I’m tired. I miss my dad. I miss my dad dreadfully. But I’ve had a fair bit of fun this week too. I went to see my football team win a match in extraordinary fashion. I hugged my mum. I saw a hedgehog. I got a shoutout on one of my favourite podcasts. I ate a massive chimichanga - bloody love a chimichanga, me. I wrote about my favourite alien invasion movies for The Face. I watched the absolutely fine movie Prey.
And I listened to a load of music. Let me tell you about it…
Oh, but before I do, let me tell you that this Substack now has well over 2,000 subscribers. Around 80 are paid. I am so grateful to all of you. Whenever I publish an edition of Here is the music I am listening to this week - I think Wednesday is more or less the day you should be expecting it in your inboxes now - I regularly get around 100 people emailing me telling me what music they’ve listened to this week. There’s a Spoook community growing. I love it. Thank you all for being part of it.
Incidentally, if there’s any music you think I should be listening to, do feel free to email me at spoookmagazine@gmail.com.
The Isley Brothers - ‘This Old Heart of Mine (Is Weak for You)’
Of all the great songs written by Lamont Dozier - who has sadly passed at the age of 81 - this 1966 single for the Cincinnati group, released during their brief tenure on Motown’s Tamla label, is perhaps my favourite. You’ll know that Dozier’s working relationship with songwriting brothers Brian and Eddie Holland resulted in a glut of the best songs ever written, but I still think there’s something about the gentle stomp of ‘This Old Heart of Mine’ that is a cut above everything else that he and they put their name to. It’s worth remembering that 1966 was the peak of everything Motown ever was. It’s the year of The Temptations ‘Get Ready’. The Four Tops ‘Reach Out I’ll Be There’. The Supremes ‘You Keep Me Hangin’ On’. I could be here all day. And all night. And all the next day too. But even in the context of such illustrious company, the hook of this song, originally intended for that last band and which saw up and coming songwriter Sylvia Moy added to the Holland-Dozier-Holland credit, is a marvel. It’s so breezy, even as Roland Isley desperately pleads, “I’m here, whenever you want me…” It’s a song that says, ‘love is misery, love is pain - but I’m here for it…’
My general belief is that the word genius shouldn’t really be allowed anywhere near pop music, but I’ll make an exception here. Rest now, you talented fucker.
BREAKING ISLEY BROTHERS NEWS: How mad is this?
Joesef - ‘East End Coast’
It’s probably a bit trite to make parallels between Joesef’s new single and that enduring classic ‘Smalltown Boy’. Released in different eras. Different things going on. But I do think both songs share a similar sense of loneliness. Perhaps it’s that BBC Sound of 2020 star Joesef - who I think would probably be a superstar already had COVID-19 not put showbiz on hold for two years or so - has recently left his native Glasgow for London. Good luck kid, this city amplifies everything you do and feel. He’s some talent. mind. There’s always been a deep well of sorrow in his lo-fi soul - ‘sad boy bangers’ to use the homogenous words of every UK style magazine I’ve seen his face in - but even so, there’s something about ‘East End Coast’, it’s synthetic pulse perhaps, that perfectly articulates every sad, early hours, solo walk home I’ve ever had. I mean, back when I used to do that sort of thing. I can’t believe I used to do that sort of thing. I much prefer my sofa, my wife and Netflix these days. Let’s hope Joesef doesn’t cotton on to such simple pleasures, at least not for a while yet...
Tree River - ‘Little Ripper’
Big Scary Monsters are a label I normally always like the output of, and their newish signings Tree River, from Brooklyn (obviously), are increasingly becoming one of my favourite bands around. Their debut album, Time Being - which this blast of anxious emo is taken from - is an excellent thing, and has somewhat scratched an awkward itch I’ve had since the wretchedly underrated Thermals disbanded in 2018. Good video too, though I do have something of an issue with the co-option of clowns by the horror genre. I get it, I watched Tim Curry as Pennywise as a kid too, but I can’t help thinking that people who profess to be scared of clowns are actually just people who have never seen anything actually scary. Like attending a children’s birthday party at fallen burger giant Wimpy. I mean, have you seen what they send out to entertain the children at those things? Look at this awful thing.
I’ll have a bender in a bun and a lifetime of therapy, please.
GIFT - ‘Gumball Garden’
Ever since I remember, I’ve had this thing about jewellery that dangles. I can’t explain it. As I’ve told you many times over, my brain - or at least the way OCD has seemingly rewired the flow of neurons with it - means that I have some pretty odd thoughts. But I don’t think this fear - because it is a fear, I see dangly jewellery and I freak out - can be explained completely by OCD. I don’t know where it comes from. And it’s sometimes made my life quite difficult. I remember my mum putting a St Christopher necklace on me as a kid and me standing in the street screaming, “it burns! It burns!” I’ve lost track of the number of girlfriends or female flatmates who have exploded with frustration over not being able to find their earrings (they’re always under the coffee mat I have put on top of them, out of sight, out of mind). I don’t blame them. Some other things I freak out about; wet food that I’m served instead of prepared myself, insects, rings on little fingers, the changing room floors in swimming baths.
But nothing freaks me out like dangly jewellery.
And so it was a bit touch and go getting through this, the new video for the new song by Brooklyn (obviously) psyche rock types GIFT. They all have a lot of dangly jewellery. Particularly distressing was seeing the singer’s right ear… until I realised that he too has a ring on his little finger. Then I realised I could just listen to the song and not watch it. L8RZ, eyes. Then I got really into it, especially the bit towards the end where they give up on making pretty music and instead make ugly music. WAAAAAAAGH! ARGGGGGGGH! WUKARGGGGGGH! The reference points are obvious; My Bloody Valentine, early Smashing Pumpkins, Slowdive. But it’s very good! Their debut LP, Momentary Presence, is due out October 14th, 2022, on Dedstrange, the label that Oliver Ackermann from A Place To Bury Strangers has set up. I’m all in. On the music that is. Not the jewellery. Horrible. Horrible. Horrible.
Suede - ‘15 Again’
The new Suede song is good isn’t it? By good, I mean, ‘could have been a b-side in the Dog Man Star era…’, but that’s still really, really good! It’s weird to me that I have so little interest in a potential new Blur record - my favourite band during those glorious years between the end of Nirvana and my discovery of Bis - I haven’t even listened to the last one in full. I’d eat my own shoes to see Oasis again (I’ve been watching this a lot recently, still the best gig I’ve ever been to). And I am certainly going to see Pulp play live again as soon as I can do, despite having little interest in hearing new music from them ever again. I can pass on hearing the grubby thoughts of a 58 year old Jarvis Cocker. But Suede? Every time Suede do something new I’m interested in a way I’m not about any of the above. They’re one of those bands that are brilliant even when they’re not actually brilliant. They’re always entertaining, funny, silly, dumb… or heart exploding brilliant. They’re not a band from my youth, they’re a band.
That’s the secret to this pop lark, kids. Don’t be boring and everything else will work itself out. New album! Autofiction! Out September 16th!
(Oh, and the artwork is very good. This is worth celebrating. Suede album sleeves haven’t always been very good! I mean, who signed this one off…)
The Distillers - ‘Dismantle Me’ (Hallowe’en Special)
The Misfits, Alice Cooper and The Distillers just announced a Hallowe’en show. It’s in Dallas so I won’t be going, but it looks like it’ll be a fabulous time. Unsurprisingly for a man who runs a DIY media organisation called Spoook, I love Hallowe’en. Truly the greatest time of the year. But whenever it gets to around this time, I start to worry about to do when October 31st rolls around. One night. Endless variables for disappointment. My problem is that going to see whatever new slasher gumpf has been rushed into cinemas just won’t cut it. Dressing up as my favourite horror movie character - “who have you come as? Vagrant Jason Donovan?” - just won’t cut it. If I don’t see at least one actual zombie rise from an actual grave, then I will have wasted Hallowe’en. And so I normally just stay in and watch The Blair Witch Project, again.
This week I did stumble upon a bunch of videos of The Distillers playing their fanclub show from a few years back. I do think if I had been there I would have been disappointed that there wasn’t any actual paranormal activity, but then I think I would have had a very good night too. Plastic skeletons and punk rock is a decent substitute - for anything really. Anyway, if anyone is organising a seance for October 31st this year, you know where I am.
Where is that new Distillers album, by the way?
All of the Deacon Blue
I interviewed Ricky Ross for The James McMahon Music Podcast the other day. He’s got a new solo album out, and a memoir too. Both are very good. It’s a pretty good episode of the podcast too, although I wish I’d asked Ricky about the remarkable suit that he’s wearing in the video above. It seems extremely impractical.
We talked a bit about my dead dad. I didn’t mean to, but I’m struggling to talk about much else to be honest. Ricky was lovely, with one of those soft Scottish accents that can take your anxiety down a notch with a single vowel, and man I loved Deacon Blue as a kid. In fact, I can’t hear this song without being in the barbers my dad would take me to on a Saturday to get my haircut. He’s bought me a comic. I’m watching him get the clumps at the side and the tuft atop top his shiny head trimmed. I can see my future. Then it’s my turn. My dad won’t let me get an undercut. The barbers hands smell of cigarettes. Deacon Blue are on the radio. Afterwards my dad will get me a hot chocolate from the KLIX machine and maybe if I’m good chips on the way home. I am happy. These moments - you don’t even notice them at the time. They come and they go and when they’re gone they only echo. I walked past the barbers last weekend when I was back in my hometown. It’s a kebab shop now. Nothing lasts.
I think the secret to a happy life is to notice these moments at the time, not decades later. I really, really miss my dad.
Silversun Pickups - ‘Scared Together’
Funny band this lot. They’ve sold millions of records. They’ve been around forever and ever and ever. And yet I’ve never, certainly on this soil, met anyone who has ever said to me, “my favourite band are Silversun Pickups!” I’m sure they exist, but that does sort of remind me a bit of the time that, as a cub reporter for the NME and refused by the PR an actual ticket to the gig, the great Pat Long sent me to stand outside a James Blunt gig in Oxford and ask people leaving the venue ‘why’ they liked him. He sent me to review Nickleback too, the swine <waves fist at heaven>. It’ll take more than this taster for Silversun Pickups forthcoming sixth album, Physical Thrills - out August 19th - to make me say that Silversun Pickups are my favourite band, but I do like it an awful lot and it might actually be my favourite thing they’ve done since their swoontastic dream pop debut, Carnavas, way back in 2006. It’s also perhaps the least they’ve ever sounded like The Smashing Pumpkins, while also having a lot of the daring spirit I wish the rancid corpse that is now The Smashing Pumpkins had today. This is all getting very complicated. Not so much a rat in a cage as a rat in a maze.
Turnover - ‘Myself in the Way’ (featuring. Brendan Yates)
I once read someone describe Turnover as making music that ‘makes you nostalgic for things that haven’t happened yet’. I like that. I think there’s some truth to it, as there is to a lot of the newer American indie rock. And I really like this new single and taster for their forthcoming record, also named Myself in the Way, due November 4th.
Being a knobhead for a moment, I do have a bit of an issue with punk bands deciding that this insane moment of illiberalism, cultural conservatism, digital inauthenticity (and that’s without getting into the clusterfuck of wrong going on over on the right of things) is the right time to experiment with ethereal funk pop. “What were you doing while Rome burned, daddy?” “Well, I decided I’d get my wah-wah pedal out…” But I am perhaps being a bit unfair, Turnover have never been the Dead Kennedys, and maybe I’m taking my wider frustrations out on a band that I’ve always found perfectly pleasant, and increasingly so. This is unquestionably a good song that I have enjoyed a lot this week while pretending that the world isn’t en route to hell in a handcart. The appearance of Brendan Yates from Turnstile is a treat too. I guess I just don’t understand how you can experience the world right now and encapsulate it like this.
All the Enter Shikari
I went on a bit of a rant about British rock last week. Not really about its quality, but it’s confidence and vitality. Then, about ten seconds after I pressed publish, Enter Shikari - never a band who have done anything boring ever - announced they had new music coming. That, I believe, is a team-up with the excellently named Wargasm, and it arrives this Friday. It had to be fate. Had to be. I’d be amazed if that music didn’t feature in Here is the music I am listening to this week, um, next week.