ON REPEAT: Smerz, John Carroll Kirby, Raisa K, Kari Faux, Sweet Trip, Get Smart, DJ Paulinho Mondi & MC Vitorioso, Oklou, PinkPantheress
tuu-cha-cha-tu-chacha
Hello, happy(?) 4th of July, I hope you eat some burgers.
If you didn’t catch it, the entire Best Show Retrospective is now on YouTube if you want to learn about the show I work on and have loved for a long time:
Okay, let’s move onto the very nice songs. Check out all of the tracks featured on this page here on this Spotify playlist—sorry!
Kari Faux “rebound”
Kari Faux (from Little Rock, Arkansas) is one of my favorites. This woman is a chameleon—her sound is constantly changing but it’s always hitting right. Compare this to this!
Raisa K “Affectionately”
Raisa is from the band Good Sad Happy Bad, which is the response I stutter when people ask me how I’m doing these days.
John Carroll Kirby “Mates”
John Carroll Kirby has worked with Solange, Frank Ocean, and Harry Styles, and his instrumental song "Mates" is inspired by his time in Costa Rica. But after seeing this video of him hanging out with his friend in Tokyo, that’s all I want to talk about here. His friend’s name is Mamoru Mikamoto. This is all I was able to find out about him.
Smerz “Feisty”
Smerz, the Norwegian duo of Henriette Motzfeldt and Catharina Stoltenberg, have a new record out. They make moody (and sometimes spooky) music about regular shit. The name "Smerz" is derived from the German word “Schmerz,” which translates to “pain” or “heartache.”
I am always fascinated by their obsession with normie girls. I mean, look at this older record cover, it’s MAGNIFICENT:
Just a bunch of white girls drinking sangria in the darkness.
What does a normal day of music making look for you guys?
CS: We meet up at 10 a.m. at one of our apartments...
HM: ... almost every day.
CS: And then we drink coffee.
HM: And if one of us is late, we bring croissants as an excuse. Then, if someone is having a bad day, we talk about that for an hour.
More Smerz in a bit.
3l3d3p “rpa”
3l3d3p provided my absolute favorite track to go running to during the pandemic. It’s the solo project of Marina Rei Thompson, from LA.
PinkPantheress “Girl Like Me”
Everybody’s loving PinkPantheress these days…
and it’s nice to see!! PinkPantheress is a nice girl!!
Oklou & underscores “harvest sky”
I like this song because it sounds like I’m outside of the club—WHERE I BELONG.
DJ Paulinho Mondi & MC Vitorioso “Beeper Funk - Slowed”
Brazilian funk, aka phonk mandelao or phonk, is the closest thing to a new punk rock we have now. Like you can probably make people of a certain age mad by just playing it. so I’ve been trying to get into it.
There’s usually an element of tuu-cha-cha-tu-chacha, some busted bass sounds and then a “drop” that sounds like actual hell. The artwork is usually AI of some demon going super saiyan or something.
This one isn’t particularly egregious, but please point me to some of the best (or worst):
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Sweet Trip “Air Supply”
I can’t be the only millennial that just found out about Sweet Trip right? i mean, we all have our blindspots but this one feels particularly egregious.
I was casually watching a video about some Rate Your Music list—a site I’m not really too familiar with. All the applicable top lists had Sweet Trip’s albums right up at the top. Since then I’ve been inundated with Sweet Trip stuff as if they were one of the huge bands of the 2000s. I feel mildly gaslit, as if I somehow missed The Shins or something in my youth. I payed very close attention to this stuff back then! I can’t help but wonder how I missed such a seminal band during my peak musical discovery obsession phase.
Maybe I’ve just tuned them out because of their vaguely generic name, a thing I’ve done for some bands whose names turned me off (like Helmet, or Cigarettes After Sex). But I don’t really mind Sweet Trip.
They were a San Francisco band. Maybe it’s a Bay Area thing? You guys do things your own way up there. Since moving to the West Coast, I’ve had conversations with people like “WAIT YOU DON’T KNOW ‘HYPHY HOODSHOT’ BY KEEK DE FREEK?” or whatever. No, I don’t it’s for you guys.
The real reason is probably younger music nerds discovered it for themselves and boosted it up. After all, the kids love Slowdive. Hell, kids everywhere were dancing to The Cramps when Wednesday came out. Kate Bush topped the charts! My mom was the right age in the 1960’s but probably couldn’t name a single Velvet Underground song. Things aren’t canonized on a schedule. It just happens.
Or maybe it’s Mandela Effect?
Tell me in the comments if I’m dumb for not knowing this already. More on Sweet Trip here.
Get Smart “Just For The Moment”
Here’s another one I’m just discovering for the first time through snooping through my friend Kate Sweeney’s playlists. This band is from Lawrence, Kansas, the first place I ever went that wasn’t in New Jersey or New York as a child. Perfect song for the summer!
THE GOLD STANDARD
Smerz “No Harm”
Spooky shit but also nothing spooky about it.
Kari Faux & Jerry Paper “Gotta Know”
I’m doing two gold standards!
Yeah also hadn’t heard any Sweet Trip until recently (38 years old, central Scotland). I feel like the same thing is happening with the American analog set renaissance we seem to be having… although I liked them first time around +5/6 years… so like 2006? Dizzying.