Midweek Update 47: the Culture Clutch edition
Bill McKay, Baby Reindeer, Amyl & The Sniffers, Don't Vote Tory, the John Oliver Bear Cake and more.
SONG:
“Keeping In Time” by Bill McKay.
A song that sounds 100 years old, in the best possible way, but is actually brand new, ditto. Is that Cat Stevens I hear in McKay’s voice? Or Yusuf Islam? Or just some plain old emotive singing that conjures as many familiar memories as it does melodies? Filed under Folk/Americana, the album from which it hails is so much more.
REMIX:
“For A Moment” by Emma Anderson, remixed by dreary.
Anderson’s former group Lush were at the heart of the shoegazy dreampop that rendered the early 1990s so escstatic. (So were the substances.) This remix of her new single, courtesy of London duo dreary, takes me right back there. Minus the chemicals, of course.
Wordsmith delivers a Midweek Update full of recommendations and links almost every week; weekends bring single-subject long reads. This particular post is free as the birds so share it if you like, recommend a friend if you can, comment if you have something to say, and up your sub if you feel generous today.
ALBUM:
Pudding by James.
Purchased by yours truly on week of release as part of the double-CD incentive accompanying James’ new album Yummy, I have come to prefer Pudding, even though each of them vies for worst album title of all time – and believe me, James have created some tough competition already in that field. Posited as “outtakes,” “B-sides” and various other recordings that didn’t make the cut, there’s something more endearing about this set’s unpolished though only occasionally unfinished nature, especially compared to the rather over-polished production on Yummy itself, which may have been justified in the bigger scheme of things allowing that it topped the UK album charts.
Pudding is now available on streaming playforms too, though annoyingly as simply a run-on from the original album, much like the bonus tracks on CDs of yore would tend to do until labels and artists alike realized they had the option of presenting silence in-between. So, jump straight to Track 13, “Anyone But You” (all about online dating addictions), and on to “Activist Song” and “Won’t Be The Same,” all of which represent three different if familiar aspects to James as well as anything they’ve released in a long time.
POLITICAL POP SONG:
“Don’t Vote Tory” by Wyatt Riot.
‘Tis the season. At least in the UK, which is why Wyatt Riot has re-released this jaunty singalong complete with low-budget singalong video. I suspect that few of my readers will need a reminder not to waste their vote on the party that has all but destroyed my home country’s economy, and of course living standards that go down with it, just as I suspect that this will not be the last time I recommend a song or a video this British election season. But that’s no reason not to share “Don’t Vote Tory” song and all sing along.
BAND:
AMYL & THE SNIFFERS
Joe Bonomo get yet another Wordsmith shout-out, this time for turning me on to Melbourne’s Amyl and The Sniffers. It’s abrasive stuff, riot grrrl righteous anger at the world, fortunately delivered with just enough humor to be palatable for those of us who have non-machismo sons the same age as lead vocalist Amy Taylor. The video for new single “U Should Not Be Doing That” brings in actor Steven Ogg for especially addictive viewing that recalls, if Amy Taylor doesn’t mind me shifting male here, a heavy dose of IDLES. And that is always no bad thing. PS: Unlike the substance from which they are named, there is no heavy comedown attached to taking this video, so I am reliably informed.
QUOTE:
“a job of older people is to bring to bear the somewhat wearying but valuable experience that simply living longer allows you to accumulate.”
Bill McKibben, whose The Crucial Years Substack is sufficiently crucial that I have contributed with a paid subscription, even though he has no paywall. (Quote from this post on Betrayal.)
PODCAST
“Animal” from the New York Times Daily.
There’s a reason the New York Times Daily is one of the most popular podcasts in the world – because it has highly professional production values. (Like, really, what podcast thinks it’s a good idea to put two hosts on separate speaker channels and how quickly do you think I stop listening if you do it all the same.) A new 6-part Sunday series takes a welcome respite from hard news to deliver stories about Animals, looking them in the face to get a slightly better understanding of what makes our natural world tick (and hopefully, how we can save it)
TV SHOW:
Baby Reindeer
I don’t know whether to thank my friend
for insisting I watch this hit Netflix series – or unfriend/block/report him. Put it this way: my partner and I are only able to stomach one episode a week (you know, like TV used to be) because it turns us off each other. Of course, if you know anything about the show, you’ll know that’s all part of its incredibly successful dark plot all about the so-called comedian male narrator’s relationship with his female stalker – which inevitably reveals an awful (and I mean, awful) lot about the narrator’s relationship with himself. No spoilers please – especially about the real-life characters and the public shitshow that has followed.BOOK:
THE DAWN OF EVERYTHING by David Graeber and David Wengrow
As an anthropology student, I’m fascinated by this subject matter, and appreciate that a friend of mine thought highly enough of it to send a hardback to me, by mail, from Canada, even though it weighs in heavier than most healthy babies. But, and bizarrely so given that it is written (theoretically) in a conversational manner, it is as dense as it looks. I am of course, not in a position to cast such aspersions, having penned the occasional 600-plus page book myself, but this potentially innovative rewrite of history via the story of humanity could have done with some trimming in pursuit of clarity. Fortunately, there is:
MAGAZINE:
THE DAWN OF CIVILISATION from NEW SCIENTIST
…which I picked up at Heathrow Airport in April, because, as an anthropology student, I’m fascinated by the subject matter. This Essential Guide delivers, in bite-size form, similar findings to those within The Dawn of Everything, such as that our transition from Hunter/Gatherer to Agricultural beings was neither as sudden as reported, nor with such cataclysmic results as I would like to blame it for. Similarly, that complex societies existed in the heart of the Amazon… for around 8000 years minimum. There is nothing like studying history to make us look irrelevant, which is humbling, and occasionally necessary, given our collective inflated egos.
FEEL GOOD FINALE
The John Oliver Bear Cake
It is so lovely to see my home town (for the last 5 years) of Kingston, New York in the news for something other than its real estate bubble. First you need to watch this, a recap of how my fellow expat John Oliver snagged all the cooking equipment from our newly shuttered local Red Lobster, which I know well enough from driving past it to the nearby health food store – and how the family bakery around the corner from me was, albeit good-naturedly, a little pissed off about it.
After the bakery issued a challenge of its own to John Oliver, the comedian news broadcaster naturally met it, resulting in this heart-warming happy ending. All the more so as the local bakery – it has a name, it’s Deisings and members of the extended family are all over the community – is donating profits from its Oliver cake to The People’s Place and its associated food pantry. Yes, the UK is not the only country to see a rise in food banks, and yes, it’s election season. Cheers. And don’t vote Tory.