The Singles Jukebox

Ian brings us some British-French post-punk with no Indiana involvement…

[Video]
[7.40]

Ian Mathers: I don’t remember what the song was, but I still remember the feeling the first time I encountered music that didn’t immediately make sense to me. This isn’t quite the same thing as music I find disappointing or lacklustre at first but grow to love — a category that contains an awful lot of my favourite music, and is an endlessly renewable resource. But up until that point everything I had run into was something I immediately either liked or disliked (yr boy was a big fan of “Never Gonna Give You Up” when it was originally a hit, if that helps date me), and to hear something that was somehow neither was profoundly disturbing. As I got older and more into music, finding something that truly doesn’t make sense at first has become rarer and rarer. More things get adopted into your repertoire, you have more context, and often you realize that stuff that bent your brain in your own history had plenty of antecedents that make them less singular. And that feeling… that little shock of non-recognition when you’re used to recognizing so much, that little moment of “why or how did someone come up with this?” that sparks across your brain… it’s like hearing about a new country when you thought you knew all of them. It’s a reminder that life never settles into a comfortable box. None of the elements that Mandy, Indiana use to make their music are particularly confusing to me (hell, I even took French all through high school). But the first time I played i’ve seen a way, I had that feeling. These didn’t feel like songs. They had elements of songs. Some like “Pinking Shears” even had choruses, relatable sentiments (who isn’t tired?). They had sounds and structures I was broadly familiar with. But something about the way each track, and the album as a whole, was put together made me feel like my brain was degaussed. I spent maybe my first four listens in a rapturous quasi-panic, for the first time in years not being able to respond to a piece of music in the ways I was used to responding. I’m sure when that happens to anyone, it’s not 100% inherent to the music itself. There may have been other bands who could have done this to me if the phase of the moon or my choice of lunch that day had been just right. But it felt rare and precious when I got that experience from Mandy, Indiana. And then, a second miracle: as I kept listening, “Pinking Shears” and the rest of i’ve seen a way resolved in my ears into just songs, the way these things always do (since it’s hard to repeatedly experience the shock of the new from the same thing). And it turned out those songs were really really great.
[10]

Vikram Joseph: This is so strange and addictive – a righteous French diatribe about racist border policies over a rhythmic racket and stomach-churning synths that sound like a cow in distress. From Brooklyn Vegan’s English translation: “Those we bombard are told to fuck off / and then we elect bankers / and posh assholes and rentiers / and we are surprised to get fucked.” I mean, yeah. Imagine how fatigué we are. Imagine how fatigué we are of it.
[8]

Tim de Reuse: What’s it take to go industrial in an age of digital purity? Chase the feeling of grimy misanthropy without actually getting any dirt under your fingernails. Meticulously ugly, to distract you from how it’s actually neat and tidy. Check out the perfect knife’s edge of that snare drum; check out the huge, reflective metallic object that passes for a bassline; check out the clean, papery reverb. I’d criticize it for being inauthentic if it wasn’t so much more fun than the things it’s ripping off.
[8]

Joshua Minsoo Kim: Nestling its way into a sound between Filth-era Swans and the EBM of the same decade (Severed Heads, Front 242, Nitzer Ebb), “Pinking Shears” aims for a raw, cavernous sound that’s more hollow than all-consuming. The playful French vocals provide an amusing contrast to all the whirring, but that’s sort of it. Big synth bass, big crunch, big yawn.
[5]

Micha Cavaseno: Vaguely answering a question nobody asked, which is “What if Liars were signed to Amphetamine Reptile or Skin Graft?”. It’s got one point, and it delivers it in perhaps the most cast-off gag and splutter of a way, before hurrying along with its day and avoiding trying to remember what color and texture of its release it was, but never quite getting rid of the taste for the next couple days. Love the clutter of the percussion sounding like a rude joke at a dance’s expense, pushed aside by a belch of bullying rock. How rude.
[7]

Taylor Alatorre: I always sorta felt that the world needed a Kidz Bop version of Einstürzende Neubauten.
[7]

Hannah Jocelyn: I’m sorry, that percussion riff sounds like “Crack a Bottle,” the vocals sound like The Google Translate Song, I can’t take this seriously. That said,
[6]

Oliver Maier: This is my “just say you hate fun”.
[8]

Jacob Sujin Kuppermann: Genuinely a bad and unpleasant time in the way that most latter-generation “post punk” can only feint at. Feels much longer than 2.5 minutes, but not tediously so — each moment of this drags you down into itself, each metallic hi-hat snap and guitar scratch a barb into exposed skin.
[8]

Nortey Dowuona: Simon Catling’s humming bassline shows up halfway through the song over Isaac Jones’ drums, with jagged shards of guitar by Scott Fair slunk in at each interval at the end of Valentina Caulfield’s chorus, punctuating them with a phlegmy shriek. Caulfield’s vocals at first feel like a representation of politesse but gain an edge of menace over the crashing of the percussion. The bass presses the guitar into the margins allowing Caulfield to fill up the middle of the mix, repeating the refrain.
[6]

Michael Hong: I like when that beefy fart of a bassline arrives, a really nice rejoinder for the rattling voices in your head.
[6]

Brad Shoup: I love when post-punkers stomp, when they strip it down to a megalithic groove. All kinds of stuff on the ground can stick to it. The first half feels like a (bear with me) minimal, metallic go-go take on Cop Shoot Cop’s “$10 Bill”. To reach the more trad second half, they catapult in some streaks of noise. (This transitional part, and I take far more pleasure in hearing than saying this, sounds like “Come With Me” from the 1998 Godzilla soundtrack.) But that recedes, and Valentine Caulfield reveals the song’s final form: protest rap. A [7] for the journey.
[7]

Wayne Weizhen Zhang: You don’t need to be francophone in order to understand Mandy, Indiana’s vitriol and rage. But the lyrics are worth dissecting: “Nothing makes me want to continue in the filth of our society/I don’t have have any desire to wake up when we let humans die in the Mediterranean.” This is a tirade about how we treat refugees, and the existential exhaustion that comes from living in a world where this feels normal. 
[7]

Katherine St Asaph: For months I assumed based on the name that Mandy, Indiana was an emo band. If I had known they would instead be spoken-word French over a harsh but oddly unchaotic post-punk dervish, I might have listened to the album earlier than Q4. Assumptions foil me again!
[9]

Aaron Bergstrom: I did not expect the revolution to be this much fun. Embrace the chaos. Build a new world from the ashes of the old. Dance on the barricades.
[9]

Claire Biddles: My face is just gasping_pikachu.jpeg the whole way through this — yes!!!
[9]

Michelle Myers: Mandy, Indiana’s music makes me feel like I’m wearing a perfectly worn-in leather jacket and red lipstick that never smears, waiting in line to get into a club that I already know I’m not cool enough to get into.
[6]

Kat Stevens: I’m glad there’ll always be people making music that sitcom teenagers can slam their bedroom doors and stick on at high volume, to the despair of their parents. “Where did we go wrong, Adam?” “I don’t know Helen, our sweet girl… it’s like I don’t even know her anymore. Were we too indulgent? Too strict?” “Well Adam, in retrospect maybe constantly playing The Downward Spiral to get her off to sleep while she was a baby wasn’t the best idea.“
[7]

Alfred Soto: To play loudly and indiscriminately when holiday twaddle begins to choke you.
[7]

Anna Katrina Lockwood: I am so tired, yet I cannot sleep. 
[8]