Wake me up when September ends
Sam and Jos.
Y’know, when we ended the pod with our 4-hour-and-17-minute episode “Wake Me Up When September Ends,” I was as curious as the rest of you about what would happen next. The knowledge that we needed to end the pod came from the same dumb-guy instinct that guided everything we did, meaning it wasn’t so much a decision as a passive, going-with-the-flow kind of acceptance. The pod happened, then it didn’t. So I was also wondering if that same passive pod magic meant that, when September ended, we would have been woken up. The truth is, we’re working on a bunch of stuff right now, both together and separately, but we’re still deep in Billie Joe slumber for a bit. I guess there’s no pod magic without the pod. But maybe we’ll find a new kind.
Here’s what we’re thinking about this week.
Behold the Arctopus Interstellar Overtrove
Sam: I’ve been forced to dramatically reduce the amount of weed I consume over the past few weeks which mostly sucks but it means I must actually like this shit. I’m just putting this on and vibing out BONE SOBER like Jhizz over here. I find a lot of (most, all) avant-garde metal to be too “difficult” for my feeble soul to tangle with (Boris is cool, but I never listen) but there’s something so… enchanting about Behold the Arctopus. It reminds me of being young and thinking I liked free jazz (I don’t). Really genuinely fun!
Jos: Man there’s something so hilarious about being someone that used to voraciously consume new music and pay attention to emerging bands and hype and buzz and have an opinion about everything, and now only be connected to anything new because of this newsletter. Whenever I’m poking around for new songs to prepare for the newsletter my inner monologue is like “huh, Spiritual Cramp… now there’s a band I would never willingly listen to, but maybe Sam will put it in” and then instead he makes me listen to something called “Behold the Arctopus.” My brain is tripping over itself trying to come up with a joke about what kind of guy I imagine likes this band… I’m picturing a tattoo parlor inside of a brick-and-mortar steampunk store that specializes in Kickstarter board games? OMG I clicked through and the art definitely looks like a flier that would be in the place I just invented. I definitely respect how annoying this is, but why didn’t Sam just listen to Hella or Don Cab? Why does it have to be so stinky….
Weedian Trip to Arizona
Sam: This is the first time I’ve heard a Weedian comp, but what a sick idea — each Trip to features the sludgiest, doomiest, most stoned sounds from a region (New England), country (Japan), season (Halloween) or state (Arizona here). Just watched an episode of Reservation Dogs with a big Sleep needledrop in it and lusting after some similar tones, but my lust is now satisfied. No vice comes close to weed in terms of the art it inspires in the most literal possible form. Now if only I could smoke some, fucking goddammit why am I doing this to myself…
Jos: Why are you doing this to yourself? Why are you depriving yourself of the one thing that tickles your brain in the most juvenile and slightly naughty way? I’m talking, of course, about letting me giggle in your ear once a week. No but for real, I agree that anyone who is serving a prison sentence for selling weed should be freed. But since capitalism seems to contain a need for the prison industrial complex, they should replace them with anyone who has ever smoked weed. Life sentence. Also I don’t really mind the riffing and production of weed-metal bands but the vocals always sound like shit to me.
Slowdive “kisses”
Jos: Thankfully, I’m not just learning about new music from Sam’s imaginary bong-ripping ass. I also keep hearing about cool stuff from my lovely wife, who seems to be paying a lot more attention than me these days. To be honest, I kinda always felt like I didn’t like shoegaze. It always seemed like some boring “Canada’s music authority” listicle shit, and then the poseur hardcore shoegaze bands all suck so much that I just wrote it off (I understand that many things I enjoy are technically shoegaze, but still). But Sara has been bumping Slowdive for a while, and it feels like they’re one of those senior-citizen indie bands that’s quietly releasing late-career albums in a cool “still got it” way like Teenage Fanclub rather than in a desperate old person way. And their songs always have a nice lil jaunty beat to them. This song “kisses” is so sick and twee, and it’s called “kisses.”
Sam: My first true exposure to shoegaze came in 2003 when I saw Lost in Translation and I went onto the message board I lurked at the time (Secret Arcade unless it was already 20hz by then but probably not Stillepost) and tried to describe the song when Scarlett Johansson is staring longingly out the window and someone was like “I have not seen the movie but that’s got to be My Bloody Valentine.” Bought Loveless and kind of never went any deeper. This is cool tho!
Landon Barker “Friends With Your EX”
Jos: I’m so out of the loop that I didn’t even know about Landon Barker’s lil MGK-core song “Friends With Your EX” until Sara told me about it. No clue what I would do without her. It’s crazy that the 2019 Barker formula is still working for these kinda fake pop-punk songs, the little intro and then the shitty sketch and then the mumbling first verse that builds to a big half-time chorus. It’s also weird that he didn’t get his daddy in the video, even though he’s clearly trying so hard to emulate his tunes and look (and even releasing on his label). Anyway, I love the Barker family.
Sam: This sounds so much like an MGK demo it’s actually depressing me. I hate this. Maybe MGK killed the pod. Then again, I feel like I’m doing the pod just by listening to this, but I’m all alone so it’s proper sad.
Sum 41 “Landmines”
Jos: You know I couldn’t close out the newsie without dropping the new Sum 41 song. I found out about this one because it was shared on social media by my friend Tom. Tom Thacker of the band Gob. Who is also in Sum 41. Anyway, this is a great little pop tune. I know Sum 41 loves to play metal for some reason (metal’s gotta be the worst genre of music, no?) but they’re so good at these plucky power pop tunes. This sounds a little more clever than most of the clout-chasing pop-punk comeback stuff, and it’s for their upcoming last album. Quitting pop-punk is tough, but it’s worth it.
Sam: Tom is cool, this song is good, it’s very cute that the video features people who are maybe only 10 years younger than the band members pretending to be the band members in the halcyon days of their wayward Southern Ontario youth. Those videos WERE legendary. They’d mail them to you!
I need to close out with this picture of oogle Tom Green.