I Listened To And Wrote About The Latest Songs Listed In Pitchfork’s “Best New Tracks” Feature Until I Couldn’t Take It Anymore

Death Grips, “I’ve Seen Footage”

Feels like fast forwarding a bunch of video tapes at the same time in the 80s when VCRs were big like having a face. Seems like the vocals were recorded in a boxing ring surrounded with bulbs going bananas. I like when his voice makes little avalanches when he’s holding the words out. Suddenly feel like going to shop at T.J. Maxx while listening to this in the really big fat headphones that swallow your whole head. I think I’d get a sweater and wear it in the sun until I felt like I was going to pass out. Thought, “Big azz breasts, big breasts all over the earth.” I wish I was born in 1997 and the year never changed ever again.

Dive, “How Long Have You Known?”

Seems like these guys might have never eaten food in their life. Felt my arm trying to move over to the mouse just now to click next track before I even thought to do that. So much “I’m going to the beach and never coming back” in all these white kids making up songs now. Envisioned a beach on fire and the people not realizing it, like the fire is just floating above them. I might have liked this song when I was in ninth grade before I knew who Slowdive or Catherine Wheel was. Feel pretty sure one of the guys in this band has a Pearl Jam poster on a wall in his apartment, but ironically. Felt like somehow the song had started over again and was about to check and then it ended.

Mister Lies, “Cleam”

I’m already two and a half minutes into this for some reason six-minute long song and still have pretty much absolutely no thought or thing coming on in me which is often a good thing in music to be deleted by it but instead I feel like I am even more on the internet than I have ever been even though I’m not really using the internet at all right now but just typing and kind of looking at the browser behind this Word document. Seems like this guy or lady or “production team” or whatever they are works in a used book store and makes his or her beats at the register on the laptop the store owns to check people out on and wears headphones and gets all frumpy whenever anyone comes up to him to check him out or ask a question and sighs and frumps his headphones off all in his grease head hair like what do you want bro I’m trying to make a beat. Suddenly feel like walking up a mountain though one that is entirely green, every inch, which I don’t think exists. Suddenly feel very inspired to check my Facebook, which makes me wonder if this producer was hired by Facebook to make this song. I mean, the slowed down sample is cool but I bet whoever’s voice it is if they heard this would wish they weren’t on it. Maybe they are dead and would wish they were even deader. The Pitchfork reviewer bro used the word “velvet” in regards to the sound and said it’s “the kind you want to wrap yourself in.” Jesus.

jj, “Beautiful Life”

Seems like we’re in a remix of the previous song where instead of the slowed down voice they let this lady get in “the booth” and throw down some moaning, but no, it’s a different song, though the fake bongo percussion sounds just as fart camp as the previous. I think I prefer “fart camp” to “chill wave” or “dad wave” or whatever people call this ding dong boat party. Seems like if someone’s little brother was going asleep forever in a box of rashes. The first child conceived to this song will come out covered in GoDaddy ads and holograms of the Apple symbol.

King Felix “Spring 01”

There’s a box of crayons on my desk and as this song started, again sounding like it meant to lead out from the one before it, I imagined the crayon box floating up in front of my face and opening to reveal 48 crayons all in the same white color that then rose and began to draw more fat onto my face until I could never move and this song never ended and I could never die but am here sitting listening to keyboards crying for the rest of my life. Imagined a mall playing this song during Christmas and Santa Coming out in a black robe masturbating, which I think was a defense mechanism-produced image designed to keep me from having to remember I heard this song. I want to take a bath without any water now and then go buy a sword.

Dirty Projectors “Gun Has No Trigger”

I feel good hearing someone actually singing. Feels like this song was written for all the cartoons I watched as a child played back all at the same time on mute. Suddenly want to be buried in a conversion van filled with dirt and left parked in an amusement park parking lot in the hot sun with the engine running and this Dave Longstreth guy coming by in a gas station attendant outfit every so often and refilling the van so it never runs out of gas until there is no gas forever and all is well.

Lotus Plaza, “Monoliths”

I’ve tried numerous times in my life and failed every time to write a story about a person who wakes up to all the bruises they’ve ever had reappeared on their body overlapping and fresh again but not bleeding or in pain, and this song sounds like that and hearing it in this way feels rather fulfilling, if in a wholly expected way.

Jai Paul, “Jasmine”

Pretty sure this bro sampled Phil Collins but with a sampler that didn’t get any of the good things about the original and instead just got all the “fart camp” style about it and couldn’t tell and started singing his own lyrics on top of the track with his mouth still all full of some pasta his mom brought over loose in a paper bag and with a separate paper bag for sauce all leaking from her lap and in the car and up the sidewalk to the bro’s apartment and spoon feeding him in his “No Jacket Required” shirt all still stained from the last time she brought him food. No, bro. Go get in the gym or something and leave Phil alone and don’t come back.

Acéphale, “Elite Gymnastics: ‘Here, in Heaven 4 & 5 (CFCF Remix)'”

Oh, we’re back to another remix of the “I’m on the internet eternally and I am Facebook” track, sweet. Just felt overcome by a .jpeg of Chris Cataan’s face smirking inside my head so big it seemed to fold my head down to dot. Feels like I’m at a club in heaven without bathrooms and without drinks and without people and with nowhere to sit and nowhere to stand and just big blocks of white ham lightly nudging me from both sides. There’s six minutes left in this song still but I’m pressing mute. I pressed mute so hard it came back on. I’m turning off my machine.