Janelle Monae | ‘Water Slide’
As a singer, writer, actor, Afrofuturism innovator and all-around force of nature, Janelle Monae radiates confidence in a way that’s infectious and joyful. Released in June, her fourth album, The Age of Pleasure, and its accompanying filmography so far, is a complete and total celebration of freedom.
Freedom to be naked, no matter what kind of body you have. Freedom to own one’s identity (she came out as pansexual in 2018 and nonbinary last year — telling the Los Angeles Times, “My pronouns are free-ass motherf***er — and they/them, her/she”). And most of all, freedom to bask in the sun, even during a time when freedom is being stripped away for many.
With Grammy nominations galore, roles in iconic films like Moonlight, Hidden Figures and Knives Out: Glass Onion and even a bestselling, critically acclaimed book, The Memory Librarian, Monae has more than earned this moment to recline, splash, hula hoop and dance all limitations away.
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Faye Webster | ‘But Not Kiss’
Let’s be clear: Any time there’s a music video co-starring puppets, we’re in. Here, the stringed creatures provide backup for singer-songwriter Faye Webster as she plays to what looks like a darkened, potentially empty venue. There’s a puppet pianist and puppet backup dancers. It’s whimsy with a healthy dose of creepiness – a paradoxical mix that matches what Webster was going for in her lyrics.
“I think it could be a really romantic song or a really anti-romantic song,” she said in a press release. “It’s something I’ve looked for but struggled to find in other love songs, for them to describe this conflict or contradiction.” The single is Webster’s first new music since last year’s Car Therapy Sessions EP.
Alas, it was filmed at Los Angeles’ famous Bob Baker Marionette Theater and not the Center for Puppetry Arts. Webster’s currently busy with a full North American tour, which will conclude here in her hometown with two gigs at the Eastern in November.
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Deerhunter | ‘Primitive 3-D’
Deerhunter is to 2010s indie rock what boeuf bourguignon was to Julia Child. But to back that claim up, for this more recent edition of Vintage Track of the Week, we humbly submit this song’s throwback bonafides: First, this was filmed by Pitchfork, which had just reached its peak king-making powers four years earlier with the launch of the Pitchfork Music Festival in Chicago in 2006. Then, we’ve got the hipster-cool psychedelic filters that turn archival medical footage into a kind of horror movie. It’s not the ubiquitous “Helicopter,” Deerhunter’s biggest single from their widely acclaimed 2010 album Halcyon, but we’d say it captures a moment.
The group came together in ATL in 2001, founded by Bradford Cox on vocals, keys and guitar, and Moses Archuleta on drums and electronics. Their most recent lineup features Lockett Pundt, also on guitar, vocals and keys, Josh McKay on bass and Javier Morales, who does a little bit of everything, including slammin’ the sax. Self-described as “ambient punk,” they’ve toured with the Smashing Pumpkins, Spoon, Yeah Yeah Yeahs and Nine Inch Nails. Their most recent album, released in 2019, was the somewhat ominously titled eve-of-pandemic Why Hasn’t Everything Already Disappeared?
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