Gobruary is traditionally the shortest month of the year, so unfortunately that means it’s time to say farewell to our month of Gob songs. But we get one last episode with “Give Up the Grudge,” an exploration of one of the band’s biggest hits. The episode itself has major gas leak energy, and I don’t recommend listening to it.
Listen to the new ‘sode of 155 here.
The covers section is also back, which means we’ve been dropping weekly Bandcamp compilations. Listen to 8 versions of Gob’s “Beauville” here.
Here’s some other stuff we’re thinking about right now:
Angel Electronics “One Thousand and One Nights”
Sam: While I’m pretty confident that I’m too old to be into this and am probably missing some vital piece of internet context, I am still extremely into Ultra Paradise. Featuring one half of Black Dresses, a band I only discovered as they were kinda-sorta breaking up (but still releasing new music?), this album is at least only one month old and therefor makes me feel like I have my gnarled, wizened finger wrapped firmly around the wrist of youth, dimly sensing its pulse. There’s some really fun table stakes genre mashy mashy all over the record, but this song in particular sounds like it could have come from the first batch of Reggie and the Full Effect songs, which I don’t love anymore because I think he’s canceled but I did love very deeply at one point in my life. I hope this is a sign that the kids are about to discover The Stereo and The Anniversary???
Jos: Hmm Sam’s description made me think this was gonna be some leftovers from the “hyperpop” microgenre that existed for approximately 2 weeks to psyop 37-year-old New York Times subscribers, people who have “Know Your Meme” bookmarked on their browser and know-it-all “genre explainers” into thinking they were on the cutting edge the other year. But instead this is just some really nice Dance Dance Revolution pop-punk. Very cute song.
Chop Chop Chop Chop Chop Chop Chop “Dirty Harry”
Sam: As a longtime casual grindcore appreciator who, if I’m being honest, only truly loves Anaal Nathrakh and Genghis Tron, I am the target demographic for Chop Chop Chop Chop Chop Chop Chop. Additionally, for reasons I cannot explain, hating cops was one of the first things I picked up from trying to be or be seen as “punk” at a time in my life when the only interactions I had had with them was when Blinky the talking police car would come to our schools for safety demonstrations. Today, dumb-ass Toronto is rapidly becoming the cruelest city on the planet where the solution to every problem is quite literally to throw cops at it (and then throw more money at the cops and make a half million dollar podcast about how they’re nice), and I find myself filled with the kind of useless, impotent rage that only privileged losers like me get to experience. This is the one thing punk was right about. This song rocks.
Jos: In order for me to write the newsletter while it’s still a Google Doc, I have to copy and paste Sam’s YouTube link into a new tab to check it out. And that band name and comparison to something called “Anaal Nathrakh” is making it very, very difficult. Especially since my browser just autoplayed the deeply comforting Four Tet x Manitoba x Notwist collab from 2002 that I listen to every day. Okay here goes… I’m putting on the band with the epic coconut bacon name who have a song named after Clint Eastwood…. Okay I’m hearing some hip-hop vibes. Methinks this is about to be subverted. Okay it kinda sounds a tiny bit like the Locust, so I might’ve liked this when my carabiner was still on my belt loop instead of just adding bulk to make it harder to lose my keys.. But the band name is still very “heil seitan.”
Men I Trust “Ring of Past”
Jos: One thing I sincerely love about cheugy millennials is that we’ve made it normie to cosplay the ‘70s. You can just be walking around in head-to-toe Big Bud Press, dressed like a toddler from The Brood while sharing fake risograph vector art about mental wellness that is secretly an ad for a dystopian app. And the new Men I Trust vid, which pairs perfectly mediocre disco with clips from a 1979 National Film Board of Canada short called Love on Wheels, is a great song for that. Put it on and water your houseplants or pack orders for your fake-bespoke Shopify dropship business, you adorable little nerd.
Sam: This is the kind of music I only hear when I’m being super lazy at night and put on a playlist called “Sunset Vibes” or “Cruise Control” to finish cleaning up the kitchen and getting all my things ready for the next day. Listening to this around noon is throwing me for a huge loop, like I’ve turned on my phone’s blue light filter and and popped a gummy with some zzzzz branding. Who listens to this on purpose during the daytime. Have a meeting in 10 minutes that is going to feel fucking strange now.
Beck “Thinking About You”
Jos: Both my wife and my brother were heady Beck fans in the pre-download age, ordering CD-Rs of bootlegs and B-sides from eBay. I know “Steve Threw Up.” I’ve held an original print of Golden Feelings in my hand. I’ve been there. And in modern times, it’s easy to overshadow Beck as a wacky Scientologist (which he’s since renounced) or a guy who does the robot and says “purple monkey dishwasher” on top of some fake white-guy boom bap. But Beck really shines when he makes sad sack soft rock, and “Thinking About You” is another perfect example, another wonderfully morose acoustic picker with a Neil Young harmonica (omg I just found this too) and a subtle yet sweeping string section. My thetans are loving this shit.
Sam: The only Beck I like is the honky boom bap but that’s probably because I only listen to this kind of music when I’m going to bed early and don’t want to put on my white noise machine yet (shout out Dream Egg) so I find a playlist called “It’s Night” or “Bed 4 Me” and turn all the lights in the bedroom blue (it’s actually called Aurora) and try to read a full chapter of a book about ghosts in space before I fall asleep anyway and Ashley has to close the curtain.
Skrillex Quest for Fire / Don’t Get Too Close
Jos: I wrote a long-ass Mod Sun review for the newsletter this week because, well, I just felt like I was put on earth to write about something called God Save the Teen. It was fun, but I’m not sure I can start writing longform music reviews all the time. That said, Skrillex’s pair of new albums have me tempted. I first normalized Skrillex for myself when I had a review copy of the Spring Breakers soundtrack in my car. From there, liking Skrillex got me into Korn via their collab. So maybe I listened to it all backwards, but I also hadn’t even really listened to Burial until after Skrillex so I’ve always been okay with brostep. Seems like everyone else is fine with it too, because these two albums are driving the discourse. As they should. Despite a few weaker spots, these two LPs see Sonny retaking his throne at the top of pop culture, and weaving together a guest list that includes Yung Lean, Bladee, PinkPantheress, Chief Keef and I guess the guy from Saosin. It’s a huge body of work and it’s really fun to keep poking around all the bleeps and bloops and wubs.
Sam: Seeing spaceship stage-era Skrillex at one the dozen summer festivals that happened in Toronto around the corner from my old house for, like, two or three summers where promoters were forced to absolutely paper tickets everywhere the day before is one of my fondest Toronto summer mems. As aficionado of the loud and dumb, I appreciated the hyper-maximalist vibe, and yeah, the Korn album just cemented our whole thing. I have yet to listen to these albums because I’m busy with my new carabiner bands, but so far this sounds too small. Fuck me up. Make British people in turtlenecks mad. They can’t be mad enough about this for me to be into it.
blink-155s02e19
The show that we charge money for is blink-155. It’s a new batch of episodes about the band blink-182, using the same format as our original podcast as we look at their influence one song at a time. Only trouble is, they’ve only released one song in the last half-year or so. So yes, we’re still talking about “Edging.” This time, we’re looking at the song through the lens of Smule.