music moots with t-minus ("I Wanna Be On Your Mind" by 2nd Grade)
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 t-minus! The Philadelphia 4-piece (James Lynch, Seth Brodzik, James Parks, and Alexa Rozell) released their debut album Convenience in Understanding last month on Karol Records. They describe the album as encompassing "two and a half years of self-produced, self-engineered, self-everything you could think of all under the guise of tape hiss and friendly Miller High Life fueled banter." Recorded on a Tascam 424 MkII, Convenience in Understanding has a particular lo-fi texture that blasts through the cold oblivion of space and immediately creates a pathway of warm feeling from band to listener. The crunch of crumpled guitar, the intimacy of vocals nestled gently into the mix, the eavesdropping-y thrill of verité interludes...what a sweet listening experience. Cassette Format As Lifestyle.
t-minus
t-minus recommended "I Wanna Be On Your Mind", off their album Scheduled Explosions. "An album the whole band has been unanimously obsessed with this year :)," says the band.
Power pop, baby. A Philadelphia band like t-minus, 2nd Grade rock out in the Guided By Voices tradition of including many small masterpieces on the same recording; Scheduled Explosions is 23 tracks ("I Wanna Be On Your Mind" is the closing song), and 2nd Grade's Peter Gill just put out a solo album as WPTR (great artist name) that is 18 tracks long. I am interested, always, in brevity as a songwriting tactic—not in the modern "let's keep this as short as possible so everyone's decapitated attention spans can handle it" way, but maybe more like one of those hella nutritious granola bars that contains just nuts, dates, and an egg white to bind it. Brevity = simplicity, simplicity = perfection.
That's how power pop as a genre always hits my ear, anyway. Song as attempt to craft the Perfect Morsel Of Sound. The "pop" is the likeability of the song, the "power" is the undeniability of the song. And on "I Wanna Be On Your Mind," that morsel can be found at the 39 second mark, in the melodic turn of the titular phrase, where the your mind tucks itself, with polite yearning, beneath the wanna be on. That's the perfection of power pop...the large brass key clicking in its lock...the tapered tail curled about the tower of swirled soft serve ice cream...a natural + refreshed awakening just a minute before your phone alarm would have jostled your consciousness...to craft such a moment of fulfillment must be so satisfying, and to hear it is divine.
Thank you t-minus! Listen to Convenience in Understanding.
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