October 2025
suitable for a cruel dinner party or perhaps a bespoke Berlin yoga class
You know, I’m not one for legacy acts — I always feel like there’s gonna be something macabre about seeing artists I remember as a violent shock to the status quo reappearing as calcified grandes dames, trotting out their best-ofs. But my bestie Larry Tee has known the B52’s since before they even had a record deal and he had box seats and back-stage passes to see them with Devo and Lene Lovich at the Hollywood Bowl, which seemed quite glam… So off we went, planning to see part of Devo’s set and then catch the B’s and go backstage. But as we arrived we heard “Rock Lobster” — followed by a roar of applause and then nothing. They had traded off headlining with Devo, so after a rather anti-climactic tour of the backstage we decided to at least check out the spud boys.
When I was a weird, depressed teenager in the OC, Devo were one of the few new wave acts (along with Elvis Costello and The Cars) to get played on KLOS alongside standard fare like Supertramp, The Steve Miller Band, Foreigner and such. They were my first exposure to the whole cultural upheaval that my generation experienced and embodied. We felt like mutants in a world of fucked-up conformity. We were sick of hippy culture; we didn’t want to deny the dark, festering, rebellious parts of our consciousness with communes and Kumbayas. “Mongoloid” described how we felt inside.
Mongoloid, he was a mongoloid
Happier than you and me
Mongoloid, he was a mongoloid
And it determined what he could see
Mongoloid, he was a mongoloid
One chromosome too many
Mongoloid, he was a mongoloid
And it determined what he could see
And he wore a hat
And he had a job
And he brought home the bacon
So that no one knew
So the box seats were pretty sweet and Devo came on and it was actually my first time seeing them live and they started playing some of their 80s hits and I was like wow, this is pretty good — how old are they and how do they have this much energy? They did a costume change, came out in their trademark jumpsuits and energy dome hats and turned the clocks back to 1978 for an insane run of “Uncontrollable Urge,” “Blockhead,” “Mongoloid,” “Jocko Homo” and “Smart Patrol/Mr. DNA.” Mamma mia, I really needed that. They were like kids out there, totally into it, silly and profound and rocking as hard as any band ever.
And by the way I was sorry to miss Lene Lovich but I dug up her old albums and yes, she will forever be the Supreme Braided Goddess who gets to say when.
So that happened. Meanwhile back in 2025, pride of Warsaw Piotr Kurek has been busy creating rich, organic gardens of avant I know not what — a kind of prickly lounge that hints at melody then quickly backs away. Track 2 on Songs and Bodies is a slowgraffitti favorite and an accurate description of his ethos: “It Used To Be a Song.” Suitable for a cruel dinner party or perhaps a bespoke Berlin yoga class. “Try To Be True” sets house plants on fire, jogs fond memories of early James Blake and is the closest he gets to radio-friendly.
Massachussettsan Izzy Hagerup AKA Prewn makes bold and vulnerable 90s-flavored indie on her new System album that at its best delivers a PJ Harvey adjacent rawness/realness. Her voice has its own unique, woodsy American theatricality, and with “System” the song she’s written herself a barn-stomping, nihilistic, drenched-in-strings anthem.
Don’t look up there is
Nothing there to know
Just give your life away
Turn on your lights baby
Give them a show
It won’t be long you say
But it’s a system and
All that you know
The clouds won’t go away
They keep on coming again and again
Just give your life away
Another dollar another day
Young Thug released UY SCUTI, his first album after doing two and a half years in jail, to a swirl of online sniping — influencers trying to drum up some outrage around Thug putting himself in whiteface on the cover and haters generally dissing the quality of the record, which, I don’t know, they probably have a point, but come on maaan, the dude’s been through some shit. Anyway, he followed it up with a Supernova Edition, featuring some older unreleased/leaked tracks including the lovely, vulnerable, heartfelt “By The Police,” which feels like a blueprint for the album he might have put out in a parallel universe where hyper-capitalist media culture didn’t turn every thing into its commodity double.
Help me up, help me up
You see me down, nigga, better help me up
I’m torn down, man, you better help me up, yeah (ATL Jacob, ATL Jacob)
Gettin’ woke up by the police (every day)
Every single damn mornin’ (ooh)
I put my left wrist on gold like a trophy
I’m drippin’, don’t forget, I can tell you what to go get (let’s go)
Probably could’ve been an athlete, but a nigga didn’t get a chance (get a fair chance)
Instead, I had got on my grizzy, then I came home with all kinds of bands (all colors)
Niggas wish they had this pretty bitch of mine, but you too late, my mans
Nigga try to antagonize a nigga spirit, but I turned to a king again (king)
How the fuck you gon’ ride on the opps (opp)
Then turn around and tell it to the cops? (Ptuh)
Ever since the Sugarcubes dropped themselves into our late 80s teacups, Iceland has had a disproportionate number of cool and successful bands — I mean their population is on a par with, like, Bakersfield or Wichita. mùm haven’t had quite the same impact as GusGus or Sigur Rós but they’re still going strong nearly 30 years on, with their rather gorgeous, gentle, intimate, analogue and powerful new one History of Silence. “Kill the Light” in particular twinkles and crescendos with hope and melancholy; it feels like watching the Aurora Borealis.
Searching for a broken world
Where our hearts belong
Seems like we never did
All along
Staring at the crowded sky
On a breathless night
Galaxy, tapestry
Kill the light
Searching for a broken world
Where our hearts belong
Satellite, haunting light
On our own
Kill the light
And you won’t feel alone
And if we can stay in the hypnotic world for a moment, but over on the electronic continent, slowgraffitti-certified hierophant Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith has certainly been a busy little beaver. I had to do a bit of a dive into her Gush to find my personal bliss — I had gotten my dreamy needs met back in April when the title track came out, but the album resisted me until I found the glorious alpha-state elevations of “Almost” and “The World Just Got a Little More Big” tucked into the final stretch. La Smith also allows us to follow her into the delightfully quirky “In the Dressing Room” as her final punctuation.
It felt so close
Maybe it wasn’t right for me or you
The heaviness
Of what it feels like
To almost have it meet
And walking away pulls at the thought of
What if it was to be
Our little overachiever (originally from Washington state and now based in L.A., and btw unfairly pretty for someone so talented) has also co-created an EP of classical (ish) music for New York artist residency and performance center Artspace, AND she roped in Hot Chip legend Joe Goddard to craft the non-album avant-dance track “Neptunes” and brought in none other than Colombian electro goddess Ela Minus to do a remix!
Monaleo is such a nice, attractive young lady, but oh my word — her lyrics would make a longshoreman blush! She’s from Houston, she’s fierce and feral, and there’s something so earthy and fragrant about that thick Southern Black accent — it just oozes sex. As does the mid-tempo beat on “Putting Ya Dine”…
He wanna give me cunniling‘ (Yeah)
Got my stripes like a bumblebee
Bouncin’ on the shit right to left, bitch,
I’m hittin’ my shoulder lean, pussy (Huh, damn)
I’m puttin’ you on, huh
Big Leo, I’m song for song (Let’s go)
Huh, huh, this ass so fat (Yeah),
huh, I’m goin’ thong for thong (Uh-huh)
I’m a dog, he is too (Dummy)
We goin’ bone for bone
He beatin’ my shit from the back (Uh-huh)
He love when I scream (Yeah)
I’m going cone (Yeah-yeah)
As exhaustively chronicled in these pages, Richard Dawson recently took us pretty deep into the beautiful black mold of British freak folk. And yet The End, the new one from Junior Brother (Dubliner Ronan Kealy), makes him sound like a wood-carving Sabrina Carpenter. Kealy enjoys spinning terrifying, seductive and verily Hieronymus Bosch-esque visions of a cruel and curdled modern world, mutating folk into outlandish forms. Our slowgraffitti emphasis track would be “Today My Uncle Told Me,” which pushes far beyond all proper concepts of song structure into something dark and deconstructed but oddly organic, perhaps like a Hydnellum peckii or a Xylaria polymorpha.
Deep in my head
I can see heaven
God cannot hear
Though I call for him
I see inside
Tomorrow’s paper
It’s in your eyes
You’re on the losing side
O life
Is gas
Since I seen past it
And now I laugh
I’m always laughing
How vast the world
Such fools the people
Believe the truth
I’ll laugh and hurt believers
Sadly that one isn’t on YouTube, but you can find it on Spotify or anywhere fine records are sold. Conversely (to a point), Junior’s hit single “Small Violence” flirts with a bit of melodicism, boldly shifting tempos and grafting together a variety of sour timbres, bringing to mind, in an oblique way, Pere Ubu.
I went alone
Toward a heavy light
I saw a massive head
I saw a little crown
I saw a snake of many colours
Come through the town
At least a million miles and growin’
Under the floors and feet of many
To join the world’s sea
Like a river
Like a river-
Uh
From little word
To little hands
Spreads small violence
From uh-foul mouth
To unhappy man
I gotta admit that when it comes to electronic music I get a little fuzzy on genres. Like, Blawan has been described as post-dubstep (a not-nerdy-at-all term), as have James Blake and Mount Kimbie, who truly sound nothing like him. Anyway, nobody cares and my point is to direct you to the enticements of SickElixir, the new Blawan (née Jamie Roberts, from South Yorkshire). It’s quite abrasive, with plenty of farty distortion (particularly on high-charting track “NOS”), and Maori Haka-evoking vocals that transport me back to the heady days of A Split Second and Front 242 and the many charms of 1980s Belgian Electronic Body Music. At the same time, if you happen to be an ‘ard boy or ‘ard girl, it’s all quite dance-y (“WTF” is pretty irresistible) and it manages to explore vast carousels of color and texture within the parameters of its unique sound — on “Rabbit Hole” for example, it even gets a bit psychedelic.
In this perverse era in which anyone working in media is compelled to spend way too much time screaming “look at me, feed me!” on any and every scrolling feed, Tom Boogizm (quite a name) aka Rat Heart took the Cindy Lee route, quietly releasing the rather glorious introverted musings of ironically-titled Dancin’ In The Streets almost nowhere, with zero promotion. About as punk rock as it gets in 2025. The vibe on side 1 is soulful, torchy-loungey, dreamy-depressive, jazzy slowcore — somewhat in the vein of last year’s Homeshake album or LA Priest’s Phase Luna, or Tricky at his broodiest. Side 2 drifts into harsher and more disparate textures, including spoken word, flamenco, and the moody/abrasive “OPERATION ALWAYS BE A BRAVE LITTLE CUNT.“ And good news — sort of? The record just turned up on Spotify.