Contrary to the maraschino cherries
Mix 38: Lots unknown-to-me, a heavily international bunch: Swiss-Tamil, Polish, Thai, Ukrainian, Taiwanese, Swedish. Plus: Jessie Murph returns with Jelly Roll and UNICORNS HIVE: ASSEMBLE!
Each week I skim through about 2,500 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.
Another small edit to the intro text — I now skim through about 2,500 songs on average after finding a few other big Spotify New Music Friday lists and lots of smaller weekly updated playlists over the course of this year-long experiment. (I might nix the intro text soon, though.) I still feel like I’m missing huge swathes of released music, which I am, and of course the way I “listen” to these songs means a huge number of promising things fall through the cracks. But I usually trust my gut first and serendipity second, figure anything really amazing will find its way to me at the right time.
I’m also dumping all of these songs into a spreadsheet, on which I can track things like country of origin and genre and other categories. I will probably have ten or so smaller year-end playlists of highlights by region, genre, etc. Should be fun! …For me!
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 // Mix 27 // Mix 28 // Mix 29 // Mix 30 // Mix 31 // Mix 32 // Mix 33 // Mix 34 // Mix 35 // Mix 36 // Mix 37
MIX 38: CONTRARY TO THE MARASCHINO CHERRIES
1. Príya Ragu: Black Goose
Swiss-Tamil artist who seemed like standard issue “we have MIA at home” (one of my favorite modes!) but I think that’s selling it a bit short; this is much more bread-and-butter R&B in approach, to its benefit, I think.
2. Katarzia: Dost'
Czech artist sonically interesting enough that I figured it was Polish, though a bit jazzier than anything from Poland has been, aside from the actual jazz.
3. sandi: GB
Thai singer hops on the PinkPantheress train, though more likely it’s technically the NewJeans train. Still, I need to personally thank PinkPantheress for helping to increase the average BPM of popular music; everything holds my attention much more easily now!
4. Mari Kraimbrery: Случилась осень [Sluchilas osyen, “Autumn Has Come”]
My Russian pop leads on Spotify have all disappeared — though I wonder how the pop industry in Russia has been holding up generally over the past few years, especially compared to Ukrainian pop, which has been strong in my random sampling. (Could just be a Spotify thing.) The name I come across the most on my scant few Russian pop lists is Mari Kraimbrery, who appears to be popular in Russia but was born in Ukraine.
5. Jessie Murph f. Jelly Roll: Wild Ones
Glad to have an opportunity to include Jelly Roll on a mix — his album is good, though hasn’t really leaped up my personal charts — and it’s appropriate, I suppose, that he’s tethered to Jessie Murph, the other country artist I’ve probably noticed the most so far this year. A good entry for my hypothesis that the current domination of country on the pop charts has as much to do with Lil Nas X as it does to any other country music.
6. IVE: Off the Record
The representative K-pop single that broke through to me this week — seems to be immensely popular, which of course as a K-pop non-follower I cannot predict to save my life.
7. 未來少女 緋紅魅影 CRIMZON: Boom Box
Contestant from a Taiwanese reality show called Next Girlz makes me want to write a bit more about how the promise of American first-wave millennial teenpop (1998-2001) was fully realized in Asia, not the United States, while all of the current popular American stuff like Olivia Rodrigo that has taken on teenpop’s earnest second wave (i.e., post-Avril teen confessional, 2002-2008) seems to have just erased the legacy of teen confessional and sutured itself directly onto that wave’s alt-rock influences (remember: Ashlee Simpson desperately wanted to sound like Hole!).
8. Pangaea: Installation
One of the songs I found combing through a few hundred albums I missed last week, none of which made a dent on my tentative albums list of the year (Kesha’s going to win it by a mile). This song was great, though.
9. Heavy-K f. Ami Faku: Andikayeki
South African house in full blissout mode, closer to Sun-El Musician than to amapiano proper. I still don’t know if there’s a name for this strand of South African dance music — amaeuphoria?
10. DJ Maphorisa & Tman Xpress f. Kabza De Small: Weh Mama
Was a weak enough crop this week that in addition to a proper album trawl I was also able to pull something from my baile funk & amapiano holdover list, which is up to 150 songs. Selected this on name recognition; it doesn’t disappoint.
11. julie: catalogue
More 90s alt fetishism! I only like every one in ten of these sorts of pastiches, but when it works it works.
12. The Joy Formidable: Share My Heat (radio edit)
For a short time I padded out this mix by sticking the unconscionably noodly 15-minute version of this new Joy Formidable song on the mix. It’s worth listening to, I think, but I wised up and opted for the radio edit.
13. Killer Kin: Needles and Knives
Some faithful proto-punk from Bluesky’s Bandcamp link filter. So far Bluesky is OK for small group music chat — I had a fun series of conversations with total strangers who argued that Olivia Rodrigo is better than I think she is (I think she’s…fine) and someone even accepted my premise that Hilary Duff is good(!). But it’s dicier for finding music, in part because there’s no way to embed videos from YouTube or upload directly.
14. GG ГуляйГород [GG GulyayGorod]: Милий [Milii]
Choral Ukrainnian pop — I enjoy what sounds like the influence of Ukrainian folk in the pop on my Ukraine lists, a heartfelt belt that’s free of Broadway brassiness, R&B melisma, or operatic virtuosity.
15. Population II: C.T.Q.S.
Second appearance from this Canadian psych-rock group, sounds like an old Dungen song (compliment).
16. Britta Persson: Färdigheterna
Loved Britta Persson’s Kill Hollywood Me, which I listed as my 20th favorite album of 2008 (a song from that album, “At 7,” is my favorite of hers), though afterward I lost track of her music and eventually most of what she released was only in Swedish. This is the first Swedish language song of hers to capture my attention with a melodic hook, since I don’t have the words to fall back on.
17. Islands: Life’s a Joke
Unicorns hive (re)unite! Islands, the post-Unicorns project of Nick Thorburn, has been putting out albums since I stopped paying attention in 2006 (seven of them!) and this is probably the first thing I’ve heard since then. Time to check out the other ones, I guess.
18. Elisapie: Isumagijunnaitaungituq (The Unforgiven)
Heard about this interesting project, Canadian singer Elisapie’s translation of modern rock classics into Inuktitut, from Ned Raggett over at Shfl about a day before Spotify gave me a push notification for it. It is very much my thing on paper, though only the Metallica adaptation really hits home to me so far — some of the other songs are a too indelible to stray far enough from the original arrangement to find something new (Fleetwood Mac’s “Dreams”) or just aren’t suited by the folkier arrangements (“Heart of Glass”). But on this one the match is just right—in fact this it’s much better than any of the seven versions on the absurd 50+-track Metallica tribute album from a few years ago.
19. Nicole Dollanganger: Married in Mount Airy
There are a few Mount Airy’s to choose from, but I choose to believe this song is about the one I happen to live in. A few weeks ago someone told us that they had moved to Mt. Airy as a kid when their parents got a “Mount Airy Divorce,” which, they explained, is when you live in a more conservative Philadelphia suburb and then one of your parents comes out as gay.
What does it sound like, you may ask? A YouTuber sez:
It's giving "ghost of a bride murdered on her wedding night by the man she loved" and I love it
20. Ananya Ganesh: Why Doesn’t It Feel the Way [2022]
Ending on the sort of song that I would probably try to write if I were a little braver. Cool album by Brookyln-based artist Ananya Ganesh, whom you should support on Bandcamp while it’s still Bandcamp.
***
That’s it! Trust me, I will never sell this newsletter to a music licensing platform. (Unless they think it’s worth something.)
—Dave Moore (the other one)
Title from “Married in Mount Airy” by Nicole Dollanganger.