Staff Picks and Good Shit for the Week of May 8

It’s Friday and we’re sort of losing our minds because it’s so nice out. Many of us have burned our jackets in celebratory acts of defiance. At least three of us arrived to the office pantsless today and we don’t plan on ever going back. Here is the music we’ve been listening to this week while getting a bronze on these pale thighs.

I’m at Levitation in Austin now, and it took a lot of traveling, a few hotel rooms that were supposed to be empty but weren’t, and a broken TV in the back of a headrest to get here. Thankfully I’ve had Todd Congelliere’s newest creation, Underground Railroad to Candyland’s new LP The People Are Home, to burn through on repeat. This is the title track and the album closer, and it’s totally perfect sugary chunk of melodic power pop not to far removed from Toys That Kill or any one of a number of his recent bands.

Fred Pessaro, Editor-in-Chief
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Do you like The Drums? Do you like riding in cars with the your friends with the windows wound right down? Do you like that initial kiss when you find out what someone tastes like, you know, for the very first time? This song by Oakland based dude Day Wave is somehow related to all of these things. This song is appealing to my inner 16-year-old who is in fact my outer 16-year-old because once again, I've come to work dressed like a 16-year-old.

Kim Taylor Bennett, Style Editor
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Alessia is an 18-year-old singer-songwriter from Ontario. She's already signed to Def Jam, and this song—"Here," produced by Pop and Oak and Sebastian Kole—is gorgeous. An anthem for the introverted and antisocial, it's made for all those people who find themselves partying for the sake of, well, partying. Those situations in which you find yourself standing in the corner, looking at all the idiots in the room wearing their latest version of patterned fashion sweatpants that really look like they belong in a video game from the 80s (this is not a good thing, despite sounding kind of awesome), asking yourself, what am I doing here? Hopefully this is the first of many songs that sound like the summer afternoon sun.

Eric Sundermann, Managing Editor
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I've had this really shitty, aggravating cough for what seems like forever now, and my only respite from hacking away like a pack-a-day tobacco fiend has been refusing to buy cough syrup and joking that I've got black lung (which is a very very bad joke, but I've only got so many options here). I did just find this sweet stoner rock band called Black Lung, though, and they're doing a pretty solid job of easing the pain.

Kim Kelly, Contributing Editor
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You can tell a lot about someone based on which version of "Turn Me On" they consider familiar. For me any version where the first ten seconds aren't looped to stretch for the better part of a minute isn't the "real" version. The real version is above, and it featured the first verse played no less than three times, just like the way Lyttle intended for this song to be heard. I've also started to realize that nobody really reads these all the way through, so I'm going to start revealing really personal secrets about people I know in the middle of my weekly write-ups. Like that secret about how Adam killed a guy with his car and then drove off on his way to go skiing. Also, do you think Kevin Lyttle updates his own Soundcloud? What else could he be doing with his time.

Slava Pastuk, Noisey Canada Editor
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More #backyardsessions videos coming today!! Huge thank you to Laura Jane Grace of Against Me! and #JoanJett of Joan Jett and the Blackhearts for lending their voices and helping me launch The Happy Hippie Foundation. Find out more at happyhippies.org #HappyHippiePresents #Androgynous #HappyHippie

Posted by

Miley Cyrus

on Friday, May 8, 2015

Almost two years ago, I wrote about Miley Cyrus as a punk figure in pop culture. The level of hatred I got for it in the emails/comments/tweets was absurd. Death threats. Well fast-forward to today and not only do I still find her art outlandish but she’s covering this song with Laura Jane Grace and Joan Jett for the organization she started to benefit homeless LGBT youth. Meanwhile, the rest of our top pop icons are using their platforms and respective social media reaches to promote #TIDALforALL like it’s some sort of fucking charity or benefitting anyone but themselves. You’d have to have very few brain cells and still listen to Punk-O-Rama comps to think punk is about what patches you wear on your vest. Doing something truly subversive is using the system to go against the grain. As Gary Panter once put it: “Capitalism for good or ill is the river in which we sink or swim.”

Dan Ozzi, Editor
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