ON REPEAT #6: Space, Lucy Pearl, Martha & The Muffins, PPJ, Yaeji & Lorraine James

Shock, shock horror, horror, shock, shock horror

If you want to keep track of my weekly picks you can jump on my very long ON REPEAT playlist on Spotify.

And in case you missed it, there’s a new GUEST LIST feature on this Substack now, beginning with the legendary Mike Krol providing his picks. He’s one of my favorite musicians and people.

Here are mine for this week:

Yaeji & Lorraine James “1 Thing to Smash”

I’ve been a big fan of Yaeji since I heard the words “Mother Russia in my cup,” and this new album is no exception. Though this is a much more mature Yaeji, particularly in this collaboration with Lorraine James, who I have clearly been sleeping on for too long. This is a sparse song with ambient synths and a flute and is a nice thing to throw on in the morning.

This album is full of catharsis by an artist letting off steam, which I think appeals to me lately. Growing up, you get more of a silent rage, as opposed to your more visceral youth. I still wanna “Break Stuff,” just maybe not Limp Bizkit styyyle.

Lucy Pearl - Dance Tonight

I stumbled on this song during my previously mentioned Pazz & Jop experiment, where I’ve been going through every single that makes The Village Voice’s end-of-year roundup, beginning in 1979, and assembled by Robert Christgau by a committee of music critics. It’s a fascinating project intended to discover the songs that got away. I watch the music video and read what I can about every song, no matter how much I don’t want to. If they have multiple music videos, I’ll watch them—though I had to tap out at “Trapped in the Closet, Part 12.”

I’ve probably heard this one. Probably many times, back in March 2000 when I was 12. This is the peak era where I had no cable and no internet, so I kept a VCR tape at the ready to the *good* SNL sketches, Conan desk bits, WWF SmackDown matches, Simpsons reruns and anything remotely titillating (again, no cable or internet). I would also record songs played on music shows like Video Music Box, Soul Train or Showtime At The Apollo that I liked, and got into 90’s hip-hop and neo-soul. I was a weird tween who had strong opinions on acts like Floetry and Bilal (and maybe a little bit of a crush on Q-Tip).

I didn’t recognize the name Lucy Pearl, who at first sounded like another forgotten R&B singers that I’ve encountered through this project. Maybe someone that sang on a Jay-Z album but didn’t get a “(feat. _____)”

But then I saw some familiar faces in the video—Raphael Saadiq (formerly of Tony! Toni! Toné!), Dawn Robinson (formerly of En Vogue), and Ali Shaheed Muhammad (formerly of A Tribe Called Quest). Another supergroup!

Sadly, this one was not meant to last. Saadiq was accused of keeping the money to himself, and delaying an album release. This delay cost Robinson her house, and when she stuck up for herself, she was labeled “difficult” and replaced, not an uncommon situation for a black woman in the 90’s (just ask the first Aunt Viv). And Muhammad was the middle man in yet another band breakup.

Do I like this because I heard it on Soul Train 25 years ago and it left an imprint on my bored 12-year-old brain? This did hit #40 on the Billboard charts, after all. Or is it just because these are great musicians I like teaming up for a chill pop song with cool visuals and clips of the movie Love & Basketball?

Martha & The Muffins “Echo Beach”

Canada, man. It’s so much like America but it’s a decidedly different country. One where nobody questioned who the Arcade Fire was when they won a Grammy. It’s a place where The Tragically Hip are rock gods. I was only in Canada once, and I had one of my favorite comedy shows I’ve ever done. Canada is full of surprises and this is one of them.

This was another Pazz & Jop discovery. I feel like I knew all the bands that sounded like this, outside of compilations put together by the brave heroes that dedicate their life to the songs that got away. This is not one of them. They actually never went away!

Now maybe, this is another blind spot that I’m rectifying with this project. This song has been a go-to every week for a while now. Also, the chorus reminds me of this.

PPJ “Bicha”

You’re not ready for the insane dancing in this video loop:

I said it before, I love PPJ! Ay caramba!

I’ve never been a huge club person. I think I could be but I find the whole world of dance music a bit impenetrable. I listen to a lot of it, but feel like a tourist.

That being said, I want to hear this song surrounded by hundreds of people with the biggest subwoofers making a bass so loud my toes vibrate.

Also is that The Mask? RIP Stanley Ipkiss.

THE GOLD STANDARD

Space - Female of the Species

One of the weird trends I spotted in the Pazz & Jop list was this 1960’s lounge/exotica revival in the mid to late ‘90s that gave us songs like this Edwyn Collins hit and certainly was a bigger movement alongside Broadcast and Stereolab, and it just happened to coincide nicely with the release of the first Austin Powers movie which featured this song by SPACE.

Again, I was a weird tween who liked penis jokes I guess, so Austin Powers was hugely influential to my comedy interests, but had a nice side effect on my musical tastes because those soundtracks are good! I was getting into Sergio Mendes and Brasil ‘66 before I had braces thanks to those. There are songs by The Cardigans, Broadcast, and lots of Bacharach—all things I love to this day.

(And don’t get me started on MING TEA, yet another supergroup with Susanna Hoffs, Matthew Sweet, and lead singer Austin Powers.)

But this song always stuck out to me. It’s the third song that plays in the end credits of the film and is just uniquely kitschy and catchy and it stuck with me. I’ve read it was huge in the summer of 1996, so that may be why it stuck with me, but I don’t quite remember it from anything else and certainly didn’y hear it ever after. Rediscovering it years later (when we FINALLY got internet) was like reconnecting with a song that got away.

It’s inspired partially by this Walker Brothers song, which shares some key lyrics, both referring to a well-known Rudyard Kipling poem. (I, admittedly, know no poems and thought they were quoting Clue.)

Also…what a band name! SPACE.

I was at a bar in Koreatown with a pal who I will not name—because I don’t know if he publicly wants to be associated with this. But it was his idea. We were putting these kinds of songs on to see if people at the bar would react to any, but they didn’t really. Then we got bored of that and just put every version of “Steal My Sunshine” on the digital jukebox. There were like 10 slight variations on the song, including ones that sound like another one is starting. People started to get so upset. It was so funny.

Speaking of bars, I’m so mad I never got to go to that Austin Powers bar.