Gimme a grrr
2025 Mix 31: The A-pop series nears its conclusion, some hemming/hawing about platform unpleasantness, and great music from all over as always -- the whole point of this enterprise, y'know
A light intro this week as the fifth and penultimate installment of the A-pop series finally went out on Monday. Each of the three paths I lay out in the essay—pop impersonators, pop mirages, and post-pop impressionists—started out as their own ballooning essays, forming lots of additional paths and loop-de-loops and all other sorts of diversions. (The email cutoff is a good barometer for a word count that maximizes coherence for me.) I think the whole thing turned out pretty well, even though I’m not sure I fully agree with all of it myself.
If you ever need a cheat sheet for all of my annoying essential neologisms, I created a static glossary for when I make up some new phrase or indulge in the deep lore and esoterica of pop criticism. (Thanks to commenter ria for the suggestion.) You can find the glossary here, and it’s on the navigation bar at the main page.
I’ve also started cross-posting some of my more substantive writing to other platforms. You can read the full A-pop series in one post at Wordpress. I want to make sure that what I’ve written is available in places where as many people as possible will read it—I don’t really care where anyone reads my stuff or how they share it. I just want my ideas to be accessible. Tell your friends!
Accessibility is a gnawing question for me as I keep using Substack.1 I have long been a platform nomad, glomming on to whatever is free or wherever my friends hang out (provided that place is free). This leads me to platforms that I eventually bail on—Blogger, LiveJournal, Tumblr, Twitter, TinyLetter, Medium. I don’t think I’ve technically lost any of the millions of words I’ve written over the last 20 years, but I’ve come pretty close. Substack is what I use now because the last time I bailed (at the end of 2022), it was the only newsletter platform that worked well and was free regardless of how many subscribers you have, which as far as I can tell from testing the alternatives is still the case (very little conversation I see about Substack alternatives is forthright about this: the other newsletter platforms are designed for paid newsletters, not free ones).
Eventually most platforms either drive away the audience I’m looking for or make the platform unusable. Usually they’ll keep muddling through as platforms — only TinyLetter completely disappeared of the ones I’ve named. So I am always ready to bail, and maybe one day I will finally collect everything together at the simplest website that requires as little maintenance as possible, like Dean of American Rock Critics Robert Christgau’s evergreen site. You can call me the Last-Minute Adjunct Professor for High School Course Equivalency Summer Sessions of American Rock Critics.
I am fascinated by a recent Paul Krugman essay in which he develops an economic model of this constant, annoying platform erosion—enshittification—that I think I at least dimly understood (click through for the econ model PDF) but whose central insight intrigues me: “the basic logic of enshittification — in which businesses start out being very good to their customers, then switch to ruthless exploitation — applies to any business characterized by network effects.”
This is a sentence I need to return to. My sense is this idea is very important, but it also clarifies to me how at some level music is not as close to the “business” of its distributors and platforms as other mass media forms are. This is also why I suspect music as a medium of expression will always be the same level of great forever—it is categorically unenshittifiable as an art form—but I do worry about film and television.
1. Peki Momés: Yıldız (Estrelar)
Turkey
Let’s just start with some good vibes, man. (Figuratively—the real vibes are later.) A fun cover of a 1983 original by Marcos Valle, to which Peki Momés brings a Farah-with-one-“R”-esque “exhilarating drag.”
2. Metronomy: Salted Caramel Ice Cream (1-800 GIRLS Remix)
UK
I feel like every few years I wonder what Metronomy has been up to and then proceed not to check in. They’re one of those special bands that created one perfect song (“The Look”) but nonetheless generated zero interest in anything else they’ve ever done. On this one I think a lot of credit goes to 1-800 GIRLS, who take the group out of the university student center indie disco of the original and throw them into…well, not a real disco, but at least a nice block party or something.
3. Mahmut Orhan, Yiğit Karakaş: Mueva
Turkey
For whatever reason, this weird little electro cha-cha keeps playing in the car when I drive my kids to camp every day. One of the kids never remembers it, but the other now moans, “oh no, not ‘Mueva’ again,” waiting for the annoying repetition and electronic stretch ‘n’ squeeze of the title phrase that creates the sort of inane banging-on-a-keyboard earworm that apparently only weird parents like. Today when we were listening to a hyper hyphenate of some sort or another, the youngest said “you like weird music, but it’s not like the weird music that I like, it does this thing where their voice is over here but then all of a sudden it’s over here,” and while saying this casually demonstrated a perfect approximation of hyperpop Autotune bending. Kids will [weird noises] the darnedest things.
4. Deekapz, Tuyo: Repare
Brazil
Some interesting cosmopolitan electronica from Brazil, very ama-poppy. (That one’s in the glossary.)
5. Mariah Carey f. Busta Rhymes, Redman, Method Man: Type Dangerous (The Remix of the Gods)
US
It has been long enough since I picked this out of the playlist line-up to see that my only note on it is “Brazil funk remix :/”. Listening again now to that remix, it’s not bad, but sounds mismatched—Brazilian funk is a pop stress test like Simlish, always reveals who the true stars are (Aly & AJ and Black Eyed Peas in Simlish, Nelly Furtado in Simlish and Brazilian funk) and who the phonies are (Katy Perry). Anyway, Mariah’s on much more solid ground with a straightforward throwback that brings a bunch of ‘90s rappers in for their perfunctory, nostalgic features.
6. Darian Donovan Thomas f. Ian Chang: Ugly Betty
US
Look, I’m not going to tell you this isn’t a little too close to a rough-around-the-edges Owl City, but Owl City was better than I thought at the time and Postal Service is worse, and I’d rather listen to this than either of them, which is neither derogatory nor complimentary, more of a commentary on how time marches on and some old tastes never return.
7. Debby Friday: Bet On Me
Canada
The Debby Friday album is very good! I like how she flits in and out of corporeality. This is a bit like what I was getting at in the A-pop piece with the “auteurist mirages—not personalities reduced to instruments, but instruments elevated to personalities.” Auteurist mirage does not have a glossary entry yet.
8. Marta, Tricky: Leave the Lights
Poland/UK
I find it odd and a little sweet that Tricky has found a late-career muse and collaborator that has led to some of his most consistently good music in over a decade, and it all came from finding a (then) bartending singer to fill in as a vocalist after a last-minute emergency at a show in Poland, and that few people have seemed to take much notice of this.
9. Fantomel, Kate Linn: Dame Un Grr
Romania
Channeling equal parts Latin pop and Emilíana Torrini’s “Jungle Drum,” this Romanian novelty is a charmer even before they start doing the little claw-hand dance on every grrr. Taylor Swift should adopt it for her next single; it is exactly her speed, choreo-wise.
10. Dj BeBeDeRa: FodanCia Do Mais Velho Aguado
Portugal
Lope…LOPE!!! Chuck Eddy reminded me to check out a massive (maybe definitive?) Príncipe compilation of unreleased tracks by the label’s growing foxy roster, which might be to the label’s batida what DFA Records Compilation #2 was to a bunch of hipster dorks (and me, but I was just a dork) back in 2004.
11. Makaya McCraven: The Jaunt
US
Jazz palate cleanser from Makaya McCraven, whom I could have sworn I put on a mix before but can’t find now. Atmospheric, gets the requisite nod for literal and figurative vibes—at least until Mulatu Astatke shows up later, which isn’t really a fair fight.
12. S.G. Goodman: I’m in Love
US
If you haven’t subscribed to Don’t Rock the Inbox yet, you should — they just moved over to Ghost. This is one of their recs—loopy love-struck Goodman does The Swimmer through her neighbor’s pool, writes off things she ain’t bought yet on her taxes, and checks out “Walmart collections of underwear,” a phrase I will savor for a long time. But none of these things offend me until she RSVPs to something without intending to show. Don’t mess up the headcount on purpose!
13. Mah Moud: Colorado, TX
Canada
Ah, beating Don’t Rock the Inbox to the punch—which I can do maybe twice a year?—with a soft and smudgy little alt-country number from Eritrean-Canadian artist Mah Moud.
14. Teri Lyon: Keep Yourself to Yourself [1979]
US
A Numero Group rerelease of a lovely 1979 psych-folk album by Teri Lyon, whom I have found absolutely no information on, except that she signed a copy of the album for Robin and David at Casa Escobar in Santa Monica, California on December 27, 1981. You can stream the whole thing on a YouTube playlist. This seems to be the only thing she ever released.
15. Meme del Real: Incomprensible
Mexico
A solo act from Cafe Tacvba shuffles along sleepily until someone fully nods off in the control booth and accidentally hits a bunch of effects switches, making it sound even better.
16. Flyte f. Aimee Mann: Alabaster
UK/US
London alt duo get Aimee Mann in to sing harmonies in the way that I imagine she does to every song on the radio when she’s listening alone in the car (complimentary).
17. The Sorcerers: Ancestral Machines
UK
The second-best Ethiojazz of the week, an impressive cosmo effort from a UK fusion group who are just, like, really into the sound, but can’t exactly show up Mulatu Astatke here, an uncharitable juxtaposition that they’ve brought on themselves.
18. Mulatu Astatke: Nètsanèt
Ethiopia
A lighter and spacier update of Astatske’s original from 1974 — from the album that I put at #7 of 1974 if you’re into that sort of thing. The original does not feature vibes (…VIBES!) and therefore does not activate that particular Pavlovian response in me, even though the original is still better. This is the first released track from an upcoming album of new versions of his older work.
19. Gwenno: Utopia
UK
I seem to have gotten very far into the career of Gwenno without knowing it was, to quote my British pals, “her from the Pipettes.” You might be wondering: how did you not know it was that Gwenno? That’s easy — I am not Anglophilic enough to be on a first-name basis with them. I thought that was their whole deal? Anyway, as usual: pretty.
20. Disiniblud f. Cassandra Croft: Serpentine
An expansive closer from Rachika Nayar and Nina Keith’s Disiniblud, has a new age softness that is transporting in a way that does not mean “transports you into unconsciousness,” though it could probably do that, too. They throw in little gritty effects flourishes and flutters throughout to at least make it safe for operating heavy machinery.
***
That’s it! Until next time…GRRR.
—Dave Moore (the other one)
Title from Fantomel, Kate Linn: Dame Un Grr
For the record, I’m not thrilled that the backbone of my music writing currently runs through Substack and Spotify, who have particularly outsized assholes at the helm. Will maybe write a bit about why I still use Spotify another time; Anthony Cougar Miccio posted his own mea culpa recently (on Ghost). My uses are very different from his but I appreciated his reflection.
FWIW my current guilt level on a 1-10 scale (where 10 means I actually stop doing the thing) is maybe 3 or 4 for Substack (wish not doing PR for Fascists was understood as compatible with and in fact necessary for free speech, but that U-boat has sailed) vs. 7 or 8 for Spotify (sadly my "worst streaming service, tied with all the others" doesn't seem true anymore. Maybe tied for third-worst with most of the others?)
In regard to losing words:
Substack comments don't seem savable, in Google Chrome at least, so I basically don't save them, though I suppose I could via screenshots or cut-and-paste. Do you know of any other way? (When I make drafts before posting, I save those, but those, of course, miss any subsequent changes, not to mention other people's responses.)