These are notes for the actual recorded radio show, which is here:
Or,
you can listen to it all as a spotify playlist without having to listen to me:
Or,
Read on.
Welcome to Episode 2 of Echo Beach Radio. This show’s theme is vaguely about being human, which is in response to heading down to SHIFT, the Human First advisor conference in Florida this coming weekend with a new Zine. New Zine, new radio show. So hopefully, all of these songs have some sort of commentary or place in a discussion about what “being human” means in music. It’s a topic I grew tired off in the 80s and 90s, and which we mostly forgot about after the DAW was invented and almost every musician except for Jack White went digital.
“Dumbest Girl Alive” by 100 Gecs
My album of the year was 10K Gecs, and I’ll just copy what I wrote about this incredible tune in my 2023 wrapup.
Put aside the narrative genius of the THX opening, the fantastic and cutting guitar riff with perfect tone. The “whoo!” bringing in a vocalist for the first time before monster rhythm section hits. All of that’s just “a good banger”. Then at 35 seconds in, seemingly for no reason, a passing note in the guitar rift is randomly replaced with single sinewave eighth note. The rest of the song lives in this weird liminal space between digital and analog, leaving you constantly guessing what the next literal note is going to be from — the raw digital side, or the sloppy human side. By 42 seconds into the battle is fully enjoined, and the rest of the song plays in the narrative space between the manic artificiality of hyperpop, and the sloppy, distorted noisiness of being human.
So yeah, it’s on theme, it’s duality in a riff. But also it’s just a darn banger.
“Change Shapes” by Lauren Mayberry
Better known as the lead singer of the amazing CHVRCHES, I got to see her opening for the *amazing* Death Cab/Postal Service tour this year (yes, she sang the female vocals on all the Postal Service songs, and it was amazing). I find her voice pretty captivating in any case, but I think there’s some really interesting production going on in this album. I also felt like the lyrics fit the theme, and it’s super new. Hooky AF.
“Mimetic” by Oli XL
Carles, the progenitor saint of Chillwave and the indie Last Blogger, who ran the infamous Hipster Runoff indie bible website that was killed by Grimes, came out of retirement — for us — in the pandemic. OK, he was on SiriusXMU for a few years prior, but when Covid hit, he went on a streak of maybe 100 shows that was just amazing. Long spoken word interludes about learning to make sourdough. And amazing music discoveries. Oli Xl is one he surfaced for me, and he makes the most incredible experimental electronica. Skip if you must, but I say grab the headphones and strap into a masterclass in musical construction.
For a long time, when it seemed like there was time to have opinions about changes in culture as opposed the usurpation of base-code reality, I was part of a lot of arguments about whether synthesizers were “real music” and if you could call yourself an “artist” if you didn’t record analog.
Yeah.
Lie Love Lullaby by Girlpool
Sad they disbanded a few years ago, this duo made some just amazing bedroom-pop synth-forward grooves, and this is my favorite off their last album. But they’re also emblematic to me of a lot of modern, interesting music: using all the toys, playing all the games, but also just making it work and still seem very sweaty and real.
Regiment by David Byrne & Brian Eno
The question of what is considered an “artistic” use of technology has been a thing since I started listening to music. People used to get really worked up over synthesizers as dehumanizing and then Brian Eno got his hands on them.
“My Life In The Bush of Ghosts” arrived as my mind was opening to the broader world. My tastes in magazines had gotten towards world affairs. I watched PBS with my grandfather and asked him questions about the news. I was ENGAGED, so when I found this weird new thing from the guy in the Talking Heads in the discount bin, my mind was thoroughly blown. The influence the two of them have had on my music appreciation over the years is boundless, up to and including Eno’s weird connection to last years Ambient masterpiece from Fred Again, Secret Life, which uses a ton of old Eno samples from the archives.
Blasphemous Rumours by Depeche Mode
People gave David Byrne a pass because the Heads were so wild, and Eno a pass over the years because he’s been associated with some of the greatest albums of all time with artists from David Bowie to U2 to Johnny Cash.
But people who hate synths REALLY hate Depeche Mode because they used synth DRUMS. Oh my goodness were people fired up. Anyway, they were the soundtrack to much of my youth, but I never saw them live until last Halloween. I was very reluctant to get tix, but we booked last minute thinking we were in nosebleeds, and got right up on the stage in a block of fanclub tickets. They were shockingly good, even though I was there to see Diiv.
This is their best song. Deeply human, almost entirely electronic and sampled.
Sour Times by Portishead
One last retro song for the list. The 1990s in San Francisco were LIT. Concerts at Slims and the Great American Music Hall, Trip Hop was playing in almost every bar south of market. The warehouse/burning-man art communes south of market were always doing something involving fire and sparks and smoke and slinky music with a lot of scratch in it. Portishead’s Dummy was music to drink Manhattan’s to after work. It combined everything I loved about hip-hop with a lifelong love of jazzy torch song singers.
Fool by Adrienne Lenker
Back to the now with three striped down very human vocal performances: Adrienne Lenker is best known as the lead of Big Thief, but her new solo album is just insane. I love this song for this play list because it has this mechanical heavily constructed quality underneath that I associate more with electronic music than someone like Lenker. There’s also just something about her voice that reaches right into my heart and yanks, especially in a song about living and growing old with someone, sharing a life, and wanting only their hapiness for decades. Sigh.
Don’t Forget Me by Maggie Rogers
New to me really (I had heard her I guess breakout hit Alaska, but it seemed very overproduced for my tastes, and a bit of an Alvvys-alike), this song is an ass kicking vocal performance. It almost feels like a a reboot from the earliers tuff I’ve listened to and I’m into it. While I love singer-songwriter modern folk, this makes me want to hear her punch out some Joan Jett covers.
Funny Feeling by Bo Burnham
It’s been a few years since Inside dropped in the middle of the Pandemic, and I stand behind the claims I made then: both the album and the video special are the art icons of that era. We’ll look back in a decade and see them as time capsules. Funny feeling captures my sense of the now more than any other song on this list. Not unhopeful, but deeply confused about the state of the world. It seemed like an appropriate way to end this folky block in the Being Human playlist.
I smile every time I hear “stunning 8k resolution meditation app, in honor of the revolution it’s half off at the gap.”
Brown Paper Bag by DIIV
I love these shoegaze millennials so much. I made a point of seeing them when they opened for Depeche Mode and they played this song for the first time on that tour (clip here from a show around then). Like the best Shoegaze bands (Duster) they’re a “real band” that plays “real music” and writes about “real sad.” This song has that great drive, and just the most depressing lyrics.
Deceptecon by Le Tigre
Gotta end with two bangers. Le Tigre went on tour last year and I missed it. Hopefully I don’t have to wait another 20 years to see them. Kind of the last gasp of Bikini Kill and the Riot Grrl era, this is one of my favorites from the early oughts. Some hardcore folks rejected them for the electronic bits, but I think they’re stellar, and again, bridging that gap between what the electronic tools can do for you, and the ethos of punk.
You and Me - Pain of Truth * Freddy Madball
Madball (Freddy Cricien) is a bit of a New York punk legend, and while I haven’t exactly “followed” his career, this song dropped last week and it was like a slap in the face from early ‘90s hardcore. No idea who Pain of Truth is — I suspect a band he’s trying to help get traction. But they deserve it. This one’s good for an angry walk after a bad day.