Music Makers

Music Moots with Dan Boeckner

Music Moots with Dan Boeckner

We are extremely back with Music Moots™, the blogseries where I ask someone to recommend me a song they like, and then I listen to the song and then write a little about it.

Today we have Dan Boeckner! A Canadian indie rock legend who has played in some incredible bands over the years—we're talking Handsome Furs, we're talking Divine Fits, we're talking Operators—in 2024 he 'struck out on his own' with a solo album as Boeckner (the album title was Boeckner! and you know we love an exclamation point around here) and this year he's been playing a bunch of shows with the band that started it all, Wolf Parade, who got a big boost when the gay hockey show Heated Rivalry used their classic "I'll Believe In Anything" in an episode where [SPOILER] a hockey player professes his love for his secret smoothie boyfriend (a boyfriend who makes smoothies) in front of a big crowd of hockey fans. That song just hit 100 million streams according to Sub Pop, holy moly.

I just saw Wolf Parade's set at Osheaga and it was incredible. And so simple! Four dudes churning out heartfelt rippers on normal-sized keyboards, nothing fancy, just good shit. I often feel the urge to roll my eyes at the moment when everyone hoists their phones in the air at a festival set for the Big Viral Song but I had no desire to do so for Wolf Parade, who are getting exactly the flowers they deserve.

Dan is a real one and gave me a song recommendation for Music Moots: "I WISH I WAS AN M80" by Lex Walton.

This song has an addictive texture. I feel like a scientist in a lab that develops new snack foods, tasting different kinds of potato chip. Is this song "crispy" or "crunchy"? The guitar and drums scronch perfectly throughout, and the phrase "Renaissance woman of concept rock" contains a poetic rightness, it's been stuck in my head on and off for days.

I didn't know much at all about Lex Walton so I did some background research. She helmed/helms a record label called Youth Against Satan, named so because "we are vehemently against Satan, Lucifer, the Dark Lord, forces of hate, evil, nihilism, unTruth, and as such, we try to create love, good, purpose, striving towards the Truth In All Things" (that quote is from a 2022 interview on the website of the Boston-based show promoter Kids Like You & Me...shout out independent media). I recently went to my husband's film premiere in Hollywood and, en route, saw a business called Lucifer's Pizza. It struck me as completely insane to invoke Satan in your pizza business. Those people are playing with fire...and I don't mean wood-fired pizza.

I don't always listen to the artist's whole enchilada when I get a song rec but I listened to the whole I WISH I WAS AN M80 EP, as well as the newer release ENGAGEMENT BAIT and Lex Walton simply has It...unusual arrangements with at least a touch of friction to challenge your ears, but also an essential catchiness, swagger and allure...catching flies with both honey AND vinegar.

Lex Walton also has a Youth Against Satan BLOG! And I enjoyed her poem/manifesto about the concept of Sound Rock, especially these thoughts on genre:

Genres are not meaningless, that is the problem. There are no rules we should obey but the rule of "what sounds good is good." Genres that signify historical moments should be especially vilified in modern contexts. "Proto-punk," "post-punk;" if "punk" is an eternal state of being, why must it be adjoined with time-based constraints (each with their own baggage)? Long live adjectives. We don't wish to erase ways of talking about music, but genres should only live on in the vestige of adjectives; "noisy," "glammy," "proggy," "twee." Talk about "trap hi hats" and "surf guitars" and "jungle breaks" and "motown bass" in ways that don't condemn the music that contains them to a narrow frame of relation. It is better to be described as being like something than to be diagnosed AS something.

I'm always trying to figure out how to describe music without just leaning on genre tags in a superficial way, and that last sentence is basically why. Whenever I default to calling something one of the Big Genres, I then ask myself...why? What am I trying to say? Why am I being so lazy? Long live adjectives, indeed.

That being said, I need to write my own poem/manifesto about how we need to stop saying "indie rock" and start saying "alt rock" again. Setting a reminder to do this. Watch this space.

Anyway, Lex Walton = GOOD MUSIC. Addictive crunch, excellent flavor.

Thanks Dan! Wolf Parade is playing more shows this fall, dates are on their link aggregation.

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