the great nookie divide: is a nü nü metal renaissance inevitable?

(also the week's best tracks, jsyk)

Last week I went to see the Walkmen, a band I had never really loved in their prime but had come to appreciate as I revisited their records. Also, I really just wanted to see them play “The Rat,” still probably the best single rock song of the 2000’s.

Their set was incredible – taut, loud, ferocious – but that’s not what I’ll remember most from the show.

The openers, Liily from LA, spent most of their set winning the crowd over with good-natured hardcore that follows Turnstile and Model/Actriz in finding new lanes for aggressive rock, half noisy groove and half pummeling attack. But then they closed with a straight-ahead cover of Limp Bizkit’s “Break Stuff,” and whatever good will they claimed with the audience dried up, at least from the folks who lived through nu-metal. The visible wave of washed 40-somethings pausing to mouth “what the fuck” to their friends brought a palpable wave of questioning what, exactly, we were witnessing.

Are we fighting against the inevitable? Is nu-metal going to be rehabilitated, first as meme but then as salient musical reference? I’m always happy to see uncool sounds rehabilitated in good ideas – who hasn’t thought that “BLACKOUT” sounded a lot like Trapt? I don’t love what Rina Sawayama did with Evanescence-core on “STFU!” even though I can respect the swing to try and retcon “Pardon Me” into a provocative reference. But straight up covering one of the worst multi-Platinum bands of all time for LOLs? It brings nothing to the table other than (personally) memories of getting picked on by Axe bodywash assholes on the school bus. It’s just one of those days.

Just a handful of Good Links this week:

• Fever to Show – For the 20th anniversary of Fever To Tell, the Yeah Yeah Yeahs released the short film There Is No Modern Romance about the whirlwind surrounding the band around the release of their debut.

• Shazam Your Subconscious – Ross Scarano movingly writes about songs we witness that we’ll never hear again.

And with that, here are your best songs of the week. As always, you can follow along on our playlists on Spotify and Apple Music, which update every Tuesday along with the newsletter.

Jessie Ware – Begin Again

I’ve been all in on Jessie Ware’s disco rebrand since What’s Your Pleasure dropped in 2020, but I wasn’t convinced by the singles preceding That! Feels! Good! especially the “Late Night Talking” soundalike “Pearls.” *However* I was absolutely wrong, as That! Feels! Good! goes beyond the lithe, hip late night disco of What’sYour Pleasure into the disco dollar bin, finding joy in the type of camp-y 12” B-sides and album cuts that make the high disco era so delightful. “Begin Again” leans heavy Larry Levan-like chords and a rising gospel-inflected chorus as the song seemingly keeps ascending, anchored by an insistent wiggle that brings a knowing wink to every chord change. I actually laughed out loud when I first heard the piano break, out of joy, and luckily the entire record delivers on that moment of surprise.

Isola – Red Balloon

Hearing a friend’s new project out of the blue is a blast – no drip of IG promos, no pre-save text, just an unexpected drop for you to dig into what they’ve been thinking about. Isola’s new album LP1, produced by friend/producer Nick Sylvester, is crystalline, beautiful, and incredibly consonant – even though the songs pulse in search of resolution, they’re built as stable scaffolding for singer Ivana Carrescia to dance around. Her vocals are the album’s deserved focal point, alternating between floating over the songs and creating hooky, fluid pockets that bounce against the project’s subtle physicality.

Healing Potpourri – The April Fools (Burt Bacharach Cover)

San Francisco’s Healing Potpourri is currently the city’s reigning champion of low-key pastel psych-pop – and his “Lagniappe Session” on Aquarium Drunkard is a perfect showcase of his depth of craft and deep appreciation for perfect pop songs. Alongside daring covers of the Beach Boys, the Beatles and the High Llamas, Simi Sohota also pays homage to Burt Bacharach’s genius on a heartbreaking, lush cover of “The April Fools.” Balancing straight-ahead vocal performance with pillowy orchestration, Sohota’s arrangement swaps the original’s heavy saccharine strings for a bouncing playfulness that brings the song’s dripping melody to new life.

Julie Byrne – Summer Glass

“Summer Glass,” the first single from Julie Byrne’s upcoming album The Greater Wings, spins a glimmering synthpop tower out of Byrne’s deliberate, melancholic songwriting. The biggest songs from her 2017 LP layered gentle synth swells under her acoustic guitar and voice, but on “Summer Glass” her melodies are surrounded by arpeggiated, mechanical power. The song’s potent synth-pop then melts away at the song’s climax into a string quartet, as if the song is suddenly freed from gravity for its ephemeral second half.

The Soft Walls – Waking

After a deep March addiction to the Red, Pinks and Purples’ homemade jangle pop, I was the perfect target for the Soft Walls, a UK home-recorded project from Dan Reeves. The songs have a bit more of the War on Drugs comet-tail jam strewn into its chiming pop mixture, but his new LP True Love (out May 5) captures the incredible feeling of hearing tightly wound pop songs recorded in an environment just a little too small for their size and ambition.

throwback

Melanie – Some Say (I Got Devil)

Heard this via director Tony Tost shouting out the needle drops on his movie Americana. At first I thought it was a little self-congratulatory, but if you’re not hype as fuck about your own needle drops, why even make a movie??? I support it! It also helps that “Some Say (I Got Devil)” is an incredible lost cinematic gem, equal parts Lee Hazlewood and Vashti Bunyan.