Dinner Music 124: The weekly lineup
experimental pop, dirtbag wave, french synth
This week we’re listening to synth-forward and experimental-adjacent albums. Expect the tracks and albums to get a little bit freaky. It’s been a while since we went weird, so we’re going there a bit this week.
We begin with Mondo Tempo Freak Heat Waves whose music is more about sensibility, rather than style, think “druggy, unkempt, and a little bit dangerous, a souped-up ride whose wheels could fall off at any moment.”1 This album is a clearer take on that sound—there’s a particular summer-bright drone and feeling—while still keeping in time with their ethos. Let’s say it’s Balearic encroaching on the dirtbag space. We’re going to keep that dirtbag sensibility with Chris Knox, a New Zealand-native with a punk rock pedigree. The lofi sound on Polyfoto, Duck Shaped Pain & “Gum” makes it clear that Knox is serious about the DIY spirit, yet the variance from song-to-song also shows that Knox is not all one thing. It’s punk, sure, but it’s new age, folk, synth wave, hardcore, baroque and bedroom pop. “Osmosis” and “The Outer Skin” both feel modern in that vintage-throwback kind of way. There’s a little bit of Clairo, a little bit of Beach House, wedged into between punk tracks best heard at an underground show in someone’s garage. And don’t miss his track Not Given Lightly. We move further into synth and experimental with Discovery Zone’s Remote Control, a sort-of retrofuturist album that pulls from sci-fi and lo-fi aestheticism and our internet age to build something that feels that it is, at once, so firmly rooted in our era, while also maintaining a psychic distance, looking toward the future. The sound is ethereal and electric, with a sweet darkness. If you liked Pearl & The Oysters, you’ll like this. SAYA by Saya Gray is a breakup album made of unconventional parts. The album gets the post-breakup journeying — the cycle of false epiphany that leads to a seemingly-endless oscillation between the ecstasy of freedom and the claustrophobia of being emotionally entrenched. The sounds are intimate, even through the bigness of production and experimentation, like a person reading aloud their late-night thoughts from the notes app, especially on SHELL (OF A MAN). With Polaroid / Roman / Photo by Ruth, we end the week with a cult synth pop classic.
Enjoy.