song that’s a series of vignettes about how love derails the mundane. It perfectly captures the feeling of being stuck in your head obsessing over someone while you try and be present in your life. Concept aside, “Karaoke” is just a great big swing of a pop track, with one of those choruses that’s actually a prechorus to an even bigger chorus!

SML – Industry

Discovered this excellent knotty, improvised record via Bandcamp’s Album of the Day. Imagine if Harmonia spent time DJing at Dublab and cratedigging spiritual jazz, and you get close to SML’s dense textures. It’s not surprising that this five piece band are hanging out in similar scenes to LA’s current lowkey jazz/improv revival – the loose approach to “jazz” rhymes with Sam Gendel’s work and the rest of the Leaving Records scene. However, it’s the group’s integration of pulsing synthesis and studio manipulation that result in jams that surprise with a more granular and confrontational footing than their peers.

Wilco – Hot Sun

I’ve struggled with the last few Wilco records even though I’m a fan, but I was thrilled to hear the band in the weirdo krautrock mode of “Spiders (Kidsmoke)” on the opening track of their new EP Hot Sun Cool Shroud. Jeff Tweedy’s defiantly major-key chorus only highlights the spindly summer paranoia of the main groove, and the track’s string arrangement in the back half set up the cracked spaghetti western guitar solo to break like a summer sweat.

Channel Tres – Cactus Water

A double dip on Nick Sylvester production this newsletter – so glad to see him back working with Channel Tres, as they bring out the best in each other on tracks like “Cactus Water.” The bass pocket is infinitely deep and hooky, and Channel plucks lyrical moments of of the song’s negative space built for singing along on a sweaty dancefloor – “show me how they do it in your town” – and even though the track sounds simple, the effortlessness feels miraculous.

Lil Yachty & James Blake – Woo

James Blake has suddenly found himself making smart, weird moves in 2024 – nothing about his collaborative record Bad Cameo with Lil Yachty reads as a big swing, which is exactly why it’s a way more fun listen than many of his most recent albums. Even his surprise CMYK002 was more of a serious proposal than this album, which seems to thrill in keeping things at a vibes-only level. The arpeggiator that matches the energy of the footwork kick pattern at 1:31 still speaks to both artist’s skill, even on an album that intentionally feels like it keeps the stakes low.

throwback

Shaquille O’Neil – No Love Lost

For those of us who grew up in the Shaq-Fu / Steel era of Shaq’s fame, it’s wild to know that Shaq’s rap record You Can’t Stop The Reign wasn’t on streaming until this week, complete with never-before heard Jay-Z and Nas verses. Let’s give Big Aristotle some credit – try and imagine Luka Doncic dropping a serviceable hip hop record, and You Can’t Stop The Reign looks almost impressive.

The vocal mixing and beat selection is almost comically of the 90’s MTV/Bad Boy era – he was clearly incredibly fond of Notorious B.I.G., aping his flow across the whole album, and drawing heavily from an East Coast palette of beats and collaborators, minus the DJ Quik-produced lite G-Funk of “Strait Playin’.” The Biggie worship is so heavy there’s a song called “It Was All A Dream,” based on the opening lyric of “Juicy,” immediately following a song with a verse from Biggie. He made it a hot line, Shaq made it…a song. Shaq, in all honesty, overdelivers as an MC on the record, and this is a delightful window into 90’s monoculture where the biggest star in the NBA had his own breakfast cereal, children’s movies, and Sega game…so let’s forgive the man biting from the best.