Can I say something? Can I say something without everyone jumping in to praise me for my bravery and independence of thought? Right, here goes. I really hate the Spotify algorithm. Their suggestions are trash, and they have no idea how different styles of music and artists are actually connected. At this point, just playing something at random would be an improvement over their machine-generated guesses as to what would be appropriate in sequence. So here's the scene: I'm busy, I have music on, I'm listening to an A Giant Dog album (Pile, to be exact). The album ends, and it starts autoplaying just... whatever-Alvvays, Diet Cig, Lucy Dacus... and I kind of get it from a robot's perspective: distorted guitars, lo-fi-ish production, former "indie" rock stars retired to the big farm of major labeldom- Oh, and there is a female singer, so that means they all get to live in the pink aisle of the algorithm, only the aisle has A24 lighting so it's a little less patronizing, right? Wrong. None of these people have anything to do with each other, and they sound nothing alike. You can't just mash together Obama-era dream pop, tender punk, and random sad-girl indie-pop with early '10s garage punk and expect me not to take umbrage. I'm not one of those people who insists that everyone has to memorize the entire Wikipedia page for an artist or genre before they can appreciate music for what it is, but this is a pretty good example of how culture and context can be paved over and suffocated to death in this new digital era, and why actual music curation still matters. A Giant Dog came out in an extremely hairy, hazy, and homely era of underground rock that has almost entirely evaporated at this point, related to the same trends and aesthetic preferences that also spun up Hozac Records and at one point made Beerland an inescapable cultural pivot point within the Austin scene. This means that to put them in context, an A Giant Dog playlist would need to pair them with psyched-up power-poppers and rock revivalists in the treds of Shapes Have Fangs, Bad Sports, Big Eyes, Natural Child, and purely as a sonic concession, Dirty Fences- who I don't think ever played with A Giant Dog, but who I have to listen to in succession after an album like Pile, without fail. Dirty Fences were (and I guess still are) a tribe of greasy, goofball, gutter crawlers who came out of NYC swinging for the bleachers with every plate of wax they allowed their rough-and-rumpus sound to be carved into. Their last blitz of Schlitz-hammered power pop and sweat-lathered punk, as of this writing, is the 2017 LP Goodbye Love. The riffs and hooks spill out of these tracks like a froth of cataract sprawling into the street from a cracked fire hydrant knocked over in the course of a high-speed chase. These party-ready, jaunty blasts of rock 'n' roll revelry draw complementary comparisons to pogo-powered proto-pop-punks The Nerves, love-sick strummers The Undertones, and slick rock revivalists like The Knack, but had for their time a very contemptuous take on all these classic '80s peals, causing them to feel perpetually fresh and fecund enough to impregnate impressionable minds with dreams of fast times, free love, and the sensual splendor calling to them in the night and leading them astray from the starchy spiritual squalor of buttoned-up suburban living. Tap the keg, pop a tab, and turn up the toe-tapping, slapdash grooves of "Goodbye Love," the ribbed guitars, spiked melodies, and floor-stomping beat of "Teen Angel," and the windmill riffs and punchy tempo shifts of "Love for Higher," the volatily vulnerable, bed-sheet-knotting insistence of "Four Leaf Clover"- whose softly twisting chorus is so strangely reminiscent of a Sabrina Ellis and Andrew Cashen joint that I'd be willing to put any amount of money on the premise that it was penned on the beer-soaked cushions of an Austin green room with said dynamic duo, if not leering in person, then within earshot from the stage- and finally, the plucky, distortion-buoyed ballad "One More Step" featuring guest vocalist Christina Halladay of Sheer Mag, as if there wasn't enough degenerate dynasty already gracing these decks. At the time that Goodbye Love debuted, it seemed like just another addition to a deep catalog of great rock and roll that endlessly proliferated across the Rust Belt and central US, in celebration of the persistence of spirit imbued in the nation's castoffs as well as their torrid tendency towards outright depravity... but now it more resembles a love letter dropped in the carrier slot mere moments before it all fades to black. I miss this era of DIY, even more so because I don't think it's ever coming back. Goodbye Love- they really called it.
