SWEEP FREQUENCY #418: No Neutrals
New tunes by Radio Free Alice, CJ Wiley, Kilo Kish, Hank, Lullahush, and more...
OPENING RIFF: "My arguments against self-care, which once felt so watertight, were splintering, leaking. I'd used my small austerities as an ethical stance, feeling I could at least show I was better than the frivolous, basic, and checked out--a weak gazelle worried about not being dead last in the pack." Ryan Lee Wong, Which Side Are You On
SMALL TALK: It feels like a strange time to be reading Ryan Lee Wong's debut novel. At a time when more and more people are despondent over how little protest there is during Trump's second term, how quickly we're tuning out, it feels like the very recent history of Which Side Are You On comes from an alternate reality. Telling the story of a young, radicalized college student coming home to reckon with his own future and the activist past of his parents, there are endless references to the overthought politics of Twitter's peak years, to protest and vigilance in a way that has, simply put, come to a grinding halt in the past few months. Something about the dilemma at the heart, though, does feel quite relevant: how to preserve yourself during burnout, how to shift the goal posts of what makes activism successful, and how to deal with the fact that we're bound to lose over and over again. There's a push-pull relationship between youthful idealism and wanting a better world for the family you inevitably start, where the lines between compromise and reinvention often blur. Wong's ideas here are dense, embarrassingly familiar to the extremely online, and somehow still a breeze to read. While I could do without what seems to be a very contemporary problem of Los Angeles novels over-explaining their city's history and politics like it's another planet, there's something like hope for a way forward worth clinging to during Which Side Are You On. Beyond that, I was saddened to learn that George Lowe, the voice of Space Ghost, passed away this week. Like a lot of people close to my age, Space Ghost Coast to Coast really informed my sense of humor even if a lot of it flew over my head after discovering it past my bedtime on Cartoon Network. I spent some of my Mardi Gras hangover rewatching some favorite episodes, and it's a damn shame that they're not even legally streaming anymore. 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. RADIO FREE ALICE - "EMPTY WORDS": There's a ton of buzz behind Australia's Radio Free Alice, and the band's newest track shows how poised they are to deliver. At a time when we're starting to feel the futility of social media activism, "Empty Words" feels like a perfect takedown of the idea, but the music itself is the main draw here: something that feels like a throwback to the best of '00s indie rock while feeling distinctly borne out of this urgent moment in time, all jagged post-punk guitars and yowling cries.
2. CJ WILEY - "PEOPLE PLEASE": Despite the chill sounds backing it, the newest tune from CJ Wiley takes direct aim at how much we should expect from our music stars. Over a reverb-laden strum, "People Please" is tinged with the bitterness that can only come with surviving the way music executives try to mold one's music, and Wiley's mournful pleas feel extremely earned here.
3. KILO KISH - "REPROGRAM": It's been a few years since we've gotten a release from Kilo Kish, but the fellow Pratt alum did appear on my favorite hip-hop track of 2024, and now she's properly back with a new EP on the way. "reprogram" has some extremely sick drum beats, soaring strings, and the signature line delivery that has made Kish such an alluring vocalist for so long.
4. HANK - "STAND ON YR STAR": The hard-to-Google band known as Hank have really impressed me with each tune they've put out, and "Stand on Yr Star" continues that tradition. Starting out in hushed fashion, this tune lulls you before getting your adrenaline going, with both singers using droll delivery in turn while switching between shredding distortion and acoustic strums.
5. LULLAHUSH - "MAGGIE NAH BHFLAITHEAS": This will probably be the most unique tune you hear today courtesy of Athens-via-Dublin's lullahush. With a blend of traditional Irish folk and left-field electronica, "Maggie na bhFlaitheas" brings as much traditional flute as it does slick bass lines, yet another bubbling moment in the era of Ireland’s cultural takeover.
PARTING SHOTS: The Democrats have no fucking clue how to actually fight back against Trump, with the State of the Union being the most damning evidence yet. It's probably worthwhile to wonder if there could be some future correlation between federal workers getting laid-off en masse and the cult of Luigi Mangione. The Tournament of Books is officially underway. The new Panda Bear album is extremely good, so I appreciated this rare, in-depth profile of Noah Lennox. Mardi Gras is over and I'm still recovering, but even if you don't live in New Orleans you should still smile at a CyberTruck getting booed relentlessly during a parade on Monday.
ENCORE: "RUNNING AWAY"