January 2024 - Several Different Vibes, All of Which Call for a Leather Jacket
Albums
joe unknown - For Better, For Worse
Last month I called out joe unknown’s single “Ride,” which is wonderful both for its hard-ass, driving electro grooves and for its parody of electro machismo. It sounds like what might happen if you took Sleaford Mods and gave them a sense of humor about themselves (rather than the sense of humor they actually have, which is about pretty much everybody except themselves). “Ride”s straight-faced self-deprecating humor is awfully charming, and I figured I’d need to spend some time with For Better, for Worse before this new blog post.
And man, I’m glad I did. You can find a lot of that hard electro sound in this album - that would be enough to recommend it right there - but it turns out that the self-parody is just one aspect of it. There’s also a lot of poetry. "Ride” has the nice image “I got scars longer than the memories we had,” and “Silence” is a kind of masterpiece of consistent rhyme and measure which actually does resolve into meaning (or well, I think it does). The album also occasionally takes a turn into something more earnest, like “Hennesy Brown” and "Hell of Mine.” I’m not sure that I like the earnestness as much, but it does add another dimension to the album.
His name has turned out to be annoyingly apt because I’m having a helluva time finding anything about this guy. I know that he runs a party called Erosion and that his real name is Joe McDonald, but both of those things have proven to be pretty much ungooglable. The one really satisfying thing I found out is that he looks pretty much like you’d expect.
Public Memory - Elegiac Beat
Quick note: if you ever find yourself in the position of interviewing a musical artist, never suggest that they sound similar to any particular other artist. Even if you’re right, you’ll never get a satisfying response out of them. No one wants to say, “Why yes, I sound just like Cocteau Twins. Thanks for noticing.” Robert Toher’s take on it (that’s the Public Memory guy) is that he’s influenced by krautrock, rock psychedelia, and Burial, and that makes sense. It’s a dreamy, dark, minimalistic haze, full of chimes and ethereal vocals. It’s hallucinatory and lush.
Public Memory is yet another reason to recommend O’Brien’s Pub in Boston. It’s a little hole in the wall which has music seven days a week and punches way, way above its weight class in terms of talent. I try to get over there any time something sounds even vaguely interesting. Most of what I know about this band comes from chatting with someone who was sitting next to me at the bar, who said that she drove all the way down from Portland, ME for the show (roughly 2.5 hours for those who aren’t in the area), and that the reason she follows them is that they used to play shows in her basement in Allston. I was kind of enamored with that woman, ngl.
I also learned that Public Memory’s sound came from an evolution from a Mogwai-esque post-rock band called Apse, to a band called ERAAS which was also Mogwai-esque post-rock but with more electronic stuff, to this. I’m going to spend some time with those previous iterations this month. More soon.
Calva Louise - Euphoric
Calva Louise is a really interesting blend of styles. There’s certainly a lot of metal-y screaming in here, which I think is probably the first thing listeners hear in it (it’s the first thing I heard, anyway), but I’m really struck by some elements of 90’s rock as well. In particular, I’m thinking of the off-kilter guitar hooks, and some of the vocal production reminds me of Republica’s “Ready to Go” and the like. But of course, it’s so much harder than that, and at times they pull in some electronic elements and a bit of Latin rhythm as well (see “Alcanzar” and “Tiranito”).
I’m jealous of the cross-culture collaborations that happen in the UK. In this case, it’s a Venezuelan vocalist/guitarist/keyboardist working with a French bassist and a Kiwi drummer. You’re inevitably going to get a fresher sound from artists that grew up listening to different stuff than you would otherwise. Around here everyone just grows up listening to other Americans.
Jess Eastwood is a total badass. She writes all the songs and also does the vocal, guitar, and keyboard parts. She also apparently does all the album covers now, because her pandemic skill was learning Blender and Unreal Engine. And I guess she also invented her own keyboard stand, which has some kind of sliding mechanism?
As I’ve been listening to this, I’ve been thinking about how we listen to music, and how we’re hearing the production just as much as we hear the songwriting and performance. I love almost every song on this album, but the production is a little uneven, and sometimes I have to remind myself to stick with it and enjoy what’s here. I’m always rewarded when I do that, but sometimes it sounds a little thin, and I’m sure that as a live show these tracks would all be absolutely amazing.
I also want to call out “Oportunista” from the new album, which is much more metal than anything you’ll find on Euphoric. That’s the song that got me into these guys to begin with.
Gaye Su Akyol - İstikrarlı Hayal Hakikattir
Gaye Su Akyol is a super interesting interview. She’s very direct about her goals as a musician, the social and political world of contemporary Turkey, and LGBTQ+ issues in particular. I encourage you to read her commentary on all of those issues, both in the interview I linked above, and in pretty much every other interview she’s ever done (she’s done lots in English, and I have to imagine many many more in Turkish). For our purposes, since I only have a few hundred words, I’ll focus on the stuff she wants to do with this album: bring Turkish music into the world of modern psychedelic rock.
As a Westerner, it’s helpful context to have her describe her music that way, because I wouldn’t necessarily have thought “psychedelic rock” immediately. My mind went immediately to some of the slinkier 60’s lounge music, or maybe some alt-pop stuff from the 2000’s, like Florence + the Machine. But having read that, it’s totally here. The reverb effects on electric stringed instruments (I don’t think they’re guitars, but I don’t know enough about Turkish music to identify them), and the delays on the vocals put it in that territory. Not to mention the themes of the album. The title translates as Consistent Fantasy is Reality. She’s described that idea like this:
We are living in a dualist world full of injustice, inequality, and grief but also love, passion, and art at the same time. Life turns into what you are convinced of. People looking at the same point can perceive totally different things, so there is not “one reality”, there are actually infinite realities even in one mind. Reality changes according to an individual’s perception. So at this point my mind asks the question: if the reality we are living in is quite absurd but the only thing that makes it real is consistency, then what is the difference between a consistent fantasy and reality? We do not know if we are living in a simulation or holographic world but I do know that the software of this life is based on “dreaming the reality”.
The world is ruled by idiots who lack imagination while the rest of the world feels powerless and hopeless. What these people are missing is the power of consistent dreaming. If we see the same dream then it becomes our mass reality and the only thing left is to take action which is quite simple when you believe in it. As Picasso once said, “Everything you can imagine is real” and none of the organised evil can survive against it.
That’s quite a trip, and certainly a much more interesting take than you normally get when psychedelia becomes political. There’s a lot to unpack with her.
She’s got a lot of awesome music out there, and before we go, I also need to call out the surprisingly electronic “Biz Ne Zaman Dman Olduk” from her most recent album, Anadolu Ejderi.
And I also just want to point out that every pic of her I’ve ever seen (as well as every music video) is incredibly awesome looking. Apparently she does tour in the US occasionally, so everyone keep your eyes peeled.
EMS Synthi 100 - DEEWEE Sessions Vol. 1
Don’t be fooled. It’s Soulwax.
Pretty much the whole story is explained here, on their Bandcamp, but EMS Synthi 100 is actually the name of a very rare and powerful (not to mention physically enormous) analogue synthesizer. There are only 31 of them in existence. I’m sure you’ll be shocked to hear that Soulwax are collectors. They’d been looking for a Synthi 100 for years without success, and then, right after opening a new studio in Ghent, they discovered that there was one at the University of Ghent, right across town. As it happened, the department that owned it was in the process of moving to a new building and needed somewhere to put the thing in the meantime, and at that point Soulwax raised their hands and were like “uh, we can hold on to it for you.” This album came out of their time with it.
They’ve said that their intent is to show off the power and potential of the Synthi. I don’t understand enough about modular synth to know exactly what’s cool about it, but they list a whole bunch of features that I’m sure are very impressive. Apparently it’s a uniquely versatile and powerful machine. I can tell you, though, that this album has a lot of cool stuff on it. It’s probably best thought of as an ambient album, with lots of hypnotic arpeggiation, only occasionally veering into Soulwax’s signature buzzing.
Tracks
Logic - Lightsabers (ft. C Dot Castro)
When Logic is on, he’s truly spectacular. This track is certainly his best since coming out of retirement [eyeroll], with a technically brilliant hook, and some absolutely fire verses to boot, both his own and one by C Dot Castro.
College Park is a concept album (aren’t they all with Logic?) about driving through College Park, MD before he became famous. The first three tracks are all awesome, densely referential compositions which call out to Ice Cube, TY, his own previous albums, and I’m sure many other touchpoints that I haven’t picked up on. I’m glad he’s out of retirement [eyeroll], because this is promising stuff.
Gut Health - The Recipe
You could say that this is pretty straight-ahead post-punk, with all the angular guitar riffs and shouty singing, but there’s also a point in each of the songs on this album in which things just sort of spin out into jagged, disorienting noise.
It’s great, catchy stuff. They don’t have an album yet, but they’ve been touring around the world so I think that moment is coming.
Josefin Öhrn + The Liberation - Rushing Through My Mind
I love that moment in the middle when the guitars suddenly take over this nice spacey groove. It’s a great swell and sets the track up for a very satisfying close.
TVAM - Ephemerol
I’m a huge fan of TVAM’s stuff, which is very (very very) Tobacco-influenced. This track is definitely still in that noisy lo-fi world, but this EP, Costasol, represents a significant move to something a bit more poppy. The title track moves a bit too fan in that direction for my taste, but this one and the following track, “Heart Attack” are both very promising.
Younger Hunger - Dead Inside
Sometimes a track grabs you for reasons that surprise you. This track has a great groove and is pretty catchy, but if I’m really honest, the thing that stuck with me and put this song on the list is really just the way he says the word “inside” like “insoyed.”
Kerala Dust - Red Light
There’s a little bit of a Tom Waits vibe in here - a laid-back groove and a gravelly-voiced vocalist over some complicated percussion. Of course, no one is as gravelly as Tom Waits, but I’m pretty sure he’s the theoretical maximum of gravelliness, so let’s not hold that against Kerala Dust.
C Duncan - Bell Toll
This is a really beautiful, theatrical song with a really interesting harmonized call-answer structure. I love that swelling bridge.
The Bongo Hop & Nidia Góngora - La Ñapa
Just a little afro-Caribbean dance groove.