September 2025
the simplicity of a children’s song, the wisdom of a zen master, and maybe a tendril of pot smoke
Seriously though, I’ve been walking through some dark nights of the puss lately, at times feeling like where is God, where are my bearings. Whilst out on a night walk in the midst of a lot of fear and doubt a song appeared: “‘cello Song - Take 4, January 4th 1969” from the recording sessions of Nick Drake’s life-giving first album Five Leaves Left (an album of rarities called The Making Of Five Leaves Left just came out). It’s a raw track, recorded live, with no added production, and it was as if this lovely human being whom I adore and revere was stepping out of time to comfort me in person.
Strange face, with your eyes
So pale and sincere
Underneath you know well
You have nothing to fear
For the dreams that came to you when so young
Told of a life
Where spring is sprung
You would seem so frail
In the cold of the night
When the armies of emotion
Go out to fight
But while the earth sinks to its grave
You sail to the sky
On the crest of a wave…
From behind his bally (that means balaclava, white boy — I researched it), Esdeekid spent all summer shooting bullets of hardest scouser street rap into my supple, Erewhon-fatted flesh. There’s not an ounce of fat on Rebel — just a blur of bitches, drugs, money and violence, dripping with that unusual Liverpool brogue and lightly seasoned with cut up, distorted, minimalist arrangements.
Louis V Sandals
Crazy, hoes act scandalous
Yeah, these supermodel bitches be fans
Drop the pack off to her man and then I go hold hands with her
In a kush coma, EsDeeKid fried, I'm a fuckin' stoner
Got a bottle full of Tris, kid, I'm never sober
I don't push no shit, lad, I fuckin' told ya
Never had an older
I was doing day trips to the 'Dam, wait, damn
Got a bally on me face and I'm rockin' Ray-Bans
Wait, man, I don't fuck with no snakes, fake mans
Keep a stack up on me lap, got twenty in the waistband
Hailing from Holidaysville, PA, Lyra Pramuk is now based in Berlin, and very much embodies Berlin-ness. Laurie Anderson’s para-classical experimentation and Julia Holter’s exaltation of the divine feminine might come to mind when trying to contextualize Hymnal, Pramuk’s new album of devotional incantations, but her song structures are Phillip Glass circular. Her fertile excursions are as bold and untamed as nature itself yet hold together in perfect expression, as undeniable as pop songs.
OK, what do you guys think about GROUNDWORK? Maybe I’ve lost my mind, but it’s by a brand new manufactured Korean girl group called KiiiKiii and it sounds like, I don’t know, 90s indie? The Breeders maybe??? I mean, you know, with a ton of pop production. And an adorable, expensive looking video. I was gonna suggest it’s got notes of post-punk but that’s going too far. I mean their other stuff doesn’t sound like this…
Groundwork
'Til you crown us
Burn the bad world
Do that groundwork
Dig deep, weeds out
No damage, just work
There's no role model
No cap, no sleep
장난 없인 못 해 [I can't do it without playing around]
That's just what I feel
한 끗 차이인 걸, 떨림과 설렘처음부터 알았어
[There's a slight difference, trembling and excitement]
This will be my field
평범하겐 안 해 [I won't do anything ordinary]
superpower seed (시작해) [start]
Groundwork
A sprawl of delicious, distorted experimental riffing and noising, Mondo Lava’s Utero Dei is a thing-in-itself that sometimes sounds like Bach, sometimes like Tangerine Dream, and more generally like a cassette left on a Phoenix dashboard all summer. Californian James Ketchum and Pamplonés Leon Hu do occasionally rock out, for example on Golem Boogie and much of disc 2, but it feels like they’ve been broadcast across a ghostly time warp — they give Cindy Lee vibes in that sense.
Where to start with Water From Your Eyes? They have a new one out called It’s a Beautiful Place and I mean yes it is impressive, and it also feel like it’s trying a bit hard, and I’m digging it anyway, and I’m wondering if I can love a band even though I sense them efforting. Maybe I can. They do the disaffected, spoken-not-sung lyrics thing on their first bonafide indie-dance banger, “Playing Classics,” which also features a bit of heavy autotune, some growly guitar, notes of Fischerspooner and Peaches, all grounded in a driving, happy-making piano riff.
Look, I'm concerned as a matter of fact
Contact, contact, all this shattered impact
Shake three
Desire in crisis, no, a longing for truce
Yeah, the long hard road from here to the truth
Shake six
Look, face contoured, face the music, the crash
There's a war on stage, smoke the glow into ash
Shake nine
Outside the state, somebody's begging for moves
It's the long hard road from here to the truth
Shake two
Disinblud is the super-duo of muchly rated avant-melodic young witches Rachika Nayar and Nina Keith, spinning and chiming and slicing/splicing enchanted fairy forests like a post-modern Enya. These fairies have balls — so unafraid of coloring outside the lines with elements of dissonance and the occasional thwack of big, scary bass. They also have the good taste to recruit ethereal Earth enchantress Julianna Barwick to do some of the heavy levitating. The tit-ular song has tits in its video, and peenies too, often on the same body, so YouTube won’t let me embed it, but it’s for your own safety.
Blackpool native Joanne Robertson is a bit of a black pool herself, and has a stellar CV that features (shifting into a whisper here) Dean Blunt collaborations. The Cocteau Twins comparisons I’ve been reading are a stretch, other than her voice being female and her lyrics hard to parse. She reminds me more of my 90s shnookumses Movietone, with her mossy vocals over moody, not in a hurry to get anywhere in particular guitar. The Dean Blunt feel is there, a wild, bent beauty weighed down by heavy blankets of depression. Eventually some strings seep in courtesy of one Oliver Coates, but I think I might be more into the barren early tracks.
Out on the board, you let the plane
Poke down a sewer trap
Vines, not a bird, dying
True type, you stand still
Shoo, trap, you stand still in the noon
As the windows that glow in your toast
To get halfway out of sleep
Cold days
Play on the phone
Try get to
What keeps you close
Pray I do all
To get what I can share
Of the people that don’t make it there
Don’t tell anyone but The Raincoats are the kind of band I will nod in deep agreement and appreciation about if someone mentions them, but do I know a single song title? That notwithstanding, I can report that Gina Birch, now pushing 70, recently started a solo career and there’s a gem of a tune called ”Happiness” on her new long-player. The simplicity of a children’s song, the wisdom of a zen master, and maybe a tendril of pot smoke? It wanders through a verdant garden, timeless and radiant, and has only been heard on Spotify by 5,536 people in the whole world ever.
Happiness happiness happiness
It comes and goes it comes and goes
Sunshine bursts right through me
Happiness
Like a whirlpool of laughter
Like I’m one with joy
You raise me up
You make me smile
You raise me up
You believe in me
You raise me up
You make me happy
You raise me up
You make me smile