OPE! Mixtape #28: Hit the Hague, hit the bong
A good week to be a New Radicals fan.
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. All typos are intentional.
Well, hello there. How are you?
I’m late today! Some timely work came up, and I’m still daydreaming about recently seeing Dune 2, a very good movie that I like more the more I think about it. (That’s a weird sentence to write but you know what I mean.) I’m also obsessed with Shōgun, which is becoming the first TV show I’m dedicating to tuning into each week live since … Game of Thrones? Perhaps that was FX’s original goal. I highly recommend both.
Anyway, let’s get to the dang thing. Here are this week’s links and songs.
MY FAVORITE LINKS OF THE WEEK
Honest Trailers: The Oscars 2024 Best Picture Nominees. (I hope everyone enjoys the Oscars this Sunday!)
The video game remake boom is producing nostalgic hype and uncomfortable questions. (Hey now, I wrote a similar feature a few months ago about music’s also questionable remake boom.)
Generative AI and the widening software developer knowledge gap. (aka what I’ve been complaining about for over a year now.)
How the Pentagon learned to use targeted ads to find its targets. (What a lede!)
THIS WEEK’S MIXTAPE
Liquid Mike - “American Caveman”
4/4
How folks talked about Wednesday and MJ Lenderman last year is how I feel about Liquid Mike. The new album is pretty good and very good at times, but “American Caveman” is stunning. “American Caveman” feels like the Michigan sun slapping you in the face while teaching you how to canoe and believe in people. Not a single wasted note. The ideal OPE! band and song. I guess Third Eye Blind’s influence on this decade is comparable to the Goo Goo Dolls’ impact on the last decade and The Replacements the decade before. You know a song deserves high praise when a railroad harmonica doesn’t sound embarrassing. Not groundbreaking yet a familiar feeling done perfectly.
Groovy Movies - “Palm Of Her Hand”
3/4
So this is what Revolver-era Beatles sounds like without all the drugs and 200 years of Boomers gushing about wanting to suck John Lennon’s earlobes. Have Rickenbacker guitars ever sounded bad? Yes, but don’t tell your mysterious uncle who may or may not live in Florida. I continue to be a sucker for melody (sung or played) and harmonies, even if “Palm Of Her Hand” doesn’t move the needle in any meaningful way and doesn’t pretend to. Sometimes this is the hardest music to write about: “Palm Of Her Hand” does all the right things and hits the senses and sounds like everything I’ve heard before. Groovy Movies is a pretty good band name.
St. Vincent - “Broken Man”
3/4
The music video CGI fire is really bad in an otherwise interesting and, ultimately, catchy song. The fire is not St. Vincent’s fault. “Broken Man” has a great chorus melody. Nine Inch Nails doesn’t have a monopoly on industrial drums, yet Annie Clark is smart to build up the song’s dynamics with crunchy riffs and a great drummer so that “Broken Man” doesn’t fall victim to quote-unquote warehouse vibes. Clark is a great yeller. I imagine “Broken Man” will sound better within the album’s context. I also like that, once again, I don’t understand what a St. Vincent song is “about,” which is what plagued her last album (which I interviewed her about for Vulture; we had a stern yet interesting conversation). Got to love guitar nerds who don’t care about modern trends aka thank goodness “Broken Man” isn’t produced by Jack Antonoff.
Faye Webster - “Lego Ring” (feat. Lil Yachty)
2/4
Natalie Prass walked so Faye Webster could jog into the hearts of boring teens who don’t have the nerve to listen to ambient jazz but want something a little more spicy to play in the background while waiting for their Blue Apron. Webster’s 2019 album Atlanta Millionaires Club felt like such a breath of fresh air at the time, it seems that all her following (and earned) streaming success has made her music dull. I would love to do as little as Lil Yachty does in “Lego Ring” and still be called a musician. These keyboards feel on loan from a better song. Is every modern indie rock band sharing the same used distortion bass pedal? A 39-year-old NPR listener living in upstate [insert state] is losing his shit right now.
New Radicals - “Murder on the Dancefloor” (original demo version)
Longtime OPE! readers will know that New Radicals is one of my all-time favorite bands. Their one album, Maybe You’ve Been Brainwashed Too, is one of my favorite albums and feels like a better time capsule of what most late ‘90s music actually sounded like instead of my colleagues rewriting history to pretending that we were all still listening to Swervedriver. There’s a viral Twitter prompt going around right now about naming your favorite 13 albums on top of your head, and New Radicals made my list.
Here’s my list, by the way:
Green Day - American Idiot
Wilco - Sky Blue Sky
Oasis - (What’s the Story) Morning Glory
The 1975 - I like it when you sleep, for you are so beautiful yet so unaware of it
Radiohead - The Bends
New Radicals - Maybe You’ve Been Brainwashed Too
Boards of Canada - Music Has The Right To Children
Elton John - Madman Across The Water
Chet Baker - Chet Baker Sings
The Beatles - 1
Modest Mouse - The Lonesome Crowded West
My Bloody Valentine - Loveless
Carole King - Tapestry
The point of the prompt is to be painfully honest with your list and immediately regret leaving out your other favorites. As you can tell, I love guitars and melody. Never apologize.
Anyway, Gregg Alexander, the mastermind behind New Radicals, is also a pretty successful songwriter for other musicians, including co-writing Santana and Michelle Branch’s “The Game of Love” and Sophie Ellis-Bextor’s even more viral revived hit “Murder on the Dancefloor,” which ends the movie Saltburn, a fun movie but not a good movie. The use of “Murder on the Dancefloor” was easily that movie’s best moment. This past week, Alexander did a rare interview with The Guardian sharing the original song’s demo, which indeed sounds like lo-fi New Radicals! It’s not an exceptional demo (that’s why it’s a demo) but I’m glad that more people are finding out about Gregg Alexander beyond “You Only Get What You Give,” which, hey, still sounds great.
And that’s it!
Until next Wednesday, as always.
With love and all the other good things,
-b
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