Crank That (Haunted ballrooms)
Through a Year with Music 2
Hella Immaculate is thoughts/FEELINGS, peculiar music, and actions to improve our world, from me, writer-performer-comedian Dave Maher.
Thank you for reading! I love my work, and you make it possible. I believe directly supporting artists we love is the way to a future of vital and varied art free of corporate dorks.
If you enjoy what I do and want more, join me on Patreon. Even $3/month validates me more than is healthy. Or send a friend the most popular edition of this newsletter or the funniest episode of my afterlife podcast!
N.B.
There’ll be a special New Year’s edition of Hella Immaculate later this week featuring the things that got you through this year (it’s not too late to reply and tell me!). This one is long, so I’m breaking them up. Stay tuned!
Through a Year with Music: The Sequel
Here’s Part 2 of my intuitive roundup of music I loved in 2020, sorted into highly personal, semi-arbitrary categories I explain. No embedded videos this round for email readability.
For reference: Part 1.
Independent Artist
Songs and artists who comfort and encourage me on the path of making art on my own terms. Heroes, comrades-in-arms.
Big K.R.I.T. – “Believe”
Nipsey Hussle – “Change Nothing”
Blueprint – “Go Hard or Go Home”
Kathleen Edwards – “Glenfern”: There’s freedom in “giving up” music to open a coffee shop called Quitters. To quote the poet David Whyte, “Give up all the other worlds / except the one to which you belong.”
Chris Crack – “Reparations Not Decorations” and “Go Where You’re Prioritized”
Calvero – “Falling Forever” and “Wait (feat. Arthi Meera)”: I've mentioned my former roommate and favorite sounding board here before. When I play these songs, I hear an artist so many people have yet to discover is their favorite. And I get excited.
Seeking Out
I spent early quarantine making 40+ playlists for people using three sonic touchstones (artists/songs/albums) + three words to describe how they wanted to feel (e.g. “90s Beach Xanax,” “A Specialized Witch,” and “Vanilla Space Clouds”). Here are songs from those mixes and other songs.
Georgia Anne Muldrow – “Play It Up” and “Vital Transformation”: G.A.M. appeared on what feels like 40% of those mixes. The sounds in the intro to “Play It Up” (drum programming and some kinda crazy synth maybe?) are just nasty.
G.S. Schray – First Appearance: Murky parking lot mood music for record store clerks.
Nailah Hunter – “Soil: Song from Silence”
Aharon Amram – “Ya Benaya”: Biggest earworm of my year, favorite Radiooooo discovery, and ignited my desire for music in non-English languages.
Enya – “Only Time”: Heavier than you remember!
Creating
A record I put on while writing to imagine different worlds. A collage of influences and edits that encourages me to steal and synthesize ideas liberally. Seemed all slippery surface and little substance at first, until I found I couldn’t stop listening.
I’m waiting to create a virtual version of Feed Wolf Ice Cream until it can look as evocative and striking as the “Almeda” video.
For the Love of the Game
The closest to a traditional year-end list I’ve got. My favorite music regardless of context.
Waxahatchee – Saint Cloud (esp. “Fire”): There was a point pre-or-very-early-quarantine when I couldn’t listen to the first line of “Fire” without tearing up. A song about wanting to be enough for and love yourself through changes. Just writing that last sentence fucked me up a bit.
Open Mike Eagle – Anime, Trauma and Divorce: I’m 36, and I’m tired.
Beissoul & Einius – “Love Song” and hoping for Questions in the Dark to click
Bad Bunny – “Pero Ya No”
Odunsi (The Engine) – “luv in a mosh” and “nü finesse”
Julianna Barwick – Healing Is a Miracle: Sunburn come-down music.
Bed/Chair
In honor of the places I did most of my listening this year. When the uprisings began, I didn’t know how to help, so I created a guide to Rare Black Music, which started my love affair with Bandcamp.
Kelis – “Breakfast” and “Runnin”
Channel Tres – Black Moses
Pink Siifu – ensley
Medhane – Own Pace: Mental health raps.
Beverly Glenn-Copeland – Keyboard Fantasies
Oui Ennui – “Slap Happening” and his whole thing: Angel Bat Dawid told me about Oui when I interviewed her. I reached out, we had a blast, and he said it was the most he’s enjoyed a conversation with a stranger.
Mustafa – “Air Forces” and “Stay Alive”: Hood Elliott Smith?
Amaarae (feat. Moliy) – “SAD GIRLZ LUV MONEY”
1010 Benja SL – “Boofiness”
SZA (feat. Ty Dolla $ign) – “Hit Different”
Tama Impala – “Posthumous Forgiveness”
DJ Molasses – “Classic Man (Screwed & Chopped)”
Kathleen Edwards – “Who Rescued Who”
Gia Margaret – “Sugar”
The Voices of East Harlem – “Right On Be Free”
Walks
Immersing into worlds. Overwhelming senses to drown out thought. Psycho shit discovered on “Create Station” mode. Music to anxiously plan a Patreon to. One ineffable epiphany.
Black Taffy – Opal Wand: Haunted ballrooms.
Bill Callahan – Gold Record: Wise, weird, sad jokes.
Angel Bat Dawid – The Oracle: Sweating, mystical, quarantine space funk.
Duval Timothy – Help
Jusell, Prymek, Sage, Shiroishi – Fuubutsushi (風物詩)
Alkaline – “Move Mountains”: Contender for the most insane song I’ve heard in my life.
Gaza Slim (feat. Vybz Kartel) – “Anything a Anything”
Alabaster dePlume – all of it, esp. To Cy & Lee: Instrumentals Vol. 1, “There’s Always More,” and “Is It Enough”: The mythical ending to “There’s Always More” gobsmacked me.
Outside Discovery
I went to Michigan in September with my partner because spending a weekend by ourselves in a cabin felt like a low-risk way of going SOMEWHERE. We heard this song on the stereo in a coffee shop (I promise we wore masks and stayed hella distant, got in and got out, but Jesus, I’m really judging myself here). I asked what was playing and had a brief conversation with the barista about the band. A relic of an interaction.
4 Albums I Want to Spend More Time With
Ty Dolla $ign – Featuring Ty Dolla $ign
The 1975 – Notes on a Conditional Form
Jason Molina – Eight Gates
Polo G – The GOAT
This Week’s This Is Your Afterlife
Zack Seward is my best friend and the bane of my nightlife in my 20s. We’d go out, and he’d get asked if he was McDreamy while people shouted “Yo! Jack Black!!!” at me. He’s a Managing Editor at a big-time cryptocurrency news site now, which is funny to me mostly because I don’t understand crypto at all and the subculture seems more whacked than even comedy.
We had a great chat, and Zack’s full episode has his “Kill 1 Thing” segment with the exclusive dish on journalism tropes we find annoying. It might be the first episode in which I share something I’d kill (best believe I have a mental bank). Get that at patreon.com/davemaher.
Wamp Wamp (What to Do)
Donate to the NIVA Emergency Relief Fund to help performing arts venues at risk of permanently going under. The Save Our Stages bill is part of the next stimulus package, but it’ll take a while for those grants to get to the venues that need them. Help keep independent art accessible!
I donated $20. Reply with what you donate, and I’ll report our total next week.
Celebrate! Last week, we donated $45 to Stop Line 3, a group opposing an oil pipeline through untouched wetlands and Anishinaabe territory.
Is It Enough (no),
DM