Hit play. I can listen to it twice between the office and the station. I can get it in one more time walking from one platform to the next. And then one-and-a-half times between the station and home.
It’s been what? Three weeks since I discovered Elliphant and MØ’s track One More, a simple pop tune about two friends going out on the town, counting the street lights, having ‘one more’ before they head home.
It was the clip that drew me in, probably because I could see myself and my friends in it. Two girls heading out, getting trashed in a cab, so trashed they up snogging because why not? And then peeing on the street. Yes, in the clip she actually pees on the street, squatting on the foot path. For just a second you can actually see it gushing out.
“You wouldn’t actually piss on the street?” My boss asks, looking thoroughly disgusted.
Well, maybe not on a main street during peak hour but let’s not pretend we haven’t all ducked between two parked cars in a dark alley.
“Are you having Chicken Cottage for lunch today, Liz?” Chicken Cottage is the UK’s poor man’s KFC. It does a roaring trade between 10pm and Last Tube Home.
“No. I’m not hungover. Chicken Cottage is only for hangovers and periods.”
“Liz!” One of the girls pipes up.
“What?”
She’s flustered. I said ‘period’ out loud rather than in a hushed whisper in the basement of an abandoned house in the middle of a desert somewhere.
“What? I can’t say period? Why not?”
She’s screwing her face up.
“Are you serious?” I throw my hands up. “Lily Allen raps about them.”
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I feel like, for the past month and a half, I’ve been living in one long period of period. Not in the sense that I’m grumpy or shrieky or emotional, but drained, listless, uninspired, overwhelmed by an all encompassing sense of Can’t Be Bothered.
I have a bad case of the First World Waah Waahs.
Much like the onset of a period, it comes with symptoms. For me, the first indication that I was starting to get an illness of the spirit, was my complete disillusionment with music.
I’d been on a high. Banks had dropped her debut album Goddess, and I was loving it. Like, every song. Relishing the 90s-style R&B, the minimalist down-tempo electronic stuff, the perfectly tailored pop tunes. Pitchfork said it was shit, but I only read Pitchfork reviews so that I never forget what a bunch of stuck up arseholes they are. And, to remind myself that thanks to streaming services giving me the opportunity to listen to pretty much anything I want, thereby making up my own mind, they’re also fairly irrelevant.
There were a few releases on the horizon that I was looking forward to so, while I waited for them, having played Banks to the point where she was almost making me sick, I started Googling things like ‘Best Albums of 2014 So Far.” I went through list after list – most of them very similar – picked out things I hadn’t already rinsed, and searched for something that would, what? I don’t know. Feel like magic.
Everything fell flat. And I’m not saying that’s because it was all shit, I’m just saying that it wasn’t enchanting me.
I eagerly picked up the new SBTRKT, and felt nothing.
“Vance Joy released his album today,” a friend texted me. “I think you’re gonna love it.”
Listened to it. Meh.
Alt-J, This Is All Yours – got halfway through – bored.
My friend at work recommended Woodkid, which apparently is neofolk? Whatever, I love folk, why not neofolk. I started getting into it – Run Boy Run, I Love You – this is me, I thought, I’m there. Then I found myself clicking back to only play those two songs.
Next.
I checked out Mark Kozalek and Sun Kil Moon, and I really really loved... a few tunes.
I’m a happy person. One of those arseholes who loves their job, and their friends, and their flatmates, and even my family. I’m not sad, or depressed, and given that I burst into tears watching an anti-racism video this morning – no, I’m not getting my period – I’m not even apathetic.
I don’t think my life is hard. I’ve got most shit in perspective.
I just feel like I’m just sitting around waiting for a bus, in a place called Monotony, without any real meaning or purpose or magic.
The world’s gone to the dogs.
I wanna watch trashy TV shows where supernatural beings fall in and out of love with each other.
And listen to pop music.
Mostly Scandinavian pop music.
Which I’ve developed an obsession with.
In lieu of a life purpose.
It started with Danish singer, Kwamie Liv, and her track Lost In The Girl. I’m not going to bother coming up with fancy Pitchforkesque language to describe this tune. It’s a sick tune, it’s a pop song, it’s like magic.
From there I went on to MØ, another pop singer making things interesting who also happens to be Danish.
Scandi pop is, I’m not even joking, the only thing I have listened to/talked about for a whole month.
Little Dragon. Magic.
Niki and the Dove. Magic.
Elliphant. Magic.
Robyn, Fallullah, Miike Snow, Nervous Nellie, Erlend Øye. Some things I like more than others, some things I haven’t liked at all, and I’ve only scratched the surface.
Great pop comes out of Scandinavia. They do dark and stirring as well as they do supercharged euphoria.
I want to be stirred. I want to feel euphoric.
