New Music Friday #10: Parallelograms and a new, once in a blue (lou) moon

I guess this has turned into a newsletter

Did anyone else see the blue super-moon the other night? For me, it hung above ambulance sirens, peeking over tall, pearlescent buildings. It looked so out of place, such a big monument to nature, awkwardly hanging over a total desecration of it (I hate cities right now. I know. Hypocrite).

Firstly, here’s what I’ve been listening to:

A friend sent me this album, and it soundtracked a monotonous, stop-and-start drive back to the midlands. Linda Perhacs was a dental hygienist back in the 70s, then one of her clients (Oscar-winning film composer Leonard Rosenman, of course) heard her songs and invited her to record them. The album flopped, so she went back to teeth. Then, thirty-to-forty years later, ‘Parallelograms’ had its renaissance, not unlike the story of Rodriquez. So she’s recorded album 2 and 3 in her sixties/seventies, released on Asthmatic Kitty Records.

Speaking of Asthmatic Kitty Records, I also managed to bag free tickets to one of the many Sufjan Stevens album listening parties because my now disused tumblr app still notifies me every time he posts on tumblr (I don’t know why it’s picked only Sufjan’s tumblr, how to switch that off, or why I’d want to).

I’ve been reading a lot about Ethel Cain, a.k.a Hayden, and I really, really admire her artistic process, an experimental one that feels mostly absent in the world of mainstream artists. She sees herself as ‘the author’, watching her creation ‘Ethel Cain’ take a journey she narrowly avoided, exploring where she could have ended up if she followed a certain path. I feel like Hayden has really found a way to talk about and process life as an artist without being forced to reveal which parts of it are fact or fiction.

I saw Tomberlin started a substack because it reminds her of tumblr, and I guess maybe that’s why I started one too. Well, it was mainly to see if I could write for money, but I just found it really fun instead. Hence this becoming a newsletter.

I wrote this whole, too-exposing thing that led up to this sentence, so I’ll just give you the sentence:

If you are an artist, please curate your own world. Please don’t rely on external validation. It’ll stop you making anything at all. Believe me, I know. I’ve lived it.

I’m making a load of music right now that I can’t wrestle down into something that makes sense to put out. It’s been three years of writing whatever I feel like, trying to say to myself, “okay, so this sounds like an Elliott Smith record” or “okay, these are gonna be piano ballads”. After all this nonsense worrying, my advice is that you’ll be able to put songs together in a meaningful way when you have enough of them. Which finally happened last week, for me. It wasn’t forced. I just finally ‘arrived’.

(that doesn’t mean they’ll be out any time soon)

And through years of trial and error, I’ve realised that the only way I can get myself to make music is to not even consider releasing it for a second, to not think about how it’s going to be consumed. For ages, I was so afraid to make anything.

I’ve arrived at a nice feeling of ‘fuck it’. The other day, me, Jack and Max sat down to approach a song I wrote when I was seventeen. Jack’s always loved it. He’s really fought for it over the years. The first iteration was too self-victimising and self-effacing, holding wailing lyrics like, “I was never meant to be loved”. The second version was blaming, persecuting and angry, “your asshole friends” and “you said I wasn’t good enough”.

I was about to boo it down, when I suddenly wondered if I was old enough to write it now. Sure enough, I managed to wrestle those teenage lyrics into maturity and closure. I stepped out of the drama triangle completely. That felt really good. And despite all our hardships as a band, we still make it back into that room, no matter how much has changed.

It’s always been easy with the band. Other people push me over the line, push me to finish stuff, acting as motors driving it forwards, or I can feed into their ideas, instead.

Making my own stuff took a backseat, naturally, but I also let it. I’ve worked really hard to improve my self esteem and get to a point where I can make it again. I’m over my whole “I can’t afford this” and I’ve realised I’m going to do it anyway. Losing nearly everything has that funny way of making you realise you still exist, that your identity is always ‘you’ without the things you thought made up your identity, like jobs, or towns, or cities, or money, or places, or age. And this empty, floating ‘you’ still deserves to make stuff. I’ve also realised I was only told no because I let people tell me no. And if it’s not ‘good’…well, I’ll make it anyway, because not doing it feels worse. I still have things to say, even if only to myself.

I like writing these. I’ll still do interviews. I want to write about how I’ve listened to Jon Hopkins ‘Music For Psychedelic Therapy’ every single night since 2021, and my deep love for Tracy Chapman, oh and my new (late) discovery, Linda Perhacs, but it’ll be when I feel like it.

I’m breaking up with my phone and the internet (I’ve been saying this for three years), and my life has been enormously better. I highly recommend you think about your phone use, and read ‘How To Break Up With Your Phone’. I’ve felt really in the moment, really present, really able to appreciate my friends, able to be in nature, able to know myself and able to accept each day for what it is.

I didn’t realise how insidiously I was slipping back into social media use after using it to advertise my band. I didn’t make the link between that and feeling awful all the time, at first. I didn’t understand my sudden sharp mental health decline, where did it come from? As I waded through the wreckage of my mental health, I started putting the pieces together.

Not being on my phone is glorious. Enjoying the things I’m doing is glorious, too. Deciding to step out of worrying about where I’m going to live, or searching for a miracle job that will give me enough money…to instead accept the present moment and where I am. To take each day as it comes is a much better way of existing. Whose sofa am I on tonight? God, I’ve missed this person, and if I was still renting, I wouldn’t have been able to afford the train ticket to see them. I’ve seen more people in two months than I’ve seen in three years.

Every time I spent thinking about how to get people to listen to my music on social media could have been time spent making music. If you’re an artist, please ask yourself this. Is it worth it?

Now, to talk about Lou Moon. I went to Bristol to watch my friend, who has released two EPs, Drifting 1 and Drifting 2. I ended up playing percussion, which was out of my comfort zone but really, really fun. Here’s an impromptu rehearsal:

I helped Lou finish these songs one? two? years ago. Max said he’s been listening nonstop now it’s out, as it’s nostalgic of the time we all first came to London. Hollow was 2013/2014. I still remember Carlos (drummer) holding seashells on stage, and how revolutionary that felt to me. I remember feeling so intrigued by Lou’s time signatures, that 5/4 chorus.

I Can’t Feel The Sun was the one that got me. Lou! You have to release this! Sure enough, a few years later I was screaming the lyrics down in the crypt into some room mics. I think what I love about Lou Moon’s writing is that there’s no pretentious goal, it’s just about bearing your soul.

Then Lou wrote orchard keeper, probably my favourite, and recorded it with Hana Stretton (who I interviewed on this blog a few weeks back).

When we performed at the cafe, it started to rain. I was off my phone. I looked around at Lou’s brother, Maya, Hana and Lou. We played music for the sake of it. And I felt so at peace.

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