The Plan, Abandoned

7/8/2021

1. Caballeras - SÁVILA
   This here’s a neat example of what my old English Lit professors would describe as “mimesis”—the aesthetic imitation/formalization of the natural or material world in art. The Mexican-American outfit girds their ode to equestriennes with an understated, cantering cumbia rhythm that enkindles visions of riders in a twilit prairie, or of King Arthur’s coconut wielding page.

2. If Anything - John Glacier
   The blogs are excited about John Glacier, which feels like a very antiquated thing to say. Most of the press she’s been getting in the runup to her debut record has alluded to her “mysteriousness,” which also feels antiquated in our age of panoptic transparency.
   
   It all leaves me feeling nostalgic for an era when music blogs had the cultural purchase to pluck toiling geniuses from obscurity and propel them into the mainstream. But that’s an era I wasn’t actually old enough to experience directly, and the cynic in me wonders if there really was anything special about that period of indie music kingmaking, or if the music blog industrial complex was, in reality, just another expression of the same market mechanisms that have been shaping the contours of popular culture since time immemorial.

3. Seeing - Izzy Johnson
   A druidic sigh of a song. A pine-scented, lakeside breeze. The prattle of a stream on weathered stones. The sun, just before noon, sending green-gold beams through the whispering treetops.

4. Payday - Doja Cat, Young Thug
   Doja has achieved the same kind of protean pop music greatness that is probably best embodied by Drake—the ability to perfectly distill the thing that makes other artists/subgenres/scenes appealing and then incorporate that distilled essence seamlessly into her own work. You can call it culture vulturism, but it’s the same thing that uber-popular artists have been doing for literally ever, so, it’s like, you’re right, but get over it. Here, she does Young Thug, on a song with Young Thug. The chemistry is ridiculous. It’s my favorite thing she’s done since Go Down.

5. Voulez-Vous - ABBA
   ABBA is an institution. I’m not gonna sit here and tell you that I love everything they do, or that I even really like them all that much as a band. But who else does it like this? Nobody. Is that a good thing? Maybe. Probably.

6. Lahore State of Mind (Al Dobson Jr. Remix) - Jaubi, Al Dobson Jr.
   The Pakistani instrumentalists Jaubi write tunes that evoke the restive street life of their home city, Lahore. In this remix, that generative chaos is further shaped and sculpted by London producer Al Dobson Jr. The result is a tenuous sense of order forever teetering toward entropy.

7. Hope You’re Doin’ Better - Mndsgn
   Just another small reminder to check in on the homies.

8. Seer - James Brandon Lewis
   The Buffalo-based saxophonist dropped a gorgeously wandering record earlier this year. This track scans to me as an idle conversation in the middle of an impossibly long journey.

9. Confesso - Deekapz
   I was baptized Catholic, but my parents sort of lost interest in the Church during my early adolescence, so I was never confirmed, never received communion, and never participated in confession. But I did go to Catholic high school, where once every semester, the administrators would corral us into the chapel so that we could put on our penitent faces and disclose our sins to an ordained man of the cloth.

   On those days, I would sit in the back pews with the other unsanctified souls who lacked the spiritual bona fides to tell the priest how often we masturbated. I remember watching the rows of blushing, polo-shirted students file into the confessional to receive their penance before quickly reappearing, their heads bowed piously, their solemn expressions cracking the minute they made eye contact with a friend or classmate. I didn’t envy them at the time, nor would I willingly take those anxious steps into a confessional today, but I do sometimes regret that I never had the experience. I imagine the idea of a divinely dispensed clean slate would do wonders for the conscience.

10. Friends - Spookey
    ”We’ll always stay friends. Forever.” That’s a big, aspirational statement, Spookey. A promise not easily kept. But I respect you, Spookey, for entering joyously into that covenant. There’s no worthier cause than the preservation of a friendship. Nothing more life-affirming, Spookey, than the careful cultivation of human fellowship. Sometimes it’s hard. It’s often inconvenient. You’ll never be perfect, Spookey, but you know that. You recognize your mortal shortcomings. You understand that you will err, but that you are ultimately defined by the work you do to acknowledge and redress your failings. You’re wise, Spookey, but more than that, you’re brave. Brave in a way I wish that I could be. You’ve taught me so much, Spookey, but I feel like I still have a ways to go. And I’m ready. I’m ready to embark on that journey with you, Spookey. Because I know we’ll always stay friends. Forever.

⛺