Well, it’s the end of another week! My week has been pretty uneventful, how’s yours been? Uh-huh. Oh wow. Mm-hmm. Damn that’s crazy. Hey check out these songs I found, they made me think of you:
The English Beat - Save It For Later
This song is just groovy!!! Sometimes when I’m running around doing errands or chores or just moving about getting stuff done this song will get stuck in my head. I think it’s just made for moving to!
Is it fair to say that The English Beat/The Beat are underrated? If I have a skewed sense of their relevancy to new wave/80s music please let me know (I was not alive then) but I feel like I don’t hear them brought up often in conversations about bands from that era. I think they’re great, and the way they blend new wave with ska and punk is fun and funky.
Amaiwana & Maki Nomiya - COVER GIRLS
This song makes me feel like I’m in the opening for a slice-of-life anime about a silly awkward girl trying her best to navigate everyday situations. Like if there was an anime about Amelia Bedelia this would be the theme song. It’s fun, bouncy, and a little silly! There’s some clear Shibuya-kei influence on this which rules, I’m glad new artists are incorporating that sound still. I’m definitely gonna dive into more of Amaiwana’s music eventually and keep an eye on what she comes out with in the future!
Junior Varsity - New York
Once again I don’t remember who told me to check out this band (sorry). This song is off an EP they released last year and… I have mixed feelings. The song is catchy and upbeat and is well produced but… I mean this is just the Go Team again. Like I’m sorry but you can’t trick me this is definitely just The Go Team’s reheated nachos. But on the other hand, those are still really good nachos. And there’s still a little hint of something unique throughout this song more than some of the others they put out so all-in-all I’m enjoying it and hopeful that Junior Varsity will carry this influence to new places with future releases.
Jay Som - Nighttime Drive
I already wrote in a previous installment how much I recently fell in love with Jay Som’s album “Anak Ko”, and I mentioned this song while doing so. It’s just that this record is really good and I’m still listening to it a lot so… *shrugs*
Ari Lennox - Smoke
This is a damn good modern R&B song. It’s bombastic and smooth at the same time. Just the right amount of nostalgia for old school singers but with really strong modern production. Really love whatever sampling they did on those flutes in the background. This tune makes you want to strut like a badass when it’s on. Fuck around find out.
Black Kids - I’m Not Gonna Teach Your Boyfriend How to Dance With You
I mentioned The Go Team earlier, and Black Kids is very much a forgotten contemporary of them. I think that this song has seen a recent resurgence due to the renewed popularity of “2000s indie sleaze”, and honestly I’m fine with it. It’s a really good song!
My favorite fun fact about this song is that the lyric “ever since I was a little girl” just comes from an inside joke between the lead singer and his sister (also in the band) where they would just come up with random sentences that started with the phrase. I.E: “Ever since I was a little girl I knew I would eat steel rebar for fuel.” Good inside joke.
Graduate - Elvis Should Play Ska
This is the band that the dudes from Tears for Fears were in before they made Tears for Fears. Imagine if this played in Donnie Darko instead.
Robert Wyatt - Shipbuilding
I don’t feel like anyone in my generation talks about or even knows Robert Wyatt but I love him, and there’s a certain group of old guy who get really excited when I know to reference him.
This song makes me feel like I’m a hundred years old seeing the start of yet another war. Elvis Costello apparently wrote this specifically for Wyatt to sing, and god that dude knew what he was doing. The vocal delivery on this song is so perfectly melancholic and heartbreaking.
2nd Grade - Favorite Song
2nd Grade rules!!! If' you’re unfamiliar, Peter Gill writes these short little pop songs (pop like Buddy Holly, not so much Sabrina Carpenter) that manage to encapsulate so much emotion and storytelling in under two minutes. Their record from 2024, “Scheduled Explosions” was good, and 2020’s “Hit to Hit” still has a permanent spot as a CD inside my car. It’s short, rock solid songwriting. What more could you ask for?
King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard - Phantom Island
It’s almost a cliche at this point to be a music fan and a lover of King Gizzard but… they’re just easy to love! They genre hop like musical frogs which means they have something for literally everyone and that just gets more and more true as time goes on! I first got into them in high school when they released the psych rock album “Nonagon Infinity” and I’ve continued to be a fan since, though I only check out probably every other album that comes out. (They put out a lot, okay?)
Anyway the new record seems like it’s going to be psychedelic soul craziness and it rocks and if somehow you haven’t been into King Gizzard already I urge you to give them another chance.
Mitski - Pink in the Night
A little while ago I said in front of a group of friends that Mitksi’s 2018 record “Be The Cowboy” was a perfect album. (It is.) At first they tried to disagree, saying that it was good but it wasn’t perfect. Time had warped their memories, dear reader, though we need not hold that against them. I gently held their hand and had them look at the tracklist and really think about each song and eventually they realized I was right and this album is fucking perfect. Each song on it is emotive and powerful and immaculate, but I think everyone who listens to the album all the way through1 will connect most to a different song that somebody else. This is the one that means the most to me, partially because I think it perfectly follows up “Nobody” in the context of the album but also for transgender reasons.
KANA-BOON - ばけもの
I like some anime-ass J-rock okay! And I mean this literally. KANA-BOON has had a lot of songs in anime. They did an opening song for Naruto: Shippuden. They’re still putting out new music a decade after they formed and it still is energetic and features really solid guitar work, which is the real reason to listen to j-rock.
The title translates to “Monster” and I just had the thought to Google Translate the lyrics and man. I gotta go make a Sasuke x Naruto AMV now.
Freddie Scott - (You) Got What I Need
I did not realize that the Biz Markie song lifted the hook from somewhere until my friend Ben told me and played me this song. Obviously I love the Biz but sometimes you gotta put on some OG soul music and this is a really solid track for that. It also has a really good feel for closing out a mix with. Like right now!
That concludes Pack Rat’s Rat Trap for this week! I hope you had a nice time. Goodbye!
