Happy Sunday, bibliophiles! I hope this week has treated you well.
This week: When I say L, you say OG! L TO THE…?
Enjoy this week’s songs!
SUNDAY SONGS: 8/11/24
“Lazy Eye” – Silversun Pickups
This song returned to me like an old friend not long ago, and with it, some misconceptions that were only picked apart when I saw the music video for the first time. For the longest time, I thought that a woman was singing this song; I saw Nikki Monninger and thought, naturally, she had to be the one singing, right? Wrong—Brian Aubert just has a uniquely high-pitched, more androgynous voice. (To be fair to my past self, Monninger does sing lead on a handful of their newer songs, but she primarily plays bass.)
I specifically remember the only other Silversun Pickups song I know, “Circadian Rhythm (Last Dance)” being on heavy rotation on Sirius XMU back when I was in middle school, but even around 10 years apart from each other, “Lazy Eye” has that same meticulous drive that the best 2000’s indie-rock track had. It’s almost startling to me that this song isn’t the opening track of the album, Carnavas, even having heard nothing else from it—there’s just a feeling of it that’s just so distinctly beginning. The instrumentals build up from steady indie-rock, laden with foreshadowing in the form of Aubert’s driving flourishes of both vocals and guitar. “Lazy Eye” segues into a second act that can bear no description other than explosive, splattering in your face like a can of soda shaken up for too long. But as quickly as everything ricochets in a thousand directions, the floorboards fall out from under it, returning to its mellow origins as the repeated outro of “The room, the sun and sky” fades into the woodwork. Paired with the precipice-staring lyrics of anticipation and coming to grips with reality (“I’ve been waiting for this moment all my life/But it’s not quite right”), make it feel molded for the intro of a coming-of-age movie, coming to grips with the fact that nothing’s as perfect as you can ever dress it in your imagination.
…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:
Where You See Yourself – Claire Forrest – “I’ve been waiting/I’ve been waiting for this moment all my life/But it’s not quite right…”
I’m far from caught up on any kind of Clairo lore, but apparently “Juna” is the first song that she’s ever made a music video for! There’s something funny, unintentionally or not, about having a song (and a singer) as unassuming as Clairo set against the backdrop of a bunch of screaming, oiled-up wrestlers tossing each other around. Somehow, it works.
Clairo has never fully blown me away, but every once in a while, she’ll break through the mellow and snap into something luscious that has me looping it for days. Maybe I just like Clairo when she leans into the ’70s influences—I always come back to the funky bass that comes through the sadgirl mold in “Amoeba,” but “Juna” fully leans into it. If you took away the synths and left in the layered piano riffs, this track would feel like pure ’70s soul. I’d be fully convinced if there turned out to be some grand conspiracy to make this song just to soundtrack playing pool in a dimly-lit club, flickering lights fading both inside and out as the multicolored balls collide across the velvet. It has all the grace of aging, velvet curtains and the twinkling of new, flirtatious love, the kind that pushes you towards things you wouldn’t have done before: “You make me wanna go dancing/You make me wanna try on feminine/You make me wanna go buy a new dress/You make me wanna slip off a new dress.” Clairo’s voice constantly feels seconds away from dissipating into thin air, but she pulls off the sultry groove that “Juna” presents. And somehow, just like the bizarre juxtaposition of this song’s gentle disposition and said video of greasy wrestlers, something about Clairo’s mouth-trumpet breakdown (new sentences are formed every day) fits right in. I’d prefer…maybe more actual trumpet, but I feel like there’s something perfect about this song not taking itself too seriously. (Not necessarily everybody else in the video hamming up said mouth-trumpet breakdown…yeah)
…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:
The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue – V.E. Schwab – “Most of these days/I don’t get too intimate/Why would I let you in?/But I think again…”
One of my first thoughts while listening to “Drain Me!” was that it sounded like Pixies if they’d gone pop. Seems like an oxymoron, but I swear that there’s something about the guitars near the last third and the chord progression that reeks of “Gigantic.” Conclusion: this is Pixies, if they happened to be a) more pop-inclined, and b) ragingly lesbian.
I’m sure you have to be an unattainable, Taylor Swift level of influential to be able to control when your record comes out, but releasing Towa Bird’s debut, American Hero, this May, right before the rush of summer, was a genius move. Granted, this is the only song of hers I’ve heard, but it is a PERFECT summer song. Charged with reckless kisses and clandestine meetings, it feels like the kind of head-over-heels love that’s made for blasting with the windows down, careening down the highway. Bird’s guitar-driven approach pulls it ever-so-slightly out of the mold of mainstream pop, but there’s no denying that this is a summery pop song for our day and age—you make a song like this, and you’re just asking to have it featured in Heartstopper or something. And how wonderful is it that we have so many out, queer pop songs? Open queerness exists in almost every genre right now, but even if I don’t like a particular artist, it gives me hope to remember that songs about women loving women can draw massive crowds—and even better that this one was written by a woman of color. It’s not like this song is revolutionary, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t worth celebrating—and fully worth dancing around to.
…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:
Road to Ruin – Hana Lee – Daredevil sensibilities, magic-powered motorbikes in the post-apocalyptic wasteland…and queer women.
Thus (tentatively) concludes my Cocteau Twins summer…for now, at least, until it’s cold and I can allow myself to listen to Victorialand. Cocteau T-winter.
I’ll see myself out…
This is the only track I’ve heard off of their 1984 album Treasure, which critics seem to have attached themselves to like the album’s namesake, but has been described by the band themselves in terms including but not limited to Robin Guthrie calling it “an abortion.” Yeah…again, harsh, but if this is the only track I take from it, how on Earth does “Lorelei” deserve that slander from its own creator? Sure, they hadn’t hit their stride at this point; it sounds more distinctly, in-your-face ’80s with its stuttering drum machine and slipshod production, but it’s all part of the charm, if you ask me. That drum machine is the paperweight keeping the billowing curtain of Elizabeth Fraser’s silk-thin voice tethered to the earthly realm. Even so early on in their career, Fraser had already honed the ethereal breath of her voice, able to make every hum, mumble, and lilt the stuff of magic itself, how I’d imagine the texture of fabric woven from the dewy web of a spider in the early hours of dawn.
…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:
A Magic Steeped in Poison – Judy I. Lin – the kind of breathy, enchanting music fit for a magic system based on the properties of tea.
“L to the OG” (from Succession) – Kendall Roy
I’ve finished the first two seasons of Succession, and my main takeaway is this: watching Kendall Roy, a middle-aged billionaire whose vocabulary consists of every corporate buzzword imaginable strung into a sentence, not only try to rap, but say a line like “yo, bitches be catty/but the King Kong daddy/Rock all the haters while we go roll a fatty” gave me more whiplash than the twist ending of the season finale. It’s like watching a train wreck…you just can’t peel your eyes away…
…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:
The Electric Circus – Timothy Lipton – “It’s about a young man making his way through the world. It’s set in two different time periods; it kinda switches back and forth…the circus part is a metaphor for the anxiety of modern life.” – Roman Roy, starred review
Since this post consists entirely of songs, consider all of them to be today’s song.
That’s it for this week’s Sunday Songs! Have a wonderful rest of your day, and take care of yourselves!
The Bookish Mutant 