Kool Kids Music Club - No. 2
Physical Media Rules Everything Around Me (P.M.R.E.A.M) Edition
“Rocking is a privilege, but it is also a totally awesome responsibility.” - K.E. Flann, from For Those About to Rock - Have You Considered All Your Options?
Like a lot of people, the pandemic triggered a bought of personal musical nostalgia. I’ve talked about how this has manifested in finding new bands that sound like old favourites. But it’s also had a more literal effect: I’ve been digging deep into my CD collection, listening to records that I haven’t heard in years.
It should probably come as no surprise that I’ve got a lot records. And by records, I mean physical slabs of vinyl and plastic that basically take up an entire wall in my place. They’re cumbersome and, in the age of streaming, totally unnecessary. But I love them.
I’ve always collected things: baseball and hockey cards gave way to comic books, which were finally left behind when my desire to buy the latest 90s alt-rock radio buzz band overcame my need to know about whatever new paradigm shifting absurdity would befall the X-men (comics, at the time, were also exceedingly uncool). The thrill of finding an album I’ve been digging for never gets old. I think I also have some undiagnosed OCD; it truly nags at me when I’m missing some “key” album in a band’s discography.
Streaming music has proven a particularly hard task lately; faced with endless choice, I become petrified. When I do pick something I inevitably play 30 seconds of their music before I’m reminded of a different artist that I'd rather be listening to. It’s an endless loop. I started this newsletter partially as a way to organize my thoughts around this.
This is not the case with my CDs and vinyl. Having the spines of each album right in front of me makes picking what I want listen to a lot easier - there’s a finite number of items to choose from.
I also find myself gravitating to albums I haven’t listened to in years, stuff that is decidedly not cool, relevant or in some cases, even that good. The other day I listened to the entire second album by ska-punks Goldfinger. I’ve made the rounds of CanRock gods like Our Lady Peace and Matthew Good Band. Counting Crows are a semi-regular pick, as are the not as good (but still pretty good) albums from bands like Green Day and Bad Religion. And it just feels weird to stream old soul and R&B like Otis Redding, Curtis Mayfield and P-Funk. Best of all once I’ve gone to the trouble of getting up, picking something and putting it in/on the player, I’m sticking with it.
Look, I’m not saying that listening the physical media is the “proper” way to experience music. Any sane person with bills to pay should reasonably stick with Bandcamp, Youtube, or a streaming subscription. I just happen to already have these things in my home and enjoy the process of adding to them. It works for me, and now, thanks to the pandemic, I have a reason to point to beyond “I like reading the liner notes” (which are probably online somewhere anyway) for keeping up this anachronistic habit. 🤘
Halifax DJ and producer Ryan Hemsworth has always made his love for emo and pop-punk a well known quantity. But his latest project, Quater-Life Crisis makes the connection even more explicit, enlisting luminaries from the indie-emo world like Hand Habits, Charlie Martin from Hovvdy and Hop Along’s Farnces Quinlan. The Quinlan track is the highlight in my opinion. Also, the chorus weirdly reminds me of Karen O’s jubilant “All is Love.”
Hemsworth also dropped Ryanpack Vol. 3, which features remixes of Avril Lavigne, The Cardigans, Taylor Swift, and Tegan & Sara among others.
Kansas indie pop musician Jordana dropped her debut album back in March, and already she’s got a follow-up in the can. Somethng To Say To You, combines her last two EPs Something to Say and To You (see what she did there?). “Divine,” my favourite of the available tracks, moves her sound in a slightly more R&B direction.
Field Medic, who made one of my favourite records from last year, Fade Into the Dawn, have been releasing new singles and loosies throughout the pandemic. The new tracks hue closer to the acoustic guitar, voice and boombox aesthetic of Kevin Patrick Sullivan’s early records - written quickly, recorded cheaply - but it’s still a great distillation of his whole vibe. The whole batch was collected as Floral Prince which came out last month.
You can file Samia along with other female artists like Sad13, Half Waif, Lomelda and Squirrel Flower who are, broadly speaking, making pristinely produced, deeply personal (and really good) indie rock. Even if she didn’t imbue her debut, The Baby, with plenty of her own idiosyncracies, separating herself from her peers, I’d be here for it. God knows it never stopped teeming hordes of dudes from doing the same (he says, scanning all the emo and pop-punk CDs on his self). Her Liz Phair and Keane covers are pretty boss too.
New York Times’ pop critic Jon Caramanica recently described the National as “Depeche Mode without the zhuzh.” While I humbly disagree with that (pretty damn funny) assessment, I think that Brooklyn synth rockers Nation of Language would thread that needle for him. “A Different Kind of Life” is the first new music they’ve put out since dropping their debut back in May.
Gum is the brainchild of Jay Watson who is a member of Tame Impala’s live band (Watson also plays in Pond another, and IMO better, Tame Impala spin-off) who plays drums and synths with Kevin Parker. His fifth album as Gum, Out in the World, came out back in June, but I really dig this latest single.
Are Just Friends a ska band? They’ve got a horn section. They’re from California. And that bass line in the track “Fever’ is pretty dub-by. But there’s something a bit indie-emo about them too and they kind of sound like early Bomb the Music Indudsry!… Fuck it. Nothing matters in 2020. No labels. No guilty pleasures.
Listen to all these songs in the playlist below. Follow for updates.
Kool Kids Music Preservation Club
A recent episode of Slate’s excellent Hit Parade podcast, which spins narratives out of Billboard charts, took a hard look at one-hit wonders. In it, host Chris Molanphy makes the point that strictly speaking, most of the artists we think of as one-hit wonders, coasting off the success of a big hit, actually managed to score a second hit.
I think that’s probably the case with A Flock of Seagulls, a band who I have never paid any mind outside of “I Ran (So Far Away)” and That Hair.
The YouTube Algorithm Gods (YTAGs) dropped “Space Age Love Song” into my recommendations a few years ago, and TBH, I was probably more intrigued by the video at first (I’m not even sure if it was band sanctioned or just a fan cut). The song, which originally appears on A Flock of Seagull’s 1982 debut, was unearthed for the 1991 John Hughes penned movie Career Opportunities, which sees Frank Whaley and Jennifer Connelly getting locked in a department store overnight (I think - I’ve never seen it). The movie tanked and the fact that it’s not been reassessed as a lost John Hughes classic leads me to believe it was with good reason.
“I Ran (So Far Away)” peaked at number nine on the Billboard Hot 100 back in 1982; “Space Age Love Song” which was released in its wake, peaked at a pretty respectable number 30 on the same chart. The official video is pretty similar aesthetically to far more iconic “I Ran.” and the track itself features a lot of its predecessor’s hallmarks as well, including a great chiming guitar line. The key difference: it’s completely unburdened by 40 years of cultural baggage. This thing could have dropped yesterday and no one would be the wiser.
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