Back in the heady days of mid-Obama I got into this bizarre boyfriendesque situation with a cute guy with good taste in music and a lot of emotional damage. He was always on the verge of breaking it off, and I was DETERMINED to make it work. We were fans of Factory Floor, a groovy British industrial dance band — they sounded like the bleached bones of Moroder. We had tickets to see them at the Echo on the night Luis (let’s call him Luis) got back from vacation, and things got weird the minute he showed up at my place. Me: “Can I kiss you?” Him (indignant): “Why would you ask me that?” By the time we got to the club he wasn’t speaking to me at all; he went and sat in a corner with his face in his phone. I was stressed but I figured I’d give him some space — I went out on the patio and chatted with a friend a bit. When I got back inside Luis was nowhere in sight, and “The 15th” by Fischerspooner was ringing out through the club: “Providing, deciding, it was soon there / Square to it, based to it, it was not there.” After a year of trying, hoping, fighting, reconciling and almost connecting, that was the moment I realized the inevitable.
It was a great show regardless, and now Floor member Gabe Gurnsey is pumping out human robotic dance imperatives under his own name, with his partner Tilly Morris on vocals. New album Diablo is endless shudders of full body climaxxx. It starts off with “Push,” a retro-futuristic throb of machine-heart certainty that will help you build empires as it makes love to you in all 27 dimensions. “This a prime example of a pure temptation / Oh boy, your touch is heaven / This is the kind of feeling I could ride forever / Forever, let’s push together / Ride…”
Around the turn of the century I was getting my kicks from what was sometimes called “countrypolitan” – country and western made by and for sensitive-depressive types like me, and as far as I was concerned it was really just two God-like bands, Freakwater and The Handsome Family. Another band that would get mentioned in the same breath was Lambchop, but I just couldn’t stand them — from what I remember they did country ironically, which gets a big hell no from me. Through the ensuing perfumed years, when a new Lambchop album popped up I would do a quick eye roll and hit ignore, but lately I have a policy of tasting everything (except maybe jazz), so I threw “Police Dog Blues” on and… wow. Kurt Wagner’s become like the new Scott Walker, wandering across spooky sonic corridors into oaken cubby holes with his weathered baritone, then emerging in majestic ballrooms; the country thing is pretty much gone, replaced by something that smells like the experimental end of ‘60s singer-songwriting, like maybe Lee Hazelwood, or did I mention Scott Walker? Like circa Tilt, before he went fully atonal. There are horn sections, female backing singers, and a sense of later-in-life yearning and regret: “A lover takes a page / And everything’s amazing / It’s not so hard to lose / It’s not so hard to lose / Waiting on the rain delay / Just gimme a chance / Just gimme a chance / Funny how we go so far / Gonna get some coffee / By myself / Is it a moment? / There’s no limit / I’m not even in it.”
It’s like I never knew anything.
Pink Siifu is one of the most interesting and versatile and consistently inspired musicians of the moment, and he popped up on the new Nosaj Thing album, rapping hoodied stream of consciousness on a moody and menacing track called “Look Both Ways” that moves with noirish fatalism through the city streets — the snakes and night creatures, the passion and desire, and the sense of danger embedded in the title: “You can’t tell a nigga nothin when he made up his mind… tragic.” And ominously, the words “look both ways” chopped up and scattered at the end.
I had a little thing with Dungen back when Ta det lugnt came out in 2004, not a deep soul connection but we could tell we liked each other. They’re Swedish and they do a kind of hard psych that has the drama of metal and Nordic mythology. They were actually quite popular with the east of La Brea crowd, and my teenage ego gets all snooty if I’m not the first one to discover a band. Anyway, I haven’t super followed them but they just released a fucking banger called Nattens Sista Strimma Ljus (The Night’s Last Stream of Light), a burst of sixties Mod joy with Byrdsy harmonies, Nuggetsy drums, and highly agreeable guitar fuzz all wrapped around a gooey caramel proper pop song interior.
If you happen to be lost in an abyss of sweet despair — and as a triple Scorpio I’ve been there once or twice — don’t let them tell you to “just get over it.” You and that motherfucker belonged together and wallowing in regret is your birthright. A. A. Williams will provide the black and purple soundtrack. “I can’t stop the violence in my mind,” she purrs darkly on “Evaporate”; “Every day I try just to survive / ‘Cause harm myself is all I do…” She swaths her slow and deliberate, British accented vocals in dramatic, ‘80s goth-rock textures; the Sisters of Mercy and, dare I say it, the Chameleons come to mind, although really it’s blasphemy to compare an up and coming artist to such mulleted majesty. (By the way I heard Mark and Reg, the core members of the Chameleons, have gotten the band back together and will be touring next year)
Joe Keery plays Steve on Stranger Things, which I think of as a new show I need to check out (although I’ve heard mixed things), but I guess it’s been on for five years already? His music, which he releases as Djo, is the real shit, a fresh take on psychedelia steeped in ‘70s pop rock, with elaborate 10CC/ELO arrangements and Bee Gees falsettos, not to mention the staccato weirdo confidence of Sparks. He kisses off a friend on “Gloom”: “So goodbye / Farewell / Go fuck your mother / Go fuck yourself / And so I walk out the door / Your insults don’t affect me with my favorite coat on / I know my hair looked good in the bathroom at the bar / Turns out I left my wallet at the bathroom bar.”
But he also wanders through time and space — for example into Röyksopp/Daft Punk autotuned ballad territory on “Climax”: “I was awoken from a dream last night / The climax right before morning’s first light / It felt my arms were made of acolyte / It felt my legs frozen in carbonite / But I can’t move ‘cause I’m the sterile man / It terrifies me that there is no plan / The future breaking right on top of me / The waves are washing hope right out of me.”
And there’s more good news: Wild Pink have come along to fill the void in the corny corner of my heart during the long stretch of time between Hovvdy albums. For you see I lived in Italy as a kid and I like to think of myself as a European poofter/sophisticate, but on my mom’s side I’m only a couple generations away from Illinois and Iowa and, oh dear… well to put it bluntly, agriculture. Wild Pink are actually from New York but they make homemade biscuits and gravy rock music, soft and slow and sweet and direct and uncomplicated — the kind you get married to and stay with even when things get a little boring. They literally have a song called “ILYSM” on their new one: “You left when I fell asleep, but I woke up / And I watched you from my window as you walked across the field / You disappeared under a Catalpa tree / And you moved just like smoke from wet wood / With dandelion seeds falling all around you just like summer snow / I love you so much…”
I get magical, life-giving bread every Sunday morning from the Roan Mills stall at the Hollywood Farmers Market, manned by Renaissance man Daoud — a Senegalese artist, style maven, personal trainer and sculptor of his own Greek God body. L.A. is so weird — the Bub and Grandma bread stall at the other end of the market always has a line down the block at opening time and gets cleaned out as if by locusts within minutes; afterwards the staff sit around shell-shocked like they’re in 1930s Oklahoma. Meanwhile Roan Mills does reasonably good business with no fuss and no hype, and their bread is totally amazing. Anyway, I follow Daoud on the Insta and he posted an arty video of himself dancing to “Bamako,” a slice of Afro-funky heaven that made my October mood rise overnight like Glenn Country Batard dough. The song is actually from 2020, a collaboration between Malian stars Amadou and Mariam and Serbian producers Divolly and Markward.
Scheisse, I almost forgot to discuss God Save the Animals, the new Alex G! I mean I mentioned my song of the year contender “Cross the Sea” a while back, but the album is just full of goodies — you might even say chock full. There’s an interesting motif of, like, is he talking to his dog, or from the point of view of a pet? It’s there in “Cross the Sea,” and also in “Runner”: “I laugh when you say the wrong thing / Mouthing off to everybody else but me / They hit you with the rolled up magazine / My runner my runner my man / Load it up, know your trigger like the back of my hand.” “Forgive” rambles down a country road like Neil Young at his rambliest: “Forgive yesterday, Oo-hoo-hoo-hoo / I choose today uh-huh-huh / No stories, no mirrors / We build castle, upon castle, upon castle, upon air…” On “Headroom Piano” our Alex layers disturbing, animalistic squalls of fuzzy guitar over a distorted female voice: “I don’t know what my daddy does / He works for the government / I just want to be free.” And unusually for an indie-rocker there’s a straight up song about God called “After All”: “There are rooms where I can’t hang my head / There are tears that I can’t cry / In the years you feel the most alone / You will build the walls I climb / After all, people come and people go away / Yeah, but God, with me, he stayed.” It’s such a bold album musically too, ranging from raw indie to pop-adjacent semi-gloss, and from the power of simple, sweet and straightforward melody to oblique experiments, without ever feeling mannered or self-indulgent.
Tove Lo is up there in my pantheon of Scandinavian pop queens with Sally Shapiro, Robyn, Sigrid et al., and she just put out a really weird, candy-coated but still good-for-you one called “Grapefruit,” about trying to lose weight: “The swans of ballet / Their skin and their bones, that’s not me / I’d die for my love, though break / Break ‘til I wither away / What I see is not me, what I see is not me.”
Which brings me to the rich and creamy delights of GIFT and their Momentary Presence album. They practice their trade in the great vapourous multi-tracked vocals and guitar plus timeless wisdom lineage of, uh, help me out here — I mean it’s definitely a ‘60s sound; the Youngbloods and the Association come to mind, but they’re equally indebted to the time when the ‘60s came back in the ‘80s and ‘90s — these clever lads have definitely been to Spiritualized school. Opener “When You Feel It Come Around” could be talking about the slow-motion full-body-and-soul-gasm that the album “GIFTs” you. They do their forefathers proud but also color outside the lines, bringing in electro-pop elements on the sublime “Feather”: “Oh no, said too much / I can’t find you here when I close my eyes / The voices float inside / Nothing’s wrong / You can’t tell me / Feather it to your mind.”
OK just a few more quickies before I say goodbye for another month… I’m loving this new one from Brian Eno called “We Let It In,” where he splits the difference between ambient and proper song.
Metal is not typically my thing; I wish I was a dad so I could tell my kids “That’s not music, it’s just noise, why can’t you listen to something pleasant, where you can understand the lyrics? Like The Flying Lizards for example? In fact let’s listen in silence to their eponymous debut album whilst eating mom’s meatloaf dinner.” But actually I’m digging the new Mamaleek where they play around with the genre, using a softer (you might even say jazzy!) intro for contrast before giving you a lovely bludgeoning.
The Yeah Yeah Yeahs are back with a new album and a monster of a hard rockin’ ballad called “Burning.” It does drama right — giant swooping strings delivering wild crescendos; it anoints Karen O as the new Shirley Bassey and it needs to be the theme to every Bond movie ever.
But honestly if you’re just looking for a dollop of sublime brokenhearted pop gratification please enjoy a spoonful of this one from Diplo and TSHA, featuring Kareen Lomax.
See you next month! XOXO