Episode 22
Heey-ya! It’s the spring squidfall episode, don’t you know?
Actually, it’s the “Open Format” episode! Wherein Dan learns about a new thing… and I take a deep, random dive into a box of download codes!
We are truly in the torrents of spring, friends!
Steve Albini would probably hate this podcast! #bogmonstermusic
You’ll find the value of the show is upped significantly when you hit the YT playlist!
I’m also here to say… at least in my notes… farewell to Steve Albini… gone far, far too soon! He’s one of those people who changed the music we all listen to on a scale that’s all its own. Rest in Power!
Dan’s Notes
Dan learns about a new thing!
So I just turned 48 about a week and a half ago and I had been feeling like my music listening had been in a bit of a rut as of late, you know? Liked had heard a few things that I thought were good enough recently, but ultimately not a lot really new and exciting to me. I am not someone allergic to checking out what is popular on “the charts” on occasion just out of curiosity as to what the world outside of my own online bubble/suburban office drone life are into these days and one thing I’ve noticed has been the rise of what I guess you’d put under the umbrella genre of Regional Mexican music into the US charts through sheer streaming numbers and growing Latin American diaspora communities around the rest of North America, though that term covers a pretty wide swath of rootsy folk traditions from accordion-driven Norteno and Tejano bands to the brass-and-strings ballads of northern Mexican corrido music (whose subgenre of narcocorridos is notoriously controversial within the country for its songs focussing on the exploits of various cartel figures, mostly known in the US and Canada because of the cold open of a particular episode of Breaking Bad and a few touristy articles in English language music publications in the 00’s). I noticed it as a thing but didn’t really take much time to check out the actual music until my girlfriend and I were checking out the livestreams of various Coachella stages as there were a few artists she and I liked on the bill this year. Anyway, one stream kicked in with huge lettering text and news clips talking about Mexican censorship of corrido artists whose music discussed local drug trades and government corruption over a blackened stage while a Morgan Freeman soundalike boomed out about “those who rise up from the darkness”, followed by what I can only describe as a performance by one of the biggest just straight up rock stars in the best possible way that I’ve seen in a while, and mostly working in a subgenre I was almost entirely unfamiliar with before this point. So as part of this rise of Regional artists on the charts in Mexico and the US, there has been a whole new scene of artists crossing this rootsy rural corridos music with modern hip hop influences and imagery while also drawing on those narcocorridos traditions to document the lives of the people on the front lines of NPR’s Alt.Latino podcast,s miniseries on the rise Regional Mexican music on US charts describe that I listened to recently as one of Mexico’s five largest employers across all industries – into what they call corridos tumbados or “trap corridos”. The biggest star to come out of that whole corridos tumbados scene was the artist whose Coachella set I was about to witness on that stream and who would totally blow me away during that time – a thin, raspy voiced 24 year old singer from Zapopan, Mexico who goes by Peso Pluma. I was really impressed by his whole performance and seeing that style of music given the big pop fest staging and presentation, and spent the next couple of weeks perusing playlists on various streaming services and trying to read up on the emerging subgenre and some of the big names, so in lieu of my usual collection of album/artist picks relating to a given theme I kind of ended up getting distracted from our previously selected show topic for this episode and went for more of a grab bag type list of a few of the artists who really jumped out to me.
Peso Pluma
Broke out in 2021 with El Belicon, his 2023 song Ella Bailla Sola has been a huge crossover hit breaking into the US, making appearances on late night TV and big awards shows and stuff, but still very much carrying himself as a “voice of the people” bringing the stories and culture of Mexican life out to the rest of the world. I guess he’s like Mexico’s most-streamed domestic artist or something like that and his third and most recent album GENESIS has so many killer tracks on it.
Natanael Canó
The guy who literally coined the name of the genre on his 2019 song Soy El Diablo and one of the first to really try to fuse hip hop vibes with corrido music. His collaborations with Peso Pluma, Gabito Ballesteros and Fuerza Regida have been some of my favorites of the genre. Plus “O Me Voy O Te Vas” is just one of my favourite roots/country songs of recent years.
Fuerza Regida
From San Bernardino California, FR are one of the flagship acts of Street Mob Records, one of the bigger labels focussing on the subgenre. According to the NPR doc I listened to, they are currently in a rivalry with Peso Pluma over top streaming tumbado artists.
Chino Pacas
A young up and comer on the Street Mob Records roster, Chino Pacas is still in his teens and already has a few killer singles under his belt.
Xavi
Hailing from Phoenix AZ and focussing more on songs of romance and heartbreak than more illicit topics. He also makes me feel hella old but La Diabla was one of the first tracks to jump out at me on the playlists I had been checking out.
….. Anyway, I feel Iike a lot of artists have tried to cross hip hop and country music to various degrees from either side for a little while now but these young corridos tumbados artists have made the most effective mix of those genres, but just a different style of country than your usual glossy Nashville stuff.
And also, on a totally unrelated note:
SPEED
SPEED from Sydney, Australia just announced their first full length album will be coming out this July and I’m pretty stoked about that. I know they’re one of those bands that ends up on all of those “Who will Be The Next Turnstile (etc)” listticles but something about their tough riffs mixed with golden retriever energy in interviews has made me a fan since their “A Gang Called Speed” EP from a couple of years ago. They’ve released an advance single called Real Life Love that features lots of footage of the band bro-ing out and being positive and stuff. One wild trivia thing about the band is that their singer Jem is actually a professional classical flautist as a day job outside of hardcore, though don’t expect to hear any big symphonic parts in their pounding riffage. I am very much looking forward to checking out their album “Only One Mode” when it drops later this summer.
Miscellany
Matt’s Notes
What a few days it’s been!
Let me start by saying that up until yesterday, this was going to be a pretty straightforward post… roughly corresponding to my picks for the episode…
And so… to that end…
Jesse: Complete Discography
First of all…
Leatherface is probably my favorite band of all time… or else it’s a tie with the Replacements…
I’ve known about this record since around ’99 when it was handed to me on a burned CD by a friend who I think downloaded it from Napster.
It arrived around the same time I discovered Leatherface in the first place.
Years went by. The CD got lost to one vortex or other, likely while moving between apartments…
I’m thrilled Little Rocket Records is doing so much to get Leatherface LP’s back into print… and now this long-overdue reissue… plus, Frankie is playing a few festivals in Europe and around the UK it looks like lately…
It’s as personal as anything Frankie’s ever written… it’s visceral emotionally but it also swings and sways and swaggers… it really is as good as good gets…
Rest in Power, Steve Albini
All you have to do is look in his direction for quality in everything he touched as a musician, producer, engineer, and goddamned everything that he was to so many people…
I’ve spent since yesterday morning thinking and feeling about this when I first learned via Jack White’s IG account of all things. My memories are of records he made first… and I discovered Big Black, Rapeman, and Shellac in my late teens and early twenties… going to somebody’s house and it was on… or on a mix tape or burned CD… whatever exactly we did before the internet was everywhere…
And to say nothing of Surfer Rosa… probably the best Pixies album… and, as with such a vast discography, there are things sitting in plain sight that I’ve missed listening to… simply because they haven’t landed directly in front of me… like the first Breeders LP… or the album he recorded for Thrush Hermit, of all groups…
Goat (Jesus Lizard) & Rid of Me (PJ Harvey)
So… a couple of the download codes I pulled from the Random Box of Random Download Codes are records produced by Steve… PJ Harvey’s Rid of Me… which is the first record of hers I became aware of… and the Jesus Lizard’s Goat album… they are both brilliant records by artists in their prime… sharing something harsh and visceral in the music for sure… and owing much of that to the set-up… to the production or engineering or whatever the hell Steve was there doing…
And so, like lots of other people online yesterday, tomorrow, and probably for days to come… here are a few Steve things that have cropped up… or resonate… or what-have-you…
Rapeman
In Utero (Nirvana)
Some of the invective… the edgelord schtick… has aged poorly… and he owned it…. he’s been candid in interviews about interrogating his past words… so… let’s all agree… Rapeman is the world’s worst name for a band… AND… the music slays on every track… like… it swings and shit…
I remember very clearly in grade ten when In Utero came out. It was a big deal at the time. It was so fucking menacing and heavy and intense. That intensity was for sure owing to Albini setting things up just so. Who knew at Fredericton High School circa September, 1993… the fall of grade ten… how THIS THING CALLED LIFE would go for all of us, man… This record is tied very strongly to the things I liked about that time…
1000 Hurts (Shellac) / Songs About Fucking (Big Black)
I’m in the midst of downsizing… as much as I can… for various reasons… but really, the whole endeavor has taken on a life of its own…
In the past few weeks, I’ve reduced my record collection by around 70%. Roughly. I’ve sold in the hundreds of records. This is to help ensure that everything I own materially can be fit into six oversized airplane bags, plus two items of carry-on luggage. And so… every artist, just about, had to contribute vinyl to the local stores here in Saint John… and thereby save me paying to carry them across the country or WHEREVER… so… why these two records as opposed to any others of theirs? That’s a totally good question. Basically… 1000 Hurts came in a box… thereby occupying more space in a piece of Air Canada luggage… and… Songs About Fucking is a perfect album… but so are Pig Pile… and Racer X… and so… you have to get rid of something… they’re all equally good… you see my problem? Maybe, maybe not…
Fast-forward to yesterday… and as I dove into Shellac on Apple Music like I’d yet to do so far… I listened to Excellent Italian Greyhound for the first time… and friends, there is some unprecedentedly fucked stuff there… this is some many years after Big Black…after Rapeman… Genuine Lulabelle stands out as some kind of weirdness… that works… it’s kind of awe-inspiring…
Excellent Italian Greyhound (Shellac)
To say nothing of the new Shellac record To All Trains coming out literally next week…
Or the fact that Steve was a World Series of Poker champion a bunch of times over…
Or that I JUST THIS VERY MOMENT learned that he recorded 24 Hour Revenge Therapy by fucking Jawbreaker… and that he confused them with Jawbox WHILE RECORDING THEM…
And on and on and on… good God… or non-God, if that’s your thing, man…
This is all to say it’s a drag! One could have hoped the man would continue on for many years, putting out excellent music for like… a lot more years… the man leaves a staggering path in his wake… and we’re all following in one way or another… Jesus… that’s kind of heavy… I’m going to insist on ending this on a positive note… so here’s Steve versus Nardwuar…
It’s been a time!! Let’s get at ‘er again soon!
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Filed under: Uncategorized - @ May 10, 2024 2:08 am
