I’ve been sitting on this playlist for a month or so. It all started when I couldn’t get the opening of “Anna Calls From The Arctic” out of my head: a loping bassline kicks in, someone says should I propose friendship?, followed by some synth horns, all at the pace of someone holding court, half-lidded in some shadowy corner of a bar. Last week I got to go to a listening party for Dry Cleaning’s new album (at a roller skating rink of all places) so I realized I should actually send out the playlist inspired by its first track.
New Long Leg, Dry Cleaning’s previous album, is one of those “deep pandemic” things about which I’m not even sure how I feel. Apparently it came out in April 2021, but it really feels like a December 2020 thing to me? At the time (whenever it was) I was most struck by the similarity to H. Grimace, another artsy post-punk throwback band, and especially their song “2.1 Woman”, so finally I have put the two next to each other on a playlist. H. Grimace on “2.1 Woman” also has the same mid-tempo dispassionate speak-singing delivery that Dry Cleaning does on basically every song; whereas Dry Cleaning sometimes gives off a whiff of bemusement (of the cat-like variety that seems vaguely predatory), H. Grimace is over it all.
I need deodorant
I need my brain examined
I need my eyes opened
I need my hand held
I need my heart transplanted
I need a fucking lobotomy
I need to be blonde, or beige, or purely transparent
The most striking part of the song is when almost all accompaniment drops out and we hear a list of all the features of the new and improved woman alluded to by the title; it’s a product description and nothing more, for which consumers? Well. I mean. Society, man.
There are a few more of these 80’s post-punk throwbacks in the playlist. French Vanilla are heavier on the sax and bigger weirdos; I think it’s great that “Carrie” is about the titular character of the Stephen King novel but I was once at a concert with someone unfamiliar with that book (or movie) who was a bit put off by all the talk of having a period in the shower. Drahla are artsier, I love some of the stuttering time signature changes in “Under the Glass”. And The Waitresses aren’t even a throwback, they’re originals in the genre. I had forgotten about the “sucker” bit in “I Know What Boys Like”; the word’s deployed in a similar way in “Liar” by Rollins Band years later, though it has a pretty different feel when it comes from a muscular jeering man.
The last song in the playlist is “Half Sister”, by Protomartyr. It’s the last track on Relatives in Descent, their first post-Trump album and one that was clearly wrestling with that, and this from a band that was already pretty cynical (the album Under Color of Official Right takes its title from a song about the Kwame Kilpatrick corruption scandal). I’m not a cynical person in general, but if you’d like to get at the most jaded sentiment that strikes me as true in some important way, look to the last verse of this song:
In Northern Michigan there was an incident in winter
A horse was hit by lightning and began to speak in a foreign language
When he was finally understood, it repeated, "humans are no good"
So they shot it behind the shed and stuffed him
He's now on display as a lesson for the kids to always do your best
Do your best always
Always
Always
I mean, sure, it’s metaphorical. Always hits me in a tender spot nonetheless.
Track listing
“Tuxedo Hat”, The Octopus Project, One Ten Hundred Thousand Million
“Evil Bee”, Menomena, Friend and Foe
“Busy Doing Nothing”, Love Is All, 9 Times That Same Song
“I Know What Boys Like”, The Waitresses, The Best of the Waitresses
“Carrie”, French Vanilla, French Vanilla
“Under the Glass”, Drahla, Under the Glass
“2.1 Woman”, H. Grimace, Self Architect
“Anna Calls from the Arctic”, Dry Cleaning, Stumpwork
“The Second Line”, Clinic, Internal Wrangler
“Half Sister”, Protomartyr, Relatives in Descent
Ah man, I had forgotten about Love Is All! Thanks for the reminder.