The courage to name this week’s newsletter “sometimes racism is true”

This week from Sam and Josiah

There’s a lot of stuff drama going down in just about every area we cover right now: the indie rock clout-chaser community, the orgcore normie community, the Mark Hoppus Discord community, the neoliberal SXSW buzzband community, etc. It’s all so much that it really makes you think, perhaps the Lord was sparing us from being forced to uncensoredly talk about these things into blue Yetis, adding more useless babble that ultimately detracts from the ongoing genocide that is unfolding in Palestine. 

Anyway, here’s what we’re listening to this week.

Yard Act “Fizzy Fish”

Sam: Pulled my phone out at lunch (not a lunch) this week with a friend who saw I had clearly been listening to Cake earlier and was informed of a band that is “the new Cake.” Yard Act wishes they were Cake - don’t we all - but mostly they seem to wish they were the Streets? Or Sleaford Mods? Beginning to wonder if it’s racist to say any white British man talking is the same as every other white British man talking, but sometimes racism is true. I can’t tell if I’m going to keep listening to this album all year or never think about it again but there will be no inbetween. Good band name!

Jos: Sam is the one who chooses which quote from the newsletter is the headline, and because he doesn’t believe in himself he rarely picks one of his own. Will he have the courage to name this week’s newsletter “sometimes racism is true”? That’s the kinda thing we said on the pod all the time, but looks absolutely evil in writing. Anyway, I think there’s another band with a Twitter presence and a management team who is the new DIY Cake, and they’re so unfathomably bad, it makes me so depressed. This isn’t unfathomably bad, it’s just pretty boring and kinda embarrassing to be listening to out loud.

Gonemage “Crawlspace”

Sam: Something I didn’t realize I was missing from most of what passes for “nu metal revival:” shitty sounds. Everything is so BIG and DEEP now. But so much of the real first wave sounded like CRAP. It was cool and new but it was also rough and tinny, probably because you were listening to it on cheap earbuds and the bass was only a clicking sound anyway. Gonemage bring the requisite fresh inputs that 2024 nu metal requires (black metal vocals! chiptune stuff!) but more than anything what I am drawn to here is the PURE UNCUT first album, non-headliner, still stuck in Jacksonville energy of it all. A very sick record.

Jos: IDK how Sam does it but for every really boring band that just sounds like the Smith & Westerns I stumble across every week, he’s always finding some nasty family computer-destroying outsider music that has the worst yet best art work in a way that looks both intentional and unintentional. It feels like it’s too late for people to still be doing nu-metal revival, as it also feels too late to be doing post-punk or clouted up power pop or emo revival or pretty much anything anyone’s doing. But this succeeds because it sounds less ironic and more lived in.

Porter Robinson “Cheerleader”

Jos: Porter Robinson’s Nurture was one of those albums that I loved so much and put on all the time and then immediately felt self-aware and embarrassed to be listening to it in front of other people. I kinda feel that way about this new song too — it’s so painfully earnest and sounds like some kind of Drive-Thru Records dogshit that I’ve never really heard but have known enough context clues to make fun of it. But Porter does it in such an elevated way. The song is an adorable earworm that has hints of hyperpop and Emo Nite, but both are subtle aesthetics that support his songwriting, hooks, and production. It’s just a really cute and elevated pop song.

Sam: We’ve started writing the newsletter a few days early because I kept fucking up on Thursdays but here it is at what passes for late night for me now (10:30pm) and I was hoping I could write this without actually really listening to the song, which Josiah seems to do most of the time, because I’m doing emails on the couch while Ashley watches TV and I don’t want to get up to get my headphones. Instead I’m now playing this quiet enough that I’m hoping she can’t hear it but damn it’s really good. I thought Porter Robinson was like, electronic music with wind sounds. Anamanaguchi much? Sick.

Nia Archives “Unfinished Business”

Jos: I posted a Nia Archives song a couple weeks ago and I’m trying to avoid repeats because the point of this is to try and find new stuff, but this new song is definitely the hit. Nia uses the hyped up d’n’b beats that are definitely going to keep getting more and more normie, but it works sooo good on these hyped up indie pop songs. This song is just an all around hit, and the music video is so sick.  

Sam: Fuck this is so sick. I avoid watching the music videos but this one really is great. “Nia Archives” is such a cool name. I feel like everything I share is “giving the ick” (???) but Josiah’s picks are always the opposite (or just wind).

Shoes Robinson N A T U R E

Jos: I think we’re all in a little bit of a wanker era without the pod. Shoes Robinson, one of the many fantastic wunderkinds who used to submit unspeakably high quality covers of mall punk songs, sometimes multiple times a week, has etched out a little corner for himself as someone who makes stunning punk pop, but he’s just surprised us with N A T U R E, an album of beat-driven instrumentals. It’s not wanker music like the impenetrably pretentious shit I listen to every day, but it’s something much better — a pop-informed collection of instrumentals that touches on Boards of Canada, Four Tet, and Clams Casino. It’s all good but the four-track run from “Margins” through “Schedule” is particularly inspired.

Sam: Josiah recently revisited the “The Fallen Interlude posse cut” and we spent a few minutes on Gchat wondering… how all this happened. Shoes’ musical output is an intrinsic part of the last few years of our lives and hearing him flex like this is so sick. The vibe here reminds me of Ryan Hemsworth’s Alone For the First Time, which is amongst the highest praise I am capable of giving. It’s been a long week and I’m so stoked for it to be Friday night and putting this one and hanging out with the dog on the couch tomorrow is going to be wonderful.