Max's Weekly Music Roundup
Jae Luna, Donna Missal, and a bunch of other songs that are gonna go ahead and be the best thing you've heard this week I SWEAR!!!!
Good morning,
I hope your Friday is off to as good a start as mine. Oh what’s so good about mine? Thanks for asking!! Really a generous reader, I appreciate you. Well for one it’s summer again in LA, 90 degrees today. So last week when I was nearing tears missing my breakfast on the porch? This week was already warm when I sat down to eat. Folks, it rocked.
From there, I got to watch F1 practice at a not-unreasonable hour. And just appreciate how invested I am in something I barely knew anything about, this time last year. It’s beautiful really - that something can appear out of thin air and hold such gravity in your life. Dangerous sure, but mostly beautiful. I have the experience with music often, and it’s always a special feeling. Obviously it’s a specific pleasure and appreciation to watch/listen to an artist grow over time, but there’s something so magical about an artist appearing right when you need them. That was my Becca Mancari experience and I wouldn’t want it any other way.
I hope this newsletter can be a reliable source of that magic for you. There’s so much good music - for listening, for dancing, for feeling, and I’m doing my darnedest to serve them up on a silver platter every week. And that’s part of the Friday joy too, just appreciating how fun it is to try and do just that.
What I’ve Been Listening To This Week
playlist #2, every song is so good, this really is what i’m listening to most hours of most days. If you like what you hear (very likely) or read (less likely, but hopefully still likely?!) please share it all with your nearest and dearest.
The New Stuff:
Jae Luna finally dropped i’m having a hard time being myself
you might ask, “finally? I just heard about this song right now as I read your really good and actually life-changing newsletter” and that’s fair! But you’ve been missing out. Jae Luna is a damn TikTok mastermind. He makes unbelievably well-crafted stuff (a great string of how i turn my ideas into songs), and lately has been building to this release.
Like this one, this one, or the first tease for this song.
Ok obviously I’m obsessed with the content, but the full song is absolutely fantastic and I’m so happy it’s here. The vocals are stunning, the writing is vulnerable, touching, all too relatable. That first verse hitting close to home. Jae if you’re reading this I also live in east la and would love to be friends. The guitar feels so human, and has such a pull to it, even sitting underneath some strong drums. The little instrumental break after the chorus is so cool too. The records scratching, ooo’s, drums, it’s countless eras of music blended up perfectly. Yeah you probably could count them but we just don’t have the time, the song needs your attention. The second verse starts to boil over with harsher guitars and a rumbling kick drum. Carrying straight into the chorus, where it’s all a bit bigger now. But don’t let the added sound distract you from that perfect break in Jae’s voice around 1:41 with ‘everyone aaasks me’ it’s so good, my gosh. The bridge lays out Justin Timberlake x Timbaland beatbox textures at warp speed, a completely new feeling and such a welcome surprise. The group vocals into the last chorus pushes it over the edge, this thing is a gift.
Donna Missal is back and wild as ever.
Haunting and beautiful. Just how I like my Donna Missal songs. After that intro we’re dripping in autotune, floating over the thin breakbeat. Those synth stabs feeling playful and menacing. I just paused to go read the lyrics and see that Sega Bodega produced this and the whole haunting/beautiful/playful/menacing thing really checks out now (yes this was a pat on the back). This first verse is such a generous and loving statement. The chorus unleashes everyone. Drum beat pouring through, its low-end finally revealing itself. And Donna stepping into the light, her vocals mind-blowingly smooth. The harmonies are gorgeous too. The lyrics continue to gush about a lover, and it’s romantic as hell!! Verse 2 and Chorus 2 flip textures - the verse maintaining the chorus open, clean feel, buckling down with filters and autotune for the chorus instead. The chorus really hits this way too, a really elevated moment. While it pulls from the PinkPantheress/hyperpop-adjacent world it brings a Missal elegance to it all. The bridge goes wild, a heavy edged synth underneath a vintage-james-blake-warped-to-space vocal. I was not expecting that at all and I am loving it. With a smile on my face we’re tossed back into one last chorus, and it’s a treat. <3 a tune and a half.
Y’all know rei so la??
An addicting guitar loop, that video game bloop, drums really building a groove, tiny vocal samples, a bass sliding, it’s a magnetic combo. And when rei so la’s vocals come in it only gets better. The main melody dead center, a subtle harmony panned right, the falsetto layer on the left, it has such a nice shape and feel to it. The way the production stumbles (can you stumble if it’s on purpose?) right before 0:30 just sucks me in. The maybe’s popping across the song like thoughts popping in your head. The chorus is so inviting, good luck not hitting some on a levels yourself. Swirling together in this undeniable moment. A second verse, a shooting star, time to dance our way home, the song has it all. It’s under two minutes, and I’m left wanting so much more. So let’s run it back I guess??
Mitski song, time to celebrate.
Hmmm new Mitski single? Simply no choice here but to love it and write about and listen to it way too much! Again, she is fucking reckless with these first lyrics… It’s dangerous to say stuff this devastating right off the jump!! The little synth flair between lines makes the song feel vintage in the best way. It’s such a sad song, the lyrics show her feeling unequal in this relationship, accepting her fate as the reason it won’t work and will hurt. But it has such a fun, hands-in-the-air-while-you-jump-and-spin-in-circles energy it’s easy to forget. A beautiful arrangement, incredible sounds from every instrument, and that raw solo coming in on top at 2:02 is the uncomfortable but perfect icing on the cake. Mitski is (unsurprisingly) cooking up something special right now, what a privilege to hear it.
Confidence Man is back, I’ll see you on the dance floor.
I was about to write about ConMan’s 2018 Christmas classic, Santa’s Coming Down The Chimney in the LNS section below as a too-early-xmas-music thing, when I opened the great website/app combo, Instagram by Meta, to see the world’s sexiest band (certified by guinness world records) was releasing a new single… beautiful timing.
Well the single is out now and in my opinion, they’ve succeeded in their mission as noted by Sugar Bones above. It’s a new feel for them, much brighter and sunny, both vocalists pouring out in melody. The groove is still there, a gnarly club smash, hot as ever, but now it’s also hot because we’re on the beach??? The music video features Bones blasting flames out of a balloon-free hot air balloon along to the beat, and if that doesn’t explain this song I don’t know what could. They just ooze cool in everything they do and you can feel it in this one. Things reach their climax around 2:45 and it is full on Jock Jams, it rules!! <3
The Less New Stuff:
Dijon - Absolutely
The grip this has on me…
I…
where do you even begin
At this point I’m working all day and all night on my True Detective shit, pins in my wall connecting evidence. Lyrics and themes and characters finding life again and again within all of these songs. There’s so much happening, so much to unpack.
I feel like a big thing in ~2010 was seeing how many more ‘unique words’ Kanye used on an album vs. a Shakespeare play or something like that? Well, Dijon takes the opposite approach, finding new shapes and uses for the same phrases. It’s unbearably impressive, and more rewarding the deeper you get into the album. Everything is so connected (in the album and in life). These songs feel like vignettes (which surely cannot be how that word is spelled??), and I’m so moved, even just now writing about it. How fleeting these moments and immense/intense emotions are. So quick from one extreme to another, searching for balance and searching for truth. Everything is temporary and this album is not afraid to smash you over the head with a reminder. More on this next week… I’m sure……………..
Caribou - Never Come Back - Four Tet Remix
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, I like to run and I like to listen to music while I do it! The playlist is ever-swelling, now over 25hrs of music and I’m gonna be honest, I can’t run for that long. But it’s a fun grab-bag of genres, eras, everything. Anything could pop out when you hit shuffle. To the point where I forget what’s even on there, the surprise of an old favorite fueling a hard stretch of a run.
This week I rediscovered this unbelievable remix. Nearly 8 minutes of fun, losing yourself to the relentless beat. It’s a beautiful remix, honoring the original and going for a dive into the deep end to get weird and funky and wild. Finishing off with just the vocal in a really jarring but perfect way.
Ok this crazy thing happens - sometimes y’all share this and more people subscribe and more people follow the playlist(s) and then, and this is where it gets weird, I am eternally grateful??? It’s wild I know, but it just keeps happening and boy oh boy I love it.
So feel free to share, sub, follow, etc. etc. The Maxies are heating up, nows the time :)
XOXfreakingO, have a great weekend,
Max