Music Molly

no context just vibes vol 3: church maus

Welcome to another edish of the I Enjoy Music newsletter. To preview the format of the newsletter, in an Axios breakin'-it-down style, we have:

a little bit of writing around a new-to-me song by an unfamiliar artist
(last time I did that with Zimmer90, "What Love Is")

a good physical release/remix situation

Blog Posts of the Recent Past

let's do it...

no context just vibes: Brontez Purnell Trio, "If You Can't Help Me"

Okay this is maybe not totally no context but relatively no context—I know Matty Fasano, who is in Brontez Purnell Trio (among other things, I interviewed the band VISUALS, who are on Matty's label House of Feelings, for The Alternative back in the day) and I know that "If You Can't Help Me" is a reworking of an old gospel tune. Other than that, no context, I swear.

The high energy of this number and the slightly contentious lyrical content ("If you can't help me, please don't stop me / Move out of my way and don't try to block me") together caused me think of the musical environment of my religious youth. I was raised Catholic and we went to church every Sunday. And I don't want to be a hater, but I need to be a hater a little bit: the music at Mass was some of the limpest shit I have heard in my life.

We had a singing organist who did most of the heavy lifting, and literally bless her soul, but she was not giving what needed to be given in that scenario. I remember a thin soprano voice that tended to get trapped somewhere in the rear of her epiglottis, and organ tones as murky and thin as an evaporating puddle. Given the content of the Mass itself, with promises of damnation for unrepentant sinners and whatnot, I would expect Catholic music to at least have some kind of foreboding or drama, but our parish's tunes exuded the raw musical power of a church mouse. And do not get me started on the various priests warbling let us proclaim......the mystery of faith. Where is the phantom of the damn opera when u need him?

The only respite we got was when one of the deacon's sons got to sometimes play with a band for the holidays, so we got these odd but fascinating acoustic-goth-rock renditions of classic Christmas songs. Sort of Tim Burton vibes. It was cute.

"If You Can't Help Me" has the kind of energy that might have stoked some kind of belief in me, had it played out the crowd on Sunday mornings. It has lively organs and zippy drums and a big buzzy low end and some piquant backing vocals to boot. It has energy. The rework doesn't have quite the piety of the original version's lyrics, no "God" detected, but it definitely has the zest. It has what the body craves.

reMIX MIX MIX / cool album packaging concept alert: XJermsx, Drugs In The Bathroom

Veering away from the church end of things and toward the sinning ends of things, we have a ginormous album dedicated to various flips of the tune "Drugs In The Bathroom," by XJermsx, a song about running a race for Jesus. Just kidding, it's about doing drugs in the bathroom.

Friend of the blog Charlie Baker, of the professional party squad We Take Manhattan, tipped me off to the We Take Manhattan remix that's on the album: their first official remix release, full of cute '80s synth flourishes. I followed the bread crumb trail to XJermsx's Bandcamp page, saw the insane depth of the mix/remix roster (16 tracks, including some by vaporwave-y star Vitesse X and breakcore hero DJ Pacifier), said whoa, saw that they were releasing the album on compact disc (through the excellently named label Music Website), said hell yeah, saw that the CD package included a fentanyl test strip, and said VERY COOL. Hey, if you're going to be doing drugs in the bathroom, you should test 'em. For science.