There’s an air of fellow French Canadians M83 on CFCF’s album Memoryland even though CFCF never hits their arena rock highs, a smeared nostalgia that fizzles out of view if you try to pin it down. This song is like jungle-flavored La Croix. It’s a lovely ambient-ish indie rock-ish bubbler with juuuuust enough chopped breaks to remind you of full-fledged jungle programming. Jungle is only a few years older than the sound Simon Reynolds termed hauntology (“jungle” pre-drum and bass peaks around 1994-95, Boards of Canada came out with Music has the Right to Children in ‘98), but CFCF takes the full hauntological lens to jungle drums and indie rock guitars to great effect. It works so well because it isn’t jungle as we know it, it’s not a young producer making tracks to fit seamlessly into youtube rip of a Peshay set. It’s jungle’s ghost smoothied down with all of CFCF’s myriad touchpoints into something new.
I’ve been kind of taken with LCD Soundsystem recently. The band has an absurd amount of legit hits, from every phase of their career no less. Still, there’s a not-quite settled feeling listening to them, like a relationship you’re worried might be more on the rocks than you realize. I think I’m drawn to them because they feel like a band to whom there is no analog in 2025. Despite James Murphy sometimes seeming like the only member their music is unavoidably band music. Despite structuring like a rock band and releasing what are effectively punky pop songs they are undeniably a dance act. Despite a fine layer of smarm they are essentially sincere in their lyrics. The closest contemporary band I can think of is Squid, who are most definitely a rock band with little dancefloor aspiration beyond a good thrash. I don’t know if conditions exist to spawn a new LCD Soundsystem, nor do I think identifying as “a new LCD Soundsystem” would be an artistically successful choice (hello, the Dare), but a new act who learns their lessons could be a breath of fresh air.
Life ain’t always empty! I can’t tell if Fontaines DC are sincere with their silver linings positivity on this track, but I appreciate it nonetheless. I’ve yet to figure out the hype around Fontaines DC, but I can’t deny that “A Hero’s Death” is good in both versions. Fontaines’ original hits higher highs, Soulwax slows it down to find a smoother and more mixable groove. “Buy yourself a flower every hundredth hour” is a great line AND a great piece of advice, and I’m always down for a Soulwax remix -- speaking of groups that make the most out of the borderland of rock and rave.
Stunningly, this is the Femcels’ debut single. From what I can tell, the duo (Gabriella and Rowan) are London-based college students and fashion models (Vogue, The Face, etc.) who are internet-pilled enough to name themselves “The Femcels” but also internet-poisoned enough to be neocities kids with an endearingly cryptic social media presence. Whatever their lives are like though they have announced their presence with an absolute scorcher of a track. Every single part of “He Needs Me” is an absolute blast to listen to, from the start-and-stop rave-up of the punky, chiptune-y instrumentals to the joltingly sincere bridges to the chant chorus but still none of those hold a candle to the jaw-dropping insanity of the verses. Lyrically, “He Needs Me” is a tragedy. Delusion tears us from the highest highs (“He needs me! Aaaa!”) to a fragile baseline portending total collapse (“I’m just crazy / You’re just crazy / yeah nice”) via some of the most comical bars ever put to tape. “Sometimes I trip over in front of him, because it humanizes me.” “He must be really busy like, eating burgers and stuff.” “I know that he’s had like, so much skateboarding to do recently.” “He Needs Me” takes you from losing your shit dancing one second to losing your shit laughing the next. I cannot wait to hear what the Femcels put out next, because this is one of the best debuts I’ve ever heard.
You know what else that Femcels cut is? Honest-to-goodness dance punk. With all due respect to the Rapture, this is a Femcels blog now. Sorry. “He Needs Me” was the catalyst of this show, the tracklist was built with it at the core. The Rapture are a very different kind of dance punk (unmistakably New York, unmistakably DFA, unmistakably 2000s) but they and their DFA affiliates are the last time I can remember music that was so dance and so punk. Much to my delight the DFA remix takes “Echoes” to full disco jam territory, something that the Femcels have not touched yet but I have hope they will in time. To break away from the central theme of the blog (scandal!) - I picked up this record over the weekend from the excellent Speck’s Records and Tapes in North Portland to further my light delusion of becoming a vinyl DJ, and I have to applaud DFA records for their commitment to only pressing good records. Maybe it shouldn’t be that surprising given James Murphy’s commitment to the form as expressed via Despacio Sound System, but even this label-filler three track remix compilation is pressed to heavy, solid vinyl. I have full albums that cost 7 times the price that are on pringles compared to the brutalist slabs I have from DFA. Shoutouts to good quality control.
Alright enough about music formats, back to the REAL focus of this blog: endless yammering about “He Needs Me” by the Femcels. Did you know “He Needs Me” isn’t actually the Femcels first credited song on Spotify? No, that honor goes to the intro from Babymorocco’s recent album Amour, in which they team up with iKeda and “totally not dimes square 100 gecs” duo Frost Children to bring Babymorocco across the threshold from the mundane world into the rave world a la Joseph Campbell’s Hero’s Journey. I had put off listening to Babymorocco for whatever reason (most likely his stage persona, which we will get to) but I had to do the research on my new favorite band, and don’t you know it I was sleeping heavy on Mr. Morocco. Amour is a deeply fun record that draws from the same hyperbolically sexualized aesthetic as Babymorocco’s social media presence (I genuinely don’t think I’ve seen a photo of him where he’s not flexing. Combine that genuinely impressive muscle mass with his facial expressions and puzzling choice in glasses and the overall effect is something like a college freshman who arrived on campus and realized he had 24/7 gym access for the first time in his life. His commitment to the bit is commendable, even if it did lead me to [foolishly] write him off as fratty the first time I saw him). “France” ended up as the selection for the tracklist largely because I could play it on the radio with minimal censorship, but the Justice-inflected synth work and goofy lyrics about taking the Flixbus to the title country succeed on their own terms.
“He Needs Me” also reminds me of the sizzling hyperpop scene that reached a creative apex in 2021, particularly the melting pot of neon oddballs who revolve around the Goop House collective. Alice Longyu Gao is the most energetic personality to emerge from that moment, both on record and in her captivating stage presence. “Kanpai” is a glittering dancefloor destroyer that weaponizes Alice’s self-confidence to manifest celebrity. I saw Alice perform in a club basement in Somerville, MA in front of generously 150 people, but when she puts herself on a Mount Rushmore with “Britney, Lindsay, Amanda Bynes[…] Taylor, Drake, Kardashian tribe” you can’t help but believe she’s already there.
“Bonk” was one of my favorite tracks of 2024, and a great example of a structural trend present in some of the year’s biggest dance tracks like Flight FM by Joy Orbison and Honey by Caribou which I’ve been referring to as rattlers. By song structure, rattlers resemble American buildup-drop (ahem) EDM/brostep/whatever, but strip out the grating grandiosity and self-insistence. Instead of generating tension artificially with trance snare rolls or whatever the hell metal guitars Excision uses, rattlers gently tease the “drop” section then slide into it with an abbreviated buildup at most. It’s a similar deployment of tension and release as the buildup/drop structure, but in a way that’s less disruptive to the flow of the dancefloor. “Bonk” is a textbook rattler, with a/b sections that are similar enough to flow smoothly but different enough that the extra oomph of the b section is constructively jarring, like afterburners kicking you to a new top speed.
Speaking of 2021 hyperpop… This remix is the highlight of 100 gecs and the tree of clues. It’s my favorite track from 1000 gecs flipped by two people with some of my favorite voices in hyperpop over a style of track I wish both of them would make more of. It’s bouncy, danceable, funny, unpredictable and referential without feeling chained to the past, all of the qualities that make hyperpop so appealing to me. It’s not the most innovative song by any means, nor do I think it will be remembered as well as some of the genre’s more pioneering and out there cuts, but it’s always fun to listen to, and that’s an achievement to be proud of.