BiBaBiDi

BBBD 2025

nik.mercer@gmail.com (Nik Mercer) — Fri, 7 Mar 2025 15:05:00 -0800

Another year, another batch of perpetually updated playlists, one for "calm" (i.e. ambient, chillout, downtempo, classical), one for "current" (i.e. 2025 "pop"), one for "clurb" (i.e. club), and one for "classic" (i.e. anything from before c. 2015).

It's interesting how "BiBaBiDi" ("BBBD") has come to be—at least in my own essence, in my own mind—synonymous with anything I fancy. I think it's for this reason I tend to once again not really write here, instead mostly just culling together private playlists and infusing the BBBD vision and voice into the myriad ways I interface with the world. That is, I don't have much to commit to paper because engaging with music seems to make more sense when it's intuitive and fluid, at least right now.

But, rest assured, I continue to mull over what I could do here, or elsewhere, in a personal-hobby capacity, so don't punt this URL to the archive folder yet—something new may rise from it one day soon.

Until then, follow along as I meander with my trademark velocity and nebulous curiosity, through aural salvation.

Teenage Filmstars

nik.mercer@gmail.com (Nik Mercer) — Wed, 14 Feb 2024 18:36:00 -0800

Ed Ball was one of the most significant presences in—and busiest contributors to—the British indie rock scenes of the 70s, 80s, 90s: He ran labels, Whaam! Records and Artpop! Records most notably; he was intimately involved with Alan McGee's Creation Records, home to many of his own recordings, too; and he fronted or toured with perhaps nine dozen different groups. Hyperbole aside, he was certainly active.

I mostly knew him as a member of the cult-fave group Television Personalities, Dan Treacy's band, and for his own, the Times, a garage act normally done up in paisley flowers or melted down into acid-trip lava-lamp ooze.

In the late 70s, however, he had a short-lived project called Teenage Filmstars, and he released a few rinky-dink mod singles under that name. In the early 90s, after a string of Times LPs, he revived it, and made perhaps the best album of his career, Star. On it, he lost the toothy, sunshine-and-lollipops affect that had become his trademark and slid into a fuzzy, distorted chasm of feedback, echo and delay all the way down. It's a triumph of early-days shoegaze, a disoriented morass of strained noise, stretched and squeezed like putty, and yet it's unrelentingly melodious, like what could've been if My Bloody Valentine had made Loveless a record of only big-hooks songs like "Soon."

A Primary Industry

nik.mercer@gmail.com (Nik Mercer) — Wed, 31 Jan 2024 17:11:00 -0800

Before they were the downtempo duo Ultramarine, Ian Cooper and Paul Hammond were in an ethereal indie rock group called A Primary Industry. Their one and only album, Ultramarine, feels like two records spun together in the washer; it's part ethereal Cocteau Twins and This Mortal Coil post-punk, spiky and barbed, part foamy, gentle ambient.

Their first single is interesting, too. It's a sort of jazz-funk boogie that feels like a Certain Ratio B-side.

Milky, "Travels with a Donkey"

nik.mercer@gmail.com (Nik Mercer) — Mon, 29 Jan 2024 19:20:00 -0800

Let's talk about Momus.

A little.

There's no obvious way to crack into his body of work; you can begin anywhere and proceed to draw a map around that starting point. The essential aerial-view basics, however: Momus is Nick Currie, and while he has mostly recorded under that mononym for over four decades, he began his musical career in the Happy Family, one of 4AD's first signings.

I initially came across him while digitally digging through crates of Shibuya-kei records as a teen; I was enamored with his writing and production for Kahimi Karie and POiSON GiRL FRiEND, amongst others. He slid sublimely into that biome—Burt Bacharach blossoms splashed across Serge Gainsbourg grasses under kitschy exotica electronica canopies.

At some point in the 90s, he fell into a dramatic, emotional, ultimately fraught tangle with a teenage British-Bangladeshi girl named Shazna Nessa, daughter of a "London-based Bangladeshi restaurant and factory owner," though what exactly transpired is unclear, in part because only the Daily Report tabloid covered it.

At any rate, it was with Shazna that he started a project called Milky, and it is their one and only album, Travels with a Donkey, that marks the beginning of my journey with Momus. I'm sure I came upon it either through the Darla website (he had an imprint, American Patchwork, that was distributed by them) or one of the many music blogs with an ear turned to Japan that I followed. A delightfully sweet, twee record that's as much a children's lullabies collection as it is a bedroom pop demo tape.

Shazna was also in an easy-listening lounge-pop act called Maria Napoleon that released an LP in 2000, and that is also worth a listen.

BBBD 2024

nik.mercer@gmail.com (Nik Mercer) — Thu, 11 Jan 2024 16:10:00 -0800

Nearly twelve months have passed without a peep from me, and I think—think!—that's going to change in short order.

I've new, albeit modest, things coming via Nilo soon (a sequel to the "Please Honk" bumper sticker), and I'm contemplating ways to more efficiently and quickly publish and distribute all the gobbledygook that is suffocating in my mind and crammed into my notebooks. I am certain some or all of it will live on or be connected to BBBD, though whether this twenty-year-old blog is a hub or spoke remains to be seen.

At any rate, I'll start jottings things down here again, in more typical journal format. In the meantime, follow the four playlists I'll be maintaining as per usual (they're embedded below) and behold my latest "product," a song-a-day experiment. There's an RSS feed for it if that's your jam. (There's something intoxicating about rejiggering a Spotify playlist into, essentially, a microblogging platform, and I'm happy I finally hacked it. This is something I've been wanting to make for ages.)

BBBD 2023

nik.mercer@gmail.com (Nik Mercer) — Fri, 10 Feb 2023 11:32:00 -0800

It's been a long while, and it will remain that way for at least a little while longer.

I did want to post the playlists I've been maintaining for this year, however. While I'm not writing about music at the moment, I am, as always, collecting, collating, curating these.

For 2023, I'm breaking things down a little more granularly, with two new playlists, "Clurb" and "Calm," being added to the regular offerings of "Classic" (at least ten-ish years old) and "Current (mostly from this calendar year, but maybe some 2022 material makes it past the censors).

A full archive of all these can be found on the Playlists subpage.

Evinha, "Olha Eu Aqui Oh! Oh! Oh!..."

nik.mercer@gmail.com (Nik Mercer) — Sun, 19 Jun 2022 13:35:00 -0700

Evinha Correia José Maria, from Rio de Janeiro and known mononymously as Evinha, was, in the late 50s and 60s, in a group Trio Esperança, a rather reserved and contained vocal group that produced traditional, lilting, flowing Brazilian music. Good stuff.

But it is her solo career, which she embarked on in the late 60s, that really touches me. Fun and sweet, she delivers in an unusual, boyish contralto, made all the more whimsical by the playfulness of her instrumentals. Case in point: "Olha Eu Aqui Oh! Oh! Oh!..." ("Look Here! Oh! Oh! Oh!")

Listen to it all. A joy.

Troubleman

nik.mercer@gmail.com (Nik Mercer) — Fri, 20 May 2022 15:25:00 -0700

In the 90s, Mark Pritchard was best known for his work in ambient house, IDM, downtempo, primarily through the duo Global Communication, who always managed to be unusually patient, supple, loving, elegant.

When that union dissolved, he pushed ahead in the same direction but with a shift in contextual foundation; he left the cerebral chill of Northern Europe and let his mind and ear drift across the Atlantic to the unhurried and free-spirited coastal enclaves of Brazil for a bossa nova and samba record under the alias Troubleman.

Time Out of Mind is a tranquil and warm album that seems built around the possibility of making electro-bossa music, very much in vogue in the post-Theivery Corporation and MPB-revival era, with white privilege and collector culture not at the epicenter. It's a sincere record, one that compassionately seeks to not only reference but build upon and expand another culture's sound through thoughtful, meditative reverence.

Most the elements are live, a celebration of organic sound and meandering arrangement, influenced by Brazil's storied musical tradition and yet so very imbued with Pritchard's precise and club-oriented, Western electronic wizardry.

Highlights are "Toda Hora," a collaboration with Brazil-born Smoke City vocalist Nina Miranda, and the pair that is "Paz" and "Zap," the latter song being not much more than the former in reverse. Eerie and sensual.

Adorable

nik.mercer@gmail.com (Nik Mercer) — Sun, 20 Feb 2022 14:18:00 -0800

"How does it feel? / The way I feel / Doesn't feel quite real"

With lyrics like those (not to mention a name like theirs and a debut album titled Against Perfection, a perfect encapsulation of melancholic Gen X irony), why Adorable posters aren't plastered on dorm walls and their songs on all high school first-love and breakup mixtapes out there is... baffling.

Formed in Coventry, England, and fronted by Piotr Fijalkowski, the band was around at the apex of the shoegaze scene, but they perhaps slid left, right, up, down a little much—too melodious in their waves of distortion, too jangly to be grunge, too poppy to be punks, too pretty and straight to be Madchester ravers. Too often, it's a group's hard-to-place-ness that prevents them from turning a passing sizzle into something sustainable.

A reputation for cockiness and label pressures and spats certainly didn't help. Sometimes, though, a perfect moment is meant to only last for that perfect moment, and it's wonders like this record, so assured and contained, that remind me that the "what if?" question we often find ourselves confronting is a distraction, a red herring, an impulse to fan the flames of infatuation not with deeper connection to that subject of interest but with, well, more shit.

In the case of Adorable, that desire led to the recording of Fake, a modest LP that tilts towards a flat, less complicated dourness and downcast spirit, one the debut wasn't informed by. Against was a gleaming gem of Echo & the Bunnymen's arena-filling, heartswelling post-punk anthems crossed with the warm fragility of the Jesus and Mary Chain and the fried, blown, tattered brawn of Ride. Often, it's one-and-done series that are the most meaningful. A sense of an ending is a precious gift.

Hi-Posi

nik.mercer@gmail.com (Nik Mercer) — Sun, 30 Jan 2022 12:51:00 -0800

A somewhat unusual group in the Shibuya-kei orbit in that they began as a sort of novelty, leftfield J-pop band that seemly set out to sound like Akiko Yano (矢野顕子) pursuing a rocksteady record.

After a few LPs, Hi-Posi (ハイポジ) settled on a gentler sound, a delightful convergence of Disney-princess orchestral balladry and twee electro-pop.

With 1995's Body Meets Sing—an unconventional translation of the Japanese title,「身体と歌だけの関係」, which loosely means "a connection of body and song"—they evolved into dreamy downtempo trip-hop, gentler and warmer than their previous efforts.

Unfortunately, as usual, much of this isn't on Spotify in the U.S. However, a nice collection of material is up, and that is worth flipping through, particularly if paired with a few of the YouTube streams.

The impression I get is one of the original members, Kenji Kondo (近藤研二), wrote most of the songs and has always held the masters for the bulk of their 90s efforts, and while he eventually left, converting it to a solo project of vocalist Miho Moribayashi's (もりばやしみほ), he owned the masters, it's only this compilation that has its global streaming rights addressed.

Solex

nik.mercer@gmail.com (Nik Mercer) — Mon, 10 Jan 2022 12:41:00 -0800

Originally a member Sonetic Vet, a three-chord guitar band that was too lo-fi and punky to be a Jesus and Mary Chain clone, too urgent and aggressive to be shoegaze, Elisabeth Esselink started her Solex solo project with the release of her 1998 album Solex vs. the Hitmeister, an offbeat slice of indie electronica.

It's a strange record, private and small and humble, so clearly the work of one woman in a studio, one I'm guessing doubled as her bedroom.

Fun and lively, curious and twitchy, it hopscotches from electric blues to wiggy twee dance-pop to lounge experimentation in just over forty minutes.

Years later, she and a collaborator sailed through all of the Netherlands to produce a jovial and animated musical documentary of the country called The Sound Map of the Netherlands, and I'd suggest heading there after you try LP1 on for size.

Girl Girl Gril

nik.mercer@gmail.com (Nik Mercer) — Thu, 30 Dec 2021 12:53:00 -0800

Also in the mid-90s, Konishi Yasuharu (小西康陽) had a radio program called Girl Girl Girl (ガールガールガール). Three men—him, along with Haruo Kubota (窪田晴男) and Tetsutaro Sakurai (桜井鉄太郎, of Costa Nostra, the butter-smooth, Latin-inflected loungecore ensemble)—so, of course, it was called Girl Girl Girl.

On this show, the trio, also named Girl Girl Girl, played mostly (entirely?) music they themselves produced, and it is all mostly (entirely?) hard to place. Most of it is ambient future jazz that wafts out like a plume of essential-oil-sweetened vapor from a diffuser. Laid-back, soft, and yet guided with such curious, electrifying direction; is this the soundtrack to a lost Wong Kar-wai film or a guided meditation or collection of drum breaks and synth demos?

T.V. Jesus

nik.mercer@gmail.com (Nik Mercer) — Mon, 27 Dec 2021 12:08:00 -0800

In the mid-90s, Konishi Yasuharu (小西康陽), at the apex of his imperial period, began spreading himself further and further afield, working in various genres and sowing the seeds for what would eventually become his own label, Readymade Records, which he launched in 1997.

I'm going to explore some of his other works, many of which have been lost to time and lack of translation, both into English and digital formats. As so much of this music only ever existed on CD—and was only ever packaged in Japanese text—it's difficult to track down, let alone be aware of. The man was obscenely prolific, however, and I'd like to spend a little time shining light on the efforts he made outside of his flagship project, Pizzicato Five (ピチカート・ファイヴ, P5).

And we shall begin with T.V. Jesus, a duo comprised of Masumi Arichika (有近真澄) and Rieko Teramoto (寺本りえ子).

If P5 was primarily an exploration of the past through jazzy pop, Burt Bacharach ballads, space-age lounge, rendered in polarly-opposed palettes—soft pastels, gentle and intimate, or bright neons, biting and intense—then T.V. Jesus was the same journey, but with fuzzier and greasier guitars and live drums, a glam-rock corollary to Konishi and Maki Nomiya's (野宮真貴) union.

Arichika first worked with Yasuharu on a solo album, one of his earliest, Menoto (女の都—City of Women), which was released in 1994, and it's my suspicion that this collaboration led to Konishi's efforts with T.V. Jesus. (That album was lovely, though I cannot find a single blip that's publicly online. It's similar to the previous LP, TRUEBLUE, in that it's all breakbeat and trip-hop beats, but with Yasuharu on production, a smoother side is revealed, like a Joe Jackson album reimagined with drum machines.)

Rieko, on the other hand, was recording solo as Transistor Glamour (トランジスタ・グラマー), the name of an old Sony portable radio. (And not to be confused with a duo of the same name.)

Her music had heart and charm, despite sometimes sounding as if it came off a J-pop assembly line, essentially karaoke backing tracks (lively and unusual as they may have been) with vocals laid atop. Tracks like "Fantasy" (「ファンタジー」) indicate such promise—a talented singer with a supple, calm voice, water through fine cloth.

Trembling Blue Stars

nik.mercer@gmail.com (Nik Mercer) — Wed, 15 Dec 2021 21:03:00 -0800

Robert Wratten was a heartbroken guy.

For a few years, in the late 80s, early 90s, he was in the Field Mice, the beloved jangle-pop outfit signed to Sarah Records. When they fell apart, Wratten and his girlfriend and bandmate, Annemari Davies, formed Northern Picture Library, and continued to write rather melancholic songs, but with a certain duskiness and lonely chill rather than the peppy twitchiness and innocent twinkle from before. (Their first LP, Alaska, is very good.)

Northern Picture Library ended when Wratten and Davies split, and thus Trembling Blue Stars was born. (I see your breakup album and raise you a breakup band!)

The first album, Her Handwriting, is a monument for the forlorn, the devastated, sometimes in an uncomfortable way. Admittedly, many of the musicians from this era, from this general grouping, were rather downcast, dark, and meek, but what Wratten made stands apart, perhaps because it's boldly... adult, not concerned with obscuring its vulnerability. And he seemed keen to revel in his smooth craftsmanship, his adept songwriting. There's a maturity, conflicted, pained as it is, that beckons through a confident voice and a tender humanity. I find these records moving, particularly with songs like "The Rainbow," a sweet trip-hop song that poignantly features—and celebrates—Davies.

The Honeymoon Killers

nik.mercer@gmail.com (Nik Mercer) — Mon, 8 Nov 2021 16:29:00 -0800

This Belgian band accompanied me on an unhurried drive over the wiggly, downhill roads that split La Cañada and Pasadena the other day, and it reminded me I've been meaning to write something about them for some time.

A rather unusual group, formed in the early 70s, with an energy and humor that's reminiscent of the Rezillos', which is to say the blitzkrieg punk of the moment chopped up with various retro throwbacks. In the case of the Killers, it's more chanson and free jazz than rockabilly and Detroit garage, but both share a colorful zaniness.

In 1980, Véronique Vincent joined, and her presence brought a calm and elegance to the bracing, biting punch that defined them. They managed to get a few records out, including an album that's a real zippy and zesty delight, then broke up in '85. However, they did record another LP, which they eventually finished in 2014. Credited to Véronique Vincent & Aksak Maboul (Aksak Maboul being a group two of the men in the killer had), it's titled Ex-Futur Album, and it's a very good record as well, with Vincent channeling a sort of late-night and subdued Lizzy Mercier Descloux.

Nelories

nik.mercer@gmail.com (Nik Mercer) — Mon, 11 Oct 2021 19:53:00 -0700

Two Japanese ladies, who look like they could be sisters, one accordion, a bag of campy lyrics, and an orchestra comprised of canned horns and soft strings for the backing band—would you believe their one and only U.S. release arrived through They Might Be Giants' John Flansburgh's Hello Recording Club?

An ebullient zip through an alternative timeline, where Shonen Knife is committed to doo-wop and rockabilly, and kitted out in poodle skirts and kitten heels.

The Cannanes

nik.mercer@gmail.com (Nik Mercer) — Wed, 29 Sep 2021 22:15:00 -0700

A return to Australia, eh.

At least through the 80s, when they started, calling this ragtag assembly of Sydney folks a band would be generous; their namesake bassist, Michelle Cannane, left shortly after they stumbled into a studio, and all other personnel either wandered in or out a couple times, or overslept and missed a gig, at least once, it seems.

And it shows, particularly on the debut album, A Love Affair with Nature, which sounds like an admittance they'd rather be laid out in a field, grass tickling their faces. It's messy and meandering, unstructured and always out of breath from trying to catch up with itself.

And yet! It is quite a delight. The Go-Betweens if they'd be fronted by Mo Tucker on her sleepiest of Sundays. Lyrically, full of emotion and this sassy irony—a fizzy blend, particularly when it's muffled-under-the-duvet bedroom pop, fried-with-the-curling-iron lo-fi.

(Bonus: As a Unicorns diehard, I can't help but sense a strong cosmic bond here, especially on songs like certain ones Alden Penner recorded when he peeled off from the band—in Australia.)

BBBD JP Playlist

nik.mercer@gmail.com (Nik Mercer) — Wed, 22 Sep 2021 13:49:00 -0700

I have an... intimate relationship with Japanese music.

For as long as I can remember, music from the Land of the Rising Sun has been my North Star: while perhaps not always in heavy rotation, it's always on my mind, and what I've learned and picked up through it functions as a sort of Rosetta stone; most of my other musical interests, ambitions, passions can be explained and understood through my connection to Japanese music. Particularly Japanese music that's from the 90s, that's a little askew of the mainstream, a little indie or alternative or left-field or out-there.

Disappointingly, because of, I presume, language barriers, contractual chaos, and plain ol' indifference, much of my personal collection, which I've been amassing for—gulp—twenty-plus years is not on Spotify. Granted, this helps preserve some of the mystique and curiosity that exists around it—in the everything's-always-available world we live in, it's nice to know some stuff is not within arm's reach—but, overall, it's a shame. A whole cosmos of music out there that one can't access.

(The above really only applies to Spotify in the U.S., which has, counterintuitively, a smaller catalog than other nations. I wouldn't be surprised if it's actually the smallest one of them all.)

Rather than continue to mope about this, though, I started maintaining a playlist that collects the best of what I know, love, adore. For the past few months, I've been painstakingly compiling this music. Many of these artists have slipped in through pre-DSP mixes, their legal gray zone in my favor. Many of these artists have a mere handful of pieces up. Many of these artists are only searchable through Japanese-language queries; the Latin alphabet will get you nowhere.

I updated it again, and I thought I'd finally take this opportunity to share it on BBBD. If you're apprehensive and daunted, begin with the final seventy or so tracks—that's the crash course and the beginning of the journey.

Parsley Sound, "Twilight Mushrooms"

nik.mercer@gmail.com (Nik Mercer) — Thu, 9 Sep 2021 18:21:00 -0700

A bit of an oddity for their label, Mo Wax, Parsley Sound was, at their most effective, a bit of dreamy indie-pop coming from a downtempo production approach. Sweet and gentle, a little twee, heavily filtered and electrified, despite pursuing a color palette that's au naturel, creaky, sun-bleached.

Perhaps this is what would've happened if Lemon Jelly had gotten Elliott Smith in the studio.

Mick Ronson, "Growing Up and I'm Fine"

nik.mercer@gmail.com (Nik Mercer) — Tue, 10 Aug 2021 14:41:00 -0700

One of the Spiders from Mars, Mick Ronson would undoubtedly be bigger—or at least still working, up to album number seventy—had he not died in 1993, only 46 years old.

Through the 60s, he started and was in a number of bands, including the Rats, a psych unit with a heavy and somewhat baroque, arty presence, smarter than contemporaries.

Eventually, he found his way to David Bowie, who, in 1970, was getting assembling a group called the Hype. The band eventually became Bowie's backing outfit, though only after breaking off from Ziggy Stardust, getting signed, and renaming as Ronno.

He stayed with Bowie, mostly as his lead guitarist and a strings arranger, and also began working with others, like Mott the Hoople and Lou Reed. Once he started recording on his own, he intersected with Ian Hunter, and thus began the final chapter of his career, toggling between his own macho glam ambitions (think Todd Rundgren with less of the elfish slouch and woo-woo gentleness, and a heaping spoonful of brawn), power-pop studio jobs, and hired-gun positions in touring ensembles, like Bob Dylan's Rolling Thunder Revue.

Bowie described him beautifully: "Mick was the perfect foil for the Ziggy character. He was very much a salt-of-the-earth type, the blunt northerner with a defiantly masculine personality, so that what you got was the old-fashioned yin and yang thing. As a rock duo, I thought we were every bit as good as Mick and Keith or Axl and Slash. Ziggy and Mick were the personification of that rock 'n' roll dualism."

Tot Taylor

nik.mercer@gmail.com (Nik Mercer) — Tue, 13 Jul 2021 17:47:00 -0700

When I chance upon an artist who simply defies search queries—Google doesn't know, YouTube doesn't know, Spotify doesn't know—I'm reminded of the thrill that discovery on the internet used to be, when it was more of a crate-digging-in-a-musty-basement experience rather than, well, shopping on Amazon.

In the case of Tot Taylor, today's subject, I wonder if some of the invisibility is by design, done with deliberation; he is... around... and his new material gets hits, so the fact it's specifically old—70s, 80s—stuff that leaves the bots scratching their heads makes me wonder if he's done some erasing on his own.

No matter. Bits are hard to vanquish entirely.

A very compelling character from Cambridge, who introduced himself to the world as part of a power-pop quartet called Advertising. Their one and only LP was 1977's Advertising Jingles. A cheeky lot.

I imagine them being bucketed with other good, clean fun post-punk new wavers, like Elvis Costello and Robyn Hitchcock, but they had more mischievousness, more twitchiness (that Buzzcocks bite), and more glammy musicality than those folks. This strikes me as being inspired first by ELO, the Move, Be Bop Deluxe.

Once they split, Taylor went off on his own, reimagining himself as a sort of clown prince of the lounge lizards. More piano-rooted music, more big-band instrumentation, more string orchestration, more jazzy crooning.

He also did a fair amount of stage work and scoring, both for actual productions and make-believe ones.

The Groovy Little Numbers, "A Place So Hard to Find"

nik.mercer@gmail.com (Nik Mercer) — Mon, 28 Jun 2021 19:15:00 -0700

Always a sucker for late-80s pogo-stick guitar pop from Scotland, I cannot resist the Groovy Little Numbers, yet another late-80s pogo-stick guitar-pop outfit from Scotland.

They're noteworthy—or at least more of a curiosity than others—and differentiated from contemporaries in a few ways, however. Lead vocals were often shared by Catherine Steven and Joe McAlinden, who started the band and seem to be considered the only core members, and this boy-girl tag-team adds a twist the Pooh Sticks, Close Lobsters, the Soup Dragons, the Hepburns, and most the rest in the scene didn't have.

Additionally, while trumpets were certainly a feature of the post-Postcard Scotish sound, the way these guys laid it in was gentler, sweeter. Generally, they were gentler, sweeter, more reserved Burt Bacharach than twitchy Violent Femmes.

As you might expect, this two-singles group was a sort of power-pop incubator for at least a couple of those involved: McAlinden started Superstar and was in BMX Bandits; Gerard Love got in with Teenage Fanclub at the onset.

Bad Dream Fancy Dress

nik.mercer@gmail.com (Nik Mercer) — Wed, 16 Jun 2021 18:32:00 -0700

What a name.

Cally Davis and Catrin Rees called él Records home and its proprietor, UK indie-pop patron saint Mike Alway, their lodestar. Though they didn't make what you'd expect, exactly, if you're familiar with the él catalog, both before and after it was absorbed into the Cherry Red empire. Sure, it's jangly guitar pop with a twee twinkle and primitive production qualities, but these two women had a deranged Rezillos bite and a whimsical songwriting style that's more Todd Rundgren than Morrissey.

The 80s work was produced by another mad hatter from the scene, the King of Luxembourg. It shows: this is campy and yet stylish, absurd and yet sophisticated, albeit in a taking-the-piss, satirical manner.

Valérie Lemercier, "95C"

nik.mercer@gmail.com (Nik Mercer) — Tue, 25 May 2021 20:52:00 -0700

A record that has been on repeat as of late, perhaps in part because of my obsessive reimmersion into Shibuya-kei. (If you missed the big playlist I began, check it out.) Reconnecting with it deeply, thoughtfully, and from the perspective of me as I am today as opposed to through a desire to, frankly, wrap myself in warm, fuzzy nostalgia, has unlocked new respect and reverence. Its whimsical expressiveness and lightning-bolt vigor and costume-party playfulness come from, yes, overstimulated and itchy brains, fidgety crate-digger fingers, but, more importantly, from curious hearts that want to simply celebrate life. Thus, while it's artificially about a sort of cosplay, it's a sincere, pure body of work, and that's what makes it so remarkably special.

But Valérie Lemercier isn't Japanese—she's French. Were I also French, I'd likely be well familiar with her by now; she was first an actress, and she remains one to this day, and it's that career for which she is perhaps best known. (I only know her face through a small role in Sabrina.)

In the 90s, she recorded some lively, animated music, both Gen X space-age retrofuturistic kitsch and classicism chanson and yé-yé. The album is bright, saturated with fruitiness and jazzy spunk. A real treat. And, evidently, Pizzicato Five was rather infatuated with her. She and Maki Nomiya (野宮真貴) even were matched together for a feature in H magazine in '96, in fact.

Scars

nik.mercer@gmail.com (Nik Mercer) — Wed, 5 May 2021 18:03:00 -0700

With bands like Scars, I'm reminded of how pop music, Top 40 and underground alike, and regardless of genre, is all about flavor-of-the-month trends. As with everything else available in our capitalist marketplace, we must create an abundance of choice and maintain a level of homogeneity while simultaneously seeking out first-, second-, and third-place winners in order to maintain focus and inertia. As the rewards for the winners are high, there's incentive to throw one's hat in the ring, despite the fact the odds of success—and sustained success—are minuscule. And you only have one shot; five years or so is the average lifespan of a band, and those that exist longer will never be cool in the most valuable way—via novelty—again.

I'm not cynical at all!

Scars' Magic 8-Ball was certainly in their court: they were part of the art-punk scene in Edinburgh, Scotland, rubbing shoulders with Postcard and Fast Product groups, and benefitting from the roads the elder acts had paved. They played with Fire Enginers, which, while definitely not a big deal these days, does linger around, through reissues and nods from dance-punk stalwarts, the Rapture and Franz Ferdinand being most prominent. And, additionally, "Your Attention Please," a track from their debut single, was included as a gold flexi in the first issue of i-D. Can't get any more hip than that.

Perhaps internal conflict led to a speedy breakup, but I'd like to think they quickly read the tea leaves and quickly figured it wasn't worth it. They existed in a funky sort of netherregion that almost feels as though it was settled on through democratic negotiation. The guitars are shiny, wet, brittle—Modern English without the handclaps and made-for-karaoke choruses. The drumming is often a spot-on impression of Siouxsie and the Banshees' Budgie or early Monochrome Set—propulsive, aggressive, precise, and yet somehow playful. And, at moments, especially with the slower tunes, they pull off a perfect Cure impression, dirgey bass chuggers that buzzsaw rhythm guitars lift.

Abundance of choice!