One foot in the avalanche
2025 Mix 13: Music for many moods -- friend recs NMIXX, Jessie Reyez, and Deep Sea Diver, plus a French émo-mélo-drama-queen goes big and a Brazilian pop kaiju goes small
Another pause on discourse while I deal with my feelings of increasingly un-gentle resistance. Deal with personally, that is—my vengeful stewing and spite toward [gestures] is separate from the music I’m into at the moment. The music is an escape, not a soundtrack.
Sometimes to avoid the daunting blank slate of picking an album to listen to in the evening, I do a music selection exercise where someone names two moods and then I try to find an album that intersects. I used to keep track of these, so I can tell you that “yappy + fulfilled” led to Tierra Whack’s Whack World (played four times in a row); “agreeable + anticipatory edginess” yielded Cornelius’s Fantasma; and the right mood for introducing Magma’s Udu Wudu to the household was “focused + -ish” (“-ish” being its own emotion).
This usually only works as a spark for figuring out what someone else might want to listen to.1 When I’m alone I usually just want to listen to music in an undifferentiated stream, as much of it new to me as possible. Music doesn’t so much reflect or shape my mood as give me something to focus on instead.
That said, these mixes do frequently seem to reveal how I’m feeling. Which is weird, because usually I’ve put together the only mix I could have made with the songs that made it through my intuitive whittling process—and this process isn’t as beholden to my moods as I once suspected it might be. I’ve had occasion to re-listen to huge batches of songs only to select the exact same ones. So the only mix I could have possibly made with the material I have just so happens to hit the emotional nail on the head.2 The universe works in mysterious ways.3
1. NMIXX: High Horse
South Korea
After some talking up from Singles Jukebox pals, it still took several listens for the fullness and what I guess I’ll call subtlety of this song to really work on me. What I eventually realized was that the drums sounded massive, and that this might be the first time in a long while that I’ve sensed a K-pop song really punching above its weight in terms of pure production, as opposed to general effect. I wonder if it’s just hitting the right nostalgia centers: next week I may go long on the new Tate McRae album, which is doing something similar—harking back to the peak post-Aaliyah period where R&B simultaneously constricted vocal range and expanded rhythmic oomph.
2. Jessie Reyez: Psilocybin & Daisies
Canada
A recommendation from George Henderson, who is helpfully keeping tabs on a promising artist I featured last year. She’s really gone for broke this time, sampling Smashing Pumpkins’ “1979” in a sort of oh my god he admit it nod to the humming engine powering the first explosion of indie-influenced chart pop in the mid-aughts. In related news, my own small contribution to documenting this indie crossover moment with my “Since U Been Gone”/“Hard to Explain” post has (for now) been enshrined over at Wikipedia.
3. Deep Sea Diver: What Do I Know
US
And now some real indie, from a Seattle band who have put out the best Metric song I’ve heard in years. Hat tip goes to isabel, who did not appreciate me saying that it reminded me of Radiohead in the chorus, and may have been even more offended that I meant this as (complimentary). Again find myself admiring unexpectedly good drums. In the video the “spider in the milkshake” gets its own little cameo, which is cute.
4. feeble little horse: This Is Real
US
With all the indie afoot, and with a very different horse band charming me lately, I must have totally forgotten what this other horse band actually sounded like—or confused feeble little horse with Horsegirl—because the screaming metal breakdown took me by surprise. A quick scan of their previous two albums did not reveal any hidden screamo, though, so maybe it’s a new look? If so, I approve.
5. Stevan: Mile High Club
Australia
Australian artist does unreconstructed iPod indie with R&B vocals, the sound of everywhere and nowhere, a frozen moment in pop history that will probably take a very long time to thaw.
6. Anitta: Larissa (From Larissa: The Other Side of Anitta)
Brazil
I singled out Anitta as one of the kaiju of the pop monsterverse in my latest A-pop installment, and I’ll admit that I’ve never personally understood her whole deal, so maybe I should watch the (I’m assuming) vanity documentary she has out now on Netflix, which this song is from. Larissa is the birth name and “real” flipside of Brazilian megastar Anitta, but Larissa’s musical realness here sounds drawn from the same lite dnb-pop move that most nominally bedroom-oriented strivers opt for in their own bids for a monsterverse spark. And to her (and their) credit, it often sounds pretty good.
7. Leyla El Abiri: Speciale
Italy
The real indie kids, of course, are trying to sound even bigger, but they can’t quite get to triple digits on their YouTube topic page uploads. Always appreciate it when I find a keyboard sound you’d actually hear in the ‘80s. And I also appreciate it when said ‘80s callback opts for new wave rather than whatever synth pudding everyone else’s production styles have averaged out into through secondhand nostalgia—like a telephone game that falls apart completely long before it gets to the end.
8. Ariane Moffat: Jouer
Canada
This one is my pick for synth-pop of the week, pudding be damned (also not pudding — closer to Jell-O cubes, maybe?). But it’s the melody, not the production, that turned my head on this Quebecoise artist’s melancholy little head-bobber.
9. Malcriada, Mathilde Sobrino, Pepe Pecas: No Puedo Más!
Mexico
More synths, the annoying ones I really like, from a couple of Mexican hyper-ish-poppers. (In this case “-ish” is not the emotion, but rather the normal “or so” qualifier.)
10. Dj khalipha: Steppers Mara Beat
Nigeria
I’m now at the stage where when I hear cruise music during a rough stretch of playlist mucking I’m reminded of a passage Zadie Smith wrote that never fails to make me smile:
Then suddenly I could hear Q-Tip—blessed Q-Tip!—not a synthesizer, not a vocoder, but Q-Tip, with his human voice, rapping over a human beat. And the top of my skull opened to let human Q-Tip in, and a rail-thin man with enormous eyes reached across a sea of bodies for my hand. He kept asking me the same thing over and over: You feeling it? I was.
Cruise—blessed cruise!
11. CARCA, Sanjin: Balkan Man
Sweden
Swedish/Balkan rapper grabbed my attention on this otherwise serviceable dubsteppy dance track.
12. Dj Narciso Rsproduções: 30 Paus
Portugal
Another Príncipe find, another struggle to find a visual metaphor to describe the avant-batida stumble-stomp. How about…trudging through an abandoned steel mill in snowshoes made out of frying pans?
13. Elle Teresa: Organic Thing
Japan
A chintzy, vaguely Brazilian 808 beat is all Elle Teresa needs. The contrast with her disaffected flow works well.
14. CLIPZ: Belly
UK
Have been keeping an eye out for CLIPZ since 2024 year-ends led me to his collaboration with Chy Cartier, “New.” Neither have recaptured that energy in the solo stuff of theirs I’ve heard, but both are consistently good and CLIPZ is a dependable pop dnb (not to be confused with dnb-pop) producer.
15. THÉA: Qui Fera Taire Les Kidz Fucked Up??
France
Self-described queer émo-mélo-drama-queen French pop artist THÉA is the full auteur package — according to the credits she does all the writing, singing, and playing, but sometimes she brings in a ringer on guitars. It’s like Jane Child studying My Chemical Romance instead of Prince.
16. April March: Surfing Castafiore
US
Sunny indie-pop most notable to me because April March is the stage name for Elinor Lanman Blake, a former animator for Pee Wee’s Playhouse and Ren and Stimpy. Had a Francophilic career through the ‘90s and intermittent success beyond, including a choice placement in Death Proof that I don’t remember.
17. Kwashibu Area Band: M’akoma Nnwom
Ghana
Smooth Ghanaian highlife about which I have little to say but do bestow the honor of Golden Beatology of the Week, albeit more or less by default.
18. Los Pirañas: Con mi burrito sabanero voy directo al matadero
Colombia
Hard to describe this Colombian group’s avant-cumbia (or something), whose bent-note fuckery you can tell emerges from mastery. It’s like what people always say about Trout Mask Replica, which I will continue to assume—after several decades of listening to it without forming a solid opinion, then selling it, then re-purchasing it—is probably an accurate way of putting it.
19. Cheyada: เรือนกระจก
Thailand
Sleepytime Thai ballad has been decaffeinated but is not entirely free of caffeine, which matches my literal caffeine intake needs these days and makes it perfect to hit the mix brakes.
20. Jo Schornikow: Upstream
Australia
Long, atmospheric organ piece—fully decaffeinated territory now, but very pretty.
21. Nefeli Walking Undercover: Ola Ta Pragmata
Greece
You are getting sleepy…sleepy. But first you might notice what sounds like an organ with a marimba repeat setting like in “Baba O’Reilly.”
22. DJ Koze: Buschtaxi
Germany
Ah hell, you’re probably asleep by now anyway and I’ve got nine minutes to spare, so let’s give DJ Koze some room to stretch out a bit. Nighty night!
***
That’s it! Until next time, try to find the music at the intersection of your moods, if you’re into that sort of thing.
—Dave Moore (the other one)
Title from Ariane Moffat: Jouer (“Un pied dans l'avalanche”)
Don’t want to understate the importance of my own feelings—the bigger problem is that I’m too close to my own emotions to use them as a prompt. I’ve also recommended albums to friends based on paintings or visual art they’ve sent me.
You could bring confirmation bias into it, or the propensity of music to serve as a target of projection, both of which are true, but neither of which explains why my post-election mix started with a nosebleed and went downhill from there even though I assembled it several days before knowing the outcome.
I mean…really mysterious. Did you know that 24 hours after I posted my newsletter on Jane Child, a dozen remixes of “Don’t Wanna Fall in Love” from Teddy Riley and Shep Pettibone appeared for the first time on streaming services—which, as far as I can tell, hadn’t ever updated Jane Child’s catalog since it was first made available 15 years ago? That is some heavy universe shit.
Hype to see Jessie Reyez pop up, her single "Far Away" is on one of my fav playlists from 2019
From where did you find that Zadie Smith quote?