Forcing myself to start the newsletter this week feels a lot like forcing myself to get started on my taxes. But I actually finished those last night, and I’ve got some even more complicated feelings to unpack in here. Before we get started, I want to share some talking points that I could blab for hours about:
Coachella was really funny. Not only was it fun to watch awful newfangled buzz artist “2hollis” perform from the comfort of my couch (and be reminded that he’s a clout nepo baby, his dad having played in Tortoise and his mom having worked for Biz3 publicity. Thanks for all the emails, Kathryn….) but I also found the backlash against Green Day headlining over Charli XCX to be downright delicious. Everyone was acting like Green Day saved both rock ‘n’ roll and activism because they did a Darius-style lyric change on one of their songs (I believe it was “Do you have the time / To free Palestine?”) and then they got so upset about Charli’s disrespectful sash. It was so fun to go online. Christian put it best (Ivan had a great tweet about it too but they already posted that on Stereogum where someone accused him of “putred misogyny” [sic] in the comment section):
I went to get my winter tires switched out with my regular ones at the dealership, which is on a highway outside of Montreal, surrounded by nothing. It was an incredibly busy day of work, so I dropped it off super early (8:30 a.m., I know —literally no one is up at that hour) and the guy at the front desk told me it would probably take about 90 minutes. I took their free shuttle up the highway to a Starbucks, where I tried to work while listening to that one stool scrape sound you only hear in a Starbucks. Two hours later I went back and he told me that the 90 minutes was only if I had waited in the lobby, but because I left they focused on other cars, so it would be another two hours from then. Then two hours later he told me they found another thing they had to fix, which would be at least another two hours. So long story short I basically spent a full day noodling in Figma and Notion from an awkwardly located chair, the only one with a plug, in the front entrance of the Laval Chevrolet dealership. My view:
I thought I might never escape the Chevy dealership, but by the time I finally got home there was about 1 hour to eat before I walked over to catch Mount Eerie at the Fairmount Theatre. It was lovely to see Phil, who is just so funny, and the sold-out show was pretty great too. It’s interesting to see who has discovered Mount Eerie in the last few years. I was distracted by normies dancing around and singing along as if they were listening to Pup. This group in front of us seemed like they were watching Where’s Fluffy? in Nick and Norah, and they were obsessed with their hair. A really tall boy, much to the chagrin of the sensitive Elverum heads behind him, kept nervously tussling his hair as he swayed back and forth, ensuring he was in everyone’s line of sight at all times. And at one point his girlfriend even threw her long hair into a ponytail during a spoken word bit about decolonization and getting off our phones, and the action caused her Apple Watch to activate a full-brightness bright circular orb in my face. It was a really interesting vibe. I also bought some coffee at the merch table.
I’m realizing this is turning into a “how I spent one week as a 39-year-old freaking hipster” TikTok so let’s talk about what we’re listening to instead.
MattyBRaps “Serenity”
Jos: I’m gonna keep it going because I’ve already written my damn life story in here. As we all know, I used to be very obsessed with MattyBRaps, particularly his cover of Magic’s “Rude,” to the point where I even ordered an official MattyBRaps longsleeve online. So I’ve obviously been following him on all socials for a good part of a decade. And he’s grown up significantly, now dressing like a fuck boi but saving his fucks for marriage, as evidenced in the way-better-than-it-should-be new single “Serenity.” “Take away them girls if they not tryna be my wife,” he sings on this beautiful post-Bieber singy rap song. For some reason it’s not on YouTube outside of a weird Russian rip and this hour-long loop, but that’s okay. You should listen to it for an hour.
Sam: Having only experienced MattyBRaps via Josiah’s lifelong enthusiasm for his internet presence, this is my first exposure to his music. While I appreciate that it probably didn’t sound this way ten years ago, what a funny surprise. Should be called MattyBSings. I’m on my second play through this loop and it’s starting to sound good to me so I’m moving on before I’m following Josiah down the merch path.
caroline “Tell me I never knew that” (ft. Caroline Polachek)
Jos: I’m not proud to admit it but I got into this band through Spotify’s algo. They’re really funny — they play mostly generic “music collective” indie rock straight outta 2009, but they do have enough interesting ideas and weird time signatures to keep it really interesting. They released this song called “Total euphoria” earlier this year that is like, just a boring indie song with a weird time signature, but in the best way. And they always have gang vocals and stuff. Retvrn to tasteful car commercial indie, like one that’s shot in Reykjavik or something.
Sam: Sick yes I love it. I can see that I added this band’s 2022 album to my Apple Music library at some point but clearly never listened to it more than once – curse of streaming – but this is way better than it was I am sure. Let me cruise the empty highways in my fuel efficient (electric) new vehicle. Wow that’s great API financing or whatever it is? Low ADR loans? Sign me up.
Matthew Good ft. Saukrates “Triage”
Sam: I think we avoided discussing this on the pod (somehow?) but a defining feature of my life is a genuine, enduring affection for the music of Matthew Good, a man you have only heard of if you’re from Canada. Having recently been soft-cancelled and dropped by his label, he has apparently been freed to produce soft Whitey Ford-style rap-rock that does not really rock. This is mostly just bad music made by a late career artist unmoored from culture, but it’s made so much funnier by the video, which appears to have been made with an early beta version of ChatGPT. A quick search to see if anyone had written about this song elsewhere (no) quickly turned up the Matthew Good subreddit, where a user who very clearly is Matthew Good is really mad at everyone for specifically pointing out the janky AI.
First of all, this took a guy two weeks? But most important, I’m loving the phrase “you could never afford the content.” And now you can love it, too.
Jos: This is when I start to realize we really are a dying breed. Like, we could easily talk about this for 2 hours tops. And despite the numbers, I’m also convinced we’re the only two people who have even listened to this. And I haven’t even listened yet. Okay clicking through now. Yup that’s AI. This really does have some hard-hitting boom bap to it. I would fucking love to hear Classified on this track. Oh Saukrates is on here, just as good. Wait what the fuck are these vocals lmfao. This sounds like AI Macy Gray. My favourite detail is that the video was uploaded as “Triage Final.”
Yumiko Morioka & Takashi Kokubo “Birds Of Borneo”
Sam: As indicated by the unreliable timing and quiet tension of the newsletter, I’m not doing an amazing job of balancing all my interests and responsibilities these days. But the one thing that was working for me for a minute was getting up at 4am like some kind of right wing podcaster. It’s quiet, I can get so much done before my beautiful son rises with a devil’s screech, and the light slowly coming back to the world is a lovely sight to behold. You know what you can’t listen to while that’s happening? “Triage” by Matthew Good featuring Sauktrates. Oh man I didn’t even explain Saukrates, did I? Maybe Josiah did. But I have been requiring a different kind of auditory experience for 4am, and Gaiaphilia has been the album that really works to bring me back into the world (and my weeks of backed up emails) in a way that is nice.
Jos: Hell yeah now this is some shit I would share. Gimme that sparse piano and birdsong. I feel like it’s 4 a.m. for me but it’s actually nearly 7 p.m. on Monday because we basically need to hire a project manager if we’re going to make this work. One quiet blessing, as I meditate to this song, is that the newsletter is late enough in the week that it just keeps getting longer and longer and longer. Life really is beautiful.
mgk “Empty Out Your Pockets (Juice WRLD) x Boulevard of Broken Dreams (Green Day)”
Jos: Oh you thought we were gonna end without some mgk? Bitch?? Our boy Kellz has officially finished his album, plus he’s on Lil Wayne’s new album (alongside Bono) so now he’s gonna start doing funny lil cover vids. I don’t know, I need help — am I wrong or is this just unbelievably sick? And you can’t answer until you’ve watched the entire video because something truly magnificent happens in the last 30 seconds.
Sam: The baby is waking up and I really can’t abandon this newsletter or I know I’ll never finish it, but I’m also not going to listen to this song. Thankfully I have a really important story to share – we met a baby yesterday named Colton. And I was so excited because I convinced, based on context clues, that this kid was named after mgk. I told Ashley. I even started to write about here, so grateful I had been teed up so easily. And I just double checked because something didn’t feel right. That’s not mgk’s name. Have I ever listened to a thing Josiah has said.