It’s hot, beachy weather in my hemisphere, so why don’t we discuss what the song of the summer might be. Jung Kook of BTS just knocked Caucasian Country favorite Morgan Wallen (yeah, me neither) off the top of the Billboard Top 100 with a profoundly, primordially, primate-ally vapid gust of air called “Seven.” Apparently that’s how many days a week he’s gonna be “fuckin’ you right” folks, so please consult your daily planner. Hot lady rapper Latto chimes in helpfully, “Leave them clothes at the door / What you waitin’ for / Better come and hit ya goals…”
So we’ve set the bar pretty high but I’m gonna say I’ve been getting a lot of my summer kicks from Austin band Being Dead and their When Horses Would Run album. It’s got real 60s flavor with baroque pop, spaghetti western, garage rock and surf all raising their hands. The band is unafraid to veer off into dissonance and mini-songs within songs — it’s a sound that evokes the wide-open, sun-baked expanses of Texas, rough and raw but also, production-wise, as painstakingly tailored as a classic Nudie suit, particularly the scrummy harmonies. And their lyrics are pure positivity, so you wanna be careful they don’t lead you into a free love cult, but check out the warmth and bliss of “Daydream“: “You and me we’ll bloom in the sun / We’ll lift our tongues / And swallow the whole sky whole / When we wake we’re covered in dew drops / Lying on cool rocks / Watching the day drift on / Slipped in a daydream / Take me with you / Sweet as they can be / I’m coming too / If you will let me…”
Or how about a hard and sweet slice of UK/Nigerian dance from Leke Awoyinka, better known as Ekiti Sound? “Chairman” is the standout track on his new Drum Money album. It’s got sweaty 1950s Lagos horns, a beat that veers between ancient/tribal and of the moment, and commanding flows about being the chairman (“Nobody move! Everybody move! Move, move, move!”) from Awoyinka and fierce featured guest Aunty Rayzor.
Equally enjoyable in the shade of striped umbrellas, though a lot less concerned with the tedium of elaborate production, Super Snõõper by Nashville punks Snõõper is low on rage and high on party vibes. They totally nail the dumb cool of the Ramones on the one minute three second rush of “Powerball“: “Powerball / Everybody wants to win it all / Quick pick / Turn me into a lunatic / Jackpot / Tv told me its a lot / Fast cash / Nuff to toss right in the trash / If I don’t win / I’ll try again / Put to the test / People’s unrest / Tune in to see powerball / Guess I’m left with nothing at all.”
In retrospect, “On the Ground” by Grace Ives was maybe my Song of the summer for ’22, and if anyone is picking up Grace‘s easy urban retro vibe I’m gonna say it’s Alaska Reid. OK, I hear you telling me it’s a stretch, and you have a point — Alaska is west coast, a Montana gal living in LA, so she cruises along in third gear instead of giving it that sharp Brooklyn acceleration, but I would postulate that she has a similar ear for melody and a similar resilient twinkle. “Outside the cosmic club / Seeing rain in your eyes tonight / Do you feel caged in under this big sky?” Alaska wonders on “Back to This.” “Wrapped in you and the mountains / Yeah, it’s imagining that’s keeping me alive / Running through these dreams / I want to go back to this…”
Back in 2020 I awarded Zap the Planet by Freak Heat Waves my joint Album of the Year, tied for that coveted distinction with Half Price at 3:30 by Art Feynman. Well Freak Heat Waves are back and they’re serious contenders for 2023 with the freaky, vibey Mondo Tempo. Singer Steven Lind sounds, as usual, like he’s half tomcat and half Alan Vega stoned out of his mind in a grimy beach bar in Mexico with pink and green disco lights slowly raking across his face. I could listen to his depraved croon forever, but there’s also an exciting guest vocal by my much adored love banshee Cindy Lee, who breaks up the oozing, drawling proceedings with her usual in-the-red intensity. “In a Moment Divine” has a deceptively shuffling, upbeat sound that only adds to the stalkerish theme: “I won’t be reckless / I’ll only see me cry / Now listen baby / I’m gonna make you mine / I can’t escape it / In a moment divine…”
And wouldn’t you know it, Art Feynman has a new song out himself, a lovely little funky weirdo ditty called “All I Can Do.” I’m still a little mad about that crappy show he did at the Echo in ’21, burying the transcendence of his genius album under a banal jam band workout, but this one’s fresh and summery and I think we can be friends again.
I’ve been known to babble on like a sweaty teenager about the sugary, speedy alt-dance pop of Two Shell in these very pages. Their sound is chrome-coated and glittery, with processed vocals and buttloads of bpms, which by contrast only enhances its emotionality. Their new one “Ghost2” is mandatory listening for all you weepy dancers out there, with its refrain of “feeling like a ghost / like I’m out here on my own / feeling like a ghost / the world has left me dead in the cold…” This is one you should really listen to with headphones — the production is just wild, firing in all directions with its stereo imaging and sculpting vast technologies of groovy texture and effects into the vocals.
King Krule somehow got filed away under artists that are just not my sort, but I think maybe I got him mixed up with that unpleasant bloke from The Streets, with his a-bit-much British working class voice. But to be fair this new one, Space Heavy, is a bit of a departure; he’s set aside the foghorn and lets his poetry bob along on the surface of polluted waters. He seems to be happily married with a young child, but these are definitely break-up songs. On the summery, ’70s easy listening pop rock “Seaforth,” the King (real name Archie) croons, “She speaks in my dreaming / I take her waist within my hands / And when I wake she melts away into the sand…”
Meanwhile, Michigan rock trio Bonny Doon have crafted one of those great voice and piano epitaph songs with “Famous Piano” off their Let There Be Music album. “You don’t need to whisper / You don’t need to hide / You don’t need to hang your head, no / You don’t need to apologize / You’re here.”
Fuck, I was supposed to be talking about summer… OK so back when I was a tender veal scallop the band that defined summer was undoubtedly the B52’s. Furthermore, the voice that defined a generation was Cindy Wilson‘s; it has been proven by science so please don’t come at me with fake opinions. She was the divinity on the sand, walking out of Corvettes to give you fish, give you candy. A lock of hair, a belt he wore? Cindy needed more, decades before Britney did. “Gi-uh-ive me his soul!” she commanded, her throat torn and bloody. So Cindy actually has a new song out called “Delirious” in which she does what she does best, losing control in the throes of passion. Her voice still annihilates.
Saroos from Berlin have been lighting up my summer with oddly seductive spark showers and mutant cool that harkens back to Fad Gadget and No Wave and a time when we prowled the abandoned inner cities for something nauseating to dance to. “Tin & Glass,” grooves and festers as robot vermin burrow under your feet. The album features an array of guest musicians you haven’t heard of, who drag the Saroos boys off in all different directions — dream pop on “The Mind Knows,” bedsit-rumination-core on “Being with You,” a kind of deconstructed, decomposing K-pop on “The Sign.”
So there’s a theory out there that it takes musical artists many albums to reach their creative peak. I believe the idea has a lot to do with the time it takes audiences (and reviewers of music) to wrap their heads around innovative work. It’s implicit in how the ‘fork hands out their “best new album” seal of approval. But I learned much too soon in my music loving career that most artists actually do their best work on their first or second album and then start to taper off. I will never forget the heartbreak of witnessing Echo and the Bunnymen and the Psychedelic Furs devolve into weightless shells, and please don’t make me re-live the fall of the once magnificent Simple Minds…
And yet there are clearly exceptions, like Caroline Polachek, who was bouncing around as one half of Chairlift until 2019, failing to win over slowgraffitti’s fickle heart, but now has a rather gorgeous second solo album of highly ornate electropop, titled, rather cumbersomely, Desire, I Want To Turn Into You. “Bunny Is a Rider” is the track they’re pushing, and it’s not bad, nor is “Sunset,” which features the melody from “Penny Lane” rendered as a flamenco flourish, but the star of the show IMHO is “I Believe,” a motivational number with dramatic stabs of ’80s synth and a soaring chorus: “You’re not alone / Under a sky of vultures / With all that could’ve been / You made it home / With silver string unbroken … I don’t know, but I believe / We’ll get another day together.”
You just can’t do summer with out some Italo Disco, and fortunately in the age of Spotify that woppy well never seems to run dry. When I pulled up my pail this month I found the rather arch “When I Let You Down” by M&G (AKA Mirko Galli) and got drenched in play-menace with lyrics like “I’m looking for someone / So fine / Like you / When I let you down inside / Don’t you / Want me / Don’t you / When I let you down inside / My soul / Will be your home / My heart / Will be your dawn.”
Then out popped that nugget of weirdly prescient 80s futurism “Cybernetic Love” by Casco (Salvatore Cusato), a kind of hi-tech yacht disco in which Sal complains “I have trouble finding love / In the world of flesh and blood / Late at night I stare at the screen / Every night the same routine / Cybernetic super lover.” It was released, spookily, back in ’83!
Then up came the glorious “Love Spy” by Mike Mareen aka Uwe-Michael Wischhoff, so yeah technically a German but very much part and parcel of the Italo idiom. The track is chock full of high-drama keyboard riffs that draw on the soft boy severity of Visage and Depeche Mode as Mike posits that “Day by day and night by night I’m sitting by the phone / I am the famous love spy / Call me when you’re alone […] I quickly jump into my car and leave some dust behind / I rush through New York City / I am the daring kind.”
OK, I get it, you’re cool with a bit of pop and the kind of stuff that goes down easy, why not? But you rely on slowgraffitti to dig up dangerous, abrasive art that slaps your tender sensibilities around; rusty, jagged edges that leave you with well-deserved flesh wounds. So I have a couple of delightful difficult-listening confections to share with you. Hailing from Wurzburg, Germany, Läuten der Seele makes dreamy slash nighmarey beds of folk-adjacent sound-stew that harken back to the irresistible grotesques and goblins in the playpen world of my old buddies Pram.
Over in Berlin, Ziúr brings in some deliciously funky caterwauling from Abdullah Miniawy and serves up sick performance art theatricality on instant classic “Malikan.” Played at full volume it’s more than suitable for pissing off your neighbors.
OK, I’m worried I’m going over my rigorously-enforced maximum word count, but this is important, honestly. Summertime is no excuse to just turn into a watermelon with a tan and dance barefoot under the stars pounding mezcal for months on end. Or maybe it is, but at some point you might want to feel deliciously pale and mournful, in which case you need to check out my new besties Me Lost Me, straight outta Newcastle on Tyne with their new album RPG, which features artwork of a person holding a mixer I think (or maybe an old video game console?) with a tree growing out of their neckhole. Band leader Jayne Dent adds a strange and subtle warp to the Sandy Denny lineage of modern folk, drawing inspiration from retro video games it would seem. On “Real Life” there’s a snippet of dialogue: “What other things have you seen in real life and thought ‘that’s not real, that’s a video game?'” On the seductively lumbering “Eye Witness” there’s an element that sounds like an analog version of a Super Mario Brothers sound effect, as Jayne warbles “Side to side / Infinity time … On the other hand / Shoved back / In synchronicity / Thousands of men / Tumbling down / To the bottom floor together…”
Okay, okay, I will weigh in BRIEFLY on that summer blockbuster, the one about the plastic doll. People have called it woke Barbie, and it does bandy around the word “patriarchy,” but its feminism is thoroughly blanched and irradiated, proudly advocating for issues that are completely non-controversial in 2023. In any case it looks cool, it’s reasonably fun, yadda yadda, but that said, Oh My God, Ryan Gosling is uh-mazing — so funny, such a great dancer, and somehow able to give Ken real human depth while embracing his ridiculousness. His whole identity is wrapped up in being Barbie’s boyfriend, and how can he go on without her? For real, I teared up…