Park That Car, Drop That Phone, Sleep on the Floor, Dream About Me
Posted: 18 March 2021
Imported from substack so the formatting is messed up, it looks better on substack.
This newsletter is dedicated to the stoner metal to jangly indie pop pipeline corrupting today’s youth.
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Index
A * means I really liked a book or movie, or that I can see myself listening to the album again at some point in the future (for fun). Everything else can be anywhere between great and not so great. Movie/book writing is spoiler-y.
Talks
Susan Grace Galassi - “Aun Aprendo” (I am still learning):
Goya’s Culminating Years in Bordeaux (1824-28)
Music
* Belzebong - Light the Dankness (2018)
Stoner Metal
* Belzebong - Sonic Scapes & Weedy Grooves (2011)
Stoner Metal
OM - Advaitic Songs (2012)
Doom Metal
Anna McClellan - I saw first light (2020)
Indie Folk/Experimental
Snail Mail - Habit (2016)
Indie Pop
* Forth Wanderers - Tough Love (2014)
Indie Pop
Alvvays - Alvvays (2014)
Indie Pop
* Sleater-Kinney - The Hot Rock (1999)
Indie Rock
Tom Waits - Small Change (1976)
Alternative/Blues
Crash of Rhinos - Distal (2011)
Emo/Post-Hardcore
Talks
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Goya in Bordeaux
Francisco de Goya was a Spanish painter famous for his excellent compositions and his unique love for drawing weird little goblin people. I am vaguely familiar with his work. You probably are too! Saturn Devouring His Son is a Goya, so are The Second of May and The Third of May; famous paintings all. Going into this virtual talk, I knew these more famous paintings, but did not know much about Goya as an artist or his overall body of work. This talk, delivered by Susan Galassi (one of the authors of a book focused on the later period of Goya’s life and work), introduced him through the work he pursued leading up to his death, outside of his career as a court painter.
Things I learned:
Goya was a court painter for the royal family for basically his entire life, despite his personal political leanings. Near the start of the 19th century, after the Napoleonic wars, Spain had it’s first national assembly and drafted a constitution. King Ferdinand VII returned to Spain and immediately abolished it and reconstituted authoritarian monarchy. Goya, a life-long liberal who drew political satire while the war was ongoing, hid for a few months and then returned to work for the king as a court painter. A bit hypocritical!
He lost his hearing after a mysterious illness when he was 46, it’s postulated that the illness was due to lead poisoning. Maybe he was a messy painter. [1]
He drew a bunch of demons and imps and witches in his big books of drawings.
Some of Goya’s faces (Not all! His individual portraits are excellent. The style also works with his later, looser paintings. But in some of the earlier paintings. Particularly in group portraits) are… something else. People have wretched, flat little faces in otherwise immaculately detailed paintings.
Goya’s compositions are really outstanding. This is really obvious in his black paintings and later lithographs. I love his black paintings.
The black paintings were basically painted on walls! They might not have ever been intended for the public to see. Can you imagine walking into a house and expecting a wall and seeing Saturn Devouring His Son.
Here are some of his various demons, imps, witches, and goblin people from his later works that stood out to me:
A really talented artist! I really enjoyed the lecture. Thank you to the New York Studio School for hosting it. It was streamed live and felt better than going to one in person, to be honest. They never have comfortable chairs at these talks.
Music
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Belzebong - Light the Dankness
The intro to this album is funny. I like Belzebong because, unlike a lot of other similar bands, they don’t sing, but they do have little audio samples and skits. If you’re into fuzzed up drop C power chords at 80 bpm for 11 minutes at a time, you’ll like this. Belzebong are crunchy and bluesy; a shining star of the genre.
Belzebong - Sonic Scapes & Weedy Grooves
Belzebong are also very consistent! All of their songs are great, they don’t have any duds. I kind of like having them on as background music while working because of this consistency and because they don’t have any singing. Crunchy stoner metal radio to relax/study to. I like this album a little more than Light the Dankness but I think they’re both good.
OM - Advaitic Songs
Ok ok hold up, so this band, OM, is made up of the bass and drum players of Sleep (famous for the hour long song “Dopesmoker,” which I have written about in a recent issue of this very newsletter), and they add a bunch of chanting and tone down the chugga chugga wugga.
I’m into the chanting! I’m into the strings. The transitions between the chugging guitars and strings are seamless, the songs all hypnotize you. I don’t love the singing, but I honestly don’t love most metal-adjacent singing. OM are really excellent when they lean into the chanting and strings and almost religious sound in general. It’s a tough balance between that and sludge, and they get it right often enough.
Anna McClellan - I saw first light
This album feels really good to listen to. I really like how many sounds it packs in while feeling effortless - the leading track, “I saw first light,” stealthily adds instruments until it feels almost orchestral. When “Raisin” kicks in a honking saxophone (I think?)? So good. It’s also noteworthy and really interesting that there is no bass drum anywhere on this album! Maybe there is and I missed it. But it is very light on the more traditional drum kit and feels much airier and free-flowing for it. Some of the tracks are a little too slow for me but they all do something interesting and I like McClellan’s singing. I saw first light is bold and daring and exciting.
Can someone please tell me what song “Veronica” reminds me of:
You can reply to this email or comment on the post or text me or whatever. It’s on the tip of my tongue and driving me crazy.
Snail Mail - Habit
The cover of “The 2nd Most Beautiful Girl in the World” is cool, “Slug” has a cool guitar riff. It’s indie pop with a kind of disinterested vocal affect, and the melodic lines seem way too slow to me. Sorry to this indie darling band but they are not for me.
Here’s something cool I found while looking up this band: You may have heard of Snail Mail, but how about Mail Snail?
Forth Wanderers - Tough Love
Forth Wanderers are one of my favorite bands!!! Songs about annoying relationships and unpleasant could-have-beens and even worse how-it-ises with really cool instrument parts. “Painting of Blue” and “Fuck” are two of my favorite songs. Forth Wanderers are set apart from other Indie Pop acts by their more energetic instruments. There’s a rhythm guitar keeping up a wall of sound throughout pretty much every song: it’s not very loud, but it’s there, and it gives everything more of a punky feeling. The lead guitar is also cool because it’s really prominent and usually playing its own melody which develops and changes as songs progress, almost as a foil for the vocals.
It seems like everyone in this band has a lot of fun performing! I don’t know how to describe it any other way. “Blondes Have More Fun” has a bass solo, for crying out loud. Forth Wanderers are fun!!!!
Alvvays - Alvvays
Alvvays’s bandcamp description of this album writes about their love “of jingle-jangle.” Absolutely. Great amount of jingle-jangle. “Adult Diversion” is fantastic and opens the album with incredible jingle and outstanding jangle. “Next of Kin” too. Really good indie pop with a dreamy surf rock vibe. It’s music to make you nostalgic for a life you never had.
Alvvays aren’t really like Belle and Sebastian at all, but I feel like I kind of understand people who get really into Belle and Sebastian now.
Sleater-Kinney - The Hot Rock
Sleater-Kinney are such a cool band. “Get Up” is one of my favorite songs. They have a kind of Sonic Youth thing going on where the music is abrasive and the instruments all seem to be doing their own thing, but it comes together really cohesively and still feels really good to listen to. The dueling vocals work really well, the kind of spacious songs interspersed with pointy guitar parts keep everything really interesting, the singing is fantastic, it’s great. I’ve listened to The Hot Rock before but I still wound up playing this album on repeat for a few days after I popped it on earlier this week.
Tom Waits - Small Change
I first heard “Step Right Up” at a bar a few years ago and it is one of my favorite songs in the world. Truly incredible. A selection:
That's right, it filets, it chops, it dices, slices,
Never stops, lasts a lifetime, mows your lawn
And it mows your lawn and it picks up the kids from school
It gets rid of unwanted facial hair, it gets rid of embarrassing age spots,
It delivers a pizza, and it lengthens, and it strengthens
And it finds that slipper that's been at large
under the chaise lounge for several weeks
And it plays a mean Rhythm Master,
It makes excuses for unwanted lipstick on your collar
And it's only a dollar, step right up
The songs are generally kind of slow and ballady, which I don’t love, but Waits’ voice is grave and gravelly and textured and keeps everything engaging. The songs are also more narrative than not. They paint little scenes. “The Piano Has Been Drinking (Not Me)” is so vivid in every way; in the physical space it creates, in the mood it sets, in the people you imagine. Waits frees up a seat at a dimly lit bar and asks you to join him for a drink.
Crash of Rhinos - Distal
Noisy, slightly aggro emo/post-hardcore with plenty of extended math noodles. A little sloppy and unfocused but fun. They do a ton of gang vocals! What more do you want. Some of the tracks get a little too long and I wish there weren’t as many drawn-out instrumentals but that’s more personal preference than anything. If you like post-rock this band could be a good entrypoint into screamo.
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[1] Everyone knows that lead paint is terrible for you. It used to be everywhere! There are theories that lead paint led to (or aggravated) van Gogh’s various health issues. But! Did you know this is true for a number of paints artists continue to use to this day? We’ve generally gotten pretty good about detoxifying art, but toxic paints are definitely still around. There are artists who wear gloves when working with oil paint for this very reason. Soft pastels are an absolute nightmare and you basically have to work in a mask and gloves or you get covered in dust and sneeze it out for hours afterwards.
It’s pretty easy to accidentally ingest pigment and, over time, with the right (wrong?) pigments, you can get pretty sick! It’s not endemic, but it’s not outside the realm of possibility. Anyway, this is all to say: cadmium is a metal commonly used to make bright red and yellow pigments, and there’s a fun little nickname for cadmium poisoning: the “cadmium blues.”
That’s all for this week. Thanks for reading! Have a great day.