pop – Page 20 – Plainly & Painfully

TRACK | Sheer Mag – Expect the Bayonet

Some of you latecomers may know this as the theme to Useful Idiots pod with Matt Taibbi and Katie Halper. But with great pride I say that I was among the billion people to have heard it prior to this exposure. Which still puts me in the top 12% of listeners. Not bad.

Sadly, such things are rare, this sort of lyrical content and impassioned delivery, in a format that is meant to be heard and not merely tolerated.

So before the worlds been reduced to soot
Solidarity for those underfoot
I better remind ya
Or you’ll surely regret
And if you don’t give us the ballot
Expect the bayonet

TRACK | Terrible Truths – False Hope

Teetering ideally between math and art rock, pop rock and garage rock, the core essence of it is simply good and engaging.

Rarely does it seem a song is written and recorded at such an optimal time for the elements that make up its composition.

This feels bottled at the right moment, excised from the aether more or less intact.

TRACK | Coma Cinema – Satan Made a Mansion

I don’t think anybody can in good faith argue with how good a line, “Satan made a mansion for love to live when it dies,” especially in the way it is casually uttered here, and considering its fine abbreviated state existing as both precursor and title.

Few and far between are such killer refrains.

And that is not yet to mention some of the best lo-ish-er-fi production this side of the infinite lapse.

You don’t need me to tell you whose fingerprints are on this one. I only wish I could do my influences this kind of fearless and forthright justice.

TRACK | Deaf Chonky – Shirley

Let us please have more songs that address explicitly unjust hierarchies… and, if possible, ideally, remain compelling with regard to instrumentation and lyrical craft.

“there’s burning to be done / so I’ll sleep when I’m dead”

The track is more than a little seething. And with great energy and righteousness there is a palpable sense of alienation and disgust.

It reminds me of a quote of Camus writing about the poet René Char:

Camus felt that Char…

“was quite alone, without having a taste for solitude. And he cannot conceive of a life without friendship, and he cannot love most of the men around today. Therefore he is very demanding to the few men he esteems, sometimes violently so… He deserves to be encouraged and accepted wholly because he himself is whole and of a quality so rare that without him it would take the world far too long to be reborn.”

TRACK | Jeans Wilder – Sparkler

As mentioned in the prior post, The Mountain Goats’ The Water Song feeds nicely into this track, in tempo, theme and texture.

And it is all a lot of texture, isn’t it. It’s such a lovely, warm, lugubrious track.

The 50s pop influences are here, gently warped through the lo-fi bedroom lens. If it’s not already in some slow motion film sequence or twenty it will be soon enough.

The mood has been captured or crafted and awaits appropriation, to be shuffled sequentially, reformed into a new purpose. It’s too good not to be gathered up and set against new backgrounds, some complimentary, some gaudy and/or heartless.

TRACK | The Mountain Goats – The Water Song

John Darnielle has carved out a place in the world for himself through an exhaustive output of decades worth catchy and insightful pop music.

It is seemingly self-sustaining and I admire him a great deal for this achievement. As the gears about us churn and crush everyone else, John has managed not to be ground into a fine paste.

That is not at all to say that he didn’t have his fair share of hard times, from what I understand, those due all sentient beasts. But that he continued to create throughout them and continues to make interesting media. At some point most people stop.

This song is gleefully dire. There are some field recording elements for texture, subtle but sticky backing vocals in the chorus, and the bareness of John’s grating/glorious voice.

I am most familiar with this song in the context of a mix in which it feeds directly into Jeans Wilder’s Sparkler. And that will be posted next. Due to the way chronology works in archiving posts, it will be in order but now perceived out of order. The trick is that it doesn’t matter.

TRACK | Son of Salami – Baby Mayo

Baby Mayo is a blast from the not so distant past of 2012.

It was a simpler time. Instagram gave a generation of not-yet-middle-aged millennials a reason to live. One neoliberal oligarchy apologist was our symbolic figurehead instead of another. And the domestication of the dog continued unabated.

Looking back over it now it is a real triumph of lo-fi bedroom rock. Both melodically interesting, lyrically playful, strange but also truly pretty.

I am all for representations of abrupt and seemingly arbitrary deterioration, having experienced them personally as a bipedal multicellular biological organism, like when the track hits a disintegration loop or two.

There is a lot of craft and detail going into this track which may be lost on some less familiar with the genre. Mostly because it sounds like an ice cream truck falling apart upon reentry. but it is there.

TRACK | GEE TEE – Z-ZERO

Z-ZERO is 90 seconds of blown-out synth pop punk.

The bifurcated melody lets for once the bridge also be the chorus, and it is no small wonder that this works out fine. Yet again, Australia has shown us the way.

It’s all very good. There’s enough style that it lapses back into substance at some point in the general mire, the rhythm guitar bounding back and forth across the soundscape throughout.

TRACK | Casiotone for the Painfully Alone – Tom Justice, The Choir Boy Robber, Apprehended at Ace Hardware in Libertyville, IL

“26 without a shot / that’s more than Bonnie and Clyde got”

Never one to shy away from a lengthy title no matter whose blog title section it will disrupt, CFTPA/Owen Ashworth writes songs plenty good enough to overlook this flaw.

It starts with twinkling starlight keys affixed to a broad void of bass drum, just listen to the song. It is all beginning. Synthetic clapping, you should listen for that. And there’s a tremendous organ solo that plays Tom off. You can just listen to it.

TRACK | Total Revenge – Jeep Cherokee

There’s a few great tracks on Total Revenge’s S/T, but Jeep Cherokee is my favorite of the set.

Drums that register somewhere between trashcan and streetlight corral a blown out but triumphant melody, bleeding out graciously into the verse. All of this builds pretty quickly to some kind of boil before dissipating in feedback to close out the record.

“I do all the things that I should / For once in my life I feel good”

Check out also The Fair for similar sludgery that reaches comparable heights of wonder.

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