Last Month NOW (2024.2)

Hey waiter, there's nothing there.

Last Month NOW is a sequenced and annotated playlist of 30 tracks that I spent the prior month listening to, talking about and/or obsessing over. It’s not The Best Songs necessarily, but it’s not not that. It’s also a list of the albums I liked from the previous month. And probably some other things. Here’s last month’s version.

A placeholder for future Cowboy Carter thoughts

This Playlist Was Supposed To Hit Your Inboxes In Early March, So Let’s Both Pretend Last Month Never Happened:

1. Alexander Spit f. Goya Gumbani, “Rise & Rage” I felt like it’d be a good idea to ease into this month’s playlist with a track that evokes the late ‘00s/early ‘10s Clams Casino/Altered Zones/Gorilla vs. Bear-core strain of tossed-off sounding R&B rap that only meets your ears after traveling through a fat vape cloud that smells like a grape Jolly Rancher. Two guys just fucking around with some ‘80s R&B samples and half-assed rhymes: check. Letting the sample go slack at the end of the song like “A Paw In My Face” reveals Lionel Richie’s “Hello”? Checkkkkkk.

2. Angélica Garcia, “Juanita” *walks onstage with giant fan to blow away residual vape cloud* Let’s clear up the proceedings with some theater-kid energy courtesy of this deeply dubby cumbia from a young singer-songwriter with a big voice.

3. Conway the Machine f. Joey Bada$$, “ Vertino” Tom couldn’t parse the origin of “Vertino,” but to me, verbose coke-rap over a queasy loop serves a little of Vertigo’s woozy descent into masculine obsession, and the neologism also sounds like the name of a bottle-service vodka served at clubs that Conway and Joey frequent that is designed to simulate that same experience (but which actually tastes a bit too much like lye). There’s a gnarly guitar solo here, and a nod to Ice-T’s “6 in the Morning,” the patient zero of Griselda’s crime rhymes, which is detailed with loving care in this book that makes a wonderful gift, hit me up for a discount code.

4. John Glacier f. Eartheater, “Money Shows” Speaking of rappers with chilly monikers, this Hackney rapper whose deadpan delivery and dolorous production evokes King Krule at his most lo-fi has just signed to Young Records (formerly Young Turks, home of the xx, FKA twigs, Sampha, Jamie xx).

5. Frunk29, “Izolenta Win” Some groovy Vini Reilly-isms courtesy of this mysterious Muscovite.

6. Contrahouse, “Streetcorn” Bruce Hornsby makes Balearic Burial. I’ve sold you already, haven’t I. (Full disclosure, this collaboration between Gabriel Guerra, Lucas de Paiva, Bruce Hornsby [!] and Jenny Konradsen was put together by an Indiana friend with whom I share a first name. His last name is Aswell [pronunced “Ass-Well,” he’s quick to note], and he coined the bumper-sticker phrase “Honk If You’re Hornsby” a number of years ago. The label he co-runs is Ulyssa, their first release was a cassette of a somewhat spontaneous 1987 John Mellencamp/Lou Reed show in Bloomington originally recorded through a camcorder’s microphone. They also have incredible merch.)

7. Faye Webster, “Feeling Good Today” It wasn’t that long ago—last summer, in fact—that I personally started Feeling Good Today on a semi-regular basis. Since I’ve adjusted my psychic thermostat with the help of Eli Lilly, I find myself being more effortlessly deliberate (I think I’m supposed to call it “intentional”) in everything I do. I’ve become, I hesitate to admit, a guy who reads signs aloud to himself. It’s part of the new me, and feels like a cousin to the brief litany of minor joys that Faye Webster lays out here: eating before noon, calling an exterminator, blowing part of your paycheck on something dumb. I don’t like Underdressed at the Symphony as much as I Know I’m Funny haha, which was the perfect equivalent to—if not a soundtrack for—a lazy, pre-coffee Saturday fuck. But settling into an intentional groove is enough for me (even with the auto-tune).

8. Laetitia Sadier, “The Inner Smile” The latest from the 55 year-old Parisian leftist is as “intentional” as it gets. Rooting for Love is inspired in part by Sadier’s Zen Shiatsu training, which transforms her lyrics into calmly delivered instructions (“smile at your spirit,” “be serene”) to help you reset your spiritual harmony as well as, you know, alleviate your back pain. If every Shiatsu session ended like “Smile” does—a flute freakout redolent of early, hairy hippie Kraftwerk—I’d book out as far in advance as the appointment calendar would allow.

9. Gruff Rhys, “They Sold My Home To Build A Skyscraper” The latest from the 53 year-old Welsh leftist is a Latin-tinged jazz-pop elegy for the club dancefloors that were turned into luxury developments. And yes, because this is a journalistic publication, I fact-checked: there is a significant online discourse about whether Australia is wider than the moon. Just think of all the space for boutique hotels!

10. John Francis Flynn, “Mole in the Ground” When this Irish leftist of indeterminate age heard that one of his beloved Dublin pubs was set to be turned into a boutique hotel, he organized a protest that swelled into the thousands…and won! Flynn infuses his second album with the same spirit of attacking capital on its own terms and re-recording traditional folk songs in modern arrangements. The best one is “Mole in the Ground,” an anticapitalist song first recorded by Basom Lamar Lunsford nearly a century ago that Flynn turns into moody, propulsive postmodern folk-rock.

11. Frog, “Goes w/o Saying” Yearning, gently twee country-pop with some piano and a drum machine. I don’t know anything else about this band save this story: When Daniel Bateman finished Frog’s 2015 album Kind of Blah, he sent it to David Berman, who responded thusly:

    

12. Brittany Howard, “I Don’t” I don’t like Brittany Howard’s solo album as much as nearly every other critic does, but I do think that she can do a very good Prince-via-Spoon, and she’s free to continue crushing this kind of throwback 70s Philly soul as long as she wants to.

13. Unessential Oils, “Distrust the Magician” In 2008, Warren Spicer’s band Plants & Animals sounded like what you’d think a Montreal band called Plants & Animals would sound in 2008 (the answer is Arcade Fire). Fifteen years later, Spicer leads Unessential Oils (great name), which is a funky parlor-jazz trio making what sounds like a U.S. Girls 45 played at 33 1/3.

14. Sote, “River of Pain” A creepy, phase-y electronic instrumental from the Iranian composer.

15. Chelsea Wolfe, “House of Self-Undoing” The L.A. singer/songwriter once again goes goblin mode on her latest goth-folk industrial maelstrom (produced by Dave Sitek).

16. Boeckner, “Euphoria” In Wolf Parade, Dan Boeckner was the earnest classic rocker to Spencer Krug’s yelping dervish. Ever since that band broke up, whether with Handsome Furs, Divine Fits, or under his surname, Boeckner’s never stopped striving toward that old rockstar ideal of transcendence via suffering. Few modern rockers can belt “heaven’s lonely / leave the light on / burning in the window / for my safe return” without irony, and without any guarantee that the return will be safe.

17. Squid, “Fugue (Bin Song)” A dank nugget of Cool British Punk (Robert Quine-sounding guitars and a lead singer who lectures you and occasionally yelps).

    

    Unbeatable VW recon courtesy of Blackbird Spyplane

18. Vampire Weekend, “Gen-X Cops” After his L.A. country-rock interregnum , Ezra Koenig &co are back. Back in a New York Groove. Recently, our favorite Noted Vibey Talisman Amasser chatted with Jonah at Blackbird Spyplane recently and gave us the perfect match of interviewer/interviewee: Koenig, lest we forget, had himself long ago transcended mere clothes. He told BS that he put together his albums by plotting each jawn on a vibe quadrant (above) and, for Only God Was Above Us, jamming a moodboard full of sick 90s grails, redolent of his halcyon years. I can detect “hippie goth” in “Gen-X Cops,” named after a late-90s straight-to-video flick, but given Koenig’s gift for semantic insinuation, I also hear multiple variations on “cops.” We can cop rare finds, we can cop a ‘tude, we can cop a feel, we can cop a plea.

19. Pouty, “Virgos Need More Love” Speaking of Gen X Bops, Rachel Gagliardi’s one-woman pop-punk project has released the best Letters to Cleo song since “Here and Now” was giving it to everybody but your mother on alt-rock radio.

20. A Certain Ratio, “It All Comes Down To This” Sproingy post-post-post-punk from the Madchester OGs’ 13th album, produced by Dan Carey (Black Midi, Black Country New Road, Blacula, Blackenstein, the Blunchback of Blotre Blame).

21. Fat White Family, “Bullet of Dignity” The London art-weirdo septet drop a hunk of hairy club-rock, complete with a mildly traumatizing video.

22. Mary Timony, “Dominoes” Mary Timony has been on my mind in some form or fashion since freshman year of college, when I spent countless hours trying in vain to discern what kind of horrifyingly bleak situation was going on in “Lucky Charm.” Timony’s post-Helium career has lived up to the promise of her Buzz Bin years and then some: under her own name, she’s twisted her drive to delve into the dark by embracing her psychedelic side, while her bids with Ex Hex and Wild Flag demonstrate that she’s got an equal knack at blasting out power pop chords. On “Dominoes,” Timony kind of splits the difference—she bats around memories of a failed relationship over a bluesy rock track that kind of becomes a Supergrass song by its second half. Oh, and to finish my earlier thought: here’s a Mary Timony playlist, embedded within the longer playlist. Promise you’ll come back for the last eight tracks.

23. David Nance, “Side Eyed Sam” And we’re back! Some lowkey choogle from this veteran Nebraskan to get us on track.

24. The High Llamas f. Rae Morris, “Sisters Friends” Though critics have always (fairly) tagged Sean O’Hagan as a Brian Wilson cosplayer, the lead High Llama was so far ahead of that curve (by about a decade) that it’s kind of a moot comparison at this point. Let’s stir in some other pop-perfectionist studio rats, shall we? The sound of “Sister's Friends” from the Llamas’ forthcoming eleventh album, suggests 1) O’Hagan’s knack for Green Gartside-style too-clever sophistipop (cf 1992’s “Apricot”) and 2) the robotically otherworldly multitracked vocals singing “kick the can” on the chorus of “Checking In, Checking Out,” which is about as Steely Dan as one gets. Oh, speaking of playlists, it appears that O’Hagan—more of a record nerd than you or I combined—has compiled his own 50-track playlist of his favorite Llamas tunes, and another one in which he stirs in some Llamas-adjacent tunes for comparison.

25. Beth Gibbons, “Floating On A Moment” Man…between Laetitia Sadier, Gruff Rhys, Mary Timony, the High Llamas and now Beth Gibbons on the same playlist, you all are forgiven for assuming that the entire reason for this blog is to moodboard my late-teens mixtapes. But it’s nice when musicians age so gracefully. Since her 2002 Rustin Man collaboration, Gibbons has burrowed deeper and deeper into jazz/folk hymnal territory, which, when you look back at her crooning with a cig in the legendary Portishead/NYC session, it’s really where she’s always been.

26. Gregory Uhlmann, “Mint Chip” The same guy who made this brief sliver of soft-edged IDM bleepage also made, three-ish years ago, a whole-ass moody indie rock album?

27. Sam Morton f. Alabaster DePlume, “Cry Without End” Samantha Morton long ago entered the Harvey Canon thanks to her impossibly perfect turns as a grief-laden, Can-soundtracked road-tripper in Lynne Ramsay’s Morvern Callar, a precog escapee in Minority Report (remember when Breaking Bad completely ripped this off?), and (I’m assuming) as the original Samantha in Her, for which she “created a painting and then put it in the attic, and nobody's seen it.” But with her new “Sam Morton” project—a duet with XL Records head Richard Russell (of previous and similar-sounding Gil Scott-Heron and Bobby Womack collaborations)—she’s entering her lonesome diva era, and we’re all the beneficiaries.

28. Fabiano do Nascimento and Sam Gendel, “The Room” The insanely productive avant-sax maestro weaves his soprano horn in and out of the Brazilian-via-L.A. fingerpicker’s seven-string guitar latticework.

29. John Surman, “Precipice” John Surman spent the 1960s and early 70s as an itinerant but in-demand reedist in and around London, turning in albums to UK rock labels Deram and Island before settling into a powerful, much freer trio with Stu Martin and Barre Philips and developing a fruitful partnership with Norwegian vocalist Karin Krog. But Surman truly found his home at ECM, where his 1979 debut and its eternal title track “Edges of Illusion,” and its Jack DeJohnette-collaborating followup allowed Surman to more fully explore the minimalism and New Age synths he’d been playing for years. Forty-some years later on “Precipice,” Surman’s flitting around on soprano in a far more minimalist context, with Thomas Strønen’s rumbling drums, Rob Waring’s vibes, and Rob Luft’s synth exploring a darkened trail in the middle of the night.

30. Vijay Iyer, Linda May Han Oh, Tyshawn Sorey, “Overjoyed” Let’s finish with this trio’s reworking (via Corea) of Stevie Wonder’s finest ballad. Every time that hook pokes its head to the surface is a tiny ray of euphoria.

Ten Different New Albums I Enjoyed Listening To Multiple Times In February 2024:

1. Ariel Kalma/Jeremiah Chiu/Marta Sofia Honer The Closest Thing to Silence (International Anthem) (“Breathing In Three Orbits,” “Écoute Au Loin”)

2. Chelsea Wolfe She Reaches Out To She Reaches Out To She (Loma Vista) (“House of Self-Undoing,” “Eyes Like Nightshade”)

3. Fabiano do Nascimento and Sam Gendel The Room (Real World) (“The Room,” “Foi Boto”)

4. Gruff Rhys Sadness Sets Me Free (Rough Trade) (“Bad Friend,” “They Sold My Home To Build A Skyscraper”)

5. Helado Negro PHASOR (4AD) (“LFO,” “Best For You And Me”)

6. Itasca Imitation of War (Paradise of Bachelors) (“Imitation of War,” “Under Gates of Cobalt Blue”)

7. Mary Timony Untame the Tiger (Merge) (“Dominoes,” “No Thirds”)

8. John Surman Words Unspoken (ECM) (“Precipice,” “Pebble Dance”)

9. Laetitia Sadier Rooting for Love (Drag City) (“Un Autre Attente,” “The Inner Smile”)

10. Office Dog Spiel (New West) (“Antidote,” “Warmer”)