[fusion_builder_container hundred_percent=”yes” overflow=”visible”][fusion_builder_row][fusion_builder_column type=”1_1″ background_position=”left top” background_color=”” border_size=”” border_color=”” border_style=”solid” spacing=”yes” background_image=”” background_repeat=”no-repeat” padding=”” margin_top=”0px” margin_bottom=”0px” class=”” id=”” animation_type=”” animation_speed=”0.3″ animation_direction=”left” hide_on_mobile=”no” center_content=”no” min_height=”none”]Ypsilanti power-pop trio Lightning Love may no longer play together, but their 2012 gem “So Easy” will always be a perfect summer jam.
School is out, bare skin exposed and the sense that anything is possible is undoubtedly in the air. Yes, it’s summer in the city. While we may all have our ideal soundtrack for the season, we’ve put together a few forgotten Detroit tracks that embody the whirlwind of emotions, expectations and possibilities that summer is so often defined by. Will you fall in love? Start over? Will you finally overcome your irrational fear of swimming in private lakes because you never could shake the premise of the movie Lake Placid from your brain? Summer is yours for the taking (and snacking) but mostly for the taking. Dive into these five tracks that are sure to be the aloe to your awkward sunburn.
1. Anna Burch: Tea-Soaked Letter
Anna Burch is a quiet storm. An vital touch in the folk-rock outfit Frontier Ruckus, Burch delves into her own acoustic woes with a similar rawness, this time backed by veteran scenesters Adam Pressley (Prussia, OHTIS) and Matt Rickle (FAWN, Javelins.) Simple, sweet and sorrowful, Burch delivers an aimless summer bike ride with “Tea-Soaked Letter,” a track that confesses to being unraveled and needy with a cooling dose of pop ennui.
2. Passalacqua: Been a Minute
Hip-hop duo Passalacqua revisits and rebirths hazy porch vibes with beautifully-crafted rhymes that go down smooth. There is something particularly retro about “Been a Minute;” it feels like it could soundtrack a subway montage on an episode of Broad City.
3. The Kickstand Band: Fall Back
Upbeat and wistful, surf pop DIY duo The Kickstand Band find a tender bruise with “Fall Back” as it toggles with one foot in spring, the other firmly planted in summer and one arm stretched out to graze Autumn.
4. Mountains and Rainbows: How You Spend Your Time
Possibly my favorite local record for taking mushrooms on Belle Isle or getting so drunk I call up my ex and asks if he still has my record player (not that I care, or anything), Mountains and Rainbows’ Particles contains this frantic gem, “How You Spend Your Time.” It’s perfectly posed for summer indiscretions, but masked with a sort of playful recklessness that is more fun than damaging.
5. Lightning Love: So Easy
Good god, I miss now-defunct Ypsilanti trio Lightning Love. Leah Diehl’s preciously imperfect vocals explore commitment vs. being alone, a perplexing crisis many of us find ourselves dancing between during these high-temp, highly tempting sweaty months. Appearing on 2012’s Blonde Album, “So Easy” features elements of 2005’s best power pop, and as such is well-suited for driving past addresses you don’t live anymore but think about sometimes.[/fusion_builder_column][/fusion_builder_row][/fusion_builder_container]
My earliest memories of dance involve ballet – or at least my sloppy stab at it. More than actual dancing, I remember the shined and scuffed Marley flooring; that pleated, boiled-wool skirt flopping over Ms. Burgwin’s sad calves; and most of all, the utter confusion as to why the hell my fellow ballerinas and I weren’t wearing tutus and tiaras at all times. Was ballet not princess training after all? Was I in the wrong room?
Ballet class was a rigid environment that, even at five, I failed to see the point of. I thought I wanted to learn ballet…but what I actually wanted was something far less dignified: to simply prance around while wearing a fluffy pink outfit. Why an overbearing septuagenarian was constantly shouting at us about prancing around in fluffy pink outfits, I never understood. So when my older sister decided to leave the hobby behind, I followed in her pointy pink footsteps. It was only after abandoning ballet that my first memory of enjoying dancing surfaced, featuring my older siblings and I bouncing around in the kitchen to the entirety of Cake’s Fashion Nugget and Prince’s “Raspberry Beret.” I realized from an early age that kitchen dancing was a lot more fun than ballet, and required a sense of humor, to boot.
Perhaps my conflicted relationship with dancing was born of those two polarities: the super-structured, formal lessons vs. the more primal movin’ and shakin’. The former must be rehearsed and perfected, while the latter demands almost nothing of the body. Simply acquiesce to the music, and the rhythm will move your limbs for you.
Somewhere between the ages of 10 and 22 (with the exception of a brief foray into swing dancing) I became a kind of non-dancer. This could largely be blamed on my punk rock leanings, which forbade any attempt at social normality like, say, school dances. Not only had I embargoed myself from musical genres outside of punk music, I had slow-cured and hardened into a person that no one in his or her right mind would invite to a school dance; and no one did… until I moved to a new high school.
Woodinville High School’s Homecoming soiree of 2006 would be the first and last school dance for me. Some of the evening’s most memorable factors were countless Black Eyed Peas hits, dinner at Olive Garden, and my date Kevin’s parents, who chauffeured us around in their totally dope Kia Sedona. While at the dance itself, I almost incited a riot after approaching the DJ and requesting that he play “some swing music,” which prompted a six-minute electro-swing mash up only I boogied to. People were shouting angrily, looking around for the culprit (me) as if someone had let out an acrid fart and its creator had to be identified for purposes of justice.
I didn’t dance in public again for years. You could say I forgot how to dance. This amnesia was a result of a few things. 1) The aforementioned investment in punk music that only allowed for “slam dancing,” in which the word “dancing” is used very loosely. 2) Lack of venues. Where was I supposed to dance as an underage kid in a small town? 3) Music choice. Had I been a tween, teen or young adult in the ‘60s, I could have done the twist. I would have warmly welcomed the discotheques of the 1970s, or the techno clubs of the 1990s. But no, it was the mid 2000s. What was I supposed to think of dance music in a time of The Pussycat Dolls and Paris Hilton’s cover of “Do Ya Think I’m Sexy?”? I had to become a “Private Dancer,” but not in the way Tina Turner meant it.
I began to dance in secret. In high school, I’d do it before my parents got home from work. In college, I’d wait for all three of my roommates to vacate the apartment, before putting on “Face To Face” by Daft Punk, or “Suspended In Gaffa” by Kate Bush. Those two artists were particularly helpful in getting my body to move, especially Bush, whose sweeping, avant garde pop music lends itself to wild and unstructured flailing quite nicely. I would play entire albums by these artists and dance around my kitchen and living room in the midst of doing dishes, rolling on the dining room table, leaping past the confused cat, and only occasionally breaking something.
It was cathartic, this silly thrashing of limbs. But where could I find this perfect cocktail of adequate space and music I actually liked? Certainly not in da clubs of the Meatpacking District. Where does one go to, as Jamiroquai’s Jay Kay once sang, “just dance”? Not a place to be seen, not a place to meet dudes – a place to just dance.
In an attempt to quench this new thirst of mine, I started trying out a couple of different dance classes – mostly because dancing is the best way to trick myself into exercising. Unfortunately, I found that even amateur classes at the YMCA run on the same, overly disciplined air as my old ballet lessons, and on top of that, they are filled with dancers. Or, as I should say, !!!DANCERS!!!. You know, the chick wrapping her feet at the afternoon Zumba class. She wants you to know, she is no mere Zumba dabbler, but a !!!DANCER!!!. These classes always reveal themselves as a special circle of hell, in which I am not the graceful interpretive genius sashaying across the kitchen while holding a rose whisk betwixt my teeth, but a clumsy lump of flesh that doesn’t know left from right.
So I ask you: is there a secret Kate Bush dance night I don’t know about? Can someone please start one?
There is one place I have found that meets my criteria of good music + people I don’t hate + ample space, however: the wedding. About two years ago, one of my best friends got married, and was gracious enough to make sure her guests were plied with ample booze and good tunes. It was perhaps one of the first times this group of pals had seen me dance, despite the fact that I met them in 2009. Though dateless, I did everything I could to make up for the last decade or so of burying my need to boogie. Half of my friends were horrified and confused (or as I like to think, totally jealous of my moves), but one of them got it. She leaned in, looked me in the eye and said, “You are a dance machine.”
The shorts are out. The pasty, prickly legs wearing the shorts are out, too. It’s sunny every day and we’re starting to remember that we own arms, and shins, and sandals. Birds chirp in the morning, cats moan at night, and hemlines rise with the temperatures. Isn’t it great?
That all depends. Sure, we’re in pleasant weather now, but before you know it you’ll be sweating through pants and underpants, kicking your bedmate away at night, and trying to schmooze your way into the esteemed echelons of friends with air conditioning units.
Summer is upon us early this year, prompting me to address my fellow shade seekers. Don’t worry, I can’t #summer either. How could I? I don’t play ultimate Frisbee. My surfing lessons started and stopped on a wave-less day at Rockaway Beach. I can “ride a bike” only in the capacity that I can “cook” – for survival purposes alone. And until they can make a bikini out of a black turtleneck and a motorcycle jacket, I will feel perpetually out of place in summer outfits, or as some call them, “dresses.”
So what are we supposed to listen to on the 85-degree days, crouched under patches of shade while everyone else at the BBQ dances to “summer jamz”? Don’t we get an anti-Ibiza anthem? In fact, there are plenty of songs commiserating with our Heliophobia. And yes, most of them are by Morrissey. The lugubrious Brit couldn’t have possibly maintained that sallow glow by overexposing himself to the UV Rays, now could he?
Songs like “The Lazy Sunbathers,” “Lifeguard Sleeping, Girl Drowning,” and Morrissey’s cover of Patti Smith’s “Redondo Beach” wink at the singer’s grotesque relationship with warm weather and those who enjoy it. The former seems to correlate catching a few rays with mass public ignorance. “The lazy sunbathers,” Moz croons, “Too jaded/To question stagnation/The sun burns through/To the planet’s core/And it isn’t enough/They want more.” Only an Englishman could vilify sun seekers so much.
But it’s the melodramatic “Lifeguard On Duty” from 1990’s Bona Drag that injects a common summer job with existential weight.
“The work you chose has a practical vein/But I read much more into your name/Lifeguard” Morrissey intones.
The only mention of Moz getting wet at this beach, however, is when he walks back through the center of the town, “Drenched in phlegm every time that I come home/Lifeguard save me from life/…Save me from the ails and the ills/And from other things.” Other things…like phlegm.
Another known hater of the heat is Philly’s oddball balladeer David E. Williams, whose menacing “Summer Wasn’t Made For You And Me” really sums life for the sunless.
Stalking a snowy Coney Island in a suit and tie, Williams drones, “Summer wasn’t made for you and me/With its screaming children and the heat’s obscenity/And all the stupid palefaces from town/Ridiculously fashionably brown.”
It’s a real beach party.
In my defense, I’ve gotten much better at summering in the past 15 years. My black clothing and I have come a long way since our first punk rock summer together in 2003, when I refused to wear anything but a patched hoodie and skinny jeans regardless of the season. I went three full years without revealing more than my hands and head to the sun, covering myself like a Victorian aristocrat.
Come freshman year of high school I decided it was finally time to embrace my Spanish heritage and get a tan. This was largely prompted by the fact that my best friend at the time, Daniel, criticized my forced paleness. “You tan naturally. Trying to force yourself pale is the same as all of the pale girls in school going to tanning beds.” Touché. Cocky with the knowledge that I’d never sunburned before, I lay out for hours one day sans sunblock – and subsequently turned a painful shade of cooked crustacean.
Since then I’ve found a safe space between full-body coverage and UV searing, but it’s still a struggle to exist in the summertime. Perhaps denial would be a wise approach to our collective heatstroke; it certainly worked for The Magnetic Fields’ Stephin Merritt in the deliciously sullen “I Don’t Believe In The Sun.”
“So I don’t believe in the sun,” Merritt wails. “How could it shine down on everyone/And never shine on me/How could there be/Such cruelty.”
Whether it is the sun, or summer love that left you scorched, Merritt assures us that ignoring our problems will definitely make them go away. Like Morrissey, The Magnetic Fields write recurring fuck-yous to the hi-temp months. In “Summer Lies” we hear a tale of deception.
“All the sweetest things you said and I believed were summer lies/Hanging in the willow trees like the dead were summer lies/I’ll never fall in love again.”
Perhaps summer-lovers are better at summer love, but Merritt and his Magnetic Fields may never know.
The odd thing about both Merritt and Morrissey is that although they are insufferable miserablists, they write such goddamn catchy pop songs that their melodies often outshine their dour lyrics. So bring the boombox to the beach, and from beneath your umbrella and wide-brimmed hat, sing along:
“The only sun I ever knew/Was the beautiful one that was you/Since you went away/It’s night time all day/And it’s usually raining, too.”
I bet no one will even notice.
The greatest betrayal of summer is one we don’t understand until we graduate and join the workforce. Summer becomes a myth; a vestige of childhood when adults paid our rent, fed us, and all we had to worry about was what to do on Saturday night. But now we have what Eddie Cochran (and Robert Gordon, and Joan Jett, and Marc Bolan) referred to as the “Summertime Blues.”
“I’m gonna raise a fuss, I’m gonna raise a holler/About a-workin’ all summer just to try to earn a dollar.”
As kids we used to play in the woods (where there’s plenty of shade), go on long camping excursions, and eat ice cream without an ounce of regret. But here we are: staring at desktops and clicking away, still waiting for the school bell.
But at least we have The Magnetic Fields and Morrissey to crouch in the shade with – what’s that you say? Moz moved to Hollywood, got a tan and abandoned us? He is a Lazy Sunbather now, too?
Well, in the words of David E. Williams:
“Was summer made for them?/Well, yes, maybe/But summer wasn’t made for you and me.”
And let’s not forget, that in addition to sunburns and heatstroke, summer also=SHARKS.
In a clever bit of self-effacing paid content, The Guardian’s Stephen Armstrong delves into the mixtape vs. playlist debate – on the behalf of Spotify. While I’m no fan of sponsored content on principle, I have to admit that the piece is well written and funny, and it poses an interesting question: “Were Mixtapes Better Than Modern Playlists?” Although I make them on a regular basis to accompany cheeky articles of my own, I’ve had a tenuous relationship with playlists… especially as services like Pandora and Spotify have rendered the medium.
Like me, Armstrong doesn’t sound entirely sold on the idea of playlists besting good old fashioned reel-to-reel. He waxes nostalgic, saying that with mixtapes the “maker controlled the rise and fall, the moods and motion. It was a democratised concept album with a very particular, personal story.”
Though wooed by Armstrong’s prose, I can’t help but smirk at Spotify’s cunning little bit of advertisement. It is almost as if the streaming platform is saying, “We would never deny the importance of analog compilations, which do have so much heart… but click here to start a FREE 30 day trial of unlimited music now!” And yet so far in Armstrong’s piece, the brand has made no clear advances on the reader. It lays back, sponge bathing in irony.
I begin to feel hypocritical. Who am I to resist an op-ed in which a middle-aged man speaks fondly of music ephemera? No one, to be exact. But then I smell the marketing; “Playlists, conversely,” Armstrong insists, “allow us to luxuriate in the infinite possibilities of self-expression.”
There it is: the hook. The heart of the paid content, if you will.
“Self-expression.” Everyone keeps talking about “self-expression;” ways to convey your “truest self ” – which of course can be done through products. And to an extent, I get the hype. Babies are practically born with a brand these days. Clip the umbilical chord, measure and weigh, make it an Instagram account. “You need to work on your personal brand” was something I heard relentlessly in college. “Do you have a logo?” is something I was asked the other day.
But must this corporate branding creep into every aspect of our lives? When it comes to fusing music and personal marketing, I just can’t get into it. For me, enjoying and sharing music has never been about “self-expression” (whatever that means) or at least not since I was 13 and wanted the whole world to know that I was VERY punk rock.
In fact, music has always offered me the exact opposite of self-expression. It has been a borrowed skin to step in – something that placed my problems into the hands of great poets and sufferers who might better know what to do with them. Sometimes these deities presented answers, other times, simply a new noise to embrace.
“My mixtapes were usually made for one person,” Armstrong continues, “– a girl I was trying to snog. It was a carefully curated voyage through an idealised version of my soul and included more than a few tracks that I didn’t actually like but thought would impress her. Like anything by The Smiths. They were love letters, in other words, as painful to hear as any adolescent poetry.”
I’m amused and appreciative of his honesty, and (very) British self-deprecation. However, when I made mixtapes as a kid, they weren’t forms of self-expression, nor self-idealization. They weren’t even for another person…they were for me. These were consolatory notes-to-self, because there certainly weren’t any Stephen Armstrongs writing me love letters on the J cards of Maxell C90s. I wrote love letters to myself from imaginary suitors, instead. It would be years before I received my first mixtape from a boy, and by then I no longer had a cassette deck (I still haven’t listened to it).
The closest thing I ever received to a mixtape was more in sync with my generation – a mix CD. Only a few weeks into dating my first serious, post-high school boyfriend – let’s call him Mark for privacy reasons – I was gifted a silver platter with the words “For Madison” scrawled upon it in sharpie. Its contents were love songs; the kind my tween heart longed for years prior. Mark’s mix opened with Lou Reed’s “Perfect Day,” which bowled me over with its measured melodrama.
It continued with Edwyn Collins’ “A Girl Like You,” Billy Paul’s “Me and Mrs. Jones,” and “Golden Years” by David Bowie, each song making a downy nest in my brain. It was an impressive compilation, and an important marker in our courtship. I’d like to say that being moved by a man’s swell musical taste is something I left behind in college, but that would be a bald-faced lie. Years later I am able to hear songs like “Oh Yoko” and My Bloody Valentine’s “Sometimes” without thinking of Mark’s sonic love letter – but I’ll never forget how I first heard them.
And that is something a Spotify playlist can’t stack up to – that nerve connectivity to real events that happened in real life.
Scrolling through Spotify’s human-and-algorithm curated “Genres & Moods” playlists, I can’t help but be reminded of box hair color. Names like “Poolside In Your Mind,” “Lazy Chill Afternoon,” and “Sunshine Smoothie” bring to mind as much soul as Feria’s “Chocolate Cherry” and “Power Copper” hues. It is copy – as far from a love letter as words could run.
The description for the “Early Grey Morning” playlist (which I originally read as “Earl Grey Morning”) is particularly barfable:
“A warm, tasty cup of tea and this soothing mix playing in the background will have you well on your way to a perfectly harmonious morning.”
Am I the only person who finds this creepy? Am I an incorrigible curmudgeon? Do I hate tasty cups of tea and harmonious mornings? Not inherently, but there is an issue of sincerity here. For instance, I would love to meet the person who actually clicks on the “Broken Heart” playlist post breakup. “You know what I need right now?” they might think. “A corporate curator’s perspective on my rejection.” No – the pre-fab playlist seems all too impersonal for a sap like me. Where’s the conversation in a title like “A Mellow Indie Odyssey”?
What does one talk about in, say, a coffee shop – the last bastion of IRL human interaction?
I can assure you that we music nerds desperately seek ways to talk to other people about music. We pray for the moment someone will notice our t-shirts on the subway, and strike up a convo about Bauhaus. Our roommates, families, even best friends don’t want to hear about the latest Nick Cave record, so where can we turn? Even at gigs, places that confirm we are all there for the same band, you’d be hard pressed to actually chat with someone (in New York at least).
So when you enter a coffee shop, and a great, unknown song is playing – a song, that could only have been selected by the sole employee in the establishment – a captive employee, who cannot runaway from your prodding questions, as they are trapped behind a very small counter, you ask, all too eagerly: “WHO IS THIS SONG BY? IT’S REALLY GOOD!”
The barista blinks. Shifts their vision from side to side, perhaps pondering an escape route. You lock eyes; aware that you are about to partake in the most fulfilling music banter you’ve had since you got into that argument with a subway busker about ABBA. “Um. I dunno,” they reply. “It’s a Pandora station.” They lean back after shoving a mug in your hand. The little latte heart they’ve crafted is broken in two.
A line from Armstrong’s article might drift into your head around then:
“These days, playlists are rarely true love letters.”
There is an undeniable shift in self when the clocks return to their forward position and warmer days begin to outnumber the cold ones. Spring, though different depending on your geographic specifics, happens under the same sky at just about the same time. Perhaps you’re like me and mending a broken heart after the end of what can only be described as a cruel internal winter, looking forward to dusting off, stretching out and starting over. But whatever version of spring suits you best, let these emotionally selected tracks from Detroit’s vast pool of feelings-feelers guide you through the waves of change.
The Bowie-esque closing track on Zoos of Berlin’s groundbreaking return from hiatus, last year’s Instant Evening, swirls like winter’s final snow against new growth on your favorite neighborhood tree. “North Star on the Hill” encapsulates hesitance and imbalance but with a fragility suited for this polarized change in season.
Yeah, okay. It’s no secret that I can’t get enough of Michigan native and songstress/sorceress Anna Ash’s 2016 release Floodlights. Her Lucinda Williams-esque warble and her completely unique vocal warmth could melt the most stubborn frost from the windshield of your equally stubborn ’89 Cutlass. “Player” is timeless and sun-soaked (why do I feel like it could be on the Erin Brockovich soundtrack or, like, Ally McBeal?) but what makes it a great addition to this seasonal transition is her ability to meld vulnerability with hair-flipping “I-told-you-so” vibes.
I’m not the biggest Minihorse fan. Or maybe it was a timing thing when they dropped their fuzzy, lo-fi EP Big Lack last year. But hey. I sort of get it now. “Drink You Dry” is laced with memories of riding around in your girlfriend’s ex-boyfriend’s best friend’s backseat while you may or may not be day-drunk, trying not to get dizzy watching the blur of houses and trees from the lap of someone you met once. It’s an afternoon. It’s boredom. It’s quietly and politely reckless. And in a lot of ways, it’s Spring.
There’s something so nervous and sweet about this 2005 release from one of our most beloved indie pop acts Saturday Looks Good to Me. Led by the incomparable Fred Thomas, “No Good With Secrets” embodies an innocence and aimlessness that tugs on our teenage heartstrings but 12 years later makes space for our adult selves as we still carry those bashfully brazen tendencies to drive by someone’s house (even if they can’t come out to play.)
Maybe I’m getting a little too literal, but there is something perfectly riotous and manic about Deadbeat Beat’s “When the Sun Soaks In.” It elicits that moment you realize you don’t need a jacket to leave the house and how the sight of your own bare arms turns you on. A fusion of a 1960’s beach party and a 90’s make-out session, this track is equal to smelling salts or pheromones for our shared and stagnant winter coma.
The truth is, I’ve spent more time over the past two years trying to convince myself that I like JrJr than I have actually spent liking JrJr. The verdict? I don’t get the hype or the Warner Brothers continuous record deal. This song, however, is insufferably Spring and is so infectious that you may as well make an appointment with a licensed physician or psychiatrist because even when the song ends the whistling will go on and on and on…and on. I’m sure you’re wondering why a respected music journalist with what some would say exquisite taste would include something that makes her so despairingly nauseous on a playlist about Spring. The answer is simple. “Gone” is carefully crafted to make you feel invincible. It’s a look back, a look forward and ultimately it’s about leaving what is truly gone in the dust to never be found again. This will be the last time I ever listen to this song willingly. But maybe for you, the right person in the right moment, you’ll see “the light through the trees.”[/fusion_builder_column][/fusion_builder_row][/fusion_builder_container]
You remember it. You know you do. Every morning, at 9am sharp. Standing. Hat off. Left arm, stiff at your side. Right hand resting on heart – reluctantly. All together now:
“I pledge allegiance to the Flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic for which it stands, one Nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.”
There came a time in my elementary school life, when this routine incantation became unbearable to perform. Naturally, this sudden sourness coincided with the election of George W. Bush, and his subsequent invasions and monstrosities. As we approach our first President’s Day under Donald Trump, I imagine school kids everywhere are experiencing a similar sourness during the assemblies leading up to the national holiday, the songs and pageantries one has to perform in public school, K-12.
During these morning customs, I mainly recall feeling so disillusioned with what felt like a national disease; I couldn’t bring myself to touch my heart and recite the Pledge – let alone stand up. The religious overtones of the poem always made me uncomfortable anyway, so I remained seated instead, fixing my gaze on the floor.
This did not go over well.
I lived in a small Republican lumber town – a town of many Carhart jumpsuits, many pickup trucks and several conservative teachers. What were the latter to do with their blue-haired, straight-A student who, by pleading the First Amendment, wasn’t actually breaking any rules? I relished in their visible frustration when they were unable punish me. They couldn’t even win outside of the classroom, as they knew calling my parents would amount to jack shit.
I was lucky enough to have parents who intrinsically distrusted institutional authority – or any authority for that matter. These were parents who routinely arranged “hookie” days to take me to the zoo, or on a ferry ride, or any of the multitudinous activities more educational and interesting than grade school. My political idealism was the least of their concerns; my dad admired it, and my mom was just happy I wasn’t injecting drugs. It was a win-win situation.
Years on, I can sift through all of the mornings, all of the assemblies and pep rallies I sat through, firmly planted on bleachers during the Pledge, the National Anthem, and that cruel excuse for a song, “God Bless The USA” by Lee Greenwood. Perhaps you were of the lucky lot whose school did not require its students to stand and, hand on heart, sing the putrid, nationalistic, country-crossover, garbage heap of a “song” that is “God Bless the USA.” I suspect that everyone in my graduating year could deliver its lyrics with rapid snaps of deeply ingrained memory at its opening chords.
“If tomorrow all the things were gone/I’d worked for all my life/And I had to start again/With just my children and my wife”
Ok, this is already getting problematic for a crowd of school children to be singing.
“I’d thank my lucky stars/To be living here today/Cause the flag still stands for freedom/And they can’t take that away.”
Who the fuck are they? This song was written in 1992. Somehow within seconds Lee Greenwood had married off and impregnated an entire gymnasium full of children, and put the paranoid words “they can’t take that away” into our tiny mouths. That’s creepy. It was a song that sounded born of wartime – where any one of us could be shipped off to the battlefield to fight “them,” and we would never see our Beanie Babies again. Looking back, it was absurd to make a school full of elementary students sing this. A rhyme reciting the Constitution or the Bill of Rights might have proven more useful.
What strikes me most when revisiting these memories isn’t the immense satisfaction I felt while refusing to stand, or the disgust with singing Lee Greenwood’s song…especially that chorus:
“I’m proud to be an American/Where at least I know I’m free/And I won’t forget the men who died/Who gave that right to me/And I gladly stand up/Next to you and defend her still today/Cause there ain’t no doubt I love this land/God bless the USA.”
What really bugs me is that despite my efforts to resist, despite my repulsion with these mandatory rituals, these songs and pledges and poems have been effectively lodged into my psyche forever. I will never be able to reclaim the chunk of brain tissue “God Bless the USA” has set up camp on forever. This is the beauty and the beast of music, however; the bad can be just as memorable as the good… like sex.
But what if, in light of our current President, we could sing different songs at our assemblies? There are dozens of songs that have been written about Presidents over the years, and while Mr. Greenwood was one of the chosen musical failures to play Trump’s inauguration, doesn’t a President in 2017 deserve an update? Here are a handful of President-related songs one could modify for public school assemblies nationwide. Or, if you homeschool or pay for private school, use the originals! You’re kids are going to learn the word “fuck” no matter what. I promise.
Lily Allen, “Fuck You”
There’s nothing I love more than a catchy pop song with cruel lyrics. Lily Allen wrote this for George W. Bush (as she confirmed at a concert in Brazil in 2009), but it works remarkably well as an anti-Trump number.
“Look inside/Look inside your tiny mind,” chimes Allen. “Now look a bit harder/Cause we’re so uninspired/So sick and tired of all the hatred you harbor.”
It’s perfect!
Grade school modification: Change “fuck you” to “fudge you.”
Radiohead, “2+2=5”
Also written in the Bush/Cheney era, “2+2=5” nods at George Orwell’s 1984 – which is currently enjoying an upswing in sales as the public turns to it again for answers. The equation is brilliant for its simple and effective message, which connotes the intentional peddling of misinformation. The song also includes Radiohead’s album title of that year (2003) Hail To The Thief – a spoof on the traditional, President-praising anthem, “Hail To The Chief.” You couldn’t ask for a better President’s Day song this year!
Grade school modification: make sure the children do not walk away thinking that 2+2 actually =5.
YG and Nipsey Hussle, “FDT (Fuck Donald Trump)”
Kids love rap, so this will be an easy assembly sell. With a few modifications, you can Martha Stewart this shit up and have a catchy fight song for your little resisters.
“Yeah, fuck Donald Trump/Yeah nigga, fuck Donald Trump/This is for my grandma!/Yeah, yeah, fuck Donald Trump, yeah.”
Grade school modification: change “fuck” to “funk,” don’t say the “N” word. Ever. Keep that “grandma” bit in. Someone is getting extra dessert for that.
Bright Eyes, “When The President Talks To God”
This one’s great for kids. They will learn about xenophobia, the prison industrial complex, and consonants. There is a line about “dirty coke” but you can just pretend it is the cola variety. This song may have also been written about G. W. Bush, but as you can hear, it is still relevant – unfortunately.
“When the President talks to God/Do they drink near-beer and go play golf/While they pick which countries to invade?/Which Muslim souls still can be saved?/I guess God just calls a spade a spade/When the President talks to God.”
Grade school modification: change “bullshit” to “doodie.”
The Honey Drippers, “Impeach The President”
Simple, funky, and more relevant than ever. This will be a fan favorite. Kids will learn all about the impeachment process and the transformative power of funk. Pretty much the only words are “impeach the president,” which can be easily integrated into preschool programs as well.
Grade school modification: none.
Happy President’s Day y’all. And don’t forget, #Fuck/Funk/FudgeDonaldTrump.
When Beyoncé so wisely instructed “All the single ladies” (ALL the single ladies) to “put your hands up,” it was a different time. It was 2008. A year of innocence. We had elected Obama. Beach House had released Devotion. And single ladies everywhere felt empowered by Queen B’s anthem for autonomy. I’d just moved to New York, 18 and wet behind the ears. I couldn’t wait to have my own fashion line, a loft in Soho, and to party with The Strokes – all of which happened in rapid succession. (#AlternativeFacts.)
Back then, 99% of my friends were single, and we relished in seasons of not giving a fuck about it. Our lives were spun of work, college, fun…and the impending recession. But still! Life was good. Lovers came and went like party guests. Some stayed longer than invited. Others left before even taking their coats off.
Nearly ten years on, paradigms have shifted, and rightly so. People met cute and moved in. People got married. Some got babied up. Hell, even Beyoncé, Ms. Single Lady herself, got married to Jay-Z – and I hear it’s going really well!
Naturally, my single friend percentage declined. It is in the single digits these days…like, in the 1-3% range. Which begs me to entreat: “All my single ladies (All my single ladies!) Now put your hands up!” All six of them. All six of your combined hands. Put them up, for the love of god. I guess with my hands we have eight. Strength in numbers.
Did anyone ever stop to ask: why are we putting our hands up?? Maybe Beyoncé wanted all the single ladies to put their hands up – because they were about to be shot by a firing squad? Maybe that’s what that song is about…elimination of the single ladies. She did marry Jay-Z that year after all. Perhaps it was meant as a kindness…to put us single ladies out of our perceived misery.
Ok, that’s a bit extreme, but I can’t help being wry. As we approach Valentine’s Day – the preferred holiday of single people everywhere – the commodity of coupling up can be oppressive. The polyester teddy bears lining shelves at Duane Reade. The lingerie ads. 50 Shades Darker.
Valentine’s Day is perhaps the most polarizing commercial holiday; the holiday that cruelly bisects the population into those with, and those without. Those who will dance together in the kitchen to Joni Mitchell’s “A Case Of You” – and those who will sob to it over a box of self-gifted Russel Stover’s. Those who shall feast upon prix-fixe dinners of lamb chops and heart-shape chocolate cakes – and those who SHAN’T!
Parks and Recreation may have given us stags “Galentine’s Day,” and I’m sure Pinterest is rife with “fun alternatives” to drinking an entire bottle of wine in front of the mirror while cry-singing Cat Power, but I say fuck that shit. We don’t need alternatives. The single ladies don’t need saving. I don’t wanna go to the club with “gloss on my lips/a man on my hips,” as per Bey’s example.
Instead, all my single ladies: let’s dwell. Let’s lament. Let’s feel the pain. Love does hurt after all, and so does its absence. But that’s all right. This shit makes the world go ‘round. This Valentine’s Day, I want you to imagine all of the songs that have ever been written. Yup, all of ‘em. How many of those do you reckon are love songs? A pretty big portion I’d say. Finally, think about how many of those love songs are happy love songs, versus the ones that spring from raw, unbridled agony.
You see my point.
Would Roy Orbison ever have written “Only the Lonely” if he were just peachy and happily married? Would Stephin Merritt have written any songs, ever? Would I have any sad bastard music to listen to at all?
No.
Some of the best music comes from good old-fashioned anguish. So when you’re feeling unbearably lonely, remember that you’re in good company – albeit the miserable kind.
I admit: there is a time to “put your hands up” and feel emboldened by solitude. I do it every day, when I eat my lame yet efficient dinner of sandwich meats, mayo, and hot sauce wrapped in a plume of romaine lettuce. Standing up. By the sink. I celebrate the fact that I can make the decision to do so without the democratic process. Without having the “What are we doing for dinner?” conversation. I can eat my sad lettuce wrap in peace. Blaring Pulp and singing along, still chewing. There is always a time to champion sad salad wrap singing, and 2am laundry doing, and in-bed pizza eating. And there is also a time to pour yourself a carafe of merlot, put on a depressing record, and be alone with everyone who’s ever written a song.
This Valentine’s Day, let’s get dismal. Just for one night. No one will even notice! (Because they will be on a date!)
Let’s start with Morrissey’s “Please Help The Cause Against The Loneliness.” A bubblegum number to the uncaring ear; but listen closer: sweet, sweet isolation! Leave it to Moz to wax desolate – this bouncing tune scrutinizes the pity cast upon the unwed…and who better to scrutinize than the infamous asexual himself? “Please help the cause against the loneliness,” Moz croons, as if there is a charity handout for our kind (if only!).
Next turn up some Liz Phair, who knew that you could still be completely alone while lying right next to someone. Phair’s snarky “Fuck and Run” is the quintessential opus for bad decisions. A sloppy, pitchy, honest, pathetic, undeniably brave song. This is diary caliber realism – all about that forbidden bed you keep crawling back into. Phair really hits it home when she asks the simple questions, like:
“Whatever happened to a boyfriend/The kind of guy who tries to win you over?/And whatever happened to a boyfriend/The kind of guy who makes love ’cause he’s in it?/ And I want a boyfriend /I want a boyfriend/I want all that stupid old shit like letters and sodas.”
While we’re reveling in emotional immaturity, let’s listen to “I Don’t Want To Get Over You” by the barons of broken hearts – Magnetic Fields, the band that truly did “make a career of being blue.”
As we’re discovering, a bit of wallowing can be cathartic. Despite all of the song’s clever imagery, one line says it all for me:
“I could leave this agony behind/Which is just what I’d do/If I wanted to/But I don’t want to get over you.”
And haven’t we all been down that dark hallway?
If love’s impact on the history of music, film, art, literature, and war (I’m talking to you, Helen of Troy) isn’t making you feel at one with your solitude – may I throw but one last metaphor at you?
A friend of mine recently returned from a trip to Paris: the city of lights and love and innumerable sauces. She regaled me with tales of part-time lovers and fine meals. At the end of one such fine meal, she chose a dessert to cap off the perfect dinner. She chose framboise surprise. Raspberry surprise. Ooh la la! To append an American dish with “surprise” usually suggests catastrophe (tuna surprise), but the French weren’t gonna fuck this up! It would be exquisite; mountains of frothy pink mousse encasing shortbread and sorbet, the whole thing crowned with gold-dipped sugar lattices. Quelle surprise!
When the dessert was gently placed on the table, raspberries there were. The surprise however, was missing. It was 12 raspberries, up-ended on a plate. 12. Fucking. Raspberries. That’s it. C’est tout.
My point is: sometimes love is all that frothy pink mousse and more. Sometimes a relationship is a rich and mysterious and delicious dessert, worthy of all the pain, paintings, opuses and arias. And sometimes – it’s 12 fucking raspberries on a plate. That you just paid 10 Euros for.
Some might say that sex without love is like music without soul…but what is sex without music?
It seems natural enough that someone who obsesses about aural pleasure and its many applications on the daily, would also wonder which sounds best suit oral pleasu– you get the idea. But all puns aside: if I am to write about the personal, idiosyncratic links we have with specific music, how can I respectfully gloss over musica sexus? Which is fake Latin for “sex music.”
It is a worthy genre, and not only for those of us who live our lives thinking up Top 10 lists for every possible occasion. I’ve heard many say that they don’t like to have sex to music; perhaps they don’t think of it, find it distracting, or can’t take the DJing pressure in such a moment. Others like my good friend Fletcher* say it “feels cheesy” and that it was something he “did more in high school.”
And I hear that. High school was when you were still figuring out how to navigate the difficult, terrifying and oft-taboo world of sex. You had little to no prior experience, and most likely based your moves off of those you saw in movies. So you stood outside your love’s window, goliath boom box foisted above your head blaring “In Your Eyes” by Peter Gabriel. It worked so well for John Cusack in Say Anything! Or perhaps you put on “Unchained Melody” by the Righteous Brothers after watching Ghost. Maybe you even got out some clay and a pottery wheel. You didn’t know any better!
At the unromantic end of the spectrum, sex music was just practical back then. You needed something to mask the coital cacophony you and Kateigh were making from your unsuspecting mother down the hall. Sadly few New Yorkers have escaped this sound barrier reality, as playing music while boning is a frequent necessity when living with roommates. It doesn’t actually work though.
But I refuse to accept that shagging to a soundtrack is only for teens and broke city-dwellers. Despite how “cheesy” and juvenile some might find it, I’m always down for some rock n’ roll in the hay…provided it’s awesome.
The foreplaylists (sorry!) that have intrigued me the most came when I least expected them to. A personal favorite was when a nerdy, socially inept and tame lover put on “Girl” by Suicide right before he pounced on me. The sounds of “ding!” abounded in my head as his points accrued for a) liking Suicide and b) knowing this particular song would light my fire. It’s not the kind of ditty you would think to diddle to immediately, given its eerie, ominous tenor and bouts of murderous screaming – one might wait at least until the second Tinder date – but I loved it. That was probably the only good thing he did in the relationship, and I commend him for it.
Another beau had the genius idea to screw while the entirety of Loveless by My Bloody Valentine played in the background. A song is great, sure, but if you can find an entire record to listen to instead, you’re golden. An LP ensures adequate length and a consistent atmosphere. Loveless is perfect because it is gritty and romantic all at once, and you can’t understand a damn word anyone is singing, which is even better (you’ll find out why later).
Another record I have a fond, sensual affection for is Television’s Marquee Moon, especially the title track itself. I can’t point out any specific factors as to why other than the back catalogue of my personal spank bank, but that’s good enough for me. All of these songs, paired with their role in my sex life have so swayed me behaviorally, that when I hear them I get turned on. Which is kind of kickass.
Though despite these triumphs, partners have not always been victorious in the erotic disc jockey department. The same man who was wise enough to put on “Girl” later selected a track to lesser applause. It was 1991’s “Bitch Betta Have My Money” by rapper AMG. A song bursting with such poetic lyrics as “there ain’t nothin’ like black pussy on my dick” and “you can suck the dickity-dick but I’m gonna charge you a nut.” I bear no issue with this cut musically, but no one ever got a woman into bed by telling her to “suck the dickity-dick.” Sorry, AMG. You can kiss my assity-ass.
Another snafu occurred when the most loathsome person I ever dated put his iTunes on shuffle pre-coitus. There we were, rolling about on his poly-blend sheets, when Tegan and Sara’s “Back In Your Head” boomed out of his speakers. I jerked away from him, so very confused by his Tegan and Sara fandom, and thoroughly enjoying how mortified he was. He scrambled to his desktop and switched his “uncool guy” music to his “cool guy” music, which was “Uncontrollable Urge” by Devo.
I learned many things that day, namely that denying your love of Tegan and Sara does not make you manlier. But I also learned that no moment hinges more upon mood than the moment before sex. One should be ever so careful to ensure the music is not on shuffle.
And what about sex for a vinyl lover, such as myself? If you think putting a condom on is “awkward,” try committing coitus interruptus when the first half of Daydream Nation finishes up, or worse, skips. Out of bed, to the turntable to flip sides or frantically dig through records in search of something else. Who knew high fidelity audio could be such a cock block?
Despite certain studies on the matter of sex music, some of which claim that classical tunes are the best thing to get freaky to, what I’ve learned is that one can’t rationally explain why some songs work and others don’t. It’s like the mystery of attraction and fetishes; there isn’t always a 1+2=3 answer. “Love songs” are rarely what get me in the mood. Songs about sex are often laughable and cringe worthy when you’re about to actually have sex. And I’m sure some people would be horrified if I scored their sexcapades with what I prefer. Nick Cave anyone? The Cramps? Or what about “Cold Discovery” by Smog (the Peel Session please!)? Not for everyone I’m sure.
I was finally able to get an answer from Fletcher about what he used to put on for “a romp sesh” in high school:
“’A Punch Up At a Wedding by Radiohead’ was my favorite,” he admitted.
I give it a listen for the first time in years and realize that this song will never be the same for me again. I cannot unlearn what I have been told. Just as my own intimate history augments the songs I love, so now has his. Images form, and I don’t necessarily want them to.
I guess that you can have sex without music. But I am now near convinced you cannot have music without sex.
It would be an injustice to the season and my family not to make this week’s installment of Only Noise all about Halloween, the greatest holiday on earth. The only holiday that you aren’t required to sit at a large table with family you may or may not enjoy being around, stuffing yourselves with unnecessary amounts of food, or packing into a cheesy restaurant to eat a pre-fixe menu priced double the everyday value, or pretending you are extra in love with your partner.
On Halloween you can be vulgar, clever, “slutty” (whatever that means), non-participatory, an adult-child, and more importantly, anything you damn want to be. In 1989, my parents got married on Halloween, only 15 days before I entered this mortal coil. My dad didn’t do it up for the holiday, donning slacks and a tweedy sports coat, while my mom wore an emerald green tunic with florid gold embroidery at the chest. She topped it off with beads, fake gold jewelry, and a dangly chainmail headband. It wasn’t a costume per se, but it certainly wasn’t a wedding dress. But the piece de resistance of their wedding in my humble, nostalgic opinion was the cake. It was a black cake. A black bat cake, with orange icing script.
Growing up I never equated my parents’ anniversary with Halloween, but now thinking back it makes a little more sense as to why they celebrated the day with such zeal. Halloween seemed wildly more important than any other holiday in my family, even more so than Christmas, which to many of the evangelical occupants of our rural town, must have made us seem like pagans. Maybe we were.
My parents, sister and I would spend days vandalizing the house with lengths of cotton fiber “spider webs.” We’d hang a sheer, fine mesh net from the ceiling and toss plastic spiders and centipedes into its canopy. We’d make a big paper tree to go up the wall adjoining the living room and kitchen, and affix bugs to that as well (bugs went on pretty much everything). Stuffing my father’s gardening clothes with newspaper, we’d prop a carved jack-o’-lantern on the makeshift scarecrow to greet guests.
With the help of a children’s cookbook entitled Gross Goodies – one of many finds at the school book fair, my mom and I would belabor an enormous menu of foul-looking treats such as “Pumping-Heart Tarts,” and “Open Wound Teacakes.” The party was a potluck, but the menu was exclusively Halloween-themed, putrescent looking food. Our table’s centerpiece was a miniature guillotine made by a family friend. Lying upon it was a decapitated Barbie doll – not the first in our household. She wore a green gown, with red nail polish encircling her open neck. Her blonde head rested in a basket before her.
But what is a party without music? In the same way the Christmas season makes some people want to go caroling, Halloween made my family want to do “The Time Warp.” My mom, a longtime fan of the 1975 musical The Rocky Horror Picture Show, made it an annual tradition that when the clock struck midnight, all guests would meet in the living room to reenact the synchronized dance moves for the film’s most famous song. I didn’t actually watch Rocky Horror until I was in fifth grade, which is a strange age to take in something like that with your mom, but I knew every wink, step and bar of “The Time Warp” since before I can remember. I don’t recall being taught it, just doing it.
Our playlist often found inspiration from other movies as well; cuts from The Nightmare Before Christmas (my mom’s motivation for leaving the Halloween decorations up until X-mas), “Jump in the Line” by Harry Belafonte for its association with Beetlejuice, and the bizarre numbers from a beloved little claymation flick from the ‘60s called Mad Monster Party. The film’s voiceover cast includes Boris Karloff, Phyllis Diller and Ethel Ennis. The songs are odd to say the least, but the animation and performances are ace.
In retrospect, I don’t think I’ve been to a Halloween party as kickass as the one’s my parents used to put on. Not even in New York, where Halloween invokes top-notch competition (like with everything else), and costume contests turn into battles of wit, obscurity, accuracy, and outlandishness. I remember my first Halloween here the entire city was frenzied with a Hitchcock theme. I saw several Tippi Hedren’s in the skirt suit and pillbox hat, eyes jabbed out by the fake sparrow on her shoulder. Even better was the man dressed as Psycho – who rigged up a bloodied shower curtain around his seemingly nude body.
Maybe it is just the adoring lens a child sees her parents through, but I still really think they did Halloween the best. But even after the parties ended, Halloween continued to be the supreme holiday in my life. I always knew what I wanted to be November first, and would count down the 364 days between my costume and me. These days I have less time to obsess over costume details as I used to, but the excitement is still there. I still spend October watching as many horror movies as possible (The Exorcist is always on heavy rotation) and listening to the likes of Bauhaus, Nick Cave, Throbbing Gristle, The Cramps, and just about anything spooky I can get my hands on.
In the few times I’ve lived abroad, I remember being thoroughly bummed that Halloween was not really a thing in Europe or the U.K. It was a classic case of not knowing how much you’d miss something until it was gone. In the same week that Hurricane Sandy was revving up to rip New York a new one, I was in Milan, cutting class to work on my Halloween costume for the tiny, American-filled party my roommate and I would be hosting. In was such an insignificant little party, held in a country that didn’t really give a fuck about Halloween, and that made it all the more important. I spent hours hand sewing fake intestines, a heart, a liver, two black lungs with real cigarette butts stitched on…I was some semblance of the internal organ system, with a brain sewed to the top of a bowler hat.
The party lacked decoration, the only autumnal thing being the mulled wine I drank too much of. It was a far cry from the all-out parties that my parents used to throw, but it was a stab in the right direction. So even if you’re nowhere near your ideal Halloween this year – I will be spending mine at a wedding – here’s a playlist to spook you through the greatest day of the year.
It’s time to retire our summer soundtracks and dust off our pumpkin spiced selection of tunes that illicit all of the external change in season imagery and gives love to the internal shifts, too. Whether you’re tuning a new leaf or simply shedding an old one, here are a few Detroit tracks that celebrate sweater weather and the witching hour.
Midwestern maven of Rocky Mountain sadness, Anna Ash delivered this brooding performance back in 2013. A little Cat Power, a touch Lucinda Williams and some wispy instrumentals and “Haunt” is pleasantly unsettling but all around totally beautiful.
The White Stripes: “Dead Leaves on the Dirty Ground”
It feels equal parts wrong and right to include The White Stripes. Sure, everyone knows this song but does everyone remember it? Quite literally about the autumnal dance vs. a lover leaving (leafing? sorry.) is a subdued-rock heartbreak anthem but leaves enough space to not take itself so seriously.
Every time I get to compile a playlist I find some way to squeeze in one of my favorite, now defunct, indie bands from yesteryear (okay, so only like eight years ago but STILL). Sonically, “Black Hole” feels more Fall than Summer, and more transitional than stationary. A swirling existential crisis that grounds itself in its attempt to “escape inevitability” makes it a reflective prelude to winter.
Storyteller folkies Frontier Ruckus are beautifully seasoned in exploiting singer/songwriter Matthew Milia’s broken poetry. Sufjan Stevens-esque, this soul-trip, magic hour road trip track encompasses the urgency to fulfill needs before winter, like a squirrel hiding seeds and nuts or like a bear making sure his Casper gets delivered in time for hibernation and chill. It’s sad, yes, but because its Frontier Ruckus it is filtered through hopeful resolve.
Jessica Hernandez & The Deltas: “Dead Brains”
This saccharine zombie-fied acoustic version of “Dead Brains” flirts with the hard to swallow but easy to celebrate moving onward and upward. It’s sorrowful but is without regrets. This version especially yanks on some Fall-time feels with its DIY sincerity and it’s unapologetic trekking forward, Jess and Co. make dead brains sound appealing.
One side effect of obsessing over music for a living is the ability to compartmentalize your own tastes into pre-measured doses of sonic mood modifiers. Saying “music is my drug” is irrevocably corny and should be left to the bumper sticker manufacturers of the world, but it’s not an erroneous statement. I’ve written about music and mood before, and it is a subject I find endlessly fascinating. There have been numerous studies analyzing music’s influence on brain chemistry – studies that will teach you far more than I can by relaying personal, uncontrolled experiences. I am no neuroscientist, but I’ll do my best to discuss the subject in my own, pop-culturally referential way.
But this is more a gander at the inverse; not how music dictates your mood, but how your mood dictates what you decide to listen to. Mood doesn’t always consciously affect my listening choices. Sometimes when I select a specific record to put on, it is purely because that’s the album I’ve been spinning relentlessly. Last Thursday I listened to Smog’s Red Apple Falls four times in a row, and that would have been five or six if I didn’t have to run errands.
Sometimes the decision to listen to Prefab Sprout is rooted in a logic no more complex than: I’m just in a Prefab Sprout phase right now. A phase can last weeks, sometimes months. I think I listened near exclusively to The Smiths for about a year. I binge eat artists, albums, and songs, but unlike food, the repetition of great pop music never makes me nauseous.
But there are of course moments when I Spotify playlist myself, trying like an algorithm to switch or indulge my mood. I typically indulge, which I do not suggest as a method of catharsis. Unless you like crying alone while watching Joanna Newsom artfully play harp.
If I am depressed, angry, despondent, vengeful…oh DO I have a playlist for those moments. I have entire records for those moments, box sets and anthologies. When it comes to finding the soundtrack to a bad day I’m practically Ariel from The Little fucking Mermaid showing off her endless archive of sad knickknacks. You want Joni Mitchell? I’ve got plenty. You want anguish in B Flat? I got whosits and whatists galore, ok?
So what does one listen to when suddenly inundated with…nice feelings? One might want perhaps, to not ruin it with the entirety of 69 Love Songs? What if your reference library is stocked with Leonard Cohen, Nick Cave, Roy Orbison, and artists of similar ilk? And furthermore, how do you write a column about it? I’ve run into countless occasions where I happen to be happy, and therefore want to maximize that feeling with some aural reinforcement – but I come up blank. Nick Drake, anyone?
“Happy songs, happy songs…” I mutter to myself, remembering only the bummed-out Aldous Harding track I’ve been listening to incessantly. A friend once asked me to make a playlist for her birthday party. I laughed and wondered how well this person knew me or my morose musical tastes. Everyone else in my circle has crowned me the worst party DJ ever, mocking my interest in listening to records in full and my affinity for seemingly anti-party music (what do you mean The Birthday Party isn’t a great thing to play at a birthday party?!). More than once have I spent hours carefully constructing playlists to my own birthday parties, only to have them intercepted by guests and supplanted with Top 40 jamz before the clock strikes 12. But I get where they’re coming from. No one shakes their ass to The Jesus and Mary Chain.
“Feel-good music” has never been a tag that excites me. Songs shaped into balloon animals to distract you from good-old-fashioned suffering. Pop trickery that manipulates your mind with chimes and pitch correction. But in the event of spontaneous elation, if you or anyone you know is at risk of having a good, even lovely day, I want you to know: it is going to be all right.
Whether we want anyone to know or not, joy does occasionally break through, and we just have to deal with it. I could far more easily fashion a playlist of breakup songs, funeral anthems, and frightening German noise bands. But setting aside my eternally teenage heart for the purposes of letting myself be happy (for now) is a tall but necessary order.
I’m getting better at admitting to shortcomings such as this. I’ve even found a way to label it (a writer’s favorite thing to do). Since the band’s inception, critics have often described The Smiths as “miserablists,” and while I won’t stand behind that point entirely – they were far too self-aware and satirical to be reduced to such a limiting word – I kind of love the term. “Miserablist.” It’s an absurd word, as if misery were a political party, its spokesperson being the lugubrious Moz, of course.
Involuntarily or not, I may be a card-carrying miserablist myself. To the extent that when a desire for more beatific, up-tempo, major scale pop music bubbles through all of my petty brooding, I have a slight identity crisis. But I am working on it.
In the same way it is ok to let yourself be happy (I hear), it is also ok to let yourself listen to happy music. Shiny happy music. But who am I really telling this to? You probably already know that.
I have appointed myself with the task of making a playlist of songs I enjoy for their sheer mood-erecting abilities, which was harder than you might think. They can’t just be any peppy pop songs. I have to love of course. I may be in a good mood, but I’m still a snob.
In situations like these, I first look to ABBA. They are perhaps the only group in my collection whose “sad,” or “grave” ballads hold no interest for me. I turn (or twirl) to them for disco bangers alone, songs written for the purposes of merriment and cutting fat checks, not enriching the poetic canon. I wouldn’t call theirs particularly substantive music – though it was made with a depth of technical talent – but it sure as shit makes you wanna dance.
“Gimme! Gimme! Gimme!” is perhaps one of the most asinine and catchy cuts out there. Even Madonna couldn’t resist that ridiculous synth…pan flute? riff when she sampled it in 2005’s “Hung Up.” And neither can I.
The rest of my playlist follows a similar rule. As I construct it I realize that every song is void of guilty associations – those autobiographical kernels of nostalgia embedded into every song an ex showed you, or your mother used to sing in the kitchen. These songs have somehow become mine, no matter how they came into my life.
From what I can see of the end result, what makes me happy musically is pretty in step with real life. Absurdity (“Hit Me With Your Rhythm Stick”), idealism (“Tenderness”), love (“Funny Little Frog”), and funk.
Tis’ the season for the summer festival! Hosted by Detroit’s own Seraphine Collective, BFF Fest is an inclusive safe space and special slice of summer love created to celebrate the diverse talents of Detroit’s creative community. With an inspired curation of artists and a consciousness aimed to build a more supportive music scene, BFF Fest is a progressive and inviting celebration that strives to make connections between the underrepresented individuals, music and identities. And just as important as the mad posi vibes, the lineup is bursting with the perfect sounds for an eternal Detroit summer! Not in Detroit? No problem! Rally your besties, spark up the barbecue and soak into summer with our BFF Fest playlist!
1. Best Exes: “Blessing”
The concept of having a best ex is pleasantly perplexing and the threesome Best Exes is a shimmery reflection of a love that lingers past the expiration date.
2.Junk Food Junkies: “Takeout Chinese”
Kitschy, cute and nihilistic lo-fi babes, Junk Food Junkies, write songs about the sweet, the savory and the bullshit of daily life. For a band with songs about pizza bagels, Chinese takeout and Faygo soda there is a depth that speaks volumes of the plight of the millennial, just with more pizza. Lots of pizza.
3. The Freebleeders: “Problematic Faves”
Remember the things you loved as a kid/teenager/adult? Well, they’re probably rooted in misogyny , racism, sexism and other examples of unethical evil and The Freebleeders are here to remind you and struggle with you by sharing their “Problematic Faves.” Dark, yes. But this brutally thoughtful track is still summer ready with a biting tongue.
4. Bonny Doon: “Summertime Friends”
Moody and sedated, “Summertime Friends” echoes and climbs with a melancholic malaise that is treated with medications of the party variety. Take a midday beach nap on a lovers lap to this track and let the sun burn the space around your stolen sunglasses.
5. Deadbeat Beat: “When the Sun Soaks in”
This retro, surf-punk track is reminiscent of The Kinks with its jutting pop bounciness and droning vocal timbre. Suited for beach ball tossing or post-breakup flirtation, Deadbeat Beat has their pulse on your summer feels.
6. Jes Kramer: “Something”
Grand Rapids (near the pinky of our lovely Michigan Mitten) based singer-songwriter babe Jes Kramer creates deeply personal, emotive tracks that will make summer folks ask you if you’re sweating or crying. Intricately layered with raw lyrical power, Kramer lovingly takes us back to the day where we listened to The Postal Service and day dreamt through closed windows.
If you’ve seen the cover of this month’s TIME Magazine or have recently tuned into any national media outlet, you know that Detroit’s sister city, Flint, is in crisis. Due to corrupt government, dangerous mismanagement, and incompetence, thousands of Flint residences have been poisoned by lead through the water system.
Long story short, Flint was getting its water from Detroit until 2011 when Gov. Rick Snyder, due to economic disparity, decided that Flint would begin receiving water from the Flint river, despite the water’s highly corrosive makeup and the cities aging, weathered pipeline. The water itself is not poisoned with lead, but is so corrosive that it is stripping the lead pipes. Last fall, auto manufacturers refused the usage of Flint water as it was corroding the auto parts, yet it continued to pump into every household, poisoning an entire city. Despite the President issuing a state of emergency and the allocation of 80 million dollars in FEMA relief funds to assist Flint in its recovery, the damage is irreversible.
I know what you’re thinking. What does this have to do with music? Well, nothing, really. Other than the fact that I feel that I bear the shared responsibility of social consciousness as an artist and fellow human taking up space on this floating ball in space. I couldn’t help but search for some convoluted way to draw attention to this issue, while also finding personal solace through the only outlet that I knew. I’ve curated a playlist of “water songs” by Michigan artists with the hope of a healthy resolve for the millions of people around the world who do not have access to safe drinking water, which now include the thousands of children and families of Flint, Michigan. Let these tracks wash over you and extinguish any unwanted fires.
Eddie Logix and Blair French are BLKSHRK. Released last year, Jellyfish on Cassette is an ocean of temperamental pulsations. The project fuses programmed sampled, live takes and improvisation all of which swell. “Arm Floaties (Night Swim)” gives gives the aural allusion of treading deep water.
This alternate take of “Tidal” from 800beloved‘s dreamy sophomore record, Everything Purple, is a trembling and sedated beachside lullaby. Lynch’s breathy vocals paired with the distant and upbeat pop distortions forms the sensation of having a sun stained memory you wish you could return to.
A standout track off of their 2013 album Wormfood, “Water” is drowsy and pleasantly complacent, much like falling asleep in a filled-to-the-rim bathtub. It’s a smug track about the things we normally don’t have the guts to confess about the disinterest in meaningful love and sex. It’s the type of song that demands hydration; a sonic hangover.
Before they dropped the Nascar kitsch, JRJR released Patterns. “Dark Water” is reminiscent of The Shins with hints of Jon Brion, making it both sugary and brooding. The Beach Boys-esque harmonizing and piano crescendo mask the heaviness of the repeated imagery of drowning which makes this bubbly pop track ironic and bittersweet.
One of my favorite Detroit duos, Gosh Pith, channel a sleepy Animal Collective/Vampire Weekend vibe with a track off their 2015 EP, Window. “Waves” challenges the listener to let go, internalizing the symbolic properties of water via a gentle, lapping synth pop track.
The Gories: “Goin’ To The River”
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The Gories formed back in 1986 and were fearless in welding 60’s garage rock with hyper rhythm blues. “Goin’ To The River” from I Know You Fine, but How You Doin’ released in 1990, is defiant and demands rowdiness. This track by The Gories is a perfect example of their lasting and often overlooked influence.
What I consider to be the most under appreciated album in Iggy Pop’s catalogue and one of the most important contributions to post-punk, New Values is full of songs as jutting as this one. “Endless Sea” is particularly provocative. The synth breakdown along with seductive, temperate vocals are the perfect pairing for giving the drugged sensation of literal endlessness.
The Dead Weather: “Will There Be Enough Water”[/fusion_builder_column][fusion_builder_column type=”1_1″ background_position=”left top” background_color=”” border_size=”” border_color=”” border_style=”solid” spacing=”yes” background_image=”” background_repeat=”no-repeat” padding=”” margin_top=”0px” margin_bottom=”0px” class=”” id=”” animation_type=”” animation_speed=”0.3″ animation_direction=”left” hide_on_mobile=”no” center_content=”no” min_height=”none”]
The Dead Weather may be my favorite collaboration from the diverse repertoire of Detroit’s golden child, Jack White. White along with Alison Mosshart (of The Kills) make for a sexually hypnotic rock experience. “Will There Be Enough Water” is a smokey, blues infused anti-apology that is as thirsty as it is satiated.
The folkiest track on the playlist, “Waterfall” off of Fred Thomas’ Kuma is moody and textured like a messier, sleep deprived Elvis Perkins. The song begs “Come on everyone/it’s time to go see the waterfall” an uplifting chorus partnered with moaning string arrangements keeps “Waterfall” in the heartache category.
This track off of Don’t Wait by experimental pop duo Valley Hush could easily be a secret video game level trudging through sparkling, underwater sludge where Lana Del Rey meets St. Vincent. It’s more sensational than literal, but the ominous gurgling noise is animatedly visual.
If you would like to learn how you can help the residents of Flint, Michigan, click here.
I’m finally home. After a two week stint on the road with JR JR I’m attempting to readjust and realign, and in doing so found that I was home sick all along. While traveling I was lucky to explore parts of the country I never thought I would see, and feel things yet to be categorized and safely stored. Even so, the sensation of being home is disturbingly strange. While I stumble to transition from being driven to driving myself (that’s actually pretty heavy if you think about it), I decided to channel Detroit artists singing about our beautifully complicated city. (And for the record, I really wanted to put Eminem’s “Lose Yourself” on this list, but I think you’re better off just looking up “mom’s spaghetti” memes.)
1. The White Stripes “The Big Three Killed My Baby”
My dad has worked for Ford Motor Company for 39 years. My dad also raised me single handedly. Detroit royalty, The White Stripes’ shrill and thrashing anthem, acknowledging the complexities between the city and its industry, hits home with me. While on the road, my dad called me with the news of his early retirement. I imagine on his last day we will set fire to something in a field and scream along with Jack and Meg.
Released in 2011, just two years before Detroit filed for the largest municipal bankruptcy in U.S. history, this track about Detroit’s most desperate hour is bittersweet today in the age of the city’s rebirth. Hawthorne’s reputation for being a sincere channel between the sounds of Motown and modern swagger shines here with heart and hope.
I’m not sure how they’re perceived around the country, other than seeing shitty faux vintage t-shirts at Urban Outfitters, but in Detroit MC5 are a major thread in our rock ‘n’ roll fabric. In wake of the race riots of 1967, their 1969 debut album Kick Out The Jams included this track, a Dylan-esque retaliation and retelling of this pinnacle piece of our city’s history.
Okay, okay. Patti Smith isn’t from Detroit. But she is my favorite person and she did live in Detroit and various Michigan suburbs from 1976 to the mid 90’s after meeting and marrying the late Fred Smith (beloved guitarist of the aforementioned MC5.) Her latest book, M-Train, details this very life which was first expressed in 1978 via this purging and poetic love letter that is as gritty as the city itself.
Rodriguez has an interesting story. If you saw the Oscar winning documentary Searching for Sugar Man then you know what I’m talking about. Having made music with luke warm reception in the states in the 1970’s (with mild success in Australia) Rodrieguez’s career shaped up to be short lived. Unknowingly to him, his music found its way to South Africa where his record sales outnumbered those of Elvis Presley. Rumors of his death circulated. In attempt to find the truth (spoiler alert: he’s alive) the documentary was made and released in 2012. This song is reflective of his roots and helps illustrate the mysterious life of this local legend with sweeping simplicity.[/fusion_builder_column][/fusion_builder_row][/fusion_builder_container]
If you want a retro way to play your music, but you don’t have the space for a vinyl collection, Cassette Store Day just might be the holiday for you. Inspired by Record Store Day, Jen Long and Steven Rose created the event to “[fusion_builder_container hundred_percent=”yes” overflow=”visible”][fusion_builder_row][fusion_builder_column type=”1_1″ background_position=”left top” background_color=”” border_size=”” border_color=”” border_style=”solid” spacing=”yes” background_image=”” background_repeat=”no-repeat” padding=”” margin_top=”0px” margin_bottom=”0px” class=”” id=”” animation_type=”” animation_speed=”0.3″ animation_direction=”left” hide_on_mobile=”no” center_content=”no” min_height=”none”][celebrate] the glory of tape.” This is the event’s third year, and on October 17th, a select number of record stores will be participating. Here are just a few of the best releases that will be out on tape.
Alex G – Beach Music
Alex Giannascoli is a lo-fi, laid-back songwriter from Philly. The next release in his body of self-recorded work is Beach Music, which will be out on 10/9. He was on tour while making most of this seventh record, forcing him to change up his songwriting process.The two tracks available now from Beach Musicshow his music is taking a more mature, complex direction.
Comes Alive by Baby is just as impressive for its content as the fact that it was “originally recorded, mixed, and released within about an hour; including a photoshoot and album cover.” Though all this happened quite awhile ago, it hasn’t been available for purchase until now. The band features Pat Goddard, Dennis Galway, and the deceased Tim Alexander- check out their track “Baby,” some seriously heavy blues music.
The pysch-punk rockers Beach Slang have made a mixtape for Cassette Store Day, and while there’s no preview for it, if you like loud, shimmery rock with a hard edge you’ll probably be into it. Not so sure? Check out “Bad Art & Weirdo Ideas” from their upcoming album The Things We Do To Find People Who Feel Like Us.
Expert Alterations – You Can’t Always Be Liked
Baltimore’s Expert Alterations plays understated, jangly guitar pop. Check out the title track from their upcoming, debut album You Can’t Always Be Liked, which details the pain of growing up: “And when she talks of letters she cannot spell a single thing/ And when she talks of bells she doesn’t know how they ring/ And when she talks of people she doesn’t know that they are full of spite/ But she will learn one day you can’t always be liked.”
Girl Band – Holding Hands With Jamie
Holding Hands With Jamie is the debut album from the misleadingly-male, Irish group Girl Band (check out our review here). The record will be available on 9/25, and features “Paul,” a disconcerting, intense track that erupts in noise and rage.
Sharkmuffin – Chartreuse
Sharkmuffin is a garage-rock band from Brooklyn that features guitarist Tarra Theissen and bassist Natalie Kirch. Chartreuse is their first album with drummer Patty Schemel (Hole, Death Valley Girls).Check out the title track, which starts off with a sleepy, Hawaiian slide guitar intro and then morphs into their high energy, punk sound.
The Prettiots – Stabler
This Spring, the Brooklyn group The Prettiots were the subject of a New York Times article discussing the struggles of emerging bands who travel to SXSW. It looks like the expenses and hard work paid off, though. The trio, led by the ukelele-wielding frontwoman Kay Kasparhauser, played a Tiny Desk Concert this summer and are contributing their upcoming release Stabler to Cassette Store Day.
There are only so many words, and as a result, only so many band names that can be claimed before they start to overlap. For example, here’s six bands that have “moon” in their name, and considering these all were chosen simply because I’ve heard their name recently or saw it on a show calendar, there are probably many more (such as Moonwalks featured in our latest Playing Detroit column). Here’s a quick guide to what they sound like, where they’re from, and how you tell them apart.
Moonchild
The Los Angeles based group Moonchild plays jazzy pop that includes tenor saxophone and clarinet (played by vocalist Amber Navran). They have all the timing and timbre of a standard jazz or lounge band, but with echo-y layers of vocals and brass played with a soulful swagger.
Summer Moon
Summer Moon could be placed into the category of “super group;” its members include Nikolai Fraiture (The Strokes), Erika Spring (Au Revoir Simone), and Tennessee Thomas (Like) as well as Lewis Lazar. So obviously, they sound pretty good.
https://youtu.be/AsOIlRMGzy0
Moon Honey
Moon Honey is from Los Angeles, but via Louisiana. They play intricate, surreal pop with theatrical vocals supplied by Jessica Ramsey. The trills in her voice are reminiscent of an old Disney movie soundtrack, while her melodies recall the Dirty Projectors minus the harmonies.
https://soundcloud.com/moonhoneyband/boy-magic-1
What Moon Things
What Moon Things is a New York band that’s part punk, part moody dream pop. Check out “Squirrel Girl,” a track from their self-titled LP that sounds like the perfect soundtrack for wandering through a dark, abandoned warehouse. The trio is also playing several CMJ shows at venues like Aviv, Pianos, and Bowery Electric.
The Soft Moon
The Soft Moon is a San Francisco band with a heavy, industrial sound, best described as steady and sludgy (and as their recent video for “Dummy” proves, occasionally creepy).
https://soundcloud.com/goincase/when-its-over
Moon Duo
Moon Duo is a San Francisco project made up of Erik Johnson (Wooden Shijps) and Sanae Yamada. Their sound is a combination of electronic and Krautrock elements, with droning, understated vocals, and lots of keys and psychedelic guitar solos.
It’s already August, and if you’re like me, a certain kind of panic is starting to set in: Summer is almost over! The descent into crippling cold weather will begin soon! Well, the first day of Fall is September 23rd, which means there’s still over a month left for rooftop parties, iced coffee, and frolicking outdoors. If you haven’t gotten your music fix this summer, here are some of your best bets for concerts in the next few weeks.
Palehound
8/17 at Gramercy Theatre
Ellen Kempner is the creative force behind the MA band Palehound. Though her band often gets compared to Speedy Ortiz and the two groups both have strong 90’s alt-rock influences, Kempner’s guitar-heavy sounds and lyrics full of casual heartbreak are very much her own.
Krill
8/21 at Palisades
Another of Exploding In Sound’s breakthrough bands, Krill gained fans and alt-rock cred after their last release, A Distant Fist Unclenching.
Frankie Cosmos
8/22 at Shea Stadium
Frankie Cosmos, the daughter of Kevin Kline and a former member of Porches, is inspired by the poetry of Frank O’Hara and the NYC anti-folk scene. Though her real name is Greta, the project is the singer/songwriter’s indie alter-ego.
Zula
8/24 at Silent Barn
The local psych-rock band will be playing at Bushwick’s DIY space, the Silent Barn as part of Exploding In Sound’s Extended Weekend series.
Cuddle Magic
8/31 at Baby’s All Right
Cuddle Magic is one of Brooklyn’s most unique bands, who specialize in unexpected wordplay and rhythms. The clarinet, saxophone and trumpet they occasionally include sometimes gives them a baroque-like sound.
The Juan Maclean
9/10 at Bowery Ballroom
We’ve seen Juan Maclean, so we can vouch for their live performance. Nancy of LCD Soundsystem handles the vocals over the band’s mixture of electro/techno/house. Get ready to dance.
Dengue Fever
9/11 at (le) Poisson Rogue
Nothing says summer like going to see a band named after a debilitating disease caused by mosquitoes. (I promise, this concert will be a much, much more pleasant experience). The L.A. band sings in Khmer, mixing their native language and brand of pop music with dancey, psychedelic grooves.
St Paul & The Broken Bones
9/15 at Webster Hall
Looking for something a little more soulful? Check out the Alabama natives St. Paul & The Broken Bones, who have gained notoriety after releasing Half The City last year.
Hey Brooklyn! What are you doing next weekend? Really, the only acceptable answer is seeing at least one of these bands at Northside Festival, which runs from June 11-14 and hosts shows in venues from Acheron to Warsaw. The schedule is packed with amazing artists, and to help you choose which shows to see, we made you a list of our favorites. You’re welcome.
1. Diet Cig (6/11 at Alphaville)
This duo from New Paltz plays catchy, light-hearted pop that will have you copying the dancing in this video:
2. Beverly (6/11 at Alphaville)
This band comes with a warning: their lush, relaxing harmonies are addictive.
3. Luna (6/11 at McCarren Park)
Luna is the indie band formed by former Galaxie 500 member Dean Wareham, featuring guitar-centric, dreamy rock.
4. Drenge (6/12 at Knitting Factory)
Their name is a little challenging to pronounce, but these brothers from the UK have an amazing sound: heavy, grungy rock.
5. Leapling (6/12 at Palisades)
Just one in a long list of amazing local bands is Leapling, an experimental pop group responsible for gems like “Crooked.”
6. Vomitface (6/12 at Pet Rescue)
This sludge-pop band sounds way better than their name. If you’ve got some head-banging to get out of your system, go see them at Pet Rescue.
7. Frankie Cosmos (6/12 at Rough Trade)
Greta Kline formerly performed under the name Ingrid Superstar before settling on Frankie Cosmos. The daughter of actors Kevin Kline and Phoebe Cates lists James Taylor, Hall and Oates, Liz Phair, Indigo Girls and the Moldy Peaches as early influences.
8. Mitski (6/12 at Saint Vitus)
Mitski is a stunning singer-songwriter from Brooklyn, via practically everywhere else. Go see her at Saint Vitus, where we’re hoping she’ll preview some songs from her upcoming album.
9. Von Sell (6/12 at Union Pool)
Von Sell is a relatively new electro-pop artist from Berlin who is already getting praise from indie blogs. Watch him play at Union Pool and see what all the fuss is about.
10. ONWE (6/12 at Union Pool)
ONWE’s light, catchy melodies hide something darker- just check out his song “Unpaid Internship,” his scathing opinion on “trust-fund kids.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wequcex-zXI
11. Shilpa Ray (6/14 at Rough Trade)
She plays the harmonium, and she’s one of Nick Cave’s favorite musicians: Shilpa Ray is bringing her uniquely gloomy rock ‘n’ roll to Rough Trade.
April is known for rain, taxes, rabbits, and silly pranks, but now the month has a new, much cooler holiday: Boston’s mayor, Marty Walsh, has designated April 9th “Riot Grrrl Day” in honor of Kathleen Hanna, the front woman of Bikini Kill and Le Tigre. Born in Portland, Hanna’s interest in feminism came at an early age. After dabbling in spoken word performance, she realized that her message would be louder if it was delivered in music.
How can you celebrate “Riot Grrrl Day”? Start by listening to this playlist of badass female-fronted acts.
After a long hiatus, Carrie Brownstein, Janet Weiss, and Corin Tucker reunited Sleater-Kinney with the album Bury Our Friends. Check out the title track above: “Exhume our idols and bury our friends/ We’re wild and weary but we won’t give in.”
2. Speedy Ortiz “Raising The Skate”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KyCF9r9NdMo
Speedy Ortiz is fronted by vocalist/guitarist Sadie Dupuis, who created the witty, anxious “snack rock” that rocked SXSW this year.
3. Screaming Females “Hopeless”
New Jersey’s Screaming Females is actually just one female. She may not exactly scream, but guitarist/singer Marissa Paternoster has earned the description by belting rock vocals that defy her size.
4. Bikini Kill “Rebel Girl”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DzMGqVh8G20
Of course, we couldn’t make this playlist without including the person who inspired the holiday: Kathleen Hanna, the original rebel girl.
5. Le Tigre “TKO”
Hanna’s next project, Le Tigre, is more polished, but just as fierce:“I’ll say my piece and when it’s over you’ll be on your knees,” she sings, while rocking a suit in the video for “TKO.”
Meredith Graves is the woman behind the heavy-hitting, possibly-unsafe-to-google punk band, Perfect Pussy.
8. Waxahatchee “Under A Rock”
Waxahatchee is named after a creek in Katie Crutchfield’s hometown in Birmingham, Alabama. Now living in Brooklyn, the singer-songwriter just released her third album, Ivy Trip.
9. Tacocat “You Never Came Back”
Tacocat is here to prove that cat ladies can be cool, too. The Washington State surf-pop group plays upbeat songs that address feminism, as well as topics related to cats and everyday life.
10. She Keeps Bees “Saturn Return”
The husband and wife duo has a name that almost seems like a warning- as in, “watch out for that chick; she keeps bees.” Their sound is a slow, bluesy creep that builds and sneaks up on you.[/fusion_builder_column][/fusion_builder_row][/fusion_builder_container]
So you’re throwing your annual Halloween party but you shot your wad on all the holiday classics( the Monster Mash,the Time Warp, the Purple People Eater, etc, etc) on last year’s mix. So you’re going as Will Smith circa “The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air” and you’re looking for something seasonal to blast from the boom box slung over your shoulder. So you’re psyching yourself up to wear your Sexy Einstein costume complete with the 3-inch hair (go for it, Miss/Mister Thang!!). So you’re hosting a seanceand you need some tunes to help you commune with the spirit.
WE GOT YOU. Behold AudioFemme’s spookiest, scariest, most rockin’ and rollin’ Halloween playlist, guaranteed to thrill, chill, and catch the eye of that babealicious witch doctor in the apartment down the hall. Onward!!
1. Walk Like A Zombie – HorrorPops
This Danish psychobilly act shares its guitarist Kim Nekroman with the thrashier but stylistically related Nekromantix, for which Nekroman plays a recognizable coffin-shaped bass. HorrorPops formed in the late 90s, when Nekroman met Patricia Day at a music festival in Germany. Day now fronts the group, which draws aspects of ska, rockabilly, and punk that both she and Nekroman found lacking in their other projects. The two eventually married, and fittingly, “Walk Like A Zombie” is doo-woppy and more than a little romantic. Perfect for that un-dead high school prom you’re DJing. Just make sure to keep the glassy look of death in your eyes.
2. Chainsaw Gutsfuck – Mayhem
Off the seminal Norweigian black metal album Deathcrush, released in 1987, “Chainsaw Gutsfuck” won the prestigious title of having the Blender award for “Most Gruesome Lyrics Ever” in 2006. Fifteen years beforehand, it was inspiring black metal bands in Scandinavia and beyond to delve deeper into lyrical bleakness, to glorify extremity in violence and misery, and to distort their music into the grainiest, harshest possible sounds. “Chainsaw Gutsfuck” is one of the doomier songs on a very doomy album, with lyrics that sexualize death and corporeal decay. But, if you can handle the black metal sludge, it’s totally catchy, too. Want to dress the part? Christ, you could go as any of Mayhem’s members or black metal contemporaries and stand a solid chance at being the scariest monster at the party. The group’s most recognizable figure is perhaps Euronymous, its founder and guitarist, who held some nasty political viewsand achieved infamy when, upon discovering the body of his band’s singer Dead after the latter committed suicide, allegedly made necklaces out of his skull fragments and possibly (though it’s unlikely) cannibalized him by stirring flecks of his brain into a stew. Euronymous himself was murdered by another bandmate, Varg Vikernes, the following year. Halloween is the time to be tasteless, so wear corpsepaint, long hair, black and leather.
3. I Put A Spell On You – Nina Simone
Originally performed by Screamin’ Jay Hawkins, Nina Simone’s “I Put A Spell On You” is seething, brooding and betrayed, like she’s looking into a crystal ball to discover a lover’s duplicitous carryings-on. Especially towards the end of her career, Simone had a reputation for fire and fury on stage, too. A life in the music business left her weary and long-embattled, bitter alike to the people who loved and exploited her. Released decades before her death, “I Put A Spell On You” foreshadows the betrayal she seemed to come to see in the people around her. But, no matter her demons, Simone’s genius is present here–as everywhere–glowing like an ember, dying down when it’s still, and firing up again in a slight breeze, even after you think it’s gone out.
4. Tainted Love – Gloria Jones
And speaking of women scorned, “Tainted Love” is practically an anthem for love gone frighteningly awry. Gloria Jones recorded “Tainted Love,” which later became an electronic single for the band Soft Cell, in 1964. The original fell somewhere short of Motown, akin to demonic bubble gum pop that had been steeped in the sultry blues. Five years after recording “Tainted Love,” Jones began singing backup for the British rock band T. Rex and met her future husband, Marc Bolan. It was Jones who was driving the car when, one night in September of 1977, Bolan died in a car accident. Jones–who nearly faced charges for impaired driving after drinking wine on the night of the accident–lost the couple’s house and moved back to L.A. “Tainted Love” remains her longest-lasting hit, with covers aplenty and appearances in current film and TV soundtracks.
5. Somebody’s Watching Me – Rockwell (featuring Michael Jackson)
It’s not just those Jackson hee-hees in the chorus that bring to mind the campy spook of “Thriller.” This track is pop-culture paranoid, stocked with references to television and the everyday horrors of being spied on. “Somebody’s Watching Me” dropped in 1984, and its theme of a dystopian state, in which even “normal people” fall under invisible scrutiny, feels ever more prescient today in light of Internet freedom issues and heightened technological development. Plus, “Someone’s Watching Me” has a spooky synth line that sounds like it’s played on a xylophone made of a cartoon rib cage!
6. Walkin’ Through A Cemetery – Claudine Clark
Claudine Clark, whose early single “Party Lights” proved her only song to score high on the charts, experimented with the spooky side of pop in “Walking Through A Cemetery.” Hindsight’s 20/20, but I’m not surprised that after “Party Lights”–which is about trying to convince your mom to let you go to a party–“Walking Through A Cemetery” flatlined. The lyrics took a serious turn in the for-whom-the-bell-tolls direction, after all: “If you’re walking through a cemetery one dark night/ Up jumps a creature and he gives you a fright/ Ain’t no use to turn around and walk the other way/ ‘Cause if he’s for you, baby, he’s gonna get you anyway.” Geez. Pretty serious stuff, for someone whose most popular work to date dealt with the injustice of not being allowed to do the twist, the fish, the watusi, and the mashed potatoes. But no one said Halloween was all fun and games. We’re all destined for the grave, but in this danceable number, Clark sings om bop bop, om bop bop sha doo dee doo dee all the way there.
7. Spooky – Dusty Springfield
Dusty Springfield’s gender-switched cover of the classic “Spooky,” a song that tells the story of a “spooky little girl” who compels and mystifies, and, like a ghost, only seems to show up when no one else is around, is further “spookified” by Springfield’s sly and porcelain-pretty vocals. The performance is ghostly–the woman herself was more complex. Springfield–a lesbian performing at a time when gayness was professional suicide–made a second career of cloaking her identity. The flip side of the doll-like vocals was a person who raged, drank too much, had a problem with pills. And its restraint makes Springfield’s spooky all the eerier.
8. The Whistler – The White Buffalo
Singer/songwriter Jake Smith is a big man, with a big, big voice. Nowhere more so than on “The Whistler,” off the 2013 album Shadows, Greys and Evil Ways. His stage name is apt, and like a large herd animal, Smith’s performances are often remarkable for the gentle giant-ishness. When he roars, though, the earth quakes. “The Whistler” marks the interior battle of a man who knows what the right thing is but chooses its opposite, and revels in his own destruction. The scariest demon of all is the demon inside, kids!
9. God Alone – Altar of Plagues
Out of a host of powerful metal records to come out of 2013, Teethed Glory and Injury–from Altar of Plagues, AKA Irish musician James Kelly–stands out as one of the most precocious and innovative within a genre wreathed with tradition and homage to be paid. “God Alone” stands out as the record’s most violent track, but that violence is achieved through skill and technical manipulation, not blunt force. The rhythms tilt and hang off-kilter; the beats deploy sudden, booming jolts that make you jump out of your seat.
10. Little Fang -Avey Tare’s Slasher Flicks
I wouldn’t call “Little Fang”–or the group behind it–scary, but damned if Welcome To The Slasher House, this year’s debut release from Slasher Flicks, isn’t Halloween-ishly kitschy. The group plays shrouded in a backdrop of glowing skulls, leering in neon green, and plays on dissonance and surreal lyrics. “Little Fang” is less Fright Night, more sticky fingers and sugar rush.
And there you have ’em, folks. Consider this list your musical Trick Or Treat offerings from your friendly neighborhood Femmes. Don’t egg our house, please, but do tell us what we missed! What are your favorite Halloween tunes? Let us know in the comments below!
50 years ago today, John F. Kennedy was assassinated. It was an event that shook the entire nation and his progressive politics are something we still need to incorporate in our society today. Every person I have come in contact with from the baby boom era remembers where they were were when they found out he was assassinated and how they felt like they lost a family member that day. In remembrance, here are some songs from the 60’s to present time that commemorate his lasting memory for a more peaceful world.
1. “The Sound Of Silence” – Simon and Garfunkel (1964)
While not entirely obvious, Simon and Garfunkel wrote this song in response to JFK’s assassination. The lyrics are quite ambiguous and can be applied to different situations. But a line such as, “When my eyes were stabbed by the flash of a neon light”, is alluding to the gun shot. Also, “And in the naked light I saw / Ten thousand people, maybe more / People talking without speaking” is about the thousands of people that went to his funeral and showed support, at a loss for words.
2. “The Day John Kennedy Died” – Lou Reed (1982)
A kind of eerie song listening to it now with the death of Lou Reed, but not entirely so. It’s a soft yet striking ballad in tribute to JFK’s longing for a more harmonious United States. A key lyric pertaining to that exact thought, “I dreamed I replaced ignorance, stupidity and hate / I dreamed the perfect union and a perfect law, undenied”.
3. “He Was A Friend Of Mine” – The Byrds (1965)
This short and sweet song embodies the feeling that so many felt when Kennedy was shot, as though they were losing a close friend or beloved family member. The voice of their generation was suddenly gone, and no one knew how to deal with the void in their lives and in their country. “He never knew my name / He never knew my name / Though I never met him /I knew him just the same / Oh, he was a friend of mine.”
4. “Sleeping In” – The Postal Service (2003)
Written ten years ago, The Postal Service takes a more modern assessment and gets right to the point in the opening lyrics: “Last week I had the strangest dream / Where everything was exactly how it seemed / Where there was never any mystery of who shot John F. Kennedy”. It captures the displacement felt in today’s skeptical, conspiracy obsessed climate and a yearning for less complication.
5. “Sympathy For The Devil” – The Rolling Stones (1968)
A kind of cautionary tale urging listeners to be aware that there’s evil in everyone. Mick Jagger’s theories suppose that all of these tragedies are the result of a human being, not just the “Devil”, from the crucifixion of Jesus to the murder of JFK. “I shouted out / Who killed the Kennedys? / When after all / It was you and me”. The “devil” exists, and when we think he doesn’t, he makes himself known.
6. “The Brain Of J” – Pearl Jam (1998)
The title is pretty self explanatory. A howling track with metal tinged riffs, it gives an aggressive, interrogating point of view on Eddie Vedder’s thoughts on the ordeal 35 years prior. It’s mostly about the random and disturbing disappearance of JFK’s brain. Vedder has my thoughts exactly…who steals a brain, honestly? “Who’s got the brain of JFK? / What’s it mean to us now?”
7. “Civil War” – Guns N’ Roses (1990)
Probably one of my favorite songs of all time, an epic 7-minute protest song of sorts, referencing various assassinations. “And in my first memories / They shot Kennedy / And I went numb when I learned to see” – hardly a sight to forget, according to Axl Rose. Most of the people Rose is referencing to were committed to spreading the idea of peace and justice, but he also profiles those who can’t handle it and go berserk.
8. “Public Enemy #1” – Eminem (2006)
One of the most recent allusions, Eminem is telling the trials and tribulations of being in the public eye. Once you’re famous, you inevitably become a target, not only to backlash and nasty articles written about you, but also more dire attacks. The idea of celebrity in any profession is terrifying. People know your every move and think they know you to the point of wanting to be you. “Like the day John F. Kennedy was assassinated in broad day / By a crazed lunatic with a gun / Who just happened to work on the same block in a library book depository / Where the President would go for a little Friday stroll / Shots fired from the grassy knoll”
Post any additional songs you’d like to add to this list in the comments!
While perceptions of LGBT musicians have evolved dramatically over the past few decades, the subject matter has been the stuff of some truly iconic songs (such as “Walk On The Wild Side,” a notable exclusion from this list due to its sheerly self-explanatory status). November 20th marks annual Transgender Remembrance Day, dedicated to raising awareness and memorializing those killed due to anti-transgender discrimination across the world. In honor of the occasion, AudioFemme has collected a list of songs that deal with the topic, or were created by artists identifying as transgender.
1. The Cliks – Dark Passenger: Canadian rock band The Cliks, who take their name from an amalgamation of the words “clit” and “dick,” were the first band with an openly transgendered lead singer to be signed to a major label. Energetic, hard-hitting soul rock dominate The Cliks’ sound. “Dark Passenger was released in May of this year, on the band’s album Black Tie Elevator.
2. JD Samson & MEN – Who Am I To Feel So Free:This track is fun, plain and simple. Former Le Tigre member JD Samson has extensively commented on her sexual minority status as a lesbian, but this single is—as you’d expect from the name—liberated and giddy.
3. Antony and the Johnsons – You Are My Sister: Antony Hegarty’s voice holds a reverberating, haunting appeal, backed here by soft strings and quietly building harmonies. “When I heard him,” Lou Reed has said of Hegarty, “I knew I was in the presence of an angel.” Hegarty, who never anatomically transitioned from male to female, embraces ambiguity and dissonance in his songwriting as well–refusing to shy away from contradictions, he lends his music and organic, somewhat mysterious slant, always leaving just a few spaces in his songs blank.
4. David Bowie – Rebel Rebel: Bowie’s 1974 classic, apparently the most covered track on Diamond Dogs, is noisy, rife with slapstick distortion, and filthy with the glam mode that he popularized in the early seventies. The song, due to its massive popularity, was revitalized and re-released in 1999 . After “Rebel Rebel” was written, Bowie moved almost instantly away from the glam movement that had been his brain child—the following single was “Rock ‘n’ Roll Suicide.”
5. Geo Wyeth – I Am Chasing An Alien Light: Wyeth, a transgendered, NYC-based artist, makes wistful, exciting folk music that’s minimalist in style and radiates breathless optimism. Many of his tracks, including the one below, bear an alien theme, representative of his experience not only as a transgendered person, but as a musician whose songs don’t bear any direct relation to most of the other music going on around him.
6. Styx – I’m O.K.: “I’m O.K.” was released on the band’s 1978 Pieces Of Eight album. Beginning with a chorus of “heys” and a round of bouncing synthesizers, this track is one of the standout feel-good tracks on this list: Styx’s theatricality lends itself to a rousing, epic-sounding anthem.
7. Our Lady J – Hurt: Breathy, delicate synthesizers, close harmonies, both electronically engineered and non, and a sleek production finish dominate Our Lady J’s rendition of this song, originally performed by Nine Inch Nails (or Johnny Cash, depending on how you look at it). Our Lady J, a singer and pianist known for live performers and a masterful singing style, offers an entirely new take on the growling, stripped down original.
8. Against Me! – True Trans Soul Rebel: In 1997, Laura Jane Grace, then known as Thomas James Gabel, founded punk rock outfit Against Me! as a solo project, and quickly grew the band to a quartet. Fourteen years after Against Me! Was created, Grace publicly addressed her gender dysphoria and assumed a female name, continuing to perform with the band. In January of next year, Against Me! will release the first album to come out since Grace publicly announced herself to be transgendered. This summer, “True Trans Soul Rebel” was released as a single off the forthcoming album, displaying a more introspective, acoustic tendency that any we’ve seen in any Against Me! release thus far.
9. The Kinks – Lola: Released in 1970, The Kinks’ iconic single “Lola” is perhaps the best known song about a transgender experience in the world. Detailing a meeting between a young boy and the more experienced Lola, who is either a transvestite or is transgendered. Hard-rocking, story-telling and intensely singable, the song has spawned a bounty of live versions, a German version, a Greek version, a Dutch version, a Spanish version, and a Weird Al parody called “Yoda,” among many, many others.
10. Garbage – Queer: Garbage has performed an array of songs dealing with queer-oriented subject matter, and this is one of the best. Snarling harmonies combine with lead singer Shirley Manson’s angelic vocals and disenchanted lyrics.
11. Bitch and Animal – Boy Girl Wonder: Steeped in the queercore scene, Bitch and Animal apply an insightful, often improvisatory, take to the genre. “Boy Girl Wonder” favors the story-telling aspect of the song, accompanied by an extremely minimalistic acoustic guitar for the first two minutes and twenty seconds of the song, before sharp, embittered electric guitar cuts into the track.“The boy girl wonder from Queens,” Bitch screams over reverberating chords, proving she can escalate to a howl—or drop down to a purr—on a dime.
12. Wayne County and the Electric Chair – Fuck Off: Wayne County, now known as Jayne County, holds the title of rock’s first transsexual singer. County moved to London as the punk scene there was burgeoning, in 1977, and formed a group, releasing “Fuck Off” shortly thereafter. Jayne County never received critical acclaim, despite several releases, a tour, and even a book entitled Man Enough To Be A Woman. “Fuck Off” is a song whose time, perhaps, has come.
13. The Velvet Underground – Candy Says: With lyrics like “Candy says ‘I’ve come to hate my body/and all that it requires in this world,’” The Velvet Underground’s “Candy Says” represents one of rock’s most tender and intricate portraits of a transgendered woman. This soft, sorrowful song portrays Candy so vividly because she was, in fact, a real person (that would be Candy Darling, who starred in multiple Warhol films and died of lymphoma while still very young). Candy appears in other Velvet Underground songs as well, notably “Walk On The Wild Side,” but appears here in a fuller, much more poignant capacity.
Why not celebrate Transgender Remembrance Day with a donation to a worthy cause? The Sylvia Rivera Law Project, or SRLP, works to protect freedom in gender identification by providing legal services to fight against harassment. Go hereto donate. And post your additions to our playlist in the comments!
