Tag: Tacocat

Favourite “New” Music – May 2023

Mick Jagger famously said (though the exact wording is contested) that he’d rather be dead than playing “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction” in his 40s. Mick turns 80 this year and he’s still at it, but you can’t deny that there is a cult around youth in pop music. The so-called 27 Club of artists who died at that age includes Mick’s band mate Brian Jones, along with lots of people for whom last names are enough of an introduction, like Hendrix, Joplin, Cobain and Winehouse. The attention paid to this odd phenomenon is out of proportion to its reality as a mere cultural footnote, since it ignores the many, many more artists – such as, say, Mick Jagger and the rest of the Rolling Stones – who carried on making music into their 70s and beyond.

Two of those elder statesmen, Paul Simon and Smokey Robinson, released albums in May, and they reflect rather different approaches to life at its outer edge.

Unless you’re listening carefully, Simon’s album, “Seven Psalms”, can come across as ponderous and overly serious, the title pretentious enough before you get to the very pretentious apparent lack of song titles (which exist, he just makes you look for them) and lots of references to “the Lord”. But it’s actually rather fun: shambling and messy. Simon is like that guy in the corner at a party who brought his guitar for no good reason and is just picking away and accidentally stumbles onto a melody that works and just plays it out, coming back to it whenever energy or ambition flag. He even gets the pretty girl who he’s been side-eying all night to jump in a few times. It really is an older person’s record: he’s earned the right to tell the story his way: meandering, languid, taking his time – like your mother taking 20 minutes (including a stop for tea biscuits with jam) to tell you the 2-minute tale of your uncle’s medical concern. (Sorry, mom!)

Meanwhile, Smokey is also at that party, but while Paul is getting spiritual, Mr. Robinson is trying to get some action, if the title of “Gasms” didn’t already make that clear. His voice still sounds great (where Simon is basically talk-singing most of the time now), and the result is a lush, relaxed (he knows he’s going to score), bedroom-eyes-in-musical-form record. It’s like they are playing out the Prince duality – the spirit vs the flesh – and in this case, the flesh wins, at least initially. I liked the Simon record better on the second play (I was bored and barely paying attention the first time out), but Smokey held up nicely on replay, too. I suspect “Seven Psalms” will continue to grow for me, while “Gasms” will remain the lovely gem it is right now.

They don’t all go out this way. Anne Murray gave up singing for pay (I assume she still sings while working on her sourdough, or whatever the hell retired multimillionaires do with their days) at age 63 before she (her words, not mine) stopped being good at it. Tina Turner, having proven for any doubters her greatness, released her last full album of new material just before turning 60. But it’s hard to walk away like that: Frank Sinatra retired at 55, then was back two years later.

The artists below who are still with us are (mostly) much younger, and maybe some of them will still be making albums (or whatever we’re doing with music then) when they hit 80, too. For now, they at least pleased me more this past month than did the above masters, which is no small feat.

  • The Byrds – The Notorious Byrd Brothers (1968)
  • Young Black Teenagers – Young Black Teenagers (1991) (That none of them were Black was permissible only because Public Enemy had their backs.)
  • Gin Blossoms – New Miserable Experience (1992) (Knowing none of their songs, I saw them open for (I think) Elvis Costello while touring for this record. A group of teenage girls in front of us sang along to every tune and danced ecstatically, then left before the headliner came out. I didn’t understand it then. I do now.)
  • Material Issue – Destination Universe (1992)
  • The Muffs – Blonder and Blonder (1995) (I listened to a lot of female-fronted punk and post-punk this month, which is where this and the next three albums fit in.)
  • The Kowalskis – All Hopped up on Goofballs (1999)
  • Tina & the Total Babes – She’s So Tuff (2001)
  • Manda & the Marbles – More Seduction (2003)
  • Tinted Windows – Tinted Windows (2009) (I am unable to explain why it took me this long to listen to an album from members of Cheap Trick, Smashing Pumpkins, Fountains of Wayne and Hansen.)
  • Cossbysweater – Cossbysweater (2013) (Proving that Allie Goertz is much more than an object of nerd desire for Nerf Herder.)
  • Tacocat – This Mess Is A Place (2019)
  • Indigo De Souza – All of This Will End (2023)
  • The National – First Two Pages of Frankenstein (2023)
  • Joseph – The Sun (2023)
  • The Utopiates – The Sun Also Rises (2023)
  • Rae Sremmurd – Sremm 4 Life (2023)
  • Kesha – Gag Order (2023)
  • Alex Lahey – The Answer Is Always Yes (2023)
  • Blues Lawyer – All in Good Time (2023) (I don’t think they actually are blues lawyers, since a newish indie band can’t afford such a lifestyle, but maybe this record starts them on that path.)
  • Sleaford Mods – UK GRIM (2023) (There is something nutbar about these guys that I find irresistible.)

Favourite “New” Music – June 2022

I tend to assume that people of my own generation have similar cultural touchstones. Depending on your interests, it may be where you were when Paul Henderson scored the winning goal in the Summit Series (I’ll save for another time my tale of Valentine’s Day, an English-style pub and the relationship that my friend and I almost ended by drawing the male partner into a discussion about said event, together with “Seinfeld” “second spitter” on the grassy knoll reference), having your mind blown the first time you saw “Star Wars”, your pride when the American diplomats escaped Iran with the assistant of Uber-Canuck Ken Taylor, or the sorrow when you learned John Lennon had been murdered (lying in bed after one of the greatest weekends of my life, still). I am, of course, wrong in that assumption, and received another reminder of this yesterday.

Let’s step back a moment, shall we. I own a lot of t-shirts, which are my go-to casual wear of choice. These are largely related to pop culture: movies (“Pulp Fiction”, “Star Wars”, anything Marvel), television (“Community”, “The Last Kingdom”, “WKRP in Cincinnati”), even literature (Haruki Murakami) and art (Roy Lichtenstein), the latter two courtesy of Uniqlo. Most were purchased by my wife as gifts, but last year, after the Festivus giving of cash stretched to include my mother, I invested said funds in another batch of my own choosing. And high on my list of choices (thanks to RedBubble) was this one:

Ah, yes. K-Tel. The source of so many of the records that I listened to as a child and young adult. 20 songs crammed into a space that usually held 10, so some of them were edited down to make room for the others. 20 songs when you at most wanted half of those, never knowing that some of the songs were on there because they were either (1) Canadian and helped fulfil CanCon regulations or (2) forced onto K-Tel in order for it to get the rights to a song it actually wanted. I can’t complain too much about either: as a lifelong hunter for new sounds (I always listened to the “B” sides, and sometimes ended up preferring them to the “A” track), those deep cuts certainly must have occasionally (I can’t say for certain right now) revealed to me a few songs that I might not have encountered otherwise, to my misfortune.

I would expect someone of my approximate generation to have had some K-Tel records, or to at least be familiar with them from endless television ads hocking their product. I was wrong. I wore said t-shirt to work yesterday, and ended up having to explain what K-Tel was to two colleagues who aren’t so much younger than me that the company could have been completely off their radar. Speaking to another colleague shortly after, he was shocked to be told this about our co-workers.

Anyway, I loved those records, and am glad to have had K-Tel in my life when I was young. 20 singles would have cost me around $25. For less than a third of that amount, I could in one blow increase exponentially the stock of my music collection. It’s too bad my colleagues missed out on that opportunity.

Which brings us to my favourite “new” music of last month. I try to avoid including compilations, so I mention here two such beasts:

  • Steve Harley & Cockney Rebel – Make Me Smile: The Best of Steve Harley & Cockney Rebel (1992). This guy was something of a big deal in Britain, though I’d never heard of him before. It’s career spanning, and thus sort of all over the place stylistically, but always a delight.
  • XXXtentacion – Look at Me: The Album (2022). He was not a very good person – serious issues with impulse control paired with a violent temperament – but a brilliant hip hop artist. A good subject for one of those “do we throw out the art because the artist is a piece of shit?” discussions. I fall on the “keep the art” side, but get the other perspective, because listening to Michael Jackson still makes me feel a bit squeamish.

And here is the actual list. Enjoy!

  • Paul McCartney & Wings – Red Rose Speedway (1973) (Critics are not fans of this record, which likely proves that most critics are more interested in being clever than being right.)
  • The Only Ones – The Only Ones (1978)
  • Aztec Camera – High Land, Hard Rain (1983)
  • Tiger Trap – Tiger Trap (1993)
  • Steve Burns – Songs for Dust Mites (2003) (Yes, it’s the “Blue’s Clues” guy, and he absolutely deserves more attention for his work as a musician. Glad those PBS paycheques freed him up to make this record.)
  • The Flat Five – It’s A World of Love and Hope (2016)
  • Tacocat – Lost Time (2016) (A perfect blast of pop punk – I will stan for any band that makes me forget my baseline anxiety for 29 beautiful minutes.)
  • Ratboys – GN (2017)
  • I Am the Polish Army – My Old Man (2017) (Frontwoman Emma DeCorsey put out a decent EP, “The Dream”, the following year, but nothing since. I’m waiting.)
  • Spoek Mathambo – Mzansi Beat Code (2017)
  • Nicholas Jameson – NJ (2018)
  • The Beaches – The Professional (2019)/Future Lover (2021) (Apparently, these two EPs will be repackaged as an album sometime soon, and that will likely also be a favourite listen when it comes out.)
  • Slothrust – Parallel Timeline (2021)
  • Ryan Pollie – Stars (2021)
  • Rosalia – Motomami (2022)
  • FKA twigs – Caprisongs (2022)
  • Caracara – New Preoccupations (2022) (A compelling emo-esque record that would fit nicely on your Jimmy Eat World or Dashboard Confessional playlists.)
  • Fantastic Negrito – White Jesus Black Problems (2022) (This feels like a recovered Sly Stone record.)
  • Sharon Van Etten – We’ve Been Going About This All Wrong (2022)
  • Ethel Cain – Preacher’s Daughter (2022) (Very disturbing record (umm, ritual murder and cannibalism), but you can’t shut it off. Still a bit haunted by this, several weeks later.)