[Listen] ALL THE REST: “Our Youth”

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“for anyone who doesn’t quite have their life together. Very rarely do we learn from any mistakes other than our own. Sometimes we make a mess, but that’s just how it goes”

⇑⇓

I knew as soon as I heard the very first 2 seconds of this track, that it would belong to my all-time favorite list: a list of songs that I maintain on those virtual post-its on PC, with one click could quite dangerously disappear and I’d have to rack my memory to start all over again.

All the Rest are the newest addition to this list, and its no wonder that this song resonated with me… much more than any other in the past few months. Most of these songs on my list follow a pattern; they have not much in common in terms of genre but more in tone, generally uplifting but existential, energetic but wistful. Songs to listen to so you can take time to momentarily sulk and feel sorry for yourself, but then move forward with life.

‘Our Youth’ draws pangs of familiarity, with sharply recognizable 80s chords (think Eurythmics), catchy, high-pitched vocals and body-swinging ‘pa-pa-para-para‘s. But this isn’t just another peppy indiepop track, as the lyrics mull over future unknowns, misfortunes and naivete just as much as the next brooding, millennial ballad to hit the charts. The exception is that the band packages disillusionment with some semblance of hope, leaving you optimistic rather than bereft.

Listen here:

More All the Rest to come.

[Listen] MAGDALENA BAY: “Ghost”

Mica Tenenbaum of Magdalena Bay © Nicole Almeida

Retro pop

Indie pop

Synth-pop

Heavy pop

Glitz pop

Space pop

Neon pop

Magdalena Bay began writing ’90’s music from the future’ together since high school. Listening to this track of theirs is quite like time-travelling in a glitch-infused tornado of neon color. Pulsing beats, jarring vocal chops and a carnal base topped with contrasting lofty vocals and synths all build up to a thrashing climax: Jamming, clashing, brain-dazzling electronic sound.

Both recent graduates of college, the duo have found solace in pop in expressing a nostalgia for another time of freedom and self-expression.

In an interview with Atwood magazine, the band commented on how today’s pop music has indulged into the sound of the past, on a global scale. The band argues that this is a reflexive response of using that blinding brightness of 80s and 90s sound to counter the dominant currents of darkness surrounding pop in the past few years.

Read more here:

Talking Retro Pop and Vintage Film: A Conversation with Magdalena Bay

And listen here:

Amazingly, Magdalena bay are also responsible for all of their glitch-crazed graphics accompanying their videos and campaigns, essential to creating ‘the vibe’ of their music according to the band.

[Listen]: TOMMY DOWN: “Superficial”

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Think of: Leon Bridges, Nile Rodgers, Sade, Marvin Gaye 

Heavy with sex appeal, Tommy Down’s new funk-inspired track mellows disco synths and guitar into a languid, unhurried seduction. The chorus is simple with Down repeatedly chanting ‘super, super-ficial oh yeah…’ , lengthening each syllable to create a dreamy, sultry landscape of a smoke-filled underground bar.

The imagery of this track is vivid partly due to the melody but also partly due to the lyrical narrative that Down builds; citing Arctic Monkeys as lyrical inspiration, Down wanted to tell a story with this track, taking his listeners on a meandering path from beginning to end.

[Listen] BAD RELIGION: Age of Unreason NEW ALBUM! not anymore oops

AS;OIFH; AIE I HAVE THOUGHTS.

Which, on the surface, is a statement indicating nothing more than that I have strong opinions on this album.

BUT if I were Bad Religion it would be a defiant assertion of my rationality in the face of this AGE OF UNREASON.

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So this came out May 3, 2019, must have been at like midnight or something because I was up into the witching hour trying to finish a report of some kind and I’d been drifting between albums and artists and genres for the last TWO DAYS because I was in that awful limbo period where everything is BORING and I’d have killed a man to have something NEW but luckily it didn’t come to that because this popped up in my feed and I downloaded it instantly.

First impression on my fatigued brain: Meh. Sounded way too poppy, way too Green Day, way unlike their past efforts, and therefore awful because everyone knows that different = BAD. But that’s because it was 3 AM and I was hungry and exhausted and more importantly an IDIOT.

The second listen was a more positive experience. It struck a chord with me. I heard the disillusionment. I heard the dispossession. I heard the dis-in-fat-u-a-tion.

I also heard Chinese Democracy just before this album, whoops.

With Bad Religion being Bad Religion, and the whole album being called Age of Unreason, I guess it’s obvious (to Americans, anyway) that it’d be about American politics. See, with Bad Religion you never really have to guess what they’re singing about. Track 3, “Do the Paranoid Style”, has “American politics” in the lyrics of its chorus. They have an ode to one’s sanity, entitled “My Sanity”, featuring a short vignette in which the narrator is in a rocky relationship with his sanity, plagued by the homewrecker that is alternative facts. Cute, right?

But then they also have another song called “Lose Your Head” in case that wasn’t enough of an assurance to you that there’s some crazy shit going down in this country right now, and that you are perfectly sane for suspecting that . Honestly though, I do need to hear that. As many times as I can hear it.

So the lyrics are bold and brazen, as always. I can’t think of how better or more efficiently to support this than simply copying their lyrics here, so here are some of my favorites:

“Believers, dupes, and clowns, I want you all to gather ’round, to glorify ignorance and fear/I dispense misinformation to a post-truth generation. My darlings, don’t shed a tear/For I am your candidate” – from “Candidate”

“Just to think that not so long ago was a man who received the seal/He peddled blatant lies and brought back tyranny to divide his people with zeal” – from “Age of Unreason”

“Big cyber weapon, little traitor-in-chief/He’s got a big black dog on a leash” – from “Big Black Dog”

“Since when was it just a fallacy of tainted memory/(Since when?) To believe that things were really all right/Since when were the qualities of wisdom and knowledge/(Since when?) Equivalent to mere facts online?” – from “Since Now”

What’s also impressive (and was utterly overlooked by my sleep-deprived senses) was the spread of genres they managed to incorporate here. You’ve got the classic short-and-sweet speed-punk bangers like “Chaos from Within” and “Do the Paranoid Style”, some poppier melodic tunes like “Downfall” and “What Tomorrow Brings”, straight-up ballads like “Lose Your Head”, and whatever kind of swingy jam “Big Black Dog” is.

All wonderfully energetic, supplying their charged lyrics with the requisite momentum to penetrate the listener’s understanding. Their polysyllabic verbiage is never easy to catch on the first listen, but the urgency with which Greg Gaffin unloads them into your ears is enough to let you know that they’re Very Important.

Overall, cool album! Definitely topical, but I guess that’s only to be expected of a band like Bad Religion. What’s way more important is that it actually sounds good, and is one of my new favorites by the band. So there’s one good thing that the Trump presidency brought us.

ALSO they’re on tour in support of the album right now!! Yay! Go look it up here.

 

Oh, and don’t lose your head.

-Mans

[Listen] FUGAZI: “Never mind what’s been selling, it’s what you’re buying”

BETO O’ROURKE’S #1 FAVORITE BAND

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AND I LIKE THEM A LOT TOO, BUT IT’S NOT LIKE ANYONE HERE CARES FOR MY OPINION.

“Burning Too”, from 13 Songs (1989)

“Blueprint”, from Repeater (1990)

“Rend It”, from In on the Kill Taker (1993)

They know just where to prod you, how to jar you, capture your ear and hold it hostage. Their rhythm section is tight and relentlessly heavy-hitting, and their guitar never fucking sounds like one. And they’ve got not one but TWO singers that BOTH scream but one yells in tune sometimes. Besides their rhythm, though, what gets me is their lyrics. Each of these songs has brilliant lyrics, mostly centering around one’s inherent moral duties as a human being. As an artist. As a citizen of this planet.

As A mEmBeR oF sOcIeTy.

It’s not surprising, considering the lifestyle they lead and the community they support – being celebrated musicians that refused to sell merch or charge more than $5 for tickets, living simply, DIY-ing their shit. Not to get all utilitarian and anti-art and that, but it’s inspiring to have music that stands for something. That isn’t absolute shit.

It’s hard to write individual descriptions for each song, because even as a fan freshly infatuated by Fugazi’s ethics and philosophy and eardrum-busting jams, I have to admit that their songs all follow a similar format.

More like, they can be broken down into their constituent captivating parts, which of course doesn’t make them any less captivating. Also, I’m lazy.

So besides the head-jerking grooves and tear-jerking lyrics, each song’s got these one or two lines or phrases that repeat, like a chant, so that you, as a member of an audience at some show in 1998, can scream along to the very much active band performing very much live, very much in front of you.

Sigh.

But don’t despair, they’re just as addicting to sing along to these twenty years later, only you have to do it under your breath because you’re on the subway and there are decent folk about. Rhythmic body jerks are OK too, but don’t do it too much.

 

I said what I said.

-Mans

P. S. No, goddammit, I feel bad for saying what I said (guess I’ll rend it) about their songs all sounding the same. These three kinda do, but you know what THAT means.

Fugazi pt. 2 coming soon.

[Find]: MAJESTIC CASUAL

majesticA few days ago the music channel Majestic Casual on YouTube published a short note to its viewers explaining its radio silence.

Citing personal issues and a sense of non-purposefulness, the YouTuber asked viewers to answer a few questions, ‘what inspires you about majestic?’, ‘what connects you to this journey?’ and ‘what keeps bringing you back?’. In honor of the music channel that sucked me into the complex, layered world of electronic music, I think I could answer those questions in a few words.

YouTube is a fantastic place to find new music, and I think one of the primary reasons why is because the music itself is never separate from its identifying visuals, be it album covers, curated photos, art or even animations. Some of the most spectacular albums of the past few years have had equally memorable visuals, Jamie XX’s geometric dances to Flume’s deeply saturated bio-inspired visualizers.

Rory Seydel, creative director of LANDR, a music promotion platform, quotes ‘seeing will always be part of hearing’ in an argument that album art will always be critical for success. And just like how a great album cover would convince you to buy a record, images on YouTube work quite the same way; these little worlds flash in your recommended, drawing you in to new music like a moth to a flame.

In other streaming platforms, this connection is quite dilute, often lost in the overwhelming flood of recommended tracks. Majestic, along with its contemporaries such as TheSoundYouNeed and even better, Colors, weaponize visual material to catapult music to new audiences. Majestic uses a curated selection of photography and art from various platforms such as flickr and instagram, Colors uses extremely specific hues to create the atmosphere of their artists.

Though it has taken awhile for Majestic to find its stride in pairing the perfect image with a track, the channel’s most well-known promoted tracks are inextricably linked to their visual accompaniment.  These range from a literal (but no less compelling) translation , such as Mura Masa’s Miss You or a translation of rhythm such as Mura Masa’s Move Me or even purely just a translation of feeling such as Tom Misch’s The Journey. Mura Masa and Tom Misch are some of the many artists that gained immense popularity through this incredibly intuitive combination of still image and music, the former a peek into a whole universe of experience the tracks explore.

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Majestic created a brand for itself with white lower-case text centered upon the video frame. The ‘Est. 2011’ date stamping the branded logo on both track and image creates ownership over content despite its crowd-sourced origins. Other channels have have emulated this combination but often not as well, missing the consistency in quality of aural-visual pairing (including a specifically designed name, logo and font).

Even if the music is good, its the quality of the package that really pulls viewers in, elevating the channel’s content from flippant, passive listening to engaged and productive music exploration. There are so many channels now doing exactly what Majestic intended to do, branded white text on colorful images ubiquitous in my recommended. Yet only a few really do stand out.

So yes, what inspires me, connects me and keeps bringing me back to Majestic is that I’ve found much more than just music on this channel… and eventually the channel has persuaded me to much prefer YouTube over any other streaming platform.

In a landscape of information overload, I’ve formed attachments to these tracks  that I would have never have found if not for Majestic’s unique delivery of content… a technique that is much more than just the characteristic of another YouTube promotion channel.

I’ve linked some of my current favorite tracks from the channel below.

[Listen] FEARLESS IRANIANS FROM HELL: “Monkey in the White House”

Who the hell are these people and where did they go????????????????#$#@

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All I could find was that they’re from Texas and that they’re Iranian and possibly fearless but don’t quote me on that.

They were and then they weren’t, all in the decade that starts with an 8. Except they bled into the 2000’s by accident, it would seem, when they released an EP called “Peace Through Power”, and it turned out to be a bunch of demos of old songs and ONE new one.

 

“Burn the Books”, from Holy War (1988)

“Special Delivery”, from Foolish Americans (1990)

“Die for Allah”, from Die for Allah (1987)

 

These Iranians really were fearless, in that they did the same thing the Kominas are doing now, except instead of playfully wagging a finger at Americans that don’t like that they’re all that Iranian or Hellish or whatever, they go all the way and condemn them as… well “ignorant” seems like the worst thing they say. They devoted a whole album to it! Their last one, Foolish Americans.

But they (implicitly) condemn other people too! Like Iranians. Overall, though, they just seem to hate war and death and how it (alongside fundamentalist Islam) has come to define certain areas in the East, in the eyes of the West. The best part is that all those lovely messages are conveyed exclusively in the form of hyperbolic satire, with lyrics featuring a whole lot of bloody war imagery and extremist rhetoric. I mean, they have a whole song called “A Martyr in Every Home”.

Wait wait no, let me try that again.

I mean, they have a whole album called Holy War. No wait no there’s an even better one.

I mean, they have a whole album called Die for Allah. Wait no no no wait.

I mean, they have a whole song called “Dogsperm”. Yeah, I think that says it best.

 

But even besides their lyrics, these guys are just really good at writing catchy riffs. There’s an average of like three per song. And they’re aggressive as shit! Shit’s aggressive! Aggressive shit! Angry poopies!

Mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmusic.

 

“Burn the Books” will come back to you in all these fragments that you think are from different songs but then when you listen again you’re like OH SHIT IT’S ALL IN HERE and pure aural ecstasy ensues. Its form is really interesting, where it starts slow and builds up to neck-breaking speed-chorus, predictably, but then it… cycles? Like Black Sabbath to Slayer and then back again. It was weird to listen to at first, but these guys pull it off really well. And it lets them cram like twelve distinct riffs and motifs into less than three and a half minutes. The weakest aspect for me, personally, is the lyrics, I think. Perhaps it’s just hard to hear what the guy’s saying, but I can’t quite tell what books we’re burning and who’s “the sore loser at the end of the line”. All that being said, “God gave up on you, so did I” still hits hard, despite its context-less-ness. Heh.

“Special Delivery” is just so ANGRY! Aw it’s SO angry! At America! Americans. “Another monkey in the White House because of you!” This is from 1990 though so they’re still going on about Bush. The FIRST one. It’s pretty easy to forget that, though. ‘Cause y’know. Trump, and that. Anyway, it starts out all heavy with a coupla different riffs and fun lil’ rhythm changes and then rises a little bit with all these happier-sounding power chords while the singer’s screaming at you before breaking again into instrumental riff-town. It’s amazing, how much they manage to do in just two minutes. The singer’s got a great scream, too, and the rhythm in the lyrics is extremely gratifying. And so simple!

“A mis-sile aimed di-rect-ly at the ass-hole of the Earth!”

1-2-3-4 1-2-3-4. Love it.

“Die for Allah” has this incredible opening showcasing the drums. I don’t usually give a care for drums, just because I, personally, severely under-appreciate their role in making literally every amazing song I know as amazing as it is. But this song’s got drums that even a dumbass like me can’t ignore! And the guiTARS. You’ve got all these tappy light melodic scalic passages that get beaten back down with an onslaught of monotonic sixteenth notes and the singer commanding you to DIEEEEEEEEEE FOR AAAAALLLAAAAAAAAAH. It’s so CATCHY. j-j-j-j (that’s the sound it makes) j-j-j-j j-j-j-j j-j-j-j-j. My favorite part is what I think is the chorus. And I’m only calling it that because that’s where he actually says “Die for Allah”. Just good. Fast. Headbangin’ shite.

 

Really though, with only three short albums left to us by these intrepid Persians of the inferno, there’s no excuse not to just listen to the whole fucking-brilliant catalog. And I say this because goddamn was it hard to pick three songs. I had to leave out “Forced Down Your Throat”! “Martyr in Every Home”! “The Trinity”! “What’s in the News”?!?!!?!!

Go listen or go to hell.

-Mans

[Listen] METRIC: Now or Never Now

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The first time I ever listened to a song by Canadian Indie-pop band, Metric, was in Edgar Wright’s Scott Pilgrim versus the World. A young Brie Larson appears on stage as the narrator screams ‘And then it was time…. for Toronto… to drown in the sweet sorrow of The Clash at Demonhead!’

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In a sultry, already suggestive voice, Brie covers Metric’s Black Sheep single,  chanting several oh yeahs as the crowd goes wild with ex-superman jamming on the guitar. Eyes flash, hair is tossed and silent threats fill the room. Metric’s original song gives the film added layers of complexity, contrasting the overt sweetness of Brie’s character with darkness, as the track twists and turns in its sharp key changes.

Metric’s most well-known track also embodies this theme of oxymoron, obvious in the very title as it is in the the jarring switches from major to minor; help, I’m alive.

This is what makes Metric truly unique. Each track weaves optimism with cynicism, indie-pop edged with a distinct flavor of dystopian despair. This is often so subtle that listening lifts your feelings and hopes but leaves you wanting for resolution. With their latest full-length album coming out this year, the band has been slowly releasing upbeat, dreamy singles, each more synth-heavy than the last. Their use of synthesizers give their tracks that distance between listener and vocalist, with emotion only just graspable but yet so far away that its almost surreal.

Listen to the two new singles and watch out for the new album!

[Listen]: YUMI ZOUMA: In Camera

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Presenting OtO’s most mellow post yet, Yumi Zouma bring fresh grass, blue skies and the dream-pop world of New Zealand to their track, In Camera. Known for being Chet Faker’s and even Lorde’s opening act at a point in time, the band embraces its Oceanic influences in an incredibly atmospheric way; soft, layered vocals on a backdrop of cruising, plucky guitars that have you humming.  The beat gives you the feeling and image of those warm-toned, high saturated do-nothing days, lounging about in the sun.

Unabashedly huge Fleetwood Mac fans, the band’s retro inspiration in the track is subconsciously felt, tinged with the sensation of memory, as if you’d have heard the track before, but never quite caught the lyrics. The  production perhaps is responsible for this, the band primarily relies on virtual synthesizer emulators accompanied by light instrumentation.

The album, Willowbank, is named after a wildlife sanctuary in Christchurch, New Zealand. It’s hard to only talk about the music without connecting to the recent tragedy in Christchurch in the past week… if anything, this post is in remembrance of that peace the band members found in their hometown, and in hope that peace can be found once again.

Read more in their interview with WhattheSound here: http://www.whatthesound.com/interviews/yumi-zouma

 

And an extra track just because every time I listen to this band I fall in love just a little more. I’ve never heard a track so accurately represent a color in pure sound… powder blue.  

 

[Listen] COWS: Cunning Stunts (Part 2)

This is the recommendation part of the recommendation.

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I suppose I owe you that much. You’re too busy to listen to the brilliance of a whole twelve-track experience. A 38:56 masterpiece. Philistine.

Nothing in this world could make me butcher such genius, hack it down to a paltry “top three”, just to accommodate your laziness, to tolerate your irreverence.

My own stubbornness, though, that might do it.

Here goes:

“Walks Alone” because I can’t resist the speed, the sheer energy, the adrenaline that it instills in me. It never gets old. Hey why are the fast songs never considered “the best” of an album?? Anyway- the song has no brakes. It just goes, verse after verse after verse with no real chorus or even a guitar solo – besides a four-bar, four-note guitar break between verses. And the lyrics are about some vagrant or something. A street rat. And how heeeeeeeeeeeee walks alone.

What’s great about this song, and about the Cows in general, and about their singer Shannon Selberg in general, is that despite their (self-imposed???) restrictions on their musical abilities, and their lyrics being similarly pedestrian (on this album especially: “He sits alone/In a park/’Til after dark/ etc. It’s not exactly poetry, y’know?), Shannon’s delivery still makes them hit the mark, catch the listener’s ear with patterns in meter rather than in melody, or measured, exact rhyme. Like spoken word, almost. OK wait so I guess it is like poetry. The Cows are poets now, I have declared them as such.

 

“Mine” just because it’s got this one line that goes “if you’re some commie scum that wants to share it all, remember, IT’S MINE”. HEH. The guitar’s going in both ears, constantly, in a heated argument with itself, with the bass and drums playing a comfortable and simple enough pattern to keep you grounded through that chaos. And Shannon isn’t screaming, but he’s definitely pissed about this thing that it’s imperative you know is his.

Let’s talk about the next song.

 

“Everybody” because it captures that feeling of being left behind by everybody because everybody is doing something and you’re not and you don’t know why you’re not or why everybody is doing whatever it is they’re doing but you suspect that it might just be because everybody else is doing that thing. Right? Well, the brilliant thing about the song is that it says all that and more clearly too but in only six words total, two of which are “everybody” and “something”. All the frustration, the derision, the circular reasoning, the bafflement, are conveyed by the simple repetition of these lyrics, in a melody that oscillates between like, four notes. It’s mocking them. Who? Everybody.

 

Aaand YouTube links:

Here’s the whole album again

 

And here’s my selected three

 

Now, my disciples, go forth and spread the good word of the Cows.

-Mans