đ¶
Combining punk sensibility with pop simplicity and deceptively sweet but eviscerating production⊠When âElevationâ by The Dare comes on, without fail, I get asked who the artist is. When I answer, theyâre always a little surprised. Nothing against Harrison and his perfectly calibrated image of sex and partyingâsex and partying are really importantâbut I love when artists catch their skeptics off guard and show another dimension. âElevationâ is a brilliant love song, so catchy it hooks into your brain like a good hit should. When you listen to it on a proper system, the buzzsaw synths rattle your cage. It builds to an overwhelming euphoria that emulates the feeling it describes. Itâs going to age well⊠he understands.Â
Dec 30, 2024
Related Recs
â
The first single from Winter Boyfriend from the upcoming album set a, frankly, very different note. 'anx/bodies' is an outlier for us, musically and lyrically, but when putting the final touches to the album it was one of the songs that people seemed instinctively to engage with if they weren't broadly invested in our main thing, essentially indie/indie-punk made by a would-be emo band. At the very least it provoked a reaction.
It's a song inspired by a very specific series of events but is not specifically autobiographical. Outside of the world of this song i am much less forward about sex. I enjoy being 'too much' with friends but i really don't want it going anywhere my family might hear it. Repression is fun! I often wonder if that's similar to what actors feel when doing nudity or whatever. It's a case of, "I don't want to know you've seen me experience that?" Anyway, honesty can help in art, but also maybe so too does a little internal repression.
It was written about a memory of going to a university disco, arriving at the club where everyone was looking hot and cool, and i suddenly becoming very aware of my inability to be calm. It is essentially about over-stimulation and amorousness and the confusion of that smashing like a wrecking ball through any semblance of chill i might have had.
The verse bass riff is really old, easily over 10 years old. I wrote it for a different project, a Death From Above 1979 rip-off thing, and my pal Martin played bass, while i sang and drummed. The song was unremarkable but the riff was cool. There was no way i wasn't keeping it. Also, it explains why it's the only song that uses a fuzz bass tone. Yet.
I have no idea when i came up with the guitar riff but it's one of my favourite parts i've written. It's rythmic and a little bit dissonant, but i think the G# implies an E Major chord, making it A minor natural (sorry music theory experts, probably butchering this).
I was also unsure if i could allow myself to write the chorus which used power chords. It always feels too basic. But it worked in the context of the song. I finished it years ago aside from a few lyrical tweaks and the introduction sound (chord played, tremolo arm depressed as it fades out, recorded and reversed). Also when mixing the song my references were very different and included a lot of 00s and 10s music, including bands that have been grandfathered into the whole 'indie-sleaze' thing, and it made me realise the second verse needed, nay demanded!, a cowbell and some percussion (the other percussion is drumming on glass bottles fyi).
I feel like 'anx/bodies', and the song that follows it, 'on our way home', are two sides of the same coin. One uptight, repressed yet explosive, and the other unrelenting, desperate and flailing. You could almost imagine the latter being later in the same night, getting existential when worse-for-wear. More on that one later.
Jun 19, 2024
Longtime listener, first-time caller.
S/O to Seattle's Michael Hadreas, who I first heard on KEXP years and years ago. His whole catalog is worth exploring (I particularly love 2020's "Set My Heart on Fire Immediately") and this one is from "Glory," due out later this spring.
This dude has long touched on issues of importance to the LGBTQ community -- this track certainly includes some of these -- but we all do him/his music a disservice to categorize it as anything other than "fucking great" which best describes this song's ascending and descending guitar chords, heartbroken vocals and his transformation from diva/dandy to fully-blown (ironic/send-up of a) Hell's Angel, which is very much in tune with the weirdly toxic masculinity that seems to be so omnipresent right now.
"It's a chorus reaching for us/
Swarming locusts wherever you go"
Hells yes I can't wait for the full LP to drop.
Jan 28, 2025
Obsessive with this song at the moment, I canât get it out of my head, theyâve laced this song with something.
Itâs like if Michael Stipe of REM fronted Slowdive and told them how to write indie pop melodies with their silly guitar pedals.
Listening through some more of their stuff after finding them through instagram earlier this week but this track will not escape any singular judgement I have on their other tracks- theyâre all comparable to how this song makes me feel and therefore cannot champion it.
Oct 4, 2024
Top Recs from @patrik-sandberg
Whenever I mention Night Flight Plus, no one knows what Iâm talking about. Itâs a streaming service named after (and featuring) the USA Network late-night cult series from the 1980s. It also includes a ton of films of the cult, horror, obscure music documentary, and exploitation variety. If youâre looking for Paul Morrissey, Troma Films, Vinegar Syndrome, or outdated TV specials about Minor Threat and Kate Bush, its curation is like a return to Kimâs Video⊠or my favorite VHS store from San Francisco, Le Video. The other night I watched an English-language Italian fashion giallo from 1988 called Too Beautiful To Die. Itâs a totally outrageous masterpiece. Itâs my favorite subscription. Feast your eyes.
Feb 21, 2025
I was born in San Francisco and raised in Marin and Sonoma (specifically a town called Petaluma) and now that enough decades have past, I have a new appreciation for the beauty of the regionâparticularly as depicted by Hollywood's great genre filmmakers of the '70s, '80s, and '90s. Of course, this includes great San Francisco movies like Vertigo (Hitchcock), Bullitt (Yates) and The Game (Fincher), but there are so many others that venture out to Monterey, Bodega Bay, and all the way up to Humboldt County. Some of my friends keep a running tally of "NorCal Noir" movies. Some favorites:
Salem's Lot (Miniseries, 1979), The Fog (1980), Play Misty For Me (1971), The Birds (1963), The Final Terror (1983), Firefox (1982), Dead and Buried (1981), Murder She Wrote (TV episodes, various), Cujo (1983), Point Blank (1967).
There are probably many others but between the midcentury architecture, west coast hippie/yuppie dialectic, atmospheric coastal fog, and rolling hills, it's a distinct vibe that always feels incredibly indulgent and tasteful even when it's lent in service of schlock.
Nov 24, 2024
My friend Aaron put me onto Badvril, the best band presently crawling out of San Franciscoâthe cesspool from whence we all came. And they sound like it, in all the most perfect, sludgy, narcotic, dreamy, total-eclipsing sort of ways. If you like shoegaze, Catherine Wheel, early Pumpkins, '90s alt revival, or melodic punk that pre-dates the Hot Topic era, you will die and go to heaven listening to their I AM GOD EP. that came out in February.
The desirous thing about becoming a fan before there is too much noise is that it's easy to catch up on their back catalogue. And then Becket becomes your Instagram friend and sends you the new unreleased album and it's the best music you've ever heard in your life. One wrong move and they could be too huge to handle. I wish them all the money in the world.
Dec 9, 2024