Catastrophic blues
2023 Mix 20: New Taylor Swift and Keke Palmer, ancient PJ Harvey, and the Polish Christian kid-pop group plaguing everyone's drive to swim class
Each week I skim through about 2,000 songs mostly 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.
Tough week for Spotify gleaning—the initial shortlist of songs was a bit of a dog’s breakfast. So I wound up pulling in a lot from my albums list and a few other places to make it work, employing both hooks (Taylor Swift bonus track) and crooks (a flagrantly ancient PJ Harvey tune in wide release since 2007).
Speaking of Taylor Swift — everyone is speaking of Taylor Swift in my household right now, as my kids have finally discovered my CD cache and are holed up in a bedroom with a pile of jewel cases and liner notes. They caught the bug (Swiftfluenza?) overhearing a 48-hour marathon of Swift songs on a local radio station, back when she played Philly for her ERAS tour. I find the “eras” concept odd, since by my count she has two eras: the one before she became a hermetically sealed universe unto herself and the one after she did that. Like Weezer! (The metaphor’s not perfect — Speak Now as Green Album? Nah. But Red might be Maladroit!)
Mix 1 // Mix 2 // Mix 3 // Mix 4 // Mix 5 // Mix 6 // Mix 7 // Mix 8 // Mix 9 // Mix 10 // Mix 11 // Mix 12 // Mix 13 // Mix 14 // Mix 15 // Mix 16 // Mix 17 // Mix 18 // Mix 19
MIX 20: CATASTROPHIC BLUES
I appear to be trapped in some kind of uncanny valley of taste with CMAT, whose songwriting rings bells that should be mine (but aren’t), and whose lyrics on the page suggest an acid wit that I should respond to (but don’t). Dig the opening flock of bright green birds on the roof of the Tesco, like David Berman’s bird nesting in a Texaco sign. But the words plop out in a mush of mannerisms and it took a hokey Warren Zevon piano riff to overcome my skepticism and accept this thing as a banger.
2. Taylor Swift: Hits Different
Is Taylor Swift a masochist when it comes to album sequencing and roll-outs? Does she have even worse taste than I imagine her to have? Or is it a kind of sick mind game she’s playing with us — like how she got Lana Del Rey to appear on one of her many “Lana Del Rey songs” only to shove LDR so far into the background that she then re-released the song with the title “FEATURING MORE LANA DEL REY”? After several albums sequenced so poorly I didn’t even bother to buy them, much to the chagrin of my now-completist children, she has now released all of the good songs off of Midnights in a hodgepodge of bonus content. This song — a very good Taylor Swift song! — was, until this week, available only on (deep breath) the Midnights Lavender Edition Vinyl Open Parentheses Target Exclusive Close Parentheses.
Keke Palmer’s first full-length in 16 years — two years older than she was when she made the first one! — was released as a “visual album” on the star’s own streaming platform KeyTV without much fanfare last month. I noticed it at the time but didn’t dig for a representative track until I came up short on songs this week. This one sounds like it could have just as easily been on that 2007 album — which you should really listen to if you’ve never heard it. I have devoted my life to making sure everyone I know listens to one song off of it in particular.
4. Central Cee x Dave: Sprinter
Been looking for a chance to include Central Cee on a mix this year, and this collaboration with Dave (the other one?) is as good an excuse as any. They sound like they’re cracking each other up.
5. PJ Harvey: Heaven [1988]
Earlier this year I finally listened to the enormous PJ Harvey miscellany comp released in late 2022, and “Heaven” jumped out at me immediately for its amateurishness and…hippie-adjacency? So I was unsurprised to learn it’s one of the first things she ever recorded professionally in 1988. She released it as a B-side in 2007: the same year that Keke Palmer released her first album! (Did I mention that already?)
Brazilian trio collaborating across three continents.
7. Louise Post f. Veruca Salt: What About
Lots of classic kid commentary from the backseat about this mix. I forgot to mention up there in the Taylor Swift blurb that my youngest said “I knew this was Taylor Swift before I even read her name because all of her songs sound like that. You know, it’s like…this sound they all have?” I knew exactly what he was talking about.
He amused himself listening to this one by shouting “what about what? What about what??”
Another ringer from the albums list, from Hannah Jadagu’s debut Aperture on Sub Pop.
9. Jessie Murph: Cowboys and Angels
A post-“Old Town Road” country track worth its…salt lick? By the time she hit the silly “Rambo/Lambo/handle/vandal” rhyme scheme I decided that yes, I am very into this.
What if Skye Sweetnam cursed!
11. Buggin: Youth
What if the Dollyrots were a hardcore band!
Hyperpop’s only dead in America, June edition. This one’s from Nigeria.
13. LUDMILLA f. Tasha & Tracie and Ajaxx: Sou Má
A relatively huge success story from funk carioca — Ludmilla’s PR makes repeated mention of hitting a billion streams on Spotify, a calculation that I didn’t bother to verify independently. This is a track from her (OK) album I used for a transition into the Brazil/Portugal section.
14. DJ JOÃO PEREIRA f. DJ Biel do Furduncinho & Menor do Engenho: Que Eu Vou Te Botar
15. DJ ESCOBAR f. MC MENOR HR & MC Theuzyn: Dentro Da Evoque
Two baile funk tracks from a large batch this week, picked basically at random. The first seems fairly popular (ten million views in two months on YouTube), not familiar with DJ JOÃO as far as I know. Second one is by a producer I’m familiar with (and is at least named after a much more popular track from late 2022) but it’s a remix of dubious provenance with no audience to speak of outside of whichever funk playlist I found it on.
From Brazil to Portugal, it’s DJ Danifox, a Lisbon based DJ on the Principe label featured in a few other of my mixes this year.
Now this cursed thing my kids went absolutely ape over: an aggressively annoying Eurodance number by the kid-pop off-shoot of a longstanding Polish Baptist music network, TGD or “Third Hour of the Day.” I have now listened to this song about ten times in the car, and will need to burn the song to CD so that it can also be listened to for bedroom dance parties. (“Maybe you could put some other songs on the CD too.”)
My oldest explains: “See, we’re kids, so sometimes we would rather hear kids singing. Like some of these kids are probably older than me, but they sound young—it’s fun. When adults are singing, it can sound a little too real. But when it’s a kid, it’s just like, oh—I get that!” If he doesn’t manage to solve climate change with some kind of space algae, I hope he at least makes a few bucks in marketing.
18. Alien Skin Official: Twayiseko Dda
I’ve been hanging on to this chintzy but charming Ugandan rap single for several weeks, coasts on a charming Casio riff.
19. Marioo: Tomorrow
Tanzanian, much less chintzy, another pop use of the amapiano log drum outside of that genre, something I’ve noticed a lot in Naija pop.
20. Vico da sporo f. Azana: Amaphupho
21. Kabza De Small x DJ Maphorisa f. TNK, Ricky Lenyora & Vaal Nation: Wetsalang
Two amapiano tracks, the first a bit staid but with an interesting singer. The second is from a massive mixtape from Kabza De Small and DJ Maphorisa that clocks in just shy of 3 hours. In the amapiano world, anything that runs at a piddling single hour is classified as an EP. I’m an amapiano fan but I’m no glutton for the stuff; I’m like Marge Simpson descending into a drinking problem that maxes out at one glass of wine per day: “I just can’t listen to that much!”
22. Goat: Seu Sangue
The lone original track from a quickie remix EP by Goat sneaks in some last-minute Portuguese to the mix, though why the Swedish group sings it in Portuguese has evaded my cursory online search.
What would an Other Dave mix be without the requisite jazz cool-down? This one’s from bassist Linda May Han Oh — the sweet vocal melody mirroring the horns reminds me a bit of Chick Corea’s Return to Forever slowed down to half speed.
Whew, made it through the mix! God forbid I have to skip a week with one of these, would hate to ruin my streak, like I almost did in Wordle yesterday. Sometimes Spotify throws you the playlist equivalent of a CVC-ER and you just have to cross your fingers and hope you get to HATER before it’s too late.
So, uh, bye HATER!
—Dave Moore (the other one)
Title from Taylor Swift’s “Hits Different.”