KQUE — youth vs indie
Hello and thank you for tuning in to this inaugural radio broadcast; you are listening to Radio Query.1 This month on KQUE we've heard a particular fascination with alternative indie and country. A new generation of musicians are emerging into the mainstream and a new set of voices are mulling over the same old questions: How do I relate to what exists? How do I relate to how I used to exist? How do we make love and meaning in these modern times? And, perhaps most importantly, how can I take what exists and make it sound a little more like me?
The world is stranger and bigger than I ever previously suspected. The more I see the less I know, and I see more every day. Thus is the subject of Animal Collective's fantastic album Strawberry Jam, easily the oldest inclusion in this mix (released in 2007). There is more to the world than our limited perspectives will ever know, which can be a source of malaise or wonder depending on headspace. To exist in the world we must recognize the limits of ourselves and each other. We hurt each other as powerfully as we love each other, and still we must go forth.
We must grow up.
Neither the world nor our bodies will wait for us should we refuse.
This month Twin Fantasy obliterated a levy holding back a lotta weight from my childhood, indie rocking me out of stagnant waters. It is the only other inclusion in this mix from before 2023, in part for thematic resonance with the youthful gasping throughout the rest of the mix and in part in ode to its influence. The loves of our youth never really leave us (in the words of Cat Stevens: "The first cut is the deepest"), they are the grounds upon which we build all future love. As our lives get more complicated, deeper rooted in precedent and context, our past never really passes. In the present we must make sense of past love because it never really fades, only grows distant. Art can capture this truth beautifully, making a moment continue for decades. The beauty is not in the stretching of the moment but in the irrefutable evidence that the way you used to feel was real. You were you then just as much as you are you now.
And that's a lotta conceptual rumination to describe what the body already knows: to live you must move. Twin Fantasy is banging, it begs all listeners to dance. Because when you dance you must continually occupy new spaces and relations. You must let the moment happen and let all the ruminations oscillate out your hips. When you do the funniest thing happens: you're no more than you'll be when the next song starts, no less than you were when the last song ended, you simply are.
Lex Walton also deploys this power of dance but aims it outward instead of inward. Her lyricism frequently blends into the realm of rant, releasing the pain of youth who had to watch the world come apart. Coming of age is already an incredible task, even without an increasingly hostile political reality. The internet gave my generation incredible access to the world, enabling unprecedented queer visibility for both good and ill. It allowed more weirdos to love more fully and for those same weirdos to know just how horrifically they're hated. It enabled the artists and raw nerves to know all the bombs their dollars buy. All the genocides supported by their governments.
Sometimes you just need to scream about it.
Sometimes you just need to dance about it.
Sometimes you just need to love about it.
"What if things made sense? And what if joy was really an act of resistance? I know it isn't all too well, cause sucking dick won't undo the bombs that fell." So sings Emerson Borakove on Jewish American Prairie Princess, finding much more humor in her sense of political helplessness than I can usually muster. The US government is focused on safeguarding the wealth of the pedophilic elite while pitching itself to the public on a platform of violence against brown and trans people. How the fuck are you supposed to be young right now? Or queer? Or just alive at all?
Well, we can start with music. I know I do. This last month I usually started with Emerson. Her tracks take the earthen warmth of country as grounding against everything I've referenced here. Her lyricism reminds me that kindness is a necessity, not out of any political naivete but because we're all going through it. We're all coming of age, we're all facing unprecedented times, we're all in it until we're not.
I'm running low on air time so I'm going to be kind to myself and leave this mess messy. I've left quite a bit just barely unsaid here, but no matter how long I spend rambling the music will speak for itself. And, in my defense, its thematically coherent to be incoherent about alt indie ;P
To wrap up, I can't not mention Spiral Staircase who provided the darkest cut on these airwaves. Sometimes to feel better you need to sing and dance and embrace the warmth of a good guitar tone. Sometimes you need to wallow. Just don't wallow too long.
Remember to breathe.
Let the music take you.
That's all from KQUE. I'm hoping to broadcast at the end of every month. I meant to focus more on the actual instrumentation and sound of this set but got caught up getting all heady. Something to improve next time I suppose; have a little patience for a first time radio host :3
Stay safe amidst autumn's browns and golds. This is Kassiopeia, signing off.2