‘Tis the season to share end of year lists. There’s plenty of lists to chose from, so rather than adding to the list of lists for 2018, over the next week PopLib will suggest some essential releases to explore and hopefully purchase or send to friends as gifts. So here we go…
One essential 12″ EP every home should have this year is Negative Nancies’ “You Do You” on 12″ EP from the ever-adventurous CocoMuse Releases, or as a digital download via their bandcamp.
“You Do You” is a disturbingly brilliant collection of music, in the form of a debut EP from “Dunedin’s finest anxious polka-punk, Alt-fizz, subgressive fun-time fantasiangst” trio. There’s only 6 songs but those 6 songs are as baffling and wonderful as anything I’ve heard in my lifetime of listening to and wondering about baffling and wonderful music. Fire Engines, Amos and Sara, And The Native Hipsters, all come to mind as baffling and wonderful music makers I’ve enjoyed, and right now I’m enjoying Negative Nancies debut EP as much as anything I’ve enjoyed by those artists.
“You Do You” starts with “The Dogs” which begins with the repetition of “the dogs, the dogs, the dogs…” for quite a while before the music kicks in. It’s slow and sombre at first, full of ominous feedback and distortion. Then, out of nowhere comes a great melodic tune incongruously teleported in from some 1960s girl group chart pop hit. The way it seamlessly layers over the heaving noisy drone of the song is pure genius.
“G.O.S.T.” is next. If you don’t really appreciate songs with gleeful singalongs like “we’re going to get our shit together, we’re gonna get our shit in a great big pile, we’re gonna get our shit together, you’re gonna smell our shit from a mile, from a mile, from a fucking mile” then this may not be the release for you or your loved ones to spend Christmas with. However, I find something deeply cathartic about singing along to that, loudly and often at this time of year.
“Candy Milk” is the radio friendly pop single on the EP, the kind of song which would have been a fixture on John Peel’s radio show had it arrived on earth during his DJ tenure on BBC Radio 1 in the UK. It is ridiculously catchy pop, alternating singalong candy-pop punk with grainy computer game cascading keyboard volleys and a bit of low-key psych weirdness to leaven the song’s lurching see-sawing ride.
On side two “Jeden Dwa” starts with what may be a Polish folk song, then the grainy crushing feedback noise and drum beats kick in, while voices sing and mumble indecipherable phrases like some kind of a ritualistic incantation attempting to exorcise evil spirits but only succeeding in coaxing even more howls of unholy feedback from the possessed sound equipment.
“I Wish” is a further variation in this ever-changing world, alternating between a plaintive desire to remedy unconscious repetitive behavior (“I wish, I wish, I didn’t grind my teeth at night/ I wish, I wish, I didn’t hold my jaw so tight”) set over a galloping whip-crack beat and a rapid spiraling descent into a deeply weird nightmare of distorted keyboards, feedback bass and a cauldron of swirling voices. This kind of dreams-into-nightmares weirdness is prime Residents territory, but I prefer Negative Nancies natural noisy exploration and gleeful expression which sounds genuine rather than an arch art project.
“Fun Fun Fun” concludes this exploration of noise and melody with a short and simple self-explanatory song which builds up a head of steam and screams to an abrupt stop. Can’t be having too much fun, fun, fun, right? It’s all (this song, the whole EP) too short really, but also the perfect length to play it twice each time you listen to it.
These are six exhilarating, brilliant, perplexing, provocative, melodic and hugely enjoyable songs, each with a heart of twisted, mutant, wild-yeast-fermented pop. “You Do You” seems to exist in it’s own little universe, sounding like pretty much nothing else happening in Dunedin or in New Zealand at the moment. It is PopLib’s EP of the year, against intense competition from the skewed pop brilliance of Glasgow’s Hairband who released their debut EP on the label of Glasgow record shop Monorail Music.
Pop Lib 