Why are we still doing this? We aren’t even on the computer at the same time as each other anymore. When we DM one another, it takes like hours for the other to see it and reply. We may as well be sending emails. Are we about to move on from having a Gchat relationship to a Gmail relationship? The only thing keeping us together is seemingly Mark Hoppus’s new book, something I truly couldn’t care less about, but also something that continually has people messaging both of us at once to talk about it. We really did make blink-182 our whole thing, eh? Well, let’s not talk about that. But let’s talk about MUSIC.
Here’s what we’re listening to this week.
Turnstile “Never Enough”
Jos: I’m gonna go first because I had to create the new Google Doc. I like to think I’m generally fairly chill about stuff (I mean not really at all but just go with it for this rhetorical device) but I absolutely feel mugged off when I have to do things like create a duplicate of a document and rename it, or scroll up in a chat to find relevant info, or update the status of something in some kind of work tracker. It makes me feel like I’m being punished so hard. And speaking of fake work email jobs, I had an awful Gen X boss at my last job who, in addition to being a bit of a snake, would always ask me if I had heard of this band called Turnstile that he read about in the New York Times. Trying to make small talk at work in a hyper corporate environment about a hardcore band is the exact kind of mortifying that I love to engage in when I have an audience, but it feels so brutal if I’m doing it in the privacy of a work call. Anyway this new Turnstile song is, despite all of my baggage, really good, and I can’t hate. I shared it on Slack at my new job, and only one person reacted. So they’ve even beaten the “coworker music” allegations.
Sam: I logged off Twitter the day my son was born but I didn’t develop a better relationship with my phone, myself, or my child. I just go on Reddit now. Mostly I read about husbands who are worse than me on r/beyondthebump/ but sometimes I am served up some post from r/hardcore where people are mad that women are in bands. Seemingly the only thing that makes them angrier than women is Turnstile (who also have a woman in the band now! - Jos). But how could you be mad at these lush tones. Josiah’s right, this is good. I’m lapping this up just like those waves. Lap lap.
Arcade Fire “Year of the Snake”
Jos: Even though my freaking millennial heart couldn’t resist the allure of “Wake Up,” particularly in Spike Jonze’s Where the Wild Things Are (I’m so old and cringe and deserve to be taken out back and shot), I’ve still always hated Arcade Fire. When Funeral came out I remember SUVs driving around Robson Street blaring that shit, and as a station wagon-driving early Modest Mouse fan I felt like all the normies were encroaching on my world. For some reason I was really mad about SUVs back then. Nowadays most cars are like SUV-sized but look like sedans. Speaking of cars, this video has “Win” and “Regine” turning a shitty old minivan into a mortifyingly cringe art car. That’s why I included this. Post-allegations, Arcade Fire are finally just like, floundering with no music video budget, making the most horrible “why be normal” ass sad clown music. It’s very humbling to watch.
Sam: New Orleans is so cool but you shouldn’t be allowed to move there. Or it should be like the Toronto islands where you just have to join a 100 year list to eventually enter a lottery to live there, so people like this aren’t tempted to become exactly this. I’m mostly lettin this play in another window but every time I go back it’s worse. The difference between Cajun and Quebecois culture has never been more clear.
Time X Heist The Unforgiving Minute EP
Jos: Yesterday, I happened upon a tweet sharing this 2004 EP by a Japanese amazingcore band called Masterpeace, and it was so perfectly janky yet generic that I listened to bad hardcore all day. It seems like everyone’s making either aesthetically racist (or even just outright racist) beatdown music these days, but like bad hardcore lyrics themselves I truly became a believer in new youth crew again. My friend Christian told me there are only a couple bands keeping this style alive, and one of them is Time X Heist. This music is perfect to me: a truly wimpy, tepid singing voice, a Bouncing Souls bass tone, melodic guitars that feel like candy, generic lyrics and awkward rhymes. This is the faith that never fades.
Sam: Sick. You shouldn’t be able to make a bass sound any other way. Actually no, you should be able to make the string super loose and just hit them like Fieldy but that’s it. When he’s not on tour with the band, do the people who fill in have to play the same way? I mean I guess they have no choice but it’s just such a funny thing to have to do an impression of.
Mod Sun “Morning Breaks” (video)
Jos: I’m just gonna keep putting shit in here. Sam you should add your stuff too if you have it but I can go on forever. The real reason we gotta keep doing this is I spend my week checking out music more than ever before and dreaming up lil blurbs in my subconscious. The newsletter, much like the pods and everything else we’ve done, has infected my brain. I already shared this song, and I really don’t want to criticize Mod Sun. I have this unrealistic belief that one day I’m going to buy a verse from him to put on a SILLY song. But I don’t really fuck with this video and its pro-troop message (I don’t have Sam’s “all troops are good” believe — which, by the way, I’d love to relitigate in the light of current geopolitics). But the thing is, I saw in the credits that the guy playing a soldier is named RodthePlanter, and I assumed he was a Soundcloud rapper but I found his website and he’s straight up a pseudo cult leader, which just adds so much wonderful texture to both the video and Mod Sun lore in general:
Sam: Do you think Mod Sun knows who Josiah is? I kind of think he does. Like maybe not by name, but if you gave him two or three points of reference he’d be like “oh yeah that guy.” What I could not say with confidence is where it would go from there. I assume he’d love him, just like we all do, but maybe he worries that his affection is tinged with irony? We know it’s not. So Mod, if you’re reading this – he means it. He cares.
Smoking Popes “Fox River Dream”
Sam: I really only know this band from the song on the Clueless soundtrack, but this new album is just so good that I had to crank my head to finally address this massive blindspot in my midwesty, Festy enthusiasms. In doing so I also discovered that this guy is super Christian now… so maybe you like, Josiah???
Jos: I’ve always thought of this band as being for older people but I kicked through and almost lost my mind at how Gen. X this art is. Like, this is definitely some shit that’s on the broken spinny magnet stand in a local ‘90s tinged gift shop that should be out of business by now but the owner is old enough that their parents have died of natural causes and funded them to keep trying to sell oven mitts that say “Bitches who cook” in typewriter font for the rest of their lives. I do really like how this guy has a chill Semisonic singing style. But I don’t need the Jeff Goldblum name drop. That said, fix the artwork and I’m probably loving this shit.
Sleigh Bells “Bunky Pop”
Sam: Ignored this band when they first were a thing but after seeing them at an extremely mismatched SXSW show with Nas many years after their hip heyday I realized… they are sick, and I like them. This new album is a mixed bag, but what are you looking for in a new Sleigh Bells album? You’re old now! This song is soooooooo good. But apparently it’s about a dog that died? This life. Such complexities. Going to hug my dog now.
Jos: It’s really funny that they’re not gonna do music at SXSW anymore. It’s just gonna be straight up overt CIA propaganda. Since starting the newsletter this morning I went to get a sandwich at the expensive sandwich place across the street and they were playing Matt and Kim. And then I saw the Mae Shi reunited, and it’s like 6 middle-aged men posing in hypercolor bomber jackets. I’ve seen a lot of mutuals that I wished I had muted but it’s too many clicks talking about how this album rocks ass or whatever. And I kinda liked this band when I first heard them like, what 45 years ago? Anyway this fucking sucks. I hate it. It’s completely atonal and infantilizing and annoying and just all around bad. And that’s music for ya, baby!
