Songs of the Week 10/20/2023 (coming to you from 10/27/2023)

This background art is joyous. Don’t think about Oppenheimer. Look how pretty this burst of stellar fission is. Don’t think about Oppenheimer. Haha, Happy Halloween, boooo! Don’t think about Oppenheimer.

NO ME PUEDEN PARAR | J Noa I really don’t talk about enough rap here, which is probably because my taste stopped progressing past early nineties hip-hop, so let’s break the cycle with something so fresh, it was made by a sixteen-year-old. What was I doing at sixteen?! I think I made a Google Slides about why Trump sucks for AP US History?

I have my girlfriend to thank for finding J Noa through her Tiny Desk Concert, though I can’t understand a word of it. Speaking of being sixteen, something I’ve come to regret is not retaining any Spanish, and not just because I can’t catch a lick of J Noa’s lightning-fast rap. I think my parents made the right choice raising me in a small, mountain town and I wouldn’t have it any other way, yet in doing so, I never fostered a connection with the afro-latine roots on my mom’s side of the family. It’s not like I wasn’t paying attention in Spanish class, but by the time I found a reason within myself to be really invested, practically all of my vocabulary had slipped away. That reason, of course, is the personal, cultural enrichment that our pragmatic school systems don’t (and likely couldn’t) impart unless it was an organic part of the environment—something I doubt was a priority in a town self-effacingly nicknamed “Everwhite.” Even as someone who’s creative to the core, it took me well into high school to realize that real lyricism and literature isn’t just about the story conveyed, but the words used in tandem to do so. Some of my favorite comedy comes from Arrested Development’s near-wizardly ability to coil so many clever callbacks, double entendres, and wordplay into such short scenes—a skill that demands to be taken seriously—and I mourn the loss of any non-english speakers who might miss so much. That’s not even taking into account the sorts of sound-play and poetic devices that make a sentence pop—something Google Translate couldn’t dream of replicating. I think the first time I realized rap’s sound could be completely transformed in Spanish was, ironically, in Spanish class, when Mrs. Warren played Control Machete for us earlier in the morning than I’d like. It’s a different style from a different era that J Noa has little in common with, but it’s a fun demonstration of the magic one can work with a different phoneme library, and that’s not even mentioning the slang embedded within. So, yea, of course utilitarian schools aren’t able to impart the value of learning another language—language is culture, language is art, but I guess the money spent on that is probably better diverted to buying the football team a party bus. I digress.

So, J Noa. Right. I may not be equipped to experience “No Me Pueden Parar” as intended, but let’s see what we can gain. Unfortunately, a big chunk of the J Noa experience is (reportedly) her lyrics—as she herself declares, “Soy optimista cuando se habla de insultar en una pista / Demostrarles a estos chivitos que soy una liricista.” Yea, we monoglots are missing a lot. Part of what makes J Noa’s repertoire (reportedly) so impressive isn’t just that she’s a fantastic rapper, but she only writes material that she feels has gone unspoken. If I was actually able to listen, I’d probably be talking about “Betty” instead—like much of her burgeoning discography, it’s about living poor with the Dominican Republic’s systemic problems, and in this case (reportedly) tells the tragically insightful story of realizing one’s parents are still growing up. Comparatively, I’m not sure “No Me Pueden Parar” tells as much of a compelling story, though it’s a pretty empowering one—from everything I can understand, it seems to just be J Noa hyping herself up as an important and political lyricist, though I’m certain there’s some solid slang and wordplay I’m missing there. The music video, thankfully, fills in some gaps, featuring J Noa crawling up from the dirt and full-on Black Canary blasting some douchey, male rapper and the gaggle of reporters and business-types around him. It’s the sort of sentiment that makes perfect sense in context of her debut EP, Autodidacta, which (thank God for cognates) embodies her pride in being a self-made, afro-latina rapper coming from a country that’s rarely on the wider radar. J Noa is seventeen now, with Autodidacta releasing just six months ago, and she’s already done a tiny desk concert in that time—consider me curious where she goes next. Hopefully I know some more Spanish by then.

Pairs Well With: “Betty” (J NOA), “Humanos Mexicanos” (Control Machete), “Like A Feather” (Nikka Costa)

PLANET OF THE BASS | Kyle Gordon (feat. DJ Crazy Times & Ms. Biljana Elektronica Look, I thought I was gonna be all original with this one, but The Jonas Brothers beat me to it. You’ve already heard this song. I’m just gonna put the video here.

This video blew up so fast that I think everything there is to be said has been said—the praise for the brilliant performances, the expertly garbled lyrics, the replacement of Biljana Elektronica with random models in all of the promotional videos, the fact that DJ Crazy Times is wearing Kyle Gordon’s girlfriend’s swim goggles… it’s all out there in some comment section or reaction video. I’m sure the naysayers are already swarming out of the woodwork to claim that this song isn’t a comedic masterpiece, but to them I say, “Goodbye / and tonight, I will never die.” Alternatively, fuck off. I’m just glad something this creative and funny is getting the air time it deserves.

Pairs Well With: “7 Элемент” (Vitas), “Drama!” (Erasure) “Mortal Kombat Chronology Remix” (Compilation)

CAN YOU HEAR THE MUSIC? | Ludwig Göransson Anyways, let’s talk about the lurking specter of nuclear annihilation. I’m a lot late to the Oppenheimer party, and it’s far past time to post the Barbenheimer Movie Friday review I’d planned back in July—we’ll have to think of some “one year retrospective” excuse to air that dirty laundry. Suffice to say, both are great, though even as a longtime Nolan simp, Oppenheimer took two viewings for me to fully appreciate (sitting with “this unspeakable promethean crime against the universe cannot be undone” without transitioning straight to “P! Pretty! I! Intelligent! N! Never Sad! K! Kool!” probably didn’t hurt, either). A lot of my initial Oppenheimer detachment started with the first act, moving at a breakneck three expositions per scene. It takes a lot to admit this, but Nolan is a visionary auteur with storytelling experience far beyond my own (I know), and so I have no doubt this was an intentional choice—likely keeping pace with young Oppenheimer’s once-in-a-generation brain. Despite all that, when Kenneth Branagh likens learning physics to feeling art in my favorite line of the movie—“[Y]ou must be able to hear the music. Can you hear the music?”—I was left thinking, “uh, no.” Frankly, the whole experience just felt a little emotionally inaccessible for me until the revelation that [SPOILER for real history] a spy was discovered at Los Alamos. It’s not that I don’t find the nuclear bomb to be an incredibly emotional subject—I’ve spent far too many hours awake thinking about the nuclear apocalypse instead of just taking a Unisom and calling it a night—but I went into Oppenheimer expecting overt dread and was instead met with a very subdued distance from the whole thing. While Oppenheimer’s own detachment from this mortal plane may have been the point, I didn’t (at first) enjoy it. As someone who absolutely understands what it’s like to “hear the music” in some subject (though in my case, the poeticism of paleontology is what totally sets my brain ablaze), I was also hoping to see this brighter side replicated onscreen after that Kenneth Branagh line, and just didn’t see myself there (Max Todd is not one of the greatest scientific OR filmmaking minds of our time? Stay humble). Again, I’ll save it, but after a second viewing, I’ve come to like this sequence a lot more, and that all started with the music.

This is insufferably nitpicky, but for how prolific Ludwig Göransson may be, he’s often been a bit hit-or-miss for me emotionally. Like Michael Giacchino, he’s become a go-to composer nowadays, even replacing previous Nolan loyalist Hans Zimmer when Zimmer chose Dune and Daddy Denis over Nolan (which has to sting, but also… so fair). Granted, Zimmer is also a go-to composer these days, probably only second to John Williams in the movie composer hall of fame, but like Williams, I feel there’s a distinct voice that comes with almost every Zimmer score, whether it be Superhero, Sci-Fi, Documentary, or Disney. I’m not sure the same can be said for Giacchino or Göransson, though I don’t think their artistic integrity is to blame. As composer Danny Elfman has spoken on, oftentimes directors come to composers with a sound already set in mind, and it can be incredibly stifling to work within the constraints of someone who thinks they know what they want, but doesn’t have the trained ear for it. With that in mind, it’s worth acknowledging the versatility it takes to be a genre chameleon—experimenting to this degree might even be refreshing. Still, though I’d never call a Göransson score bland, it’s certainly telling that I couldn’t tell Zimmer had been replaced for Tenet, but I could tell I liked its score less than the usual Nolan fare. I’m no composer, but to me, it’s far more resonant when someone does their own thing at the expense of stylistic continuity, although there’s undoubtedly a balance to be struck.

Okay, that was harsh, and I would never presume to be a better composer than someone named Ludwig. To Göransson’s credit, the very moment I heard “Can You Hear the Music,” I knew Zimmer wasn’t at the wheel—his style was distinct. One thing about Göransson’s voice that I always do admire is his refusal to be classical. While this song’s slurring violin arpeggios at first sound historical, when the phrase first repeats with a doubled tempo, I was immediately at attention. On my uncertain first viewing, this disruption only added to my inability to anchor. Still, the exponentially-accelerating strings stayed with me because they truthfully capture that runaway brain feeling that I struggled to initially find in Oppenheimer—one it’s clear Göransson understands as a creative. What’s really genius about “Can You Hear the Music,” though, is its thematic versatility—I’m not the first to point out that the doubling tempo sounds like fission, and it’s a stroke of genius to link this to ideation, but the symbolism doesn’t end there. It’s no coincidence, I think, that a similar-sounding piece accompanies Oppenheimer’s ending premonition with Einstein by the lake. Bleak as it is, I think it’s pretty interesting to see not just the overwhelming glory of a chain reaction, but its shadow in the form of total apocalypse. I mean, it’s kind of a must for a movie about splitting the atom, but to be able to connect so many dots through the music is next-level. Though I know my Göransson introduction wasn’t exactly positive, he’s never exactly been out-of-favor for me—his chilling “Killmonger” theme alone is fantastic, and though I’ve long since given up on the show, I really respect his decision to stay away from John Williams’s Star Wars soundscape in The Mandalorian. Still, “Can You Feel the Music?” is what really made me a fan, for what it’s worth—like, what a phenomenal feeling, especially paired with its corrupted brother, “Destroyer of Worlds.” Göransson’s gigs are so diverse that I can’t say for sure if I’ll be tuned in for his next work, but I’m certain this won’t be the last time we hear from him on Songs of the Week.

Pairs Well With: “Destroyer of Worlds” (Ludwig Göransson), “Reborn” (Colin Stetson), “Rococo” (Arcade Fire)

I DON’T LIKE CANDY CORNS | Moose A. Moose & Zee In a time when the United States stands divided, it is our responsibility as citizens of this great nation to stitch shut the gash in our union by grasping hands across the aisle.

Pairs Well With: “Ghost Duet” (Louie Zhong), “My Favorite Plum” (Suzanne Vega), “Not Everything Grows” (Shakey Graves)

RUN | Hozier This past Tuesday, I had the pleasure of seeing Hozier live at Red Rocks next to, and I mean this without a hint of hyperbole, the biggest Hozier fan there, my girlfriend (do better, Colorado. All that weed and you still can’t bust a move?). It was so meaningful and a huge honor, so obviously, I had to come prepared. After a review of his past three albums to pretend I wasn’t a total pozier (feel free to use that one, I don’t want it), I came away feeling the same as ever, but with more conviction: why hasn’t Hozier done a scary album?! While I understand finding solace in the darkness à la “In a Week” (the one about falling in love while decomposing) or “Abstract (Psychopomp)” (the one about falling in love while comforting roadkill in its last moments), I find there’s often a musical mismatch, especially after hearing the delightfully sinister “In the Woods Somewhere” [Reviewed 05/12/2023] put to excellent use in Netflix’s Dark. For as vast as his vocal and lyrical range can be, I just wish his music reached tonal lows like it does tonal highs. Even arguably his spookiest record, Hozier, only has three or four songs that sound as ominous as their subjects, at least to my ear, and that’s also counting two that are relegated to bonus tracks. Take “Run,” for example, a song which I only just found out about—while I just barely prefer “In the Woods Somewhere,” this song has exactly the apprehensive, fleeing insistence to earn its title. If you aren’t sold by the lyrics “Like how she twisted the bog man / After she married him” (“The Bog Man??” What the fuck??), we might be here looking for different things, but this monster story has just the same emotionality to it as the rest of Hozier’s body of work executed excellently. In isolation, I wasn’t sure I understood this song’s lyrics, but as always, they point back to Ireland, hinging on the stanza “Oh, but the farrow know / Her hungry eye, her ancient soul / It's carried by the sneering menagerie.” While this personally made me think of the mother of monsters, Echidna, in the Greek Mythology Hozier seems so fond of, this is actually an allusion to James Joyce’s Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. Says Joyce:

‘Do you know what Ireland is?’ asked Stephen with cold violence. ‘Ireland is the old sow that eats her farrow.’

…which is metal, right? In this light, the title seems more mocking or futile, which makes the steady, stomping bass sound ever more like approaching footsteps. There’s a lot to unpack in the assertion that a country only cannibalizes its people to sustain itself, but the emotions therein align perfectly with the at times scathing, naked metaphors in Gaelic and other Celtic traditions—I know it’s of a different people, but something about this song just sounds so right with Beowulf. Much as I’d love Hozier to lean more into some of his country’s harsher imagery, his relationship with his homeland is far more profound than my own, and I wouldn’t trade this authenticity for any of my superficial sound preferences. I mean, I have Chelsea Wolfe for that, right? Yea, October might almost be over, but I am not about to shut up about Chelsea anytime soon. Stay tuned.

Pairs Well With: “In the Woods Somewhere” (Hozier) [Reviewed 05/12/2023], “I’m Deranged” (David Bowie), “Feral Love” (Chelsea Wolfe)

EXPLOSIONS ON A SUN 80 BILLION LIGHT YEARS FROM EARTH | Vance Kirkland It’s weird to be talking about Vance Kirkland himself so far into my Kirkland Museum kick. First and foremost, kudos to Kirkland for his Bowie-levels of reinvention—I may not resonate with every one of his eras, but these dot paintings done close to the end of his life are mesmerizing like many of my favorite hyper-detailed comic styles. I’m not one for justifying abstraction, but being a depiction of “Explosions on a Sun 80 Billion Light Years From Earth,” this painting’s concept justifies its style in a really interesting way—since the known universe is itself only thirteen billion years old, by nature of light speed, this is a sight none of us could ever conceivably see, as it would take nearly six times the history of everything for this sun’s light to reach us (or whatever schmutz remains). I love when the emptiness of space is depicted this way—not so empty after all on an inconceivable scale like this. We, too, might seem comprised of nothingness at a subatomic size—if a proton were the size of a penny, after all, the atom itself would be the size of a football field, with everything in between being empty space. I once had a dream about the Green Lantern Corps (characters I can’t say I care much for… oops?) that looked an awful lot like this—in it, their home planet of Oa exploded, and the millions of particulate space stations that orbited out were scattered in the shock wave. Like animations I’ve seen simulating colliding galaxies, these colorful clusters of dots, each their own miles-long spaceship, swirled at the mercy of gravitational ripples beyond comprehension, yet still so small on a universal scale. I’ve always wanted to write about it, but it’s one of those dreams that the scale of cannot be captured. I’m rambling. Cool stuff though, right?