'Cause I like heavy metal now
Mix 26: Powerpuff girls, moth girls, fake-or-is-it pop, unearned guitar solos, roaming diacritics, and the Gen Z Randy Newman returns
Each week I skim through about 2,000 songs mostly from Spotify's company-curated New Music Friday playlists. Whenever I find 80 minutes worth of music I like, I make a CD-length mix and write a newsletter about it.
Contrary to this week’s title, which in context (Palehound’s “Eye on the Bat”) is only referencing Paranoid by Black Sabbath, I have not found a ton of metal so far this year. So not very different from any other year, but I’m at least trying!
But if I needed a song to breathe life into a genre I’ve given up on, it would probably come from NewJeans, a group so far ahead of the rest of the K-pop I’ve heard lately I’m not sure how to even process it. How did they do it?
Mix 1 // Mix 2 // Mix 3 // Mix 4 // Mix 5 // Mix 6 // Mix 7 // Mix 8 // Mix 9 // Mix 10 // Mix 11 // Mix 12 // Mix 13 // Mix 14 // Mix 15 // Mix 16 // Mix 17 // Mix 18 // Mix 19 // Mix 20 // Mix 21 // Mix 22 // Mix 23 // Mix 24 // Mix 25
MIX 26: ‘CAUSE I LIKE HEAVY METAL NOW
British R&B star whom I’ve heard here and there the past few years just put out an album that’s stuck somewhere in the previous decade. Nothing sounds particularly current but nothing sounds old either—well done but mildly unfashionable. That makes the whole album a little uncanny and more than a little hit-or-miss, but this song specifically sounds like something that could have been stuck in the middle of Kehlani’s SweetSexySavage. (High praise.)
I suppose this is the NewJeans theme song now? As far as I can tell, no other K-pop group sounds this cool, a quality I have not applied to much K-pop music in about a decade.
3. Hannah Diamond: Affirmations
Is Hannah Diamond still, like, ironic or whatever? It’s probably for the best that I can’t tell, and don’t care, anymore. When this came on after NewJeans, my son said “this is a really good mix,” so she must have done something right.
I really liked RAC’s 2014 album Strangers, but he never really seemed to take off in my critical sphere, and his sound didn’t really keep up with EDM trends (or maybe it tried to and I didn’t like it?). This sounds a lot like his 2014 material, even shares a collaborator, MNDR, that I don’t think I’ve heard anything else from since then.
5. Tay Iwar f. Juls: Summer Breeze
Another Naija pop keeper from LokpoLokpo, this time via a conversation about “Summer Breeze” (no, the other one) (no…the other other one) in the People’s Pop summer jam mini-poll.
6. Àbáse f. Douniah: Bamba (Part 2)
Hungarian jazz guy with a cross-cultural bent, recently focusing on Brazil, and on this one working with a German singer.
Another banger from Palehound — looking forward to the album. Good road song, right down to pissing behind the van and comparing puddles in the dust.
Shamir has built a formidable indie sound since releasing Hope back in 2017 — is there a regular band at this point? If so they should rebrand with a terrible band name and get more famous — Jockstrap or Wet Leg or Wednesday or Soccer Mommy, something dumb like that. I really like the image of living above a record store that keeps playing “our song,” so that you’re not sure if it’s literally a Shamir song they’re playing or, like, Warpaint or something.
“Australian DJ” is the full extent of my (ahem) research here — here’s the Bandcamp.
Housey Ukrainian pop. (This is the first appearance of a “Gunna” on my mixes in 2023 and it’s not the rapper.)
11. Sofia Mattos: Se a Lua Falasse
Trop-housey Brazilian pop.
12. TABULÅ RØNDA: Kermesse Bubonique
Arty French pop by a group that seems to have a lax approach to stylized diacritics.
13. Ssaru x Tricks Hr x Fathermoh: Utam Flani
Kenyan pop-rap with an infectious hook in the chorus (“flani!”).
14. Eje Eje: That Rainy Dawn (Winter)
Instrumental from a Tel Aviv-based artist, formerly from Israeli/Turkish psych-folk band Şatellites.
15. Ralphie Choo & Mura Masa: MÁQUINA CULONA
Second Mura Masa and second Ralphie Choo track so far this year, much less weird than both of them are capable of individually, unless you’re watching the video, which is…very weird.
16. DJ DUARTE x DJ TN Beat x Mc Gw: Toma Toma Pau
The guitar figure on this one is so familiar that I’m not entirely sure there isn’t another baile funk track somewhere on my mixes already (or in my holdover playlist) that is essentially the same song, or uses the same sample. Wouldn’t be the first time—the piano from “In the End” by Linkin Park has been a popular baile funk meme this year, for instance.
17. Maurício Tapajós: Comigo é no Metrô [c. 1980]
An unreleased cassette demo from a Brazilian artist who put out one solo album in 1980 and died in 1995. Subject for future research.
18. Misha Panfilov: On the Hook
Estonian producer based in Portugal, one of two instrumental segues to the eventual moth girl appearance on track 20.
19. Blake Mills: Wendy Melvoin
Segue 2 of 2, from an artist on Verve probably better known as a producer, recently at least co-responsible for the amazing production on Feist’s Multitudes. (Moth girl to follow.)
20. LIA LIA: What if I jump from a Bridge? [cw: suicide]
Lia Lia is back!! She contemplates jumping off a bridge, sure, but she already told us SHE’S A MOTH!! so she may well have a failsafe prepared.
Does this indie rock song earn its almost 9 minutes and an indulgent guitar solo? See, there I go again talking about earning everything. Why can’t you just have something and not worry so much about whether you deserve it? Relax.
A passable Billie Eilish(ish) singer-songwriter paves the way for the real deal.
23. Billie Eilish: What Was I Made For?
So when I said that I thought Billie Eilish was the Zoomer Randy Newman a few mixes ago, I did not expect her to literally put out the heartbreaking ballad for a mega-hyped toy movie.
What I meant was that when she delivers her own songs, they can seem a little odd because of her specific vocal mannerisms, but when other people cover them you understand that she’s a bread-and-butter songwriting genius with a particular gift for melody. And having looked at a few videos of Billie and Finneas in the studio, I think she’s as responsible for those melodies as her brother; she improvises melody like Paul McCartney—about whom, as I never tire of telling people, Carl Perkins once said: “now listen, if you think this boy's not got a connection with the spirit world....”
I hope you, too, maintain whatever tenuous connection you have to the spirit world. May it gift you beautiful melodies from the ether and not leave too many weird side effects.
—Dave Moore (the other one)
Title from Palehound’s “Eye on the Bat.”
Belatedly adding "What Was I Made For?" to my Ongoing Singles list. It unquestionably belongs; my hesitancy was that it's a bit Send In The Clownish. —For reasons I might want to someday unpack, that's a negative association. Whereas associations are positive for "What If I Jump From A Bridge?"--> "About You Now" and "Se a Lua Falasse" --> "BonBon." Well, regarding "About You Now," I think late '00s Lμke would be losing its luster even if he weren't under a cloud – his sound was repeating and getting overbearing – but he too has an unmistakable gift for melody. I think "Se a Lua Falasse" --> "BonBon" is the strongest affinity despite their not having that much in common melodically. Something about the setting, though I'll have to figure out what it is musically. (This is not to criticize any of these in the slightest, except for "Clowns.") Favorite Eilish might be "Hotline," btw. Or the Bond theme.