This is NOT a “desert island” question. No no no.
This is a REMOTE island.
You are not stranded, but you are ambiguously living there for the rest of your life. And there’s food, and basic comfort, and somehow electricity.
The differences are immense.
You get to bring six things with you: 1 album, 1 movie, 1 book, 1 piece of “enrichment,” 1 memento and 1 cask of alcohol.
If you love art, rankings, and the exercise of thinking about how you would hypothetically feel and what you would hypothetically want if left with solely your thoughts, some art, some memories and some booze…then you’ll enjoy this question as much as we Mote Street editors did.
Here’s the first part of our two-part discussion on the matter. We invite you to think about your answers as well.
____
SCG: Did you think about these answers in any particular way outside of your favorites in each category?
JF: Yeah. I’m thinking in terms of my favorite stuff that also has dimensionality. I think the biggest battle on a remote island will be lack of variety…no matter how much you love an album or movie or book, you’re gonna get tired of it. So re-watchability/re-readability/replay value have to be the most important criteria, even above baseline quality.
SCG: Did you think about movie/book/album in context with each other?
JF: No, because they were all covering different bases for me.
SCG: Okay interesting; I did think about the relationship between them, at least a little. We’ll get into it.
A few of my choices are locked, and some I want to talk through a bit…where should we start?
JF: Let’s start with album.
SCG: Okay we’ll save movie, because I’m struggling with how to pick for movie.
JF: Let’s start with movie.
SCG: Let’s fucking do it.
JF: Question, can I take a Part I and Part II?
SCG: (laughs) Probably not…
JF: Okay. I’m still taking Kill Bill Part I. If you picked the first Lord of the Rings and didn’t get the other two, that’d be rough…but Kill Bill is already non-linear, so the fact that the story isn’t resolved in Part I is fine I think.
SCG: I agree. And once you’ve watched a movie 30+ times, I don’t think you’re going to mind that it ends on a cliffhanger. Kill Bill doesn’t really anyway, it’s self-contained, but even a movie like Fellowship of the Ring could work.
JF: Maybe you’ll want a cliffhanger. It gives you something to live for, some hope of a future or something.
Anyway, Kill Bill is one of my favorite movies, one of the most entertaining movies…but it also has crazy variety and pace. There’s slowness (like the opening), there’s all the classic Tarantino dialogue, and then there’s these all-time action sequences too. It’s Western and Eastern; it’s literally a Western and a martial arts movie. It’s got a little bit of everything, and it’s just really fun.
SCG: I feel like you have to go with a movie from a filmmaking master, which you’re obviously doing. The subtle touches of when a song comes in, or just what the soundtrack is… those things are important in any movie, but they’re so important here. This is it for the rest of your life. And you’re also alone the whole time.
JF: I didn’t even think about the soundtrack, but that’s a good point.
Going back to the variety point - it has the Lucy Liu backstory sequence, which is animated.
SCG: (whispers) That’s SUCH a good point.
JF: It’s a nice little switch up. You could even just watch those seven minutes as a short if you’re not in the mood for a movie.
Another thing I was gonna bring up as I was thinking through a lot of these…Kill Bill a hero’s journey. I feel like you have to pick stuff that is uplifting and empowering a little bit. You have to be so careful what album you pick, or what movie…you’re going to be super isolated. You don’t want to be watching some really sad shit.
SCG: Oh god, see everything you’re saying right now is influencing what I’m gonna pick. I think the other thing that I’m considering, which Kill Bill definitely has, is you want a Big Story. I don’t think you want something that’s a niche story.
JF: Your life is already a bottle episode. You don’t need another one.
SCG: Right. You don’t want anything too specific. Like I would say Uncut Gems is one of my favorite movies of all-time…no chance I would consider Uncut Gems. It’s a perfect movie, but it’s too specific of a story.
JF: Okay, so what are you considering?
SCG: So I’m down to 2 movies. My thing is, you want something long, you want a Big Story…but you also want one of those movies - and Kill Bill has this, by the way - where it’s like, now we’re in this amazing scene, and now we’re in this amazing scene. You are wowed every time you watch it at how every moment is somehow so memorable and iconic.
One of the movies I’m considering feels like a zag, because I’m a contrarian and this is such a non-contrarian pick, but it’s The Godfather. To the Big Story point, that movie is kinda The Big American Origin Story, and I can just imagine being isolated on this island and wanting something super essential. The more time that passes, the harder and harder it will be to stay in touch with the fabric of what it even meant to live in society…
As far as iconic performances, it’s just completely unparalleled. The career peak of so many of the best actors of all-time. Beautifully shot.
JF: Really amazing score.
SCG: Incredible.
Also to be clear, I’m taking Part I. Funny that we both took Part I’s, but The Godfather is obviously fully self-contained.
JF: Would you feel eventually - say, 10 years in - that you wish you could see something contemporary?
SCG: Well so this was going to be my next point - I think there’s something appealing about picking something old, because it’s withstood the test of time already. If I’m gonna have to watch this movie for the rest of my life, The Godfather has proven to age well. Kill Bill is newer, but I think old enough to be in that category too.
Which brings me to my other option, of a similar age to Kill Bill, which is The Big Lebowski. And as you were talking about the animated scene in Kill Bill I thought…I might have to go Lebowski because it has those surreal, music video-esque dream sequences. It has probably my favorite soundtrack ever, the Bob Dylan scene…I feel like I can cheat a little bit and double up on music by picking that movie. It’s more relatable than The Godfather too. I relate to The Dude in some ways, I relate to the LA-ness of it…it’s a piece of regular human life. It’s not as big a story, but it’s still a hero’s journey, and it’s hilarious…I don’t know how humor ages though.
JF: That’s the biggest risk of going with a comedy. Imagine watching it one day and you think it’s not funny, at all. Because you will get to that point.
SCG: Yeah, it’s really tough. I do think I’m gonna go Godfather after talking it through.
JF: I would choose that one.
SCG: Also while Lebowski is more relatable in a literal sense, The Godfather was formative for me as a person. I loved it as a kid. So I think that gives it legs for my entire life…it will always speak to me.
JF: Okay so I win that round…
SCG: Where do we go next?
JF: Album but you go first.
SCG: Okay well this isn’t a draft, so the album I’m gonna pick you could in theory pick.
JF: This is probably our best and last shot at picking the same thing.
SCG: I’m taking a Mote Street favorite, softscars.
JF: I considered it.
SCG: Two biggest reasons: we were talking before about variety. Here you have not only sonic variety, from the crunchy, hyper-digital tracks like “sulky baby” and “4ui12” to the super sparse voids of “bloodbunny,” “fish in the pool,” “aphex twin flame” etc…but more than that you have conceptual variety. That’s kind of what I wrote about last year in my “ode to softscars” piece; to me this album captures different states of the multiverse. I feel like I’m in space when I’m listening to it, and not space like planets and stars, but different dimensions. Color fields with floating foliage, frozen icescapes...
JF: It’s a cyber futurist album.
SCG: Yeah. It’s cyberpunk but not earthly. It’s cosmic…I considered 2001: A Space Odyssey for movie because to me it’s similar. Probably my favorite extended movie scene of all-time is the end of 2001 where he’s descending to Jupiter, and just looking at all the monochromatic, vaguely-familiar landscapes, and then wakes up in that empty, luminescent, vaguely-classical hall…this album puts me in those kinds of spaces.
And while it resonates with me so deeply in terms of all these aesthetics, it also has the other huge thing that I need from music, which is emotion. It’s this incredible character work, and not in a Chappelle Roan way (I love Chappelle Roan), but this character is particularly fascinating and relatable.
I don’t understand EXACTLY who Yeule intends this character to be, but it feels like some sort of robot/alien/non-human -
JF: Angel Demon!
SCG: Yes- robot/alien/angel/demon experiencing human emotion in this outsider way, where they’re unfamiliar with these feelings and describing them somewhat naively as a robot/alien would, and that level of technological, emotionless removal makes it more emotional, but also less literal. One reason I got so into this album when I did is that it felt like such a refreshing departure from all the hyper-literal emotional shit that had been dominating pop and dominating my streams.
JF: That music won’t age as well. I feel like you want something cryptic so you have something to think about.
SCG: Yeah. And this may not age well either, in that it feels very tied to our current relationship to technology and the emotional dissonance it creates. But I feel like if I’m leaving for this remote island now, I might be suspended in my understanding of how society progresses. I know that sounds like it contradicts my earlier point about picking things that have stood the test of time, but I think in this case it’s different. If anything it’ll become more relatable…I’ll probably start to feel like this cyber meat robot with a broken software update after 30 years alone on this island.
I also think music has evolved too much to pick something old, whereas film hasn’t.
JF: Film has evolved in a bad way.
SCG: Exactly.
JF: Okay, my pick is The Godfather of albums, OK Computer.
SCG: Hell yeah.
JF: I was gonna do Kid A because it’s a little more varied…you have “Treefingers” which is a pure ambient song, and there’s more of an electronic influence throughout, but the issue is that it’s just too dark. OK Computer is a little more uplifting, especially near the end with “The Tourist” and “Lucky,” which are triumphant songs… and he’s singing about surviving a plane crash, which is probably how I’m getting to this fucking island. “No Surprises,” “Karma Police,” absolute classics. “Paranoid Android” has really great chaotic energy, which is going to be very cathartic. “Airbag” is fucking sick. “Fitter Happier” is a nice little interlude to remind me of the bad aspects of modern life that I’m escaping…
SCG: There’s A LOT of softscars energy to this album too.
JF: Wow, that’s a good point.
SCG: I mean flip it around, this was first and probably influenced that, but yeah.
JF: Yeah, that’s really interesting though.
I think I’d probably approach this by breaking it into sub-albums, or even listening to one song at a time and try and isolate its impact. I’d avoid listening to the whole thing all the way through, but rather be like “I’m in the mood to listen to Paranoid Android right now, because I’m spazzing out.” I feel like I’d get bored more slowly this way.
SCG: OK Computer also has “Exit Music,” and similarly to “fish in the pool” off softscars it just feels so crucial to have in perpetuity something that’s super cinematic.
I was even wondering if I should just go classical or jazz, but I think you need something that’s more modern pop too. You need catchiness. Classical might be the most enriching, immersive experience, but I also want a groove.
JF: Yes. There’s gotta be rhythm. I’m trying to dance on this island.
My two fringe choices I considered were Broken Social Scene and Massive Attack. I’d get different singers on different songs, and both male and female vocals. You also get hip hop grooves with Massive Attack, and have very different vibes song to song.
Ultimately, I just decided that I don’t think I like either band as much as Radiohead. Which had to be the trump card.
SCG: Yeah, Radiohead is a great call. I would never pick one of their albums just because they have never meant quite as much to me as they do to you, but they would be higher on my list for this than my overall albums list. They’re just so versatile and also so essential.
Okay, book?
JF: Book.
SCG: Okay, you go first.
…and THAT’s how you do a cliffhanger.
Come back for Part II next week!
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1 album, 1 movie, 1 book, 1 piece of “enrichment,” 1 memento and 1 cask of alcohol.
Simon’s got an all-time iconic period film and a hyper-futurist album.
James has two turn-of-the-millenium classics.
How will they finish prepping for remote-island eternity? The conversation from part 1 continues…
______
JF: I might have the objectively-best choice for book. It seems like it was written for this. It’s Cloud Atlas. I know you’ve never read it.
SCG: I haven’t read it.
JF: Did you see the awful movie they made of it?
SCG: I did not. But tell me what the book is about.
JF: It’s basically..... put long pause in the notes here (long pause). It’s basically… it’s written like a collection of sequential primary source materials. So you start out reading a diary of a person in the 1800s, and he’s marooned on this island, and you’re reading this letter he wrote. And then it jumps forward in time to a seemingly-unconnected story that’s another primary source, but as technology advances the type of primary sources change as well. One of them is in the 60s and it’s a pulp novel, and then the next chapter is contemporary, and then the next chapter is written on a data slate in the future, and then it goes into post-technology… it turns from historical nonfiction vibes into apocalyptic sci-fi. There’s also elements of comedy, romance, there are wars and battles… It uses every genre.
It’s insanely well written, it’s entertaining, it’s super varied, and it gives you this sense that there’s something bigger in the universe than randomness… I really want to re-read it.
SCG: I have a follow-up to this question: Did you consider short stories at any point? I was considering some kind of anthology, and my pick is somewhat in that range. But it sounds like you’ll get the benefit of that, with the added benefit of there being a through line.
JF: Yeah, you get your cake and eat it too. I didn’t consider short stories but I think this fits that bill. But also reading it in full is really satisfying, because it reaches this apex where you have two chapters in the far future back to back, and then it starts going back in time and finishes each half of the other stories that were left on a cliffhanger.
SCG: I assume it’s a long book?
JF: Yeah, I think around 500 pages.
SCG: I think length of book is probably more important than movie or album. With an album the difference between a short one and a long one is like, half an hour. With a movie it’s an hour, hour and a half maybe. With a book, we’re talking about days of reading’s worth of difference.
JF: And I’ve also only read Cloud Atlas once. I wouldn’t want something I’ve read several times.
SCG: My pick is a more extreme version of this. I picked something that I haven’t finished.
JF: That’s a good call too. A little risky though.
SCG: It’s a little risky, but I know enough about it to know that I think it’s a plus. And I have… (reaches to the bookshelf) I got two copies of it right here. A Lover’s Discourse, Roland Barthes.
JF: That’s the book that Matt gave you?
SCG: (holds up one of them) this one’s Matt’s. And I’m gonna take Matt’s version, with all his annotations.
JF: (laughs) That would be cheating.
SCG: What makes this book such a great choice is that it’s a collection of short essays…and actually like Cloud Atlas, it’s all tied together. Another cake/eat it too situation; it’s all on theme. It’s a book of short essays about desire.
But the way he writes it, it reads like an academic text. Each essay is about a term he’s made up or redefined, and then he goes into explaining what the term means more deeply with examples, annotations, references to other terms in the book…he’s creating his own vocabulary, and his terms remove context that we currently have in our language, or in French (which is the language he wrote it in). So we might say something like “I have a crush on this person.” And we very quickly fill in all these connotations that we have around the word “crush.” But here, for example, he has this section Talking, which he opens with this term Declaration, which he defines as “the amorous subject’s propensity to talk copiously with repressed feeling to the loved being about his love for that being, for himself, for them.” If you didn’t understand what I just read, neither did I, and that’s why I think this book is amazing. You have to think about and often decipher every sentence.
JF: Right, you have to read it over 100 times. I did think about going that route, and doing something that’s really difficult to understand… it’s a long-term project.
SCG: Yeah. It takes time, it motivates you, it sharpens your brain… and when you DO understand it, you understand it in this way that’s so much deeper than if someone just wrote it in plain, accepted language.
And while it is about romance and love, which I do think could get dicey when you’re this isolated, I also think it frames those subjects in a way that works for isolation. It’s somewhat bleak, and it essentially treats desire as an unsolvable problem. I feel like a big part of the book’s thesis is that loving and desiring are inherently annihilating, and I feel like you can find solace in that from a destitute location.
JF: (laughs) Right. It’s like, a reminder that being human is to suffer and to suffer alone. So you’re not missing out.
I feel like I have so much less to say about the next three categories…
SCG: Same, but I feel while there’s less to analyze, our choices themselves will be the interesting part. The strategy gets more open-ended.
JF: True. Okay, you’re next… can we do enrichment last though?
SCG: Ooooh, that’s where I wanted to go. But okay. Let’s go to alcohol. The Cask.
JF: We gotta have something to sip on while we enjoy our fragments of culture.
SCG: Exactly. I assume we’re getting one big barrel of this? It’s not an unlimited supply.
JF: Nope, not unlimited.
SCG: Okay, so I need something strong as fuck. And I don’t want it to be immensely drinkable. It needs to be a little difficult to drink.
JF: You don’t want to run through it too quick.
SCG: Yeah. I’m going with… absinthe.
JF: That’s a great choice.
SCG: That shit is 50+ percent. It’s delicious, but you can only take tiny sips. As intense as it is from a proof standpoint though, it’s pretty versatile from a flavor standpoint. It’s not like a really intense smoky scotch, which is on one far side of the flavor spectrum.
JF: It’s almost got the herbaceousness of a digestif.
SCG: Yeah. There’s hints of sweetness, it’s got a good warm feeling, it doesn’t put you to sleep… but it could very easily if you needed it to. And they said back in the day that it inspired creativity.
JF: Well the real shit is hallucinogenic. Because it’s got wormwood root or whatever.
SCG: Yeah… I might not want the real shit. I might be okay with the modern one.
JF: You gotta decide right now.
SCG: (long pause, sighs)
JF: You didn’t pick good hallucinogenic art.
SCG: Yeah. I’m not trying to trip out.
JF: If you picked 2001…
SCG: You’re right.
JF: “my enrichment is…mushrooms.” (Both laugh)
Okay, so at first I had the same thought about strength of alcohol, but I decided that’s actually a non-factor. Because what I’m gonna do is: sober for the first year. Get my tolerance down to zero. That way, I can just pick my favorite shit. Which is… Little City Vermouth.
SCG: Woooooooo!
JF: I’m rockin with it. It’s my favorite thing to sip on. It’s kinda similar in the sense that you’re not gonna chug it, it’s not like beer, you’re gonna take small sips. But, super complex flavor. Also herbaceous, sweet, kinda syrupy… it just really relaxes me. And bruh. If you’re on an island, any type of alcohol is gonna get you drunk. The sun is sweating all the hydration out of you all day.
SCG: Yeah, I think that’s a great call. Yours will go faster than mine, but it sounds like you’re taking an approach of really making it a rare occasion.
JF: I mean, you can go through that absinthe very quick too if you’re not careful.
Alright, memento. I go first.
I’m taking my great grandfather’s tobacco pipe.
SCG: Before you go any further… does your memento have to be something you actually own?
JF: I thought so… what were you gonna say?
SCG: I thought it had to be a thing you could potentially own.
JF: So you were gonna pick what, sculpture of David or some shit?
SCG: No, it’d have to be like a reproduction. Anyway sorry alright. Continue.
JF: I’m gonna find something on that island to smoke out of it. It’s probably the most sentimental thing that I own right now. And I think it could actually come in handy.
SCG: That’s a great call. You could also just display it.
JF: Yeah. You can also just puff on it and taste like, ancient- I mean this shit’s kinda gnarly but if I’m in dire straights, I’ll like… smoke the resin.
SCG: Okay, I am still gonna bend this a tiny bit.
JF: What WERE you gonna say?
SCG: What I was gonna say, I don’t even like it as much as what I’m gonna say now.
JF: Okay. But I still wanna know.
SCG: Okay. I’ll say what I’m gonna say now first, and then I’ll go to that. It’s something that I’m gonna inherit from my parents.
JF: Okay, I think this is not bending the rules.
SCG: Okay, cool. And I like this more than what I was gonna say. What I was gonna say…I’m taking a painting, 100%. I want a painting. And the one that I’m now taking-
JF: Wait, I’m gonna change my answer too after.
SCG: (laughs)
JF: Bro I have many so paintings I could take-
SCG: Yeah, you have heat there. But I’m glad you said yours, because I don’t know if I would have thought of this if you didn’t.
JF: You’re welcome.
SCG: So I was thinking about the art I have here. And I’m like…alright dude, I don’t want one of my photos. I don’t want one of my mom’s pieces of art that I only have because they’re her least favorite pieces she had. I want her painting she owns now that was my grandma’s. It’s by Joan Brown, painter from the 1960s, Bay Area Figurative Movement, the painting of a woman swimming in the bay with the Golden Gate Bridge and Marin in the background.
It’s super sentimental, it makes me think of my grandma, makes me think of my mom, makes me think of [redacted]… I want a painting because, I want something that can remind me of some other shit. I want something I can stare at.
What I was GONNA say, but this is so much better… but I was gonna say I went to this play with our friend Madeline that was based on the Hieronymus Bosch triptych with the Garden of Earthly Delights, and in the play they had a replica of that painting. And I want that thing from that prop set.
I wanna come back to your changed answer here but narratively I feel I have to say now what my enrichment is… my enrichment is painting.
JF: Wait, what?
SCG: I’m gonna bring canvases and paint.
JF: You can do that?
SCG: I can’t?
JF: I guess so. I wasn’t thinking that big.
SCG: What were you thinking?
JF: Like a deck of cards or something.
SCG: Oh shit. (Both laugh) I mean… I can make it as humble as we want. It can be watercolors and a tablet.
JF: Maybe that’s the tradeoff. If you pick painting supplies, you might run through those supplies in two years. Whereas I’ll have my- actually if I lose one card and can never play solitaire ever again, that’s risky too actually.
Okay, then I’m picking guitar. I thought that was cheating.
SCG: I thought you were gonna pick guitar.
JF: No.
SCG: Yeah. We can answer both ways. Let’s answer both ways and let the audience decide what’s more fair.
IF painting’s allowed, I’m gonna pick painting, and I’m gonna get really fucking good at painting. As I was thinking about art forms, I thought okay, I do photography, I can take a camera, or I can take a notebook and write… but painting is the one thing that I might not be that good at yet, but if I had unlimited time I would want to get the best at. I enjoy painting so much more than I enjoy photography, it’s just that photography is currently way easier for me and hence less frustrating. So it’s rewarding in the short term. But over 50 years, painting would be more rewarding.
And following this plan, I was gonna get a reproduction of a painting as my memento, back when I thought I could do that. And I thought, do I want a Van Gogh, do I want a Toulouse-Latrec… no, give me something painted in a style I could never replicate, even in 50 years, which is what the Bosch painting is.
JF: Okay, after all this painting talk I’m not gonna switch to a painting, but you gotta let me bring some tobacco to even things out.
SCG: Okay. If you get to bring tobacco, I get-
JF: Tobacco SEEDS.
SCG: I get to-
JF: And the knowledge to- (both die laughing).
This is crazy because I’ve never smoked in my life. But if I was on this island I think I’d want to.
Alright, enrichment… the thing about a guitar is if you break a string, it gets a little dicey. But maybe I can scrounge together some reeds and make my own strings.
At first I really thought this category was like, a puzzle or a board game or something. I thought you were gonna pick Yahtzee. You would actually go insane. Just fill out like, 2,000 sheets of Yahtzee.
SCG: If I can bring 2,000 sheets of Yahtzee, I can bring 100 little canvases.
JF: You can also grid the paintings out and last longer.
SCG: Or I can paint over them. Be like another Bay Artist Jay DeFeo, who made that rose painting in her apartment for 8 years and I died of lead poisoning.
JF: That’s crazy.
SCG: Maybe I’ll bring lead paint.
This is NOT a “desert island” question. No no no.
This is a REMOTE island.
You are not stranded, but you are ambiguously living there for the rest of your life. And there’s food, and basic comfort, and somehow electricity.
The differences are immense.
You get to bring six things with you: 1 album, 1 movie, 1 book, 1 piece of “enrichment,” 1 memento and 1 cask of alcohol.
If you love art, rankings, and the exercise of thinking about how you would hypothetically feel and what you would hypothetically want if left with solely your thoughts, some art, some memories and some booze…then you’ll enjoy this question as much as we Mote Street editors did.
Here’s the first part of our two-part discussion on the matter. We invite you to think about your answers as well.
____
SCG: Did you think about these answers in any particular way outside of your favorites in each category?
JF: Yeah. I’m thinking in terms of my favorite stuff that also has dimensionality. I think the biggest battle on a remote island will be lack of variety…no matter how much you love an album or movie or book, you’re gonna get tired of it. So re-watchability/re-readability/replay value have to be the most important criteria, even above baseline quality.
SCG: Did you think about movie/book/album in context with each other?
JF: No, because they were all covering different bases for me.
SCG: Okay interesting; I did think about the relationship between them, at least a little. We’ll get into it.
A few of my choices are locked, and some I want to talk through a bit…where should we start?
JF: Let’s start with album.
SCG: Okay we’ll save movie, because I’m struggling with how to pick for movie.
JF: Let’s start with movie.
SCG: Let’s fucking do it.
JF: Question, can I take a Part I and Part II?
SCG: (laughs) Probably not…
JF: Okay. I’m still taking Kill Bill Part I. If you picked the first Lord of the Rings and didn’t get the other two, that’d be rough…but Kill Bill is already non-linear, so the fact that the story isn’t resolved in Part I is fine I think.
SCG: I agree. And once you’ve watched a movie 30+ times, I don’t think you’re going to mind that it ends on a cliffhanger. Kill Bill doesn’t really anyway, it’s self-contained, but even a movie like Fellowship of the Ring could work.
JF: Maybe you’ll want a cliffhanger. It gives you something to live for, some hope of a future or something.
Anyway, Kill Bill is one of my favorite movies, one of the most entertaining movies…but it also has crazy variety and pace. There’s slowness (like the opening), there’s all the classic Tarantino dialogue, and then there’s these all-time action sequences too. It’s Western and Eastern; it’s literally a Western and a martial arts movie. It’s got a little bit of everything, and it’s just really fun.
SCG: I feel like you have to go with a movie from a filmmaking master, which you’re obviously doing. The subtle touches of when a song comes in, or just what the soundtrack is… those things are important in any movie, but they’re so important here. This is it for the rest of your life. And you’re also alone the whole time.
JF: I didn’t even think about the soundtrack, but that’s a good point.
Going back to the variety point - it has the Lucy Liu backstory sequence, which is animated.
SCG: (whispers) That’s SUCH a good point.
JF: It’s a nice little switch up. You could even just watch those seven minutes as a short if you’re not in the mood for a movie.
Another thing I was gonna bring up as I was thinking through a lot of these…Kill Bill a hero’s journey. I feel like you have to pick stuff that is uplifting and empowering a little bit. You have to be so careful what album you pick, or what movie…you’re going to be super isolated. You don’t want to be watching some really sad shit.
SCG: Oh god, see everything you’re saying right now is influencing what I’m gonna pick. I think the other thing that I’m considering, which Kill Bill definitely has, is you want a Big Story. I don’t think you want something that’s a niche story.
JF: Your life is already a bottle episode. You don’t need another one.
SCG: Right. You don’t want anything too specific. Like I would say Uncut Gems is one of my favorite movies of all-time…no chance I would consider Uncut Gems. It’s a perfect movie, but it’s too specific of a story.
JF: Okay, so what are you considering?
SCG: So I’m down to 2 movies. My thing is, you want something long, you want a Big Story…but you also want one of those movies - and Kill Bill has this, by the way - where it’s like, now we’re in this amazing scene, and now we’re in this amazing scene. You are wowed every time you watch it at how every moment is somehow so memorable and iconic.
One of the movies I’m considering feels like a zag, because I’m a contrarian and this is such a non-contrarian pick, but it’s The Godfather. To the Big Story point, that movie is kinda The Big American Origin Story, and I can just imagine being isolated on this island and wanting something super essential. The more time that passes, the harder and harder it will be to stay in touch with the fabric of what it even meant to live in society…
As far as iconic performances, it’s just completely unparalleled. The career peak of so many of the best actors of all-time. Beautifully shot.
JF: Really amazing score.
SCG: Incredible.
Also to be clear, I’m taking Part I. Funny that we both took Part I’s, but The Godfather is obviously fully self-contained.
JF: Would you feel eventually - say, 10 years in - that you wish you could see something contemporary?
SCG: Well so this was going to be my next point - I think there’s something appealing about picking something old, because it’s withstood the test of time already. If I’m gonna have to watch this movie for the rest of my life, The Godfather has proven to age well. Kill Bill is newer, but I think old enough to be in that category too.
Which brings me to my other option, of a similar age to Kill Bill, which is The Big Lebowski. And as you were talking about the animated scene in Kill Bill I thought…I might have to go Lebowski because it has those surreal, music video-esque dream sequences. It has probably my favorite soundtrack ever, the Bob Dylan scene…I feel like I can cheat a little bit and double up on music by picking that movie. It’s more relatable than The Godfather too. I relate to The Dude in some ways, I relate to the LA-ness of it…it’s a piece of regular human life. It’s not as big a story, but it’s still a hero’s journey, and it’s hilarious…I don’t know how humor ages though.
JF: That’s the biggest risk of going with a comedy. Imagine watching it one day and you think it’s not funny, at all. Because you will get to that point.
SCG: Yeah, it’s really tough. I do think I’m gonna go Godfather after talking it through.
JF: I would choose that one.
SCG: Also while Lebowski is more relatable in a literal sense, The Godfather was formative for me as a person. I loved it as a kid. So I think that gives it legs for my entire life…it will always speak to me.
JF: Okay so I win that round…
SCG: Where do we go next?
JF: Album but you go first.
SCG: Okay well this isn’t a draft, so the album I’m gonna pick you could in theory pick.
JF: This is probably our best and last shot at picking the same thing.
SCG: I’m taking a Mote Street favorite, softscars.
JF: I considered it.
SCG: Two biggest reasons: we were talking before about variety. Here you have not only sonic variety, from the crunchy, hyper-digital tracks like “sulky baby” and “4ui12” to the super sparse voids of “bloodbunny,” “fish in the pool,” “aphex twin flame” etc…but more than that you have conceptual variety. That’s kind of what I wrote about last year in my “ode to softscars” piece; to me this album captures different states of the multiverse. I feel like I’m in space when I’m listening to it, and not space like planets and stars, but different dimensions. Color fields with floating foliage, frozen icescapes...
JF: It’s a cyber futurist album.
SCG: Yeah. It’s cyberpunk but not earthly. It’s cosmic…I considered 2001: A Space Odyssey for movie because to me it’s similar. Probably my favorite extended movie scene of all-time is the end of 2001 where he’s descending to Jupiter, and just looking at all the monochromatic, vaguely-familiar landscapes, and then wakes up in that empty, luminescent, vaguely-classical hall…this album puts me in those kinds of spaces.
And while it resonates with me so deeply in terms of all these aesthetics, it also has the other huge thing that I need from music, which is emotion. It’s this incredible character work, and not in a Chappelle Roan way (I love Chappelle Roan), but this character is particularly fascinating and relatable.
I don’t understand EXACTLY who Yeule intends this character to be, but it feels like some sort of robot/alien/non-human -
JF: Angel Demon!
SCG: Yes- robot/alien/angel/demon experiencing human emotion in this outsider way, where they’re unfamiliar with these feelings and describing them somewhat naively as a robot/alien would, and that level of technological, emotionless removal makes it more emotional, but also less literal. One reason I got so into this album when I did is that it felt like such a refreshing departure from all the hyper-literal emotional shit that had been dominating pop and dominating my streams.
JF: That music won’t age as well. I feel like you want something cryptic so you have something to think about.
SCG: Yeah. And this may not age well either, in that it feels very tied to our current relationship to technology and the emotional dissonance it creates. But I feel like if I’m leaving for this remote island now, I might be suspended in my understanding of how society progresses. I know that sounds like it contradicts my earlier point about picking things that have stood the test of time, but I think in this case it’s different. If anything it’ll become more relatable…I’ll probably start to feel like this cyber meat robot with a broken software update after 30 years alone on this island.
I also think music has evolved too much to pick something old, whereas film hasn’t.
JF: Film has evolved in a bad way.
SCG: Exactly.
JF: Okay, my pick is The Godfather of albums, OK Computer.
SCG: Hell yeah.
JF: I was gonna do Kid A because it’s a little more varied…you have “Treefingers” which is a pure ambient song, and there’s more of an electronic influence throughout, but the issue is that it’s just too dark. OK Computer is a little more uplifting, especially near the end with “The Tourist” and “Lucky,” which are triumphant songs… and he’s singing about surviving a plane crash, which is probably how I’m getting to this fucking island. “No Surprises,” “Karma Police,” absolute classics. “Paranoid Android” has really great chaotic energy, which is going to be very cathartic. “Airbag” is fucking sick. “Fitter Happier” is a nice little interlude to remind me of the bad aspects of modern life that I’m escaping…
SCG: There’s A LOT of softscars energy to this album too.
JF: Wow, that’s a good point.
SCG: I mean flip it around, this was first and probably influenced that, but yeah.
JF: Yeah, that’s really interesting though.
I think I’d probably approach this by breaking it into sub-albums, or even listening to one song at a time and try and isolate its impact. I’d avoid listening to the whole thing all the way through, but rather be like “I’m in the mood to listen to Paranoid Android right now, because I’m spazzing out.” I feel like I’d get bored more slowly this way.
SCG: OK Computer also has “Exit Music,” and similarly to “fish in the pool” off softscars it just feels so crucial to have in perpetuity something that’s super cinematic.
I was even wondering if I should just go classical or jazz, but I think you need something that’s more modern pop too. You need catchiness. Classical might be the most enriching, immersive experience, but I also want a groove.
JF: Yes. There’s gotta be rhythm. I’m trying to dance on this island.
My two fringe choices I considered were Broken Social Scene and Massive Attack. I’d get different singers on different songs, and both male and female vocals. You also get hip hop grooves with Massive Attack, and have very different vibes song to song.
Ultimately, I just decided that I don’t think I like either band as much as Radiohead. Which had to be the trump card.
SCG: Yeah, Radiohead is a great call. I would never pick one of their albums just because they have never meant quite as much to me as they do to you, but they would be higher on my list for this than my overall albums list. They’re just so versatile and also so essential.
Okay, book?
JF: Book.
SCG: Okay, you go first.
…and THAT’s how you do a cliffhanger.
Come back for Part II next week!
“Hopefully will get it to you guys in next few days so it could go out before 2025 lol” - BRAIN MINT creator STRETCH 4
He held up his end of the bargain, but we did not. Thus this recap is now a retrospective, a journey back to a simpler time.
Feel free to imagine there’s one less “1” in today’s date, and inhale this 90-song mix of fresher newcomers (Chanel Beads, Dummy, Tyla) still-minty vets (Kim Gordon, The Cure, Nick Cave) and evergreen legends (SZA, Father John Misty, Kendrick Lamar).
I used to reject the feeling of “going back in time” that visiting my parents brings, but these days I crave nostalgia when I’m in my childhood home. During my most-recent visit, I decided to dig through my high school closet - full of treasures from those years and much earlier. Baseball magazines, Tintin comic books, Pokemon cards - and a limited selection of my parents old vinyls. They sold most of their collection when I was in high school, but they let me pick out ones I wanted to keep. Santana’s debut album, “Talking Heads: 77”, Gil Scott-Heron’s “Pieces of a Man” and Jimi Hendrix’s “Are You Experienced” should give you a sense of what my parent’s formative years were. When I got back to New York, I went straight for my record player - the first I’ve owned since high school - and I threw on The Beatles’ “Magical Mystery Tour,” one of four Beatles vinyls I returned with.
I’ve had four Beatles Phases in my life. They were the first music I ever loved, and among the biggest of my obsessions at 8 years old, joining Jackie Kennedy, the Solar System and Chicago skyscrapers (all would soon be obliterated by the singularity in my brain that was baseball). I came back to the Beatles in high school, my music-snobbery glory years, and my favorite song was “I’m So Tired.” Another revival came when I moved to New York with my ex after college, and I’d get a hit of tear-inducing emotion anytime I experienced art that reminded me of when I had a soul.
After coming home with my parent’s vinyls two weeks ago, I’ve already locked in my Spotify wrapped top Artist for 2025 by listening to every Beatles song, album by album, over and over, and given each one a 1-10 rating. And thus commences the “I turn all joy into content” era of my Beatles fandom, though my nostalgia cravings also feel well-loved.
Take a look at all my ratings if you’re interested, and if you are so inclined, waste some time this winter listening to and evaluating John, Paul, George and Ringo’s 200-plus song catalog yourself. If you do, we’d love to see your final tallies.
See girl core 1 for description.
Unadorned spoke component
Hubcap ledge (partially obscured)
Surface layer accumulating
Interstitial space
The rubber circle itself
Tires well
Aerated courtyard
A deep gray fender (visible)
An interwoven grief component
A collapse beneath the composite
Entryway below
Accumulation of velvet
Heading out into the pre self before you
Continual translation of pain into looking
below
above
beyond
Hello paragraph maybe something like I grew up on job sites long breath working in homes slash beneath my skin short inhalation drilling long pauses to enter the tree lined umm interior exhalation last august needed materials capable of withstanding closed lips something confessional i drilled through the ceiling joist thus compromising the structural integrity of the home ok i had headphones in a line break do you ever imagine a future inside a song interstitial pause at 8th grade dance this girl i liked was kissing my friend but still being nice to me a window sill for the commemorative candle burning a future autopopulates in your mind around the imagined holding kissing fucking self portrait in a convex mirror by john ashberry inventing a crush creates future it’s my job to keep punk rock elite by nofx resolves inability to exist in the present interstitial listening breath I excused myself at the dinner party to rifle through the medicine cabinet modesto pittsburg bay point hayward we need more tensile strength ok the waves devoured whatever was left last winter stockton the waves berkeley the waves sticky dancefloor the waves if i don’t go home with someone ill die !!!
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If you’re wondering why a lot of these songs are TikTok hits from 2022, it’s because that’s when I made this playlist. That year I heard 30 seconds of Just for Me at House of Yes. Saw Smile Machine open up for *Ovlov at Baby’s All Right. I even succumbed to the Touch Tank curse.
We’ll be rolling out a few more volumes that feel a bit more contemporary, but it’s only right to start with volume 1. Besides, what’s so bad about indulging in a bit of nostalgia with October right around the corner.
*Ovlov is NOT girl core
Excerpt from "ROUGHLY CHRONOLOGICAL" by Carol Kantner (1976)
we make grocery
lists together:
on flannel we make writing
filling
spaces on the shelves.
we put the lists in linty pockets
pat our hips and think of jars.
we wash blouses together:
in big soup bowls lined with rain
we measure out white soap. we stir with spoons.
for rinsewater we use vinegar, we
spread the blouses out to dry
on cedar,
in the sun.
we think of buttons.
we prune trees together.
we make cuttings, give branches
new sisters.
we do this before winter.
we do this because of winter.
we think of fingers.
we patch walls
together: in cardboard boxes
we make a paste of dust and ghosts.
we spread the paste with butterknives
on cracks, and think of children.
we bind books together.
we take flat ferns
and the footprints of small animals;
we bind them with blue thread,
make covers of pond scum,
and call the books
tadpoles thinking of frogs.
we hold the books,
wait for the mail,
think of libraries.
we open umbrellas together.
from the afternoon closet
one is green,
one is black and automatic.
taking them to open
puts little wings
in the short hall.
we hold the glass handles, listen
to the opening,
think of doorknobs.
together we put couches to their naps.
we take warm blankets,
we cover the couches with them.
the couches remember this:
they come down the road like cows
for it.
we think of the insides of things.
I’m new here, still getting used to the steps, the static shock of the railing, the creaking of the neglected staircase. I haven’t met a single neighbor yet. So far, all I can go off of are the items they leave out front their doors.
Some inferences are obvious. I figure the other three on my floor are women, just based on the sizes of their shoes alone. Two have welcome mats, one doesn’t. Maybe they’re new like me. Or they haven’t gotten around to it, or just don’t care. The apartment diagonal mine likes to leave a trash bag to take down at a later time.
On my way up the steps I see a large pair of white Air Force 1s amongst her sneakers and ballet flats. I’ve seen them there before. Probably a boyfriend. But today they’re placed haphazardly, careening towards the top step. They’re so far out of orbit that I can’t help but catch a glimpse inside the sole of his right sneaker as I try to step past. Something shiny. A Penny. Lucky? I think only once about the peep hole above my head as I lean over, pinching the coin between my fingers. It’s still warm. I slip it into my pocket as I take the last few steps to my door, letting myself inside.
A truly spontaneous act. These are rare for me. I feel like a movie character, like Bilbo pulling a fast one on Gollum. Sitting on my couch, I hold the coin between my index finger and thumb, spinning it around like a two-dimensional globe. It’s absolutely pristine, any blemish long buffed away by the sock and sweat of its bearer. Why’d I take this again?
That’s when I hear it. Raised voices, followed by a slammed door, then creaking steps. A fight? I’m not voyeuristic in nature, and have no interest in trying to make out the words. But my brain can’t help but infer, make connections, piece together a story. Yes, this works out perfectly. In his rushed exit he’ll have no presence of mind to realize something is missing. That his right shoe is one gram lighter, one cent cheaper. Probably not until he gets home, probably not until tomorrow.
Is this person a villain in my head? Some type of mark? I’m not superstitious myself, and I don’t want a lucky Penny. No, I simply want to deprive him of his. He’s a person who believes luck is real, and he wants to tip the odds in his favor?
I unceremoniously drop the Penny in my coin jar before washing my hands, flossing, applying my retinoids. I expected to sleep deeply, but in truth I’m tossing and turning, just like normal.
WHAT IT IS
Simon and James take turns drafting songs off of their consensus album-of-the-year thus far. These can get contentious.
HOW IT WORKS
Simon won the coin toss to pick first. Snake drafts are no fun with just 2 people, so Simon will pick first for 4 rounds, before the order flips and James picks first for the final 5 rounds.
1. B2b (Simon)
SCG: I’m really trying to stick to my board in this draft. I don’t know what you’re trying to do and last time I tried to think about that I fucked myself with the Frog draft.
JF: That was my strategy going into this but just for a different song. Luckily you didn’t take it.
SCG: The “took a long time, breaking muscle down, building muscle up repeating it” breakdown in the middle is just so good. This song is the closest we’re gonna come to some prime-Kanye shit. It has Yeezus energy; Fade energy.
JF: Wait. What’s that? I think I see Capri in the distance-
SCG: Oh my gahddddd
2. Everything is romantic (James)
JF: I was gonna take this as soon as I could…and because it was playing when we started I was so afraid you were gonna take it.
I think it’s the most versatile song on the album. You can listen to it closely, and it can be a club jam. I love the imagery…lemons on the trees and on the ground, sandals in the stirrups of the scooters…it’s like the part in Normal People when they go to Tuscany. Anyways. I could go on and on.
SCG: If I was doing my Frog strategy that would’ve been my top pick. I knew it was gonna be yours. But I also felt like if I take that and you take B2b…I think B2b is my favorite and this is my second favorite.
JF: b2b is my second favorite.
3. Von dutch (Simon)
SCG: Okay so for me this is pretty easy. Of all the straight up bangers on the album, I just think it’s the best.
JF: Yeah. (defeated tone). I think there’s kind of a drop off after this.
4. Sympathy is a knife (James)
JF: It’s really fallen down my list…It was number one on this album for me initially but those other three all leapfrogged it along with a couple others. But I can’t let you go B2b, Von dutch, and then Sympathy is a knife while I just take one of my personal favorites.
SCG: It was my initial favorite too…I think it’s just the first point on the album where you’re like oh shit. Something crazy is happening here. She’s going to insane places sonically and creatively.
5. Girl, so confusing (Simon)
Okay. I’m just gonna stick to my board again here.
JF: I’m really glad you’re taking that one.
SCG: I know it’s lower for you-
JF: This is where I come back, babyyyy
SCG: -but like, you’ll see with my next pick why I’m taking this one here. I will say I’m kind of salty about the whole Lorde aspect, because now I feel like it’s just about Lorde. Overall I want to know less about personal backstory on this album than I do. This isn’t Taylor Swift, she’s not trying to write Easter egg tabloid music…, but a lot of the discourse is making it about that. She didn’t do herself any favors with this one doing the Lorde remix, which I think is pretty corny, but…it’s a really fucking interesting, good song. And if I’m imagining hearing this in a club, B2b, Von dutch and this one are my top three.
JF: I think Club classics would go harder than this. But this one is obviously good and in my top half.
My next pick wasn’t on my radar for a while…but I’ve been seeing the TikToks.
SCG: I know where we’re going.
6. Apple (James)
JF: Shit’s growing on me. Not too much to say. It’s just really catchy.
SCG: I love how her voice sounds on that song. She does a slightly different type of effect. And it’s her most lyrically non-literal song.
JF: It’s a nice palette cleanser on the album. Much like an apple would be.
7. Club classics (Simon)
SCG: You scared me when you said you’d rather hear this one in the club that Girl, so confusing… I’m torn between two picks and I think I need to lock this one in here.
JF: Yeah, because I’m about to snake right here.
SCG: Yeah. But Club classics to me is the most recent riser. It was off my radar for a long time, probably because it’s more abrasive and less melodic than most of this album. But those breakdowns…like the “put your hands up and dance yeah I’m gonna dance all night that’s right” parts…those little parts are really sick to me. I think you’re right, it would go harder in a club than Girl, so confusing.
I’m happy with where I’m at pre-snake…I hope you don’t make me pay for it with this back-to-back.
JF: What if I took 360 and 365. How pissed would you be? (Maniacal laugh)
SCG: Insanely pissed. (Terrified tone)
8. 365 (James)
JF: Nah there’s no way I’d do that. I think it would be doing myself a disservice to take both. It’d be like drafting both of the Thompson twins. I’m taking 365, which is Amen. Wait no, which one’s better?
SCG: It’s hard to say, honestly. Amen went higher, but Ausar might be better.
JF: I’m learning from that mistake. I’m taking Ausar Thompson.
365 is like 360 but with a little more bite to it. I love the illicit scene-setting…I’m also always more of an album closer guy than an album opener guy. And then - my biggest sleeper on this album…
9. Mean girls (James)
SCG: Oooh
JF: We don’t need to talk about who she’s describing, but I love how she describes her… “You said she’s anorexic and you heard she likes when people say it.” Her voice also really shines on this one.
SCG: “She’s kinda fucked up, but she’s still, en, vogue” (Both laugh)
10. 360 (Simon)
SCG: I have to. I definitely wasn’t even thinking about how you could take this and 365 at the snake…I’m so glad you didn’t, because my plan was to wait on them until you took one since I had them back-to-back on my list.
JF: Which one did you have first though?
SCG: I did have 360 higher…I want to think of another comp other than the Thompson twins. Because 365 I like more, but I wouldn’t like it more if it was the only one that existed. I like it more as a riff on 360. It’s like LeBron and AD…AD is probably better but as a No. 1 guy he couldn’t do what LeBron can.
11. I might say something stupid (James)
JF: I’m taking the first non club banger. You gotta have a song like this! It’s such a better version of this kind of song than this one (puts on “I think about it all the time”)…showing instead of telling.
SCG: Okay. I’m very curious what you’re gonna think of this next one because we haven’t talked about the bonus tracks with each other…
12. Spring breakers (Simon)
JF: I think that’s the best of the three.
SCG: I think all the bonus tracks are more like her earlier music…they’re more sassy, trashy, indie-sleaze vibes.
JF: Yeah. UK trash. “Now I’m on the news with the DUI stare.” This is a sick beat…and she’s almost rapping. Shit gets really crunchy. Yeah I definitely wanted this one.
SCG: I also love the movie Spring breakers.
13. Talk, talk (James)
JF: I don’t love anything that’s left…
SCG: There’s one song left I really want.
JF: Better take it now…
14. So, I (Simon)
JF: I don’t like that one either.
SCG: It’s probably my favorite of the ballad-y ones. And the live performance she did for Billboard was really fucking sick.
15. Guess (James)
JF: Also trashy like Spring breakers, really heavy-handed…it kind of is a raunchier Club classics. Since I didn’t get that one, this can play that role on my team.
SCG: I really like this one.
JF: Sonically I fucking love it. The lyrics are a bit much.
SCG: But it’s funny as fuck.
JF: Yeah.
16. Hello, goodbye (Simon)
SCG: Guess was a steal honestly; there’s another big drop-off here.
JF: Yeah, Hello, goodbye is very bland.
SCG: It’s the one song on the album that feels like it could be made by anyone. And I think the worst production on the album.
JF: It’s really annoying. This is the kind of club music that I hate. It’s anthem-y. You can’t dance to this shit. There’s a reason this is the only song she’s released off this with only single-digit millions of streams. It’s like generic vocalist on a Major Lazer song. Avici. David Guetta.
SCG: It does feel like filler… maybe I shouldn’t have taken it. I just think it actively annoys me less than the remaining 2 songs.
17. Rewind (James)
JF: Yeah, this one is even more annoying to me. The outro is good, the verses are fine, but the lyrics are very woe-is-me. I hate the hook.
18. I think about it all the time (Simon)
SCG: I like this one more than Rewind and honestly more than Hello, goodbye. I messed up that pick so I’m glad I ended up with this here. The production is really good. I like how it sounds thoroughly. It’s not as cringe lyrically to me as it is to you, but it’s obviously kinda cringe.
JF: I think she’s trying to sound like an amateur singer on purpose. I just don’t think it works…clearly she’s doing it on purpose because she’s an amazing singer. It’s just not something I want to listen to.
FINAL ROSTERS:
Simon:
B2b
Von dutch
Girl, so confusing
360
Club classics
Spring breakers
So I
Hello goodbye
I think about it all the time
James:
Everything is romantic
Sympathy is a knife
Apple
365
Mean Girls
I might say something stupid
Talk talk
Guess
Rewind
SCG: What do you think makes this album so interesting?
JF: I think how well she plays off the production. I think she’s so talented that she can take club/electronic music and make it the pop album of the year if not last few years. Can you imagine another contemporary pop singer turning this type of sound into a hit, let alone an album full of them? Hell no.
SCG: It’s a really good point. Sometimes I think about the pop music I really love, and I’m like…how much do I REALLY love this? Is it just the best thing available to me? Like Olivia Rodrigo, Taylor Swift, Boygenius…I love all of these artists and think their music is really fucking good, but I wonder if I’m kinda settling for it as the best music I can get without trying too hard. Olivia does some really cool pop punk stuff, Boygenius has great harmonies and chemistry…but with Brat, it’s like…oh. This is purely creative vision and artistic genius. It reminds me of Lorde. Like prime Lorde.
JF: Girl, I think you’re confusing me…but yeah. I think what’s so cool about it is that she’s been the tastemaker in pop for a decade behind the scenes. For people who go deeper into the genre beyond what’s charting, she’s always their favorite. She’s every pop artist’s favorite. Has been for a long time. And now, this is her being the moment culturally. They were playing 360 in the lobby of my office building when I left today.
SCG: That song is all about It girls…and she’s an It girl in the sense that she is actually cool. Like truly cool. The starkest contrast is someone like Sabrina Carpenter, who is a very propped-up, curated It girl…I don’t believe anything in her music or image is genuine and I don’t think there’s any creative vision.
JF: I’m shocked she’s popular.
SCG: Yeah, It feels like Sabrina is an example of a label saying “we have this talented artist, how should we mold them in a way that will resonate with the current cultural moment?” Like you said, Charli has always been the one behind the scenes helping other artists be the moment, and now she is the moment.
JF: Her music is just not watered down at all. She’s worked with the same producers for so long, this is the sound she wants, and the whole album is bangers. She’s not doing club-influenced pop music, it’s actually just club music that is so genius-ly crafted that it has huge pop appeal.
SCG: If you went to basement or nowadays and you heard this music being played during a DJ set without knowing the context of what it is, you’d be like…. this makes sense. It’s the best thing I’ve ever heard here, but it also fully belongs here.
JF: This is what’s gonna get my old ass back into the club. I gotta hear this shit live with some sweaty ass people. Shit’s gonna pull me out of retirement.
SCG: We’re the same age as her.
JF: I think about it all the time.
Every day I feel the tranquility
of orchids growing on the stems of birds of paradise,
venus fly traps resting nestled among ferns
and fallen pomelos, fragrant and bitingly fresh
against the viscous humidity,
I find myself called by a chilling spring night breeze,
and second-hand cigarette smoke,
surrounded on a patio
or in an alley way, with other peacefully-tortured souls
BRAIN MINT is back and this time we are celebrating the coolness of the late-winter months thawing into Spring. To me, the regrettably-named genre of trip-hop captures that icy, cold breeze of March, while the warmer breakbeats and acoustic strumming of the latter half of this mix attempt to evoke that feeling of snowmelt fading into babbling brooks. April is here. No shuffling as always.
Remember that October?
That was the month that you stayed.
You’d been in that little box in that skinny building
For over two years, you’d fallen in love with that place.
Even though it’d been haunted,
Even though ghosts had moved in,
Rats too,
And the whole building unified and stopped paying rent
And you wanted to renew
For a third year but had no lease,
And it felt as if an era would end soon.
You could have left before October.
You could have moved to Brooklyn the previous winter,
But you stayed then and you were staying now,
Only this time the staying felt more like staying
Because you technically no longer lived there,
But you still stayed,
You overstayed, you squatted,
In your own home, you sat still, you stayed still.
And then you put up string lights,
And you cooked chicken cutlets with puttanesca and wine,
And filled your ceiling with balloons,
Every inch of every room,
And watched them start to fall
At 3 and 4 and 5 am,
Some to the ground,
Some to eye level,
And some somewhere in between
And the world felt frozen for you
So you danced through it,
and in the morning sat in a sea of balloons,
A sea you parted with with scissors, with a corkscrew
Sometimes during those years,
You’d stand still and stare.
There was that one window to the north
With elegant orange lighting
And thriving indoor foliage;
And then there were others,
So many others,
Dozens of buildings everywhere,
above to the left, below to the right,
over and across the street, beyond that in the distance,
You’d feel the levels of the city infinitely layered on top of you,
like an intricately-patterned quilt, the horns and trains
and happy and alone and in love people singing you a lullaby,
As you slept, and sat, and stood, and stared, and drifted.
The winter I experienced my first proper adult heartbreak, I thought a lot about Joni Mitchell. Blue, her fourth studio album, had celebrated its 50th anniversary, Joni had yet to take all of her music off Spotify and I had yet to dig through the $1 CD bins at Princeton Record Exchange, desperate for a copy.
I thought mainly about how Blue was an homage to her whirlwind relationship with Graham Nash. I thought about bad timing. I thought so much about the man I had loved, the woman he happened to meet and love a little bit more than me. I thought about how, 50 years ago, Joni Mitchell wrote songs about the same feelings and experiences.
If you cracked open my brain, the chords and lyrics of “River” are probably imprinted along the inside. The song is a reminder that pain is enduring, but so is love. The combination of the two colors our outlook on life. An enduring, successful song reaches through the decades to say “I broke my own heart, too. We’re going to be okay.”
“River” is believed to be mainly inspired by Mitchell’s relationship with Nash, its tumultuous path and its hasty ending. Mitchell wanted to be free to create, travel and live life on her terms, and the idea of settling down with Nash spooked her. After a year of fights between the two, she ran off to Europe and sent him a telegram to say the relationship was over. It is believed to have read: “If you hold sand too tightly in your hand, it will run through your fingers. Love, Joan.”
My biggest adult heartbreak ended in front of the 6 Train station in Spanish Harlem, and was finalized in a short, angry text exchange a month later.
In your twenties, the future goes on forever. But the present is equally frightening. For some, commitment is terrifying and limiting. For my previous partner, it was horrifying: who else was out there for him? Would settling down with me just hold him or me back? Was a little heartbreak now worth it if he hopefully found someone better?
And for me: could I bear to let him go and move on? Could I accept that he truly had happened to meet someone who met all the unspoken requirements he had? Could I also handle that as it happened over and over in the months that followed? At the time, I couldn’t. I cut him off, I walked away, I lost a perfectly good friend
I'm so hard to handle
I'm selfish and I'm sad
Now I've gone and lost the best baby
That I ever had
I walked away from that relationship because I couldn’t handle being friends, being second-best, being considered a lesser option. I’ve done it again since and God only knows how many more times I have it ahead of me. It’s a decades-old feeling, I am not the first to be in this situation and I am not the first to grow past it. But in the moment and moments after, it sure does feel like it.
That’s why “River” and Blue on the whole have endured for 50-plus years. Mitchell is willing to be blunt and emotionally vulnerable in her lyrics, to tell the story as she felt it and in cognizance of who else was hurt by her decisions.
There is no aggression toward her partner, no happy ending: just her, lamenting and trying, desperately, to escape the present and her own pain.
I’m inside of an album, physically exploring
I travel through a sequence of chromatic spaces
separated by cushy, plush wormholes
There are no words in these spaces
Think of the lyrics as God’s word
and the spaces as visual manifestations of god’s word
All I hear is melody and texture
Each space is distinct, for example
one is sparse, bright yellow, fragmented and flowering
with a soilless species I’ve never seen
The next, a cloudy purple amoeba
filled with alien emotions I can only approximate
Another is an atmospheric blue,
and I have this constant falling sensation
due to association with earthly sky
or a symptom of new physical laws
In another, I’m surrounded by isolated sparkles
that look like eyeless twinkles
In one space I’m certain I’m the center of absolutely nothing,
and in another it all crumbles and expands and clears and clouds and collapses around me
In the next, I dance
My motions become this space’s scripture
Images of my movement immediately appear
painted on chapel ceilings
One wormhole is a ventricle
I know where this leads,
until suddenly I’m pumped into an empty space scape
Blood drips from my skin, freezing into icicles
It’s unclear how I proceed
but I do, perhaps into this space’s version of an afterlife
Ahead lurks a thicket of dark rusty metal beams,
and beyond that a white nothingness
or perhaps an off-white nothingness;
There’s so much rust I can’t tell,
and I don’t know if color theory works the same here
As I move forward I pass through the beams,
not like holograms exactly,
it’s hard to explain,
but I emerge feeling strengthened
This is the first installment of BRAIN MINT, a loose collection of tunes that will make your brain minty fresh, like you just put two Altoids in your head. Future editions may be more focused genre-wise, but Volume 1 features a smattering of disparate genres which together form a cohesive experience. I recommend listening in order for maximum pleasure.
When I wrote about the 30 most important songs in my life each day during April 2020, I started with “Rolling Stone” by The Weeknd. I don’t know if I was subconsciously avoiding picking a song on House Of Balloons, but I’ve found my favorite album of all-time impossible to write about since.
To celebrate bringing the 30 SONGS format to Mote Street, I’m going to try. It’s just difficult.
To describe its sampling as genius is as if mentioning Siouxsie and the Banshees, Beach House, and Cocteau Twins shows a sophisticated or unexpected palette rather than a future-of-music-shattering takedown of the concept of genre.
To praise the lyrics is as if the lyrics are lyricism, as if the sense of danger, sense of cool, sense of thrill, sense of paranoia, sense of arousal, sense of desire, sense of disconnect and sense of depletion are simply senses, rather than involuntary responses to the controlled substance being injected into your ears, spiking and draining your own serotonin to the point you forget what is making you feel this way in the first place.
To compliment Abel’s voice, his timbre and his range is as if there isn’t simply a quality to his singing that allows his most imagery-laden verses and his most non-verbal wails to somehow be equally decipherable, emotive and bone-freezing.
To identify standout songs is as if there’s somehow a way to critically discern between the merits of the synth pad that transitions House Of Balloons to Glass Table Girls, panning you from vibe to vibe without moving you an inch as if someone just poured a mountain of powder on the table in front of the silk couch you’re glued to, and the “oh-whoaaa-ohhh” Abel ad-libs on Loft Music, between asking what you are doing in the bathroom and saying that he hears noises in the bathroom, but that it’s okay because we can do it in the living room.
To admire its atmosphere is as if the samples, production, vocals, ad-libs, flows, lyrics, structures, transitions, motifs, through lines, song titles, cover art, and your own life with the album, from when you weren’t even fucking 20 to on your 30th birthday in the middle of the city, didn’t define the details of what you’ve wanted, the feelings of what you’ve desired and the contours of what you’ve achieved, in all its colors, its buoyancy, its temporality.
I felt electricity in your hand on Thursday. I’ve thought about our Avenue A weekends, the ones with you perched on my lap as I sit on a ledge in front of a bodega. Your hair is particularly curly those nights, and your eyes are glossy.
When someone emerged from the bar behind the booth I was sitting in, I felt transported back to my first psychedelic trip, which was 5 days prior. I’m 30, so my brain’s done developing, and there’s nothing inside that I’m afraid of seeing. Sure, I had visions of dingy basements, cobweb-covered radiators and long-nosed masks, which surprised and frightened me, but you didn’t show up until Thursday. As I turned to look at who was saying my name, I felt space blur. It was similar to the painterly blending of the lake and fall leaves I stared at last weekend while listening to Ethel Cain’s “Crush,” before I blinked and it all became one kaleidoscope pattern, the trees and their reflection forming a diamond-studded arrow, with brown, yellow, orange and green tones evenly distributed throughout.
While that hallucination was more beautiful than the basement, it was perhaps even more frightening, because it was not the inside of my brain, but something I was actually seeing—however distorted—that blinking could only clarify—not disappear.
Why is laughter the trivial counterpart
to heavy tears?
Release through laughter
Release through tears
Laugh until you cry
Cry until you laugh
Deep lines creasing the same face
Pulling, stretching, contorting
Making their mark
As we forget to breathe
I want the characters in my poems
To become characters in a book, a
television show, a telenovela,
Written by someone else
I want a 3D model of the architecture of my mind
Filled with life-sized plaster casts of all my ex loves
Frozen in dramatic motion
Scattered across an endless maze of rooms
Separated by frameless doorways
Each section holding some conceptual purpose
Within its plaster white walls
I want to wander through this space
Admiring the vision of the artist
I suppose I must have commissioned him
But what fantastic execution
Her 2021 entrance was a teenage heartbreak dissertation, a destinationless journey through betrayal, pain, confusion, bitterness, anger, pity, acceptance, nostalgia, and pain all over again. On some songs, Rodrigo effortlessly breathes out intricate lyricism like prime Jay-Z. On others, she launches her emotional WMD of a voice, exploding into piercing notes and soul-rattling melodies.
She does much of the same on her sophomore album GUTS, which I first consumed ambling around Portugal. While "ballad of a homeschooled girl" might seem like an odd Euro-walk soundtrack, I felt Rodrigo's lugubrious shouts enhanced my ability to absorb my surroundings. I’m not sure if this is a compliment to GUTS specifically, or if it’s just an example of how we paradoxically need to distract ourselves in order to be present.
What I will say is that I thought a lot about balance on that trip. Like how dry, minerally white wine enhances fatty, salty cheese, or how bitter, acidic coffee complements creamy, sweet egg tarts. I thought about how never-ending club/bar/dance-filled nights feel untenable without crowdless solo strolls through quaint neighborhoods, and how riding mopeds pairs really nicely with never doing so again.
I thought about how after 3 days I was ready to move to Portugal, how after 6 days that Lisbon was my city of choice, and how after 9 that I'm never leaving New York.
GUTS isn’t SOUR. That fact alone made me dislike it on first listen; it felt scattered, trite and commercial. By listen 3 I started appreciating it as varied, funny and upbeat. By listen 5, its expression of imperfect vulnerability brought me to tears. A few weeks in, I find myself revisiting SOUR more often for my Rodrigo fix. But next time I’m walking up steep Bairro Alto streets, I’ll hear “Lacy” in my head, and every time I hear Rodrigo shout “your flowers filled with vitriol” in my headphones, I’ll see castles.
Here at the beach the sky is limitless
But the brim of my hat caps my field of view with a concave blackness
I'm suddenly transported–if only for a moment–back to the city
Below some great underpass not yet explored
>>>
The five specks of green sea glass, nestled into the mixture of burnt orange, dark grey, off-white, beige, light grey, terra cotta, black and spectrally brown pebbles, shell fragments and fossils, that make up the coastal edge of this particular part of Porto, the edge of Europe, the edge of the Atlantic, of which the clashing, contrasting, hard-edgedness will soften with time and become sand, matches the emerald glow of my Caravelhos sparkling water bottle, nestled into the earth.
>>>
Simple is the man
Who stands full lungs near the sea
Clarity is found
On one hand, it was the most personally-gratifying project I’ve ever worked on. Defining myself through moments, moments through music, and music through myself was both a literary and therapeutic accomplishment. At the same time, the project carried with it a melancholy nostalgia. As I locked myself in my room and wrote about memories from my final days of high school, my one-way flight to Italy and my first devastating adult heartbreak, I felt like life was behind me.
The day I finished that project, I met someone who would, over the next three months, open me up to Caroline Polachek, Carly Rae Jepson, Taylor Swift, and change my life forever.
6 months later, I tried updating the list. I tried again 6 months after that, and 3 after that, and 3 after that. Every time, I was hit with the same block.
I wrote this in December of 2021:
I am overwhelmed with raw emotion, emotion tied to a life that is perhaps—no, certainly—more full than it has ever been. I’ve made more friends, developed more crushes, been crushed more times, formed more intimate connections, partied more, (redacted), accomplished more professionally, established more independence, developed more confidence and learned more about myself than I have since I was a 21-year-old living in a Florence apartment building inhabited on every floor by other 21-year-olds living thousands of miles from home. The difference is that now, I am self aware enough to appreciate it so, so much more.
The point is, I’m fucking alive and I’m fucking present. I may not have the perfect words to describe what “Deja Vu” means to me, but that might be because I am not yet over the girl who I met in the stairwell shortly after the song came out, who defined my summer in lockstep with Rodrigo.
Another year-and-a-half has passed since then. Circumstantially, I’m somewhere between where I was in April 2020 and in December 2021. I am still surrounded by friends, crushing on girls, getting heartbroken and breaking hearts. I also deeply miss the Lower East Side apartment I moved out of 6 months ago, feel somewhat stagnant, and am noticing my social circle slowly but surely lose the energy it had two summers ago, as we cross into our 30s one by one.
The beautiful thing is, unlike in April 2020, I don’t see this as life moving behind me. Periods of stagnation now feel like ones of transformation, and I’m listening to more new music than I have in a decade. There’s also a major plus to the reprieve from the peak intensity I was feeling in December 2021: I feel able to write again.
In celebration of the most versatile artist of his generation revisiting his southern roots and dropping Sandhills, I spliced together a small collection of songs that hit that indie-twang sweet spot.
Yet the way it lay heavily, undignified in the crack of the sidewalk let me know it had not simply suffered a heart attack, choked on a bottle cap, or otherwise expired. I knew I’d receive clues from the head, and as I came parallel with the creature, there it was.
Its neck was curled towards its wing at a near 180-degree angle, its beak open, as if frozen in one final agonizing trill.I looked up and saw an elderly man approaching, his back curved forward and to the side like a three-dimensional lowercase “r” as he jittered forward. I wondered if he noticed what lay ahead of him.
Sound. Background, foreground, score. In Oppenheimer, sound is no longer just an experiential tool; it is integral to the subject matter. It deepens our understanding of the internal and external world created, and destroyed, by inventing an atom-splitting, humanity-altering explosive.
Science and mysticism. The interplay between these two seemingly-oppositional forces is the stage on which so much of Nolan’s storytelling has been built. Here, he explores a real-world example of this dichotomy, and perhaps the best real-world example in human history. The magnitude of the science and its consequences is so extreme that as humans, it paradoxically becomes fully unscientific.
Mystery, conspiracy, paranoia. What starts as the film’s B plot is revealed to be its A plot. Take all the slowly bubbling unease of Memento and apply it to a story that is about, as much as anything else, the Red Scare.
Callbacks. Showing scenes again, but with a new angle, new dialogue or simply new context. To execute these revelatory climaxes the way Nolan has throughout his career is an exceptional feat. The fact that he doesn’t need short-term memory loss, identical twins, a cloning device or a magical spinning top to pull it off here is all the more powerful. Not because it’s more impressive (it is), but because it makes you ponder our actual reality in a new way. That’s not just peak cinematic experience, that’s peak art.
Boundless visual ambition. Nolan and his teams have been creating unparalleled visual masterpieces for a long time, but creating Oppenheimer’s nightmare vision of nuclear war above the clouds is perhaps the most lasting image from his films yet.
Where Oppenheimer truly breaks from anything Nolan has done before is that it feels important. Japan was terrorized with atomic bombs in 1945. World War II ended, the Cold War began, and it lasted until 1991. I was born the following year, to Jewish parents born during the peak of McCarthyism. In 2001, the most famous terrorist attack of my lifetime took place. In 2003, the United States pretended that Iraq had nuclear weapons to justify an invasion. In 2016, many claimed that Russia stole our election, and in 2023, truth is so hard to come by that we’ve collectively given up on caring - about our current reality, about history and about the future. All we want from our films is to include *snaps* inducing monologues, be about Spiderman, or both. We’ve become simultaneously desensitized and reactionary, paranoid and ambivalent, catastrophizing and dissociated. I never would’ve thought the world needed another World War II movie, but as much as the world can need a movie, I really think it did. It needed a movie about real life, real consequences, and it needed it to be extremely, extremely good.
This is NOT a “desert island” question. No no no.
This is a REMOTE island.
You are not stranded, but you are ambiguously living there for the rest of your life. And there’s food, and basic comfort, and somehow electricity.
The differences are immense.
You get to bring six things with you: 1 album, 1 movie, 1 book, 1 piece of “enrichment,” 1 memento and 1 cask of alcohol.
If you love art, rankings, and the exercise of thinking about how you would hypothetically feel and what you would hypothetically want if left with solely your thoughts, some art, some memories and some booze…then you’ll enjoy this question as much as we Mote Street editors did.
Here’s the first part of our two-part discussion on the matter. We invite you to think about your answers as well.
____
SCG: Did you think about these answers in any particular way outside of your favorites in each category?
JF: Yeah. I’m thinking in terms of my favorite stuff that also has dimensionality. I think the biggest battle on a remote island will be lack of variety…no matter how much you love an album or movie or book, you’re gonna get tired of it. So re-watchability/re-readability/replay value have to be the most important criteria, even above baseline quality.
SCG: Did you think about movie/book/album in context with each other?
JF: No, because they were all covering different bases for me.
SCG: Okay interesting; I did think about the relationship between them, at least a little. We’ll get into it.
A few of my choices are locked, and some I want to talk through a bit…where should we start?
JF: Let’s start with album.
SCG: Okay we’ll save movie, because I’m struggling with how to pick for movie.
JF: Let’s start with movie.
SCG: Let’s fucking do it.
JF: Question, can I take a Part I and Part II?
SCG: (laughs) Probably not…
JF: Okay. I’m still taking Kill Bill Part I. If you picked the first Lord of the Rings and didn’t get the other two, that’d be rough…but Kill Bill is already non-linear, so the fact that the story isn’t resolved in Part I is fine I think.
SCG: I agree. And once you’ve watched a movie 30+ times, I don’t think you’re going to mind that it ends on a cliffhanger. Kill Bill doesn’t really anyway, it’s self-contained, but even a movie like Fellowship of the Ring could work.
JF: Maybe you’ll want a cliffhanger. It gives you something to live for, some hope of a future or something.
Anyway, Kill Bill is one of my favorite movies, one of the most entertaining movies…but it also has crazy variety and pace. There’s slowness (like the opening), there’s all the classic Tarantino dialogue, and then there’s these all-time action sequences too. It’s Western and Eastern; it’s literally a Western and a martial arts movie. It’s got a little bit of everything, and it’s just really fun.
SCG: I feel like you have to go with a movie from a filmmaking master, which you’re obviously doing. The subtle touches of when a song comes in, or just what the soundtrack is… those things are important in any movie, but they’re so important here. This is it for the rest of your life. And you’re also alone the whole time.
JF: I didn’t even think about the soundtrack, but that’s a good point.
Going back to the variety point - it has the Lucy Liu backstory sequence, which is animated.
SCG: (whispers) That’s SUCH a good point.
JF: It’s a nice little switch up. You could even just watch those seven minutes as a short if you’re not in the mood for a movie.
Another thing I was gonna bring up as I was thinking through a lot of these…Kill Bill a hero’s journey. I feel like you have to pick stuff that is uplifting and empowering a little bit. You have to be so careful what album you pick, or what movie…you’re going to be super isolated. You don’t want to be watching some really sad shit.
SCG: Oh god, see everything you’re saying right now is influencing what I’m gonna pick. I think the other thing that I’m considering, which Kill Bill definitely has, is you want a Big Story. I don’t think you want something that’s a niche story.
JF: Your life is already a bottle episode. You don’t need another one.
SCG: Right. You don’t want anything too specific. Like I would say Uncut Gems is one of my favorite movies of all-time…no chance I would consider Uncut Gems. It’s a perfect movie, but it’s too specific of a story.
JF: Okay, so what are you considering?
SCG: So I’m down to 2 movies. My thing is, you want something long, you want a Big Story…but you also want one of those movies - and Kill Bill has this, by the way - where it’s like, now we’re in this amazing scene, and now we’re in this amazing scene. You are wowed every time you watch it at how every moment is somehow so memorable and iconic.
One of the movies I’m considering feels like a zag, because I’m a contrarian and this is such a non-contrarian pick, but it’s The Godfather. To the Big Story point, that movie is kinda The Big American Origin Story, and I can just imagine being isolated on this island and wanting something super essential. The more time that passes, the harder and harder it will be to stay in touch with the fabric of what it even meant to live in society…
As far as iconic performances, it’s just completely unparalleled. The career peak of so many of the best actors of all-time. Beautifully shot.
JF: Really amazing score.
SCG: Incredible.
Also to be clear, I’m taking Part I. Funny that we both took Part I’s, but The Godfather is obviously fully self-contained.
JF: Would you feel eventually - say, 10 years in - that you wish you could see something contemporary?
SCG: Well so this was going to be my next point - I think there’s something appealing about picking something old, because it’s withstood the test of time already. If I’m gonna have to watch this movie for the rest of my life, The Godfather has proven to age well. Kill Bill is newer, but I think old enough to be in that category too.
Which brings me to my other option, of a similar age to Kill Bill, which is The Big Lebowski. And as you were talking about the animated scene in Kill Bill I thought…I might have to go Lebowski because it has those surreal, music video-esque dream sequences. It has probably my favorite soundtrack ever, the Bob Dylan scene…I feel like I can cheat a little bit and double up on music by picking that movie. It’s more relatable than The Godfather too. I relate to The Dude in some ways, I relate to the LA-ness of it…it’s a piece of regular human life. It’s not as big a story, but it’s still a hero’s journey, and it’s hilarious…I don’t know how humor ages though.
JF: That’s the biggest risk of going with a comedy. Imagine watching it one day and you think it’s not funny, at all. Because you will get to that point.
SCG: Yeah, it’s really tough. I do think I’m gonna go Godfather after talking it through.
JF: I would choose that one.
SCG: Also while Lebowski is more relatable in a literal sense, The Godfather was formative for me as a person. I loved it as a kid. So I think that gives it legs for my entire life…it will always speak to me.
JF: Okay so I win that round…
SCG: Where do we go next?
JF: Album but you go first.
SCG: Okay well this isn’t a draft, so the album I’m gonna pick you could in theory pick.
JF: This is probably our best and last shot at picking the same thing.
SCG: I’m taking a Mote Street favorite, softscars.
JF: I considered it.
SCG: Two biggest reasons: we were talking before about variety. Here you have not only sonic variety, from the crunchy, hyper-digital tracks like “sulky baby” and “4ui12” to the super sparse voids of “bloodbunny,” “fish in the pool,” “aphex twin flame” etc…but more than that you have conceptual variety. That’s kind of what I wrote about last year in my “ode to softscars” piece; to me this album captures different states of the multiverse. I feel like I’m in space when I’m listening to it, and not space like planets and stars, but different dimensions. Color fields with floating foliage, frozen icescapes...
JF: It’s a cyber futurist album.
SCG: Yeah. It’s cyberpunk but not earthly. It’s cosmic…I considered 2001: A Space Odyssey for movie because to me it’s similar. Probably my favorite extended movie scene of all-time is the end of 2001 where he’s descending to Jupiter, and just looking at all the monochromatic, vaguely-familiar landscapes, and then wakes up in that empty, luminescent, vaguely-classical hall…this album puts me in those kinds of spaces.
And while it resonates with me so deeply in terms of all these aesthetics, it also has the other huge thing that I need from music, which is emotion. It’s this incredible character work, and not in a Chappelle Roan way (I love Chappelle Roan), but this character is particularly fascinating and relatable.
I don’t understand EXACTLY who Yeule intends this character to be, but it feels like some sort of robot/alien/non-human -
JF: Angel Demon!
SCG: Yes- robot/alien/angel/demon experiencing human emotion in this outsider way, where they’re unfamiliar with these feelings and describing them somewhat naively as a robot/alien would, and that level of technological, emotionless removal makes it more emotional, but also less literal. One reason I got so into this album when I did is that it felt like such a refreshing departure from all the hyper-literal emotional shit that had been dominating pop and dominating my streams.
JF: That music won’t age as well. I feel like you want something cryptic so you have something to think about.
SCG: Yeah. And this may not age well either, in that it feels very tied to our current relationship to technology and the emotional dissonance it creates. But I feel like if I’m leaving for this remote island now, I might be suspended in my understanding of how society progresses. I know that sounds like it contradicts my earlier point about picking things that have stood the test of time, but I think in this case it’s different. If anything it’ll become more relatable…I’ll probably start to feel like this cyber meat robot with a broken software update after 30 years alone on this island.
I also think music has evolved too much to pick something old, whereas film hasn’t.
JF: Film has evolved in a bad way.
SCG: Exactly.
JF: Okay, my pick is The Godfather of albums, OK Computer.
SCG: Hell yeah.
JF: I was gonna do Kid A because it’s a little more varied…you have “Treefingers” which is a pure ambient song, and there’s more of an electronic influence throughout, but the issue is that it’s just too dark. OK Computer is a little more uplifting, especially near the end with “The Tourist” and “Lucky,” which are triumphant songs… and he’s singing about surviving a plane crash, which is probably how I’m getting to this fucking island. “No Surprises,” “Karma Police,” absolute classics. “Paranoid Android” has really great chaotic energy, which is going to be very cathartic. “Airbag” is fucking sick. “Fitter Happier” is a nice little interlude to remind me of the bad aspects of modern life that I’m escaping…
SCG: There’s A LOT of softscars energy to this album too.
JF: Wow, that’s a good point.
SCG: I mean flip it around, this was first and probably influenced that, but yeah.
JF: Yeah, that’s really interesting though.
I think I’d probably approach this by breaking it into sub-albums, or even listening to one song at a time and try and isolate its impact. I’d avoid listening to the whole thing all the way through, but rather be like “I’m in the mood to listen to Paranoid Android right now, because I’m spazzing out.” I feel like I’d get bored more slowly this way.
SCG: OK Computer also has “Exit Music,” and similarly to “fish in the pool” off softscars it just feels so crucial to have in perpetuity something that’s super cinematic.
I was even wondering if I should just go classical or jazz, but I think you need something that’s more modern pop too. You need catchiness. Classical might be the most enriching, immersive experience, but I also want a groove.
JF: Yes. There’s gotta be rhythm. I’m trying to dance on this island.
My two fringe choices I considered were Broken Social Scene and Massive Attack. I’d get different singers on different songs, and both male and female vocals. You also get hip hop grooves with Massive Attack, and have very different vibes song to song.
Ultimately, I just decided that I don’t think I like either band as much as Radiohead. Which had to be the trump card.
SCG: Yeah, Radiohead is a great call. I would never pick one of their albums just because they have never meant quite as much to me as they do to you, but they would be higher on my list for this than my overall albums list. They’re just so versatile and also so essential.
Okay, book?
JF: Book.
SCG: Okay, you go first.
…and THAT’s how you do a cliffhanger.
Come back for Part II next week!