Under the covers with my Nokia
Mix 14: A-pop, ama-pop, P-pop, and Pomplamoose
I spent a lot of time writing this week without publishing anything — a 3,000-word essay on A-pop and the Pop Pantheon podcast, a tentative Taylor Swift post-script, plus a bunch of personal writing that probably won’t see daylight for a while. We’ll see if I decide any of it is worth putting somewhere anyone else can see it.
After a rush of confidence in publishing I’m back to shakier ground, shying away from overstating half-baked ideas or turning essays that are personal into Personal Essays. I do miss writing Personal Essays, though, and was proud of a few of ‘em I wrote a few years ago, especially this one (very pandemic-y) and this one (very dear-god-is-it-still-the-pandemic-y).
There’s always words in the newsletter…
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: UNDER THE COVERS WITH MY NOKIA
1. Sabrina Carpenter: Espresso
2. Ava Max: My Oh My
Starting things off with two A-pop tracks — Sabrina Carpenter has for some reason decided to take a page from TisaKorean’s book and make SILLY part of her brand (it works for her), while Ava Max is still doing…whatever it is Ava Max is supposed to be doing. “America as a serious Eurovision contestant”? The last time I heard “there’s a place in France” quoted in a pop song was Kesha’s “Take It Off,” and the distance between there and here is telling, I think. I wouldn’t call Ava Max tasteful, per se, but there is something oddly muted about it, like a germaphobe trying to convince you they love trash. (Kesha was Oscar the Grouch and Gonzo at the same time.)
Meanwhile Sabrina Carpenter seems to be approaching things from the other direction, singing the sort of stuff that Ashley Tisdale might have done breaking free of her High School Musical character, but with a sense of being somehow sophisticated and above it all; it almost codes as smugly superior but stops short, since she has more than a little Disney left in her still. Whatever strange alchemy it is, it’s working. (Better than Dua Lipa, anyway.) Maybe she’s shaping up to be the left-field Emily Osment to Olivia Rodrigo’s Miley Cyrus?
3. Flo Milli: Tell Me What You Want
Not A-pop, I suppose, but Flo Milli does appear to have crasser stuff on her new album than “Never Lose Me,” an uncharacteristically subdued modal rap move. Plenty of Flo Milli songs are raunchy, but she has only truly, ruthlessly sold out a handful of times, and this is at least a step in that direction.
4. Nelly Cottoy: Fuh Spite
A blast of Trinidadian dancehall spite, and a surefire entry for any future pop tournaments that require songs under two minutes. She says “fuck” a lot but makes it sound more like “kill.” (I bet she could say “kill” and make it sound like “fuck,” too.)
5. Charisse C f. Shazmicsoul, Small Keys: Angisafuni
UK-raised South African helps me clarify what the heck I’m going to call these recent crossover trends in amapiano music — I think ama-pop works just fine.
6. Tato el X5, Negrette Game Over: Sobalo
Dembow remains in ferment, though there aren’t as many dembow holdover tracks (the ones that pique my interest but don’t fit on a mix) on my extras list than the other two regions I’ve separated out (Brazil and South Africa). Of the 150 tracks on that holdover longlist, fewer than 10 are dembow, while funk and amapiano (and/or 3-step, afrotech, or whatever else) each have closer to 60-70.
7. DJ Dali, Angel Dior, Mc Gw: Bebesita
An interesting Latin American collaboration between dembow’s Angel Dior, funk’s Mc Gw, and a practically fossilized-sounding (by comparison) EDM DJ bringing the two together. The sound is so far outside either featured artist’s zeitgeist that I find myself drawn to it: a bouncy but slightly dead-in-the-eyes reggaeton that sounds like it’s practically begging for the unfashionable EDM drop that never arrives.
8. Lomiiel: No Me La Sube
More dembow, more cowbell!
9. God.wifi: 2late
10. Blossi: Sírenur
11. Annie-Claude Deschênes: Les Manières de Table
12. Liraz: Haarf
And now we get to the “…who?” suite of four bangers from relative nobodies. The fewest views on a YouTube in this group is Blossi, an Icelandic electro tune with zero views (though they must have one at this point). None of the other tracks get past triple digits in their YouTube view count. There’s god.wifi from Poland, with a sound that I will now, thanks to a Jacob Sujin Kuppermann neologism, call landfill hyperpop. Annie-Claude Deschênes, from Montreal, veers closer to Devo in their 80s fetishism than most sleeker 80s-excavating synth-pop. Iranian-Israeli Liraz sings in Farsi and uses Middle Eastern melodies, but also layers in the sort of indie disco production that, unfortunately, works like a charm on me.
13. Habibi: Do You Want Me Now
Kill Rock Stars garage-y indie rock that claims Middle Eastern psych in their influence, but I don’t hear much of it here. Iranian-American founder Rahill Jamalifard has an interesting solo career as an eclectic indie pop songwriter over at Ninja Tune.
14. Samsara 304: Playas Anthem
Don’t know if I’ve gotten anything like this trap’n’B ballad from the Phillippines. (In fact I’m not sure how much Phillippines pop I’ve featured at all on my mixes?)
15. Tony Merle, Nesia Ardi: Baju Baru
A song from the soundtrack of an Indonesian horror film, Siksa Kubur. The proper songs (i.e. not the instrumental score) all sound very old—but this one was, as far as I can tell, composed specifically for the film. This is par for the course for Indonesia, where they seem to have mastered the art of producing songs that sound like they’ve been sitting in someone’s garage for decades (see also previous Dave mix faves from 2020 Lembayung Group and Borock N Roll).
16. Roger Damawuzan: Misiqui [1989]
80s funk from a new compilation of Togo soul, funk, and disco music.
17. Akina Nakamori: Hello Mary Lou [1989]
A cover of the Gene Pitney song made famous by Ricky Nelson, from 80s Japanese megastar Akina Nakamori.
18. Milkweed: My Father’s Sheep Is Dead
UK group mines folk texts and then records original vocals to sound like long-lost tapes stashed away in an attic, then slices the whole thing together so that it goes maybe a tad too trip-hop to sound genuinely trippy—which is to say, they’ve got nothing on Indonesia.
19. Baula: Santa Fe
The sort of counter-intuitively upbeat “downer indie” that people used to compare to Joy Division, from a Swedish/Icelandic duo.
20. Maquina: Desterro
Portuguese indie with a lite industrial flavor.
21. Pomplamoose: Nuclear Kittens
The artist reveal on this track during my blindfold taste test was a jump scare—I remember Pomplamoose as an insufferable acoustic cover band like Karmin, and figured both bands had shuffled out of the limelight years ago. But this is at least as convincing a Stereolab cosplay as En Attendant Ana, which led me to peruse the last several years’ of Pomplamoose’s journey. Sure enough, they went French a few years ago, though even their first all-French album still has traces of tryhard YouTube-core. It’s not until 2021’s Impossible à prononcer that you start to hear them come into their own. And even then there’s still a pit stop at a twee Daft Punk covers album before you get to this one.
22. Thomas Bangalter: DAAAAAALÍ!
Speaking of Daft Punk, here’s one of ‘em doing the jaunty acoustic theme song to a new Quentin Dupieux film.
23. Kaia Kater f. Allison Russell: In Montreal
A song from Kaia Kater’s upcoming album, a paean to Montreal that starts roots with banjo and string section before slowly spiraling into something artier, like if Radiohead produced Cowboy Carter (OK Cowboy would have been a better name, too).
24. Gerry Read, DJ Koze: Highly Recommended
I always have trouble connecting with DJ Koze, whom I tend to admire more than like after giving the DJ Koze DJ-Kicks maybe a dozen listens back in 2015 without ever figuring out why it wasn’t working for me. This simple, sunny collaboration with producer Gerry Read seems to work for me, though.
***
That’s it! Until next time, keep it simple and sunny, stupid!
—Dave Moore (the other one)
Title from Pomplamoose’s “Nuclear Kittens” (“Sous les couvertures / Avec mon Nokia”)