November 24, 2024 — Weekly Bullet Reviews
If you’ve been following this column at all, you might notice that we have a new person contributing this week… say hi to Mya! Side note: this might be one of the last weekly reviews in a while as we prepare for our year-end extravaganza. Stay tuned!
As always, some ground rules:
- These songs are listed in no particular order.
- Basically these blurbs are our rough first impressions of these tracks, so our reviews will be a lot more relaxed!
- Anything released from the past 3 weeks/month is eligible for a bullet review.
- Songs with new, recent music video releases will also be considered for a weekly bullet review.
Mya: A flighty bop. Like a drunk night out in WeHo, jumping between bars.
Justin: It’s a TikTok 10. This sounds so similar to Peggy Gou’s “It Goes Like (Na Na Na).” Lyrics are poppy and sticky as hell. Video is fun and experimental and expensive.
Li-Wei: The new XG album, AWE, just came out, and a large reason why it’s currently been all I’ve been listening to lately is “IYKYK.” It doesn’t quite hit the highs of the nastily ambitious “WOKE UP” (For whatever reason it’s disappointingly not on AWE… in its place is a remix? Who decided to do this?) and the song itself doesn’t feel too far removed from new-gen girl group stuff, but with a chorus this sticky sweet on hyperdrive, how can you not play it on repeat?
Each one of the girls also have brief moments to shine on the latter part of the song, and I would be lying if I didn’t mention that Maya’s glorious “Ayy, do my dancey-dance” delivery practically is the line that makes the song. IYKYK.
Miso Extra, Metronomy – “Good Kisses”
Mya: The sulky, laidback vocals are particularly charming. I impatiently waited for their return when the glossier vocals kicked in.
Justin: Cute and sad dancing in the corner of your little room. Such amazing production that feels like it was born inside a game cartridge or soundcard. Miso Extra stay winning.
Li-Wei: If there’s one thing that Miso Extra excels at, it’s her lyrical hooks. It’s been a while since I first heard “Great Taste” and “Space Junk,” and I can still hear those words making an appearance in my head from time to time. “Good Kisses” continues that tradition with its own Japanese chorus that are sprinkled over video game blips and Miso Extra’s always-cool, stealthy vocal delivery. And when that key change hits in the middle of the song? Pure magic. This is a song that straight up radiates night time-good time vibes. If those annoying car sideshows near my house would blast this on their loudspeakers while their tires screech away, I wouldn’t be so mad at them.
tinyumbrellas – “until the flowers die”
Justin: Singer songwriter pondering wandering on the wind and grassy parks of your small hometown sitting by the windowsill watching birds migrate out of town for the season. Plaintive and effervescent vocals to guitar work ratio. Perfect for CW shows. Adorable, emotive, enrapturing conclusion.
Mya: Listen to this two months post-breakup if you want to have a bad time.
Li-Wei: This one’s warm and comforting – the longing in the lyrics here are absolutely palpable. Bonus points for making me look up what a wood louse is.
Mya: The chorus feels like skipping on grass, hand-in-hand with a childhood friend, half-tripping, catching yourself, carrying on, laughing all the way. “I’ve been down, you’ve been down / let’s be down together.” Things could be better, couldn’t they?
Justin: A tender, nostalgic rearview mirror track. Somehow accomplishes the country sing-along standard with the “I’ve been down, you’ve been down, let’s be down together.” Love that it ends sounding like a party. Would love to hear this in a crowd. Good vocabulary. “Beseeches,” “atone,” nice 🙂
Li-Wei: They can’t keep getting away with it!!! Sibling-duo Esme Emerson have been one of my favorite new discoveries this year, and with each new song that they release it feels like they’re soon going to be taking over the indie pop scene. Their warm, crisp production remind me a lot of Jay Som’s early work (Everybody Works), and I can’t help but hope that their newly announced Applesauce EP will contain more of the same rosy dreaminess that’s on full display on “Together.” Also, when the crowd comes in all sing-along-like at the end of the song… wow! Someone let me experience this magic in person, please.
Justin: Emo digital garble leaking from your broken aux cable that only works at a specific angle. I feel like there’s something cutting edge about this sound where the vocals are intentionally drowned out by the bass and crunch of the track. Feels good in the inner ear like somewhere between a Q-tip and ASMR. I’ll call it AUXrock. Make sure the Wiki links back here.
Mya: This music video is SO middle-school chuuni emo. If I was still an angry teen I’d listen to this in the car while my mom drove me to school. In the present day, it makes for good public transit music, since either way I can’t hear the lyrics!
Li-Wei: The early 2000s Internet aesthetic lives on in Harry Teardrop’s “Fcuk.” And really, all his songs feel like they’re dug up out of the extras of some obscure DVD cult-classic arthouse films – here, he’s whispery, mysterious, and vaguely horny? Any song that can work in IRC chatroom references is cool and automatically nostalgic for me (“Caught your smile / It’s pixelated”). I dig it!
Between “Fcuk” and Kenneth Takanami’s MOLT EP, I’m really being thrown back in time this year to appreciate the early ‘00s aesthetic I was way too young to pay attention to at the time. Shout-out to Isaac Kau’s era-appropriate video as well, which really helps sell the song’s aesthetic (he also did Bubble Tea and Cigarettes’ “Plane Crash,” which also feels very All About Lily Chou-Chou).
Justin: I feel like I’m stuck inside his throat, which makes me feel like crying in an intense, primal way? Disarmingly short like it was the third draft of an iPhone recording. Cinematic to the extent that I’m hungry for some missing detail, name, or closure that’s being dangled right off-screen. Not like anything I’ve ever heard this year.
Mya: This hits me the same way that Taylor Swift’s “Love Story” does (in a good way I swear). It’s a love story; “Book 1” tugs at my heartstrings, packing pathos and poetry into a stripped down, cut-short song.
Li-Wei: If you’re a fan of Dominic Fike’s 14 minutes project that came out this year you’ll probably dig this as well!
Justin: “I know that quality of envelope,” has the lyricism of something like Death Cab for Cutie. Atmosphere of being stuck in a music video from 1991. Maybe I’m too stuck on the swirl and fish imagery in the music video but this feels like it belongs in a DreamCast mix CD. Makes you feel like a pixelated fly in the analog soup.
Mya: This has nothing to do with the rest of the review, but I love the close-ups of spiders in the official visualizer. Moving on. Gauzy and dreamlike, “Sweet Anecdote” is a siren’s call, beckoning me into the water. A chilling, mournful wail announces the end of the song–and snaps me out of my lull.
Li-Wei: Wonderfully synthy, frazzled, and spellbinding. It’s an icy one from Sea Lemon, whose music I remember as usually being on the sweeter side. I wonder what anecdotes you’ll tap into when you’re listening to this with your eyes closed?
Yufu – “Honey If You’re Extra”
Mya: Yufu is pure SOUL. Scarily so. This song would be right at home in my vinyl collection.
Justin: Where the hell did this crooner come from??? Ripped right out of 70s, easily rivals Silk Sonic. In fact, tell them about Yufu and let the light (and money) flow to him. This is the sound that heals American divides. Be the favorite child and stealthily tuck this into your Thanksgiving playlists. Excited to not be able to afford concert tickets to you, Yufu.
Li-Wei: I’ve been a big fan of Yufu’s after hearing his debut album Is It Vain To Be Awake? years ago, but I haven’t heard much from him since. His previous album is now scrubbed from Spotify in the states, which also doesn’t help. On “Honey If You’re Extra” though, Yufu returns with a brand new sound in the retro-funk range on a brand new record label, leaving behind some of the rockabilly sounds that so defined his debut. It reminds me a ton of Aaron Frazer’s work, and I’m excited to see where this goes.
Justin: Something distressing about a single donut in a box. Something worse about being an unfinished donut in a box. Something devastating about how the lyric video is all of this plus an avalanche of indecipherable decisions to a box of Krispy Kreme. The song is a fun 2010s-esque sentimental, electronic ditty that feels like it could have blossomed from a viral YouTube musician. “Drape me over the balcony, forget to water me, until I dry” captures the abandonment and neglect in pure poetry.
Mya: As a donut hole lover, there’s no donut holes in the music video. :^(
Li-Wei: corner club excels in lovely little songs, and “donut hole” is no different. But like many of their other tracks, a deeper look reveals more complicated feelings under the pleasant exterior. This one is about feeling overlooked, walked over, and underappreciated. Like the titular underrated treat it’s named after, “donut hole” is a track that shines with its sweet glaze – if only you’d give it the attention it deserves.
Wisp – “I remember how your hands felt on mine”
Justin: Strangely, has the same musical shape as 2000s alt-rock blasting out of Volcom, Tilly’s, and Pacsun over surfing montages. High flying spiritual edge led by Wisp’s soft, sweeping vocals. It’s a summer song made by a winter person and that’s so sick.
Li-Wei: Shoegaze wunderkind Wisp might have some detractors in the ever multiplying shoegaze subculture, but when she can spin songs like “I remember how your hands felt on mine” with relative ease, she’s bound to win you over eventually. It’s not too far off from the ethereal and floating vibes on her major label EP Pandora, but why fix what isn’t broken? Good stuff.
Header photo taken from Miso Extra, Metronomy – “Good Kisses.”
Check out our other Weekly Bullet Reviews here.