30 Days in 60 Minutes: February 2013
Featuring Mount Moriah, the Besnard Lakes, Akron/Family and The Future Sounds of Copium-Core
Going out on a limb here with the first paid subscriber-only post - I’m humbled by every email I get from Substack saying that someone, anyone, signed up. Realize I’m a few days late with this (gonna only post mixes in the months they were made), it’s still a process trying to figure out formats that work, but I wanted to focus on this time period because it truly brings me back to where my tastes were at right before I was put onto what was happening in the Emo Revival Extended Universe. I bet Steve reviewed a lot of these albums.
Mount Moriah - “Younger Days”
I’ve lived in enough southern college towns to understand why I still fantasize about, I dunno, Ole Miss or Appalachian State offering me like 80% of my current salary to start up an eating disorder treatment center on campus; I suppose it’s some real monkey’s paw shit that I actually do live in a college town, albeit it’s the San Diego State campus five minutes from where I live. The charm of such places feel self-evident, in that they offer the best things about that region (lower cost of living, chill pace of life, proximity to fun food, the possibility of actually having a front yard, a social scene that revolves almost entirely around college football) in a bubble that perpetually cycles out the young and idealistic and everyone else either works at the university, a hospital or are some kind of rich weirdo. Of course, during my time in Charlottesville, Athens and Lexington, my residency had a natural expiration date, so I never really got to experience true townie-dom, or come to terms with how these places always rank super high in Best Places to Live surveys because of microbreweries and hiking trails and good schools, stuff which I have no interest in whatsoever.
But every now and again, I’ll hear an alt-country song that speaks to this very 20-something dream, because what’s more “duality of the Southern college town thing” than alt-country, full of regional signifiers, but with an option to opt out of all that at a moment’s notice. Songs like this one - “You know who's in town now, and we got a round on my tab/Big city lights really got to be a drag/August is over, so when are you coming back” - that remind me of all the times at $2 pitcher night that my friends and I swore we’d buy land together in Crozet or something and it seemed like a good idea.
Foxygen - “San Francisco”
I reserve the right to make fun of every music writer who spends the first paragraph describing, in great detail, the salad their interview subject ordered…that said, I can’t help but be a little envious, since moving to San Diego, and then going through the pandemic, has all but eliminated my ability to do in-person interviews. And sometimes, those details are necessary! For example, I interviewed Foxygen and this bit seemed pretty important at the time:
The classic-rock-worshipping record is a far cry from the "sped-up voices and farts"-filled songs they were making as teenagers, even if their current meal of coffee and pickles suggests their eating habits haven't changed much since then.
This is the sort of thing you’d expect from a couple of musicians who showed up to their interview visibly booted - upon re-reading this piece, they asked for a hug when we were finished, maybe because I let slip the fact that they were several hours away from getting Best New Music.
Even if they were very charming at that point, it was pretty clear that things weren’t going to end well with Foxygen, and they very much did not. Still, whether it’s due to the ongoing it-producer status of Jonathan Rado or the Lemon Twigs successfully running with Foxygen’s whole shtick, I dare to say that We Are the 21st Century Ambassadors of Peace & Magic hasn’t been totally relegated to “private listening” only status. It’s impossible to remember the mumblecore mid-2010s without “Shuggie” or “No Destruction” or especially this song.
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