Being the first in a potential series of theoretical posts about good stuff from the 00s.
Over the past year I’ve developed something of a love/hate relationship with Matthew Perpetua’s Fluxblog, which I think is based more on familiarity than anything else–when you see something/someone nearly every day for six years, little irritations are bound to grate more and more–but there’s no denying that, for the greater part of this past decade, Fluxblog has been my favorite radio station, and Perpetua my favorite DJ, by a wide margin. I’d say Fluxblog is responsible for introducing me to 90% of the best new music and artists I’ve heard in the last decade, from M.I.A. to Sleigh Bells; it was Fluxblog that (re)introduced me to the joys of Pop after ten years of being mainly a Rock Dude. (But it’s always nice to be reminded that, like yours truly, Perpetua is a child of the alt-rock 90s: a Pavement fanatic, a wonderful explicator of what made Pearl Jam special to those of us who were 15 at the time, and the author of maybe the all-time greatest critical work on R.E.M.) In a lot of ways, Perpetua’s taste has become my taste.
One thing that’s kind of interesting, though, is that though Fluxblog has introduced me to dozens, if not hundreds, of songs that I love, the number of albums that I’ve bought because of a Fluxblog recommendation could probably be counted on two hands. (Yes, I’m aware that this is in direct violation of the mp3 blog golden rule, as stated plainly on Fluxblog: “Please buy the records from the artist if you like what you hear.”) I’m sure part of this has to do with my introduction to Fluxblog coinciding with my embrace of an iTunes-equipped PC as my music delivery method of choice, not to mention the general trend in the music industry of no one buying any albums at all, ever again. But part of it is also the songs themselves. Though Fluxblog reflects Perpetua’s wide-ranging tastes, it specializes in concise, joyful bursts of pop, overflowing with energy and excitement. This checklist of elements in U.S.E. songs also describes the Fluxblog aesthetic pretty well, though usually the songs that Perpetua features have darker undercurrents, whether lyrically or musically, to keep things more bittersweet than saccharine. The upshot to all this is that many of the songs featured on the site are these super-dense, super-intense little things, like amazingly rich chocolate truffles; maybe you’d like to eat a whole box of them, but one is more than enough. The joy that you get from the one song might be diminished if it was just a component of an album. Sometimes it’s more fun to let that one song stand on its own, to know that there might be more like it waiting out there if you feel the need, but for now you just want to hit repeat on this one track until it’s all you can remember.
*****
Those of you who haven’t been obsessively reading Fluxblog over the past six years are in for a treat today, as Perpetua has compiled a mix of some of the best “lost” Fluxblog tracks for your listening pleasure. Many of these songs are of the “one is all you need” variety I was talking about. Though Perpetua notes that these are songs and artists that never caught on with the public, for me (and I’m sure many others) this is pretty much a Top 40 Countdown. Worth the download for David Wrench’s mighty, towering “World War IV” alone, though I could say the same thing about half these tracks. “Youth Alcoholic!” I need to go listen to that right now.
–Gardner
