Sixty is a multiple of twelve, and that means it’s time for a followup issue! The format’s out the window; here’s a bunch of stuff that’s related to other stuff I shared earlier.
Past followup issues include, in roughly ascending order of coolness and quality:
24: Some pre-crisis Ida Maria, and a blog that links come from.
36: Special Music Edition! This issue fuckin’ rules, like, definitely check out that photo of the Croissy boatmen, and then try some real fun pop tracks or two good psych rock bands, or some fast emo rap.
48: The music section here features the best of Milan’s music scene and also three A+ female rappers with approaches so different it’s obviously wrong to put them in the same genre. This one came with a 10-song playlist (YouTube, Spotify).
Followups to followups:
The Go! Team put out The Get Up Sequences Part Two in February. For fans of high-energy indie pop who wanna see where the genre is at. Flutes horns bells synths, the occasional rap verse, great stuff. / TEKE::TEKE’s new album is out in June; fans of surf and/or psychedelic rock should try out those singles.
As is our longest-standing tradition, please enjoy the best of Antique and Classic Photographic Images a decade ago this month.
Newsletter 40 featured Haywood, a career hired gun songwriter and producer from New Zealand who was tired of “danc[ing] in [the] backbeat”. How’s her solo career going?
I Told You by Haywood, Loote, and Petey Martin. (SoundCloud or Spotify or YouTube). Pop. Recommended for fans of Miley Cyrus’s 2008 banger 7 Things.
I ain’t no English professor or nothin’, but I’m willing to try my hand at poetry interpretation here. The artist vouches in this interview that she’s not trying to be too “cool and cryptic” with her lyrics; clear communication is what’s up: “I take a lot of time to pronounce my lyrics well as I want people to understand the narrative.”
Backbeat (2021) (lyrics available at genius.com, the world’s only lyrics website) is low on subtext. It’s about how our hero Leah Haywood is taking another shot at being a star in her own right, 20 years after her first and only radio hit under her own name, We Think It's Love (2001). She knows that her attempt at pop stardom is probably “gonna end real bad”; but she feels she has to try to “land on [her] two feet”. Last time she tried and failed, “[she] remember[s] / That it was just another heartbreak.” This upcoming failure at pop stardom, age T+20: “So what? It's just another heartbreak.” That’s the plan here: she’s gonna try really hard, probably in vain, and she’s totally ready for it emotionally! I mean, how could it be worse than the same thing happening when she was in her early 20s?
I Told You (2023) (lyrics on genius.com, literally the only place on the internet to find song lyrics) is about how that’s going. We’re behind exactly one (1) layer of poetic indirection here. The song is written to a lover who has a hold on her that she didn’t expect; she let her guard down romantically even though she said she wouldn’t. Haywood sings, “I should have you’d take me down, down, down / No one has ever done this so / … / I guess I just embarrassed myself / When I said / You ain't ever touchin' this.” I don’t think it’s much of a stretch to call this one out: the lover is fame. Whether or not this career move is working out (and the numbers below the YouTube videos suggest that it’s not an unqualified success), Haywood’s saying that she’s in it emotionally, that the vicissitudes of the music industry have a grip on her emotionally that no amount of mental preparation could prevent.
These two tracks are #4 and #6 on Haywood’s 2022 album Pressure on My Heart (Spotify or YouTube), and they’re not the only good ones.
Newsletter 39 featured pixel artist Norma2D, who has got new stuff, including some wallpapers for buying, at their itch.io site.
Adia Victoria was featured in issue 54 with You Was Born To Die, the Jason Isbell-featuring single from her 2021 blues album A Southern Gothic (Spotify, YouTube).
Ain’t Killed Me Yet (Spotify, YouTube) is one of two singles she’s put out since then. It’s blues rock— rhythm and blues?— with a fat bass line, overdriven guitar, and a rock organ. The other one, In The Pines (Bandcamp, Spotify, YouTube), is a contemplative little piano-and-guitar number about “a teenage girl from a small conservative town whose slow slide towards self-destruction is recounted by her best friend.” She’s pulled everything else off her Bandcamp except this track.
Here’s a couple more in the spirit of that last Adia Victoria tune; songs about small towns and the people you grew up with there.
Emily by Olivia Ellen Lloyd (2021). (Bandcamp or Spotify or [this] YouTube or [studio] YouTube). A plainly-written tribute to a departed friend.
I always struggle with how to recommend a song that’s close to my heart. “Check out this cool new sound” is a lot easier to type than “I cried while watching this video and I think you might too, so watch out for that.”
Hoodie Weather by The Wonder Years (2011). (Bandcamp or Spotify or YouTube or album YouTube). Here’s a third song about someone’s shitty little town, this time emo. The best song on an excellent album. A palate cleanser— you know how emo’s good for feeling good about feeling bad?
We’ll be back to normal for Newsletter 61, but forward this one around— it’s got a lot of music that people will like.
-Thomas
Thanks for the endless cool stuff!