365 – New Music Daily

I am back. Writing again. What’s going on? Am I losing my mind – perhaps… Am I bored at work? Perhaps again… Am I going through a minor career crisis where I feel unsure of the work/life balance and unsure how much I should actually give a shit about my work vs. how much a good balance/life outside of it can make it suffice? Perhaps… BUT that is not why we are here. We are here because, through the ever-phasey nature of my life, music and writing subsist. So should this outlet that goes into the ether, with the exception of the few of you who do read this. Why you do that, I do not know (but I do appreciate!), but if it provides you with at least one good song that you jam to, my mission has been successful. And, again, I do appreciate that it doesn’t go fully into the ether… though perhaps that’s the best place for my meandering brain.

Though perhaps this will turn more into a High Fidelity blog where I detail the ins and outs of my psyche, love life, inner turmoil, and all of the above. I’m SURE you want that. Right? Anyways. What will happen here? I have no idea. But as I said, it’s a music blog. So let me tell you what jams are in rotation.

Reading, Writing and Arithmetic – The Sundays

As you all (you few? you none?) may recall, I am a long standing critic of genre labeling. It’s restrictive, boxes artists in, and also often means absolutely fucking nothing. What is indie? Someone recently told me that Indie (which is quite literally a shortening of ‘independent’, one of the laziest genre-labeling acts in music history… “we don’t know what this is, just call it independent!’) corresponds to ‘a specific image in their head, in a field, like I can just see it’ – which was one of the most pretentious responses I can imagine to me saying ‘Indie doesn’t really mean anything, right’? I’m trying to establish a shared interest, lady. Not hear about how you come from a musical family and you can just see these things. I do think that diving into musical niches can turn into a practice of trying to limit how pretentious you come off – or just allowing it to flow freely – but that’s gotta be up at the top of the list of most pretentious music things I’ve ever heard. Even worse than the YoU dOnT kNoW tHe SuNdAyS?!?!?

The meander returns to center here – a center that has yet to be defined (so was it even a meander? How hard is it to get through a few sentences for you 3 readers?). The Sundays are labeled as Jangle Pop – a la the Smiths – which is actually does feel somewhat apt? Stealing a trope from Bill Simmons – half-assed internet research:

The Sundays are a 90s British Jangle Pop band that was effectively the brainchild of a couple – a rare instance of a romantic pairing in music that did not erupt in flames! Signed to Rough Trade (which, btw, hell of a label! List of Rough Trade Artists (Wiki)) in the midst of their financial issues in the early 90s, they only put out three records before moving on from creating and publicizing music to focus on a family – heartwarming stuff here. They were not huge commercial smashes – though the song linked below did reach #1 on the Billboard Modern Rock chart – which was in part due to the momentum that was somewhat halted by Rough Trade not being able to financially back the band (or many other bands, it seems).

The Sundays jangle pop sound is self explanatory in many ways – groovy acoustic riffs, lax vocals, layered synths/electric guitar – all resulting in sort of a mix between the typical shoegazey/dream pop sound that was originating from this era (more to come on that later – but this is more like Dream Pop/Shoegaze Lite), the more alt rocky stuff coming from bands like the Smiths, and the post-punk Joy Division/New Order, Cure, etc. sounds coming out of this fantastic, robust era of music. Which DOES feel like a descriptive label for this niche – though it’s still arbitrary stacked on arbitrary. There may not be a great way to describe music genres incredibly well – but jangle pop is specific enough and contains a specific correspondence that I have no gripe.

All in all, the resulting product is an album full of catchy, fun, laid back, and incredibly interestingly structured songs. Their #1 below:

Favorite songs: Here’s Where The Story Ends, You’re Not The Only One I Know, A Certain Someone, I Kicked A Boy, My Finest Hour

Heaven or Las Vegas – Cocteau Twins

I hate to be this focused on the genre stuff – but if there was one that really nailed it, it’s Dream Pop. Often intertwined with Shoegaze, Dream Pop is exactly what it sounds like – thick synths, ethereal guitar tones, somewhat drowned out vocals, leading to a floating experience that this blog has only seen from Beach House.

I also realized I provided someone bad info recently – I thought it was shoegaze because there was so much shit going on that you just looked at your shoes. Wrong. It is called shoegaze because the guitarists would stare down at their pedals. That makes much more sense. But may my bad info live on.

Heaven or Las Vegas & the Cocteau Twins are often given the attributions of being (one of) the origins of Shoegaze – again, pulling from post-punk elements heavily, but taking it to an ethereal, truly “dreamy” (I hate to continue to use the word in the name of the fucking genre, but that is what it sounds like!) sound that is now the definition of what Shoegaze truly is. This was proven a bit further by My Bloody Valentine’s Loveless in ’91 – a genre-defining album that many point to as “the” Shoegaze album (especially when you consider how drowned out those vocals are – I have no idea what they are saying for a single second on that), but Heaven or Las Vegas is another level for me. 1 second into the album, you’re greeted with thick, reverb-filled, distorted guitar chords, fat and driving basslines, and the fantastic vocals of their lead singer. The band was also taken by a romantic relationship mid way through their prime, and guess what, they broke up, and the band followed too. Now we’re back babeeyy!

My personal experience with this album – I had given it a shot a while ago before I was truly hip to the magic of shoegaze, but I re listened to it recently and was shocked with how fucking good it is. I mentioned the many musical elements before – but the difficulty to me with Dream Pop/Shoegaze is accessibility. Due to the nature of Dream Pop/Shoegaze music being balanced sonically – atypical of a usual song structure – it can have a bit of a higher barrier to entry for many people. To be more specific: Most songs (generalizing) are characterized by – vocal dominance/catchy and right in your face lyrics – the lead singer is often the star of the show. Back that up with the melody (Guitar/Piano/Synth), have the bass and drums do a bit of the percussive/glue work, and boom. You have described the structure of so many songs – and there is nothing wrong with that at all. In fact, there’s a lot right with that.

Shoegaze is much more of a medley – as if you’re fusing together one sonic experience that is driven by different things – often marked with some bands having REALLY drowned out vocals (listen to a lot of My Bloody Valentine’s Loveless, and you’ll see what I mean) – which is a deterrent for many to get into Shoegaze. So valid! It’s a major deviation from how a lot of the music we all know and love is structured. But, there is some serious shit to it (well said, I know) and I think the Cocteau Twins do it right, and they make it catchy as well. The refrains in many Shoegaze songs aren’t there – but if you listen to Heaven and Las Vegas (in this case, I mean the song linked below, but the whole album is fantastic), you’ll hear Shoegaze with catchy moments – which is a total rarity. HEAVEN OR LAS VEGUUUUUUS will get ya.

Favorite songs: Cherry Colored Funk, I Wear Your Ring, Heaven or Las Vegas, Fotzepolitic, Wolf in the Breast

A Few Miscellaneous Jams…

While The Sundays and Cocteau Twins have caught me as albums, I’ve also got a few more kicks to share:

BOB

You all know I love me some Bob. And add Tim as Bob? God damn. (Seriously though – Chalamet was fucking great in that movie). The Bob movie rekindled my appreciation of his earlier shit – not that it was ever entirely dormant once I got into it – but once you hear Girl from the North Country, you listen to it 10 times every day. In fact, pretty much everything off of Freewheelin’ is amazing – which goes back, once again, to song structure/genre. We dive into labels of what type of music we listen to – what elements define it – but at the end of the day, music is art, and nothing needs to be grounded to elicit the emotional response that a great tune will give you. Girl from the North Country is just a man, an axe, and a harmonica, and it’s fucking beautiful. Don’t overthink it.

thanks Bob. Even though you’re an asshole. Thanks Tim.

Sade – always!

There will never be another Sade – the band and the woman. While being so distinctly 80s in many ways (when else would Paradise have come out) – Sade’s music has made a resurgence lately through social media, which is one of the joys of the mind melting app landscape that dominates our attention spans – god I hate my fucking phone. Anyways!

Kiss of Life, Paradise, Your Love is King, and even some of the beautiful, less jazzy/funky later cuts – All About Our Love, Lover’s Rock – her airy vocals float over funky basslines, sporadic chords, and create something that is uniquely her own.

70s Rock – Dan, Allman, and more

While I will take rightful ownership of the coining Steely Dan by their surname, I will also campaign that I’m one of the biggest 26 year old Dan fans. I love me some Dan, and as my music taste goes around the bends, Dan will always remain. Dan has (in part) also brought me to many other areas of 70s rock – from the Allman Brothers to CSNY to JJ Cale and so many more – if you peer through any playlists of mine you’ll surely find many of these names. And what good shit it is.

There are plenty more tangents for me to get into here – and the staples remain (including the Smiths, Strokes, and Takanaka) but I will be back. My music taste has continuously evolved, and I love learning and hearing more. And experiencing the connection it brings me. So anyways, I will be back. For real. How often, I don’t know, but I love talking about my kicks, and I love writing. I’ll leave you with a reminder that I’ll try to eloquently relay.

As I meet new people in life, I continuously struggle with an internal battle of describing music without a air of pretentiousness – some of which can be avoided in framing – but many of which comes from the correlation of nerdiness and pretentiousness. To lay a piece of unsolicited advice on the few that will scan this with their eyes – be both unabashed in your taste and stray from judgement with anyone else’s. Music is art – a very unique form of art that can elicit strong emotional responses, connections to times, places, feelings, smells, sounds, and people – vastly different from many people’s experience with the standard definition of art. Movies come close, but music has an entrancing quality that is both universal and completely unique.

Much like other forms of art, is an amazing experience to share enjoyment of music with another person – something that feels about as close to spirituality as my consciousness lives in, and something that feels so inherent that you can be so easily moved. However, if someone doesn’t like the same stuff as you, or the same stuff in the same way, they are not wrong. Because of that inherent way music can impact your soul, it is inherently subjective. No one’s music taste is better than anyone else’s. Does that mean that people shouldn’t appreciate talent? Absolutely not – but that’s more of the human condition. All this is to say – keep your ears open, and most importantly, let anyone’s connection to music stay true to them. It’s a special, moving thing, and do not spoil it for anyone else. Jam and groove!

I leave you with Takanaka and Carlos Santana jamming, and a promise to return!