staires!

Wow, what happened to pop week? One minute I’m here, next minute I am somewhere else entirely different. This was meant to be one of the songs in my pop week series, obviously. This song is loud, hooky, and maybe doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. I want to know why that number is so specific. If anything it sounds like the narrator of the song is the pathetic one if they’re keeping track that precisely…

Let’s just call this pop week now, because we’re adding songs to the lineup that weren’t even in the original list of songs to post. But this song came up in my rotation, and I think it fits. It’s bombastic, it’s anchored by a simple riff, and the lyrics are infectious. It counts!

Good lord, I said it was the weekend of big pop songs and then I forgot to post this song yesterday. I bet the old staires didn’t post a lot of music like this, because my taste in music used to be a lot less fun. I don’t even think I liked LCD Soundsystem back when I was originally writing about music over here.

Anyway. This song rules. The bass, the bass, the bass, what else needs to be said? The song lives and dies by that bass and the Duran Duran chorus. I dunno what else to say, this song is just so much fun.

I have some weird soft spot in my heart for this style of pop song. I’m not sure if it can be considered a specific genre, though people credit the sound of this song to another band, Joywave, who partnered with another band to make a very similar song with Big Data that I should also post.

Anyway, this song is bombastic and a joy to listen to, and it comes at you out of left-field with a second chorus that feels plucked from an entirely different song… but it works! It works really well. I love the stuttering effect on the voice and the little triplet (I think) extra stutter that adds the right amount of rhythmic interest to it. I reaaaallly love the little glitchy guitar part they added to the second main verse, like the stereotypical high pitched funky pop guitar is being strummed somewhere far away over a broken connection. It’s just fun!

Maybe this weekend will be 2010’s POP WEEK.

A couple years ago, this wonderful video game came out called Paradise Killer, and one of the many fantastic aspects of that game is the soundtrack by the producer Epoch. Since then, I’ve kept an ear on what they’ve been up to, and for the most part it’s all high quality, juicy “city pop”, and no one does it quite like Epoch.

Imagine my surprise when Epoch, along with regular guest vocalist Fiona Lynch, put out a covers album. Unfortunately for my music cred, I only recognized one song name on the album, and my immediate visceral reaction to seeing “You Oughta Know” was to recoil in horror. A city pop version of Alanis Morrisette’s most grunge-coded song? It can’t possibly work!

But, you know what, it does. I mean, I’m biased, I like Epoch’s sound in general. And Fiona Lynch dials in a fantastic snarl we’ve never gotten to hear from her before. It’s fun! I can’t complain.

When I visited Amsterdam, my only real negative experience at a coffee shop was when I was sitting out on a patio listening to a group of very insufferable and obviously wealthy 20-something’s talking loudly about the imaginary woes of their affluent lifestyle. This was day two, after a day one where I met some very interesting people who exposed me to new worldviews, the stereotypical “sheltered American travels abroad” experience, so the shift was jarring.

I feel like this Lorde album will be very influential and important to that sort of person because Lorde sings very frankly and honestly about the experience of being one of those people. No real responsibilities, their entire twenties are just The Teens Part 2, pretending that there’s something poignant and significant in the way they looked at themselves in the mirror while brushing their teeth that morning. It’s… very annoying.

Which is a shame, because the production (or sound design, whatever the kids are calling it these days) is fantastic. This song specifically, “Man of the Year”, is a sonic journey, a tour de force. Her voice itself evolves as the song goes on, from raw to robotic. It’s stupendous. I love it. The rest of the album might not be quite as experimental as this song, but overall it sounds fantastic and no one could legitimately complain about it.

But good lord, the lyrics, sometimes my eyes are too busy rolling for me to really enjoy the music.

I think I’m probably in the beginning stages of what will pass for my midlife crisis, and a big part of it seems to be taken up by nostalgia of the glorious era of media that existed between 1996 to 2001.

If you were around back then, you know that electronic music got positively huge, and for a teenager in that time period who enjoyed staying up late at night, you got your fix from MTV’s Amp, a late night celebration of electronica.

It’s hard to imagine a single CD full of as many great songs as the first MTV’s Amp compilation, which features this fantastic mix of “Are You There” by Josh Wink, which seems to be a condensed version of the “(95 Remix)” from the 2014 compilation.

Enjoy!

You may or may not have noticed that staires.org quietly switched away from Wordpress.

Why would you have noticed that? Perhaps you are very strange.

Either way, we’re back in action and after an extended break caused by Wordpress.com being very annoying (and expensive). Expect to see more posts, more frequently, and less extended breaks? We’ll see.

HEALTH has spent the past 20 years refining their sound and craft incredible soundscapes, this song now joining the ranks of, uh, industrial dance goth bangers. I’m just going to call them industrial dance goth, you can’t stop me.

Enjoy! I have nothing else to say but I did not want to just move all the current blog posts over without posting something new.

Back in 2019, Cheekface released their debut album, a record that’s difficult to categorize without simply listening to it. It’s kind of post-punk, kind of pop, and mostly spoken-word; it’s quirky, clever, and nearly danceable.

Now it’s 2025 and Cheekface has released their fifth album—but I just don’t have the stomach for it. Greg Katz is trying to move beyond simple monotone spoken-word vocals by singing a lot more, and there’s maybe even a hint of auto-tune on his vocals. It’s… horrible.

Cheekface has a rabid fanbase, so I say this with trepidation. I mean no offense to Greg Katz—it’s not that his vocals are inherently bad, it’s just that I started listening to Cheekface for songs like “Dry Heat/Nice Town”, and a song like “Living Lo-fi” is… not like that song.

They might as well be two entirely different genres, even if they share the same core components. It’s like ordering a steak burrito and getting a carne asada plate—similar, sure, but fundamentally different.

It’s unfortunate, but sometimes a band can only extract so much magic from a single schtick. Maybe the original Cheekface formula had a lifespan of two solid albums, one decent album, and now we’re two records into the (hopefully short-lived) awkward years.

Luckily, we can always revisit those two solid albums, then jump to the last track of their third, “Vegan Water“—which I’d argue is not only the last truly great Cheekface song, but possibly their best. It’s akin to how Arcade Fire closed out their last good album with their finest work, “Sprawl II (Mountains Beyond Mountains)“.

Holy shit, this song is so fucking good. I don’t know what else to say about it. When I heard it for the first time, my ears pricked up, and my eyes widened. Will this already be my favorite song of 2025?

This is the kind of Vulfpeck song that I live for! When they get too soft and slow, they kind of lose me, but this song, and the rest of this live album, are a revelation. I don’t want to heap too much hyperbole onto Vulfpeck because there’s the rest of the world to do that already (and they do that already, check out this recent review of one of their concerts).

Not that it is unjustified in any way. Vulfpeck is most excellent. Enjoy!