on music
what i’m listening to, intentionality, and the transition of seasons
I am first and foremost a Gemini, which means I love to yap. I also work a job that is so slow I’m afforded pretty much countless hours to just stand there and think myself in circles. It’s a byproduct of my education and maybe capitalism’s yuppie productivity culture that I feel compelled to share these thoughts, or at least channel them into a Body of Work so I feel a little better about the blank stretch my life seems to be heading in.
Other background: I am at best a fiction writer. I am not an essayist, and believe me I am self-aware enough to know that writing about myself is perhaps one of the least interesting subjects I could choose. By nature, however, music is personal, and in order for me to write about music I have to write about myself (which is why I feel compelled to include this as a disclaimer). Originally I wanted to start a music blog with Zach, but he is too busy actually making music (and studying, graduating school, etc). I, on the other hand, have unlimited free time and too many things to yap about.
Music, more so than other forms of art, is a great framing for personal zeitgeists of thought. I’ll explain: iIf you’re anything like me or the people I spend time with, music is the salve for train rides, drives, long and boring shifts. As a form of cultural capital, music is also far more easily consumable IMO than a book, or a painting by Gerhardt Richter. The sheer profitability of streaming services has completely changed the way music is both made and released. With more and more content being jammed down our throats, the erasure of individuality, it’s easy to become a passive listener. And that’s okay! But I want to extend the same amount of critical thought I’d exercise at a gallery to what I’m listening to. This is something that’s relatively easily done when you’re a college student with your own radio show, but as a washed-up 22 yr old requires a little bit more effort. Coupled with the fundamental change in production and accessibility via TikTok and other various algorithms which dictate listening patterns, the need to self-reflect on media consumption is increasingly important. What am I thinking about? Why am I thinking about this? are questions that I believe aren’t just important to ask yourself, but are made easier to answer through the lens of a playlist.
All of that to say: I am trying to be more intentional with the way I listen to music, and hope to hold myself accountable by writing about it.
Disclaimer: taste is subjective, blah blah blah, my taste leans more towards older music than current releases. I watched a video essay about the resurgence of emo in the mainstream via tepid approximations of its precursors. Not to say that “all music these days is bland and derivative copies of what came before” because obviously there are original artists making original music today. I think there’s definitely a specific sound that will come to define the 2020’s led by artists like Bladee or Yves Tumor (and whatever “escape room” is). Still, it’s worth asking: why do things sound the way they do, why is it getting made today? Why is everyone listening to shoegaze now? Idfk lol but more on that later.
Anyways. Here’s where I actually start talking about the music I’ve been listening to.
I was falsely under the impression that the weather in New York was warming up, and so began emerging from the chrysalis of winter’s distortion, minor chords, and dark wave into the cleaner guitar, legible lyrics, and general indie rock of spring.
Historically, I lean more electronic in the winter. Aphex Twin, Labyrinth Ear, Black Marble, and Death in Vegas have been on the top of my Jan-Mar rotations. This was my first winter outside of the Midwest in four years, and so a lot of sad guitar made its way into my daily commute by way of college nostalgia. I got really into Modest Mouse’s Building Nothing Out of Something, which I know isn’t true midwest emo but has a lot of the same characteristics that pierced my soul as American Football and Algernon Cadwaller back when I was tromping through Chicago snow: riffy guitar and plaintive lyrics wailed by a slightly off-key male singer. (“Dramamine” sounds like it was conceived whilst waiting for a delayed Red Line train at the Howard stop).
The whole concept of writing this came about when I was putting together my spring playlist, drunk on the warmth and scenery of a bus ride through Mexico. There is a song by Swedish band Goat called “Trouble in the Streets” that is emblematic to me of sunburn and wearing jorts in a hot car. Goat is an interesting band (one quick Google search and you’ll see what I mean). They’ve got that Global Village Coffeehouse vibe going on, like your middle school friend’s mom drove you guys to Starbucks after soccer practice and you’re listening politely while she tells you about her recent safari trip to Kenya. You’re twelve and haven’t quite grasped concepts like colonization and the global South. I knew they were emblematic of something–like, how did a bunch of Swedes come up with that sound? I asked Zach for some other similar song recommendations and he sent me Gonora Sounds, a busking father-son band from Zimbabwe that’s been around since before the GVC aesthetic even had a name. Ahh, that’s where it came from.
So began the briefest of research into Zam Rock. “Trouble in the Streets” went on the playlist, but so did “Go Bhora.” The guitar is joyous, the drumming wildly impressive, and you can hear the smile on Daniel Gonora’s face as he sings. Summer in a moonshine bottle. It’s like watching the 2005 Pride and Prejudice, falling in love, then reading the book and realizing how much depth and character was cut from the story. I can still enjoy the adaptation, but perhaps now even more with a thorough understanding of the original. Another famous Zambian band is Amanaz, whose album Africa was one I listened to quite a bit back in freshman year of college. Fun fact: “Khala My Friend” was originally supposed to be the end credits song to White Lighter Myth when I wrote it back in Intro to Screenwriting. It’s these little threads in the tapestry of life, weaving in and out, that make me believe that God, or Someone or Something out there has seen all that there is to see and knows exactly how it will come back around. It’s these kinds of things that make me feel whole in a great American world that tries as hard as it can to isolate you from everything when really you’re meant to be singing along with everyone else. Cheesy, but true. Really.
All that being said, it’s not like I'm immune to the ebbing trends of social media either. Indie sleaze has become the buzzword term that blares across my phone screen every time I open Instagram. I think, somewhere in the mix, that maybe the whole concept of indie sleaze got distorted because it seems like everyone has different ideas of what that sonically means. Is it The Strokes? Crystal Castles? Sky Ferreira? The 1975? Jk… What does seem to be agreed upon however is the younger millennial (and dare I say older gen Z) nostalgia that the aesthetic for lack of a better word (ew) is built on. I never threw away my ripped American Eagle skinny jeans because Isabel said they might come back in style one day and I’m semi-reluctant to agree that if it’s not already happening, it will in another couple years. I’m finally old enough that the trend cycle has caught up with my own personal nostalgia, distilled in early internet culture and drives down I-40 in high school. A few weeks ago I was watching YouTube with Zach and Koji, old MGMT music videos and the like. It sent me down a whole rabbit hole on the 2010’s indie pop genre. Think Passion Pit and Phoenix (who I think is having their own resurgence, thanks to Thomas Mars’ work on the Priscilla soundtrack). I’m not sure if these bands really count as indie sleaze since the height of their careers came post-2008 recession, but consider this my trend prediction.
Coupled with the promise of summer looming on the horizon, this has wound up becoming the transitional genre from the darker synth-driven electronica of winter. I came across The Generationals, a band I’d never really listened to back in high school despite eating all the others up in the back of Devon’s white truck. “Put a Light On” is the song that everyone with an American Apparel tote bag back in the day would recognize (and the one that made it on the playlist), but the entire album Heza embodies the sound of a freshly acquired driver’s license in the last few weeks of high school. This is the sound of the 2010’s to me. I think what makes this easy-listening indie pop so special, so recognizable is, in part, the way it came up alongside social media and the internet of that time. I was a girl on tumblr with an individuality complex, and aside from my ex-stepdad’s attempts at educating me on the history of house music (and a brief foray into dubstep during seventh grade), this was the first time I’d really heard electronic elements incorporated into music that was performed by a capital-B Band. Frankly, I’m appalled at the rapid rate nostalgia comes with age, like getting T-boned by a white Ford from the past. Aside from the occasional soft rock radio hit from the back of my mom’s car, this is really the first genre I can experience firsthand nostalgia for. I wasn’t “born in the wrong generation” because I was hearing it as it came up.
Lastly, on shoegaze. It’s back again; synthesized in the 90’s, now resurging through the veins of TikTok (an assumption, since I no longer have TikTok). Maybe it was a little before that, I’m not entirely sure. Whether or not shoegaze was truly “resurrected,” it never really died in the whole college radio scene. It was the first genre that really gelled with me back in my freshman year on WNUR. my bloody valentine remains one of my favorite bands to this day, solidified by ScarJo’s wistful window-watching to “sometimes” in Lost in Translation. I’m talking about it because I want to, because it’s probably my most-listened to genre, and some of the first music I ever put anyone else on to. Like, I get to see the Drop Nineteens in concert in April with some of the best friends I ever made, the same friends I cried about because they only listened to Taylor Swift (I’m sorry, it happened, we’ve all moved past it). I believe in gatekeeping with reason, but there are so many incredible bands working within this genre, back then and now. It’s why I’m so excited to know (and continue to learn about) music, to be able to see the way things circle back and come to influence the up-and-comers I’m literally watching come up today.
The last band I’ll talk about is Spirea X. Historically, the summer time is when I depart from shoegaze (and even dreampop), largely because the big walls of sound settle like a blanket of snow more than a blanket on the sand. In the summer I want to feel light and barefoot, I want to hear the sound of a guitar being strummed and not just the droning pedal effects. (You can see where I’m getting ahead of myself, talking about summer when it’s still 40 degrees out, but I’m sitting in a sun beam as I write this right now and it’s bright and promising). That’s where Spirea X comes in. I’m incapable of separating music from memory, so maybe that’s why the EP version of “Chlorine Dream” sounds like driving on the Pacific Coast Highway, gunning the pedal to catch the sunset over the beach. The band itself is Scottish, founded by a former member of Primal Scream (a band that sounds undeniably Scottish), so it doesn’t make sense that it works the way it does for me. “Fire and Light” and “Confusion In My Soul” off their 1991 album Fireblade Skies are a couple other tracks that feel a little bit more laid back than the typical shoegaze classics. Somehow, inexplicably, the Scotts captured a shoegaze version of the California Coast. There’s nothing more warm-weather than SoCal, after all.
It’s still probably another month or so before winter will actually finally come to an end, so don’t hold me accountable for the things I’ve said on promises of warmth when the warmth actually rolls around. It’s why I enjoy making playlists though, to capture the ideas circling overhead a specific season of life. Certainly songs make it on the playlists that don’t embody everything I’ve previously talked about. Music, like clothes and pretty much everything else is transient, but it’s interesting and gratifying to see it build on itself, in and outside of cultural moments. These are just one person’s thoughts, at the end of the day. I get so disheartened when so much of the new music I see on the day-to-day is whatever big label release they think will make the most money, or generate the most views. My Reels are populated by WMG pseudo-independent musicians begging for pre-saves, using the warzone that is the IG comments section to generate engagement. All press is good press, right? At the end of the day I just think it’s sad. The most precious connections, conversations I’ve had are ones spent talking critically about music, or not even talking just sharing. This is largely influenced by the people I’m lucky enough to be surrounded by, who care as deeply about music as I do. Glimpses into what they’re listening to reveal a flashlight beam of their own personal ideologies. It’s what makes what we listen to so personal.
At the same time, I worry I bore the people around me with how much I talk, about media, mostly about myself. The curse of the only child etc. Truly, deeply, I want to know what other people think about too. It’s the only way to feel less narcissistic, less insane.
