May ’23

I most ceeertainly did not grow up around country music. I mean I remember “Jolene” by Dolly Parton getting played on the radio, but country music mostly seemed alien and strange and comical — ladies with giant bouffants, stiff-looking black-haired dudes and more simple-minded sentimentality than you could ever sop up with your cornbread. It was a musty, unappealing world, like church, or the circus. But when my then-hero Elvis Costello put out Almost Blue my mind was blown — I jumped in the car and got myself down to Music Market in Costa Mesa and picked up Patsy Cline and George Jones’s respective Greatest Hits albums. I mean at that age when someone you idolize tells you “this is cool” you kind of fall in line, or I did anyway. TBH I can’t say my Elvis Costello fandom has aged well — I cringe a bit, thinking it might be evidence that there’s an Orange County basic bro lurking inside of me… But in any case, mid-century country and western married well with my generation’s ironic reclaiming of pre-hippy values and esthetics. “Good Year for the Roses” is Texas-sized camp that will genuinely break your heart, and “Walking After Midnight” will always be a gay anthem, so, you know, everybody wins.

Through the years — and I do apologize for talking so much about myself, I really want to hear about you, but let me just finish — I’ve had a few country dalliances: Randy Travis’ pained and syrupy vocals on Storms of Life really got to me, as did k.d. lang’s insane power and range, from throaty foghorn to crystalline trill (I’ll never forget hearing it fill up the Wiltern Theater, circa ‘89).

Then in the 90s the alt-country of Freakwater and The Handsome Family gave me that special feeling. I realize I’m being long-winded; I’ll have to rely on my team of editors to apply a few judicious cuts, but what I’m getting at is that Bella White, a 22-year-old from Calgary — an Albertan like k.d. — has shown up on my doorstep with a cascade of fire-red hair, a 10 gallon hat full of slide guitar heartache, and that little hiccup in her voice that’s the true mark of country authenticity. The core of what she does is classic C&W, but she lives and breathes her songs in way that feels alive and organic and new, allowing them to spread and rise and turn golden, like the balls of cookie dough I put in the oven to bake the day you left because it was the only thing I could think to do. On “Flowers on My Bedside” she shares that “…I’ve been contemplating / Is my shadow moving? / And does the light still catch your wall? / There’s been a stillness here inside me / But I can feel the heat now it’s climbing / Well, I bet it won’t be long before it falls…” The song builds to an archetypal simile: “I’m afraid my glass is often empty / It don’t take me much to cry / Maybe I would feel okay had I told myself / That it won’t work out this time / Well, I’m so good at spending all my love on / Those whose love for mе has dried / Like the flowеrs on my bedside…”

Tall, skinny, pretty, long-haired Brit Ben Gregory really goes for it on episode, his solo debut, handling some hot and jagged sonic materials to build his melodic castles in the air. “deathbed hangover” is exactly the good dark fun its title promises — spatiating across a dissonant and diseased keyboard riff; diving into Röyksopp/Daft Punk sad boy autotuning and beyond. “blue sea blue” is his “Bohemian Rhapsody” (with all due proportions), unfurling multiple nested songlets across its luxurious ten minutes. Its lyrics capture a very of-the-moment sense of frantic, grasping need: “Every photo’s a document / Your life in storage, so no one forgets … Nobody speaks their mind because / Their personalities might clash with the facts / Fivе points for your ambience / Another for what you said about God / Nobody’s surе, but the place we’re searching for / Is between the strange and the odd / Not much of a renaissance man / Got blood stains on his hands / It was a shaving accident…” But Ben finds his way to a better place in a cresting finale: “If you could teach me how to see / All the colours spiralling / I’d take you up to the top / Where we skim the flat stones off / Into the water…”

Back in the mid-80s, when I first moved up to L.A., me and my new urban friends were super into the whole Flying Nun scene — New Zealand bands that worshipped Jonathan Richman and the Velvet Underground but came across quite a bit more pastoral. They were as young, gentle, bookish and pained as I was; they evoked something like riding a battered old bike through verdant hills in the warm December sun with a lump in your throat. “Point That Thing Somewhere Else” by The Clean was one pinnacle, the song that always got played at parties, and Kaleidoscope World by The Chills was my Bible (“Pink Frost” was and still is a contender for my favorite song ever). The Bats were second wave Flying Nun and brought me to my knees with one bittersweet confection after another — “Made Up in Blue” still takes me there: “He’s my man and his mind’s made up in blue… The scars on his hands are glowing like his eyes now / As he grips on to another day… His second rate ravings don’t thrill me / Even if they did some time before / Only his blue eyes still drill me / As I get to know my friend the floor.”

Aaanyway, all this to say that a newish band from down under, Terry out of Melbourne, have picked up the Flying Nun mantle of casual, unassuming, indie pop darkish joy. Call Me Terry is actually their fourth album so I’ve got plenty of back catalogue stuff to explore. “Gold Duck” is a beer on a sad and resentful Sunday afternoon kind of song, with charming boy/girl vocals: “Hold it up to the glass / Wish it was you / Was the third time / Not the last time / Go out every night / With what with what with what? / Gold Duck every time / With what with what with what? / It’s a good thing / Righteous / It’s a rolling pin / On my face…” But oh actually “Gronks” is equally good and has horns on it and it’s got a real video, so I guess I’ll share that one.

I’m not sure if I’ve had a chance to gush over shroomy weirdo genius Connan Mockasin in these tattered pages, but when I heard the new one by LA Priest I noticed a commonality, and when I looked him up it turned out his secret civilian name is Sam Dust and back in ‘16 he was half of the very beguiling Soft Hair, along with who else but Mr. Mockasin himself. The new LA Priest album is called Fase Luna, and the story is that it came into being while our Sam was stranded on a beach in Central America trying to get into Belize. His vocals have a Marc Bolan-evoking lysergic fairy presence, and his effects-laden guitar generates quite a vibe: it bends and melts and ripples and glows with watery, reflected moonlight throughout. Plenty of highlights, but the show-stopper is “Star”: “If the star is shining / But we align to find him / and his word is lightning today / It taught me how to recognize / a voice in me that sat in line / behind the walls of paradise / that’s where he was / the way he goes and hypnotize / for me the first to harmonize / shining legs with diamond eyes / that’s what he was…”

Nathan Fake has also been around for a minute, but he’s delighting my earholes for the first time with bejewelled cascades of richly layered, trancey techno on Crystal Vision. The title track is equally suitable for dancing or crying. Or yeah, probably more for crying. “CMD” serves up rusty, textured, oddly comforting chimes under a shifting layer of hiss. “The Grass” (featuring Wizard Apprentice) is hypnotic, with simple lyrics that invoke a sense of ceremony: “The grass is wet / I kneel to place my hands in it / Head bowed forward / The Sun is warm / Across my back / I part my hair / Offering my neck to the light…”

Nobody delivers dark, wounded menace like Tricky. I used to have a picture of him with red horns that I kept up on my wall, just so I could keep an eye on the devil, and I swear I saw it mutter at me. Someone named Berlin Banter has recruited him to apply his polyphonic rasp to a supremely catchy, hard-as-nails three minutes of venom called “I’ll Wait.” I can’t make out all the multi-tracked vocals but there’s more than enough there to get the gist: “Dark and cloudy… Come out to play… Rented room… Walk for hours… Don’t you think I feel… I feel it all… I start to crawl… think I could kill, I killed them all… then I wake up and put on my makeup…”

I’ve been trying to not be a Beach House fan for almost 20 years… partly because good taste and Baltimore don’t fit together in my brain. I mean what would John Waters say? But they have released another sachet of reverb-drenched nuggets of sadness and joy called Become that transports me to Mazzy Star dreamland and to the Twin Peaks Roadhouse. “American Daughter” gets me all warm and radiant as Victoria croons, “Friends who wore / Ribbons in their hair / Talked about a new doomsday / And the old window displays / Hang my head / Off of the swimming pool / Into the bittersweet / Under the Milky Way…”

They’re not easy to google, but brother-sister trancey electropop duo uh are channelling something danceable, trippy, arty and otherworldly on their humanus album. The title track starts with a funky and distorted keyboard riff that’s surely lifted from or inspired by my favorite Yaz deep cut “State Farm,” then locks into a motorik-Moroder groove as Fionnuala Kennedy’s angelic vocals hang-glide across it all — before sputtering into a richly warped and diffracted outro.

OK it’s getting so late in the month, and it’s certainly been a month, but I want to leave you with something to dance to. On “Loving You” (are they quoting Kiss or am I showing my age?), Cannons drizzle agave syrup all over you as you sexy-dance, dropping in whistling and hand-claps just so, and they won’t tax your brain with anything too philosophical: “Can you hear the voices calling? / I was made / For loving you / Don’t be scared, we’re only falling / I love the way / Our bodies move…”