Music Molly

music for unprecedented outdoor parties (megamix 13)

Beyoncé once said, "You said you outside, but you ain't that outside." Maybe she drew some inspiration from parenting newborns. I was once quite outside and now I would say I am inside, so it's been different to get the majority of my musical stimuli from within rather than without, but there's still plenty of music banging around the O'Brien-Wade household.

Still, if you have music you would like to send me or music-related stuff you want to tell me, the Mailbox is always open, more open than ever before: ienjoymusicblog@gmail.com!

An audiovisual recap of Labor

So I thought I was going to curate a huge, perfect playlist of my favorite songs to listen to in labor. Then I realized listening to a huge, perfect playlist of my favorite songs during labor had the potential to ruin some of my favorite songs forever, depending on what gnarly stuff was happening at the time. I decided to keep a few familiar/comforting DJ sets saved on my phone like Zedd at Ultra 2017 (don't knock it til you try it, man), but by the time I was in the bed and hooked up to all the tubes, I realized the only media I could handle was TBS on the hospital television. 21 Jump Street and 22 Jump Street pair great with an epidural.

When I was 9.5 cm dilated, I had my husband play the Woodstock '99 audio of Korn's "Blind" (ARE YOU READY?!?!?!) and then for actual pushing/birthing I had a nice b2b set from Resident Advisor's podcast playing that I hadn't listened to yet: the late Andrew Weatherall ("everyone's favourite debonair psychonaut") and DJ Harvey ("a living legend") playing together at an Amsterdam superclub in 2012. Several nurses complimented the music!

In a weird bit of synergy, the song playing as we settled into "the golden hour"—that's where all the health professionals leave you alone to chill with your baby after they, like, clean everyone up and make sure they didn't leave any of their surgical stuff inside you—was a "desert disco dub" version of one of Chris's favorite songs, Echo and the Bunnymen's "The Killing Moon." Can't tell you how many times I have seen him do it at karaoke ahaha. Good vibe setting for le baby...

Fatboy Slim almost destroys British seaside town

While couchbound with new child, I thought exposing her to a little big beat music would be good for her constitution. I've played a lot of YouTube search results for "Fatboy Slim live" but I somehow missed this DVD footage from his Big Beach Boutique II concert in 2002.

The backstory behind this literally and metaphysically ecstatic concert is unreal. Fatboy Slim threw a free concert in his home city of Brighton in 2001 and 60,000 people came. The following year, he did the same thing, only 250,000 people showed up. This doubled the population of the city. Liquor stores closed early because they ran out of stock. Cars were abandoned on the highway miles away from the beach. And there were fifty police officers assigned to the event to mitigate

Two people died in the aftermath of the concert; there were 170 injuries and enough trash (scuse me, RUBBISH) to merit a £300,000 cleanup effort (Fatboy Slim donated £75,000). But this could have been a true, horrific disaster, and it wasn't, because everyone was rolling and the music was banging and they let the show go on rather than cancel it and risk a riot. The footage is nutty. Attendees look so unequivocally happy it looks almost art-directed, like the classic smiley face has been grafted onto their heads. The concept of throwing a free concert with 50 bobbies to keep the peace seems laughable even then, to paraphrase an old Vine, I can't believe they'd done this.

Gelli Haha's immaculate track names

I'm a bit late on Switcheroo, Gelli Haha's wonderfully cracked circus music debut, but I have caught up to the zeitgeist and really enjoyed this offering. My favorite song is "Piss Artist," a spoken-word account of peeing in a jar at a party over a wonky bouncy beat, which would fit great on a playlist between cumgirl8's "Picture Party" and Emily Allan's "Naked Body." Also the tracklist for Switcheroo tells you everything you need to know about how the album is going to sound, I feel.

Benson Boone mogs Harry Styles in Harry's House???

My friend Tara went to Benson Boone at MSG and posted a video of him singing "Sign Of The Times" by Harry Styles (my favorite Harry Styles song by a country mile). This pleased me greatly. I don't wanna get too snippy about Mr. Styles lest the TREAT PEOPLE WITH KINDNESS crowd find out where I live and hide in my walls, but I think even the Utah-bred, mild seasoning chicken tenders energy Boone has more...endemic spice...on offer...than the One Direction man. Yeah I said it. I see Boone's Harry Styles cover as a direct challenge, mano y mano for pop-rock domination, two white boys enter, one white boy leaves. The vocals are there, the pants seem to be made of leather, the belt buckle is sparkling and Boone is at least pretending to put the "bi" in "biceps." This is not karaoke, it's Harryoke. Your move, Styles.

Good photo alert: this photo of Geese

We all know I love a good promo photo here...

I saw this one of can't-say-enough-nice-things-about-this-young-but-already-bangin'-band Geese in Blackbird Spyplane—a promo photo taken by Mark Sommerfeld. Not to be all "the Strokes" (Geese are doing something quite different than the Strokes, even though they're also some nice-looking New York natives) but reminds me a lil bit of the vibe of the Strokes's first promo photos. Just hanging out and being cool...I've never been able to pull that off but I recommend trying it out...

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

Let's Eavesdrop.

I listened to Greg Freeman's Burnover because Grace Robins-Somerville gave it a zesty Best New Music for the 'Fork, and also because Freeman is based in my hometown of Burlington, VT and I gotta see what's up in the scene. (Interestingly, Freeman seems to write a lot more about my parents' homeland, UPSTATE NEW YORK. Stewart's Shops vibes.) I listened to some of the Garth Brooks Bass Pro Shops exclusive box set because someone posted about it being deeply discounted on the Time Crisis subreddit. Blog post TK. Speaking of "reddit," the effusive praise on r/popheads got me into ADÉLA's The Provocateur EP and it hit me like a semi-truck and I had to text all my personal popheads about it. SEXY!! I listened to the GUNK playlist, highlights include "Coins" by Horsepower (subtly rockin' power ballad) and "I Knew" by Léna Bartels (aggressively rockin' post-punk-freakout). I listened to Racing Mount Pleasant by Racing Mount Pleasant (which features a song called "Racing Mount Pleasant") because good taste-haver Colin Kennedy posted about it. I listened to "ALIVE" by Playboi Carti and NBA Youngboy because Jelani posted about it on his Substack...intense. I listened to Fast Money Music's Rouge because Natasha Somerville rec'd it on Perfectly Imperfect—fuckin' rakish, man. LOUCHE. Saxophones and sequencers, what could be better.

And how about some new music from past I Enjoy Music featurees?

adults, last featured in I Enjoy Music for their Blueprint Playlist that commemorated a split EP with Spank Hair, have a new single out called "patterns" with romantic '80s soft-goth guitars and gorgeous layered call-n-response vocals...dreamy!!:

Thrift Bakery, whose associate musical identity Loco Domingo was last featured in IEM with their barnburner song "It's Loco Time," simply refuse to stop grooving. Their newest single "Tall Enough To Ride" pairs elegiac Bruce Springsteeny 'we gotta get outta this town' lyrics with homespun funk vibes: