Kool Kids Music Club - Issue #1
Never trust anyone under 30 or, How I Stopped Worrying and Embraced being Old
Maybe it’s the pandemic, maybe it’s getting laid-off from my assistant editor side-hustle, or maybe I’m just getting old, but I’m having a heck of a time staying on top of new music this year.
This isn’t a new feeling - recent years have seen me cut back on the number of shows I go to, thus limiting my chances of seeing something new, different and (often, but not always) local. But over the past 12 months, my descent into a musical comfort zone has definitely accelerated.
Higher Power, Soccer Mommy, Illuminati Hotties, Supercrush, Charly Bliss… the list of bands that I love that sound like other bands from my youth is becoming overwhelming. Adding to the sense of musical stagnation is the fact that the pandemic has deeply messed with my basic listening habits, meaning that I’ve probably listened to less music in 2020 than any previous year since becoming a semi-professional music critic.
It’s a scientific fact that listening to new music is hard, but there are rewards to doing so. So to force myself to engage with it in a more formal (and public) way I decided to re-establish some accountability around my listening habits. The result is the newsletter that you’ve got in your hot little hand/lap.
While my greater ambition is to include notable stories, interviews, reviews, and (capacity willing) original content the core of Kool Kids Music Club will always be music recommendation, ideally with a bit of context around the artist or song in question.
The material will undoubtedly be skewed towards my own tastes - usually, but not always pop and rock. But it’s my hope that my tastes are broad enough (or at least over the course of compiling these, that those tastes will be broadened) that you, dear reader, might get something out of this. Maybe you’ll even find your new favourite band.
That tweet at the top of this newsletter is from Toronto artist Pretty Matty, who makes pretty cool garage-y pop-punk. However, he’s also guilty of his own criticism. Matt Morand (his real name) also plays bass with PONY, the brainchild of Sam Bielanski. “WebMD,” their latest, boasts the crisp, crunchy, 90s guitar sound that’s basically catnip to someone like me.
Also worth checking out: their cover of Adam Sandler’s sad-bastard jam “Somebody Kill Me Please.”
I can’t claim to know much about ambient music, but I very much enjoy the breezy vibes of Joseph Shabason. You might know him from his sax work with Destroyer or his former (I think they’ve split up?) band DIANA. He’s got a solo career that’s produced a pair of beautiful records in recent years and earlier this year he teamed up with Nicholas Krgovich (No Kids, Gigi, P:ano) and Chris Harris as Shabason, Krgovich and Harris.
Last week on US election day, Shabason dropped the new/old track “Our Place” a song he described as “a super mellow little track that me and Thom Gill made years ago for a documentary about Canada's Charter Of Rights And Freedoms.”
One of the coolest local releases I did get hip to this year was the debut album from Toronto’s Pantayo, “a Filipina-Canadian collective mixing kulintang gongs with modern pop and R&B,” (which is how I described them back in June). They made my Best of 2020 (So Far) and Polaris Short List ballots this year. This is probably their grooviest track while also capturing the more political side of their music.
A.G. Cook, overlord of future pop collective PC Music, has released too much good music this year. First, there was his production work on Charli XCX’s Mercury Prize-nominated quarantine album How I’m Feeling Now. Then he dropped the seven-disc 7G, under his own name, followed just a month later by another solo album, the single-disc Apple.
Each of those releases comes with their own flavour, and while my undying love for Charli remains true, if you want something representative of A.G. Cook (as opposed to him working with someone else) you could start with Apple opener “Oh Yeah.”
Danish producer ML Buch has her roots in club music, but the songs on Skinned could easily pass for singer-songwriter fare, if given a production makeover. The rawness of her lyrics mixed with electro-acoustic instrumentation make for a deeply intimate listen. “Can’t Get Over You with You” is a personal fave, a spiritual sequel to Massive Attack’s “Teardrop” aka the theme song from House.
Phoebe Bridgers is capping off a stellar year with a new EP featuring string versions of songs from Punisher (a record that easily found its way into my top 10 for the year). More importantly, she teamed up with Maggie Rogers to cover Goo Goo Dolls immortal power ballad “Iris.”
The track is a Bandcamp exclusive with proceeds from sales of the track will benefit Stacey Abrams’ Fair Fight.
Not to be outdone on the 90s cover-front, Vancouver quartet Babe Corner have followed up this year’s Killer EP with a dreamy take on Gwen Stefani’s “Cool.”
Beabadoobee already hooked me with her 90s-baiting Space Cadet EP, but Fake It Flowers her full-length debut on the 1975’s Dirty Hit label, is a real step up. The brainchild of Bea Kristi, Beabadoobee supercharges the sound of 90s alt-rockers like Belly, Lush and Throwing Muses for the 2020s; you can hear the influences, but Kristi manages to blow past them and establish her own voice. “Worth It,” one of the album’s standouts, is full of teenage ennui (Kristi just turned 20) but it’s the kind of teenage ennui a 39-year old can still relate to.
Fellow Dirty Hit signees Pale Waves may have upped the 80s goth quotient in the clip for new track “Change,” the first taste of music from their new album Who Am I? But the song itself feels more like something the Matrix would have written for Hillary Duff or Avril Lavigne in the mid-2000s (this would track with Lavigne emerging as a key influence on a new generation of female artists). I think I prefer the shimmering 80s R&B/rock hybrid they established on their debut album - it was more idiosyncratic IMO. But I can dig this too.
You can listen to all these songs in the playlist below. Follow for updates.
Kool Kids Music Club Preservation Society
Speaking of the Matrix, I recently reacquainted myself with the record they did with Liz Phair, 2003’s Liz Phair. The Guyville exile caught a lot of flack at the time for teaming up with the pop production team and managed to piss off the indie-police (guilty right here) without actually moving enough units to constitute selling out. Viewed through the lens of 2020 though, it’s actually a pretty great record and despite slicker production, fits in nicely with Phair’s overall oeuvre.
It did spawn a couple of pretty great singles that I remember getting regular rotation on the satellite radio station we had to listen to when I worked in the kitchen at Red Robin in Vancouver. “Why Can’t I” was probably the bigger of the two, but I particularly like “Extraordinary,” especially the “average everyday sane psycho” bit in the chorus.
Hit up koolkidsmusicclub@gmail.com for praise, gifts and submissions.
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