𝒸𝓇𝓎𝓅𝓉𝑜𝓅𝒽𝒶𝓈𝒾𝒶 𝒾𝓈𝓈𝓊𝑒 12

Welcome back to Cryptophasia. In this issue: new releases from Jess Scott, Visual Purple, The Afterglows, No Home and Jenny Hval. What have you been jamming lately? Seen any good gigs? We'd love to know.

𝒥𝑒𝓈𝓈 𝒮𝒸𝑜𝓉𝓉, “𝐼'𝓂 𝒮𝑜 𝐹𝑜𝓇𝑔𝑒𝓉𝒻𝓊𝓁”

Step in the world of Jess Scott. Whether in her uncanny paintings or art-interviews journal Quinto Quarto Quarterly, with her poetic post-punk in Flesh World or the ripping melodies of Brilliant Colors, the L.A. pop polymath has charted her own path, putting spirited wrongness inside of daydreams. “All of my work tries to make joy or fun out of the outermost boundaries of acceptability, or vice versa,” she once told me. “I’m constantly trying to make things for a little world of simple pleasure that I wish was there.” On “I’m So Forgetful,” a recent single from her long-awaited solo 12”, Modern Primitives, Scott adds bite, melancholy, and striking clarity to the Patti-like expressiveness of her phrasings. As she sings about “getting older” while “downwardly mobile,” she opens the window to her universe ever wider.

𝒱𝒾𝓈𝓊𝒶𝓁 𝒫𝓊𝓇𝓅𝓁𝑒, “𝒩𝑜𝒾𝓈𝑒”

Tale as old as time: one person’s gleeful, life-affirming expression (rocking out in the basement) is another person’s torment (the next door neighbor). In 1996 in Canton, Michigan, three Kinks-loving fifth-grade boys put the anguish of the situation into a song. The result: outrageously sick raw noise pop. “They’re playing what they call songs, and what we call noise,” sings guitarist Kevin McGorey, in a perfectly adolescent squawk. The band split up by seventh grade, but not before McGorey’s dad got their songs on a 4-track, which surfaced on YouTube last year and caught the ear of Detroit’s Shelley Salant (Shells, Tyvek, XV) who has now reissued the recordings on cassette.  “Whaaaat’s all that raaacket?” goes the undeniable hook on “Noise.” “I hope it doesn’t turn into a band.” The neighbors tried to stop Visual Purple, but Visual Purple lives.

𝒯𝒽𝑒 𝒜𝒻𝓉𝑒𝓇𝑔𝓁𝑜𝓌𝓈, “𝒯𝒽𝑒 𝒪𝓃𝓁𝓎 𝒲𝒶𝓎 𝐼𝓈 𝒰𝓅”

Every homespun Afterglows song is a reminder that simplicity is often anything but. On their 2016 self-titled debut, featuring acoustic mini-masterpieces like “Angels in the Sunshine Hotel,” and now on a followup full-length, the Philadelphia duo of Sam Cook-Parrott and Michael Cantor makes raw, radiant music rich in Everly Brothers-style harmonies and the gentle, seams-out illumination of Arthur Russell. Their songs are as duly elemental and ephemeral as their golden-hour name suggests. The Sound of the Afterglows is a palliative mix of the intriguingly secret and the comfortingly familiar. Cantor and Cook-Parrott speak the language of pop tradition, and they honor its mysteries even as they put them at arm’s length, from the hissy tape opener “The Only Way Is Up” on. Play this quiet music loud.

𝒩𝑜 𝐻𝑜𝓂𝑒, “𝒲𝒶𝓇𝓅𝑒𝒹 𝐵𝑜𝓌”

London multidisciplinary artist Charlie Valentine has described their approach to noise in material terms: “When you have very little to make music with, you get creative,” they said in an interview accompanying “Warped Bow.” “Guitars can be loud. Other materials—pencils, glass, water—can be too, and most are free in the world.” The single was recently released via a series called Open Tab, from the Brooklyn label Fire Talk, which presents a track alongside a Q&A and an artist-curated mix, an interesting effort in slowing down the process of hearing and contextualizing one song. On “Warped Bow,” Valentine applies their resourceful creative ideology to a haunted story of a girl who works in a deserted plant shop, mesmerized by everything around her. As on 2020’s excellent Fucking Hell, the clattering and nonlinear soundscapes evoke an ever-creeping anxiety, but it’s Valentine’s colossal vocals that seem to stop time.

𝒥𝑒𝓃𝓃𝓎 𝐻𝓋𝒶𝓁, “𝒯𝒽𝑒 𝑅𝑒𝓋𝑜𝓁𝓊𝓉𝒾𝑜𝓃 𝒲𝒾𝓁𝓁 𝒩𝑜𝓉 𝐵𝑒 𝒪𝓌𝓃𝑒𝒹”

A lot of web 3.0 evangelism unfolds online today in the name of “ownership.” To see what I mean, search “the ownership economy” and find headlines like “Get your own piece of the ownership-economy pie” or “Participatory Capitalism.” This is where my mind went when I read the title of “The Revolution Will Not Be Owned,” which closes Jenny Hval’s new record Classic Objects, and raises questions of creativity and commercialism, utopia and self-control, with simmering jazz. “And this song is regulated by copyright regulations,” Hval deadpans. “And dreaming doesn’t have copyright.” She seems to ask: how far can we expand our imaginations within the limits of commodification? It follows the more direct penultimate track “Freedom,” a meditation on longing for “democracy” where people and art are liberated. Hval said “Freedom” reminds her of a song “written by a political folk song generator,” calling it indefensible but “necessary” to the album. Taken together, this closer hits deeper. Revolution means we never stop dreaming.