The funniest thing about Sam and I’s working relationship is that if he, like any reasonable human being, takes the slow route or misses a deadline or doesn’t fill in a specific blurb, I will always swoop in an find a way to make it my own like the human brain infection I am. For example, the opening paragraph of our newsletter, which no longer has anything to promote but itself, is now a space for me to tell you about how I bought the weird Nikes that look like they were burnt in a volcano. The backstory of them is that they are three items tied together with string so that they can be deconstructed in some bullshit theoretical green initiative. But I’m just obsessed with them because they are sooo weird looking and also the comfiest shoes I’ve ever worn. And everyone hates them. They’re perfect.
Here’s some stuff we’ve been walking around with this week.
No Pressure “Say What You Mean”
Sam: There’s this Apple Music playlist called like “Rise and Grind” that is all fast pop-punk that I almost love but it all kind of sucks. No Pressure are a “Rise and Grind”-ready band that is actually good, which seemed very cool to me until I realized one of the guys is in a much more popular band that I think is probably really bad and annoying (never listened to them, hate the name too much). Since then I feel like they’ve increasingly strayed from the blink-worship that I was drawn to in the first place, edging more into All Time Low-ish territory. This feels like another step in the wrong direction, but I will keep listening because I desperately want to enjoy a new band that sounds like this. Sounds stupid but the heart wants what the heart wants.
Jos: The problem with being middle-aged men who have refined taste as well as an affinity for pop-punk aesthetics is that we occupy such a tiny niche in the universe. Yes, I think “Cacophony” and “Strings” are perfect songs. No, I do not think No Pressure “slaps” and “captures the energy” of early blink or whatever. People are always trying to recommend me this band, or the three-letter dog band, as examples of torch-bearers for pop-punk of higher quality. But this just sounds like the compilation tracks I skipped in 2002. We need someone to make some extremely pretentious, lo-fi, difficult pop-punk. I’m working on it.
Lit “My Own Worst Anti-Hero”
Sam: Apparently this is a mashup that has been blowing up the ‘Tok so Lit just went ahead and recorded their own version to… trick the algorithm? Prove that they’re down? Coast off some newfound social media relevance? I genuinely can’t tell if I think it’s sick or profoundly embarrassing. I guess that means it’s sick. It’s on my running playlist now, the only true measure of musical success in my life anymore.
Jos: I went and looked at the TikTok to see what the deal was with this shit, and it’s crazy how this guy still kinda looks like he’s trapped in a ‘50s themed alt rock video from 1997. I can’t even remember what this Taylor Swift song sounds like, and this definitely feels like we’re reaching some kind of end of the bog roll of remembering the ‘90s, but IDK. If I have to experience people doing this shit, I guess I’m glad you put the Lit one in here. Because I’m pretty sure Pinegrove also did some TikTok pandering this week too, and I really don’t want to hear them for the first time.
Steve Marino “Got You (In My World Now)”
Jos: Steve Marino is a touring member of bands like Bugg and Angel Du$t, so you know he’s been around some hardcore hypebeasts in his time. But I know his name because he exists in the It’s a Beautiful Day in the Gulch realm, and I even read his first name using Alex’s voice in my mind. Normal names like Steve somehow take on an Americana significance in the Gulch-verse. Anyway, his new album Too Late to Start Again is coming out on Pop Wig next month, and at first glance it almost seems like more of the classic hardcore hypebeast late career power-pop turn, but something about this song not as easily calculated as that. It reminds me of hanging out with power-pop guru Chris Dadge and hearing all of these incredible earworms from pawn shop CDs with the worst art you’ve ever seen. This song sounds like it would play perfect on a 12-string acoustic guitar, and I don’t think the same could be said of a lot of Steve’s poppy contemporaries.
Sam: I write my blurbs first and I messaged Josiah after finishing to say that I am clearly in a “dark zone” because I just picked songs that I think I hate to shit on. This isn’t me. I’m having a long week. I’m sorry No Pressure, I’m sorry Lit. This song made me a little bit less mad and that means I’m not going to get cancer I think.
PinkPantheress “Angel”
Jos: Look I try to act like I’m above it all, but who am I kidding. I hit the Vulture paywall every month. I watch I Think You Should Leave and The Other Two. I love Starbies and Sweetgreen and the Ssense sale section. I’m a nasty little millennial content piggy just like the rest of them. So yeah, sorry, but I too am excited about the Barbie movie. I can’t lie. I read the Ryan Gosling GQ interview and thought it was delightful. I ship the hell out of Baumbach and Gerwig, even if they’re officially overrated. And now it’s looking like the soundtrack is going to be a wonderful journey through post-PC Music contemporary pop. This PinkPantheress ballad is an absolute treat! The violins? The weird growling barks? (Look, I’m even writing like Sam now!) It’s gonna sound so good when I’m sitting through the credits, feeling frustrated with myself for falling for the hype and wishing I had waited for the torrent.
Sam: Wow with open-hearted Josiah logging on I guess I need to become an even more positive exaggeration of myself? Is that possible? I can try? This song: rocks. The movie looks: sick. I’m probably not going to see it in: theatres. I’m just too lazy these days.
The Cure, Budweiser Stage, Toronto, 06/14
A few months ago I got a message from my brother-in-law asking if I wanted to go to the Cure, and before I even read it he had copped four lawn tickets (summer’s greatest invention).
The show was incredible — the pals, the people watching, the performance of “Plainsong” into “Disintegration” at the end of the (first) set that left me levitating. A cool band that I’m glad I got to see in my lifetime.
Nickelback, Centre Bell, Montreal, 06/14
Jos: How can anything ever be explained? My life makes absolutely no sense and too much sense simultaneously. I had completely forgotten that I entered a Nickelback concert ticket contest on Twitter, until I won the contest. The guy from “Made Ln Canada” (spelled with an L) told me on the phone that he chose me because he saw my Twitter banner photo and could tell I was a real Nickelback fan. Check it out for a fun surprise.
When I was first hanging out with Sara, I have a distinct memory of the first time she really deeply spoke to me. We were getting late-night Denny’s with group from uni in 2004, and a Good Charlotte song came on the tinny speaker. “I like this song, but ironically,” I told her, still hoping to make a good first impression. My hair was still blonde from dying it, also “ironically,” to attend Simple Plan and Gob at the Croatian Cultural Centre the week before. Sara called bullshit, telling me you either like something or you don’t. It’s something I 100% agree with now, but it blew my mind back then at 18.
I was thinking about this all night when I dragged Sara to be my plus-one to Nickelback. To get to the train, we had to walk through the crowd lined up outside the Protomartyr show at the Fairmount Theatre, which was a very funny contrast. Oh how I wish we had ran into someone we knew and could tell them where we were going.
BTW, I saw a guy in the crowd wearing the same CBGB’s shirt from Target.
The same day that Bell laid off 1,300 people, we showed up at the Bell Centre only to learn that our comp seats were, in fact, in the third row on the floor, right before general admission. Finding our spot, I realized that these were probably the best concert seats I’ve ever had in my life.
To be clear, it was also one of the best rock concerts I’ve ever been to in my life. I mean, even the nasty butt rock songs about fucking sound absolutely incredible in a pyro-filled arena, but the radio hits, all of which have aged incredibly well despite how bad or good they ever may have seemed, were just sincerely 100% excellent. And it helps that Nickelback have a genuinely great stage presence — they’re funny, charming and even self-effacing without seeming cloyingly self-aware — and, more shockingly, they play all of the music live. It’s weird how alarming it is to see a rock band without backing tracks. Even when a song had piano, there’d be a guy playing a real piano. Authentic warm rock vibes. (No wonder they had a shirt with vinyls on it.)
Sure, there were things that were funny. The graphics at the start weren’t rendered properly, so the band was introduced with a choppy video that still had animation notes on the screen. Chad kept doing shots and saying “cheers” in the most disgusting voice. And, in perhaps the most bizarre and maybe ironic (in the traditional sense) moment was when they straight up played blink-182’s “All the Small Things.”
Still, I found myself laughing with the band 10x more than I was ever laughing at them. And it complimented Sara’s early Good Charlotte wisdom with another piece of wisdom from earlier in my life: growing up, my mom would say, “There’s a little bit of truth to every joke.” That nugget took on a deeper meaning in attending the Nickelback concert in June of 2023. I started liking Nickelback as a joke when I was sick of the jokes making fun of them, but then I just stood there for 2 hours in the third row, hooting and hollering and filming nonstop, and really loving every minute of it. Irony is just inherent truth we haven’t admitted to ourselves yet.