Mix XXXIX — The Delirium of Negation
St. Francis Hotel ft. Portugal. the Man — Milkshake What a low key hum to cool you out. There’s a buzzing groove that vibrates on a frequency right on board with your mellow out mental sequences. The hook itself is enough to get you based after your most hectic of experiences. Some psychedelics and an aggressively produced apex halfway through the track (1:50) will wake your nerves while the looping plucks of strings will illuminate a path to follow to your core. I love the long leans on those organs.
Slum Village — Untitled/Fantastic I tried writing a longer piece about how modern day… hip-hop? Rap? Trap music? is in its screamo phase and questioned how much of what the kids who are performing it nowadays will look back at it with a smirking nostalgia, loving the time it was made and appreciating what it influenced going forward alongside the doors it opened up for them, but ultimately was a disposable bridge that had to be crossed, despite the prideless elements that are currently being flossed. I honestly don’t know enough about what’s going on in that genre to speak to it and when I try to mirror what my 14 year old son listens to, I can’t make it through a single track and come out the other side with anything to speak brightly about. I can tell you, though, that over years I have found so, so much phenomenal fundamental hip-hop that speaks directly to a part of me that is immortal. It’s timeless and impossible to know exactly from what decade it came from. This is one of those tracks, clearly influenced by the work of Wu-Tang, of Rakim, of Digable Planets. This is a cultural piece of beauty, something to forever let ride in the background, whether it was 20 years ago or 20 years from now, this sound will remain relevant. The decision within the production of the track to make it seem as if the track is skipping with those hiccuping moments of silence is so dope. RIP J Dilla.
Yaeji — Waking Up Down Oh are you telling me that there’s a song with a remarkable hook, one whose lyrics I don’t understand but it absolutely doesn’t matter in any way shape or form? Count me in. This is a forever loopable chill out track, one that could be a serpentine rhythm that you spiral and roll your body alongside and within for as long as you both shall live. There are several columns of cyclic rhythms here, between the vocal lead, the reverbed key lead, and the basic drum machine percussion backing which almost eventually borderlines on some dancehall rhythms. In futures and in pasts, if this song comes on, I don’t think that anyone who counts themselves among the species of dancers can sit remotely still while it’s on. It weaves in and out like a leviathan in an orgasmic hunt for a mate.
WILLOW — Wait a Minute Summer is right around the corner, baby. This is that open window song, right here. There are elements of PVRIS, elements of Hayley Williams here, a chorus that is undeniable and a driving rhythm that pairs well with a long draught of Vitamin D. What a powerful voice, that Willow seems to draw all the way back like a taut bowstring and then release in arcus fashion. At this song’s core is a powerful pop track that should have been utterly massive but somehow missed its catalytic ignition point.
Turnover — Much After Feeling This song almost single-handedly carried Turnover’s record from last year to the top of the end of the year list. This is my Baby Driver song, one which regardless of which busy city street I am walking down, regardless of what is in my hand, I am dancing as I place one foot in front of the next, feeling every finger pointing at me in utter disrespect, in total attempts to pull me down from cloud nine and instead I float forever forward, dancing like I’m some kind of Rick Astley music video animated gif hologram. Are you happy elsewhere? There is a powerful handful of close friends who I absolutely know can envision me in the passenger or driver’s seat of a car absolutely losing it while listening to this track. The wild thing is that no matter how high of a pedestal I build for this track, I’m not even sure if this was my favorite song of 2019. Another contender for that crown is also on this mix….
Racquet Club — Head Full of Bees This song is a meditation. “Suffering is suffering.” // “I have done what you’ve asked.” This is like some kind of depressive state Hey Mercedes track where no one triumphs. Nothing explodes in cascading fireworks (every day). The drums marching forward make direct eye contact with whoever the subject of this track is targeting, demands answers and begs penance. I saw this band with The Get Up Kids in 2018 and was rapt with this band’s performance. Veterans of a bygone scene, they knew how to stand and deliver, to take songs and channel the recorded power into a live performance that carried in a different dirgelike frequency. On record, this one sounds even brighter and ever more vivacious than the live performance’s dense and heavy delivery.
Moneen — Don’t Ever Tell Locke What He Can’t Do This fucking song will tear me out of any skin that I feel is too heavy for any moment and propel me into some rocketship shaped morale and conquer any obstacle, overcome any challenge, usurp any control that’s been wrenched of me from any external factor. This is the anthem. This is a song from a record that I played countless times on South Beach when we got to pick any time I had control over the PA. Moneen is something special. One of those bands that always seemed to fly close to the ground, had a DIY aesthetic that spoke directly to any of us who happened upon them. Also, I love the reference to the character from Lost, one of those shows who constantly maintained a rotation of Favorite Characters. I never finished it, but John Locke was always a direct source of inspiration for ravenous self-discovery and and The Insatiable Quest. Yes I Can. I swear this song provides some element of levitation.
Daytrader — Kill My Compass Brookyln’s own. Fuck. This is a sound that reminds me of a PLACE. Of a Chapter Of My Life. This song has that crazy post-pop-punk sound that never dips into Yellowcard/The Starting Line territory but it’s impossible to not compare to that same era. It’s the well-written chops of bands like Northstar that were able to write songs that sat in the beautiful middle ratio of genreless songwriting inspired and for those same kids. One of the best shows I’ve ever been to was when these guys and Restorations opened up for Fairweather during their reunion, a revival of emotions and feelings that found a grave that I was only too eager to unearth. Whatever internal storage unit that the lead singer pulls those yelling lyrics from during the chorus needs to be mined for its resources. It needs to be snorted, huffed, injected and imbibed until we’re a brand new species of energy.
Oso Oso — Dig Probably my [other?] favorite song of 2019. This one (and the one previously from Turnover) basically never left my mind from the moment I heard them. They came with me on long walks through my neighborhood, through opening hours at the store, through light reading. The chorus of this one is a perfect twilight dream. It’s sunbeams on a garden; it’s soaring through an atmosphere and looking back at the Earth. As the song closes and reduces itself to a half speed drift, there’s a build up that feels like it’s going to swell up larger than the vessel that contains it. Beautiful. I don’t know how someone is able to create a vocal sound that drifts through the air like fireflies, like the ectoplasm of kindness, like friendly reunions. I can hear a little bit of that Jesse Lacey Your Favorite Weapon era lilt as well. Long Island, baybee.
Porno For Pyros — Pets While writing for some fictions that will more than likely never leave this Google Docs cloud, I was heavily inspired by a lot of 90s music, namely Jane’s Addiction’s ‘Jane Says’, which is one of my favorite songs of Ever. I remember back in the early 2000s, I was really inspired by Perry Farrell and Jane’s Addiction and the ways that they were performing back when they were breaking into that “avant-garde” scene through the early 90s. One thing that always really blew me away was reading about how when they played super small venues, they would still insist on dragging in blacksmith anvils and play them as percussion with hammers and stuff like that. So rad. This song drives spacily through a small town two lane road and reminds me of how strange all of those old Liquid Television animations were on MTV. I listened to this record in a strange drive home during rush hour one early morning after helping a family member commute and it sat perfectly with the pre-dawn mood and the slowly moving traffic. I regret not sticking around for Jane’s Addiction when I had a chance to see them during a massive radio festival at Jones Beach Amphitheater. I’m sure this is a cliche at this point, but I can’t not see Farrell’s energy in the more recent performances from Daryl when Glassjaw has [seldom] come back around.
Faith No More — Falling to Pieces WOOF. That fat bass sound. I had some deep flashbacks while listening to this song earlier this year. In my junior and senior year of high school I remember going to a ton of shows in NYC at Hammerstein and Roseland Ballrooms and at Irving Plaza and it always seemed like this was one of the songs that would play through the venue between acts. I didn’t know much about Faith No More, but I slowly learned that Mike Patton was one of those prolific people in music who never stopped working and influenced acts from the huge metal bands that I was seeing at the time to even some of the bands that were coming up, probably even younger than me when I was seeing these shows. A massive inspiration simply as a creator, it’s wild to see that he continues to work and show up in all walks of my interests, whether it’s in his own bands, in cameos on other records or even in voice acting in animation or video game work. I still haven’t really been able to get deeply into Faith No More except for some tracks here and there, but their impact will always be felt. When it comes to live performances, can I cite Daryl again?
These Arms Are Snakes — The Shit Sisters What an incredible band. I remember when Botch exploded and splintered into Minus the Bear, Russian Circles and this band, I tried to follow each of them in some capacity. This was the band that I was able to find a home for first, followed thereafter by MTB and eventually Russian Circles, the one which found a place next to me for the longest. The riffs and production for this record was one that was so ‘cool’ to me, especially when I came from a place where I was more into breakdowns and that screamo sound back then, this one had a lot of those elements that made those genres great to me at the time, but also without all of the posturings and theatrics. It was raw and genuine. Absolutely brilliant pedal work, making so much of the big guitar bridges sound magnetic and soaring and otherworldly. This song is heavy in such a sneaky way, hardcore influenced breaks subterfuged beneath a more ‘rock’ sound. A big memory for this record is finding a copy of the CD at a distro at Skate and Surf in 2004 or 2005 and Doug from The Sleeping shouting their record out on stage and me having it in my hand and holding it up and him seeing it and being somewhat incredulous that it seemed as if he had summoned up the record out of thin air just by the sheer mention of it. I think this track also works as a perfect springboard into the aggressive innards of this mix.
Save Us From the Archon — Lost In a Reverie I’ll be real: I know very little about this record or this band. I knew though that when I heard it, it was something special. I’ve always been pretty partial to busy instrumental music (not to disregard experimental and slow instrumental music as well) but lots of the mixes I’ve had on here lately have had some kind of cool and summery noodly instrumental rock (the likes of Chon, Polyphia, Covet) and it was nice to hear something that was a bit more aggressive, a bit more damaging. This one sounds a lot more like a freefall, a lot more Superjail than Adventure Time. There’s some of that “how the FUCK do people’s fingers move this fast” which remind me ever so much of The Fall of Troy. How do you fit sounds this frenzied into a studio, into a track, into a song under five minutes? It covers a fretful amount of ground, min maxing until the band is utterly blue in the face.
The Gentleman Homicide — The Goodbye and the Morning After This band comes directly to you from The Myspace Era. I had this song specifically as my profile track for such a long time. In fact, I wish I could get a list of all of the songs I had on there at one point or another. This album was one that I downloaded I believe directly from them, and I never found a proper recording of the record that had any quality that sounded just right. Even this Spotify track sounds so muddy. For some of the elements, it works so well, making a lot of the violence so indistinguishable from the fog of war itself. But I just wish there was a way to make some of the cleaner guitars crisper, some of the drum elements a bit sharper. But here we are. The production adds a bit to the fact that it’s such a throwback to a different time. This song to me was so far beyond any bands that were trying to do this sound at the time. It has so many layers, so many parts, so many things that they’re able to fit within a one minute and forty five second timespan. Love the way the gang vocals at the end are recorded so cleanly, possibly from so far away.
Employed to Serve — Platform 89 Can’t say enough about this band. One of those records that I can’t believe I heard too late. It dropped in 2017 and by the time I heard it, I knew that it would have easily been in the top five records of that year had I heard it in time. It is such an urgent record, not only in its songs but in the fact that you can feel that this band is writing music in a way that is using its influences as a pendulum to propel the sound of aggressive music forward. The influences are worn directly on their sleeves. It is heavy and pummeling and furious, but intelligent and deliberate. The production on this record really isolates each piston at its maximum temperature, channeling every instrument into a phalanx. The sound that they manage to summon from the guitars is otherworldly and terrifying. Such power. And the way some of those background vocals are utterly spit from the band members is filled with such vitriol, you simply have to believe the disgust.
Stay Inside — Monuments This is as new to me as it is to you, probably. I heard this record for the first time this past week and it immediately vaulted so many of the great records of the year and placed itself deep into my top ten. If other albums end up overcoming it, it foretells of a great 2020 in music. There are elements of so many bands that I love here: As Cities Burn, The December Drive, Pianos Become the Teeth, My Iron Lung, Balance and Composure, Citizen, Circa Survive, (early) Coheed and Cambria… so many more. This sounds like my 2006–2012. While the record that surrounds this song is remarkable, this particular track is one that I know my friends would hear and whether or not they knew I would like it, they would know that it was meant particularly for me. The clean guitars, the high pitched vocals, the screams and roars. Holy shit, the way this song ends with that clean chugging, that undistorted breakdown is perfection. The only drawback I can talk about lies in this exact format, and it’s that the transition from this track to the next cuts off. What I wouldn’t give to be in a 600 max venue, piling onto strangers, friends and brethren burning my vocal chords out and throwing my shoulder joint into oblivion with my pointer finger extended shouting along to this track.
Whirr — Ease Fuzzy and grungy and gazey. The cotton mouthed haze that you swim through on this track, from the shore of a distant dream to the next umbral abode is a journey that hovers somewhere between an infinite sadness and a nostalgic romance. If there was a pink and foggy highway that took you from coast to coast, this might be the official song of the road. This is drenched in that illegally medicated sadness of my mid twenties, eyes sealed shut but for being held wide open for what lay ahead. The instruments continue to make music and the muscles are on overdrive. Every doorway is a mystery.
Blis — Bad Weather When this song begins, it reminds me that moment that your needle hits that first note on your favorite vinyl on your turntable. This sounds like a tree that grew from an acorn that fell off of the Smashing Pumpkins’ 1979 tree and was watered by the Silversun Pickups’ Carnavas downpour. I didn’t expect something this subdued from this band, as their last excellent record had more of an edge to it, more of a bite to it. This one shows its teeth through more gnarled and gritted restraint. The purr of Aaron Gossett’s vocals really take the music to a different place, paint the entire landscape in an ethereal found-footage filter, which holds hands perfectly with the drum machine that can be found patchworking the chunkier parts of this track together. Some elements of the vocals on this track remind me of what it would sound like if Nicole Dollenganger has a tougher older brother. I don’t think there’s a more Steve Guitar Part than the one that grabs the spotlight around 2:07.
Beach Bunny — Colorblind What a blast this record is. A sunbeam I want to catch in a mason jar and keep on my dashboard as I drive to each and every one of my friend’s houses. This record has been one of the biggest surprises of the year for me, one which is an easy and fast listen with very track acting as a powerful positive burst of sound. Those spunky little guitar parts that are thrown in, the accent marks and italicized underlined lead parts are brilliant little ways to enhance an already euphoric experience. It’s playful in a way that reminds me of laughter you hear from someone for the first time. That moment when you finally “get” them.
Pinegrove — Endless The line that Evan walks on his tracks falls somewhere between what I used to imagine “good country music” would sound like. There’s a twang to it, despite his New Jersey roots, but it never goes somewhere alien or foreign to me, to a place where it feels so rustic that it has a foot more entrenched in the back of a Ford F-150 than it does in a small coffee shop. All of his work is clothed in the dense and humble weight of a sadness that has strapped itself to his insides. He takes his time letting it out, letting it melt out of him in long molasses-like drips, resolved to the fact that this darkness is a part of him which defines him in silence as much as in aural creation. While many creators make their living portraying their emotions as characters and those characters on a stage of their output, I believe that there is nothing put on here, nothing but a stripped existor allowing you access to the tomes of himself. And while I’ve ridden his sadnesses from crest to shore, some of his songs show that he has embraced this bottom and sees the escape, believes in the escape, and is cherishing the damage. He’s letting the suffering build an alphabet from which the healing will write a whole new story.
Nothing — Zero Day The churning of this one alongside the authorial intent of the song title give it such a menacing and foreboding tone. It feels like the soundtrack to the slowest outward blast as we watch while people go about their day, unaware that a white hot wave of punishing energy is coming to swallow their skin and disintegrate their structures. It’s a big sound, emotionless and androgynous and not at all particular. I feel like I can see this song in orbit from Earth. Nothing (this band) has always had a distinct grasp of constructing an impenetrable sound and it really affirms itself here. This song could be a piece of fiction.
Greet Death — Strange Days Boy oh boy, this Brian Molko-esque vocal style is the express line to my core. The surprise of the heavy guitars coming in halfway through one of the lines being delivered is so impactful, after the words have been floating in their own atmosphere brings such a welcoming jarring effect. Is this song ugly? Beautiful? And now all we seem to love is the darkness. Looking backwards as if this wasn’t how it always was. We haven’t always seen the grim present as that which we worship. There was a brightness that we’ve given up. There was a light that the singer reminisces about in these moments, mentally armored against whatever it took him to lose it to this chasm.
