The signs are waiting
2023 Mix 15: Kesha talks to God, Coi Leray coasts, the 90s alt saturation point has arrived, and an antelope chases a cheetah
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.
Did I tell you I had a kinda-sorta religious awakening when I was sick with COVID for the first time a few months ago? My step-sister called my so-called moderate case “old-school” and laughed at me for being so hopelessly passé, per yoozh.
In the worst of it, I suddenly understood with sweaty clarity that I was merely bounded by the ceiling, which appeared to be slowly caving in on me, rather than trapped under it—the ceiling was protecting me from the vast emptiness of the universe: “Everything you need is in here already; there’s nothing out there.” (Ironically it was easier to literally leave the house after that.)
So me and Kesha have plenty to talk about! (We’re both pisces have both been Kesha fans from the jump, talk about kismet.)
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: THE SIGNS ARE WAITING
Kesha talked to God and then wrote a song about it, “Eat the Acid,” which she recorded into her iPhone and let Rick Rubin (another pisces) arrange into this weird little masterpiece of anxious awakening. From Rolling Stone:
Then there’s “Eat the Acid,” which she and Rubin wrote over Zoom early on in the pandemic, her vocals lagging behind the music like her hero Captain Beefheart yelling the lyrics to Trout Mask Replica through the glass of the recording booth. Rubin chose that take — which she recorded on her phone next to her cats’ litter box — for the album. Although they’d go on to record most of the album in professional studios, Rubin kept a lot of Kesha’s iPhone scratch vocals in the mix. “Rick Rubin has access to the nicest microphones known to mankind,” she says. “But the purity and genuine nature of just recording something with what you are holding in your hand on the fly, in the moment, it just captures the magic that was not re-creatable.”
I don’t know what they did to those iPhone recordings, but they sound fantastic. I’m looking forward to the album—I love a lot of songs on both Rainbow and High Road but this seems like the sort of album concept I’m usually a sucker for, like how the best Miley Cyrus album is Dead Petz even though it includes zero of her best songs.
As for the “jagged edges” Kesha’s mom describes in her acid trip, they reminded me of Elena Ferrante’s treatment of edges shifting as a code for the emergence of a secret, terrible knowledge, like Lila’s “dissolving margins” of incipient madness in the Neapolitan novels, or frantumaglia, the word Ferrante’s mother used to describe the inchoate storm of everything-ness—a muddled mass of ideas and sensations—that heralded a new depression descending on her.
Malaysian-Irish bedroom-popper currently getting “shit-hot” over at NME and compared to breakout-era Lana Del Rey in Pitchfork, but I hear stuff like this constantly on Spotify, where pinku’s latest single — the song of hers I like best so far — was tucked unceremoniously into the UK New Music Friday playlist just inside the top 50 (three places above Kesha).
Is Miguel back? Has he been gone? This is the first song of his I’ve clocked in a long time—I think since his duet remix of “waves” with Kacey Musgraves way back in 2016. As usual he sounds sexy while saying remarkably odd things: I had to double check that he really wants ‘em “fine and fertile.” Okay, weirdo!
Coi Leray continues her charm offensive, this time barely putting effort in over the clatter of cowbell. It’s a controlled distillation of her personality, un-confounded by any other variable.
5. illiomote: ヤケド [“Yakedo”]
Tokyo pop duo glide on the surface of an effortless—if, er, surface-y—disco miniature.
6. Onipa & David Walters: No Commando
Self-proclaimed afrofuturist group from London by way of Ghana, shares personnel with Nubiyan Twist, whose “Tittle Tattle” did well in the People’s Pop Twitter year-end poll of 2021.
7. retro noise: خلصت [Khalast]
Egyptian indie, sounds very homemade.
8. Indigo De Souza: Wasting Your Time
American indie on Saddle Creek. Was thinking this week about the self-conscious 60s moves of the Paisley Underground against the post-punk and new wave direction of pop in the early eighties, and how it eventually seeped entirely into 90s indie to the point that some version of “the 60s” often felt like the entirety of indie’s well of inspiration into the early 2000s. I think we’ve reached a similar saturation point of 90s alt against the influence of EDM and precursors to hyperpop.
I like the transition of “your hand in my mouth” from the last song to “I didn’t want to see that bloody hand on your stomach” opening this one. (Maybe she bit.)
Someone on YouTube says they’re looking forward to this appearing in a movie 11 years from now. I don’t think they’ll need to wait that long, especially if someone finally hires me to be a music director on an OK network drama that needs some budget-conscious needle drops. (Band appears to be Swedish, or at least their management and playlist placement is.)
11. GUM f. Ambrose Kenny-Smith: Minor Setback
Figured this was algorithm-boosted Spotify pop when I checked the Discovered On tab, but it’s a team-up of Tame Impala and King Gizzard members worthy of a Stereogum write-up.
12. Mitú f. Loyal Lobos: Sin Freno
Figured the singer was Mitù and Loyal Lobos was the band, but it’s the other way ‘round: Mitù is Bomba Estereo’s guitarist Julián Salazar working with percussionist Franklin Tejedor. Loyal Lobos is the L.A.-based, Colombian-born singer whose (good) solo stuff tends toward singer-songwriter strum.
13. Simatakaca: Entah Sampai Kapan
Sleepy Indonesian indie-pop.
14. Mo Troper: For You to Sing
Who does this guy sound like? Guided by Voices covering a Teenage Fanclub song maybe? Anyway, he’s from Portland.
15. Thundercat & Tame Impala: No More Lies
Thundercat in a mellow mood to match Tame Impala’s unassuming co-credit. The image on the single artwork is an impala chasing a cheetah (get it??) but from where I’m standing the song’s all antelope.
16. Les Abranis: Akoudar [1983]
This one’s from a retrospective of the Algerian rock group Les Abranis, whose career started psych-y in the 70s and ended funky in the 80s. Both modes are good (the compilation is on Bandcamp), but this is from the funky end.
17. Kawtar Sadik f. Rabab Najid, Hamada Hammy, El Mahmoud, & Karim Hasnaoui: DABA
Long, languid Moroccan jam that my kids danced to for the full eight and a half minutes.
My son, who just turned six, told me that this sounds like “a little bit of jazz and a little bit of rock.” I told him that was an accurate description, but then he paused, dissatisfied, and said, “no, not rock, it’s lite rock, like the music that David from Hilda listens to.” The kid’s got an ear.
19. Yussef Dayes f. Venna & Charlie Stacey: Black Classical Music
From the debut album of young hot-shot UK jazz drummer Yussef Dayes, formerly of the duo Yussef Kamaal. Good drumming!
I heard a couple of decent country songs this week, though Spotify remains a poor window into what’s going on in country judging from my pulls so far. The one I liked the most comes from Canadian artist Colter Wall, who sounds much older than 27.
I too am feeling much older than I may appear (see above re: COVID-induced grappling with cosmic significance and mortality!), and I’ve already got a decade plus on Colter Wall!
Until next time, I hope you, too, can find ways to manage cosmic insights with or without drugs or serious illness.
—Dave Moore (the other one)
Title from Kesha’s “Eat the Acid.”