Finding a Groove

Hello everyone, and welcome back to the first Spins for the month of September. I’m not sure I have a bunch to get through. There are albums for sure, but I don’t think I have too much obsession stuff, which is nice.

I realize that I have gained some subscribers, so I would like to explain something that came up in my boutique rap dispatch and might have seemed strange. There was a point at which I referred to a particular Canadian rapper who is named Aubrey Graham. You may have read that and wondered to yourself why I didn’t use his nom de rap. The reason is that Aubrey lost the rights to that with his contact following his rap battle with Kendrick Lamar. Rather than taking the L, Aubrey decided to sue because he was butt hurt that he lost. With this move, any respect I had for Aubrey disappeared. Hence, he doesn’t get to be called D**** in this newsletter. He is only ever going to be Aubrey Graham, and nothing he can do (if he were to actually care about this) can change that.

With that said, let’s get started.

The Obsessions

The Immaculate Collection

I spend an inordinate amount of time thinking about Madonna during the course of a week. Why? I’m honestly not really sure. She hasn’t really been cooking since the early 2000s, even though she has released new music for the people. She also does not have quite the same cultural cachet that she did when she was younger. However, whenever a Madonna song pops into my head, it stays there for at least a day. Aside from the sheer quality of her hits, think about how many there have been. This brings me to The Immaculate Collection, a compilation of Madonna’s hits from the 1980s. While you can complain about omissions and whatnot, the album is a clear display of a woman who could not put a foot wrong. It is just nice to remind y’all that Madonna truly blessed us with art throughout her career.

“Cowboys in Africa”

In continuing the trend of thinking about random songs, this is one from the influential no wave group Bush Tetras. A song about ostensibly getting killed while engaging in a misguided mission (such as ranching in Kenya like on the television show Cowboy in Africa), the song sticks in my head because of the snaking bass line and the static wall of noise that is the guitar. I heard this song when I was in my late teens, and it’s stuck around since then because it’s a great, strange song.

The Recommendations

The Beths, Straight Line Was A Lie

This is an album that pulls off the ever-delightful trick of indie pop: it’s very cheery while also being very dark. The cheeriness is in the instrumentation. The guitars jangle, and the rhythm section is completely dialed in. Lead singer Elizabeth Stokes sounds upbeat, but don’t let that fool you! Ms. Stokes has had a terrible few years between this album and the previous one, and the lyrics show it, referencing various personal difficulties that have befallen her. It’ll be the best 43 minutes you’ll spend being happy and sad simultaneously.

Blood Orange, Essex Honey

Dev Hynes is a singular voice in the music world. His music as Blood Orange is extremely smooth and complex, touching on a variety of genres while exploring his own position as a Black man in the world. This album, coming seven years after Negro Swan, shows Hynes in excellent form. With a crack crew of collaborators (which includes, randomly, Vini Reilly a/k/a The Durutti Column), Hynes presents another suite of well-crafted, well-calibrated songs that explore his own adolescence in England. The lyrics can lean towards melancholy, but the beauty of the music lessens the blow. The entire album is stunning in its grace and depth. It’s good to have him back again.

Margo Price, Hard Headed Woman

Margo Price, one of the great women occupying the alt-country/Americana space, has decided to drop that alt- and return to her country roots. If you have never listened to her debut, Midwest Farmer’s Daughter, this album might be a surprise to you. If you have, you know that she can play country with the best of them. The excellent songs on this album call back to the outlaw spirit of Waylon Jennings and Johnny Paycheck as well as to the take-no-shit attitude of Loretta Lynn, one of her greatest influences. There are rockers, ballads, and duets, and all of them sound equally good. It’s nice to hear her in this space again, and it’s great to have her putting out new music again.

Ganser, Animal Hospital

Chicago continues to be one of the major homes of the post-punk underground, with bands like FACS and Lifeguard calling the city home. Another band that calls the city home is Ganser. On their new album Animal Hospital, the band plays a very nervous form of guitar-driven post-punk that still retains space for dark menace and experimentation. It is twisty and all-encompassing, constantly leaving the listener unsettled in some manner throughout. In short, it’s a solid post-punk album.

Westside Gunn, HEELS HAVE EYES 2

This is the follow-up to Gunn’s 15-minute tape from earlier this year. It is a bit more fleshed out than that one, running for a lean 37 minutes. If you read the dispatch about boutique rap, you should know what you’ll be hearing here. That said, I put this in here because I heard a voice that I would have never expected on a Westside Gunn tape: MIKE. And, I’ll be real, he came with it. It was just a reminder that Westside Gunn is one of the greatest curators in the rap game right now.

Sally Shapiro, Ready to Live A Lie

Sally Shapiro, a Swedish duo led by a woman who is not named Sally Shapiro, has been pumping out melancholy, Italian-disco-infused dance tracks for quite a long time. They disappeared in the 2010s to only reappear in the 2020s, signed to Italians Do It Better, a label that could not be more in line with their particular sound. If you are expecting a grand reinvention, you are barking up the wrong tree. If you want to listen to a group who has honed what they do to a sharp point, this is the album for you. In addition, there is a fantastic cover of “Rent” by the Pet Shop Boys on this album.

Galaxie 500, Uncollected Noise New York ‘88-’90

Recently, there has been multiple releases of some archival Galaxie 500 material, and it has been quite a boon for people such as myself. This is one is a compilation of songs recorded at Kramer’s studio, Noise New York, during the years mentioned in the titles. There are demo versions of songs you already know such as “Oblivious” and “Blue Thunder” as well as outtakes such as “Never Get To Heaven.” If you don’t know the band, this is a good place to start. If you do, it’s a fascinating addition to their archive.

Saint Etienne, International

Apparently, this is the last Saint Etienne album. If this is the case, they nailed the landing. The crew, with a few of their friends, have made an album that highlights the strengths of everything they have done over the course of their 35-year career. The songs feature a mixture of the dance music they were making on albums like So Tough and Foxbase Alpha and the sophisticated, slice-of-life lyrics that populated albums like Tales from Turnpike House and I’ve Been Trying To Tell You. Whether this is your first Saint Etienne album of you have listened to them all, it’s a beautiful swan song for a truly excellent band.

Curtis Harding, Departures & Arrivals: Adventures of Captain Curt

Curtis Harding is a soul artist who believes that music exists outside of the Stax and Philadelphia International catalogs. While his music does reference classic soul, it is also infused with modern elements, making it much more interesting than your run-of-the-mill revivalist. While this is nominally a concept album, don’t let that stop you from listening to it. The songs are centered on soul grooves mixing with orchestral arrangements, psychedelic sounds, and a healthy amount of echo. A truly great listen, whether you follow (or care about) the concept.

Chicago Underground Duo, Hyperglyph

If you read these dispatches and think to yourself, “Why doesn’t A.C. recommend something really weird,” this is for you. Nominally, this is a jazz album as both Rob Mazurek and Chad Taylor are jazz players who play in more traditional setups, but with all of the studio wizardry, electronics, and synths, it becomes something far more challenging. It is a hard, difficult listen, with skittering rhythms and burning trumpet solos. However, those willing to take the step will find themselves deeply rewarded.

Alright, that is the Spins for me this week. I’ll leave you with a hint for next week’s post. It is the following video:

I’ll leave it to you to figure out what this could mean.

As always, take care of yourselves and each other.