“It’s Crazy It’s Party” is a dizzying pinnacle of human achievement by Finnish Eurovision almost-winner Käärijä and Estonian weirdo genius rapper, dancer and cultural Trojan horse Tommy Cash — a satire of Euro-bro culture that also makes me want to be one. The lyrics, partly in Finnish, translate to “Party yesterday, party today and party tomorrow / Party all around, overseas and in Finland … You’ll soon feel this party in your hair and in your ass.” Later they continue in English, “When I walk into club they be going crazy / Hey there, beautiful, how you doin’, baby? / Now put your hands up and shake it, shake it, shake it / I got a feeling we’re gonna make a baby.”
And yeah, I get it, maybe you’re trying to cut back on toxic masculinity, maybe experts have determined it’s bad for you, OK, I have the antidote: Miami’s City Girls have a new long player called RAW, featuring proclamations such as “Face down, ass up, slut me out / I don’t even let a broke nigga eat me out / He know this pussy stay wet in the middle of droughts / I make him face me, nasty, squirt in his mouth…” Emily Dickinson would be proud. Dickinson, get it?
For even more rarified vaginal pleasure I traveled back in time to 2020 and the Girls‘ collaboration with Doja Cat on “Pussy Talk“: “Boy, this pussy talk Birkin, Gucci, Chanel / Boy, this pussy talk Louis, Pucci, YSL / Boy, this pussy make movies, wetter than a whale / Boy, this pussy be choosing, draft, NFL … Pussy give speeches, heartfelt / Said the pussy really talk like it Garfield…” Ach scheisse, I can’t embed the video here because it’s age restricted. Because it discusses pussy I guess? Anyway if you’re as bored with regular mouth talking as I am please enjoy this nether-conversation on YouTube.
I fell out of bed twice when I found out Sam Wilkes is from LA — I guess I just assume all LA white people bands are goth and shoegaze, but apparently Sam‘s an experimental jazz guy striking out into slightly more structured pastures. On his new Driving album, opener “Folk Home” sets some human warbling against a cityscape of piano, woodwinds and maybe marimba. OK, this might be a stretch, but it brings Gershwin to mind: the concept of bringing the spirit of a big city to a piece of music. Then Sam shifts to Nick Drake-esque folky guitar and romantic longing gets teased on “Ag“: “Agnes, Where’s your heart? / Has it moved since we first started staring at each others eyes? / At lunch, I tried…” The album is thematically drawn together with the wonderful short story in its last song, the pained and lovely “Driving,” in which Sam‘s plan for a perfect moment, driving with the object of his desire, is interrupted when they see their English teacher, “Walking home in this brutal heat / With a big black bag strapped over her shoulder.” Sam ponders that “Surely it’s the right thing to go and get her / But what about my moment of truth? / I said “no, let’s keep going”” And in the end, “Now you’re driving / And it’s silent / A decision I think I picked wrong / dropped me off / And I said goodbye / And your chest didn’t get red like it used to.”
If you’re in the mood for some strong stuff, Kristin Hayter fka Lingua Ignota has released a beast of an album inspired by violent religious passion called Saved, calling herself Reverend Kristin Michael Hayter. It’s a kind of goth folk with a beating metal heart in which Kristin wails, implores and excommunicates, over beds of sometimes highly distorted, emphatic churchiness. It’s both camp and highly sincere; a bloody quest for salvation and an arch, theatrical rendering of one, but it’s played quite straight, and it truly sounds like nothing else, not even Nick Cave.
So Duran Duran have a new album out and it got me revisiting their debut album, the deluxe edition extras and such, and I have to say I was a bit surprised to parse the lyrics to “Girls on Film,” which are really something, so impressionistic and poetic and so unlike the posh lads riding the waves of British capitalism vibe they’re known for: “Lipstick cherry all over the lens as she’s falling / And miles of sharp blue water coming in where she lies / The diving man’s coming up for air / ‘Cause the crowd all love pulling dolly by the hair / By the hair / And she wonders how she ever got here / As she goes under again…” Turns out the song was written by Andy Wickett, the band’s original vocalist, who got £600 for his trouble. Here’s the NSF2023 extended video.
Portland’s own G Jones delivers the EDM thrills on his second album Paths, discovering fresh forms and textures whilst delivering all important driving beat energy to the booty. I have already forgiven him for naming one of his songs “Liminality.” The star of the show is “Which Way,” which starts out a colorful, abstract sound collage and keeps threatening to morph into a monster rave anthem, edging you into an oddly satisfying state of imbalance.
The Serfs‘ signature tune is “Vanishing Act” from their 2020 debut — a zero body fat krautrocking autobahn-obliterater with notes of Fad Gadget and Killing Joke. They’re from Ohio and they harken back to the deliciously bleak weirdo rustbelt Ohio of Pere Ubu and Devo, but their metier is more in the vein of disco scraped from under the toenails of corpses. Their new one is charmingly titled Half Eaten by Dogs; it’s end to end sickness and ooh there’s a chilly one on there called “Club Deuce,” which sounds like a bad place you want to go: it’s a poison sugar crystal keyboard riff sprinkled over icy 80s electro beats, enveloped in smoky tendrils of dispassionate female vocals.
If you don’t mind venturing a little further into the darkness, perhaps we can wade into the fudgy sludgy grunge-metal of Liverpool’s Bonnacons of Doom and their heavy as planets Signs album. Lead singer Kate Smith — no not that Kate Smith — juxtaposes tiny lost little girl vocals against Godzilla onslaughts of sonic destruction, building to delicious tortured howls. Kat Bjelland and Alison Shaw would be proud. It’s basically 90s soft-then-loud rock given new life, shifting into mournful flowers in the attic madness on the title track.
You might not associate arty and angular new wave with Baton Rouge, but Spllit deliver a Plastics / Suburban Lawns collage of bright colors and quantum time signatures that will bring out your dorkiest dorm room dance moves. “I want my words to grow into their legs and walk away,” frets lead singer Marance, “Into a distant place / But all I can do is borrow and restate…”
Shabazz Palaces have been around for a minute, bringing hip hop to Sub Pop without really penetrating slowgraffitti’s brain membrane. Shabazz Palaces, yeah I know the name… But they have a new one out and we finally had a chance to kick it and Ishmael Butler really is the epitome of cool, forever sprawled across designer furniture up in the VIP, relaxed and menacing. On “Binoculars” he obliterates a rival: “I got the drip that left them astonished / His style will get punished / He’s not it I’m just being honest / Dipped in the finest pursuing some commas / That boy want to see me give him some binoculars…” Then he shares how he chats up a lady: “Who da nigga get it wet / Who the nigga help you pick the pics you put up on the net / Uh, if he don’t do it right I do mean to intercept / But if that ain’t my place I don’t mean to over step / Don’t get mad if you wake up with a hickey on ya neck…”
Mamma Mia, it’s getting late and I really need to publish but let’s wham bam a few unmissable works of mystery and genius shall we? Jane Remover is brewing quite a tempest in the indie teapot universe with her sprawling, genre-melting melange of delicate soul and New Jersey guitar roar. No it’s not emo. Absolutely not. OK maybe just a skosh. On “Lips” Jane sounds like quite the clever handful: “Oh, I stack the hot pink and let you color my cheeks rosy / Say it under my breath / ‘I’m your nervous wreck and I like it that way’ / Take a step back, boy, I’m so afraid / You want crazy, I’ll give you insane / Back into the matchbox, you see him smoking my name…”
Perhaps encouraged by the recognition Oh Death received in slowgraffitti’s best of 2022 list, Swedish masked neo-primitives Goat have unfurled another chanting, thrashing, effects-pedaled trip through dirty Valhalla called Medicine. No need to cherry-pick favorites — ruthless Nordic quality control has been applied, and all eight tracks spank the joy up in you. But why not “Join the Resistance“?
I’m really not in favor of all this AI nonsense and the eagerness to cleanse the humanity and spirit from the way we create and communicate. On the other hand, British electro guy Lee Gamble has put together a rather lovely album, aptly titled Models, with entirely AI-generated vocals. It’s genuinely moving and brings to mind the heyday of 4AD.
And apropos of nothing I guess, I’ll sign off with the dusty and dated noodly guitars of “Que pouvons-nous faire ensemble,” a generous slice of sexy 1970 French prog by the suitably shaggy-haired and ponchoed Alice.