OPE! Mixtape #25: Perfect Days
Everyone wants sleaze but no one wants to be sleazy.
Welcome to OPE!, the ranch dressing of music blogs, by Brady Gerber. OPE! is a daily blog, but this weekly newsletter includes more song reviews, my favorite links of the week, and exclusive essays. This week: learning how to write stuff that only you can write, not loving The Last Dinner Party, and revisiting The Velvet Underground’s “Pale Blue Eyes.” All typos are intentional.
Well, hello there. How are you?
I hope everyone had a lovely Super Bowl evening and enjoyed all those trailers. I still don’t know what Temu is.
Anyway, let’s get to the dang thing. Here are this week’s links and songs.
MY FAVORITE LINKS OF THE WEEK
Thanks to AI, Alicia Keys’ Super Bowl flub is already being erased from the official record.
“My experiment in phonelessness was a failure. It also changed my life.”
Speaking of phonelessness, here is a French village that voted to ban phone scrolling in public.
New York Magazine’s epic Bill Ackman profile has been all over my timeline and feels like a litmus test for examining powerful people who are endlessly fighting against … everything? The exhaustion that comes when everyone and everything becomes a target, and how that still attracts a lot of followers. (‘There were times when she said, “Please don’t tweet anymore”’ — but he defended himself by pointing to memes online suggesting he had become a hero to wives everywhere.”)
ProZD is one of my favorite YouTubers who’s joining the “I’m stepping back from my channel for a little bit” train, but he goes the extra mile to explain how to best support YouTubers you care about. (I also love his bit about how he intentionally does things with his videos that go against the “algorithm” because he thinks the algorithm is stupid … and those “things” are my favorite parts of his videos and why I follow and support him in the first place.)
As a young Millennial who spiritually feels 90 years old, I enjoyed seeing Jon Stewart back on The Daily Show.
THIS WEEK’S MIXTAPE
Ariel Kalma, Jeremiah Chiu & Marta Sofia Honer – “Écoute Au Loin”
3.5/4
Is International Anthem the best music label working right now? I think yes, in terms of the new music that I hear that gives me pause to think, “Huh, so that’s how music is evolving.” This is a song featuring Ariel Kalma, Jeremiah Chiu, and Marta Sofia, but for all I know this is the work of one person, or a subway full of jazzy doodlers who are in tune with the sound of the earth and wish to express its beautiful pain, or a beauty so painful that the saxophones (I think those are saxophones?) only have so much energy to yawn into the horizon. I love this.
Oisin Leech – “Colour of the Rain”
3/4
Fleet Foxes but not annoying? I’ll listen to anything with Steve Gunn, whom I interviewed many years ago for Vulture and still find to be a fascinating musician with a rewarding discography. At the time, I described Gunn’s new album as Bob Dylan’s long-lost Manchester album. I think that applies to Leech too. Such beautiful acoustic guitars. A melody you can hum into your mind while looking out into the endless horizon and sky and wondering if your early 20s self would like how you turned out in your 30s, and you in your 30s not caring about what your past self didn’t know about you today. Oisin Leech is such a cool name.
Ducks Ltd. – “Hollowed Out”
3/4
On paper, I should love the new Ducks Ltd. album. I love the last album Modern Fiction; I voted for “Under the Rolling Moon” for that year’s Uproxx’s music critics poll. Weirdos who love melody. Right up my alley. The sensitive jangle guitars? The best. It sounds like the band recorded in a slightly better studio this time too. But I’ve heard this band do this exact sound before. Many times before. Like, this is their whole thing. Which is not bad. It’s just diminishing returns. But I’ll take diminishing returns of my favorite guitar sound than the best version of shit music. “Hollowed Out” and this whole album get an extra half-star if you’re new to Ducks Ltd.
The Last Dinner Party – “Nothing Matters”
2/4
The Last Dinner Party should have released this album a year ago when the Kate Bush revival still meant something. Prelude to Ecstasy is a great album title and deserves a better album. Have f-bombs ever sounded this boring? The Last Dinner Party feels right at home with the Saltburn soundtrack, which already feels like an impactful collection of meh-to-great songs that’ll turn into a cult classic that tells the story of late ’00s music better than the late ’00s ever could. Whether you think that’s good or bad depends on if you think Barry Keoghan licking cum off a bathtub drain is edgy. I say no, but I also used to be a 19-year-old who just discovered John Cassavetes and the one great Yorgos Lanthimos film (Dogtooth; The Lobster is very good, almost great). The worst thing about “Nothing Matters” is that it sounds exactly like this Saltburn connection was intentional like some major label executes were screaming for a hip young group to cash in on NME googling “indie sleaze.” Everyone wants sleaze but no one wants to be sleazy.
Paramore – “Burning Down the House”
1/4
What a boring cover. Gross. I hate Talking Heads—has any band other than Pavement or Deftones inspired such horrible music—but this cover makes me want to go back to the original, which at least feels like a novelty. I don’t hate Paramore (I was there when “Misery Business” took over MTV2) but they’re not dynamic enough musicians to get “funky.” Take out the lead singer and you’re left with a profoundly meh group of musicians who can barely play their instruments and, worse, are trying to replicate the original song note-by-note. Like looking at a Met exhibit of edgy subway graffiti and thinking, “Wow, this is edgy.” When did A24 start sucking this much?
The Velvet Underground - “Pale Blue Eyes”
I saw Wim Wenders’s Perfect Days this past week and loved it. I’m already a sucker for Wenders—Wings of Desire is a top-five movie for me (and is streaming on Max) and Paris, Texas is a mostly great film that has one of the best endings ever—but Perfect Days, which is now playing in theaters, feels like the most approachable masterpiece he’s made yet. I also live and die by my routine, and this is a movie all about routines and what drives us to have routines in the first place—to establish order and rituals in our lives, to connect us with other people or ourselves, or to distract us and make us forget about past or current hurt? Maybe all three?
The beauty of the film is that we don’t end up learning a lot about the main character, Hirayama. We have just enough details to hint at some family drama, but this seems to be an older man who has mostly found peace in his life and feels connected to the world around him through his environment and his job which some (many) would consider to be a lesser trade, even though it’s a vital service we all depend on. My pitch for seeing this movie is that it seriously made me consider how much stuff I have and how little of it I need, as well as being more mindful of how I spend my days. How we spend our days is how we spend our lives, indeed. The movie’s message is not, “You need to live like Hirayama to be happy,” but rather a suggestion that maybe your entire life doesn’t need to be so busy. I know I sound like a hippie, so I would rather have you see this film since Wenders does a better job of showing us how to find zen within the big cities that can make us feel so alone and isolated.
This being a Wenders movie, the soundtrack is dependably great. A key plot device throughout the movie is Hirayama’s collection of cassette tapes, and much of the movie follows him driving around Tokyo to and from work while listening to his cassettes in his van. Most of his driving is in the early morning, so his songs usually soundtrack a quiet Tokyo that is slowly waking up to each new day. “Pale Blue Eyes” is played nearly in its entirety during one of these drives. I now consider this song to be a Tokyo song. Or it just reaffirms how The Velvet Underground were the ultimate metropolis band.
I’m struck by how little happens in “Pale Blue Eyes.” Like the movie, all the repetition builds up into an atmosphere that I get lost in. Has Lou Reed ever sounded so tender and vulnerable?
And that’s it!
Until next Wednesday, as always.
With love and all the other good things,
-b
Like this newsletter? To steal from Austin Kelon, OPE! is free but not cheap.
Here’s how you can help (financially)
Tip me through my coffee fund.
Become a paid newsletter subscriber to get more exclusive goodies.
Here’s how you can help (for free)
Consider me for writing work for yourself, a friend, or a colleague. My website has more info about how to best contact me and my favorite writing samples; I’m also active on LinkedIn.
Become a free newsletter subscriber.
Share OPE! on one of your social media platforms.
Share OPE! directly with one of your friends, family members, or colleagues.
Bookmark OPE! (the blog and the newsletter) on your computer or phone.
Heart, comment on, or repost this specific newsletter post; see the buttons at the top of this page.
Seriously, y’all sharing this newsletter is how OPE! grows organically. Sharing is caring.
Connect with me on Twitter, Instagram, or LinkedIn. (For LinkedIn, please include a connect note saying that you found me through this newsletter.) OPE! is also on Facebook, Bluesky, and Letterboxd.
Website | OPE! (the blog) | Donate to my coffee fund | Find your local reps
Original OPE! logo by Claire Kuang. Words and cartoons by yours truly. Stock photos by Substack unless credited. Animations made using FlipaClip and EZGIF. All typos are intentional.