Josiah’s on a road trip this week which can only mean one thing – this is a canicross newsletter again. You’re all so very welcome! There are other things happening – it’s really remarkable how much it took to fill the pod-sized hole in my life over the last year – but running through the woods with my dog is doing some heavy pod-hole lifting. I recently ran a trail that took us by a gorge known as “the Devil’s Punchbowl,” which is pretty cheeky as geologic formation names go, I think? I mostly just lurked Twitter my whole life so being so aggressively outdoorsy is a new situation for me. I think I’m doing alright except when it’s apparent that the bugs are getting to me.
Here’s some stuff we’re listening to this week.
Minnemi “THE CURSED UTAU MINI CONCERT”
Sam: A genuinely wonderful side effect of doing This Exists again is finding myself transfixed by music like this. After watching for a few minutes, I have just let this run in the background of my day, occasionally returning to see Kermit or Shrek and Slenderman giving their all in what is an accurately-titled performance. From what I gather, UTAU is kind of like vocaloid but cheaper while still being incredibly difficult to work with? Maybe this could be my next hobby??
Jos: Wait I gotta watch a 38-minute concert film? I feel like this one dev at my work is really into shit like that. He’s always posting bands in the #mixtape channel on Slack that are like, Brazilian dreadlocked metalheads playing djente-infused J-pop. This is definitely very catchy, but I also find myself wondering if it’s less ironic and more just the end result of a treat-obsessed human race? Like is there anything musical going on? Or is it just pornographically tongue-in-cheek?
SOPHIE feat. Kim Petras & BC Kingdom “Reason Why”
Sam: I’m not enough of a SOPH-head to pretend I was playing the live bootleg of this for the last five years, waiting for this moment. I AM, however, enough of an ageing dickhead to take every opportunity I can to talk about seeing SOPHIE at the PC Music showcase at SXSW at 2015 and how you KNEW it was an Important Moment. I just searched to get the date right and discovered this entire Pitchfork article about the show - “PC Music's Inverted Consumerism Critic – Sasha Geffen looks at how PC Music's showcase at SXSW functioned as a critique of the branding that surrounds the festival.” Not linking. We’re all such pricks. This song is incredible and this album is going to rock and there’s no resisting the tragic narrative that in the brat era of pop music it’s never been more obvious that SOPHIE is probably the single most influential artist of a generation. Sorry to go blog mode.
Jos: I believe you that you were there, and I believe that you love all this stuff, but I can’t decide if I believe that you knew it was important at the time. I just can’t decide. I do know Stephen Carlick reviewed the same show for Exclaim! and I was jealous because I wanted to be covering SXSW. Imagine wanting to go to SXSW. Who was I? Anyway SOPHIE is obviously a legend and an architect and this sounds great. I think people were mad about this album? I mean posthumous albums are usually a terrible idea in one way or another. For the record, you can release anything you want from my harddrive when I die. Just make sure it has good cover art. Also, the other posthumous SOPHIE thing I want to say is, the lyrics for the St. Vincent clout-chase song are insanely funny and bad.
mgk “Sun to Me (Zach Bryan cover) [live from Cheshire Cottage]”
Jos: Despite the marketing push, I’m not sure the “y’allternative” thing is really working in a broader context — Beyoncé’s country era came and went fairly quickly, Orville Peck is struggling to get to the upper rows on festival posters — but I do find myself inching towards Willie’s Roadhouse, and even the Chris Stapleton channel, when I’m stuck in traffic in my car. There’s something to be said about country as a viable pivot, and I would really love if mgk just took the plunge. He does seem a little lost in his post-pop-punk purgatory. But obviously I’ll still be pressing play on everything he puts out. Never heard this Zach Bryan song. It’s mgk’s now. I like it.
Sam: It’s amazing how actually great popular music is right now, in a way I do not recall being true for almost… thirty years? I don’t mean this in a hokey poptimist way that is still ultimately about celebrating music that isn’t actually popular, and not in a nostalgic way where we’ve all retroactively discovered that the music we hated when we were young is “good” but probably just because it reminds us of before we had to pay taxes or whatever. Zach Bryan is so sick and so big and now he’s going to make mgk go country?? He’s unstoppable.
Sinai Vessel “Laughing”
Jos: I clicked this one because I like the name “Laughing,” as we established in the post about the Montreal band Laughing. This song does have actual laughing in it, which is really great but also annoying because, spoiler alert, I have written a song that has actual laughing in it, which probably isn’t going to be out for a long time. So hopefully we’ll forget about it by then. But by talking about it maybe I’ll make sure we don’t. So that’s annoying. Anyway this is a really nice little alt country tune. And the guy singing it looks really cool in an extremely annoying hip weeb way that I fuck with heavily. And the music video is generally cool. Good tune. And kinda pairs well with mgk’s country song.
Sam: Damn it just started really pouring here and the vibes were right. It just sucks that you ripped this song off, a fact I will be sure to remember when you stop recording deegie covers and finish your own songs. I can see the next song, dude. You need to focus on you.
deegie “Drink Til I Puke” (Robbie)
Jos: As Sam mentioned, I’m out of town again this week, so there is some confusing time play going on. Not only do I now know how deegie has responded to our post entitled “deegie summer” (which I can’t even link to because it doesn’t technically exist yet), but I haven’t even heard her latest single “Drink Til I Puke,” which came out the same day as the “deegie summer” newsletter, and is thusly now a week old. I feel genuinely sad. Based on the Instagram preview it sounds almost Sleigh Bells-like in its extremely chopped production. I’m going to give it a proper listen when I plug the song in, maybe I’ll be able to add more. More words need to be written about deegie! Okay I’m listening in full…. I don’t have much to add except this sounds a lot like John Feldman era blink-182. So it’s technically quite impressive but not my favourite deegie. And she hasn’t said anything gross yet. I would love lyrics about a fuckboy that gave her a UTI or something.
Sam: Honestly giggling at “time play,” a term I totally forgot. We’re funny boys. I’m trying to remember what kind of boost BONK! BONK! got from your tireless dedication to their cause last summer, and wondering what we can expect from the full court press of your current deegsession (doesn’t work sorry). I’ll come back and listen to this next week, but I’ll only add something if I have something better than “deegsession” to say.