Not even the river wants to go to the sea
2023 Mix 1 [Originally published Jan 23, 2023]
Each week I skim through about 2,000 songs from Spotify's company-curated New Music Friday playlists. Whenever I find 80 minutes worth of music I like, I make a CD-length mix and write a newsletter about it.
It has, as Staind once said, been awhile.
I won't bore you with the details of my writing slump (slumpy!) but suffice it to say I'm back to listening to a cumbersome trashpile of songs each week and pecking out the gems. Instead of doing a monthly mix as I did in my last batch of songs, I'm throwing out an 80-minute mix whenever I get enough songs together in a relatively well-sequenced order. (Yes, I do plan on burning all of these to CD's at the end of the year before tossing them into the bowels of my CD-R graveyard until half of these songs get taken off Spotify.)
They're all here:
Mixes are posted newest to oldest, each mix separated by "Silent Track" by Silent Track off of the album Silent Track. (There's only one mix at press time, with one to follow soonish.)
MIX 1: NOT EVEN THE RIVER WANTS TO GO TO THE SEA
1. Bizarrap & Shakira: Shakira: Bzrap Music Sessions Vol. 53
The first three selections here are probably the only ones you're going to find extensive coverage on. If you are unfamiliar with Argentine producer Bizarrap's previous 52 volumes, many of which have hundreds of millions of Spotify streams, you are in good company with me (though technically I heard one of 'em). Billboard can fill you in on why we are so obsessed:
With her session, Shakira took the notion of the pop diss track into new territory, where kiss-and-tell comes with names, details and punishment all bundled into one delicious package that can be (and has been) dissected, reproduced and parodied in thousands of ways on social media.
OK then!
2. Shania Twain: Giddy Up!
Less ink spilled about this Shania Twain song than her comeback ballad, as far as I can tell, though it was "Giddy Up!" that immediately had me searching for whether my hazy memory of Shania Twain losing her singing voice was true. (It was true -- ongoing complications of Lyme disease in 2003 affected her voice until she had throat surgery in 2021.) The song brings to mind Brian Wilson's rerecording of SMiLE in 2004 with decent Beach Boy impersonators the Wondermints -- Shania Twain has the same distance from her former voice that adds a hint of contextual gravity to something that is otherwise goofy.
3. NewJeans: OMG
Haven't kept up with K-pop diligently in many years, but everything I've heard from NewJeans, a new group from 2022, has sounded great, especially their debut, "Attention." When I first started listening to K-pop ten years ago I saw it as the heir to the promise of the millennial teenpop boom in America, but eventually it started to feel more like a closed-circuit fan experience that required me to follow along at a level of dedication I didn't have. (It didn't help that what showed up in the US charts was often abysmal.) But I heard that initial rush again in "Attention" and there's a hint of it in the new single, too.
4. Popstar Benny f. Tony Shhnow: All the Girls <3
Last time I wrote for this thing I was obsessed with how miraculously weird "Old Town Road" was. "Miraculously weird" is now rap's house style, and I am here for it. Love rappers "desperately lobbing out syllables like they're hoping to get them all in before the buzzer" (as I said on Twitter), love the wooziness that has lingered from the brief trend for hypertrap that doesn't seem to have inspired a ton of strong followers after Playboi Carti (whose late 2020 album was one of my favorites), love how assertively rap has responded to the cryogenic heart rate of the modal rap era, practically doubling the BPM. By 2023 everyone seems to have decided that music needs to be faster, and I agree with the sped-up Tiktok teens here even though, as it so often happens, this teen trend can be traced back to a couple of shadowy Scandinavians.
5. Angel Dior: A I O [2022]
Speaking of faster, one genre I've followed for the past few years is dembow, which is well represented in Spotify playlists. I've liked a few dembow tracks here and there, but generally I found they were too long, sounded a little one-note, and ran out of steam well before their runtime. Angel Dior's "A I O" from September of last year (didn't hear it until January) is probably the single best dembow track I've heard from Spotify, though -- wrote to a friend: "Angel Dior has the Looney Tunes pyrotechnical chops not to flag in the second half -- never looks down after running off the cliff and makes it safely to the other side."
6. Noite & Dia f. DJ Aka-m: Unica
Noite & Dia is Angolan and comes out of the kuduro music scene, where she had at least one big hit, "Kibexa," twenty years ago. "Unica" is good; "Kibexa" is magnificent.
7. Nino Vibes & Josue No Beatz: Zequinha Guerra Terrivel
No such background research success for this one. Hope it's nothing odious; it appears to have an illustration of child soldiers on the cover. Fingers crossed!
8. MC MENOR SJ, DJ ESCOBAR, & DJ PESADELO: Vida de Artista
The most exciting music to follow for about two years now has been Brazilian funk, comprising lots of subgenres whose distinctions I have trouble keeping straight. The gist is that much of this music is abrasive and exhilarating, making you dance to sounds that could as easily be used as torture devices without defusing their effectiveness as torture devices. Nothing as tough as that here, with a simple horn and tuba figure giving lots of space to the annoying clicks being used as the sole percussion. But there's a lot of a cappella space, too, as funk can even find the compelling/annoying sounds in the negative space.
9. GUNNER, Younggu, & Diamond MQT: พะโล้ป่า
Another promising area I've followed a bit is Thai rap. The Thai music I get from Spotify still doesn't have as much rap as I'd like to hear from it, but starting with a popular rap competition show The Rapper and its breakout star MILLI -- seen here giving a technically impressive and narratively disturbing performance on the show -- I did start to notice the scrappy and ebullient rap starting to break into the mainstream there.
10. Lvbel C5: DACIA
No idea what's happening in Turkish music, but have found a few songs so far this year that have turned my head in ways I don't usually associate with the New Music playlists curated for Turkey. This one's a decent reggaeton track, though haven't gleaned much background from Google.
11. Sauce Walka: First Testament
Reminds me of the sort of long-form realist anthems that helped launch Meek Mill and Tee Grizzley.
12. Charif Megarbane: Commencer La-Bas
Here Spotify's providing a useful archival function, as I now know there are several volumes of Habibi Funk rereleases of North African and Middle Eastern funk music from the 70s, along with their releases of newer music. This one's a contemporary effort to recreate some of those sounds by Beirut-based producer Charif Megarbane.
13. Rasmus Thall: Tresko
Speaking of archival functions, this one sure sounds like nerdy dance music from 10 years ago, from a Norwegian who missed out on Eurovision after losing in the semi-finals. Would sound good on a mix after "Turtle Pizza Cadillac (Yam Who? Rework)."
14. The Emilio & Vagif Nagiev: Azerbaijan
A lightly EDM'd update of a Soviet-era paean to Azerbaijan by Muslim Magomayev. I found the earnest baritone in the remix endearing, but there's a lot more personality in the original.
15. Mido Belhabib: 3lah 3lah (علاه علاه) [2022]
The Middle East and Maghreb Spotify lists I use have also had more interesting finds in them than previous years. This one's Maghreb, features the trademark(?) Autotune bath that still sounds great in this context.
16. DJ Snake f. Wade & Nooran Sisters: Guddi Riddim
Another DJ Snake track in a long line where I have to try to remember that "Turn Up for What" was not his whole deal (though listening to this one again...wasn't it, though?). Not sure how "active" the featured credits from the vocalists here or if it's a sample flip -- the Nooran Sisters are classically-trained Sufi artists whose biggest pop success was "Tung Tung" in 2012. But they're really the whole game here, with Snake's tepid laser show at least having the decency to stay out of the way. Hope they got/get/stay paid!
17. Scooter: Waste Your Youth
Scooter is back! As they always are! Using only exclamation points! This must still be the place! To attack with the force of the bass!
18. Paramore: C'est Comme Ça
Assumed this was from the Fresh Finds A&R scout factory playlist where I will occasionally find a young bizzer on the verge of breaking through to pop success, was surprised to see upon my deeper dive into the songs I'd pulled that this charming wannabe bandwagoning on Wet Leg indie yuks was Paramore. Sounds like it could have been on the second CSS album from 2008 -- my highest compliment.
19. Rian Treanor & Ocen James: Bunga Bule [2022]
Noises! Good ones!
20. Kate NV: oni (they) [2022]
Russian artist Kate NV's "Plans" was one of my favorite songs from 2020 but nothing else from the album compared. Glad to be excited for their next one, too. My route to this one was not through either of the Russian Spotify playlists I had been following, both of which appear to have vanished.
21. Asian Glow: Dorothee Thines
South Korean, billed as emo but tends more toward post-rock, with little hints of hyperpop peeking through in places. Which means it mixes the music I would have nodded politely at 20 years ago with the music I nod politely at today.
22. Fievel Is Glauque: Clues Not to Read [2022]
Jazzy one that Pitchfork editorial sez "alluring jazz fusion songs in miniature" and I say not miniature enough at 4:30 with multiple guitar solos, but sounds good in the cool-down phase of the mix and reminds me of a Twitter music game Arron Wright is running this month based on Clue (he's British, so the tag is #cluedopop). Would have loved to participate and share this on day one ("clue") but alas I was suspiciously absent when it began, too busy attending to something important with my spanner in the billiard room.
23. Sunomono & Pedro Milman: Enter Sandman [2022]
Jazz quartet covers the Metallica tune and the piano sounds about as cool as it's going to get on this one. I aspire to eventually playing something like this in a hotel lobby.
24. Annett Louisan: Die mittleren Jahre
German chanteuse sounds like Amy Diamond but is in fact singing a bittersweet ode to the inertial rut of middle age:
“People used to only turn forty
and saved themselves the therapy
These are the middle years now
Not even the river wants to go to the sea”
Preach, Annett. But at least I'm writing again!
Until next time!
—Dave Moore (the other one)
Title translated from Annett Louisan’s “Die mittleren Jahre”: “Das sind jetzt die mittleren Jahre / Nicht mal der Fluss will zum Meer”