Music Molly

music for oops all kick (megamix 12)

hi guys I just had a baby so I Enjoy Music is "on maternity leave" for a little bit. This was written right before baby arrival. But there are a few great posts scheduled for the future – like this interview with NYC designer/music impresario about town Serge Neborak.....anyway enjoy the megamix!!

Megamix intro — If You're Reading This, A Kid Is Happening Soon. I'm hella pregnant, baby is imminent as I type this, I'm like...scheduling blog posts just in case I go into labor. I'm gonna take a little break from the blog while I figure out how to keep a baby fed and watered. But I will be back eventually, with more music to be enjoyed, in a blog style.

Here's something fun: I did not expect to write my first ever Pitchfork review whilst 9 months pregnant, holy moly. I also did not expect to write it about Radiohead's second-ever live album (their first since 2001) and I did not expect to get to grapple with Hail To The Thief's complex "political album" legacy in the shadow of the band's unsatisfying stance re: Palestine...got to do all those things, and I'm proud of how it turned out, even though giving music a score makes me feel all itchy....I twitch and I salivate like with myxomatosis!!

I also got to write about one of my favorite subjects—the place of Swedish pop songwriting in our music ecosystem—for GQ, specifically in the form of a song-splainer of Max Martin and Shellback, who've been tapped once again by Taylor Swift (heard of her?) to produce her upcoming album. It's been cool to write for these legit outlets this summer...is this what Hunter S. Thompson was talking about when he said "when the going gets weird, the weird turn pro"?

Tom Petty baby

The place where I've been going for prenatal doc appointments pipes music into their hallways and bathrooms, and at one of my last visits, I clocked the sweet sounds of "Even The Losers" by Tom Petty. Tom Petty is simply one of my guys. I came to him via paternal osmosis. Dad loves Tom Petty, I love Tom Petty, simple as. This reminded me to text my father asking if he had a good Tom Petty playlist...

Later that day I texted my friend Dana for weekend plans, and she said she was going to a classic car show that would shut down part of a busy shopping area in Glendale. There would be entertainment in the form of cover bands, including an Elton John impersonator, and a Tom Petty cover band called the PettyBreakers. The universe was aligned. I wore a shirt emblazoned with an old Branson Reese design, borrowed from my husband because I am Extra Large rn but also because it had a car on it?

Classic car show was unreal, a fabulous night. Something poetic about a car-centric event that shuts down several large blocks of a busy street for pedestrians. The PettyBreakers rocked, their lead singer had Tom-accurate flat-ironed blonde hair. I just looked at their schedule and they were BOOKED AND BUSY this summer, they have nine gigs around California in August alone. My favorite Tom Petty song is "Runnin' Down a Dream" but I think my favorite Tom Petty album is Wildflowers, a true Rick Rubin slay.

music media format experimentation, yes!!

I've been really digging 8-track, a digital media experience created by music writer Caleb Catlin. Each...issue? post? the format defies my standard blog descriptions...presents a different interview with a featured artist about some of their favorite records, in the form of a series of futuristically designed layouts. So far featurees include Niontay, who shared his love for Joy Division and the Cure, and zayALLCAPS, who talked up Mint Condition's 1993 song "You Send Me Swingin'" ("it's some HBCU ass music".) I talked about my love of the specific mystique of print magazines in a past megamix and a post about !!!, and 8-track absolutely captures Print Media Magic for the purpose of hacking the social media planet. INNOVATION. Follow Caleb on IG and TikTok for more of these.

why did we culturally accept the name Goo Goo Dolls? whatever, doesn't matter

I pride myself on having a rich library of go-to YouTube music moments to treat myself to in low moments, but somehow I missed "Goo Goo Dolls play 'Iris' in the rain in Buffalo New York in 2004." I had briefly re-downloaded TikTok in a moment of weakness and that's where this clip resurfaced.

1998 was a very powerful year for music, I wrote about it in my old newsletter The Molly Zone, everyone was so dramatic at the end of history. "Iris" was written for the movie City of Angels...can I beg for a re-investment in high quality original music for motion pictures (film and television)? There was something a little disappointing about the big song coming out of Lena Dunham's new television show Too Much being a The Fray cover by Waxahatchee/Kevin Morby; just as throttling longform journalism will dry up the source material for the salacious narrative podcasts that eventually become the streaming television we all know and love, a lack of brand new songs will cause the nostalgia ourobouros to seize up and wither away and in 20 years we'll have nothing to fresh cover or sample. Regardless, we can all agree John Joseph Theodore Rzeznik looks great sopping wet!

i drank Steve Albini's iced fluffy coffee

Steve Albini has been gone for over a year and that sucks. His music was incredible, it is known, but in addition to pioneering a legendary sonic palette, he also had kind of a delightful...dietary palate. His 2018 Grub Street Diet is a portrait of a man fond of root beer ("All root beer is delicious. I mean, Barq’s sucks"), Bulgarian yogurt ("I feel sorry for Bulgaria, so I buy [their yogurt]. Their roads are real fucked up."), roast duck from a casino in Indiana, and cooking mélanges of leftovers ("made a kind of budget cassoulet—or more correctly, an absolutely typical pasta fagioli"). Grub Street Diets never fail to reveal the true soul of the dieter and Albini's is certified pure.

Early in the Diet, he mentions the concept of a cinnamon and maple syrup latte that's a "house specialty" of his recording studio. He calls it a "fluffy coffee." A few weeks ago, my YouTube algorithm served me a tutorial for an iced version of the fluffy coffee that had been posted back in April. I had all the ingredients and was able to replicate the recipe.

It's...oh it's so good. My first sip of coffee was stolen from my mom, who enjoyed her bean juice in the style of melted coffee ice cream. This gave me a desire for Dessert Coffee that still burns in my heart, even as the cruel process of aging has forced me to chill out with the sugar in general. God I wish I could be like a hardboiled detective who orders coffee black, but I don't think that's ever gonna happen. The iced fluffy is tremendous, essentially one of those iced shaken espresso type things from Starbucks but without the cultural baggage or the shaking. I Recommend. Pair with Goat by The Jesus Lizard for maximum impact.

a touch of Wisp

Whenever I get an invite or opportunity that makes me feel like a Real Music Blogger, I have to take it. Hence I got to see the shoegaze artist Wisp play an intimate 'secret show' to commemorate the release of her debut album If Not Winter at the Pico Union Project, the oldest synagogue building in Los Angeles. Very cool small space with dark wood floors. People with different sizes and formats of cameras milled amongst the small, hype crowd. The fog machine emitted mist so thick it sometimes blotted out the band entirely. With the help of some ethereal backing tracks, the Wisp Live Sound is plenty beefy, ripping, roaring, etc. and it has been fun to continue to explore the sound bath-esque curative qualities of contemporary shoegaze music. The sweetest moment of the show was "I remember how your hands felt on mine," which got everyone in the first few rows hopping up and down and screaming AYYY on the 2s and 4s.

I listened to music because I saw people saying it was good

Eavesdropping Time.

I listened to a playlist called "insane electronic outros" after seeing someone solicit songs for it (I did this for a crunchy autumnal playlist several years ago and it worked out great). I listened to "Into Pieces" by Subtronics after it was mentioned in a moving personal post on The Dancers' Dispatch, a Substack about dance music, especially experiencing dance music live, that I am enjoying. (Subtronics should have a Substack...nominative determinism.) I listened to jetski's epic kick mix song and the required airhorn made me laugh so hard I almost injured myself. I listened to "an acidic, stomping Billy Joel flip" shared on John's Music Blog: "Big Shot (What Kind of Madness)" by Lukøje, which hit perfectly after having watched all five hours of Billy Joel's HBO documentary. I listened to Foster Kamer's Summer Fridays Radio after it got a mention on Feed Me. I listened to Sophie's PRODUCT re-issue after reading Sam Bodrojan's lovely writing about it. I listened to DI LEO's 2020 album You Wanted to Listen from Outside My Room I Guess after reading his newsletter about how much he loves chilling and working on trains (SAME).

And guess what - new music from past I Enjoy Music featurees?

Ravine Angel, last featured in I Enjoy Music for her wild castration movie companion album, dropped new tunes: Object Of Affection, 10 experimental electronic tunes that balance her taste for abject dissonance with her subliminal/unconscious penchant for catchiness...

And The Terminal Buildings, last seen talking about prolific songwriters and compilation albums in a Three Music Thingz, has fresh tunes out after a blistering run of albums in 2023. A Binful of Bells is gentle, tuneful, altogether appealing indie pop that "takes influence from the softer side of 60s psychedelia":