Tag: pop

TRACK | Merce Lemon – Backyard Lover

5/5 golden merles

Sometimes the magic trick isn’t a slight of hand. Though often the case, it isn’t always derived from a dexterity of muscle memory achieved through practiced repetition coupled to a misdirection which makes it seem as though something incredible has happened. Sometimes a kind of magic is derived from slowing down. Or reexamining what is plainly visible but has been taken for granted. It is the exception to the rule but also remarkable. This is that second one.

Language is complex, small manipulations of its channels and ruts can have a cumulatively outsized effect.

In “Backyard Lovers” pauses are pulled apart, lines are staggered to warp or embolden them. It is a valuable offer for a free and safe means of disoriented coherency. The perspective shifts. The familiar is made a bit exceptional. It speaks in the language you speak, but it expands that language. It appears in a recognizable indie/folk rock arrangement, but it extends the possible combination of elements through some frankness and some creative problem solving otherwise known as invention.

Another way I find it to be good is that sometimes you can let a melody go and it comes back to you stronger. That takes some strong kind of confidence and it’s easy to lose in the process of making. In writing the song you’ve got to remember it; the more subtle its shifts and elaborations, the harder it is to keep the thread from tangling up and knotting here or there. There are many elements to this particular making that seem sheerly intuitive and others that seem deftly calculated.

For example, late on there’s an assemblage of attributes listed that don’t fit the earlier structure, compiled as an addendum between two instrumental passages. It’s placement is a little unusual, but it is adding significant, palpable depth and nuance to the portrayal of the world as it has been uttered into being. Instead of binding back into the chorus at the end and the edge of the track, the bridge leads out of the world, back to this one or another, whatever you prefer.

This song was found through the tireless and obscene scouting of Various Small Flames and you should go read that blog. Vinyls and Tapes from Darling Records, and preorder the files on the bandcamp; arriving on Sept. 27th.

TRACK | Busted Head Racket – Poor no more

5/5 golden merles

Garage Synth / Egg Punk. Newcastle, Australia. I will never in my life make something that sounds this good. Yet the merciless and merciful aspects of our brains are broken in similar if not effectively identical ways with respect to consumption ideals. What can be salvaged from a poisoned music culture and made good again?

We can’t let the bastards entirely have melody. We can’t allow them to curse and butcher the synth that sings, or only allow play for profit. I can’t make what the band has made. I like to hear it. Busted Head Racket are thriving in the new fresh hell.

As far as simulacra that mimic the moment go, it is a course correction. It’s a good interpretation. There’s an adequate amount of noise and degradation applied that substitutes for where it is otherwise extracted in daily, unavoidable consumption. The filth is placed back on the scale, countering the kitsch that sits like a lead balloon upon the other side.

The discordance is like a filter that allows you to see what lingers around you and at all times but is otherwise invisible; They Live sunglasses or Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe quietly mapping all the background radiation. It is encouraging to see. It helps us navigate the world.

What niche allows for such a thing to emerge and inhabit a space and not be smothered or obliterated? I don’t know, there’s not enough, you should probably support it if you are able. Name your price on the band’s bandcamp. Buy the Vinyl on Erste Theke Tontraeger.

TRACK | Little Oil – Hey Judas

5/5 golden merles

Coming 2nd among Twelve Songs, Little Oil’s “Hey Judas” is a psych-folk tune composed of deftly piercing hooks dispensing immense compassion. Piano’s plonk and murmuring synths ferry the arbitration neatly forward, familiar myths reconfigure, agreeably heralded in the heat of the room. The melodic components are strong. The envoy offers consolation, there’s very little dread to be found within a context usually larded with it, only sunny reconciliation.

How to even begin to approach this subject and themes in its gilded iron sarcophagus, or deflect the baggage of the bastards who claim its copyright?

The answer is: orthogonally, reinventing suppositions around base symbols we’re all locally steeped in, the reframing of the frame within another. Or just generally with a little innovation and the warmth distinct to those who remain in the world.

There’s plenty of good examples within the approximate genre to pull from and a nice suitable lineage. “Hey Judas” slides into place among other fine tracks such as Loose Fur’s “The Ruling Class,” Brian Jonestown Massacre’s “The Ballad of Jim Jones,” Page France’s full “Hello, Dear Wind,” Doug Marsch’s rendition of “Woke up this morning with my mind (staying on Jesus).”

The whole set has a lot of these same sensibilities, cutting melodies, rich images placed aside non-lexical grooves and is worth investigating. Cassettes from Fountain Inc. and digital are $12 on the Bandcamp.

COMP | Este Sinte Mata Fascistas

5/5 golden merles

New compilation from Argentina in the wake of the December inauguration of the libertarian hatchetman and fascist clown Javier Milei. In the absence of simply gawking in terror at the spectacle of a modern state being disassembled and sold for scrap, what can be done? Well, Fichines Ruido Zafarla have put out Este Sinte Mata Fascistas, that’s what. The disc functions as a unified front of disgust and defiance from a collection of some of the nations finest punks.

There’s a good breadth of style to the pieces, from egg and devocore tinged tracks like Valentina & los Bindis’ “Basta” to harder proto punk and hardcore Desborde’s “Hartxs” components. But the spirit remains consistent throughout and pulls from common threads of musical influence and political offense.

In “Basta” saw synths reverberate in a synchronized percussive wave, the chorus a harmonized rallying cry of that eponymous declaration (“Enough!”). It’s great synth punk, melodically sound and structured with playful invention within the coalescing vocal lanes, commiserating formidably with the best of the genre. There is value in mutiny during times of madness, singing about this dissension, and celebrating noncompliance with your friends.

The act itself is valuable but fortunately the record is also exceedingly good. Show a bit of solidarity if you should see fit. The beautiful CD option comes in a floppy disk sleeve, for $3 ($15 to get it up and over to the US), or name your price for the digital files.

COMP | Palestine Solidarity Compilation

5/5 golden merles

The Palestine Solidarity Compilation is one of the most stacked comps of the era and for the cause eating at the conscience of the world. Just look at the list for many favorites of this portal: Billiam, Busted Head Racket, Rude Television, Cool Sorcery, Gee Tee, Cherry Cheeks, and the many and the more, 27 tracks of playful and cursed invention. Further good news, all the included songs are unreleased, demos, covers, or live versions, so you may become a craprock completionist and cleans some small portion of your soul in the process.

Highlights for me are Balaclava‘s “Swimming Up Up Up,” a devocore/egg punk blinder, collapsing with great intention and some real fun melodic subversion in the latter stages. And Moshi Moshi and the Moist Boys‘ “Pitchforks and Torches,” which operates primarily by gallantly gliding its synthpunk guts across the soundscape. There are many new names to investigate here, many I had not come into contact with previously, and this is a welcome introduction amidst much good company.

Give if you’ve got and can afford to. There is thrashing, there is jangle, there is wallop, and all going toward the cause of providing a tiny bit of support for those who continue to face dehumanization and death daily.

Please see the bandcamp description of the album for how to buy (…it isn’t $1,000). Make a donation and then email them directly for a code. Tapes from Idiotapes (EU) and Godless American (US).

TRACK | Sandy Pylos – La Modelo De Mis Fantasias

5/5 golden merles

Sandy Pylos is the psych/power pop project of Portland-based Paraguayan multi-instrumentalist Ana Belén. It is bedroom synthpop undeniably stacked with invention and melodic charm. Eschewing all manner of kitsch that plagues the genre, Belén allows wonder and devotion to manifest in a genuinely thoughtful and compelling account, all delivered to you inside a series of superb hooks. “La Modelo De Mis Fantasias” is the lead single off of the debut album, Notas de Voz. It is what pop music can sometimes be at it’s best: experimental, cunning & heartfelt.

There are aspects to the lyric and phrasing that are similar to the routes Dig Nitty or The Cowboys might take: language singularly formed, freshly dispatching the burden of invention, defiantly in search of the feeling but actively allergic to established routes. These turns and extrapolations tweak the universal and better reinforce the narrative, offering the listener the opportunity of discovering new paths between two points of familiar earth. The question is put to us by proxy: “Have you ever even been on a giant slide?”

In “La Modelo De Mis Fantasias” the chorus is given the right amount of time to wind its recursive variants: first as anthemic refrain, then reappearing within a field recorded rendition of writing or reciting, finally, later, among other elements, it emerges in a distinctly stripped-down acoustic version that ushers in the end. The duplication reaffirms the sentiment. Its inclusion seems to offer a glimpse of love expressed at other angles, the melody fluctuating with time and suiting evolving exterior circumstance. Arrangements morph, time passes, but the obsessive dedication nonetheless remains transfixed, an ever-present undercurrent and preoccupation. Witnessing that reification is as fun as it is compelling and enriching.

There’s plenty to admire in the works constituent parts, harmonizations and percussive fills. But simply dissecting the organs and putting them back together would miss the point. Whereas most creatives infatuated with 60s/psych rock might offer earnest but antiseptic covers and fine enough tributes, the great power and grace of this EP is reinterpreting particular methods in the pursuit of impact. It is assured and realized, utilizing what still works and subverting the rest. It is the difference between mimicry and mastery.

It is good when so very many things are not. Tapes are $8.00, mp3s/wav $5.

TRACK | The Uptights – Jasper

5/5 golden merles

Oslo’s The Uptights have created in “Jasper” a multifaceted fuck-you of a tune, some real fun experimental lo-fi post-punk. Early hooks are hung on a static howling, doused in reverb and abandoned in sequence. From this admirable mire three distinct subsections are carved and then collapsed at the emergence of each newly favored form. It is resolute in relation to what it is not, competently corrupted. The contrasting components of this set provide by their shared presence a murky but welcome depth of field, one that is surprisingly vast and inviting.

Within this arrangement the track seems to feed off of itself in a complex and closed system. It is pleasant to witness. By populating the relative void of the medium in this way we are able to see and define something more clearly than if it were otherwise an isolated instance or series of tracks. Instead of fostering some post-punk hack medley, the negative space envelops the substances, rematerializing them afterward in new forms, glowing, growing and exhibiting signs of life. The movement and misdirection creates a admirable gap in which other imagined aspects are allowed to flourish.

If you’re a fan of Flegel you will be familiar with the feeling derived from expert arrangements. It’s the same in any medium, but this is a good example.

By the allotment of elements you’ve been intentionally given something to recognize in relation to one another: a sense of scale and speed, relative motion in focus instead of a blur, a foundational frame of reference that allows for orientation. That is something music can but often does not offer: a signpost in a sea of dark, a diminishing of alienation for the observer. Maybe a couple of metaphors need to be tacked together to get at the scope of it, but that’s the general idea.

I don’t think most writers even know to want it. This type of articulation is often discounted or crudely overelaborated to the point of the grandiose and the monstrous and it all collapses, some limitation of consciousness or patience usually inhibits their ideal manner of consumption. The texture and tone has to be right to be of a compelling type to even tolerate the transference. Counted off and casually scuttled, as here, you don’t need some minutia fixated vulgarity, at just under three minutes the graceful brevity achieves a similar end and doesn’t rot out under your gaze in the process.

I was dreaming arrives October 27th. The cost is 99 NOK for the cassette or 30 for the digital (~$3).

TRACK | The Toads – Ex-KGB

5/5 golden merles

The Toads include members of The Shifters, The Living Eyes and Parsnip, each has featured here or in past mixes. In The Wilderness is for me one of the early contenders on the short list for album of the year. Underneath the immaculate cover art there’s a lot of amorphous and sometimes languorous melodic hooks, both grim and rejoicing. All the sonic lanes utilized to converse are corrupted and bleeding together as one sort of agreeably dysfunctional organism.

There’s a consistent sense of dread and foreboding expressed in conversational tones and language, never deprived of humor or fully paralyzed by withdrawal. It’s a nice record, almost akin to being alive. This is something I find some alignment with (“I have a love for what is mine / but it’s slowly disappearing / …wave after wave”).

Reading concurrent to processing the album, I find the tone and grade similar to some work from Louise Glück. These lines seems appropriate by way of comparison (following a bleakly-comedic sequence on forgetting the word for ‘chair’ in old age – just go read it):

“To raise the veil.
To see what you’re saying goodbye to.“

The melodic shift that accompanies the chorus late on is a valuable motion, increasing the scope and adding nuance, growing the world of the thing. There’s plenty of this care manifesting throughout, like the slight variations on the roving bass scale, the abiding horns and the backing vocal thrust bracketing many of the lines. There’s plenty of subtle sophistication that doesn’t reek of lacquer and polish; plenty of humor and a bit of misery in the fabric of it. I’m happy to hear it and to be in alignment with this bleak and pleasant thing.

Vinyl from Upset the Rhythm (UK) and Anti Fade Records (AU), $7.90 for the transmittable files.

TRACK | Mantarochen – Porzellan

5/5 golden merles

“Porzellan” is formidable synth wave/post-punk from the overflowing chalice of Leipzig. This is all about the multifaceted arrangement of melodic layers, interwoven and unfolding in a organic and fundamentally convincing manner. The immediate complexity doesn’t overwhelm the feeling of the thing while in pursuit of its own novelty. That’s a kind of magic trick, both rare and good to behold.

I’ve been in a rut with respect to consumption; everything I hear sounds captive to its influences instead of supported or branching out from them, mostly exhausted, redundant. But Mantarochen’s track here is a stark contrast, taking the general genre cues and with an outright devotion to melody breaking out of that pattern by some novel means.

With a handful of elements, symbolically rendered (Digi-drums braced between synths octaves and the bass beneath, the poised utterances), you too can recreate the world. Or at least an amusing and convincing representation of it.

Beast or man, I studied German at High Schools and Universities in the United States. This means I have acquired the vocabulary of a pigeon after filling out various pulp-smelling workbooks at ungodly hours of the morning. But what I can comprehend sounds agreeable and fits the mood established in the murk of its movements.

The price is whatever you want it to be on the bandcamp. It was found on side B of 12xu’s Verspannungskassette cassette #58.

TRACK | REIZ – Kauschiene

5/5 golden merles

Another sprouting from the top-tier Leipzig scene, REIZ are relentless in their kinetic thresh. There’s a good pallet of blotchy bloodied tones and a proudly pop sentimentality to it. The care in detailing is always elevating it slightly beyond your ability to anticipate, appreciably above the good-enough imitators and pretenders. You’ll probably find enough fine warp to feel familiar if for some god forsaken reason you consume this text and curation regularly. It didn’t arrive in the summer but the summer suits it.

The set is fun and funny but not defanged. Playful and approachable without the kitsch that salts the soil and kills everything else around it. It features rotating vocalists and distinct instrumentation across a terribly well calibrated soundscape. You’re at home in the dusk and the wind is coming kindly through the windows. Nothing is set in stone. There is music playing on the periphery that does not alienate you.

For some recent brethren in melodic bleat and genially scourging impulse, maybe you’re already in favor of its spiritual brethren like Jeanines, Jesuslefilles, and Liquids? Ok, that’s just about enough reductive blubbering to hit publish.

It’s €3.50 for the congealed three years of tunes selected. That’s only €1.16666666666667 euro per year. Check the math if you don’t believe me.