SWEEP FREQUENCY #414: Brain Freeze
New tunes from Marseille, Gnarcissists, Vv Pete, Momma, Chaos in the CBD, and more...
OPENING RIFF: "It's somehow more comforting to imagine that one's suffering is unique, and to measure against what one doesn't know, rather than against what one does." -- Chris Ware, Building Stories
SMALL TALK: I've written at length about my love of a certain type of Swedish indie pop in the past, but I didn't say much about one of that micro-genre's pillars because their landmark release was lost to the sands of time in the streaming age… until now. This past Friday marked the first official release of Studio's West Coast for streaming alongside a very cool set of physical reissues (mini-disc, even!), and I spent a lot of the past week obsessively listening to this record again. While I've always felt like this era of music from Gothenburg was defined by its dreaminess, West Coast always offered a quite different variation on it compared to the other acts of the time. There's a certain precision, a certain dose of wiggly experimentation that was hard to pin down, and harder still to recreate. There are hints of prog, Kraut-rock, disco, and more beneath a vibe that can put a listener in a trance, and I'm excited for a new generation of music nerds to find out about it. Beyond that, I braved my favorite local movie theater to catch a screening of The Brutalist, a film that seems to have built its reputation on being intimidating and long more than anything related to the film itself. While I expected something more abstract and grandiose, what I found instead was a fully engaging, relatively easy to digest meditation on the way capital compromises art no matter how much we try to shield ourselves from its pressing grasp. It's lacking the masterful intangibles that often push a film from good to great, but I have to say that I'm glad I got to witness an actual mid-film intermission for the first time, and that alone makes for a cool experience. Let's get to this week's new music.
Nearly Every Song From Every 2025 Newsletter Will Be Available in Playlist Form: SPOTIFY | APPLE MUSIC
1. MARSEILLE - "HISTORY": Despite the name, the teens making up the band Marseille hail from Derbyshire, and they're quickly becoming an exciting name to watch. The appropriately named "History" seems like it blends so much of the past and present of UK's indie pop and rock pedigree into one beautifully crafted sound, all with the sort of nervous, yearning swagger of youth that can make something feel entirely and urgently its own thing.
2. GNARCISSISTS - "BROADWAY BABY": For all of the talk about the next wave of New York bands, few seem to evoke the city in that grimy, old school way people are clamoring for, but the punks in Gnarcissists deliver here. Playing on the dumb idea known as the Cop Shot Program, "Broadway Baby" is a furious, scuzzy rocker that will make you feel like racing to the Lower East Side to down some cheap ass beer.
3. VV PETE FEAT. UTILITY & FORMATION BOYZ - "WASSA": You don't hear too much about Australian hip-hop, but Vv Pete's globe-trotting, clubby take is something you didn't know you needed in your life. With UTILITY and Formation Boyz in tow, "Wassa" is bound to get your heart rate up, and Vv Pete's impeccable flow makes everything even better.
4. MOMMA - "I WANT YOU (FEVER)": In a lot of ways, Momma were ahead of the curve as everyone started developing a newfound appetite for shoegaze a few years after their debut album. Because of that, they've also had time to hone their sound to be even tighter and better than a lot of the acts that have come after, something you can hear in the triumphant moments of "I Want You (Fever)," a jam that feels like it's a stadium-ready dose of distortion.
5. CHAOS IN THE CBD FEAT. NATHAN HAINES - "LOVE LANGUAGE": Despite making smooth house, jazzy jams for quite a while now, I was surprised to learn that Chaos in the CBD are just now getting ready to release their debut album. You can hear that patience and dedication to their craft on lead single "Love Language," a funky tune that features a killer dose of saxophone from Nathan Haines.
PARTING SHOTS: The way that what’s left of the media (mis)reported the attempted federal hiring freeze is just as worrying as the attempt itself. You've probably seen a link or two about all those new young alt-right people partying in DC, but the main takeaway should be that we need to get off the Internet as a form of resistance. Speaking of which, Today in Tabs wrote a nice piece about how simply joining something, anything, that's social is a form of solidarity in these isolating times while working through post-2016 DSA burnout. I highlighted Peter Hujar's Day in a recent newsletter and I was shocked to discover that it's been made into a film starring Ben "Paddington" Whishaw. Speaking of adaptations, my mind is blown hearing that the next Paul Thomas Anderson film is officially a modern adaptation of Vineland.
ENCORE: "LIFE'S A BEACH"