Flex all the memories
2025 Mix 14: Tate McRae's marshmallow mouth; TEN's intergenerational K-pop; smooth hits from Colombia, Nigeria, South Africa, and Thailand; and wild sounds from Indonesian composer Peni Candra Rini
We’re a quarter of the way through the year, which means that I should be doing a recap of things that have stuck with me so far. I’ve heard a lot of songs I’ve loved, but couldn’t really give you a rundown of my top picks. Albums are hopeless — I haven’t listened in full to, let alone returned to, many albums at all. My only enthusiastic album recommendation so far is ALT BLK ERA’s Rave Immortal.
Instead I’ll do a rundown of my retroactive albums of 1989 this week, which I planned to do as a standalone post and mix. (I was annoyed at my chosen songs’ refusal to cohere, so intro stub it is.) I did find a few pockets of ferment in ‘89 worth at least mentioning: thrash/metal (mostly non-American), the UK indie scene selling out, Brazilian teenpop, and Belgian new beat or European industrial more generally. I’m sure there are others I missed.
So here you go! All albums available on streaming except the entries with hyperlinks, which will lead to their YouTube playlists.
Jane Child: Jane Child
L’Trimm: Drop That Bottom
Galaxie 500: On Fire
Liza Minnelli: Results
Ut: Griller
Transvision Vamp: Velveteen
Roxanne Shanté: Bad Sister
Neneh Cherry: Raw Like Sushi
Fuzzbox: Big Bang!
De La Soul: 3 Feet High and Rising
Pixies: Doolittle
Beastie Boys: Paul’s Boutique
Technotronic: Pump Up the Jam
Lenny Kravitz: Let Love Rule
Annihilator: Alice in Hell
Adeva: Adeva!
Wink: Especially For You
1. Tate McRae: Dear God
Canada
Hearing “Greedy” more frequently over the past year was enough to convince me that I’ve been underrating Tate McRae—even if that was her only achievement, it would be an impressive one. But the new album surpassed my expectations. McRae mines the post-Aaliyah (peak-Rihanna?) landscape of R&B and pop in a way that sounds like what would happen if you gave top-shelf material from The-Dream & Tricky Stewart, Ryan Leslie, or second-wind Timbaland to a Disney second-stringer—like if “Umbrella” went to AnnaSophia Robb or something. McRae’s terminal vocal mush (i.e. those affectations referred to variously as marshmallow mouth [by me c. 2018], cursive singing, banany avocady, or Cajun baby) oozes over expensive-sounding beats like a textural slime that you just want to poke at compulsively, half attracted and half repulsed, unable to stop yourself.
2. TEN: Stunner
South Korea
I can never remember which generation of K-pop we’re in (I think fifth?) or which generation is being alluded to as nostalgia these days (second, I’m pretty sure). But I did a Leonardo DiCaprio pointing gif when I heard a reference to BIGBANG—fitting, because BIGBANG is the first K-pop boyband I remember really noticing and wanting to explore more of, with TEN being the…well, yeah, probably tenth or so.
3. NAZIMA: 100%
Kazakhstan
4. Hearts2Hearts: The Chase
South Korea
5. ALALA, PiXXiE: Into You
Thailand
Three strong Asian pop hyphenates (Q-, K-, T-). First is my favorite, from a Kazakh pop star (now based in Russia according to socials). Hearts2Hearts kept elbowing their way onto my playlists until I gave in to their dogged competence. ALALA and PiXXie I’ve been holding on to for weeks because it perfectly demonstrates the jazz-inflected building blocks I wrote about when taking on “Say So” a few weeks ago. Those chords are so plain this example that I could really hear how much this template is derived from city pop: it’s pretty close to “Plastic Love.”
6. Debby Friday: 1/17
Canada
Thinking about The-Dream’s imperial phase in the context of the Tate McRae album helped me admire the audacity of this song’s structure. No spoilers, but suffice it to say that it does not exactly pack the punch of “Fancy,” something I can’t very well hold against a song any more than I can dock an enjoyable movie for not being Citizen Kane.
7. Park Hye Jin: See so (I Can Hear Your Heart)
South Korea
This is what I can only assume is a plaintive ode to bygone streaming service Seeso from Park Hye Jin. I haven’t really paid attention to her since her 2021 album stormed my top ten at the end of that year, landing at #3 below two albums that are both technically #1s: Pale Waves’ Who Am I? is my #1 of 2021, and then-#2 Whole Lotta Red by Playboi Carti, released in December 2020, is my revisionist #1 of 2020. (Apologies to the Birds of Prey OST.) Maybe I’ll get around to actually revising that list sometime in the ‘30s.
8. Pháo: SỰ NGHIỆP CHƯỚNG
Vietnam
Should do a more thorough genre scan of V-pop sometime soon. It seems to be firing on all cylinders in both alt- and non-alt scenes lately from the little I get of it—don’t think it’s super well represented in the playlists I pull from. This one is just this side of non-alt, but it is “age-restricted” on YouTube (they may have snuck a “motherfucker” in there if my ears don’t deceive me). That hasn’t stopped it from racking up 24 million views in two weeks.
9. Kairi Yagi, Electric-Play: Memo
Japan
Fun electro-pop group collaboration from a singer who usually records singer-songwriter and ballad material.
10. Pan Pan, Lamprini Gkolia: Το Νιώσιμο
Greece
Is Greece another Vietnam? Er…as in, a country whose pop landscape I probably need to explore more diligently. The perfunctory rap here can’t quite keep up with the livelier stuff happening in the beat, but I’m not complaining.
11. W Sound, Beéle, Ovy On The Drums: W Sound 05 - “La Plena”
Colombia
Another Spanish-language viral behemoth according to various accountings of such things. W Sound is a Bizarrap-style production series from Colombian producer Ovy on the Drums, whose signature style (as best as I can tell) is a sleek and mellow reggaeton.
12. Lomiiel: Pa Que Lo Bailes (Bailalo Rocky)
Dominican Republic
Also mellowing in interesting ways: my dembow artist of last year, Lomiiel, who brings the temperature down without lowering the BPM.
13. Shallipopi: Laho
Nigeria
More minimal global chill — a Naija pop smash hit from Shallipopi that strips things down so much that you wonder if they were maximizing profits by selling all the studio equipment.
14. 031CHOPPA, Ice Beats Slide, Djy Biza, Chley, Phila Dlozi: Indaba Kabani
South Africa
This was an auto-inclusion for getting together at least three names on my amapiano bingo card (031CHOPPA, Djy Biza, and Chley). This is a highlight from a great new EP, The Playbook that clocks in at a blink-and-you-missed-it 35-minute tasting of 031CHOPPA, Djy Biza, and Shakes & Les’s subtly deconstructive style. Contrast their brevity to my other favorite amapiano album of the week, which may also be the longest amapiano album in history: DJ Maphorisa & Xduppy’s Ngomoya. That album is the length of a The Godfather Part II screening, including period appropriate trailers and an introductory cartoon short.
15. Kaikki turhat haaveet: Talo ja huone
Finland
Garage rock from Finland, can’t deliver an organ sound as grody as Avril Lavigne on “What the Hell” but not bad! (Just not quite “bad” enough.)
16. Maiya Blaney: Fumbled
US
Wouldn’t have guessed this was American—gallops through a dystopian cinematic urbanscape to the throb of a frantic Prodigy breakbeat, punctuated with sneering schoolyard taunts. Run Maiya Run.
17. Mustard Service: Big Time
US
18. PAL: I Think You Should Order
US
Two from the Creem and/or Post-Trash playlists, both good sources for under-the-radar post-punk. Mustard Service tends toward jangle, PAL toward new wave.
19. DVTR: Né pour flâner
Canada
A spiky post-punk Montreal group I’ve featured before and usually enjoy when they (pretty frequently) show up on my playlists. To wit: I went back to see how I’d described this “spiky post-punk” band two years ago, and discovered the entirety of my commentary at the time was…“spiky indie.” I am consistent, if perhaps in need of a better thesaurus.
20. Eva de Marce: Quisiera
France/Mexico
A confusing search through social media yields geographical provenance(s) as France (nationality, and how she’s listed in profiles of her duo Los Eclipses), Mexico (current work, listed on Facebook), and maybe at some point Spain (location cited on previous Bandcamp material). So let’s just file it under “cosmopolitan,” where it obviously belongs anyway.
21. Peni Candra Rini: Sentrut
Indonesia
An artful racket from an Indonesian singer and composer who gets props from Kronos Quartet among others. Rini trained to be a world-class sindhen performer, a form of solo gamelan singing, and has decided to shove this great gift through Autotune and fling it against a barrage of synth bloops and whooping cartoonish asides, like studying to be a ballerina but then getting drunk and attempting to run an obstacle course instead. No—in addition. Just goofy enough to avoid going cold in the ingrained solemnity of the academic avant-garde.
22. Gnod, White Hills: Drop Out
UK/US
Ending things with some droning psych that never really reaches much of a freak-out— maybe it “freaks in”? From what I gathered, the group records this same song every couple of years at varying lengths and fidelities. But it’s new to me!
***
That’s it! Until next time, try to use your marshmallows, bananys, avocadys, cursive, and Cajun for the greater good.
—Dave Moore (the other one)
Title from Tate McRae, “Dear God”
Now whenever I hear mushmouth (me, c. 2017) singing I usually tune out because at this point it's so worn out, I just lose interest in a singer. There's always exceptions. For whatever reason SZA's doesn't phase me maybe because she uses it like mild seasoning. Ultimately, I blame Arthur Russell and/or Karen Dalton (Godfather and Godmother of the googly-eyed clam singing). My loose theory is those remastered albums/compilations (circa '03 -'05) of both Russell and Dalton (more Russell in my guestimate) influenced artists like Devendra Banhart, other indie/new-folkie "weirdos," etc. who then influenced pop singers in the late 00's or early 2010s.
The second episode of "Radio Not Radio" is up now, featuring songs by Nayomi & Perrie and Vanyfox I learned about here: https://www.mixcloud.com/callinamagician/472025-radio-not-radio/