I recently worked at the lovely Manila International Film Festival (which happens in Hollywood). Somehow, at some point in every festival — despite usually being appropriately shut off from my feelings — I get choked up, and this time around it was a short doc about Larry Ramos that got me. Ramos was a Filipino-Hawaiian child ukulele prodigy who went on win a Grammy as a member of the New Christy Minstrels and then to become a member of The Association and sing co-lead on era-defining songs “Never My Love” and “Windy.” He had a radiant smile and a very 60s-era sweetness and positivity that made it extra poignant when people opened doors for him that weren’t usually available to brown people. “Never My Love” is one of those songs that’s sort of always been around me, not demanding too much attention, but hearing it in the context of the movie I was just annihilated — it was a little weird to be bawling on the job.
R&B was pretty far from the city center of my musical interests back in ‘97, but then Erykah Badu showed up and delivered “On and On” on the Jenny McCarthy show with her towering Yoruba headdress and funked-up Billie Holiday vocals and I was mesmerized. Baduizm soon colonized my CD player. I haven’t followed her every movement since then but whenever she pops up it’s a delight. One time on an airplane I put on a silly movie called What Men Want and she was in it, playing a psychic; she was given free rein to improv her lines and — I mean check it out if you get a chance — she’s fucking hilarious, pure anarchy. She has a pretty sensational new album out called Before The World Blows, a collaboration with The Alchemist, and she’s in her 50s now but she doesn’t play it safe at all, striking out in all directions with style and vulnerability. My favorite deep cut is “Love Me Not,” a vivid recollection of an abortive love affair that morphs into a comical skit between Erykah and a dubious, squeaky-voiced esthetician giving her a wax job.
I met a man the other day that said he wasn't ready
He didn't like my spinach, but he loved my spaghetti
And before I knew it, I was throwin' up confetti
You gon' be for me and fuck around and going steady
Now in hindsight, I think it happened kind of subtle
He only wanna fuck, but I really wanna cuddle
And I would get in trouble if it wasn't on the doublе
And, yes, it was a struggle, espеcially with the stubble…
I like to scan the websites that review new releases and make up little “need to preview” playlists every morning and listen to ‘em during breakfast and when I’m driving around in my car. Squirrel Flower came on when I was driving somewhere with my famous and opinionated buddy Larry Tee, and we tried to think of equally bad band names. Arctic Monkeys is always my favorite to hate on. The song didn’t make an impression at the time, but then somehow Ella O’Connor Williams kept drifting back into my earballs and eventually I was subjugated. Her new one Say a Prayer to the Gods of Getting Going has some lighters-aloft power ballads on it (“Cleveland”), but IMHO the best stuff is when you nibble around the crispy edges. The opening/title song reminds me of Julia Holter back when she was writing proper songs. And the closer “Weightless, Untethered” does a call-back to the lyrics of the opener, a pristine goth angel lullaby.
Hey, weightless
Untethered
Drink in one hand
Cigarette in another
In another
Hey, did you wonder why
I left your show
I can‘t talk to people
I don‘t know how
Don‘t know how
As you turn to go
A rat runs for cover
Trash spilling from it‘s mouth
Makes you shiver
Say a prayer to the gods of getting going
And say a prayer to the gods of staying still
Yeah, say a prayer to the gods of getting going
And say a prayer to the gods of staying still
Staying still
OK, true confessions time. My understanding of sub-genres is sketchy. Maybe I have no business writing about music. Should I give more fucks? I get lost in what is house (is it just re-branded disco?) and when it becomes EDM, and when is hip hop actually grime or drill or trap. When it comes to dubstep and post-dubstep I’m pretty sure James Blake is the latter but I’m not sure why. Somewhere around the end of the century people started referring to “math rock,” mainly about Tortoise if memory serves, and Tyondai Braxton, who was in Battles at some point eons ago, is that. I think. Or maybe just Battles are. He has amazing hair and he does sound kind of mathy on his new one Splayed Werks, but in a skittery, fun, highly experimental way. It’s like musical imaginary numbers. He’s landed on a fresh sound, reinventing rhythm and song structure like a mad scientist.
I can’t claim to have spent the 90s poring over Royal Trux’s every beautiful grunt, but “The Flag” was for sure one of the decade’s sweetest car crashes, a bludgeoning, druggy clatter that seemed to be taking form in real time. The band’s rock’n’roll excess is the stuff of concussion poetry. They broke up inamicably, but Jennifer Herrema is still at it with her band Black Bananas, in which she swaps the blues for a kind of funky, freeform, bongwater psychedelia. Bad Bunch’s smeared, 70s-flavored jams remind me a bit of DJ Sabrina the Teenage DJ. I can’t find lyrics for this one but maybe that’s OK. Rock on, Jennifer.
The Beastie Boys brand was all about being mouthy and bratty and teenage(ish) and giving no fucks, and MCA’s death in 2012 seemed like a capstone on that particular party/esthetic/worldview. I never imagined a new album from Mike D in 2026 would be something for me to fuck with, but it turns out to be a total renaissance of the fight for that particular, all-important human right. “What We Got” is my pick of the litter — thrashy, overconfident, wise-ass and just plain wise.
All the suffering and the cause
You must've felt something that made you pause
All of our actions is what we've got
Finite time lost the plot
Lost in the mosh pit
Pressure in the cockpit
Can't mask it
Down to the last bit
Questions remain
We don't ask it
Feelings there
But we don't mask it
Times I think it but don't say shit
Stuck in our minds replay it
Those times that could've been different
Same things happen, did you listen
Piece by piece insistence
Make my peace piece de la resistance
Emma Ruth Rundle is a bit of a Tori Amos for these times, a bit more hard-rocking certainly, a bit prog even, but her quivering, vulnerable, truth-telling vocals swoop and soar, raging against human greed and the rotten state of the world with poetry.
Power corrupting, you had my trust
Empire collapsing, everything dust
We run like rabid rabbits over your plate
The craven habits hammer, madness, I am ashamed
I’ve been meaning to write about Nu Jazz for a minute. They’re that rare band capable of creating a new (hybrid) genre, locking into grooves that yes are often jazzy but sometimes krautrockesque, and morph organically into a surprising and thrillingly screamy metal/hardcore. There are six of them and they’re a kind of New York City supergroup with a Wren and a Deli Girl in the lineup.
Thanks to my bestie Scenery, music supervisor extraordinaire, I got hooked up with three concerts in a week, which I don’t think has happened to me ever. First up was Robyn at the Forum, my first time there actually, and we got to hang out in the storied Forum Club, now called the Kia Club, where back in the 80s all sorts of sordid activities unfolded. It’s surely been remodeled many times since then but there’s still a feeling of old-boy-club debauchery about the place. Robyn’s presentation was remarkably minimalist for a pop artist — she wears little or no makeup aside from a sort of metallic tear on one cheek; much of the show was done on a simple black stage with an embedded lazy Susan for our hero to rotate upon. When a cone of glitter light showered down on her at the end it was startling and delicious to see. At one point she talked about something to the effect that life is just embarrassing — and then you die. So we should accept and embrace being embarrassing. She unspooled hit after hit; the highlights for me were new one “Dopamine” and the deathless pop majesty of “Call Your Girlfriend” (quite a thrill at the time but then it got stuck in my head for like a week).
A few days later we braved the Stasi-inspired security at the Hollywood Palladium to check out Welsh garage-techno-breakbeat-drum&bass (according to my research) fusionists cum sensitive soft boys Tom and Ed Russell, better known as Overmono. They opened with the open-hearted dance lament of “Gem Lingo (ovr now)” and it was one of those unforgettable communal moments — the entire audience vibing as one. There were people who knew all the words. A gaggle of zoomers was dancing and stunting and smiling together right next to me; one of the boys gifted me a smile so sweet it made me look away and blush. The bottled joy of “After the Rain” was where it peaked for me; after that the Russels started playing harsher stuff, louder and louder until I had to plug my ears with my fingers — and then out of nowhere a woman (not a Palladium employee to be clear) came over and handed me earplugs! Afterwards, with the final encore of “Good Lies” still sugaring my thoughts, I walked to my car past the El Centro, the Hollywood building where I last saw my bestie Gary Dowd, and, years later, went through the wild highs and lows of my love affair with Paul Grillo.
Bella White at the Moroccan Lounge was a much homier affair, starting at 7:45 with a hard out at 9pm for some reason. She asked us if we were going out after the show or going home to bed, and everybody went “bed!” Belying the crystalline sensitivity of her songs, she strikes an easy confidence onstage, chatting freely, clearly enjoying the spotlight, with perfect posture, a wide open countenance and a certain loucheness of the eyes. She tossed out the instant classics from her new A Sign in the Weather album (“Trouble,” “Little Things,” “False Start,” “Better,” “Pink Living Room,” and especially “Without Making A Sound” are a preposterous bounty to appear on the same record), offering bits of context but little fanfare. Such a flex.
