Tag: pop

TRACK | Point No Point – Are you OK?

5/5 golden merles

In these dark times, alongside the great mass of voices demanding to be heard, pleading, there can sometime be a week or more in which I don’t hear anything I like. In these times I think maybe I should back away for a bit, that I’m not in an ideal mental space for processing new material. And that maybe I wouldn’t even know anything good if I heard it.

Then, sometimes, with great reassurance, comes, guided and meditative, a calm voice of distinction and craft. Point No Point’s “Are you OK?” is a tuning fork clanged against the side of the universe, spirited and uncommonly well calibrated.

It is that which is becoming, tangential and tactile, built before your very ears. It contains all the joys and horrors of being known. A tame trajectory, familiar, left unimpeded, that nevertheless hits the intended target. It sounds like the end while discussing the new beginning, which are coincidentally, mercifully, the same thing.

If there’s any future worth having our degraded/spoiled era will be bound up and bundled with the dark ages. But maybe some documents like this will make it out and convey we had a bit of sense and the capacity to craft things of value.

TRACK | Dr. Dog – Where’d All The Time Go?

5/5 golden merles

Every now and then you have the realization that these are more or less the good old days. That this will be the idealized era, later, despite how it all may seems day-to-day.

Stagnation from a position of decline will have relative superiority. The stress and unease will be forgotten, whether we survive or not/in either case. And the rest will be survivors bias, and how it all seemed inevitable in retrospect.

If you can have a song that is earnest in its recollecting without the rose-tinted glasses or losing the shape of the thing in the glare of some golden era, maybe this is it.

and when the fog rises / somebody sighs
who is not in disguise anymore

Alongside the well detailed and comprehensive inclusion of the faults, there is included even a kind of nostalgia for the collapse. There is a fidelity and as fair an account as is possible by one who remains to do it.

TRACK | Alex G – Southern Sky

5/5 golden merles

One gentleman that doesn’t necessarily need any further press is Alex G. But if I’m posting daily and I want to keep the quality high every now and again there’ll be a more celebrated/known entity served up. Giannascoli is a great songwriter on their 9th album.

But for those unfamiliar with the sweep and swell of these tracks, or merely revisiting from 2019, what a delicate but elaborate concert of textures and intention it is.

The density is what I find most admirable. There is such a fine synthesis of simple components that successfully conspire into this ornate folk rock tune.

It remains instantly recognizable/catchy while introducing several small experimentations alongside the blunt trauma of tradition. And it builds naturally into this commendable, gilded thing.

TRACK | Andy Shauf – The Magician

5/5 golden merles

I first heard about The Party as a Katie Von Schleicher recommendation. And may really prefer this live version from a tiny desk concert. So maybe check that version out as well if you feel the studio lacks a little bit of warmth.

But in either incarnation, the melody is a supreme and graceful thing. Full of delicate and elaborate instrumentation, it is a devastating and compelling opener to a great album.

TRACK | Aoife Nessa Frances – Here in the Dark

5/5 golden merles

As a rule I don’t trust any song over 3 minutes. There are exceptions, many of them, but generally songwriters just don’t have that much to say on any given subject. Or at least not nearly as much as they think that they do… If I wanted to hear the chorus four times I’d loop the track.

But in this case, with Aoife Nessa France’s “Here in the Dark” running to 5:14, every second feels earned.

It works in concert with the void it fills, not so much against it. Minimal instrumentation is set to the task of accompanying the singer-songwriter substratum. Glacial and understated, spirals of synth and strings fittingly accent the core elements of voice and guitar.

The song/record has a different scope and pacing to most material in the genre, but without sacrificing some underlying mechanics or the appropriate measure of attention to detail. I don’t just mean BPM, there’s a kind of assurance to it. It doesn’t take the audience for granted but also does without pandering or indulging. There’s a recurring and really well realized construction.

TRACK | The Archaeas – Absent Mind

5/5 golden merles

The Archaeas “Absent Mind” is a dose of fiery garage-punk imported from Louisville, Kentucky. Recent P&P favorites Wombo are also from the neighborhood. But the ultimate embodiment of human evil Mitch McConnell also resides there, lest you think it strictly heavenly indie rock turf.

The track has all the peculiarities of elegantly controlled chaos and strikes a marked balance between its upfront, surgical pop characteristics and the smoldering, ruptured punk elements.

In the series of humiliations and degradations known as ‘the world,’ this can be a difficult balance to strike, what with all the distractions and immiserations afoot. But, considered or intuited, it has been achieved; the whole s/t album is great. With respect to Style vs Substance, Content vs Form, Design vs Function, Et Cetera vs Etc, there is enough tasteful thrash and tarnish around the imminently coherent core for you to invest your credulity in.

As the empire collapses, turns its exported brutality inward, and quality of life decline for us all, we’ll surely turn on one another instead of our shared oppressors. But one thing I hope we can all agree upon is that Louisville is making some sick tunes and that we’re both proud of and thankful for them.

TRACK | thanks for coming – a character you can relate to

5/5 golden merles

Making music allows for a dialogue with culture instead of simply being dictated to. I think that Rachel/thanks for coming is maybe working within some form of this intention. They create adroitly constructed narratives with cunning delineations. They seem to relish the precision of fully conveying a convincing lowdown.

That’s not nothin.

They can make you out to be some kind of evil / They will convince you when they show you your own demons

There’s a fundamentally gripping and illuminating character to these expressions. It is material full of musing and philosophical brooding which provide an imaginative advising on the more or less ineffable. It’s a highly recommended catalog if you like lo-fi pop music with a narrator’s palatial scope, inventive phrasing, and a lack of patronizing oversimplification.

TRACK | OK Cool – Self-Sow

5/5 golden merles

Chicago’s OK Cool are making ruminative and well crafted hooks, angular and blazing within a shoegaze/bubblegrunge genus.

While lyrically pensive and introspective material, the instrumentation is sheer revelry and admirably honed to a point of exacting precision. There is great density within its melodic ornamentation, and seemingly always another generous layer or accent driving the tracks metering forward.

Sonically rich, there is considerable attention put into the pacing of all the accompanying forms. The vocal effects are an early ghostly clarion, but equally laudable are the vaporous, sophisticated guitar tones phasing in and out of the mix. It is a joyous thing to behold in the headphones.

TRACK | The Mokkers – Peace of Mind

5/5 golden merles

One excellent album from 2016 that even James Acaster himself overlooked, The Mokkers’ In a Daze is tremendous, tremulous Berlin-based surf/garage rock.

I really need a change /
I need it like the plants need water when there’s no rain

Well-versed and wholehearted, “Peace of Mind” is a searing and self-assured cut. More or less timeless, it dissects a few essential organs steeped in history that are worth preserving and successfully transplants them.

Smoldering vocals, speaking in and with instrumental accompanying tones of the past, beseeching, to reconfigure the present on better terms. In league with others who do this properly, like our dear parasocial friends Shannon and the Clams and Sheer Mag.

TRACK | Cupid and the Stupids – Burn the Mattress

5/5 golden merles

Having featured these gentle giants on a previous mix and once earlier on this eternal tomb, I was excited to see the new album, 99 ways to fix a broken heart, appear in the Tremendo Garaje feed.

It’s a joyous and raucous set, tactile in that lo-fi measure that puts you in the room. 99 ways is 36 minutes of the fervent and the gushing. Recorded over three days, it really feels like it, or maybe even more like one afternoon of unsupervised pyrotechnics.

Mostly incandescent, its poignant haranguing is a lot of fun. Antithetical to most music that is built to bracket advertisements, it is built with a different purpose. And this almost seems like a mistake or misdirection within the current structures that determine what has value and why.

But, knowing the dominant alternative, it is a great relief to have access to this sentiment and viscera… particularly on this day of all days. I am of course referring to the fact that it is exactly 74 days until Arbor Day. Good luck out there, my friends.