music moots: Attract Mode
We continue to be back with Music Moots™, the blogseries where I ask people to recommend me a song they like, and then I listen to the song and then write a little about it.
Today Chris McCrea of Attract Mode recommends a song! Attract Mode make smooth, moody rock music in Washington, DC and just released The Art of Psychic Self-Defense, an album that is here for a good time, not a long time (eight songs, just under 20 minutes long).
Attract Mode
With vocal contributions from Caroline Weinroth of Cinema Hearts, plus saxophonal contributions from Rob Spackey, McCrea makes music that has the romantic melodrama of '80s post-punk, packaged in the quantized, dance-positive production of '00s post-punk, without any of the ironic astringency of '20s post-punk. I mean, we've got a saxophone on our hands here—it arrives at the end of the yearning "Fade," delivering a simple and true refrain— and I maintain there's no way to include saxophone in a song ironically. The saxophone is the purest expression of a heart's desire.
McCrea recommended I listen to "Sparkle" by Tatsuro Yamashita:
"This feels a bit like the wrong time of year, cause this stuff is very much Summer Music for me, but it's also good to get a head start so you can be ready next summer...I just love the lite & breezy funk feel, the rhythmic horns and of course his voice. I already knew some Yellow Magic Orchestra by then but this was the first proper Citypop song I heard and I was hooked instantly. Just love that feeling of hearing something and knowing there's a whole totally alien world of music to delve into. And this genre has just totally become the soundtrack to summer for me. I love driving around with the windows down blasting this stuff and feeling like I'm playing that old racing game OutRun lol."
Wow what a delight! I have pretty limited experience with city pop—the primary way I've listened to any of it is when I'm chilling on the couch, trying to frantically plow through a New Yorker issue (I'm a print subscriber this year and have been trying to finish every single issue, so I read each one as though pursued by a bear) and outsourcing my tunes to one of the chill YouTube vinyl DJs.
Whenever there's an interchange that involves someone else taking American tricks and selling them back to us, I'm always down. Seeing an artistic product from an external point of view can give you a special perspective that simply can't be approximated if you're landlocked in your own culture. This is how the Korean corn dog takes everything good about the corn dog—meats 'n' sweets—and goes sicko mode, spanking the original formula but utterly.
"Sparkle" is smooth jazz / lite funk abbondanza: an exuberant blend of Stevie Wonder, Hall & Oates, Steely Dan and Nile Rogers. Lounge act vocals. Indulgent bass slaps. It sounds like music designed for leisure. But not static leisure—active leisure. Kitesurfing, rather than sunbathing. A rum drink in a hollowed-out pineapple, rather than a boring glass.
Have you ever seen the brand Vacation? They make sunscreen (though they now also offer a wide variety of products beyond SPF) that smells of that particular "beach vacation" artificial coconut-banana essence you either remember from childhood or wish you did, and all their branding has a retro 70s-80s vibe, with richly saturated photography and elegant serif fonts. Vacation also has its own digital radio station, Poolsuite, which plays light and funky music designed to sound good whilst tanning, and even has graphics that mimic the old Apple graphical user interface (shout out 2 Susan Kare).
"Sparkle" reminds me of this brand, or maybe this brand reminds me of listening to city pop like "Sparkle" in 2024—it is realtime nostalgia, creating a longing for an era that you never experienced firsthand, but can still replicate in a way that gets the job done. Vacation also sells perfume that smells like their sunscreen, so even if you don't have the opportunity to sunbathe or participate in water sports, you can catch a whiff of leisure all the same. A whiff is all you need sometimes.
Thanks Chris! Listen to Attract Mode's The Art of Psychic Self-Defense here.
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